Boys And Toys

Part of Geoff's dreams for his son have come true... he has a train set... and he LOVES it!

Grant has been not-so-patiently awaiting his train set ever since we got it over leave and it has been just sitting there in the box until we moved to Oklahoma and got halfway settled.

*Note: since putting the train set together 30 minutes ago Grant has said "choochoo chugga chugga" approximately 159,937,648 times!

Things That Make Us Happy

For Geoff it is the new big @*$ TV with football on all day everyday...
For me its the new pretty furniture that holds it mounted so Grant can't knock it over and we don't put gianormus holes in the wall...
For Grant its the simple entertainment from a "frashlight"!

Things That Make Us Not-so-Happy

Heres a look at what we've been dealing with for the past week...

...it starts so young...

just too precious not to share...

Little Miss Dagny meet the Wonderful World of Burberry!

$50 oops

Grant took advantage of Mommy this morning. He decided to wait until I was on the phone with Sears trying to figure out why our dryer won't connect in the new apartment to do some experimenting...

Aleene's OK to Was-it (i.e. waterproof glue) ALL over the brand new apartment living room carpets and himself. Its a $50 oops because he was in a BRAND NEW fall outfit at the time and of course they got the brunt of it.

P.S. my arm hairs are all glued down to my skin after trying to clean both the boy and the floor up. Its going to be a great day!

What Grants Been Up To

I bet you have been wondering what we're up to since theres been no "chats" recently

Well, we're still living out of the hotel so we're having to create our own entertainment

but I have started "school" which is really fun!

I take my naps on a fun mat of the floor and don't want to leave at the end of the day

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurabchilds/TheOKmove#

Fortune Teller (T-14years)

Welcome to the World Dagny!

Dagny Arlene Richardson (a.k.a. Grant's fiance) was born about an hour ago to Rory and Joe!

back to {hotel} life

back to {not-so-great} reality

so we're back in Lawton, Oklahoma after a great week of sleeping in actual houses. We had a fun but fast visit to the east coast where we visited frends and family, got a dose of Vesuvio's pizza and even caught a movie in a theater! Geoff is perfecting his manual skills and the drive back went really well.

Since we've been back we've learned
-Grant can take off one-piece footed PJs by himself in the crib when hes suppose to be sleeping
-Its hard to eat healthy (and cheap) when you're living out of a hotel, thought they did wheel in a MicroFridge when we asked
-I'm not ready for Grant to go to day care! He's going to start going to preschool 2 mornings a week so he can learn to interact with other kids and give me time to (eventually) unpack/run errands. We went by yesterday to get our supply list and learn our way around and luckily he loved the toys so much he didn't want to leave~
(I had grand plans for all of his supplies to be themed, you know backpack, lunchbox, sleep mat and his hygene supply box all to be choo-choo trains or trucks or even monkeys... I'm in a slight bit of mourning that the combination of 2 days notice and Lawton's limited shopping possibilites won't let that happen)

The guy who lived in our apartment before us moves out today. We were told we could move in on the 11th but we're hoping and praying that he didn't trash the place in the 6 months he was here so that it doesn't take a whole week to clean and turn over!

Moving Madness

So here the deal on my MIA blog posts and the constant state of upheaval that we'll be in for the next couple weeks... Geoff's class starts Sept 8th, but the Army builds in 10 days to get there and get settled, on top of that, his unit here at Hood has given him 10 days TDY for us to find a place to live. We knew searching for places was going to be tough and we thought we'd found a house we wanted to rent so on Wednesday Nadia was my lifesaver and rode with me up to Lawton, OK to do a househunt from hades. As we were about halfway there, the rental company called to tell me that someone else had viewed it and wanted it, so "the" house was out. Geoff was checking craigslist (sketchy I know) and texting me possibilities, thank goodness for GPS, we could plug the address in and do a drive by. Nadia and I checked out 4 different houses and a few apartment complexes... lets just say there are SLIM PICKINS! So the best option was a 3 bedroom apartment that we can move into on Sept 3rd. Its funny because even now I don't really know where the apartment is in relation to base or the "good walmart" because we just went house to house, through the backroads, it was insanity~
Well the Packers and Loaders came yesterday to pack up our apartment and storage unit here in Killeen and send it to Lawton. The stuff will get there before we have the apartment to put it in SO we have about 10 days with no stuff and no place to live! We're staying at a hotel in Killeen through the weekend, then we'll head up to Lawton for Geoff to sign in Monday morning. We decided spur of the moment to use these 10 days to visit the east coast and stay with family instead of staying in a hotel in Lawton (trust me, THAT part was a no brainer). So we'll be here and there, hit and miss for the next couple weeks... I told Geoff yesterday that he better know how lucky he is, because hes the only guy I would put up with all of this Army/moving crap for!

Before you can pack...

YOU HAVE TO UNPACK!
This is what happens when CIF (the Central Issuing Facility) explodes in your already too small apartment.

The containers arrived from Iraq last week so that means it all ended up in our house this weekend. Lots and lots of stinky, dirty clothes. Lots and lots of trash send half way around the world because they had to burn or bury any trash they made over there. UGH
Now, I knew this was part of the deal but when part of moving to a new base also means that you have to turn in issued gear, to people who are notorious for being sticklers on how clean the gear is, before you can go. That means before Wednesday we have to have this stuff sorted cleaned and then repacked... and make sure Grant doesn't get into too much trouble with knives and gun cleaner. YAY!

Let The Season Begin

Tonight we'll be cheering Jim on as he makes his debut with the NY Jets!

we are all VERY excited about it... can't you tell?!? Good Luck for an amazing season~