we've landed....

We arrived here Wednesday afternoon after a very long journey from San Diego.
Its been an interesting time getting moved in! We had a pipe burst because apparently the heat wasn't always being used in this house which has been vacant for awhile, and its been VERY COLD here! We've had some issues with the washer hose in the same pipe as the dishwasher hose, oh yeah the dishwasher is between our washer and dryer, which makes it very interesting! We've had to mop up water twice already! Josh is working on it! We had to have the plummers return again to get the water running in our only full bathroom. So we think most of our plumbing issues are for the moment taken care of for the house! Other than that the house is perfect!
Jonas is happy to have lots of other 7 year old boys on our street, which we met within an hour of being at our house! There aren't too many girls that we've seen yet. The kids start school on Monday, barring any snow that could come this way. (Keeping fingers crossed that this doesn't happen as we need to get things unpacked without distractions!)

Hey We're moving today!

Just thought I'd share one last thing... we're moving today! It's hard to believe today is the day! Josh will be helping us move then he will return to San Diego and then he will be doing 3 weeks of training before he leaves to go to Kuwait. Anyway, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we make this journey again across the country. Those of you that live in Norfolk... we'll see you soon!!

Weekend Adventures!

We had a fun weekend while Josh's parents were here. On Friday we went to LegoLand, which if any of you get a chance to go, DO IT! It is especially good for children ages 5-10 in my opinion. Eliza was able to ride a lot of the rides, but there were some she was 3 inches too short to ride.


It was neat to see all the stuff made out of Legos, and funny to know that it's someone's job to build things out of legos... how cool would that be?? Maybe I should try and convince Jonas to do more stuff with is Legos! Oh and the bathroom signs had us all laughing!
Saturday we went Whale watching, we did see a few whales, but it wasn't like them jumping out of the water. It was them coming up for air and blowing a bunch out of their air hole and then going back underwater. We saw lots of dolphins, and that was neat. We all managed to feel a little queesey, but didn't toss our cookies thankfully! I don't think Jonas was overly impressed by the Whales!




On Sunday after church we celebrated Jonas's 7th Birthday with cake and presents! Its hard to believe he's 7... it makes me feel old! We had to improvise because we only had 3 birthday candles, so I wrote a big 7 on his cake with sprinkles... but he didn't seem to care!


He got some clothes, Lego Batman for his Nintendo DS, he got $7, some dinosaur eggs, and a lego land puzzle too.
Josh's parents had to leave on Monday, we are glad they were able to come and enjoy some fun times in San Diego with us before we head back to Virginia.

Little Hensley Zoofari

Josh's parents came out to see us for a long weekend (the kids are out of school tomorrow and Monday). So we got Jonas out of school early and went to the San Diego Zoo.
Jonas and Maddie were too little to remember going to this zoo, so it was a lot more fun today to take them. They had a lot of fun seeing all the animals. Althought Wyatt couldn't have cared less, he slept a lot in the stroller about half the time! We saw some very PINK flamingos (see Eliza's pointing to them)

We saw the Giraffe's and the Elephants,
but unfortunately this is all we saw of the Orangutan's their exhibit was closed for remodeling.

This was about as close as Maddie wanted to get at the petting section in the kids zoo, and all in all we had a very fun time!
Tomorrow we're Legoland...more adventures lay ahead so stay tuned!

Thank you presents

I decided to make something for Maddie's teacher as a thank you before we leave. If you haven't noticed by previous posts, Maddie loves her teacher. She will really miss him and her class. I had to do it in the next few days because I'm packing up my stamp room this week. (sniff sniff) So I made this little chalkboard clipboard, so I hope he likes it. I thought it turned out cute!

We have a house!

So thanks to Heidi and Jenn we have a place to move into when we arrive in Norfolk! After looking on-line, I found a few places, and then the girls went and checked them out for me. It was nice to have someone that could say, there's no way you would like that, or yes you'd like that but it has this about it or that, but you can live with it right? I thought I'd found the house to rent in mid January, but it got rented out because it was too soon to send an application in. So I had to keep searching, and decided after everything that I wanted to live in Larchmont (which those of you that live in Norfolk know where that is), so Heidi and Jenn went and saw the house and said it was a yes. Heidi got to go inside with the realtor and got some pictures for me. We turned in our application, and it's going to be ours! It's no longer on line or I'd have you all go and view it. It's a 4 bedroom house with 1 and 1/2 baths. I'm just happy to have a home to go to! Here are some pictures, sorry I don't have labels for what each room is, but you can mostly figure it out! We will be leaving in 2 weeks! Wow, it's coming fast!

Maddie's birthday card to her teacher

Maddie informed me the other day that today (Friday) was her teachers birthday. I asked her if she was planning to make him a card, and she said yes. Apparently they discussed what he was planning to do on his birthday. So this is what she wrote inside

which I will translate: it says:
Dear Mr. Lagarda,
Have fun playing and rolling around in the mud in a pig suit and in the hot tub on your Birthday. You have to give us no homework. Love, Maddie.

Then the other side is pretty self explanatory! I thought it was hilarious!

The Birthday Party Pics and a little side project

Here they are... Wyatt had a good time with his cake as you can see, and so did everyone else. It was crazy having 11 kids (and just from 3 families too!) at our house! They all had a good time helping Wyatt with the little cars we got him and the other gifts he was brought too. He got a ball, some bubbles, and this cool rattle that can be annoying after awhile I must admit.
On another note this weekend we decided to get the kids all their own dressers at Ikea. We will put them together when we get to Norfolk.
Maddie and Eliza have been sharing, and it's definately not working. They have way too many clothes. So we're going to get rid of 2 dressers, but the one dresser Wyatt has had for his clothes I thought I could still use for me, since I need a dresser! It has really needed a new paint job.We bought it used on Craigs list in Virginia, and I just never got around to painting it. Whicn as you can see it obviously needed!
I finally decided to paint it today, and use the knobs I had bought at Target for Maddie and Eliza's dresser but never put them on. I think it turned out great! It's amazing what a new coat of paint can do! Here's the after photo: