Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

A few pictures from the weekend...the battleship WISCONSIN (Hans cracked that it's the only Wisconsin he's willing to spend any extended amount of time in) and the Nauticus museum in downtown Norfolk. I managed to get a couple of pictures of my husband and though he doesn't look terribly happy in the shot with William, I can assure you that he was having fun. Just a couple of shots of the still-evolving house. Remember that we have a new couch coming in...hopefully in the next few weeks. At that time, our old couches will move to the "library" (which comprises the real living/dining room of the house). We have so many books...I half-joked to Hans last night that he should put books all along the top of the cabinets in the kitchen.

As the title would indicate, we dragged the kids out to the Oceana Air Show in Virginia Beach yesterday. Josiah was especially unhappy at being "forced" to go...so about half of the time, the rest of us didn't have fun. Then they managed to calm down and reprioritize and after having some (very expensive air show) lunch, we all got into a better mood and enjoyed the rest of our time there. William just chilled in the stroller--we didn't hear a peep from him...the jets doing fly-bys didn't even startle him. Anyway, we had a decent time, but as I was telling Dad, there was a lot of down time between flying exhibitions and there weren't very many aircraft on the ground to look at. I was hoping to see some BIG planes, but the biggest thing they had was a Fedex plane, go figure. Everything else was jets...the Fokker and the bi-plane were kind of neat and the requisite Mustangs. That's a picture of Josiah sitting in the seat of (correct me if I...

Annika's new ladybug earrings and Josiah's first day of school (and first ride on the school bus)!

Um...I just heard on Nick, Jr. that it's Grandparent's Day. My apologies to Pete, Jan, Donna and Steve (not to mention Bernice and Bernita). I did not even get a chance to get a heads up that Grandparent's Day was coming up. Just another thing to blame on the move. Along with not having Josiah's lunchbox OR sandwich size baggies. I had to send him to school this morning with a gift bag from Hans' birthday and giant Ziploc bags 1/16th full of crackers and a sandwich. He'll probably end up sitting alone at lunch and make no friends because his mother completely forgot that school = school lunch = lunchbox. Of course, one could argue that we were supposed to have our household goods on September 2nd and so should have had plenty of time to get things like lunchboxes organized. It's now the 7th and we'll see where the magic truck full of our furniture is today... Anyway, the point is this: Happy Grandparent's Day. I'm sorry that I'm not ...

Yeah, the hurricane was nothing much. Just some wind and rain. Even so, a lot of places were shut down today. Obviously, they take hurricanes very seriously around here, most likely with good reason. As I write this it is 6:40 p.m. and the sun is out and starting its descent. I am sitting at our new table in the breakfast nook. We have finished our first supper here, the kids were shoo-ed outside for half an hour and William had a much needed bath. I guess you could say that the parents are beginning their descent, too. Not much to report today. The truck driver with our storage goods (this would be the crates that remained in the U.S. while we were in Germany) called today and asked if he could deliver on Sunday. I told him he could deliver any time he felt like it, just to bring my stuff . Bitte and danke schoen. The folks at the port in Baltimore called late in the afternoon to tell Hans that his car has been offloaded, so he'll fly up on Tuesday to pick it up and drive it home....

So, our first night of camping went fairly well. God bless our friend Angela, who provided us with air mattress, sleeping bags, bedding (have you all tried those T-shirt sheets = love!), lamps, pots and pans, dishes, etc. The air mattress was pretty comfy, but it made a lot of strange, farty noises whenever we rolled over and when one or the other of us got up, the shift in the bed's air about toppled the other person out! We did get up last night. Three times. And not with the baby. Nope. Annika was up three times last night, for extremely important reasons, such as: her sleeping bag was upside down. I keep taking deep breaths and trying to remind myself that this move has been a major life change for the kids. And exhale. One more note about sleeping arrangements and then I shall stop blabbing about them: due to the fact that we aren't going to get our household goods until approximately November, we went out and bought William something called a Peapod. Those o...