Santa Visit

Our first visit to Santa, both kids screaming as soon as we rounded the corner to enter the room, priceless! (thankfully it was free!)Madison's turn wasn't any better...Grandma tried to make it up to him by bribing him with the fire truck, it sorta worked, he was still super freaked out from the scary guy with a big fake white beard. But good thinking on grandma's part the candy cane made it all better :)



And speaking of Fire Trucks, he sadly got his fill of fire trucks when a house across the street from us caught on fire early last week. What a surreal experience, to watch someone's house burn so quickly and especially during the holiday season... my heart goes out to them, I can't even begin to imagine.

Ah Poo...

Ah poo x 2...

1. My hopes of returning to blogging regularly while at home were dashed in a flash when my laptop died and sadly won't charge!

2. So far this week Hallie has been caught SEVERAL times sticking her hand down the back of her diaper, has come to me with her diaper off, rolling a ball of poo in her fingers saying 'ah, stinky!' AND has come to me around that same corner holding her fingers in the air, two of the tips covered in 'poo' saying 'ah, stink! poo!'

There are several words I can use to describe how I feel about this... Yuck! Sick! Gross! Gag! But the 2 most appropriate... "AH POO!!!"

**Seriously no longer than 10 minutes after writing this post, she came to me with poo on her fingers again!**

Big Changes

So I just wrote like 5 different start lines for this post and nothing sounded right. This picture pretty much explains how we feel! I write with mixed emotions, we finally found a job. Good news... it is a great job which combines Ty's Mental Health and military experience. Bad news... it is Arlington, VA.

Which means we won't be staying in WA. And to clarify even further, because it's all a little confusing! We will be moving a majority of our belongings home and keeping the necessities here. Why? Our goal is to continue looking for similar jobs in the Northwest. Hoping and praying that when the time is right, the right job will present itself and we'll be closer to family again!

While we are sad that we will still be so far away from our friends and family in WA, but we are really excited about the new job. I will wait until I have the go ahead to post more details on the job or if you are just dying to know :) email or call us :)

So once again, you'll have to excuse the spotty posting (as if it always isn't spotty!) as we are once again in a major transition phase. And yes, I guess we've decided that moving across the country every 6 months is fun... yea, crazy I know. But I guess that's how we do it. :)

So for those of you we'll see on the way, YES we are still headed to WA next week and will still be stopping to see a bunch of you and will spend a few weeks in WA before heading back out to VA.

October Visitor of the month: Williamsburg

My mom was visitor of the month for October... we were lucky enough to have her come for Micah and Hallie's birthday weekend. We took one day and drove down to Williamsburg to see all of the sights. It's a charming town full of history and some adorable shops :) We had a great time even though it was freezing! We even got to stop at good old Ikea on our way home to let the kiddo's play and pick up some birthday presents, sadly we missed our meatball dinner by like 5 minutes :(

fish fish...


Plane, plane!




They FINALLY fell asleep after we got them out of the car... I think it may be time for another cross country trip to retrain them to sleep in the car (wish us luck!) I love how they fell asleep in the same direction. T was good enough to push them around outside while mom and I hit a few shops... what a guy! :)

Trick or Treat, give me something good to eat, and if you don't...

Meet Mr. Slick the Magician and Ms. Hop Along his Bunny...

Sad I'm too lazy to get any better pictures of them, they would really look cute out in the yard or somewhere better than this nasty fluorescent lighting AND yes I realize Micah seriously looks like a vampire, but notice he IS holding a wand in his left hand AND no he would not wear a top hat for anything! :)


The church had a great little carnival and Trick-or-Treat so with the youth being in charge of the carnival, we ended up doing the basics, you know... helped set up, helped run ran the cake walk, all while trying to help two 2 year olds enjoy the carnival who were overwhelmed by the madness of it all! I shouldn't complain because it really was fun, just a lot of work! Probably didn't help that their costumes were made the day of, along with treats for the carnival, and picking up last minute things for the carnival, but you know that's just how I do it. :)

Hallie got the hang of trick-or-treating quickly, instead of just taking the candy the adults tried to hand her, she would reach around their hands and start grabbing handfuls out of their bowls. Awesome. Can I keep her?! Micah was a sweety and politely watched as they slid candy into his bag, but boy was he excited about that little bag of Swedish 'Fishies'!

And I'm pretty sure she's staring down the dinosaur in this picture...

We were so burnt out from Friday night that Saturday consisted of an evening Costco run and crashing on Lis and Bobby's couch... it was great!

A VERY unexpected trick-or-treater!

This guy came to see me the other afternoon while the kids were napping... I looked over from my spot on the couch and saw this so-ugly-its-kinda-cute-face staring at me! Strange! I had to snap pictures cause I was pretty sure no one would believe me if I told them, he climbed up the stairs, opened the gate, and even made a leap off the deck after I shut the gate so he couldn't get back up.


And if that's not strange enough, I looked up again today and guess who was back!!! Seriously, he could probably have some of our left over Halloween candy, we've got tons. I'm thinking we should start our own Over the Hedge reality TV series!

ATTENTION all shoe fanatics!

Thanks to Oprah, get 50% off your entire purchase at Payless Shoes today and tomorrow!

http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20091016-tows-payless

Did someone say sale??? You´d better bet we are on our way to Payless as soon as Hal wakes up from her nap!! Kiddo shoes here we come!

Views from the deck

We were blessed with little bits of serenity amidst the chaos that comes with moving and packing.

a gazillion Japanese Beetles

(all photos taken from our front deck yesterday afternoon)

oooo... chaco!!

My waistline really loves my new favorite snack :)

They really do like each other

When I first knew we were having twins, I dreamed of how they would get along and how neat it would be for them to have a built in best friend. I was also realistic and thought about how they would hate each other at many points like most siblings do. I have to say it's nothing like I imagined it either way. I find such great joy when they get along and play together and one of my biggest headaches is when Hallie they pick on each other. I imagine all parents probably have these same feelings.

So with that said, we still have our struggles, believe me I still pry Hallie and her mouth off of Micah on average once a day and break up countless fights over toys. But lately there have been more and more of the 'good moments' where I hear laughter from the other room or hear one of them say 'hugs' and peak around the corner to find one of them hugging the other. They ask for each other on a more regular basis and cry when the other one is upset (unless they were the culprit).

Bottom line... it's fun (most days), I'm glad I have twins (most days), I can't wait to see what the next stage brings!

Fun in Washington: Part 2

Sadly due to a small stomach flu (which manifest itself when Hallie got sick in the car on our way to see my good friend Ronica and which Micah caught later on the next week and manifest itself when Micah threw up ALL over the Papa Murphy's floor right after going to the park with my good friend Ronica! She must be bad luck!) we didn't end up seeing much of Tyson's family. Thankfully we adults all avoided it and it was a quick recovery for Micah and Hallie.

Anyway, back to the point of the post, we made up for it on the Sunday Tyson was home and had dinner at his parents house with Aaron and Kristen and kids, his parents, and his grandparents. We were even lucky enough to have our good friends Jacob and Jen join us with their kids. We all had a blast, laughed a ton and all in all just had a great time!

Hallie trying on Eli's uniform and Kristen trying to figure out what the heck Ty was doing standing on the trunk with the camera for :)

Kristen and I, and Aaron... yes he is that cool! :)

Mr. T and Carys and I

Eben hated the helmet and Grandma reading to Carys and Hallie

Micah doing what he does best and Carys

Jocelyn and Kristen and I taking pictures 5th grade style :)

Goofing and Jacob, Jen, Stacey, and Ty

Carys and Ethan

Hugs and vacuuming?? and more hugs

Avery and Ty