Turkey's gone!

We had an exciting Thanksgiving!  I think it was made more exciting by the fact that we are probably all a little familiarity-starved.  So when Jason's mom and dad got to come it was like re-entering a home world or something.  Teresa flew in the weekend before Thanksgiving and stayed in the apartment with us.  The girls were super excited about this and even looked forward to sleeping on the floor so Monty could have Gwyn's bed.  Incidentally, Lyla and Celee are the ones that slept on the floor.  Gwyn had a bed all to herself and one bed went empty!  Then, when they got their beds back they all just went back to their respective beds.  Weird.


Anyway, Celee's troop rode the light rail down to Walter's Art Museum on Saturday before we picked Monty up at the airport.  There was an extra spot so Gwyn got to go too.  Lyla's troop went on Sunday.  The museum did a Renaissance program and the girls learned about profiles.  They got to paint one of their own too.  It's a pretty cool museum and I think they leaned a lot. The girls even got to use the "secret staircase."   And they got to have fun with girl scouts and ride the train.  All in all it was great!

We did lots of cool stuff with Monty.  We shopped, ate, played games, and went to the park.  We decided to try Oregon Ridge Park after a friend here recommended it.  What a cool place!  There are miles of hiking trails, a swimming lake in the summer, an education center, historic buildings from the 1700s, a natural playscape, a ski slope, and probably more.  They have themed backpacks you can check out that lead you on scavenger hunts for water bugs, or birds, or trees, etc.  The girls had so much fun playing on the playscape that we didn't even have time to do the backpack activities.  But in the educational center the girls lucked out because the lady came to feed the turtles while we were in there and the girls got to help.  She even got one out and let it "run" around on the floor for a while.  One little guy was very hungry and kept trying to bite fingers through the glass, so he didn't get to come out and play.

We picked up the turkey from the Amish market and picked up Pop from the airport Wednesday.  (We all got to get a "coffee" at the airport *hot chocolate)  Since I didn't have room to cook the turkey I ordered a BBQ one.  It was yummy, but I'd still rather have had the injected fried ones we're used to.  We did have all the fixins' though, complete with cornbread dressing!  We ate our fill and more.  I actually got rid of the last of the leftovers today.  Celee re-enacted the "It's Thanksgiving" song from YouTube for us during our Thanksgiving feast.   So it was a good time.  I don't know whether to thank the friend that posted the afore-mentioned Thanksgiving song on her facebook or not, This post prompted my girls' "What is that?  Can we watch it?"  Now we get to hear it covered quite often.

Saturday we all drove down to DC.  I must say that it's pretty cool to be an hour's drive from Washington.  We might just ride the train next time though because parking is a doozy!  After some anxiety and barely-suppressed cursing, we did find a parking garage and walked over to the Natural History Museum.  We saw lots of fossils, many that I had never seen or heard of before.  We watched a tarantula get fed a cricket.  Celee and Lyla had the opportunity to touch a tarantula's exoskeleton, but they declined.  We all got to feel the rocks that many minerals we eat and use come from like talc and aluminum.  It was a beautiful day so when we were museumed out, we walked down the mall to the Washington Monument.  Celee was especially excited to see it.  It is pretty cool to stand there because you can see the Capital, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, and the reflecting pool from there.  We were all pretty spent by then so we didn't walk any where else, but the girls and I are anxiously awaiting our next DC outing.

To wrap up our Thanksgiving festivities we celebrated Celee's birthday with Monty and Pop.  Her birthday isn't until Dec. 5th, but this has become a sort of tradition as we are usually with family on Thanksgiving and not the following few weeks when her actual birthday falls.  So we sang and ate cupcakes and she got to open a gift.  I feel like Celee gets the shaft a little with her birthday in the winter and smashed between two major holidays, so I hope the extra celebration helps her feel special.  Especially as this year she isn't having a party.  We will have to make her special day fun in other ways!

I was dreading going into the "storage room" to dig out Christmas decorations, but it turned out well!  Since the apartment is small, I only have room really for the tree and one little tree on the bar, so that all went up pretty quickly.  And in the process of getting out Christmas boxes, I found the document box that had our car titles, birth certificates, etc. in it.  Thank you Jesus!!  Once that was found we made our first attempt to go to the MVA to get our driver's licenses and plates.  I say first attempt because even though we got up way earlier than usual, drove 40 min. though morning traffic, got there right after it opened, I still didn't have everything we needed.  We will make a second attempt in a few days.  Maybe this time I will have that 2nd piece of mail and not leave our car titles on the kitchen table.  Such is life, mine anyway.  We always joked in Champaign about how many times I would get to the stop sign at the end of our street only to back up and run inside to get something I forgot.  That's not so easy to do in this metropolitan area we have moved to.  And I will give Champaign credit for gridded street planning.  I can find my way in a square world, but curvy roads are a little more difficult.  Thank heavens for google maps!  We are learning to navigate this strange new place.  Maybe I will get my sea-legs soon.  :)

Chocolate Bomb!

I haven't been taking many pictures lately.  I realized this as I sat down to write.  I usually get my phone and look at the pictures from the past week to remember what has gone on and what I want to write about.  According to the pics on my phone, my week has consisted of a playground, UNO, chocolate bomb cake, and a science experiment.  The playground picture itself is kind of sad because we found the two playgrounds on the apartment property this past week.  I took pictures of the little one, but not the big one for some reason.  I do know the reason, but I'll get to that.  It was cold that day, hence the coats.  After we went to this playground we walked over to the bigger one which is very nice.  It's on a big terraced hill which I think will be super fun to sled on when it snows.  There are also big boulders placed around the playground that the girls (and Jason) enjoyed climbing on.  It's kind of a pain to have to cross a busy street to get to the playground, but we'll take our fun how we can get it.  :)

One reason that I didn't think to take many pictures this week, and that there weren't many things to take pictures of is because I was sick most of the week.  Not the usual "mom's sick but she still does what she usually does" kind of sick.  I was the lay in the bed unable to function sick.  It did come and go, which is why there was a trek to a playground at all, but for the most part I was out of commission.  Based on my symptoms I actually think I had the flu.  I don't know how I got this and no one else did - knock on wood.  I will say I am very proud of the girls during all this.  They did their school work.  Gwyn and Celee even helped Lyla do a lot of hers when I couldn't.  We got through the stuff that had to be done so as to not get behind.  Also Jason really was such a sweetie.  I know it's probably horribly old-fashioned, but I hate it when I don't have a hot-meal at least in the makings when he gets home from work.  I even feel bad when it's left-over night.  But he had to make several meals last week and he was so sweet about it all.  (Of course, it may have helped that he didn't really want me making his meals with my sick-germs)  I even got flowers out of the whole ordeal.  :)  Thankfully I do feel better now and can don the apron again.  (I actually don't wear an apron, but maybe I should start!)
 We've discovered the joys of UNO.  This is one card game that Lyla understands and can keep up with.  The girls get SO very silly when we play this.  I posted something about having to tell Lyla not to hold her cards with her butt.  This is because they all roll when she sticks her cards under her and does a crazy booty-in-the-air move to see her cards when it's her turn.  Of course we can all see her cards when she does this too, but you can't tell her that.  They get pretty loopy doing this so the humor goes down the toliet anyway.  It's fun to play games with the girls after dinner each night.  I hope it's something that they'll remember with smiles.  Gwyn will probably kill me one day for posting this picture of her!

Since I felt better I felt the need to cook something horrible for me.  So I chose the chocolate bomb cake I pinned on Pinterest a while ago.  It's a chocolate cake-brownie-chocolate cake layered cake with chocolate frosting and chips all over and inside.  It's pretty scrumptious if I do say so myself.  I didn't eat much last week, so I think I'm making up for it with this cake alone.

Lastly, since we all feel better we did Lyla's science experiment today.  We took ice cubes and put them in a cup on the counter.  Then we poured 2 cups of water in pot on the stove.  We boiled the water and watched the steam.  Then we measured the water after it had boiled for a while.  We also checked the ice in the cup to see how it had melted.  Then we got to draw things on a chart that were either solids, liquids, or gases.  It was fun!  Especially seeing her realize what a gas really is and that there are lots of liquids that aren't water.  In hindsight, I'm really surprised that conversation didn't go the potty way.  Ahhh.  Small victories.
I can't believe that next week is Thanksgiving!  I've ordered a turkey from an Amish market that I'm excited about.  Gwyn has already planned out the menu.  And we pick up Jason's mom Saturday at the airport.  Yippee!  It's going to be fun!  I will ask my peeps to pray for the sale of our house.  It's a source of tension in that I keep thinking things are settled for a while (months at least in my mind) and then things keep popping up that demand rethinking and discernment.  So I guess my prayer request is for continued settling here and security for the girls as well as discernment and peace with decisions surrounding our house for sale.  And of course that the house does in fact sell.  What a great Christmas present that would be!

Epilogue

As I think about the past week or so that we've been here in Maryland I get a mix of emotions.  It's been real, that's about all I can say with any certainty.   I feel a strange disconnect.  I'm not at my "home" anymore.  This isn't "home" yet.  I'm not "home" with my family.  I feel like a dandelion that has blown away from it's stem and landed but hasn't sprouted yet.  Enough of waxing poetic today - moving is fun and also not and this isn't the first or the last time we'll do it, so be patient, Lana, while you sprout!
We got here in the first of the rain that was Sandy.  We camped out in the empty apartment.  I watched the entire 1st season of Downton Abby on Netflix and we played UNO.  The nice neighbors downstairs loaned us some games until our stuff got here.  I had not realized that my girls had never played UNO before.  It was a lot of fun, and Celee may just get that for her birthday soon.  The Firaxis Halloween party was re-scheduled so we just hung out and watched the rain and wind for the 1st 2 days.  Jason even had Monday off because a state of emergency was declared.

Tuesday the movers got here.  Bless their hearts, they drove through Sandy all day Monday.  But they did get here.  And it took them all day to unload everything.  Meanwhile I kept panicking.  How is all this going to fit?  We got the bigger apt. with the intention of the "den" being a storage room, but my my.  At the end of the day we were maneuvering around boxes, bicycles, and furniture in every room. The guys from Two Men and a Truck did a great job though.  (Thanks Dan and Renee!)  They lugged way too much stuff for way too long up to our 3rd floor apt.  And so far I haven't found anything broken.   -- I will say in hind sight, that it thankfully has gotten much better.  There are still boxes of things that I have no idea where to put out in the middle of rooms.  But it is getting better.  That's my mantra anyway.
We did Trick or Treat on Wednesday.  Lyla was a butterfly, Celee was Luna Lovegood, and Gwyn decided to be Athena, goddess of wisdom and just war.  Gwyn was cold so she didn't go trick-or-treating, but I took Celee and Lyla out to a nearby neighborhood.
Then Thursday was the Firaxis party, so they got dressed up again.  I somehow failed to get any good pictures of their costumes, but at least the lady at Firaxis did get us all in one photo.  Although, Lyla had seen a man dressed up in a scary costume as we walked in so she wouldn't let go of Jason or smile.  That tends to happen to her at company parties.  The Gumby at Volition did her in before and the scary monster man did her in at Firaxis.  Eventually she did get down and have fun.  But she kept an eye out for the monster everywhere we went.





Friday night all three girls and I headed off to Catonsville to a "Scouting Around the World" spend the night.  Gwyn and Lyla's troop had signed up so we all got to go.  I figured if there's any way for the girls to make friends quick, it's to spend the night with them.  That or we'll know who we don't like.  Thankfully it turned out for the best.  Celee hung with Gwyn's troop, and they had a lot of fun and did make friends.  Lyla had a fun time with her troop too.  She didn't even want me to stay with her and her troop.  It was, "See ya Mom!" the whole time.  Even when it was bedtime.  I got a chance to meet some great moms too and I'm looking forward to doing GS stuff with these ladies!

Sunday we went church shopping.  :) Just kidding.  That's what it feels like, but thankfully the worship service we attended didn't make it feel like that.  Not a show for church consumers, but a worship service.  I was truly thankful that during the service as I noticed others in passionate worship (please do not read charismatic necessarily in that) around me, I was reminded that there are believers all over the world praising Him and He hears and responds to us all.  The girls enjoyed the children's programming.  Gwyn was excited because they split the 4-5th graders away from the K-3rd completely and they had a popcorn machine.  Celee and Lyla got to stay together and play a parachute game so they were happy too.  And I was happy because they each could actually tell me the message and story of what they learned in Sunday School.  Lyla was even so cute trying to explain that the story came out of Enthusiateses.  She was very adamant about the pronunciation of this for quite a while until she finally believed me that it was Ecclesiastes.  We are probably going to keep visiting other churches for a while, but this one if definitely on the short list.


Sunday we also went for a walk down a rails-to-trails-type trail here.  We drove up to Monkton and followed it north for around a mile and a half.  If it hadn't been so chilly we might have gone farther, but it was a very nice trail and I would love to go again.  We all love that it is so hilly and rocky here!  The girls really needed to get out and run and climb and walk too.  We were too loud to see any wildlife, but the girls did find beaver tracks when they explored under a bridge.  And there were fuzzy orange and black caterpillars everywhere.  I also noticed that the trail is lined with rose bushes/vines.  I bet it will be gorgeous in the Spring.

Sunday was also Lyla's first meeting with her Girl Scout troop.  They had an Investiture Ceremony.  Lyla had already had hers in Illinois, but she did it again with her troop here.  We also made posters for a cookie booth sale.  They sell cookies here in Oct-Nov instead of Jan. like in Illinois.  The cookies here also have the real names (dosidos, tagalongs, samoas, etc.) instead of the names the cookies in the MidWest have.  So Lyla will get to at least sell some cookies at a booth sale.  And (yippee!) we missed the pre-order cookie sales here so we don't have to worry about that this year!  Although I will miss the cookie overload that comes with it.
So it's been up and down.  We've kept busy.  We're trying to get in a groove here.  I've only had one major crying episode.  The girls are very positive and upbeat about everything.  Jason is loving his job and the studio he works at.  I actually got out and ran today.  So the world is settling in.  And that's as good an epilogue as I can write.