Farewell East Coast

Brace yourself, this is going to be a long one...

I have to admit, it was pretty tough leaving Virginia. We loved the town of Williamsburg. We loved the restaurants. We loved our house. We loved our neighborhood. And we loved our neighbors (in a friendly sort of way - just to clarify for Todd). But I think we will make our way back there in the not-to-far future, so I'm not too sad. Plus, our friends have promised to visit, and we're going to make sure they stick to it :) The perfect weather here in So Cal helps too. That being said, moving was a pain in the @$$!!

I get nervous about moving. I'm very anal about going through every room and making sure nothing gets packed that I don't want packed or isn't allowed to be packed and I like having everything organized and this time it just didn't work out that way. We had stuff going to PA, stuff going into VA storage, stuff going into CA storage, and stuff going to the house. Ideally it would have been separated ahead of time and we would have been able to give away all the stuff we couldn't move (cleaning supplies, etc.) but life with a baby is tough (I've lost my ability to multi-task) and we just didn't get to it. While our house was in chaos, Kurt dutifully ensured that the important things remained working, such as the Xbox 360. The guys were all on this NHL 07/08 kick and played just about every night until 12-2am or so while the wives were sleeping. They were crazy about it. They've even managed to figure out a way to play together from across the country - talk about dedication. The move went fine though and everything made it onto the moving truck. I'm not sure it's going to arrive in the same condition it left, it never does, but as long as it gets here we'll be okay.

After the movers took away all our furniture we still had a lot of work to do in the house like loading the car, packing up all the little stuff that was left behind (i.e. hardware to hold curtains up), cleaning the fridge and getting rid of cleaning supplies. But we didn't want to do any of that, so instead we went and had dinner with our friends and drank beer. On Friday morning I woke up early and got Kurt up and we worked on all that stuff listed above and barely made the 10am move out time that we had told our landlords (they had cleaners coming in). Our neighbors got stuck with all our condiments (which they probably already had) and the lucky new tenants got at least a hundred dollars worth of cleaning supplies. After everthing was finished we headed out for a weekend in Central PA with our friends from Williamsburg. Georgia, Todd, Logan, Mike and Kris all came up for a golf tournament/final weekend with the Weavers. The drive up to PA was okay, I was in the Audi with the fussy baby, but Kurt had the Jeep with the dogs and the broken drivers-side window. We hit a ton of traffic and construction, but when we finally got to the house we rented in Blue Knob, PA it was worth it, the place was awesome. It had this huge balcony with a great view and the weather was nice and cool (a big change from hot VA).

Various pictures from our balcony:

We had a great time up at Blue Knob with our friends. On our first day there Georgia and I were troopers and got back in the car drove up to Kurt's parents house to drop off the dogs and then drove back down to Altoona to go shopping for groceries. We met the guys at Del Grosso's amusement park where we played a bunch of mid-ways games that of course Kurt won and the guys took Micaela on the Crazy Mouse while Georgia and I took the babies on the train ride. That night we went back to Kurt's parents house and everyone had a great time riding 4-wheelers and eating hotdogs and sitting out by the fire. Those pictures are on Kurt's camera so I'll have to put them up later.

Crazy Mouse and the Train Ride:

We were so tired after first day that they whole second day was spent at the house relaxing and going to the pool. We had fun playing poker that night too. A lot of Yueng-ling was consumed over the weekend knowing that we wouldn't be able to get any in CA. We're counting on our friends to hook us up with illegal cross-border beer shipments.

Pool Pictures:

Kurt and Mike sharing a moment (at least that's what I think it looks like) ;)

Pictures of poker:

(p.s. we all got spanked by 11 year-old Logan)

Okay, I think this blog is long enough for now. Next one will be about the golf tournament, our expedited departure, shipping the dogs, and the plane flight to L.A.

A Good Day All Around

It's a good day for everyone in the Weaver Family today.

First of all, this morning I had my change of command - yeah! It feels good to no longer be responsible for those 200 Soldiers. The ceremony went off flawlessly and only took 15 minutes. My boss (who I don't really like) made a big stink about giving Kurt a coin, so I just told Kurt he didn't have to go which made his day. (pictures coming soon)

Kurt finally got his Wacom Cintiq today. He's been saving up for MONTHS for this and the last two weeks have been especially trying with some purchasing errors causing it to be late. For those of you not familiar with this piece of equipment - instead of using good old pencil and paper, you use this high speed cursor pen and you can draw on the screen. It can even tell how hard you are pressing. It's pretty cool. Oh yeah, and my laptop kept crashing, so I got a new computer too, an HP touchscreen.

As a kind of good-bye party, we are letting Micaela have a sleepover tonight with 4 girls, so she is happy. We are crazy to do it with the house a mess and furniture everywhere, but what they heck, at least they can't make it too much messier!

