Mood:  happy

So Jake and I decided that for the big move, trip, and his big school, that we needed new cameras.  We also decided that we should get eachother SOMETHING for Mother's/Father's Day and upcoming birthdays, so we splurged and bought 2 new cameras!!  We now have matching Nikons, which are really nice!  They take MUCH better pictures, but we're still playing with the settings, so some photos make looks a little grainy.  We'll get it right evenutally!

So, now that we're talking about pictures, where do we start!?!?  lol  I've taken about 60 in the last 12 hours, and 8 of those I was sleeping!  :)  It's sad, I know!  Okay, here's Sarah, I don't think I ever start with her!

This am she was a little upset.  Blake had just taken a DVD away from her...

Playing with my new camera case:

On to Samantha.  She was trying to make a phone call this morning aparently.  I don't know if she got through or not, but she was sure trying!  lol

And here's where she was trying to figure out why Sarah was crying....

And here they are together, laughing away for the camera!

Mood:  silly

So, we decided that today was another beautiful day in North Carolina and we were going to spend the morning at the beach!    Have I mentioned before how much I absolutly love it at the beach???  Someone must have figured that out by now!  So we headed out around 10:00 am and showed up back at home long enough to wash up and head to a early dinner with Shaner at Olive Garden!  Here's some pictures from our beach today.  If you want, you can go to photobucket and login and view the rest of them under the 3May08 Beach Trip category, but here's the highlights!

Blake posing for me!  Jake didn't quite rub the lotion into his face very well!

Daddy & his girls! 

The jelly fish we found...  It wasn't doing sAnd Mommy & the girls:o well!   

And Mommy & the girls:

I'll write more later, we're going to enjoy Saturday Night Care night w/o the kids!  YAY!

Rae

Mood:  cool

Ohhh, have I mentioned how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE North Carolina beaches?!?!?!  It's April 26th, and we just spent the entire morning soaking up sunshine and acting like we were kids again...  Big kids, yes, but kids nontheless!!  It's wonderful!  There's something to be said about 80 degree weather, an ice water, a cooler, and buckets and shovels!!!

**I just have to add an apology in to my friends and family back home in Alaska....  You see, it's April 26th there too and they've got about a foot of snow in Anchorage and a few inches in Kenai!!!! :)**

Okay, before we get to the pictures of the beach, I also have some pictures of the kids from yesterday.  The girls are too cute with their sunglasses on!!  I just love them!

Here's Sarah, her picture turned out a little blurry, but that's 'cause she was moving one way and I was moving the other way!!  :)  Dang kid can't sit still......  Wonder where she gets that from?

And Samantha, who's actually wearing hers!

And I might as well throw one of Blakesters in here too!!  He's not wearing sunglasses because he FINALLY got a new pair today.  We've bought him at least 12 pairs since last summer and he keeps breaking them, so we made him go 2 months without any....  Hopefully he'll take better care of the new ones.  They're Power Rangers at least...  Maybe that will help!

And now onto beach pictures!!  We missed having Robyn, Kezzie, & Maggie there!  It didn't feel the same without them, but we did have a blast!!! 

**Warning, some of the images you are about to see are rather childish...  But we were having fun!!**

First, here's Jake and I:

Samantha:

Sarah: 

Mood:  lazy

So it's been a little while since I updated everyone.  Nothing much has changed.  My Uncle Rusty turned the big 50 yesterday!!  So I guess that has changed a little!  We'll be going to see them in less than a month, on May 23rd, so we're all excited!  Jake and Blake espically 'cause they get to play golf as much as the can handle it!  My mom is also flying into Columbia on the 23rd.  We'll pick her up there, then come home on the 25th.  Our dear TMO friends will be here with moving trucks for the next 3 days, one of them being Jake's birthday, and then we'll clean and check out of housing.  Jake's heading off to Free Fall school a few days before we take off for Alaska. 

