Beauty in the desert

 went on a picture session in our yard to see if I could capture some of the beauty of the landscaping we have here. It may be a desert but the xerascape is very beautiful...

From crib to toddler bed....the baby to toddler transition milestone.

We can no longer call Brenden a baby I suppose. Babies sleep in cribs after all. Once the crib is gone then it's time to hang up the term baby. I seriously never thought this day would come. It seems the first year, you think that your life will always be about bottles and diapers. The second year you realize they can feed themselves and they switch to sippy cups that you can gratefully refill all day long and throw into the dishwasher at the end of the day (my hands thank the wonderful sippy cup as they were turning to mush having to hand wash 6-8 bottles a day). Now into the third year, we have already begun potty training and now converting the bed to a toddler bed. We weren't ready to go all the way and do the conversion to a full sized bed, although I am sure that will come all too soon as well. I am not sure why I am so hung up on this milestone. I guess it just signals to me that The Cute is now a walking talking little man who know gets up in the morning and runs and jumps into our bed to play (at the nice hour of 5:30 a.m. sometimes). He is really great about staying in bed throughout the night, in fact he hasn't 'escaped' once. Let's keep our fingers crossed that continues as the house is hot enough to need to have his door open. Stay tuned for more stories on the toddler transition that is happening at lightning speed!

The Cute turns 2... (how is that even possible)?

....I mean really it has been TWO years? I know parents always say "where did the time go?" when it comes to their children but I always thought they were exaggerating quite a bit. Turns out they aren't. It really does seem like two days ago he was born and yesterday was his first birthday. I am in awe that in two years time, someone who was a helpless baby has now developed into a little kid complete with his own wild personality! Now that is off of my chest, I can report we had a small party which consisted of myself, Dave, my Mom and Dad. It had been a year since Brenden had tried birthday cake and I am here to report that he had the same reaction to it that he had last year which was that it was messy (he hates messiness) and it was cold because I tried and ice cream cake. I think he had two bites of it and was through with it. So I will still be the Mom that everyone looks at funny because my kid doesn't eat cake and ice cream.
After the presents and cake, we all got into our swimming pool for the first time and it was great. I think it will get much use now that we are headed into 100 degree temps.

All moved in and getting the backyard landscaped

We have been here now a month and still have many many boxes stuffed into the garage to unpack. The house is mostly together though and we just finished getting the backyard landscaped to the tune of $9,600. Mind you our backyard is not big - in fact half of it is taken up with the swimming pool. Note to self - I should have gone into the landscaping business because they make some cash. It is grueling manual labor and in this Arizona heat, I suppose they earn it. The guys did a great job and we are very happy with it. Dave and I agreed on a design and it was satisfying to see it come to fruition. After renting for the last three years, it feels good to have our own home again.

Virginia Beach and Colonial Williamsburg, VA

I have been really wanting to take a trip up to Virginia to see historic Williamsburg this past year that we have been back East but couldn't quite manage it until Dave finished up training (can I get an Amen)! He had - gasp- a week off before he headed off to SERE school which is a whole other story. What to do? What to do? Let's head north! Dave graciously agreed although I am not sure he was all that excited to go walk around a restored town with people dressed in colonial garb.

On our way up we stopped at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, VA. Much larger than I expected. We got there after a day of driving with an hour and a half left until they closed for the day. That was after I got a sweet speeding ticket with just one exit to go until the destination. 74 in a 55 zone. Really? They still have freeways that are 55 mph limit? I should have know that, we have been in the South for over a year. The weather was COLD with the temps in the 30's. Not the greatest time to go but we made the most of it. Brenden seemed to enjoy it although Williamsburg was of course way over his head. Dave and I had to take turns entertaining him while the other went inside the houses. Mostly Dave did the entertaining and I did the exploring. He is nice that way.

