Exhausted

It's been an extremely busy month.  Every day I want to sit and write about what we've been doing but all I do is surf and let my brain veg when I finally get a chance to sit down.

Last Friday Mom and I drove the girls to Roanoke, Virginia to see my niece in a play at Hollins University.  What was a 7 hour drive ended up taking us 2 days.  My brand new van broke down right outside of Charlotte, NC.  Thank goodness for the wonderful people at Hendrick Honda... although it was after hours  (7 pm) and the service department was closed, they found a mechanic to drive out to where we were and check out the van.  We definatelly needed a tow according to him. 

Mom waited for the van to get towed almost 4 hours... the first tow truck driver threw the keys at her when she asked him why he was taking the plastic covering off the extra key.  Crazy!  The mechanic drove myself, Olivia and Amelia back to the dealer in a loaner van, where we dropped him off and found a place to stay for the night.  I checked in, dropped our stuff off and tried to get the girls to go to sleep.  They finally fell asleep a little after midnight, just in time to get 15 minutes of rest before I had to wake them up to go get mom.  Poor Amelia... she was as floppy as Olivia when she was a baby.  I could NOT get her to wake up and ended up carrying a 4 year old in one arm and a 17 month old in a baby carrier in the other arm down to the first floor and out the door.  I dropped their blankies in the freezing rain and generally had a rough time. 

We finally got the girls back into bed after picking up mom; and they worked on our car first the next day.  When they realized they couldn't fix it quickly, they gave us another vehicle, this time a rental, and had us go on our merry way.  We booked it to Hollins and made it just in time to see the last 30-45 minutes of Katie's play.   She has no idea how hard we worked every angle to get there on time.  It was great to see her. 

Finally home late Sunday night.  What was supposed to be a quick trip turned out to be one of the longest and hardest short trips I've ever taken. 

Thank goodness Olivia has Prader Willi Syndrome.  She was calm and quiet the whole time :)  I guess there's something to be said for a baby who doesn't ever really get fussy.  I hear she will make up for it later, but I am enjoying the flexibility for now.

The bad part of the trip is that it was so exhausting, somehow I misplaced my camera or it fell somewhere and I didn't notice it.  I'm missing a disk that was stored in there with some priceless pics of Amelia as a baby.  Don't ask me why I was dumb enough to put them in the storage part of the camera case.  I'm hoping that I find it somehow.

We're back home!

And tales to come, along with recipes of all the fun with family and friends in Texas.

Asa, Steve, Eli, Dad, Zeke, Dylan, Braden, Todd, Paul, Noah
Paul, Mia

Mom and Dad opening their Memory Books

Making Cookies with Bamaw

She is covered in cinnamon sugar!

Trip Home

One last bedtime story... Melancholy little girl looking out the airport window at our plane

Random Photos from Colorado

Dressed to kill Everywhere I went in Woodland Park, these displays of books kept popping up. The library, beautiful little craft shops, you name it. JJ wrote a delightful little book, "Grandmother Told Me" (can be ordered on Amazon.com) and they were selling like hotcakes. Rafe is even mentioned at the end of the book!

Supposed to be watching Fantasia, but teasing Uncle Gramps.

Finally settled in to see what Mickey will do in Fantasia. I thought the movie would be too scary for her, but she loved it.

Showing off her artwork when Uncle Gramps came home

Playing with Granny J

Noah's Ark Amelia put those socks on BOTH their feet. Immediately after this, she jumped down and started tickling JJ's feet.

Putting together "sewing dolls"

She loves them and can't wait to start!

Fascinated by the moose Granny J shot.

Colorado Scenery

Sunrise off the deck Same deck, looking a little to the right. Doesn't it seem like the hills are covered in gold?

I'm much better at nature photography.
At least I can get nature to stand still while I'm taking the picture!

Look at that sky! This was our walk back up the hill to the house.

And this was our walk down the hill! It's easy to get winded at 9000 ft, when you are used to living at sea level.

Vagabonds

As you can tell, we're back at Lejeune this week. We'll probably be staying here at the BOQ until the middle of May. I feel like we haven't lived in one solid place since the end of November. Mail has gotten lost, found, then lost again in the moving, forwarding, packing and unpacking. So have so many other things. I try to keep Amelia's schedule the same as much as possible to mitigate against her frustration and stress at always being someplace different. Since November, we've stayed at 8 different places with friends and family. Eight. And if I'd had more time, it would have been a few more before we left so unexpectedly to join up with Rafe. Before the age of 2, she has made numerous plane and car trips to Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Missouri, Colorado, North Carolina... and that's just the destination states. NOT even counting the states we stopped in or drove through. I should stop sometime and add up how many trips we've actually made so far. She's a trouper.

I really miss this area. Coming back I realize how much more support there is for moms. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that half this town is always a single mom running a family because half the town is always deployed. I do feel like a single mom sometimes, although a very lucky one. Most single moms have the struggle of trying to work AND spending a lot of time teaching and raising their kids, along with running a household. I feel blessed that although money can be tight at times, we have the luxury of me staying at home with Amelia.

It's nice to see my friends again. I keep running into people I know everywhere we go. I realize when I see them again, how much I really love them and miss them.