Our plan is to take the northern route, around the 1st of June.  We'll be stopping in Jersey (Robyn!!), MI (Amy & Taylor!!!), ND (Lys!), ID (Jake's Grandma), and WA (Jake's Mom), then heading to Alaska!  I'll be there until Jake meets up with me after his school.  We'll probably be leaving there right after the Anchorage Bucs 4th of July game, and then spending some time in WA until we hop on the plane to Japan!  That's the way it's looking right now anyways, all of this is probably going to change at one time or another. 

We're doing well here.  I've got most of the bedrooms sorted through and I can honestly say that S&S's room and Blake's room are ready to go.  Our's is almost there, but all the stuff to go to the thrift store is sitting in the corner so that makes it look worse than it is!  The laundry room and garage are on the calendar for this weekend.  Then it's mostly done.  We'll be getting rid of our couch in the next few weeks (like 2 weeks from now), our futon will take it's place for a few weeks, until we move.  We'll also be getting rid of our 2nd kitchen table, extra computer monitor, and probably the washer and dryer soon too.  I'm keeping the trampoline in storage with the motorcycle and garage shelving that we just shelled out a bunch of money for...  The kitchen table and beds are going with us.  That's pretty much it!!  lol  The cats go in for their blood draw on May 15th, however we're still not 100% sure they are coming with us....  We'll see, at least everything will be prepared for them to come.

For those of you on our myspace, we completely re-did our page yesterday!!  It looks really good, check it out.

I haven't really taken any pictures of the kids recently.  We've been busy outside and taking walks...  I'm up to about 6 miles a day, 10 some days, on the bike or walking.  Jake's been biking to and from work (13.8 miles one way) for the last few days.  We're trying to get into shape for the time that we will spend on our bikes in Japan!  It does feel good and I can see and feel the definition coming back to my legs!

Here's a scrap page some of you may be interested in.  The other kids are my best friends children!!  They belong to Taylor, Alyssa, Gwen & Amy, the only one missing is the new Amy baby, due in December!!!

And here's the kiddos Mamas!!  I'm going to have to re-do the map in a few months and move my picture all the way across the world!!!!

Okay, I'm off to shower and take Blake into the doctor.  He woke up at 2 am and then again at 4 am complaining of his ear hurting...  I can practically sense an ear infection coming on.  Go figure, the girls STOP having them and Blake gets one!!!  Bummer!  Oh, well, now I know how my mom felt when I had ear infections all the time!!!  Hope everyone has a great day!

Rae

Mood:  don't ask

So I just wrote an extremely long blog and it got deleted by the crazy people in charge of my computer.  Basically, I'm just going to sum it up for you and post pictures now... 

The week has been good.  We're heading to the beach tomorrow, so I should have new pictures up then too.  We have 6 weeks until we move....  As you can imagine, this blog was MUCH longer the first time I wrote in, but now I'm tired and don't feel like re-typing it all!!!  Enjoy the pictures I'm posting now and I'll hopefully have more tomorrow.

Rae

Blake:

Sarah *Soooo Cute*

Samantha

Sarah, Killian, & Samantha (Killian is my friend Kim's {a fellow Alaskan living down here} daughter.)

Mood:  lucky

Okay, so I finally got around to taking some new pictures.  Well I should say that I'm finally getting around to POSTING new pictures, as they've been on my camera for a few days.... 

Here's Blake on the 8th at dinner!  He was just too cute in this picture and he was at long last cooperating with the camera!! 

And here he is a few minutes ago playing Guitar Hero!!  Yes, I finally broke down and bought the game!  Bad mom, I know!  lol  Sarah's the only one who hasn't got to hold the guitar, but more about that later:

Blake is doing really good.  Not too much new to report on him.  He's still looking forward to the move and can't wait to start karate, which for some reason he believes he can only do in Japan!  lol  But it's what got him excited about moving, so I'm not correcting him until we get there! 

