One of those days...

Don't get me wrong, in general we are doing pretty great here in Chesapeake.  Life is good: so much more predictable and stable, and full of fun possibilities. Still, the last few days have been a little hectic. I've been trying to go through (multiplying, it seems) boxes, and both of my little girls have caught nasty colds, and it's just been a little intense at moments. I know we have too much stuff. I shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn't gotten rid of a TON of stuff before we left Davenport.  But in the space we have to work with, we still have too much. There is a big pile of thrift store donations, as well as a lot of things that have been thrown away, but now I still have to find places to cut down.  What to get rid of? What we have the most of are toys, books, media, and clothes. Clothes-to-grow-into (or in my case, shrink into...) clothes grown out of but we may need again, toys, toys, toys, (trying to get rid of a lot of those, but they're all so fun!) electronic equipment, tapes and discs galore. You get the picture. Anyway, all of it is a little overwhelming, but hard to get rid of. It was so carefully acquired (especially all my second-hand Little People sets!), and I'm not sure when we'll be in a financial position to replace it when/if we do need it. So mostly I just have to pace myself as I go through it and deal with it, I guess.  Can you see how excited Katy is here that I finally went through one of the really big bins and found some toys just right for her?

Poor Jaina woke up last night several times all croupy and upset that she couldn't sleep. I think she fell asleep on my shoulder in the bathroom while we were "steaming" her every time. She is a girl that needs her sleep! She has felt pretty rotten today, which means the tv has been on all day. :-p

Katy got sick Tuesday night and we had some rough moments the first two nights, but she felt great yesterday.

This is a happy moment. She likes the camera. :)

Today she has been grumpy again. It's just one of those days. I guess the main problem is any time you have 3 little ones in a small space and you try to do a project (whether fun or work) other things kind of get out of control quickly. Like the laundry, and the toys in the living room. I keep walking around trying to get things done and see things I've forgotten to finish (ie the washer is sitting there open waiting to start, clothes on the dining room table I somehow didn't make it to the kids' room with, even dishes in the sink, which I've been trying SO hard to avoid...) I just can't keep up with life today.  But that's okay. Life is good, and tomorrow will hopefully be better.  I'm planning to take it pretty easy tomorrow. Hopefully Jaina will feel better and no one else will be dealing with this cold!  And then it's the weekend, and we always love to have our Daddy home!

Here are some pictures we took last Saturday when we went to a big mall in Virginia Beach. I was excited because there was a Disney store there. The kids liked the Disney store, but it was almost immediately forgotten when they saw this:

A double-decker carousel, imported from Venice! THey really, really wanted to ride it.  So we let them. And Katy even got on free, which was nice! We signed them up for their birthday club, which apparently gets them a coupon for free rides for them and up to 9 friends on their birthday. Pretty cool, huh? They had a blast, even if Katy was about 2 hours overdue for her nap by the time we got her home. :)

It was her first ride, and she was impressed!

After her nap Saturday, hoping to squeeze a second lunch in...

Yesterday, making some sweet music with her Leapfrog table

Trying to Hard to Grow Up

A favorite climbing spot

This little girl already thinks she's big. She doesn't miss anything. If anyone is having a snack, or leaving the house, or playing with certain toys, or trying to work on a project, she WANTS to do the same. She has started finding jars of baby food (which she almost doesn't even like anymore) or packages of food on our little "kitchen overflow" shelf and bringing them to me, saying "this, this, this!" I ignored her the other day and kept putting clothes away, and pretty soon I could hear her fussing and upset in the other room, so I went to check on her. She had dragged the food item (a baby shelf-stable yogurt-type thing) over to her booster seat, and ADAMANTLY wanted up there so she could eat it. She sat in her booster seat for over an hour today playing with toys because Reilly and Jaina were playing with Littlest Pet Shops at the kitchen table. She is starting to really enjoy books, and I often find her flipping through them. As you can see from the picture above, she's started climbing onto anything she can (though she's not walking yet) and is a bit of a dare devil. This is new for us, since our other two were too cautious (and too chubby) for much climbing. We've even found her on the second rung of Reilly's bunk bed ladder(!). It's a good thing we don't have any stairs in our apartment, I think. I know walking's just around the corner, and while I usually just wish she would figure it out, it's going to be a little crazy to see my still (mostly) bald "baby" turn into a toddler. She's already mostly there! (minus the actual "toddling"...)

Apparently, she sees something she wants back there... "This!"

My cute little family at dinner last Sunday

Trip to the Beach, take 2.

Yesterday we tried a different beach. We knew that it supposed to rain, but only part of the afternoon, so we decided to take our chances. Also, we were going to a beach that the lifeguards didn't close when it was stormy. They just left instead of keeping people off the beach. The drive was about 45 minutes, but it was absolutely beautiful. Very green and lots of neat houses, tiny and huge. There were lots of sweet corn/ blackberry/ tomato/ live crab farmer stands.  Here are just a few pictures that I took on the way down.

Par for the course, as soon as we pulled into the parking, it started sprinkling. And as soon as we unloaded, it started raining hard. We decided to wait it out a little, and piled back into the car (much to Katy's dismay) to drive around and look at all the beach houses and splash our car through all the huge puddles on the tiny beachside roads. After about 15 or 20 minutes it mostly stopped raining and we gave it another try. It actually turned into a pretty sunny, nice afternoon (about 85º and not too humid, because of the breeze) and we had a really good time. The kids all enjoyed the sand and mostly liked the water, too. A few of the waves almost swept them away, but I don't think we had too many tears. Katy, especially, loved it. She is such a water baby. I even took her out in the waves a little bit, and she thought that was pretty cool. The water was a little less cold than I'm used to it being in California, and there was absolutely no seaweed or sea grasses in the water. I guess we have to watch our for jellyfish this time of year though. We only saw one little washed-up jelly blob, so apparently it wasn't a problem this time.
After about 20 minutes we realized it was clearing up and that we were going to stay, so we finally committed and applied sunscreen. Can I just say that sunscreen post-sand-exposure is not very much fun? Apparently everyone got plenty of coverage except Mommy. I guess I should have asked for help, because I missed a huge spot on my back and got a bright red souvenir. At least it was me and not any of the munchkins. We stayed about 2 hours I think, maybe more, and then headed home. Katy fell asleep after about 20 minutes, and I was even able to transfer her once we got home. That has only happened once or twice in the last 6 months, I'd say. She was pretty worn out. The older kids were already asking to go back today. :)

Thankfully she didn't eat much sand before she decided it was gross.

She finally figured out that she could crawl in the sand

Look at that sandy bum. I don't think I'll ever stop finding sand, even now
that we're home. It's everywhere...

Welcome to Virginia! (lots of pictures...)

Monday (the 4th) was a pretty long day for us. It went as well as could be expected.  Here are the highlights:
*Everyone up at 6 am
*Drove 2.5 hours to the airport (and got to see Sophie and Kinz for about 3 minutes!)
*Got there just in time to rush through security
*Managed to forget one of my bags in the security line
*Made it to our gate in time for a bathroom break before boarding (very exciting)
*3.5-hour flight (from Phoenix to Atlanta) was tiring, but without incident
*Rode the train in Atlanta between terminals
*1.5 hour flight from Atlanta to Norfolk (with cranky, whiny kids and mommy)
*Sat on the tarmac for 1.3 hours while they tried to decide which gate to give us
*Saw about 3 fireworks out the plane windows
*Got to see Grandpa Kerrigan in the airport since his flight was extremely delayed
*Kids fell asleep on the way to Suffolk (where we were staying) and we got to bed about 1:30 am (EST)

I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy, and when I DID get the camera out I took video to stick into our family videos.

Tuesday evening we finally got into our apartment in Chesapeake. We tried earlier in the day, but apparently they decided to install new carpet. No complaints there, but it did push things back a bit. That night at 6 we were super grateful that over 10 people from our new ward showed up to help move everything in. It was overcast, but super warm and very humid. I didn't even carry very many things up the stairs; I was kept busy just trying to keep the kids out of the way (Katy wanted to be held, of course, with all the strangers and the strange place) and trying to direct boxes into the appropriate parts of the house.  A few guys even stayed to help put together the beds so we could at least have that done, since it was already 7 pm.  Of course being on west coast time, our kids didn't go to bed until 11 the first two days...
For moms and sisters, here are a bunch of pictures we took Tuesday evening (right after we moved in).

The den. Read: computer room, storage room, playroom. Eventually.

The living room end

The dining room end/coat closet. (with silly kiddos in front)

The tiny kitchen. We're about done fitting everything in...

The laundry closet

The bathroom. Without drawers, but a little larger space-wise than the last few.

Looking into the kids' room



Our new-to-us bunkbeds. So much fun!



The kids have been enjoying re-discovering lots and lots of toys!

Our apartment is a little bigger than we expected from the floorplan (except the kitchen; it's about the size I expected - tiny!) and the paint and carpet is fresh, so we were pleasantly surprised. We're close to pretty much everything, including an elementary school/playground across the street, and the library about a block away. Jeremy's work is just down the road.

I'll post more pictures in a week or two when things are looking more like a house and less like a version of the t.v. show "Hoarders..." Things are already much better 2 days later, but we still have some work to do...

After working on the house all day Wednesday we needed to get out for a bit, so we checked out the mall. (Less than a mile away)  The playplace there isn't terribly great, but Katy thought it was awesome. She thought she was so big, and kept climbing all over the butterfly.

I didn't try to get her to pose. That's all her...

As we headed out of the mall it started raining. It was raining pretty good, but it didn't seem to be letting up, so we headed for the car anyway. As SOON as we stepped off the sidewalk it started pouring. POURING.  We were actually super close to the door, but we were still completely soaked by the time we got into the car. Like everyone had to change when we finally got home. Really really wet. It's been a while since we've dealt with rain like that! The older kids weren't sure they were going to survive, and Katy couldn't figure out what in the world was happening. She's only seen rain maybe once, I think. If that.

We attempted our first beach trip today, but we neglected to check the weather, and went down (about a 25 minute drive) during a huge rainstorm. It wasn't -actually- raining when we parked on Atlantic Avenue, but there was still thunder and lightning in the not-too-distant distance, and lifeguards were preventing anyone from actually going out onto the beach. We got to walk up and down a bit of the boardwalk, and it would have still been really enjoyable had our kids (mostly Reilly) not been grumpy and whiny. So it was only semi-enjoyable. We're hoping to try again soon.

We got wet on the way back to our car, but not nearly as wet as Wednesday. We did deal with torrential downpour about 30 of the 40 minutes it took us to get home. (between the weather and rush hour traffic) Pretty crazy, after having only seen rain like twice in the last 8 months.We need to buy more umbrellas...