Well.  We made it to Nevada.  I could give you the whole drawn out tale of staying on and off the strip in Vegas in a million different hotels while we searched for a place to live in 115 degree weather and what a complete cultural shock it was, or I could simple say "We left this...

Drove to this...

And we spent our nights wandering about here....

Until we found a place to live.

Nah.  That just wouldn't be like me, not to fill in the details just a little bit.  We ended up looking at over 20 houses.  When we weren't running about looking at houses, and Robert was at work, I ended up taking the kids up and down the strip.  It was blazing hot during the days and we practically melted as we walked between hotels.  But some things were fun to see.

Like, a Komodo Dragon.

And a Shark Aquarium. (I never actually got a good picture inside of a shark.  Ah well.)

We tried to walk in a bunch of hotels so that we could cool down.

The Bellagio....

And Jason was such a good little boy the entire time.  Like always.

And of course we had to go to the giant M&M store.  Yum!  I think we all ate way too many M&M's that week.

One night we stayed at the Bellagio and as soon as we got settled in and the kids got into bed, we decided to pull them all out again and go out to watch the fountains.  The boys put on some pants but Alaina just stayed as-is.  I think she blended right in to the characters around us.  (Both Ethan and Alaina had night masks on their heads that they refused to take off.  I didn't tell them it just made them cuter.)

(Alaina is pretending to be asleep...not dead)

 

 Some girls were standing out by the fountains for pictures.  Austin was too embarrassed to stand with them.  (see him over to the right, not looking?)  You'd think they'd be cold but it was still in the 90's at 8 at night.  It was pretty silly.

For one week we rented a house up by Nathan's house.  It had a great pool that we all spent a lot of time in.  Nathan and the kids even came by for a couple of swims.

Kid Magnet.

Finally, just when we didn't think that we were going to find a place to live, we moved into to a nice house right behind the kids' school.  We literally signed the papers the day before school started, so the kids were able to go to the first day of school.  Whew!

They looked so grown up, I wanted to cry.  But I didn't.  'Cause, frankly, I was just too tired to.  Ethan is in Fourth grade and the twins are in Third.  My kids are so Amazing and Awesome!!!

Here are just a couple little stories that I wrote down to remember about the kids.

Ethan decided that he is going to play baseball.  Professionally.  I did my best to squash his dreams.  It's what I do.  "You, know, "  I said, rather smugly, "if you took 100 of the best players in the state, maybe one of them would be able to make money playing baseball."  I got some reaction out of that, but not enough.  "They find the best players from all of the whole United States."  Still not satisfied with the tepid response, I tried one last time.  "Some teams even get their players from other countries.  South America.  Europe.  Everywhere."

This peaked Ethan's interest.  "Brazil?"  Yes!  "Asia?  Even Asia!"  Yes!  "All over the whole entire world!?"  Yes!  He's got it now.  "Even...Kentucky?!"  Yee.....whoa.  Yes.  Kentucky.  And, yes, we do need to work on our geography just a little bit more.  Although, in reality, if you say it a few hundred times, 'Kentucky' does have a certain exotic ring to it.  No?  Say it a few more hundred times.  Or better yet, try an English accent.  That should do the trick.



Alaina was not happy.  Some boy in front of her in line whispered that Dillon liked Alaina.  or she wasn't sure if it wasn't "Alaina likes Dillon." which, she immediately insisted, "Was NOT true!"  "Well."  I said.  Sometimes, when I don't know exactly how to react, a well placed, emphatic, "Well!" gets me by.

Ethan, however, knew exactly what to say.  In more of a declaration than a conversation, he announced, "Alaina is the kind of girl that a lot of boys like."  This, I've always known, but I was curious as to why he believed it to be so.  And so I asked him.  "Because she is so pretty.  And boys like pretty girls."

"Well."

The thing that made it all so much sweeter is that it's not that Ethan doesn't have the skills to butter someone up it is that he doesn't know that there is a need to butter someone else, so everything thing he says...he really means it.  It's a matter of fact.  Alaina is a pretty girl.  'Nuff said.

Sara's visit

Just before we left Washington we had one last, very special visit.  Sara and Preston flew over from Charlotte to spend a few days with us.  It was such a gift to be able to spend some time with Sara and to see not-so-little Preston playing again with the kids.  If only we had Aaron and the girls...and a couple of barrels of oysters...

