feeling crafty

I have nothing unpacked still, except the kitchen, family necessities, the kids and my craft things eventhough it is no where near organized. I have no energy eventhough I am feeling a lot better. We have been in a lot of stores lately and have noticed the Halloween and even Christmas decorations. Christmas decorations are a little ridiculous this early but whatever. I love Halloween. We are working on the kids costumes and I think we have everything we need. We went to Party City yesterday and Jessie the cowgirl costume was sold out already. That seems a little crazy to me. Lucky for us it's a pretty easy costume to put together. So we found some of our Halloween decorations and I remember one from my childhood that I wanted to recreate with Siena. She loved it. We spent all of $3 on it. When I was little we had this wooden tree that folded out and had holes in it to put dum dum suckers in. We put white napkins and a bow around them and had a Halloween ghost tree. I didn't have the whole stand so that was the part that we had to get creative with. The residents before us left us tons of little plastic flower pots. I covered mine in Halloween fabric that I had, Siena painted her pot and we found dead branches around the yard. We have a ton here. We filled them with dirt and put the branches in. Then we wrapped our dum dum suckers in white napkins and tied with a bow. Some of the ghosts are flying upside down because I realized they are a little top heavy but that adds character we will say. We found some other Halloween decor too, spider webs and skeletons that we added to it too. I think they are way cute and Siena loved it. I told her we could do this when we put Ben down for some quiet time and she was asking all morning if Ben was ready for quiet time so we could do our craft. It was fun. Thanks mom for the fun craft, someday we may make a wooden tree.

Pregnant again!

We are so excited we are expecting our 3rd baby! Again we are expecting in the Spring. Mid March so the baby will probably come late March, that is what I am planning for. If the baby comes on the due date then we will have all three kids birthdays all 10 days apart. We are really good at making Spring babies. The first trimester was awful awful awful. It was so bad. I am debating writing about how bad it was because if I remember I definately will not have any more kids. Granted, I was in someone else's house sleeping in someone else's bed. I was throwing up constantly and everywhere. It was awful. We were packing up our townhouse and cleaning and being stressed out all the while me not knowing that I was pregnant. It makes a lot more sense now, I was an emotional wreck during that time but didn't really know why. We moved in to our friends house for the summer to house sit while we were waiting to move in and I decided to take a pregnancy test. First I go to the store and I buy the pregnancy test and chocolate chips, because we didn't have any and that is what Dave and I eat at night in front of the t.v. Lucky me I get this young teenage boy as my checker and all I have is a pregnancy test and chocolate chips. It was kind of hard to make eye contact with him. It was a little embarrasing. So we found out we were pregnant and were really grateful that we bought this big house and we were moving when we were. I told Dave I never wanted to move while I was big and fat and pregnant. We are very excited. We have an ultra sound to find out the gender on my birthday Oct 15 so hopefully it is all good news and doesn't ruin my birthday. I am still contemplating not finding out the gender. My only reasoning for this is because we have all the clothes we need, boy and girl, and all the bedding and it's all in the correct season. Dave is really against this idea and wants to find out. In reality we will probably find out. I am hoping that the baby is discreat during the ultrasound. Food is starting to taste and look good again so I am a much happier person. This pregnancy cravings and everything isn't like any other pregnancy so far so I can't base what it is on that, but I think it is a girl.

1st Day of Preschool

can you tell she likes pink? it was a little too much for me to handle...someday she will learn. or she will just be one of those crazy outfit kids. I have no control.

Siena started preschool this year. Instead of doing the mom co op we put her in one at a Baptist Church. Lots of her friends go there too and she loves it. Each morning I go to wake her up I tell her it's a preschool day and she is up and ready really quickly. I don't think she talks to her teachers very much but she tells me all about her day and that she played with kids and rode bikes and painted. Today she sang silly songs. I am really impressed with the preschool and happy that she loves it and it's not a pain to go to every morning. It will get us prepared to be up and out the door early morning for next year Kindergarten.

Outer Banks 2010

the happy beach family

Dave boarding after the storm

Ben finally braving the ocean see how he is freaking out

the huge sand castle

playing in the pool

Dave trying to convince Ben that the ocean is ok.

Sienas new best friend. Adayla put make up on Siena one day she was in heaven.

These are pictures after Earl

this is the walkway down to the beach. It is stairs that were completely covered with sand it looked like a ramp. The poor ocean front houses had so much sand in their pools.

the big waves.

this is my all-time favorite picture. We went to Sonic restaurant on the way back in and they had duck taped the drive up menus to protect them through the hurricane. Duct tape will protect anything.

do you see the blue sky ahead!

This is on the way back in after the evacuation order had been lifted.

playing playdough in the hotel room so we wouldn't be too bored.

nakey boy.

too much water and sand Ben apparently needed a nap.

having to leave early.

so many fun friends at the beach house

crab hunting with glow sticks and flashlights. Siena and Ben love doing this. This year we found some HUGE crabs. One of them kept escaping the bucket we had and Siena claims that it ran over her foot and pinched her. It freaked her out. It would me too but I don't think it really pinched her. That is all she talks about now with the crabs.

my cute beach bum. She loved the Ocean and Dave scared me when she kept asking him to take her farther out and Dave would. There were strong rip tides.