Grandma and Pappy Weaver just got in and are very happy to be visiting and to see newest Weaver addition who they say has changed a lot in the last 5 weeks. I think with all the craziness around here, they'll be ready to leave in a day :)

And finally, Jonathan's new thing is to fart and then smile, and he's farted a lot today, so he's having a good day too :)

Butt Sticks and Puff Balls

Micaela is growing up too fast. The other day I brought up a black portable dvd case from the garage that wasn't being used so that Micaela could have it for her dvd player. I forgot that I had once used it as a toiletry bag. I was in my room and she was in hers emptying it out when I hear "how many butt sticks does one person need!". In my head I was thinking "WHAT!?!?" So I walk over to her room and on the floor are a bunch of small tissue packs and a handful of tampons or "butt sticks". I have no idea where she got that from and I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to explain the right answer, so I just said "give me all that stuff and I'll throw it away". I took the easy way out, but in my head I was thinking "oh crap..."

Our neighbor Kris Van Deusen (who's wife also just had a baby) came over the other day and said he wanted to show a movie on the side of our house. Kurt and I said okay, and he brought over these big speakers, a projector, and all the necessary wiring. We had people over for rice and beans with porkchops and then we all went outside to watch a movie (BTW, it worked awesome). Kurt, Kris, and Todd picked out After the Sunset because no one but Kurt had seen it (and it had been a really long time for him). So the audience for the movie was Kurt, Todd and Kris, Me and Kris's wife, our neighbor Pastor Larry and his two sons (10 and 5) and Micaela. I asked Kurt if the movie was okay for kids, and he said it was PG-13. It was a little bit of a shock when in the opening credits we all got to see Salma Hayek wearing nothing but a bra bending over to show maximum cleavage. There were a lot of sexual innuendos in the beginning of the movie and it was totally uncomfortable. Kurt apologized to Pastor Larry and all the kids were on the trampoline going "ewww ewww". Thank goodness Larry got a phone call and stepped away before the sex scene! It's too bad his kids and Micaela were still watching!! It didn't show any body parts, but it didn't really need to. We told them to close their eyes, but I don't think they did. Way to go men - you picked a great family movie. Later that night Micaela told me "the part where he kissed her puff balls was gross - you know (and she points to her non-existent boobs)". Great.

Nothing to blog about

I really have nothing too exciting to report. On Saturday Micaela and I spent a few hours cleaning her room and sorting through all her toys, books, clothes, etc and then she played and I took a nap. In the evening we went to the go-cart place and got rid of some extra tickets that we had, followed by a trip to Baskin Robbins and a short walk through Colonial Williamsburg. Of course I had my camera but forgot to take pictures. Today we had breakfast at Georgia's house, and since then we've been doing small tasks around the house and Kurt's been doing his homework (okay, I did most of it). For those of you up to date with Jon's gastric issues, you'll be happy to know he's pooping again and making up for all those days he didn't poop. It's kind of funny - around me he's just complacent, but around Kurt, he's either smiling, laughing, or really crying. For me, he lets out small cries when he's hungry, has a burp, or a dirty diaper, otherwise he just looks around and makes faces. Kurt plays with him and knows how to make him laugh and smile, but occasionally he does things that Jon doesn't like and then we get to hear how loud he can really be (we don't repeat those things). Here are some pictures of him smiling-

I don't know who got him this shirt, but I like it

Spot and Mike bonding (yes, our friends are strange)

Cleaning

Kurt and I are cleaning out the office and I came across this picture that I forgot to send. Happy Belated Birthday Aunt Weezy!

Garage Sale and Willy-Wang's Birthday

If you've never moved before, you're lucky. It sucks (just ask Misty, she's moved about 10 times in the last 5 years). The way the Army moves you is that on the first day they bring in a bunch of ladies to pack all your stuff. If you're lucky, more than one will be an experienced packer. They'll split up and each will take a room and they'll pack really fast. If you aren't watching them, they'll pack everything including the trash in your trashcans. I generally haven't had too many problems with stuff in boxes breaking though. The next day, the movers come and take apart all your furniture (and promptly forget how to put it back together) and load the van. This part makes me nervous. The way they load the truck and just stack all your furniture - it's just bound to break, scratch and tear. And then when you get where you are going, you have to unpack and hang pictures, and move furniture around - it's very time consuming. So we are doing our best to clean up ahead of time and get rid of anything we really don't want anymore. Last week we cleaned out all the places that collect junk - the closets, drawers, under the sink, etc. and then on Saturday we had a garage sale. I feel much better about selling stuff than I do giving or throwing it away. I still hate thinking about how much money we've spent in the last few years on stuff we really never used, oh well. The garage sell was pretty successful and we got rid of the two loveseats that were just eyesores because the dogs chewed up one and the movers broke the other. My favorite part of the morning was the serious garage-saler ladies who showed up with walkie-talkies making comments like "this one's mostly kid stuff" or "oh, I found jewelry, come quick". Apparently this is big business.

Our neighbors have a 1-year old son named William (who we've dubbed Willie-Wang) who had a birthday last Sunday at a neighborhood pool. It was pretty fun because the pool is big and has two diving boards. The tall diving board is 10' I think. At first Kurt told Micaela that she had to try it, but then after he accidentally went off the wrong way and hit the water wrong, he changed his mind (he has horrible bruises on his butt and on the back of his leg from that fall). But Georgia has a 6 year-old fearless niece who went up and just walked right off, no hesitation, and that gave Micaela the courage to go off herself. It was purely her decision (she definitely doesn't get that from me). I got a video of it, but it cut out at the end before you could hear her say "that was awesome!"

Georgia and Willie-Wang

The fearless niece

And finally... a picture of Jonathan: