In honor of todays Royal Wedding

My Royal Smooch at the top of the London Eye::

 Walking along "my" London street, outside of "my" London church, which is beside The Abbey::

 This speaks for itself.  I was there!

No photography allowed inside these walls::

 Enjoying the backyard patio and royal garden at Buckingham Palace, after our inside tour::

Walking down the street of the common people, along the "never ending" brick and barbed wire palace wall::

 ~enjoying the memories of London, England, from only eight months ago,

as I watch the Royal wedding coverage this morning~

Gone Fishing

We've discovered a new backyard hobby.  The kids LOVE fishing!  We've gone from being a family that had never been fishing to now owning four fishing poles, a fully loaded tackle box and finding lots of free time for casting lines, enjoying the sunshine and making new memories.  What a deal!

With the help of our neighbor, Mr. Joe, we've been successful in catching three different kinds of fish so far.  Ethan caught his first one about 30 minutes after learning how to cast out.  He was thrilled with his 5 pound, wide-mouth bass.  On a different day, Ethan and Mr. Joe caught a big 'ol catfish with hotdog bait.  Last week, Camryn caught her first fish which was a little blue gill.  Sloan is still waiting for her big moment and hasn't lost hope yet.  There's a bit of a competition now between her and her Dad to get the next bite.

UDATE on 4/4/11:  Sloan caught two blue gills today between school lessons.  Here she is with her proud catch!

Spring Fever

We have a bit of Spring fever.  And lucky for us, it feels and looks like Spring in Florida.  It's just beautiful around here.  Lots of flowers blooming, the grass is turning green again, the ponds are full of flowing water and the trees and palms are as green as ever too.  We've spent many,many hours inside our house getting unpacked and working on several big construction jobs.  For the most part we are now done with setting up the inside of our home and I'm very much enjoying the fruits of our labor.  Our home projects have now turned into honey-do-lists...for both Travis and I.  But I think we'll be shifting our focus to the out of doors for awhile now.  And believe me, we've got plenty of work out there to keep us busy every weekend though this new Spring season.  I have some posts stored as drafts so after I add a bit more to them, I'll record what's been keeping us busy.  This is a start though.  I feel a new blogging resolve coming and I couldn't resist the urge to brighten up this little web space.  I like it this way.

Eat to sleep

From the Yahoo News clip:  Should you let yourself have that midnight snack if you're having trouble sleeping and you think hunger might be part of the problem? Here are five foods that can actually help you drift off:
1. Cherries. Fresh and dried cherries are one of the only natural food sources of melatonin, the chemical that controls the body's internal clock to regulate sleep. Researchers who tested tart cherries and found high levels of melatonin recommend eating them an hour before bedtime or before a trip when you want to sleep on the plane.

2. Bananas. Potassium and magnesium are natural muscle relaxants, and bananas are a good source of both. They also contain the amino acid L-tryptophan, which gets converted to 5-HTP in the brain. The 5-HTP in turn is converted to serotonin (a relaxing neurotransmitter) and melatonin.

3. Toast. Carbohydrate-rich foods trigger insulin production, which induces sleep by speeding up the release of tryptophan and serotonin, two brain chemicals that relax you and send you to sleep..

4. Oatmeal. Like toast, a bowl of oatmeal triggers a rise in blood sugar, which in turn triggers insulin production and the release of sleep-inducing brain chemicals. Oats are also rich in melatonin, which many people take as a sleep aid..

5. Warm milk. Like bananas, milk contains the amino acid L-tryptophan, which turns to 5-HTP and releases relaxing serotonin. It's also high in calcium, which promotes sleep.

big project #1: Laundry Room

On 9/26/10 the laundry room looked like this during our initial tour of our house:

It had one industrial sink and the washer/dryer hookups.  That's it.

On 11/27/10 it starting looking like this:

The boys painted and installed upper cabinets on both sides of the room, a big lower cabinet next to the sink and a vertical row of drawers to the far left.  After adding a 4 foot counter it was time to fill those cupboards up (my job).

Today it looks like this.  And I love it.  Thank you honey, for my new laundry room.  You're THE best!

2011

Happy New Year! 

1-1-11

Looking through my window::

Merry in the making

December has turned into more of a "month for projects" rather than the usual "run to another holiday program or activity."  What a fun change of pace!  We seem to keep coming up with more creative ideas to fill our days and weekends.  I'm sure this has everything to do with the reality that we're new in town and haven't had the opportunity to get plugged in to the local activities.  But we've also really enjoyed what we've been busy with so we haven't felt the need to explore the outside possibilities too much.  Here's a glimpse at some of the projects we've been doing to find the Merry in this Christmas season.



Halleluiah

American immersion

No more of the European Vacation Life for me.  Instead of struggling though Spanish language barriers, munching on Spanish olives and planning exciting trips around Europe and Africa, I find myself being much more domestic and "normal."  I'm trying to settle into the all-American dream of being a happy wife, with a hard-working husband, two sons, two daughters, new house in the suburbs, furniture shopping and scheming up new landscaping plans.  Welcoming myself back into the American way, has been refreshing and fun but it's certainly very different from the life we created for ourselves in Spain.  I miss so many aspects of living abroad. Some of the things that made it difficult (aka: interesting) to live in Spain don't seem as bad now that I'm not in the thick of it all.  It's hard to start over from scratch and have to find new friends, new places, new churches, new activities, new doctors, new home school groups, etc.  At times it's very exciting and fun but other times, it's exhausting and I'd almost rather stay inside my house and pretend we never moved away from our Spanish lifestyle. 

My new house is fabulous!  It's the biggest and newest house we've ever lived in and and guess what?  We have room for all of our "stuff!"  I might even say we have too much room.  For example, my kitchen cupboards and drawers are only 80% used.  I've been used to cramming everything into every possible space with the excess in a hall closet or boxed up in the garage.  Spanish kitchens are pitifully small and difficult to work around.  And OH!, my kitchen sink here is like a dream!  I have a big deep side AND a smaller side.  In Spain, I only had one little round sink that was smaller than even our bathroom sinks.  My smaller side sink here is still bigger than the single little round Spanish one.  In fact, I'm surprised I that I never took a picture of it.  Now I wish I had one so I could compare it and laugh at how silly and small it was.  My fridge/freezer is so much bigger here too.  Another big kitchen difference is the size of my oven!  This one is probably a normal American size but it's a giant size compared to the little oven I had in Spain that would barely allow for a 9x13 pan to scrape along the inside walls.   I'm really looking forward to all the baking and cooking that will be happening over the coming holidays.  I can actually see myself enjoying the cooking and cleaning process of being in the kitchen while we live here!  I've already started baking my own bread again.  There's nothing that says "welcome home" as well as fresh bread baking in the oven.  In fact, I think I'll spend some more time in there this weekend and make a batch of chocolate chip cookies as well.  My kids are going to love that we have this modern American kitchen too. :-)

Chapter 18 begins

If I were to write a book about my life, the table of contents would probably look something like this:

1. Introduction: Utah and beyond
2. Growing up in Idaho
3. Being a teen:  the good, the bad, the ugly
4. My great escape to Sun Valley, ID to find my True Love
5. Running to the edge of the earth (as I knew it): Florida
6. A spiritual and religious journey
7. The wedding story
8. Montana: newlywed, college, USNavy
9. San Diego, CA: working girl makes a living & earns a college degree
10. The birth stories begin
11. We're moving to Virginia?!
12. The birth stories continue
13. The homeschool movement
14. Back to Southern California
15. !Vive Espana!
16. The birth stories return
17. European travel is addictive...just can't get enough of it!
18. Florida -20 years later

A collection of images::

...from our vacation in Illinios.