Deployment News for Angela:)

(Picture from one of Ben's other deployments.)

This post is for our friend Angela and anyone else we haven't given the news to:). She specifically asked so she gets mentioned by name. Way to go Angela.

A few months ago we found out that Ben had been chosen for a job with the Seabees. He loves this part of the CEC so he was rather excited to get this job. I on the other hand was thrilled that this job got us back to California. We are really excited by this as it gets us near our families again. We have been on the East coast now for 4 years so we are ready to have some more frequent family time. We have to thank our families for making such big efforts to come see if us they could afford to. We really appreciate all the trips out here guys:). We really have enjoyed the East Coast a lot but I am ready for my coast:).

Anyways, at the end of June we will pack up the van, the car, the kids and the cats and drive from 2800 miles from Virginia to California in one week. While we have brain washed the kids that road trips are fun, I think even energetic Ben and I will be hard pushed to make this a fun trip. But we will try that is for sure!! And I am confident we will form some great memories.

We will arrive around July 4th and with a week or two Ben will leave for Afghanistan. He will be there roughly six months. This is the downer of moving to California. We have been talking the boys through it a lot but I know their little minds can't really grasp what will happen. But we are blessed with so much family and so many friends in CA that I feel we can really make this separation as easy as possible for them. We will be living on base there which we have heard wonderful things about. I am excited to apart of that Navy community there.

This new job of Ben's will last for two years and he will have two deployments but as I am learning with all things in life, it is best if you take it a day at a time. Jesus said it best when he said, ³⁴"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."

We have a "For Rent" sign in the lawn and on Monday the listing will hit the internet. We already had a showing and they claim to want to the house. They have the application so we will see if they turn into possible renters. That would truly amazing as the sign only went in the yard on Wednesday.

There dear Angela is our news.

Rhode Island

We just got back this weekend from another family adventure. I'll have to post it in pieces as we saw a lot. I had never really been to New England so when Ben found out he had a two week class in Rhode Island, I hopped at the opportunity of going with him. He was busy with his class but at least we got to see him at night and on the weekend. It is less than three months now until he deploys again so we are trying to soak up every family moment we can.

It was a great two weeks although I must confess I was slightly worried after our first full day. We were all in one small hotel room and the weather was still quite wintery. The first day we woke up to a dense fog that stayed all day and it didn't get above 45 degrees. I went to the local tourist information place and had this conversation.

me - excuse me we are visiting the area for two weeks and wanted to know what do you have in the area for kids? (at this point I am waiting with my pen poised for a list kid friendly places and events.)

man - nothing. wait let me think about it.... yeah we don't really have anything.

another local listening in says - yeah in the summer there is the beach but there really isn't anything.

We walked back out in the freezing fog and Nati starts to fuss about how cold it is and I saw two longs weeks looming ahead of me. But once I found the local library and YMCA we were set for a good time in Rhode Island. The boys were fine outside as long as we were at the beach or playground. If we were site seeing they suddenly became cold and teary:). I really enjoyed the area and could see myself living there for a year. The winters and late spring would not let me stay too long:). It did remind me of England so I think New England is a great name for it.

The boys had fun too but we were all thrilled to arrive home to 80 degrees and full spring with leaves on all the trees and long grass. (Side note here, I thought we should fertilize before we left so I put fertilizer on the lawn the morning we drove away. It worked!! It worked so well our lawn was out of control when we got back. We actually got a city notice to not be white trash. Ok.. they didn't say that but that is what they were implying. We were threatened with $1000 fine or 6 months in jail. This made both Ben and I laugh as we tried to imagine being in jail and telling someone we were in there for not mowing our lawn. )

This is from Cliff Walk. It is this cool walk that goes in front of a bunch of the local mansions.

We found this hat and it cracks us up so I found myself taking too many pictures of it.
Ok, so the boys weren't the only ones who were cold. If I had more clothes and I would have put them on.


Stopping to jump off the wall and play in the sand.
Nati found all the changes of the last month a bit much and has started this habit of just crying and repeating things over and over if he is upset. These tantrums can last up to 20 minutes and start for no reason. He might get bumped, he might not want to do something, he might not be able to put a piece of lego together..... Even if we tell he doesn't have to do it he will continue to cry and cry and cry. So of course I had to capture it on camera.


Ben trying to reason with Nati during tantrum number 747734747932845938495 of the day. We ended up coming up with a plan that if he could choose to use his words and not have ANY tantrums for a whole day he could have dessert that night at dinner. This was a life saver for making our trip fun. I am actually glad this all came out on our two week trip. It showed me that I have lots or preparation to do to make sure Nati finds our transition to California less stressful. He is normally a bundle of fun so I think this showed me clearly that our youngest does not like change very much. Armed with this knowledge we can make sure we do all we can to help keep things stable for him.

On the weekend we took the boys bikes to a fort that is now a state park. This was the best weather we had up there. It was beautiful. And bringing the bikes to Rhode Island was BRILLIANT. Ben is just a genius sometimes.

