Bermuda Triangle?

I swear I think we're going to just live at the playground! Being in such tight quarters with such rambunctious boys is getting pretty nerve wracking to say the least.
I must say that, although I doubt we went over the Bermuda Triangle, unless the pilot got temporarily lost, we went over something of the likes that took the normal right out of our boys. They have been absolutely INSANE since we got here! It seemed that it was even getting worse. Now you may be saying to yourself, "Well Aimee they are in a new place, new time zone, everything is wonky, give them a chance!".
Of course I'm taking all of that into consideration, but regardless of all that, Mike and I are the ones in this room with them and its simply in-SANE! I've never heard so much screaming, crying, whining, squealing, squalling, yelling, fighting...oh you name it. Its constant too. In the drawers, opening the fridges, running around with a bottle of picante sauce and then it turning into Death Match 2008 to get it away from him, climbing on tables, locking themselves in the bathroom to play in the sink, sticking their fingers in the fan, trying to climb out the windows. Oh yes, I could simply go on and on and on.
I need not mention the pouring out of food, the simple wasting of basically any food at all, breaking things, making messes, making messes, making messes -- oh wait I think the record got stuck for a second.
Let's also not forget Cody pulling the gigantic TV out of the airmoire onto himself. Yep. From the other room we hear a crash and a scream and then crying by the time we can get in there. I yelled, "Oh my God!" and stand there for a moment, I mean my BABY is laying underneath a tv. Its probably just a 27" but at that moment it seemed like a 50". Then I pulled it off of him and put it on Mike's foot. He later made fun of me, but all that was going through my mind was broken ribs or internal bleeding or a neck injury.
Geez. Well the little moose was just fine and playing within a minute. He's going to give me lots and lots and lots of gray hairs. So many. I can hardly describe the anxiety that Cody can bring out in any caretaker.
Then there's Kade, while not near the daredevil as his baby brother, just simply lost in La-la land daydreaming about something while unknowingly walking straight into a building, parked car, person...you name it. It tends to get old when you are out somewhere with them b/c you are constantly pulling Cody from some dangerous stunt and yelling at Kade to watch where he's going. How many times a day do I say Kade's name to get his attention?
We could start a pool and give out some cash on this one because I doubt anyone would come close to getting it.
At any rate, we're trying to spend a lot of time outside doing things to keep them busy to keep them OFF my nerves and trying to get their sleep adjusted a little better. I'm hoping that will help some. As of today, they are a teeny bit better. Not that we have not been bribing them a little bit and threatening them.... you name it.
Its gotten down to desperate measures here.
There is a little thrift store here on base and I saw a jogging stroller through the window the other day. They have very odd hours, and I caught them open today to check on it. Well it was sitting outside with a sign on it, "make offer". Hmmm, what is a single jogging stroller worth? One that is not fancy, not that I've heard of anyway.
Well, I finally just asked and the lady said, "Give me $5 and its yours". Well, sold! Why not? What's $5 anyway??
Well, its less having to fight Cody to hold your hand JUST to cross the street. Less having to carry him, chase him or go back and get him when he flat out refuses to take another step randomly. Of course, as I mentioned its a single. Now Kade wants in it, telling him he's a big boy who can walk is of no use either. He doesn't care! He wants a ride! So....now Cody is content and we COULD be moving along a little faster, but alas, now Kade is on the ground flailing about because HE has to walk.
*sigh*
It's just never right. No matter what.
So I came back to the room and looked up double joggers. Well yeah. Okay. The sheer number of strollers that I've been through since we had kids is insane and really, there's just no way on earth I can bring myself to spend $500 on a stroller. Not with my track record. Who knows. I am pretty limited on the type of stroller I can get because Kade is a normal sized 4 year old and Cody is a giant sized almost 2 year old. They are basically the same size now, give or take about 2 inches and 2 lbs. Yeeeep.
I get asked constantly if they are twins. Oh what to do.
Luckily we finally found out that we should have my car in our posession Thursday morning. FINALLY!!!
You know its so easy to look for a new house while stuck in this room on this base with nothing but our feet to take us to our destination. Well, its kept the weight off at least with all the crappy eating we've done since arriving.

On another note, thus far, can I say that I absolutely ADORE the weather here? Adore is an odd word for it, but seriously. I just do. I still have this computer set on Abilene's weather in my toolbar. Damn! Its HOT there! So it says your high today is 103 and well, the high here is 73. Its between 73 and 80 all week here. It goes from cloudy to sunny all through out the day. That, though, makes it extremely difficult to decide what on earth you will wear. If the sun is out, you are HOT, if the clouds are out, you are chilly. Very strange indeed.
So, long sleeves you'll risk being a bit warm, but short w/ no jacket and you're gonna get chilly here and there. Whichever bothers you least is how you should dress I suppose.

Well, I'd love to share more photos, but this idiotic laptop still won't let me load anything. I hate it. If I have never mentioned that, I really really hate it. So frustrating to have spent that amount of money on something and it to be this big of a piece of crap so soon. If any rich millionaires with cash to burn are reading, I'll take a macbook pro please. Thank you.
If only. Of course, I could buy one, and I will eventually but the thought of dropping that much on a laptop (b/c I have such great experiences with them in my past) is a little sickening.

I've also tried to load that darn video for 3 days now. I even sat in the office at the lodging building where they have a real internet connection for 2 hours and it still wouldn't load. It is not like it is that big or anything. Just a clip for goodness sakes!

Anyway, that is enough rambling from me today. One is awake from the nap and the other will be shortly. If they are awake then that means we need to be hitting the playground soon before they go nutso on me. Good news is that they are waking up from nap before 4pm, meaning they are getting more and more on track with their old schedule. We're making progress I say!

XOXO!

You Talk Funny

Well, here we are. In England. We made it. The trip honestly wasn't as bad as we'd imagined all these past few months. Thank GOODNESS! As we've learned many other things, we learned a lot about traveling overseas with small children. haha! The hard way.
The boys were pretty good considering. Especially considering how rotten they'd acted the severeal days leading up to the trip. I was pretty concerned. It got down to me spazzing about the luggage that we were taking along. I wanted to try to take as little as possible as carry on, but there's so much you "might" need or that you don't want to check b/c they are so rough. Then there were the carseats etc...
Our saving grace was most definitely the fact that there were screens in the seats and it was playing Horton Hears a Who. Phew!
The boys slept pretty good on the plane and were way confused when we made them get up so "early" b/c to them it was midnight, not 6am.
After the numerous hours of flying and waiting and lugging kids and luggage, we still had an hour or so wait for the bus to the base. Then the ride to the base was about 2 hours. I was very sad that I simply could not keep my eyes open for the ride. I tried so hard, but it was impossible. Even with dozing on the plane, it was not restful in the least and basically just a way to pass the time. The few times I did open my eyes, the countryside was beautiful. There were really rolling lush hills and gorgeous buildings all over. The thing that I found pretty shocking was the traffic. Going IN to London. Oh my it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. I can't even imagine how many miles long the line was, but I have not seen traffic built up like that since I was leaving Miami Beach for the Hurricane Gilbert evacuation many years ago.
Crazy! I'll DEFINITELY be all about taking the train anytime we go to London. Yuck!

So, we've basically seen the base. The day we got here still seems pretty surreal. I'd not had ANY sleep though, the week before we left I might have gotten a total of 8 hours. So, if you can imagine, I was personally pretty out of it.
Luckily, I didn't lose a kid or a husband in the crowds on the way here. I just had to go a LONG LONG time without a dr. pepper. I was not very nice about it either.

At any rate, we're here and the weather so far is just lovely. Its hard to describe b/c you can go outside and its just comfortable, then 10 minutes later its HOT and then it might feel chilly in the next 10. Very odd. I guess I'll really have to work my layering skills.
Overall though, its VERY nice weather. We were outside at the playground tonight at 7:30 and it was maybe 70 degrees and there was not a mosquito in sight anywhere. Light cloud cover, light breeze, so very nice.
We thought of everyone back in Texas, sweating their butts off swatting away mosquitoes. :)

I did take a few photos of the boys at the play area. I won't get into the neat stuff until I get my desktop back. This laptop doesn't really work well for that, so these are jsut with my point and shoot.
Kade even took a few. I wish he'd "get" taking care of things so I could buy him a real digital camera for Christmas. I've been so impressed with the pictures he's taken with his kid tough camera, what i can see of them anyway. So I let him use the little ones sometimes, he does so good! It must be hereditary! ha!

Anyway, we just wanted to let everyone know that we made it just fine, we're just kind of rocking along here. I'm apparently a spoiled rotten turd b/c I'm simply DYING without a cell phone or car. Who the heck I'd call here who knows, but I still like knowing I have one. Where I'd be that I'd need one? Again, who on earth knows.
I can't wait to get our car though b/c well I have stuff I want to SEE!!! I'm dying knowing I'm in another country but stuck here on this base!
We might go by outdoor rec tomorrow and see if there are any bus tours or SOMETHING!
I'm pretty unimpressed with the BX here, but the Comissary is nice,so that is something right? Luckily, I keep hearing over and over how great the shopping is here. Not to mention a nice young man we met at the airport waiting for the bus informed me that there is an H&M in Cambridge! Well, I know very few know what that is, but its awesome adorable cute cool clothes for the boys that are very reasonably priced! Exciting for me. :) Living in Abilene, the closest one was maybe in Philly or California.

Anyway, enough of my shopping addiction. We just got the boys down for bed a bit after midnight and had to make a couple of calls back home. Of course we have to wait till midnight to call home to catch folks after work.
We are working on cell phones though, so we can hopefully get a decent rate on some international calling.

Now to add some photos of the boys today and I'm going to TRY to upload a video as well. Not sure though, this connection I've caught on to is pretty slow...

Okay that only took me like 3 hours to get the photos on here. Obviously no fantastic quality, but the subjects sure rock. ;) I'll get some with my big camera when we can get the heck off of this base!

Now I'm going to try a video. For you techy folks, I'm running 11.0 mbps. Yeah. So this may have to wait till I can get up to the BX or something to get a real connection.

Hmmm... so maybe that worked.

Love and miss everyone bunches already!!!!

we can count the hours now...

We are now out of our house and staying in a closet with two rooms. I was pretty surprised, why I am not sure, by the very small size of our room for 4 people. Basically the bed in the bedroom is simply NOT large enough for me and Mike. So, we are now sleeping on a pull out couch bed and gave the kids the bedroom. Its so small in there that if you roll over to fast and don't keep your arms tucked in, you'll smack the wall.
yeah.
Hey though, at least its a roof and its got AC and there is a place to sleep, right?

Today we had a little party for the boys with our closest people at "Gwanny's house". A fun pool party early birthday for the kiddos. We had hot dogs and chips and cake and just a good ole time. ALL the kids are probably sleeping just as good as Kade and Cody are right now, they played really really hard. I loved it. I loved seeing them all in one place, playing and laughing and smiling and just playing. I loved seeing our family and friends all sitting together visiting and just being there to spend time with us. Granted, its difficult to ever get real time with anyone at a party, but I tried.
Other than some stickers and one bee sting, everything went perfect. I have one very happy little boy who found out he can "swim" by himself (with the help of 50 thousand floaties of course) and one boy that absolutely MUST be in the most in depth of swimming lessons ever because Mr. Cody will bail off the side of the pool with or without your help, or go down the slide, or just take off like he can indeed swim like a fish. Very scary.
So, other than your general inability to divide your attention to perfection among all of your guests at a social function, I was unagle to keep my eyes off of Cody too. He's entirely too brave.

As it gets down to the wire, emotions are really getting crazy everywhere. I do okay until someone else cries, then I cry and tell them to cut it out. I'm not even a peson that doesn't like to hide emotion, but I think its the only way I can keep it together. After later late one night bawling to Mike for 2 hours solid, I can't stand the thought of risking doing that in front of others. Big nasty snotty slobbering blubbery mess. Ewwww....
I won't be wearing any make up when we head out on Wednesday that is for sure.

The reality hits at the strangest of times. I spend some time watching others watch the boys play and interact, then I see that glint of sadness on their faces. I do my best to try to cheer them up. I am touched though, that everyone is gonna miss us. We're sure going to miss them all a ton!
I know that many folks are upset and feel that the boys won't remember them. They will, ther is no WAY, regardless of their ages, that they will forget anyone! Now, some of you might have to fess up a photo via email every once in awhile, and we'll be prepared for lots of webcamming. The boys will have their own computer before too long, so I'll be sure to set them up with one on their computer also.
We'll keep up with our blog, we'll talk about all the mundane things that go on day to day. You won't miss a thing. You all will have to share things such as that as well, so that we can be as involved as we possibly can from over there, but also so that we can share all of this info with the boys.

Anyway, the reality of it is still so mixed. I hate that people are hurting, I hate that they are sad. I hate that they think that we or our kids would forget them. That we/they would not still love them just as much, or know them just as much. We certainly won't change any of that and the boys would never. Sure I'm sure it will take them a short bit to get into the swing of things when we do come home, but not long. They LOVE their family and friends so so so much, they talk about you all way more than you can imagine. I am asked to draw a picture of some of the most random people by Kade so, what else would that tell me but he loves everyone and thinks of y'all. That makes me happy. What makes me sad is that y'all are all some pretty funky looking stick people. My art skills have flown out the window with age or children or something.... gone. Can't even draw a straight line to save my life.
I hope that everyone will be able to look beyond their hurting hearts, and just try very hard to feel happy. Happy to know that we are going to see some things and do things that we would have NEVER gotten to do otherwise. Certainly not in this magnitude where we are not tourists but members of the community. Exposing the boys to other cultures and places and just getting to do new things is something that is very important to Mike and I. So I hope that everyone can try to just enjoy the last couple of days with us and the boys. Let them get to enjoy a bit of time with you all before we go,and you soak up as much of them as you can.
You'll all be glad later on. :) I promise.
So, I know it is sad, but please know that we are very excited as well. We are sad, but so excited. So excited, but so so sad.

Trying to squeeze everyone and everything in at the last minute its getting tough. We have just decided that we need to write out a schedule unfortunately. :( I guess its just a learning experience and there's no way you could know much about this type of move, without actually doing it. It just sucks to find out things the hard way int his type of situation. I need another week at least. I could totally feel fine leaving if I just had one more week to spend with people. However, we jsut don't have that option, so off we go. Doing the best we can.
I hope no one takes it personally if for whatever reason we cannot spend time with you before we go. We've tried please know we've really really tried. Apparently this moving overseas with 2 small children and only 3.5 months notice is a little more time consuming than you might think.

Thanks to everyone that came today, we thoroughly enjoyed the time we got to spend with you guys. We really really enjoyed ourselves. Thanks so much to Steph and fam for taking the boys off our hands so we could get a quiet dinner and do some morning errands before their party. Thanks so much to Shannon and Pop for hosting our little party, we loved it.

Won't everyone shoot me when they learn what I forgot AGAIN???? Why on earth do I have SUCH an issue remembering ice cream with cake? So this time I actually DID remember to buy some, some really GOOD ice cream too. My hard to find absolute favorite that I won't have for a long long time... Blue Bell Triple Chocolate. I forgot. Some Poteet Strawberry ice cream and some yummy vanilla. Well, its still up there in the freezer untouched.
So I'll get in trouble for forgetting to share it with everyone, and in truoble for leaving it there. ha!

Well, tomorrow starts a plethora of appointments. So here we go. This is it. 2 days.
Wow.

I checked the 10 day forecast for Abilene earlier, and on a whim decided I'd check and see what we were going to be in for in England.
Wow. WOW. wow.
Not sure if I'm glad or what. I mean sure...as I'm sitting in a room burning up and the high is 101 tomorrow, in England its in the 70's all week while its near 100 or above all week here. Hmmmm.... yeah but how will it be in the winter?

At any rate, all I can say is, "here goes nothin" and get ready to do this thing. I'll be giddy when we get there house hunting and decorating. So that is at least something to look forward to.

Love to all, we'll miss each and everyone of you! Very much, but we'll be home and still the same as we are now, just a little mroe traveled, a little thinner (for a couple of us) and a little taller and talkative.

The day is upon us...

Well, I have not posted an update simply b/c I couldn't find the darn pics I had taken specifically documenting our move. Well, you know what it looks like to move. I certainly didn't know what it looked like to have someone move FOR me though. That was sheer madness when the packers came. Wow. They sent in 4 women to pack and they were like tornadoes through here.
They got it all packed, of COURSE my office took the longest and the next day they sent over 4 guys to move it all out and put it in huge wooden crates and off it went.
Luckily the boys were fantastic through all of that, shocking I know! So it went off without a hitch.
They took our big shipment on the 26th of June and then came back on the 8th of this month and took our linens and some other smaller items. Including my precious desktop computer. Mike said they only put it in cardboard though...I'm so scared. Hopefully they gave it its own seat on the plane and strapped in it nice and secure. That's how I'd do it if it were me anyway. :)

Now here we sit, as we've survived with no bed, no dishes, very few toys and no trampoline. We were reduced to sleeping on an air mattress but by the grace of our dear friends Ronnie and Missy they had a spare mattress, so we've been kickin it on a mattress on the floor. Hey it WAY beat the pants off that joke they call a temporary bed. I slept on it ONCE and moved to the recliner and Mike was trying to be a trooper. Oh it sucked!
It was like heaven the first night we got to snooze on a REAL mattress again. What a couple of weenies we are in our old age, about to die after 2 whole nights with an air mattress that wouldn't hold air. ha!
The boys really have taken things in stride though, I'm very proud of them. Its just now really starting to show that things are really "off" for them. I know it will only get so much worse though. Seriously how on earth do you get a KID used to such an enormous time difference? Ah well, I'm up for the challenge! What else do I have to do anyway?
Personally I'm really missing my gigantic cushy bed and I can NOT wait to get the boys set up with their new bedrooms.
Cody said he was very excited about getting his new big boy bed and Kade is really thrilled he'll have a "bunk bed" of sorts.

