Finally, I have blogged away October. I'm so exhausted from all this "e-moting" that I'll have to do November manana. Enjoy!
My poor kids. First we ripped them from their friends and nice home and school and all sorts of comfort in Saint George and dragged them to New Zealand. We made them ride in the car for two months while we looked at houses for sale. Then, just when they had made friends and were feeling settled and at home, we moved them out again. Then, from July-September, they basically have had to live out of a car or in a borrowed bed at some hospitable relative's home. I don't know how they survive. I was a little worried when, after we left SLC with our FULLY loaded cars and trailer we stayed in a motel and Cam looked over and became mesmerized... he called to his sisters and said, "LOOK! GUYS LOOK! The cup is going wound and wound in this machine. This is hilawious!" He was completely amazed by the microwave. And so were his sisters! Sad, but true.
Somehow, we all survived the seven day long journey/adventure/torturous trek up here to Washington. We stayed in some fun little motels, and even stayed in the car in a parking lot in Portland when my car's alternator seized and Jonah had to stay up ALL night in the rain replacing it. His car was a champ and made is all the way to two hours south of our final destination before the transfer case completely fell apart and he put it back together with some tape or something the next day.
The kids were OVERJOYED to finally make it here to our new home, Sequim. It's spelled like Sequin, but pronounced SKWIM. We stayed in motels for a couple nights (see above) and went and stayed with my awesome Aunt Julie and Uncle Max in Redmond for a few days before we bought our very own 32' travel trailer RV and moved into an RV park.
Once we finally "moved in" to the RV park, we could get the kids registered for school! They were so delighted. I thought Ana was going to cartwheel all the way into her new class. They both got fantastic teachers and seem very very happy, except that Cam's class is way behind his New Zealand class and is only a half-day kindergarten and he was used to full day. He sometimes gets "booooored", but overall he's doing great.
When you live in a tiny RV with three kids, you LONG for any opportunity to get out and go do something. So, here we are at the annual Crab Festival. We are in Port Angeles, but I didn't see any Cullens (the local vampires).
We really enjoyed the great weather all through October. Nice temperatures and gorgeous changing leaves dotted all over the hillsides and roads.
Every morning, the kids were picked up by the bus right outside our fancy little RV park. We lived on Sequim Bay and man was it a vista to wake to.
you think the kids had died and gone to heaven with how excited they were/are about riding the bus to school every morning. They've both been dreaming about someday being able to ride a bus to school. Well kids, Merry Christmas.
One of the things I love about Sequim is that they have a great program called First Teacher that is like a playgroup, preschool, parent education group, and book club all wrapped up in one. Its open every day and provides parent education, an indoor play area and a fantastic outdoor playground/bike track for parents to bring their kids to and visit with each other. They have structured crafts, visiting story time readers, and parent discussion groups. I've met so many people there and Elsie and Cam have sure had a good time.
But back to the brute reality-- when you live in the RV, you take your kids to fun activities like movie night at Costco...
Or play "dress-up in old nylons"...
or make your kids eat their food outside.
That's the trailer in the background. It has a mini kitchen with fridge, stove, oven, microwave and dinette that folds out into a bed. It has a couch that folds out into a bed. It has a bathroom with a pit chemical toilet, sink and shower/bath only big enough for pre-adolescents. In the back, it has a queen sized bed. That's it. Not as bad as it sounds, actually, and it is SUPER easy to clean. It's also MUCH more spacious than the motorhome we had in New Zealand and the kids didn't complain about living in the trailer even once.
The super hard thing about the trailer, though, is how hard it was to find an RV Park. The one on the bay (which was very nice and had a laundry and showers and the works) would only let us stay for two weeks (because they thought our trailer was ugly... seriously. RV Parks are extremely snotty and stuck-up), and all the other RV Parks were booked through the winter. Luckily, at the last minute before we had to hook up and move out, we found a guy a few miles out of town that had five acres and had installed some RV hookups and was renting out space. We moved out there and the kids changed buses (and had an equally gorgeous bus stop as at the first RV Park) and all was good... except there were no showers. So, we joined a gym for a couple weeks so we could go into town and shower every day. Perfect. And we bought our "landlord" a wireless router so we could have some internet.
View from trailer park #2 bus stop.
So, while the kids were in school every day (and sometimes after they got home), we searched for land and houses in Sequim. We probably looked at EVERY single piece of bare land in Sequim under 20 acres and at least half the houses for sale. Our realtor was probably starting to think we weren't worth the commission she'd be making, but in the end, we narrowed it down to a few and decided to make some offers.
So, this is my birthday. We drove by the animal safari park for fun. On my birthday, we made our first low low low lowball offer on a property/shack we'd been watching since August. We joked that if it went through, I could say that Jonah bought me a house and 1.5 acres for my birthday, but we never thought they'd accept the offer we made. Neither did our realtor. Well, they did. So, basically, Jonah bought me a house for my birthday.
But, we didn't find that out for a few more days, so we just had a fun time on my bday exploring some of the local treks. Here is the ocean.
And the river.
Here's one of my favorite presents, a celebrity gossip magazine. I always want to read these when I'm in line, but I never have time.
Here I'm teaching Elsie the fine points of deciphering celebrity news.
The weekend after my birthday, we went to Redmond to spend the weekend with my Aunt and Uncle and to pick up my mom from the Seattle airport since she was coming to visit. On Saturday, we went out on a limb and went to a Thriller zombie dance party! There were hundreds of people dressed up like zombies and all doing the Thriller dance. What a party! The girls couldn't bear to dress up like zombies, so they are the Tooth Fairy and
Snow White, of course.
We were so lucky to have my mom come and visit for a few days. She was here when we found out our offer was accepted and she came and looked at the shack on the property and said, "Burn this 'mother' down!!!" Then she drew up so new house plans for us.
It was also pretty fun all sleeping in the RV together. Family togetherness 2.0.
Another fun RV Park activity: setting off rockets. Make sure your rocket doesn't land on a motorhome. Luckily, ours didn't.
She is going to grow into those some day I'm sure.
Right by our new house is this fantastic river. I can't wait to get an innertube and go up the mountain and float down it to my house next summer. It'll make up for all the Provo River Rafting I missed because I didn't go to BYU.
On this trip we had a cairn building competition.
Elsie's also included leaf mulch.
Ana took it a little too seriously. I think there were a few tears when she lost. Okay, okay--many tears. And kicking. And pouting. But in this photo, she just looks so relaxed.
HALLOWEEN:
If you happened to see our Halloween costumes in last month's only blog post, this event is what the kids wore them to... a church Scripture-Trick-or-Treat. It sounds weird, but it was SO awesome. The ward had all these different "booths" that were tied to scripture stories... like this one where you had to sligshot bouncy balls through Goliath's poster... and the kids got little scripture postcards to put in a little book if they completed the booth's contest. It was totally rockin. Probably the most awesome primary activity ever. Contact me if you want to do it at your church and I'll give you all the details. The kids LOVED it and said it was by far the BEST part of Halloween, and it didn't even have any candy at all.
Unfortunately, the Adam and Eve costumes only lasted for one night, so on the next day, teh actual Halloween, I let the kids wear some other more non-embarrassing costumes. Sequim ROCKS for Halloween activities, so we got to pick and choose which activities we went to from 11 am-7 pm straight!
This was at a fabulous Halloween activity put on by High School kids at the High School and Ana looks so demure as Cinderella... and luckily, she trieed her best to act demure too so we had a fairly calm day.
Note: do NOT try to die your 2-year-old's hair black in the bathroom at Walmart with some dye you have just bought... first, it doesn't work; second, it will probably just turn her hair blue; third, it will stain her costume; fourth- it isn't worth it... she looks fine without it.
The best thing about Elsie was that anytime she saw anyone dressed up as a Disney Princess, she would open her eyes huge and sigh and go and give the girl a big hug and then follow her around. She's a bit obsessed.
This helmet is actually the same size as Cam's real head.
Ana and Cam like to save most of the candy to sell to other kids after the other kids' candy runs out, so they divided up the candy according to type and then each picked 50 pieces and let Jonah and I have 25 pieces eacha nd then stored the rest. I really admire their restraint. In fact, Cam just barely finished his last pieces of candy last night, and that's only because he offered to share with the rest of us who ate all of our candy within the first week. They still have a load of candy to sell, but we haven't found a good venue to do it in yet since neither of the kids have soccer games or dance recitals or anything else like the places the usually sell their candy... maybe we'll just save it until next year and give it out as trick-or-treat candy... mwah ha ha ha.
My poor kids. First we ripped them from their friends and nice home and school and all sorts of comfort in Saint George and dragged them to New Zealand. We made them ride in the car for two months while we looked at houses for sale. Then, just when they had made friends and were feeling settled and at home, we moved them out again. Then, from July-September, they basically have had to live out of a car or in a borrowed bed at some hospitable relative's home. I don't know how they survive. I was a little worried when, after we left SLC with our FULLY loaded cars and trailer we stayed in a motel and Cam looked over and became mesmerized... he called to his sisters and said, "LOOK! GUYS LOOK! The cup is going wound and wound in this machine. This is hilawious!" He was completely amazed by the microwave. And so were his sisters! Sad, but true.Somehow, we all survived the seven day long journey/adventure/torturous trek up here to Washington. We stayed in some fun little motels, and even stayed in the car in a parking lot in Portland when my car's alternator seized and Jonah had to stay up ALL night in the rain replacing it. His car was a champ and made is all the way to two hours south of our final destination before the transfer case completely fell apart and he put it back together with some tape or something the next day.
The kids were OVERJOYED to finally make it here to our new home, Sequim. It's spelled like Sequin, but pronounced SKWIM. We stayed in motels for a couple nights (see above) and went and stayed with my awesome Aunt Julie and Uncle Max in Redmond for a few days before we bought our very own 32' travel trailer RV and moved into an RV park.
Once we finally "moved in" to the RV park, we could get the kids registered for school! They were so delighted. I thought Ana was going to cartwheel all the way into her new class. They both got fantastic teachers and seem very very happy, except that Cam's class is way behind his New Zealand class and is only a half-day kindergarten and he was used to full day. He sometimes gets "booooored", but overall he's doing great.
When you live in a tiny RV with three kids, you LONG for any opportunity to get out and go do something. So, here we are at the annual Crab Festival. We are in Port Angeles, but I didn't see any Cullens (the local vampires). 
We really enjoyed the great weather all through October. Nice temperatures and gorgeous changing leaves dotted all over the hillsides and roads. 
Every morning, the kids were picked up by the bus right outside our fancy little RV park. We lived on Sequim Bay and man was it a vista to wake to. 
you think the kids had died and gone to heaven with how excited they were/are about riding the bus to school every morning. They've both been dreaming about someday being able to ride a bus to school. Well kids, Merry Christmas.
One of the things I love about Sequim is that they have a great program called First Teacher that is like a playgroup, preschool, parent education group, and book club all wrapped up in one. Its open every day and provides parent education, an indoor play area and a fantastic outdoor playground/bike track for parents to bring their kids to and visit with each other. They have structured crafts, visiting story time readers, and parent discussion groups. I've met so many people there and Elsie and Cam have sure had a good time.
But back to the brute reality-- when you live in the RV, you take your kids to fun activities like movie night at Costco...
Or play "dress-up in old nylons"...
or make your kids eat their food outside.That's the trailer in the background. It has a mini kitchen with fridge, stove, oven, microwave and dinette that folds out into a bed. It has a couch that folds out into a bed. It has a bathroom with a pit chemical toilet, sink and shower/bath only big enough for pre-adolescents. In the back, it has a queen sized bed. That's it. Not as bad as it sounds, actually, and it is SUPER easy to clean. It's also MUCH more spacious than the motorhome we had in New Zealand and the kids didn't complain about living in the trailer even once.
The super hard thing about the trailer, though, is how hard it was to find an RV Park. The one on the bay (which was very nice and had a laundry and showers and the works) would only let us stay for two weeks (because they thought our trailer was ugly... seriously. RV Parks are extremely snotty and stuck-up), and all the other RV Parks were booked through the winter. Luckily, at the last minute before we had to hook up and move out, we found a guy a few miles out of town that had five acres and had installed some RV hookups and was renting out space. We moved out there and the kids changed buses (and had an equally gorgeous bus stop as at the first RV Park) and all was good... except there were no showers. So, we joined a gym for a couple weeks so we could go into town and shower every day. Perfect. And we bought our "landlord" a wireless router so we could have some internet.
View from trailer park #2 bus stop.So, while the kids were in school every day (and sometimes after they got home), we searched for land and houses in Sequim. We probably looked at EVERY single piece of bare land in Sequim under 20 acres and at least half the houses for sale. Our realtor was probably starting to think we weren't worth the commission she'd be making, but in the end, we narrowed it down to a few and decided to make some offers.
So, this is my birthday. We drove by the animal safari park for fun. On my birthday, we made our first low low low lowball offer on a property/shack we'd been watching since August. We joked that if it went through, I could say that Jonah bought me a house and 1.5 acres for my birthday, but we never thought they'd accept the offer we made. Neither did our realtor. Well, they did. So, basically, Jonah bought me a house for my birthday.
But, we didn't find that out for a few more days, so we just had a fun time on my bday exploring some of the local treks. Here is the ocean.
And the river.
Here's one of my favorite presents, a celebrity gossip magazine. I always want to read these when I'm in line, but I never have time.
Here I'm teaching Elsie the fine points of deciphering celebrity news.
The weekend after my birthday, we went to Redmond to spend the weekend with my Aunt and Uncle and to pick up my mom from the Seattle airport since she was coming to visit. On Saturday, we went out on a limb and went to a Thriller zombie dance party! There were hundreds of people dressed up like zombies and all doing the Thriller dance. What a party! The girls couldn't bear to dress up like zombies, so they are the Tooth Fairy and Snow White, of course.
We were so lucky to have my mom come and visit for a few days. She was here when we found out our offer was accepted and she came and looked at the shack on the property and said, "Burn this 'mother' down!!!" Then she drew up so new house plans for us. It was also pretty fun all sleeping in the RV together. Family togetherness 2.0.
Another fun RV Park activity: setting off rockets. Make sure your rocket doesn't land on a motorhome. Luckily, ours didn't. 
She is going to grow into those some day I'm sure.
Right by our new house is this fantastic river. I can't wait to get an innertube and go up the mountain and float down it to my house next summer. It'll make up for all the Provo River Rafting I missed because I didn't go to BYU. 
On this trip we had a cairn building competition.
Elsie's also included leaf mulch.
Ana took it a little too seriously. I think there were a few tears when she lost. Okay, okay--many tears. And kicking. And pouting. But in this photo, she just looks so relaxed.HALLOWEEN:
If you happened to see our Halloween costumes in last month's only blog post, this event is what the kids wore them to... a church Scripture-Trick-or-Treat. It sounds weird, but it was SO awesome. The ward had all these different "booths" that were tied to scripture stories... like this one where you had to sligshot bouncy balls through Goliath's poster... and the kids got little scripture postcards to put in a little book if they completed the booth's contest. It was totally rockin. Probably the most awesome primary activity ever. Contact me if you want to do it at your church and I'll give you all the details. The kids LOVED it and said it was by far the BEST part of Halloween, and it didn't even have any candy at all.Unfortunately, the Adam and Eve costumes only lasted for one night, so on the next day, teh actual Halloween, I let the kids wear some other more non-embarrassing costumes. Sequim ROCKS for Halloween activities, so we got to pick and choose which activities we went to from 11 am-7 pm straight!
This was at a fabulous Halloween activity put on by High School kids at the High School and Ana looks so demure as Cinderella... and luckily, she trieed her best to act demure too so we had a fairly calm day.
Note: do NOT try to die your 2-year-old's hair black in the bathroom at Walmart with some dye you have just bought... first, it doesn't work; second, it will probably just turn her hair blue; third, it will stain her costume; fourth- it isn't worth it... she looks fine without it.The best thing about Elsie was that anytime she saw anyone dressed up as a Disney Princess, she would open her eyes huge and sigh and go and give the girl a big hug and then follow her around. She's a bit obsessed.
This helmet is actually the same size as Cam's real head.
Ana and Cam like to save most of the candy to sell to other kids after the other kids' candy runs out, so they divided up the candy according to type and then each picked 50 pieces and let Jonah and I have 25 pieces eacha nd then stored the rest. I really admire their restraint. In fact, Cam just barely finished his last pieces of candy last night, and that's only because he offered to share with the rest of us who ate all of our candy within the first week. They still have a load of candy to sell, but we haven't found a good venue to do it in yet since neither of the kids have soccer games or dance recitals or anything else like the places the usually sell their candy... maybe we'll just save it until next year and give it out as trick-or-treat candy... mwah ha ha ha.
5 comments:
I'm not sure how you do it all but I think you are amazing. You have beautiful kids and they always seem so happy :). The pictures and views of Sequim look beautiful!!!
Catching up on your blog is never boring, Aja! I love that you not only have the adventure, but you document it so vigilantly. Washington looks beautiful--may you have many happy experiences there . . . unless you get bored and head to Africa in a couple of weeks!
I cannot believe how much you guys pack into life! Your kids are so beautiful and so sweet. I am always impressed to read about all you do and how your kids just roll along. Obviously you have a very happy family!
I share your secret love of gossip magazines Aja! A friend gave me one for the hospital--it was the best.
I think Amy and I should get a price for getting all the way through that post! :) Awesome! You guys have been up to a lot the past few months. Would love to see you one of these days since technically I am only a few hours away. Hope you are settling in well. Congrats on the new home that you plan to burn down. Maybe you can invite me for the burn and I'll bring marshmallows. :)
Hope you guys are doing great!
The girls look great but the Transformer outfit is the best I have ever seen! Nice work Camden!
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