Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

I am a very bad wife, I'll admit it. I completely forgot about our five-year anniversary until a couple of days ago. While writing down the day's date I thought "Goodness, our annivesary is in two days!". Then I forgot about it again in the midst of getting a rental car for tomorrow's trip to New Jersey and running last minute errands around Newport. I don't have a good excuse, I just plain forgot. Hans and I tend to be a little lax in the area of celebrating these things. I don't know why that is. It's not because either one of us is un-romantic. On the contrary, I think my husband is very romantic and anyone who knows me knows that I read way too much Laverle Spencer growing up. Actually, that sort of reading really didn't do me any good because it totally skewed my perception of what romance is. I'm only just starting to learn what real romance is: the husband who changes the dirty diaper I pretend not to smell! For five years of...

I read about this organization, Cell Phones for Soldiers , in yesterday's USA Today. CPFS was started by two Massachusetts siblings in 2004 when they were 13 and 12. Hello, do I feel like a slacker? Ummm, just a little! You can read all about the background story on the CPFS website. Basically, CPFS accept donations of used cell phones, Blackberries, PDAs and all of their wires, chargers, etc., etc. CPFS gets paid a small amount from the recyclers for each item they turn in. Then, CPFS turns around and spends that money to purchase phone cards for soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a great time of the year to donate to this very worthy cause. And who doesn't have an old clunker cell phone or PDA gathering dust in a drawer? It's a way to help our servicemembers and recycle something that will just end up clogging the landfills! It won't cost you a dime, either, because you can download a prepaid shipping label. There is also a list by state of drop-off s...

Ahhhhh, it's back to life as we know it at the luxurious Navy Lodge, Newport, RI. I haven't written since Thanksgiving, so I'll do a quick recap: we had a marvelous time in Minnesota. It couldn't have been much better, honestly. We got to do enough sufficiently Christmasy things to make me really feel the holiday spirit. Maybe all this renewal of the warm joys of this time of year stems from having children old enough to truly delight in the festivities and get excited by Santa. I feel like it's allowable to have childish delight in the same way that it's now allowable for me to play with them on the monkey bars and go down the slide. And of course , I wanted to do a quick recap and I go off on a tangent. We had room service for breakfast every day. Thanksgiving was great--Gen cooked a great meal and Grandma T. played bowling on the Wii (that's a newsworthy event!). After dinner, we shot over to visit family in Rochester, then on down to Austin to spe...

We have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, namely that we survived our flights. Let's just say that one member of our party was not entirely happy to be confined to a plane. From Newark halfway to Minnesota, she screamed and fought me like a wild mustang under the lasso. Seriously, I felt like I could enter the calf-roping contest at a rodeo. The whole episode probably lasted about 10 minutes, but felt like eternity. Finally, she exhausted herself and fell into such a deep sleep that I had to keep checking to make sure she was still breathing. And, as always, the part that I appreciate the most about Annika's fit on the plane is the fact that people feel the need to turn around and stare . I mean, OK, have a quick glance at the demon-possessed child in the 19th row (and her red-faced, sweating mother), then for the love of God, just turn around and mind your own business the best you can. Hello. I realize that it's loud and grating and I'm doing my best...

We've been keeping our Coke bottle tops and 12-pack codes for a bit. It's a pretty good deal for Zero drinkers, because you can get a $1.00 off coupon every time you have 100 points in your account. And anyone who is as serious about consuming Coke products as these De Fors are can rack up 100 points quickly. Anyway. Christmas is coming up and the good folks at Coke are letting Coke Rewards users donate points to Toys for Tots. It's very simple and free to sign up, plus they'll send you a free liter bottle of Coke. Then, all you do is keep your codes and take a minute now and then to enter them in. It's really very simple. Coke's goal is to get a donation of 3,000,000 points. They were at 1.2 million last time I checked. It's just a very simple, very easy and pain-free way to donate to a good cause. Check it out at http://mycokerewards.com

Today was a very gray and chilly day in Newport. So gray. So chilly. So dismal. We ran a few errands this morning and got lunch at Wendy's, then headed back to the bunker to eat and take a nice, long nap. One of the things that I like about the bunker is the ability to pull the blackout shades and have it be dark as a cave in here. We're getting used to only seeing the sun after 9:00 a.m. We're living in the dark. Like vampires or fungus or Democrats. Anyway. I decided to take the kids to the park in the afternoon. We needed to get some exercise and try to clear the cobwebs of our sloth-like day. I bundled up the kids and headed down to the park to meet up with Josiah's newest and bestest buddy Logan. For awhile, everyone romped joyfully around the park. My only excitement was trying to keep Annika's hat on her head. Not to digress, but I got her the cutest hat and mittens at Old Navy and though they are adorable and make her look like a yummy little pi...

Post trick-or-treating Being "on" takes so much energy Pre-festivities, Miss Ladybug Annika's response to "We're going to get CANDY!!" Costume by Gymboree, antennae by Rachel Pre-festivities, Mr. Tiger, GRRRRRR! After trick-or-treating (note that their faces aren't smeared with chocolate) Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. Our connection is moody. One day it is very, very slow and the next day it is very fast. Obviously, it is a bipolar connection. Today was a mostly bad day, but suddenly in the afternoon, it perked up and so...here are some pictures for the starving grandmothers. You can also get a little view of the bunker. Hard to believe but Monday it will be two weeks since we "moved in"! Enjoying the Wii. I have played bowling a few times now. It's addicting, definitely. Plus, I don't have to wear those ugly shoes that 4,256 other people have worn. Or wait for the ball return. It's pretty sweet. Hans...

OK, duh...a Wii! I am super-excited though! We have been wanting one for a little while now (this is your fault, Peder and Sarah). They are pretty hard to come by around here. We would check periodically at Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy with no luck. But today the heavens parted, the sun shone its rays down, the heavenly trumpets sounded and lo and behold...a Wii was waiting for us at Wal-Mart. It was just like that. Maybe this is why Wal-Mart always had 780 skylights on their roofs... They had probably eight of them in the cabinet when I went by to check, and by the time we left 15 minutes later, all but two of them were sold. I was so flabbergasted to see a real actual Wii in the cabinet when I walked up that I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to walk away from the area because surely the Wiis would all disappear before I could get back. Luckily for me, someone else had spied them before me and had summoned the surly, put-upon electronics guy to unlock the cabinet. I...

Today is Hans' graduation day. As he was walking out the door this morning, he said "When I come back this afternoon, I'll have an M.A.". As if he's going over to the Stop & Shop to pick it up after school. If only it were that easy, I'd do it too! Anyway, he's a little bummed today because the college isn't putting on any sort of ceremony for them. Believe it or not, Hans is in the very first class to have no ceremony. No shaking of hands, no keg, nothing. They are mailing him his diploma. Which will probably join such various important documents as his commissioning certificate and his U of M diploma in the bottom of some dark drawer. Not that I should talk--my MSUM diploma is God knows where. This has been a very pleasant year. If only Navy life was always like this, I would want him to stay in forever. We have loved having him with us every single day. We have loved having short work days, days off, no deployments, no inspections,...

Yikes, it is super-windy and raining outside! I guess the tail end of Hurricane Noel is going past. I have been outside of our little room exactly once today...an ill-fated trip to Barnes & Noble. Silly me, to think that it might make my lodgebound children (one in particular) happy to go and play with the train table in the children's section. He was happy with it while there was one other little boy there. As soon as a couple more little guys showed up, he started throwing a fit, and throwing trains. Not at the other kids, at least! We had to beat a hasty retreat. I really hate it when Josiah behaves in this way, but the thing I hate the most are the "looks" from the other mothers there. I try to tell myself that their kids have all had their days. It's sorta hard to believe when it's yours who's acting up. I've definitely been there on days when Josiah is being an angel and the other little boy is stealing trains from him or throwing tan...

Yesterday was an(other) extremely long and stressful day. Here's how it was supposed to go: we would all get up, have a pleasant breakfast, get ready to go, get in the cars and have a pleasant and scenic trip to New Jersey with a nice stop for some lunch at McDonald's. It's a three hour trip down to Jersey, so I figured if we left by 9:00 a.m., we'd get Hans' car through the processing center, stop for lunch and be back on the road by 2:00 at the latest. Home to Newport by suppertime. We did have a nice breakfast, we did get on the road by 9:10 a.m. and our trip was pleasant and scenic until we reached East Lyme, Connecticut. Hans was following me on I-95. We were cruising along in the fast lane, when all of a sudden in front of me, at maybe a distance of two city blocks I saw a truck's tanker rise up in the air, fall to the ground and start to slide, long-wise across the freeway, towards us. It seemed so improbable that at first I just didn't understand. I...

OK folks, first of all I just want to let everyone know that we are alive and well. Second. We have the slowest internet , internet so slow that it makes free dial-up look speedy. Anything that requires a sign-in takes about ten minutes to load up. After the lightning fast speed of our DSL at the house, this is painful. It's supposedly high-speed wireless, but...obviously, not that high-speed. Such a rip off! What I'm saying is...don't expect a whole lot in the way of posts because it's so annoying to use this internet . Thanks for understanding. We are all done with the house on 2 nd Street. Our last moves went...OK. The storage move went pretty well. At least the guys were half-decent...friendly and non-surly. The guys that came for our Germany move on Monday were definitely on the surly side. Well, one of them was, the other was fairly friendly. I have nothing against these guys, truly. You all know that I worked with a bunch of roofers for nine year...