Sarah's next, cause we're doing it in order of age today...  She's doing great!  As I said before their speach was evaluated and when we got the first set of results, she was at a 17 month level.  Well, the indepth evaluation was completed and Sarah is now at a 22 month old level!!  Weird, since she hardly talked for the therapist on the day that she came!!!  But yesterday, when they came to give the full results, Sarah wouldn't shut up!!  lol 

Here's Sarah at dinner on the 8th.  It was the girls' first time with black olives, so of course we had to put them on all their fingers! 

And this afternoon with her "Gover"...  She can't quite make out Grover yet, so she just leaves off the r! 

So, you remember how I said Sarah was the only one who hadn't gotten to hold the guitar?  Well, normally we wouldn't have let Samantha either, but while 4 of us were finishing up dinner, Samantha wandered into the living room where the guitar was sitting against the tv or on the couch - whereever Jake left it at the time!  She was freaking out, so we went to find out what was wrong, and luckily the camera was sitting right there:

And here's Samantha at dinner:

So Samantha was also tested, and she was at a 23 month level with her speach!  Which is VERY weird because she speaks WAY less than her sister, but when Michelle was here testing them, Mantha never shut up!  Just like her huh?  I guess she figured she needed to prove herself, but Sarah thought that she had no need!  Anyway, here's Samantha with Oscar the Grouch:
 

Yes, she was crying!!  Poor little girl!

Okay, I've got to go get ready for work now.  I meant to type more, but I ran outta time!

Rae

Mood:  sad

Well, I took my design to a place that came highly recommended yesterday.  A friend had just gone there and she was pretty happy with her's except that they tried to make it too big.  Well I decided I'd give them the shot at tattooing me right?  NNNNOOOO!!!  I took it in and the guy told me that it was too intricate of a design?!?!?  Are you serious?  You guys can see the picture, there's nothing really hard about it.  He said that it would need to be resized some, and I was like, okay, it can be a little bigger...  He came out from their copy room and showed me a tattoo that was about 6 x 8 inches!!!  OMG!  That one would take up almost all of my back!  Where would I put Samantha's initals!?!?!  lol  So I told him he was an idiot....  But before I could tell him that, he tried to tell me that even as small as they are, each tattoo was going to cost me $280-$300!!!  There's no way!  For my other 2, they were both under $50 with a $20 tip!!!  So I'm trying one more place down here, then I'm contacting Larry Allen's back home and going back to Don when I have my week up there!  I'm mad 'cause I REALLY wanted to get the tattoos yesterday, but there was NO way that place was getting my business.  I want my tattoos done correctly, not messed up, and it was a sure thing that he was going to mess them up ~ espically since a REAL artist could just freehand that design!!  OHHHHH!  Okay, I'm done complaining now.  I may have them sometime next week, but odds are, I'll wait for Don, who I know can do a design 'cause he's done the last 2 of mine!  GRRRR!

Rae

Mood:  incredulous

WOW!  All I can say is Romanita, I'm starting to feel what you feel!!  :)  I put the girls down for a LATE nap today.  We were up playing all morning, and around noon, I gave them lunch.  They finished up with that and got kinda fussy so I took them upstairs around 12:45.  Well, Mantha still won't stay in her crib, so we've been trying to figure out ways to keep her in...  No luck, obviously!  I went upstairs a minute ago to check on them 'cause I could still here them yammering on and guess what I find??  The room is a train wreck!  (Almost as bad as your living room Roma!!)  Sarah crib is FILLED to the brim with toys, and her and Samantha are in there playing away and NAKIE!!!!!  That's right, no diaper, no sleeper, NOTHING!  Lucky for me, also no poop or pee, but still!!!  So I cleaned out Sarah's crib, put diapers back on, new outfits (hopefully ones they can't get of...), and stuck Mantha back in HER crib!  I didn't get a chance to take pictures, but trust me, it was BAD!  :)  Buttheads!

In other news, as soon as Jake gets home today, which should be in about an hour, I'll be heading to the tattoo shop!  Sarah & Samantha's tattoo are LONG overdue!  For those of you who haven't seen them, I have 2 right now, one on my right calf that Casey designed for me back in high school and BeL (Blake's initals) on the back of my neck in green.

Well, for the last 18 months I have been playing around with designs for the girls' initals and this is what I've come up with.  Sarah's will be accented in the pink that you can see, but Samantha's will acutally be accented in purple, instead of the blue that's on there. 

They will be going on my sholder blades, Sarah on the left sholder, Samantha on the right.  I was going to add something to Blake's as well, but I can't quite come up with that perfect design yet, so I'm going to hold off on that until I get it completed.  Aparently the Japanese frown upon tattooing women, so I'm doing it NOW before we go over there!  ~   Yes I know Uncle Rusty, tattooing is bad...  I got that message 5 years ago when I did the clover!  :)  But you'll be happy to know that they can still be covered up with a simple tee-shirt anytime I don't want anyone to see them!!!  :)

Anyways, I'm going to go force Samantha to stay in her crib now!  :)  She back out playing, I can hear her!  lol  I'll take pictures of the tattoos tonight and post them probably tomorrow!

~Rae~

Mood:  bright

Here's Sarah trying to wear Daddy's shoes!  Both girls have a weird thing about putting on other people's shoes!!  If they are not in the shoe closet, they are fair game according to the girls.  Daddy aparently left his shoes out this morning before heading off to Cherry Point for a class so they got to spend the morning playing in his yukky shoes!!  :)

Oh, and aparently Blake left his out too 'cause that's what's on Samantha's other foot!  :)

Alright, we're off to enjoy our day.  Jake's in Cherry Point until 5, I have to work at 5 (I'm not sure how I'm going to swing that one...) and I have a bunch or errands to run in the morning, basically the next 2 hours!  Then Kim's coming over to give the kids some play time and some much needed Mommy time!!!!

Okay, so I just posted a big long blog with lots of details in it, and pushed "post" and it had an error...  ERRRRRRRR!  I hate it when that happens!  So, this will now be a quick update. 

The girls had their speach re-evaluated and they are up to the level they should be at.  Corrected for pre-maturity, their age is 17 months 3 weeks.  They are actually 18 months, 3 weeks.  After the test yesterday, we found that they are finally up to their corrected age level!  I'm sooo happy!  They have tons of new words in the past 2-3 weeks!  When they were tested in January, they were at a 7-9 month old level, so this is a huge jump for them.

They have also mastered the art of going up and down stairs!!!  YAY for them!  It's cute 'cause they usually do it backwards and slide down, but at least they are doing it just fine!

Anyways, here are some new pictures!  Enjoy them!  I am off to watch Sweeny Todd with Jake.

Mood:  don't ask

Okay, this is just a quick update.  I had my appointment earlier today.  Everything mostly looks good.  He did a full physical & all the other stuff that you have to have done when you move.  Basically I'm completely healthy, except for the headaches still!!  I had one last night that was so bad I almost went to the ER.  We discussed it possibly (more likly probably) being from allergies - the pollen is forming little yellow puddles around here everywhere and yet again our car is no longer brown, but yellow!  So he not only bumped up my vaso-diolator (spelling?  It's the medicine that diolates my blood vessels so the blood will pump through the veins/arteries in my brain {and technically everywhere else in my body, but focuses on the brain}), but also bumped up my allergy meds.  I'm taking them as needed and boy do I need them today!!  Yesterday would have been nice too!  According to all the MRIs and CT scans and what not, the problem was that my blood vessels in the noggin aren't big enough to allow sufficient blood though, so it's getting backed up and creating pressure in the brain, causing the migrains.  The little blue pill that I now take 2-3 of twice a day is helping with that.  The allergy meds is keeping my nose and throat clear of build up, which aparently gives "allergy headaches"...  When I get a headache, it's not like a normal one, its massive.  Last night I could barely see and even simple English was beyond me!  I couldn't even remember the word Coke (obviously Coca-Cola - just for clarification incase law enforcement reads this!!) and that's something that I can't live with out!!  lol 

So, other than the headaches, I perfectly healthy he said.  My blood work came back great, even my iron levels are up!  I asked him about the amount of Coke that I drink, and while he did say that as a dr. he was required to tell me to tone it down a little, or at least mix in some water, he can see no negative impacts on my body!  I asked about the mood swings, and he did say that he could give me something for that, but it could also be cause by the lack of blood flow to the brain (or the forced blood flow), so if the mood swings are still bad after we get the migranes under control, we'll talk about it - or I will with another doc.  I think it's just because I have 3 small children who drive me up the wall!  lol  But that's my non-medical opinion!

Anyway, Blake and I are going to go play Dominos while we wait for Jake to get home with a movie.  I trusted him to pick up 2 good ones, so we'll see what he brings home!  I'll blog more later!

Rae

Mood:  smelly

Soooo guess what?  The twins are sick again!!  YAY us!  They started throwing up everything on Wednesday on the way to get passports!  So we smelled HORRIBLE when we went in to get apply, but the lady was gone for the day.  So we went over to the post office in Jacksonville to get MY passport.  Remember, we decided to get the kids the free passports on base and me the one we have to pay for out in town.  We only came to that decision after lots of research and phone calls to BOTH the passport office on base and the one in town.  So, we turn in my birth certificate and passport application no problem out there. 

Well, on Thursday, we went to go turn in the kids' stuff on base.   APARENTLY I now have to have a military passport as well.  Here's the deal: a civilian passport only allows you to stay in another country for so many days.  A military passport (which is only available to military families, NOT to members of the armed forces.... explain that one to me please!) allows you to stay for extended periods of time.  So, now that my birth certificate is already on it's way to Washington DC, I have to get it back! lol  So, they are going to intercept it or something so they can just do both at once...  What ever works for them I guess.  I have to go get new passport photos taken again today & go back to the passport office to turn them in.  Fun Fun!  All with 3 kids and no car 'cause Jake decided it was essential to take that with him today! 

Okay, back to the kids:

Blake is doing fine.  He had his 4 year check up yesterday and got FIVE shots!  Yes, I said 5!  OMG!  Who ever thought to give a 4 year old 5 shots at once should be shot!!!  He did fine for the finger prick (but was not happy at all!) and fine with the first 3 shots.  But shot number 4, he was done, and screaming on shot 5 to leave him alone!  lol  But he did pretty good and got stickers out of it!  :)  Oh, he's 43 1/4 inches tall & 41 1/4 pounds, just over tall for his age, and right at normal weight.  Stupid WIC last week tried to tell me that him and Sarah were over weight but Samantha was way under!  Dumb people! 

Sarah & Samantha are starting to feel better.  Wednesday was the worst when I had to wash the car seats 3 times and do 5 loads of sheets, Thursday was only one load of sheets.  Hopefully today there's none!!!  Cross your fingers for me please?  I think it's just the stomach virus that's going around, but it's sooooo not fun!  I do not do well with vomit!  Yuk!  So the girls have been only drinking only PediLite and have finally today had some Cheerios.  Wow, 2 kids not eating is bad!!!  They have practically finished a whole box of Cheerios this morning, but it's the only thing they will keep down.

So here's a picture of Sarah this morning.  I'm not quite sure what the look on her face is!  lol

And Samantha, clutching her bowl of Cheerios!  lol

Notice that they are both wearing sandles?  Samantha's are on the wrong feet.  Anyways, I got them a while back, they are wearing size 6 in shoes, so that's naturally what I grabbed in the sandles too, right?  WRONG!!!  They are size 6, but there's no way they fit like a 6!  They are bigger than the size 7 & 8s that I have in their closet waiting for them to grow into!  I seriously thing the manufacturer messed up and put a 6 on the 9s...

Moving on:  Clutch has found a new sleeping spot.  I knew it was only a matter of time since I've seen both Moncia & Karen's cats doing it, but here's my baby cat, who I'm going to kill!!!!!

Yes, that's ON TOP of my cabnets!  Obviously, as soon as I snapped the picture, I sprayed the crap out of the cat with a water bottle and he quickly learned it was a "no-no"!!  The boys are doing well after their neutering.  I thought Turbo was infected there for a little while, but he seems to be doing fine now.  5 more weeks and they will be sterile!!!  It'll be nice when they stop trying to spray!!

