Airshow

Claire's favorite part of the show was the Coast Guard rescue helicopter.

Mama, this is not an A-10.

We arrived at the airshow and the first thing we came upon was 5 fighters lined up in a row. I gave Kate a test. Daddy will be so proud: Kate correctly identified the A-10 on the first try.

Their second favorite part of the airshow was the strawberry ice we got to eat.

On the way home, all three children fell asleep. It's been a busy week.

Hurry up and wait / bored / fini pics

I am almost mobile-blogging. I'm sitting on the futon in our boxed-up living room, with the laptop on my, well, lap. And I'm online! I bet if you're 23 and reading this, you're rolling your eyes right now. But I am pretty pleased with myself. Like I had anything to do with it. Er, thanks, Tim!

Pedro is still boxing up our stuff. The movers only sent one person (actually, I think it was his choice; something about more money, likely) to pack us up. I bet he is re-thinking his decision right about now. Our house may only be 1500', but we have it crammed full of stuff.

The kids are doing pretty well with all of this. It's sort of an adventure, or at least that is how we are presenting it. We will even be staying here tonight, boxes and all! Pedro promised to leave our bedding alone, and the movers will be in tomorrow morning to break down all the furniture. We won't even be sleeping on the floor! Tim suggested putting all our unshippable (spell-check is telling me this is not a word. I do not know another to use, though, so am sticking with it) candles in the fireplace and roasting the marshmallows they won't box up. I promise not to make a mess, Devin! ...although with all the in and out and boxes and such, you probably want to hire some carpet cleaners before you move your stuff in...

Today is the last day of school for the girls. It is our last night in our house. It's so foreign. I know we have been working at this whole moving thing for a long time, but it still is weird to think that we won't be here anymore.

Tim's fini-flight was great. We were almost late, but made it just in time (we were walking out to the tarmac just as he was turning to taxi to his spot). Thanks to R2 for telling him to take his time! And thanks to Camille, Rae, Shonda, Erin, and Deborah and their families for coming to see the celebration! It was great having friends there.

I think Kate was impressed by the big plane, but slightly perplexed as to why we were out there in the heat. Then I knelt down next to her and pointed to her Daddy in the cockpit, covered in military green and a helmet with a dark eye shade. Just then, Tim waved at her, and her face lit up. It was so fun to see the recognition on her features, and to watch her wave to her Daddy.

We re-bid on the first house in Vegas. Our new bid is significantly lower than our first one, and is below the asking price. We will see what Paul the wonder-agent has to say about that, probably in 3-4 weeks. Ha.

Now, pics.

The most fun ever

Ask Kate if she wants to go with you to a bouncy castle sometime. You'll make a new best friend, if you take her. Last night was a promotion party/first Friday at the club, and they had four bouncy castles/slides for the, ahem, kids. We arrived and, after seeing what fun everyone was having, Kate wanted nothing to do with dinner. I hefted her up onto the obstacle course castle and after some trepidation, she tentatively started bouncing. Not long after jumping on the first one, she wanted to go up the big slide. I went up with her, because it was pretty steep, and we went down together. After that, she was all over it, by herself. She held up the line occasionally, but climbed it fine on her own, and loved coming down the big slide.

Claire spent a lot of time in her stroller at first, because Tim wasn't there yet. After about an hour of wondering where he was, his squadron commander saw me and told me I was lucky I wasn't there alone. I looked at him for a long time, trying to figure out what exactly he meant. I was there alone. I finally asked him to explain, and he said that Tim had lost an engine and had to make an emergency landing at Gila Bend. I suddenly felt bad for the slightly testy message I had just left for him on his cell phone, asking where he was. He showed up about an hour later, and Kate showed him that she could climb the big slide and go down by herself. It was a somewhat hectic night, with me losing Kate twice while I was either getting food or taking Claire down the slide, and one of those times I felt the rapid heartbeat-where-is-my-child franticness that comes when you realize you don't know where they are. But I found her (on a bouncy castle, of course), and all turned out well.

Claire the Destroyer strikes again

What?

It wasn't me. You didn't see it happen and can't prove a thing.

Destroying Thomas' tracks.

So tired after Taz's fini flight.

***

Also, it is now 2:30 and the girls have been in bed (and awake) for an hour. An hour. For the love of GOD, go to sleep already!

Trial; Also: is it the weekend yet?

I've been sneaking teeny bites of vanilla yogurt to Claire. Don't worry: no one's been looking, and therefore she's kept it down. I think it's like the dieting thing. If no one sees you eat that hot fudge brownie sundae with whipped cream and 2 cherries (what?), no actual calories are consumed and therefore you do not gain any weight. So, it's been Claire's and my little secret. Anyway, she keeps grabbing for my fork of citrus chicken, or trying to divert my peppermint pattie-laden hands to her mouth. I am certain that she is not supposed to eat poultry or chocolate at this point, so I opted for carrots this afternoon instead. It's been an hour. She is sleeping, so either when I hear her wake up she will be lying in a puddle of orange guck, or she'll be happy as a clam and arching her eyebrow at me as if to say, "Why haven't you given me more of that good solid food yet?" My response will be, of course: because.

Are there anymore carrots in here?

Jen & Claire.

Claire, Tim & Kate after breakfast.

Today is the birthday of the Air Force. Personally? Woo-hoo. But, to celebrate, we went to breakfast together this morning on base. As in before swim lessons. Before 7am. Before any of us were truly awake. Dear God I am tired. It's been a long week, especially since neither Tim nor I had a weekend last week. Right now both of the girls are sleeping. And what am I doing? Blogging. I have a serious problem, folks.

Codes, codes for eberyone

Sick. We are all sick. All of us who are here, that is. Kate got it first, and gave it to Claire, who then shared it with me. Damn daycare. Now, of course, I'm feeling really bad about getting so very frustrated with Kate over the weekend; she was just feeling ucky and now I know why she was whiny. I want to whine right now, too.

I feel worst for Claire, because she's a baby and can't even pretend to blow her nose. So nostril sucker thingy it is, accompanied by nose drops. She hates it, and I hate doing it to her, but it's worse to let her cry and get so congested that she starts to gag.

The nights are long. None of us are sleeping well, and every time one of the girls wakes up, so do I. Our throats itch and are sore, and the coughing is hard to sleep through. My head is pounding, and the tantrums Kate works herself into are making me a little crazy. Not thoroughly crazy, because I've been able to head most of them off today, but I've got my tickets to crazytown in my hand just in case.

I thought I'd have my husband back to help out tonight, but it seems that this will not happen. Of course. His jet's still broken. Severe thunderstorms are in the forecast for tomorrow morning when he is (currently) scheduled to leave, and I am hoping to have him home by Wednesday. Until then, I'll be chugging Nyquil vodka OJ in an effort to get rid of this bug.

Thank heaven for baby medicine

That's right, I drugged my daughters and they are now both sleeping peacefully. Last night: not so much. And today I figured out why at least one of them was crabby: McLaren has another new tooth. Yes, another one. The second one this week. The new one is her upper left front tooth (my sister could tell you the name and number, but I'll just call it what everyone knows: the upper front tooth). After finding the tooth poking through this morning, I am impressed that she slept at all last night, or this past week for that matter.

Kate is still all congested and snotty-nosed, and cough-y on top of that. Now, after some toddler's Dimetapp, she is sleeping soundly! I have high hopes that this will allow me some continuous sleep tonight, as well. Because last night sucked, I tell you.

Tim is cross-country. For you non-flyer types: he flew a jet out to some big to-do function on the east coast. Except that he broke in San Antonio tonight, and will probably not be going to his destination, but will still hopefully be home early next week as planned. As for me, I'm not using my time wisely. I had the computer on from earlier today, and I've been sitting here, reading blogs and such for nearly 2 hours. I could have been reading Harry Potter. Or cleaning up around here for once, or watching the chick flick I got just for this weekend, or sleeping for God's sake! But I've been unproductively surfing the internet. Addict. I'm an addict.

Tomorrow I plan to be firmly planted in front of the TV, watching the Michigan-Oregon game, and willing the network to switch mid-game to what is sure to be a much more interesting match: Washington vs Boise State.

Weekend Update

We had a busy weekend. We spent Saturday getting ready to have a few people over for games, cocktails and dessert, and since it was a Christmas party I wanted to have Christmas decorations up. We strapped Kate in the car and drove to a tree place that was advertising trees from Oregon. I think most of the trees here in Tucson come from Oregon, so we probably could have gone to Home Depot and saved $20, but the people at this one place were nice and they gave us a military discount. Kate loved wandering through the forest of trees and exploring the lot. She found a string of lights attached to a pole on the tent and stared at it for a long time. She loves Christmas lights! We drove home, put Kate down for a nap, and began decorating. We opted to leave all nice/antique/glass decorations above Kate-level, and so far we haven't had any problems. We'll see how long this lasts.

When Kate woke up, she wanted to help us clean up the house, so she grabbed the duster and started on the tree.

Right before people began showing up, Kate played a round of hide and seek with Tim under the table.

Where's Kate?

There she is!

On Sunday we went to base to see Santa taxi in on an A-10. Kate watched, fascinated, as the plane rolled up and came to a stop. She thought Santa was great, until she had to sit on his lap.

Mommy, I don't like this Santa man!

Last night I had Tim take a photo of me (just for you, Carrie!) and my 'basketball'. He thinks it looks like there really is a basketball under my shirt. I told him it feels more like an oversized beach ball.

33 weeks.

Oh, and Jess found out that they are having a girl! She also had her due date revised to 2 weeks later - early May. She seems fine with this. Me, I would not be pleased to hear that!