As it was, we spent some good time talking, staying up late, playing and staring at Baby Jason.  Preston and the kids picked up right about where they left off over 2 years ago.  Here are the boys, skating down the driveway.

Auntie Sara with her little Sugar.

We took one afternoon and went on a steam train ride to Moulton Falls.  The ride was beautiful, if a little chilly, but what made this train ride even more fun was that it included an old western stick-up.

We were all give coins and necklaces when we got on the train and about halfway to the falls, the fun began.  Men on horseback, shooting blanks from rifles, jumped up on the train.

The kids didn't love all the noise from the rifles, but they held up their money when the robbers came by.  Here is Austin ready to give up his cash.  (As a side note:  after the robbers left, I saw all the boys picking out the money and necklaces that they hid away in their pockets from the robbers.  I guess they weren't ready to give it all up after all.  Sneaky boys.)

Once the robbers had collected all the money, the Sheriff and his men came riding up and they all had a big shoot-out.  It was really fun.  Look at the Sheriff get into his part!

The robbers who got shot got into their parts as well.

This guy was so good that I almost believed he bit the dust.  I mean, seriously, check out this old geezer....

He looked pretty dead to me!

Once we got to the falls, the actors met us there and took the kids on a little ride on some of their horses.

I don't think Preston is ready to trust this guy yet.  

There was a small hike to get to Moulton Falls where we had a little time to go and walk around the river.

The next day we went to the little town of Seaside.  We had been quite chilly the day before and so we were pleasantly surprised to have such mild weather at the beach.  Nothing, not even cool weather, could keep the kids out of the water.  Before you knew it, all four of those kids were soaked from head to toe.

The boys tried out the metal detector but didn't find anything exciting.

Alaina thought she'd liven things up and hid a shovel for the boys to find.  Sadly, the metal detector doesn't pick up plastic too well and so after an exhausting search, and about a dozen empty holes in the sand, we had to leave the beach minus one shovel.

Aww.

Jason got his very first experience in ocean water.  As predicted, he wasn't too impressed.

But, seriously, how cute are those little, chilly, pudgy toes!

The kids had a blast.  All of us got sunburned.  But the best part was just relaxing and catching up.  The only possible way it could have been any better would have been if we were sitting on Carolina beach. Or Sara's back porch.  :)  We'll save that one for our next big trip.

The visit was over all too soon but we enjoyed every minute we got.  I am always surprised at how lucky I have been with the friendships in my life.  I'll always be so grateful that we were able to spend four years of our life in Charlotte, if only for the chance I had to meet Sara and her very sweet family.  Now I just need to find a way to make it back to Charlotte to stay!

But not this year.  This year we are doing Vegas.  After Sara and Preston left (Boo!) the movers came in and shoved all our possessions, quite unceremoniously into a bunch of boxes and we were off!  We've now been here for 2 months and I'm thinking it is time to catch this little blog up.  So.  Next post is about melting in Nevada.  

We also managed to make a last minute trip up to Mount Saint Helen's.  The drive itself was beautiful and the kids loved being seeing a real volcano.

At a visitor's center there was a statue representing all of the people who replanted the mountain with trees after the 1980 eruption.

Behind the kids you can see the magma that rolled down the valley.  It looked like a frozen, muddy, river.

Near the top there wasn't a whole lot of vegetation that had surrvived the eruption, but on the rim of the mountain, you could see nature was making its way back to the land.

We were also happy to visit with our good friends Jessa and Jason Tyner from Hawaii.  We spent the day catching up at Lewisville Park.  It has been roughly 10 years since we last saw them, but it didn't seem like much time had passed at all.

They brought along their four, very lovely girls and all of our kids competed to get their attention.  (The boys even went as far as jumping into to the cold river in the park.  Silly boys.

Here are Jayna, Joei and Jacelynn.

And little Jillian.

We didn't have enough time to take too many pictures and visit...so we chose to visit.   It is amazing how different our lives were from the last time we saw each other.  Jessa was pregnant with her first and I was going through invitro fun.  Our free time was spent going to the beach or climbing up Stairway to Heaven.  Our apartments were roughly the size of my bedroom and we didn't have too many cares in the world.  Life was pretty great.

Now we both have four little ones and we talked about our kids, work, personal struggles and life challenges and joys.  Life is still pretty great.  The conversation is different, but the sweet friendship is just as I remember it.  Thank you for such a wonderful visit.  Next time, we need to get together before another decade passes.