It's our most favorite time of the year. Time for our beach house trip. Every year we take it at the same time right before Labor day. We do this because the houses are a lot cheaper and it's a fun way to end the summer. We always take the risk of having a hurricane ruin the vacation because it's right at the beginning of hurricane season. We have been fortunate to never have been affected by them. This year hurrican Earl decided to grace us with his presence. Oh how we hate Earl. The first three days were beautiful. We had never had that good of weather. It was sunny low 90's. perfect beach weather. We enjoyed the pool and the beach. Wednesday evening we watched the weather channel closely and they were predicting the outer banks to be clipped with the hurricane. We thought we would be tough and just hang out in the house all day Thursday. We were only going to evacuate if they made us. Despite the fact that a couple months ago we had watched this weather channel show about not evacuating a hurricane and the chaos and flooding that happened and how the police refused to come and help this couple because they hadn't evacuated and it was too late for them. We thought it wouldn't be that bad but we were worried about flooding and not being able to get our cars out again. Thursday morning we were called at 7 a.m. by the owner of the houes saying there was a mandatory evacuation for all guests in the outer banks. So now we had to leave. We quickly packed up and left. We did this really quickly, the house was a mess but we found a back way out of the little island and missed most of the traffic. Dave and I were so mad. The only thing we had to come home to was more unpacking. We quickly decided to go inland a little bit and sit out the storm. We went to Elizabeth City which is 45 minutes inland of the outer banks. All the hotels were crazy booked. We kept driving through all these little towns and couldn't find a hotel anywhere. We finally went to Chesapeake and found a decent hotel to stay in. It just happened to be by a mall so we spent the afternoon at the mall and then went to the hotel where it was full of mostly families that had evacuated the outer banks. So everyone was in the lobby glued to the weather channel. It was so frustrating. So we spent the night there and woke up again to watch the weather channel. We saw the hurricane rain and got a little bit of it in Chesapeake but we have had much bigger storms here in D.C. It was not that bad where we were. Finally at noon Friday they lifted the evacuation order for the outer banks saying there was no flooding, no damages and not even any electricity lost. We were packed up and ready to go back. We were only an hour and a half away from the outer banks. We were one of the first people back in. It was so nice that we could go back. It was well worth the crazy hotel stay that night. We went back and set the hot tub cooler and played in the hot tub while Dave cleaned the pool. There were a lot of branches and dirt in there. Finally 4 of the 5 families that we shared a house with came back. We are so glad we did. We went down on the beach and checked out the wreckage. The next day we went to the beach to swim and play. The red flags were up for no swimming but we waded and played in the sand. There were biting flies on the beach. We all got attacked by them. I finally went to get bug spray to keep them away but it only worked for so long. We were so mad that we came back to the beach and have these flies ruin it for us. So we went back to the pool for the day. The last day Sunday we packed up our beach house and got in our bathing suits to see if there was a last chance at the beach. It was the most beautiful day. I guess the flies were there just after the hurricane because they had left by Sunday. We stayed there a couple hours and enjoyed the beach. Dave said it was the best boogie boarding that day. Ben finally got in the ocean too! We went back to our beach house but couldn't get in because we had to check out that morning so we took showers in the outside pool showers. Then we were off back to Va. The first day we were at the beach Siena said it was too sandy and Ben said there was too much water. I thought we were going to have problems that week if my kids wouldn't like the beach. It turned out my kids were just having an off day. Siena had eaten too much candy and was grumpy the whole day until later that day she threw it all up. That was real pleasant. Overall it was a great trip. Great friends, fun house, good food and for the most part good weather. I never want to hear about Earl again. He almost ruined our trip.

moving day

the staging area for our outer banks trip.

poor Ben. He was exhausted.

we had so many people come and help us move. It was amazing! It was Daves birthday so I bought him a house. Nothing says 33 like a new house. Everything went so smoothly. We had our walk through at 9:30 and then our closing at 11:30. By 1 o clock we had the truck and were ready to move in. We took the truck to the house that we had been staying in for the summer and packed everything up. Dave took it to our first storage unit and packed everything out of that one and took it to the new house. I sat and cleaned the house that we were staying at out. It was so nice not to have to worry about our kids that day. They had a great time with friends and were so excited to go to their new home later that day. Dave and I met back at the new house and then he met up with some friends at the second storage unit that we had and they packed that all up while I went and got dinner for everyone. It was perfect timing all the boys arrived and I arrived at the same time at the new house and they started to unpack the truck. It was crazy fast. Every time I turned around there was a new guy unpacking the truck. It was amazing. We got it done so fast. We had some pizza and a birthday cake to celebrate the big day. It was a really long day and the whole next day Dave and I just sat around in the house not knowing where to begin. It is so overwhelming to see all these boxes and empty space. The kids loved showing everyone their rooms and the backyard and basement where they found all their old toys. Later that night we found the train table box and Ben about had a heart attack when I dumped out all his trains. The poor boy had been staying in a house with all girl toys for the past 3 months. He is in heaven. It's hard to keep track of the kids because they are all over the house exploring new places. So I really should unpack but I have no motivation for it. My kitchen is done and that is what is important I guess.