This particular time though, we are all feeling pretty bitter sweet. We are VERY excited about going. Kade even tells us every day, "Hey you know what?" we say, "What?" he says, "We're going to ENGLAND!".
Granted, I doubt he could come close to grasping the concept here, but he helped me re-pack his suitcase, after he'd pulled all the clothes out and did his, "hey you know what" bit. So who knows? I've started ttelling him now and I know he just won't get it until way later. That when we are in England, we can't just go see Granny or Ben or Shea whenever he wants to. That we'll be far far away and it costs a lot of money to come back home, but we will as often as we possibly can.

So as usual, our lives are in limbo, but its nearly there. Its almost time to move on to phase 2.

I think the greatest news we've gotten yet is that there was another flight missing from our original itenerary. So we will NOT be flying straight out of Dallas at 1pm. PHEW! Luckily we go from Abilene, to Dallas to Chicago to London. Now, most would perhaps not want all those changes and layovers, however I'm totally fine with it. Well...the rap that O'Hare gets is not so great on the flight delays but we'll just take it as it comes. So the Abilene to Dallas flight will just be fun to the boys I'm sure. At DFW we'll try to find some sort of play place or just let the boys run around like wild banshees as they are so good at to burn off some energy. Then when we pull out of there at 1pm, well golly that's just nap time, grand huh?
From there we have our layover in Chicago and will again try to find some place for the kids to go wild as long as we can, grab a bite to eat and perhaps even change into some comfy clothes for the long haul. We leave Chicago just short of bedtime. So for that, I am SOOOOOO grateful! You just can't have any idea. The thing I've been most stressed about was not the move, not living without our things, out of base temp. housing, or trying to find a new home or vehicle when we get there. The ONLY thing that has had me totally freaked out was the flight over there b/c some FOOL apparently has no small children and just wanted to torture us and the other 200 people stuck around us for 9 hours straight by giving us an Internation flight at 1pm. Aaaaah.... man I can so relax now.
So, personally, my biggest fear now is that I'll do a poor job packing all of our carry on. I HATE the security lines. I always feel like people are going to come beat me down b/c I take too long getting my damn shoes back on or something. Two small kids in tow, carseats, 4 carry on bags and 2 grown ups. Oy.
We all know what my carry on consists of anyway and its not snacks, diapers or coloring books. My 3rd baby the --- my camera and laptop. :)

My other enormous fear is that we won't get to see people before we leave, which isn't really just a fear but a reality. This move came on SO fast, we had little notice at all that its really had us beyond busy since we found out. I hate that. So I have that awful sick feeling I'm forgetting something monumental when I am sure its just a lack of TIME. I really do wish we could've gotten a good bit more notice like most people do, but that might have gotten on my nerves too. That lovely feeling of impending WAITING that the military LOVES to dish out so often.
I'm a pretty good military wife in every aspect but THAT. Crap up in the air is enough to drive me batty in no time.

Speaking of military, if you have not heard, a HUGE congrats to my sweetie. He made Msgt!!!! Huge accomplishment for him! I knew he'd make it, but Mr. Poses as an Optimist but is really a Pessimist was too worried to hope. So he'll put that new stripe on probably sometime just after the first of the year. Yay!

At any rate, this is our update. I will, I will, I WILL keep this up to date. Even if I don't have pictures (gasp!) readily available. I can always come back and add them later! :)
I'm done chit chatting on my biz blog anyway. No one is listening anyway. haha. Kind of like here....

4 more days and Adios Tejas.
I really love Texas. Been trying to soak up every bit of the scenery I can. Good thing Tracy was driving on the way to and from Austin for the most part. I'd have driven us off the road numerous times soaking up the beauty of this place.
*sigh*
So many people and things I'll miss. So many new experiences and things we'd have never had otherwise to come...

Until then....