on our way

the movers came july 25th and worked for 2 days. they were slated to work for three, but unable to sit back and let the paid movers have all the fun, i had already put a lot of our things in boxes and bags and cleared shelves and consolidated and so on and so forth. for i could not help myself. then the came back on another day and loaded everything onto the truck, and poof, we were moved. some things about the military are not so bad :)

we lived out of my sister's house when our house was nothing but a pile of boxes. she moved down the street when seb came home and we still thought we might be staying. about 2 weeks after she signed the lease, we leared we were getting stationed at Ft Lewis in Tacoma, WA, almost as far away as we could be without going back to hawaii. i had just gotten excited about living down the street from her, getting to go do things together just US with NO KIDS (imagine such a luxury) and then, we were moving.

i'm glad we're moving, i think the location will be better for our family in and of itself, but it is definitely farther than i wanted to be from the rest of our family again. but i am excited about the area, excited about the climate that had me longing to be in a sweater at 65 degrees while i was BAKING in tennessee in the mid nineties. (my husband, all 115 skinny pounds of him is grumbly about it). i will take rain 9 months of the year over weather that has you sweating sitting still in the shade for three months of the year. i am excited for seb to have a job after returning from his deployment that will get him home at reasonable hours, and excited to have lots of montessori school options for the boys. and i am SUPER SUPER EXCITED to live close to one of my best friends that i had to say aloha to when she and her family left hawaii.

we're in st louis now, seeing seb's folks before we head to my parents tomorrow. we'll be stopping to see some other friends along our way, visit yellowstone, and in about 2 weeks, will pull up to our new home in tacoma.

since that all sounds more boring than i anticipated, here are some pictures of what we've been up to lately when the kids are happy, which is not when they are trapped in the car for hours on end:

checking out a new park that is just the right size and speed for both of them

noah is going to be trouble: when he would slip and fall on this climbing wall, instead of getting scared, he would laugh and then go right back to it.

we figured out the mystery behind noah's odd choice of sign for BAGEL

which, as caleb demonstrates here, must be because BAGEL sounds a heck of alot like EAGLE. apparently noah thinks we're eating toasted eagles with cream cheese every morning.

we've been going on deep sea adventures via the teevee

and getting lots of good brotherly snuggles in. i especially love catching caleb loving on noah when he doesn't even know i'm looking.

we've been visiting family and making sure they get some snuggles too

what can i say, we are a snuggly bunch!

we went to the magic house in st. louis, which is awesome!

that's a caleb face and a noah face. trying not to think about all the germs involved in that picture.

seriously, if you have a kid old enough to walk and not eat the sand, and live anywhere near st. louis (like, say, ALTON) you must come here at least once.

it will make you wish you were little enough to play with everything and not look like a complete fool.

the water table is definitely a favorite for both boys

that's me holding noah, with caleb and seb standing to my right. this was noah's favorite part and the only one he insisted on going back to after we'd walked away from it. they play the nutcracker suite (or they did that day) while you stand in front of a camera that converts your image into something like this.

and that's about it, didn't take any pictures of the packing or any of that, though i intended too. i'll try to post pictures of our trip along the way, but based on my history for posting that may be ever so slightly optimistic. my best guess is, of there's nothing new here within the week, you might just try back in september.

or october. maybe.