He was actually really sick here but still had a great time.
Silly faces
He can walk on clouds.

After we had done a bunch of jumping pictures Yared kept thinking he had to jump every time I pointed the camera at him:).
Very cool bridge.
Town of Newport

Another tantrum. This one because I bumped his leg with his bike. After 10 minutes of hugging and saying sorry he was still crying. When asked why, "Me not know." So he got left to admire the fort wall while we walked on for a bit. He was welcome to join us, he just didn't want to.
At the local library Yared got to read a book to a dog named Yogi.
Some buildings in Newport.


The base up there is beautiful so on the way out of town as we crossed the cool bridge I stuck my head out the sunroof and caught a few shots of it and the light house in the middle of the water.


In the last month we have driven through NC, SC, GA, FL, VA, DE, MD, NY, RI, MA, CT, and PA. These sweet boys have been amazing and spend many an hour like this:). Soon they will hit an even longer road trip as we take two cars, two kids, two cats across the whole United States in under a week.... ahhhhhhhhhh... just think of the blog stories will I have for you then:).

Southern Hospitality?

One thing I have found to be true living in the south or on the border of the south is the people are very friendly. I kind of take their hospitality for granted and have come to expect it. However this is an introduction to 24 hours of the worst behavior I have experienced in a long time.

On our trip to Florida this month, we booked a hotel in the small town of Yemasee SC. It was a random pick but we were able to use some bonus hotel points so we didn't question it. This was the first day or our trip and we had been in the car for 7 hours when we checked in. The hotel was great. The staff were friendly and spoiled the boys. But everything started to go down hill when we stopped by the front desk and asked where we should go for dinner. We hadn't really noticed that this "town" was not a really a town. It was basically 4 hotels, 2 restaurants, 3 fast food places and a gas station. The manager of our hotel wrinkled her nose at our question and said, "I guess the Waffle House would be your best bet, but just order eggs." She suggested we drive another 30 minutes and go to a bigger town. There was no way we could load two boys back up for this so we braved Yemasse's food gauntlet.

Ben was for Waffle House and I was for Denny's. He hates Denny's and I hate Waffle House. Being the kind husband he is, he caved and let me take the family to Denny's. We were seated promptly as the restaurant wasn't very full. We sat the boys down and picked out our meals. We colored every possible piece of the kid's menu. We sat there for at least 10 minutes with no one greeting us, offering drinks or saying they would be right with us. Then I watched a group of kids get seated nearby. I was getting grumpy now as I knew Nati would not last that long and he was now shredding his kid's menu. Then after another 5 minutes I saw a waitress go take the orders from the kids. We were trying to flag her down when the manager seated a new person near us and took his drink order. Now normally Ben would be the one to get worked up about this. But after waiting so long and knowing the kids were going to go crazy before food came, I made the whole family leave. Nati started screaming as he thought we weren't going to let him eat. Ben couldn't quite believe I was stomping out of a restaurant carrying a distraught 3 year old and saying in passing to the manager, "We've been here 15 minutes and you were taking everyone's order but ours."

We walked outside and I felt a bit sheepish now but what could we do. We looked around at our bleak options for food and voted on Subway. This was a Subway that is part of a small store. No one was at the counter and so Ben yells out "Hello anyone there?" No one answers so we are about to walk away when a girl walks out and just stands there. She makes no eye contact. You can tell she is mad as all get out. She doesn't greet or welcome or ask us what we want to eat. She stands there glaring at the ground and smacking her gum. Ben tries to be courteous and starts ordering. She slams around putting the sandwiches together. The Junior High teacher in me is intrigued to see if she will make eye contact. She was acting like she was 13. I watched her the entire time and she never once looked at us or the boys. Finally another worker comes and rings us up and is friendly and polite. The first girl continued to glare, smack her gum and in general look furious with life. Ben and I were almost laughing before we left the store. I had never seen such outright contempt before from a person in customer service.

We laughed with the hotel manager about her remarks on the food in the area. She listened to our story and told us to call ahead next time and she would have her Mama make us some real southern cooking. Now that is more what I expected in the south.

Ben and I laughed at me being the one to walk out of a restaurant and the one to be staring down the glaring waitress. It was such a role reversal. I realized it was because they were messing with my boys. The boys were hungry and we were trying to feed them and these people were not helping me out:).

The next day we stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel. I love this place. We were waiting to put our names on the list and a woman walks up behind me. She asks, "Are you waiting to put your name on the wait list?" I say, "Yes, but this group is in my way so when they are out of the way I'll go up." She thinks about this for a minute then shoves by me and the group who just at that moment started moving. She says her name to the hostess. I am so surprised it takes me a second. Then I say to both the hostess and the rude Southern Woman. "Excuse me but we were here first and you knew that." She looks at me and says, "Yeah but there are four of you two of us so it doesn't matter anyways." and she stomps off. I tell the hostess she should change the order but the poor girl isn't sure what to do. Well the greedy pushy woman and her husband do get seated before us AND they are sitting at a table set for four very near us. Ben sees me getting all riled up again and starts laughing. Once again the kids were waiting longer than they needed to be because of rudeness. When the woman was eating and we were still waiting I almost walked up to her and said something. I spent much of my meal sending her dirty looks. This is not like me but I was so astounded by these three encounters with rudeness that I was losing my own good nature. I asked Ben why he wasn't doing anything and he said he didn't need to get worked up as I was doing it for him. He decided he liked the roll reversal. I did not and have firmly decided to let him be the confrontational one from now on. I think he is more intimidating than me anyways:).

The rest of our trip we met with the Southern Hospitality we have come to know and love.

Disney World

Wow Disney World was GREAT GREAT GREAT. I had thought it would be fun but I was prepared for melt downs, tears, heat, crowds, and exhausted little ones. Once again the boys surprised us with their amazing behavior. It was so much more fun than I thought it would be, which is saying a lot as I had high expectations. I loved watching the joy and imagination of the boys as they walked in this crazy wonder world. Doing this with Ben is just extra fun as he has all the energy to keep going and going. He loved the rides, shows and 3D movies as much as the kids. I could go on and on but I will leave you with a small batch of pictures(ha.. this really is just a sampling of our pictures, but we decided to spare you the 543:). Disney could have made money from filming Yared and his reactions. He walked into Magic Kingdom on day one and saw the castle. He then proceeded to jump and scream. "The castle, the REAL castle. Mickey's Castle!!!" He had quite a few people staring, smiling and laughing.

Day One Magic Kingdom

Taken within minutes of entering the park.

Our first ride, Dumbo. I remember this one from when I went as a kid. Nati loved it.


This was a highlight and a terror fest for Nati. He LOVES Buzz but the giant life size person made him shake in fear. I'll post the video of this meeting next post. It is hilarious.

First of three 3D movies. They are amazing. Yared spends half the time reaching out for the things that look like they are right in front of him.
Rest on Tom Sawyer Island. By now the park was PACKED and Mom was ready for a break:).
Watching Mickey Mouse show. This was the first time they actually saw Mickey in person. But they quickly became huge fans and would scream and wave like banshees when they saw him through out the rest of the time.

Waiting for the parade to start.
Ben's artistic shot of Nati' waving.

Day Two - Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios.

I was really impressed with the beauty of this park.

The boys meeting Pluto. He and Marry Poppins were the only characters that Nati showed no fear of.
Meeting Mickey in person. I thought the boys would wet their pants.
We also did Hollywood Studios on Day two. A rain storm started and cleared out the park. Here we are waiting to meet Buzz and Woody again. They have these brilliant photo ops while you wait. When I went to Disney as a kid the characters just walked around and you might get to see some. Now they have character stations and you wait FOREVER to meet them. We did this three times and then stopped. We ran into one lady from England who had spent 6 hours one day waiting to meet three princesses. Arrrgggghhh

Nati backed out of the photo shoot at the end but he was still thrilled to see them from the safety of Mommy's arms.
Cool backdrop where we told the boys to act scared and got these silly faces.

Day three Downtown Disney

CRAZY thunder and lighting storms with tornado warnings so we went to Downtown Disney instead of a park. Yared had Birthday money to spend. He insisted on giving $10 of it to Nati and they both came out with a toy to play with at the hotel.

Day Four - April 1 Yared's Big day so back to Magic Kingdom.

It was the day with the most perfect weather and honestly it was a wonderful day. We started by getting to Magic Kingdom before the park opened and watched Mickey and friends officially open the gates. Here the boys are enthralled with the magic and drama.

We had taken everyone's advice and booked a character breakfast for his Birthday. This is where you get a buffet breakfast and characters come around while you eat. We chose a brunch with Mary Poppins, Tigger, Pooh, Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland. Here we are catching the boat to his breakfast.

Tigger won Nati over by attacking Daddy in a giant hug and from then on we heard, "Igger is funny. He hug Daddy." Yared loved all the characters and would jump into their arms.

Birthday boy admiring his Birthday cupcake.
They both loved her.
We stayed at a hotel with a kitchen so I was able to make this cake for Yared the night before. He was so excited that it looked like the Disney Castle.
Birthday Pizza on our porch after a nice long swim in the our hotel pools. Three pools and three hot tubs:). Yeah baby.

Then we loaded the boys back in the van to go back to the park and watch the Light Parade. It was well worth it.

Day Five Epcot

The day we were supposed to drive home but stayed on as we had missed one day with the rain. We went to Epcot and it was really relaxing with some great rides for Ben and Yared to enjoy.

He caught on to the map idea about 10 minutes before we left on our last day:).
We took this as a joke as we left the park. I was actually less tired than I thought I would be.
Great times. Great memories.