Cities

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

My Goldens Visit: Days 1-3

While Leslie is busy with mom time (of which I am extremely jealous), I have been busy with friend time.  The girls and Bloss were here for a week and we fit as much as we could into that visit.  Here is a breakdown of our days:
  • Day 1: Base and Badman Ball
  • Day 2: Kamakura
  • Day 3: Disney Sea Tokyo
  • Day 4: Yokohama
  • Day 5: Tokyo
  • Day 6: Tokyo
  • Day 7: Enoshima
  • Day 8: Hakone
Aren’t you exhausted just looking at that schedule?!  I honestly don’t know how they kept going, especially with the jet lag.  But they were troopers and I loved sharing Japan with them.  Some of what I showed them was familiar to me and some was brand new.  I admittedly got lost a few times, but by the end of the week had mastered (okay that might be overstating it) the train schedule and google maps. 

These girls have been to every one of the places that we have lived over the last four years (along with our friend, Lauren, who was delivering sweet Ryan this year and had bigger things on her plate;))  It means so much to me to be able to share this adventure with some of my best friends.  Thanks for making the trip, my goldens! 

Here is a look into our first few days…

Cheers to Japan!
(Hot canned drinks from the vending machines - one of our favorite things about Japan!)
Seeing what Matt does all day...

Our favorite God of Happiness!


When in Rome (or Japan, in this case)...

Dankazura shrine approach

Disney Sea Mermaid Lagoon (and a safe haven from the rain)

Disney Sea

Trying to keep warm.

The hidden temple.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Mom Time.

Obviously since I'm living with my parents right now, I spend a lot of time with my mom. It's been great to do everyday things together that we've only done on vacations or holidays.  Eating dinner together, going on walks, going to the park, plus some fun outings like visiting her favorite place in Richmond which also happens to be where Nick & I got married, Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens.

Soon after we moved to Richmond, my mom and I had lunch at Lewis Ginter and walked through the gardens.  It was still pretty cool outside, but the tulips were in full bloom and the gardens were beautiful. I went back to our wedding location to reminisce on that day.  Everything looked the same, but the weather was drastically different...it was about 40 degrees cooler, zero humidity, and there wasn't a summer thunderstorm approaching! I walked over to where we had the ceremony and stuck Waverly right in the spot where we exchanged vows. She just sat and grinned, which made me so happy.

Springtime in Virginia is beautiful...as you can see!

Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in prime springtime









Our wedding spot!






teaching her about flowers...

Reception garden...love this house!
I also had my first Mother's Day this year!  It was nice to be treated special. Being a mom is full of so much love, but is also exhausting!  So it was nice of Nick to let me sleep in, give me flowers and a sweet handmade (literally - hand prints!) gift from Waverly.  We had a great day of brunch with my mom & dad at a new restaurant in downtown Richmond, Balliceaux.  They had a DJ playing 50's and 60's jams and Waverly was rockin out.  Check out the video below!  It was also really great to spend mother's day with my mom.  Since I haven't lived in the same town as my mom, I really appreciate being able to easily spend holidays like this with her. She is super supportive, always wants to know what's going in my life, and there has never been a moment when she hasn't been there for me. I'm pretty lucky!

Later that day, Nick, Waverly, and I went to Maymont Park. We walked all over the park and it was nice to explore, but we both felt as if the park could use some much needed love. It has a lot of potential, but doesn't seem to be kept up that well by the city or whoever is in charge. Maybe we've been spoiled by the fantastic parks in NYC??  My favorite part of the day was when a train was crossing and the conductor went really slow and waved to all the kids watching from the park.  I told Waverly, "Look! It's a train! Choo! Choo!"  The conductor waved at us and sounded the horn.  She was mesmerized!







Maymont's Dooley Mansion...I thought this was haunted growing up!

Nick strolling Waverly in the park

Italian gardens

Japanese Gardens!

Japanese Red Maple




Choo! Choo!

Hi!

Being a mom has changed my life in so many ways and I love it.  I always knew I was meant to be a mom, but my sweet, happy baby who is so full of personality makes me sure that this is how life is meant to be.  All the aches and pains of pregnancy and all the loss of sleep or tears cried (by her and me!) vanish when Waverly snugs against me, laughs a big belly laugh, learns something new, smiles or looks at me for re-assurance.

Such a wonderful first Mother's Day.  Love from Richmond!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Badman week.

Sometimes the Navy reminds me of being in college - most of the time that is a good thing.  Two weeks ago, it was definitely a good thing because it meant Badman week.  The week was full of costume parties and sports competition between squadrons.  Nothing like a little competition to bring people together ;)

The week started with a zombie party...
Continued with a Rock 'n' Roll party...

And a little volleyball...
And ended with a ball...


Friday, May 17, 2013

A quick hello.

Like Leslie, I’m sorry that I have been away from the blog.  This past week has been busy with zombie crawls, English classes, 80s parties, and volleyball.  Promise that I will catch you up on everything soon, but right now I am getting ready for our first visitors!  I am so excited that a few of my favorites are arriving EARLY tomorrow morning.  We have a fun week of exploring ahead of us and I can’t wait to show them around our new country.

Until next time, love from Japan.

Arriving in less than 12 hours...



Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I'm Alive.

Don't worry, I haven't kicked the bucket.  I'm alive. It's just that during every RARE quiet moment that I've had in the past month, I have tried to catch up on sleep, watch mind numbing t.v. to relax, or talk to my husband.  I have missed blogging and keep repeating what I want to write in my head...finally I'm getting a chance to type!

Our move was as you would have imagined:  exhausting and not fun.  BUT it's done and things went relatively smoothly.  We moved in 2 parts....1 weekend to move everything we needed to live with at my parents house plus some special things we did not want to put in storage. Then 2 weeks later (we had a friend's wedding in between) we moved the rest of our stuff from Alexandria to a storage unit in Richmond.

Per usual even though we got help with relocation, we chose to pack and move ourselves to save some cash.  We are very good at packing and organizing to move now...I wasn't stressed, but I still hate packing.  There are moments of "Another Pyrex dish??" or "Where did we get all this crap?" and then the inevitable moment when you need to get on the road and just start shoving shit that doesn't go together in boxes marked "miscellaneous". (These are fun to unpack later..."What room does this go in?")  Lastly you just throw things like plants, mops, and trashcans in the truck and hope they make it in one piece.

she thinks moving is fun.

Packed up house.

moving day kitchen disaster...complete with lots of coffee, cleaning products, and fast food.

my life in the past year has looked like this a lot.

We had some eventful/painful moments along the way.  Waverly got used to sleeping in a new room while getting 2 teeth. Plus everyone got a cold.  There have been some long nights, grumpy mornings, and lots of rocking to sleep.  Which caused me to have a strained neck till I saw a chiropractor. That was a painful week. We are all finally healthy again and the little one seems to be getting back to her regular sleeping habits.




Another "eventful" moment is that while moving our stuff into storage, Nick broke our everyday dishes.  The ones we got as wedding gifts. After getting Waverly to bed, I showed up at the storage unit to help and he told me that the dishes box fell off the cart.  Our good friend was helping us, so as not to appear like a crazy wife in front of everyone, I stayed calm and said "Ok, well let's take it home and take a look."  When we opened the box at home, we found that 99% of our dishes were broken including serving platters and mugs.  Crying ensued.  Since then, I have gotten over it, but it was a big loss during the move. (I'm thankful that we have wedding china!) 

Lastly, we had a hell of a move out inspection.  In all our years of renting, this was the shortest lease.  5 months to be exact.  Yet, it was the biggest hassle.  The property management company was difficult to deal with and had a ridiculous amount of fees and stipulations.  We had a move out inspection that lasted over 3 hours.  3 hours WHILE we were packing the truck, cleaning, having the carpet cleaned, and taking care of a baby.  The inspector was straight out of a movie - frumpy with glasses and took her job very seriously.  Yes, I'm being judgemental, but she was unreal.  She took 3 hours to take notes and pictures of our place while asking me to replace light bulbs, dust the banister, and "Don't forget to wipe the light fixtures!" I felt like I was on that show "Boiling Point".  Then, as we were almost done, she asked Nick to weed the yard. Weed. The. Yard. We wanted to die.  Throughout the inspection I must have said 12 times, "We've only been here 4 months".  That didn't seem to click with her though.  Luckily she found nothing to go against our security deposit and allowed me to pee and give my baby a bottle before locking the door behind us.  Needless to say, we were happy to be done living there.

In the meantime we have settled in nicely to my parents house.  They made room for us to live, store some things, and set up our own family room in the basement.  The first week was a lot of excitement while everyone got used to living together.  Now things are calmer and we seem to have gotten into a routine. I have also learned the mystery of what my retired dad does all day...let's just say that retirement is nice and relaxing.

Cole is very settled and doing great.  He has a ton of room and places to lay...he chose this spot one day.
Apart from moving and settling into my parents house, we have been very busy. Nick's new job is going great and he's really happy. Waverly and I have had lots of playdates with our friends which we both love! Walks, playtimes, and lunches...busy social calendar.  Plus there's lots of playtime with my parents, Nana and Granddaddy.  Nana likes to take her on walks and sing little jingles to her.  Waverly bounces around like she's dancing, it's pretty funny. Granddaddy likes to get snuggles during the rare times that Waverly stops moving enough for a hug.

Nana and Waverly
Swinging with our friend, Sophie!


Stroller crew. At least the sidewalk was wide enough!
Speaking of Waverly, she has changed so much since we got to Richmond!  With all the space in my parent's house, she has taken off for the races.  She seriously crawls so fast!  She also started pulling up to standing which was cool, except in her crib because she couldn't figure out how to get down and would just stand there crying till I came to her rescue.  She has finally learned how to get down.  She's also waving and saying "da" to Nick and "da da da" at Cole for "dog"!



life is good. rock on.

While all this has been going on, we also found a realtor, went house hunting, had some family portraits done, and celebrated Mother's Day! Phew!  Just wanted to give you a preview of blog posts to come...soon, I promise!

Love from Richmond!