I made the kids a kind of sand box.  Last year, to go to the beach with, I bought a blow up kiddy pool for the girls.  It's been in storage since the end of last summer.  I brought it back out on Tuesday with the thought of making it a regular pool on the screened in back porch again, but decided that cleaning them up after playing in the water, and filling and refilling it all the time sucked, so I decided to make it a sand box.  When we went to Wal Mart to get sand, I found that Crayola makes colored sand: red, purple, blue, & green...  Since Blue is Blake's current favorite color, purple is what we usually associate with Samantha, and red is close to pink which would be Sarah, I went with the green!  lol  Since the girls have been sick, they haven't gotten to play in it, but I don't think we saw Blake for the first 5 hours after I put the sand in the box!  lol  Here's some pics of that:

The deal was the sand was supposed to stay in the box, but you know how 4 year olds are!  lol

I have a doctor's appointment today, so I'll let everyone know how that goes.  It's a full physical, I'll leave out most of the details lol, and another re-check for my headaches.  The doc last week doubled my blue pill and told me to take the Midrin as needed and not to even bother with Tylenol first.  Last night I was pretty sure I was dying as I was coming home from work, and almost went straight through the light that I normally turn at to go home...  If you go straight, there's the Naval ER on your right about 100 feet up the road.  I came home, double dosed my self, and in about 1/2 hour I was feeling REALLY good!  lol 

Anyway, have a great day everyone.  It's BEAUTIFUL here, so as long as my headache stays away and as long as the twins stay happy, there's a good chance we'll go for a bike ride later.

Oh ya, we got the Wal Mart pictures back yesterday.  A lot of you guys will be getting pictures in the mail soon, as they are going out after my doctor appointment today.  Normally I'd scan them into my computer before I did that so I could show everyone, but Jake's being a butt and is taking his time fixing our printer/scanner so I can't!!!  As soon as that's done, or I go to the library to scan, I'll post them.  They did turn out pretty cute.  We're having family pictures made on Sunday.

Rae

Mood:  caffeinated

So, we got rid of our fish tanks, a table, and some kids toys last night!  I've got someone else coming this week to pick up the hamsters, all 3 are going to the same home!  I can't believe how fast the move is coming up!  I keep looking at the calendar thinking we have plenty of time and NOPE, no we don't!!

Jake has duty today, so it's just me with all the kids.  That means I have to wait until tomorrow to get them their passports (we BOTH have to be there to get them because of all the kidnappers!!), but I'm going to take in the paper work for mine today.  We decided to get me a regular passport and the kids a free passport on base.  The only difference is some countries are not accepting the adult free passport, but they have no problem accepting the child "military" passport!  So, to be safe becuase you know we're going to travel, I'm getting just a regular $100 passport!  Dang, I better get to use it a lot!  lol 

Oh, and of course, since Jake has duty today, I had to get sick!  I woke up about 2 am with my ear killing me!!!  About 3 I finally remembered that the girls have the ear infection medicine that you drop in your ear and it's got some numbing meds in there.  So I made my way down to the kitchen (where we keep the frequently used meds) and grabbed it!  I laid down on the couch and used 6 drops, instead of their 3...  I expected it to work right away I guess, but ohhhh no!  It still took about an hour to kick in.  So, around 4:15 or so I FINALLY got to go lay back down upstairs and go back to sleep.  Then the alarm went off at 6 for Jake to get up, and the girls started screaming for us at about 6:10, when Jake was in the shower.  Just my luck!  All I wanted to do was sleep some, so I changed them, grabbed a pillow and a blankie and cuddled up on their floor!  They were happy that I was in there, and Sarah played quitely while 'Mantha hung all over me!  It worked out well though 'cause I got an extra hour until Blake came upstairs (he'd aparently been watching cartoons downstairs) and decided he wanted to play too!!  Butthead!  So we came down stairs for a late breakfast.  My ear still hurts and I hear a constant ringing in it.  The good news is I already have a dr. appt. for this Friday, so if it keeps up, I'll just talk with him then.  The bad news it's all me for the next 24-48 hours!!!  :)  YAY!  lol

Alright, I'm going to go lay on the couch and pretend that I'm actually getting some sleep.  Maybe they kids'll let me get some...  Ah, who am I kidding?  lol  I guess nap time is for all of us today huh?  :)

Mood:  caffeinated

Okay, so this is going to be our general blog.  I've been playing around with this to see how things work out. Aparently I can have multiple blogs, so I'll do a special blog for big events (holidays, the move, birthdays, ect.) and then I'll keep a general blog, here, just for normal updates!  I'll let you know when new ones are posted, and to where!

First, I'm going to take a break from my normal blogging to tell you about a few movies Jake and I have watched.  Most of you know we're HUGE movie fans, Blockbuster definitly knows us by name and no longer needs to see our IDs (thank goodness for the movie pass)!  Anyway, we watched August Rush last night and it was amazing!  It's a movie about a little boy who's been in an adoption home all his life, never wanting to be adopted.  His mom and dad never knew he existed (part of the story line) and the entire family has a musical connection to one another.  He's looking for his parents and he thinks the way to find them is through playing his music and they will hear it!  It's really a great movie, and something for the whole family!  Blake like the parts that he saw (but he was too busy watching Power Ranger, circa 1995!!), and even Jake thought it was good!  We definitly recommend it to anyone! 

Also, on the same note, if you haven't picked up Enchanted with Patrick Dempsy yet either, now would be a good time!  It's a very cute and comical Disney come to life movie!  Giselle plays a princess (or almost princess) who falls through a whole into the middle of New York City (talk about a HUGE change!!).  She's so nieve about the way things work in the "real" world, but it makes you want to fall in love all over again!  Anyways, another really cute family friendly movie that we definitly enjoyed!

Okay, moving on.  The family is good!  Three of us are super excited about the move to Japan - the other 2 don't know what's happening at all, except that I got rid of their broken or about to be broken toys that they still wanted to play with!  Blake can't wait to go learn Karate and see Disney in Tokoyo!  I'm ready for the stress of moving a home to be over with, but I'm actually one of those that loves to move around, so I am doing good!  I'm pretty organized for this move (which is a first in our moving adventures) so hopefully it goes smoothly!  We've got at least 2 moving binders with everything we need in it, and so far most of the house has been weeded though.  We're actually not taking too much over there with us, leaving behind the couch, futon, TV, 2 tables, and a few other things.  We've found that the housing there is WAY smaller unless we want to move into the apartments, but they don't allow pets and I don't think I could live on the 9th floor again!!!  I'd rather downsize than move up 8-12 floors (the towers are about 12 stories high!!!), can you imagine getting groceries, kids, and myself up there on a daily basis?  Plus, there's not really places to play for the kids in the towers. 

Also, this past weekend I got my bike!  I know I'd been talking about it for some time now, but I finally did it!!!  We've gone on several bike rides since Friday too.  My legs feel awsome and I'm even starting to feel the work out a little in my abs.  We've got the trailer for the girls, and Blake can ride his own bike, although it's MUCH slower when he rides with us!  But that's okay.  It's a mountain bike, which made Jake a little iffy, but now if I decide that I want to go off-road - which may happen yet - then I can!  Here's some pictures:

Yep, that's Blake in the trailer!  He was being lazy after our 1/2 hour ride, but he still wanted to be outside, so we put the girls down, and I took him on a ride in the trailer!  Nice, and not much different than pulling 2 20 pound girls!  lol  Now we just need to get a new seat for the bike.....   A padded one!  lol

Okay, I'm off to go spend a few hours cleaning and playing with the kids, then naps, and I'll probably be back on here to customize the site a little more.  We are definitly keeping the angelfire site, and I'll probably end up paying the $30 for 3 years to get it ad-free!  Enjoy the day!

Rae