Casa Slay del Yuma, AZ

Our brand new house in Yuma closes on March 4 and our realtor has sent us some pictures of the landscape that they put in the front yard and some progress shots of the pool in the backyard that is finishing up. I am so excited to be soon living in a house that is ours again after renting for three years while Dave has been training. We should be leaving North Carolina in two to three weeks. Hello west coast! How I love thee!They haven't stained the pool deck but it will be - you guessed it 'Baja Sand' which is a light brown color. As you can see Yuma-ites use this color a lot.It was interesting to pick our colors of tile and pool deck online instead of being able to be there in person to look at samples but I think we did alright. The tile is a raku color tile:

The finished pool w/o landscaping:

Snow at the Beach Part II

We have been in Cherry Point now for 14 months and in that time it has snowed twice. The first time was last January (see post 'Snow at the Beach' on January 21, 2009) and the second time was yesterday. Since it's such a rare thing here, everyone gets out to build snowmen and enjoy the white stuff before it melts which in this case was one day. We made the most out of the two inches as evidenced by the pictures. Needless to say that Brenden's word of the day was "snoooooow".

He was very perplexed today when he went running out of the house to find his snowman was a shell of its former self - he still tried to put back on the eyes though:

Growing up - Brenden and myself

Well so far the year and a half or so that I have had this blog, it has mainly focused on our family and in particular Brenden. Now that he is 20 months old, the little milestones one sees day after day are still there although not as monumental. He still isn't talking yet. He has his favorite words like jet, ka (koala), sha (shell), bo (boat), Da (dad), Mom, ju (juice) and shif (fish) but can't quite seem to tell us what he wants yet. I know that it will only be a few more months before he is a chatter storm and then we will have another set of challenges on our horizon. What will the future bring?
Living in the moment today though, we put on the pair of rain boots that Nana Slay gave him and let him go jump in the puddles outside. A simple act that brought him so much joy. Wouldn't it be nice if we all could be entertained like that with something so simple? Then again maybe we could be but just don't bother?? A side note on the video, you can hear him say 'eww' when he puts his hands in the water. Something that he tends to say whenever he sees something 'wrong'. Hmmmm wonder where he got that neurotic behavior??

Today is also my lordy! lordy! look who is forty (seriously???) birthday. A much more mellow day than maybe I had envisioned but I am very o.k with that. I remember when my Dad turned forty and my Mom threw him this monumental surprise party. Their friends who owned a mortuary picked him up from playing tennis in a hearse equipped with a martini bar inside. By the time he got to the house, things were already raging in the hearse. The theme as you can guess by now was that he was turning 40 the party was his 'funeral'. There was a coffin in the house and everyone wore black armbands and signed a condolence book. Now that was a party let me tell you! I was nine at the time and it seems like yesterday.

Dave had me sent some beautiful orchids and we are having the Lees over tonight for bratwurst and beers. My friend Kat is coming into town next week to celebrate with me. I do think this forty business will agree with me.

Christmas 'vacation' a la house hunting in Yuma, AZ

Our time at Cherry Point is ending soon as evidenced by us looking at housing options in Yuma, AZ these last few months. With house hunting leave looking like it wasn't going to happen for Dave, we decided to use his Christmas vacation to fly to San Diego and then use that as a staging area for us to make some excursions to Yuma to buy a house. All of that and hopefully try to enjoy some down time with Dave's family. Glad to report that we were successful in all of the above! We are now in the process of owning a brand new four bedroom home with a pool. They are putting the pool in now. We close on March 4th. Should be a crazy couple of months coming up. There is a lot of work to be done with the landscape or lack there of - should be a challenging project that we look forward to.

Christmas was great - good to be with family as last year we had just moved to North Carolina and spent the holidays unpacking boxes. Brenden loved the warmer weather and spent most of the days outside in the yard at Nana and Papa Slay's house. He was showered with gifts from both sides of the family. We opened the gifts that my parents got him before we left and that was fun. He got an awesome circus tent that he basically won't get out of now that it's set up. From Nana and Papa, he got his first airplane which he loves!I managed to be able to spend one afternoon with my buddies at Wine Steals - yeehaw! :At Cherry Point.. a bit more low key: