Wisconsin

We are out of Florida and very happy! John graduated from C school last Thursday morning. On Wednesday we went to have our breaks serviced at the Subaru Dealership and they told us that our head gaskets were leaking and when we told them that were going to drive to California they were concerned that we might be stranded in the middle of the desert. After telling us that it would $3,000+ for the repair we left the dealership pretty disheartened. John called his Dad to get his opinion and his Dad offered his help fixing it if we drove up to Wisconsin. And so even though we had entirely planned our trip already we decided to say to heck with all of it and drive to Wisconsin. We decided to drive to John's parents' house around 4:00pm on Saturday and managed to clean and throw everything left that we own in the Subaru and leave by 7:30pm. We made it to Nashville that night and to Hubertus by 10:00pm on Friday night. It was crazy but I think it was a really great experience for us as a family.

On our way through Illinois we needed to stop to get food and nurse Nora and for some reason thought it would be a good idea to stop in Chicago. Since the movers came earlier that week, we thought we were still just driving straight to San Diego, so I only packed flip flops and a light sweater and Nora didn't have clothes that were any warmer. (We were both freezing and my joints had been aching for hours and hours). So when we got to Chicago it was snowing and we couldn't find any parking. After finding a street with restaurants we circled around a few times until we finally found a spot and I ran inside the restaurant with Nora in a blanket while John paid the box for parking. He was taking a while so I ran back out to find John speaking to a police officer. Apparently we had parked next to a fire hydrant even though the sign next to our car said that it was a parking spot. He was about to write us a $150 citation before I gave him our sob story about how we were trying to get food on our way to Wisconsin and couldn't find any parking and had never been to Chicago before. Lucky for us he was a VERY nice guy and told us to just find some other place to park. We tried getting back on the highway and got lost more than a few times before finally getting back on track. Traffic was ridiculous! And Chicago drivers were terrifying. No signals, no spacial awareness, and no manners. We almost died a few times. When we finally got out of Chicago we needed to get to Milwaukee and accidentally drove onto a Tollway. We had no cash and the teller gave us some serious sass when we told her this. Luckily you can pay it online. We took the first exit, found some cute little villages in Illinois and stopped at the first mcdonalds we could find. This whole frustrating last leg of our journey was made much better by a mcdonalds strawberry cream pie.

Lately I have been making an effort to change how I treat Nora and John when I am under stress. I notice I have a little more bite when I am stressed out and I think that  it is pretty typical for married couples to bicker when both of them are stressed. But this experience was a good way to practice being there for John instead of blaming him when neither of us really had any control over a bad situation. In the drive-thru of the McDonalds after feeling really stressed and cold and hungry and tired, we talked about how nice it was going to be getting to sleep in a warm bed and eat some of his mom's delicious food and then we hugged and kissed and everything was all better.

Being in Wisconsin is just what our family needed. Nora has so many cousins to play with and I have never seen her so happy. John has been enjoying working on the car with his Dad - something he finds challenging and exciting. By the way our entire engine is now sitting next to our Subaru :o And I'm loving getting time to do things like - eat breakfast uninterrupted and take a shower without worrying if Nora is screaming her head off.  Also there have been no disgusting bugs the size of my hand, no screaming neighbors, no swampy smelly air, no rain, and no Florida! I do feel bad for disappointing my family and friends who thought we would be driving through Texas and Arizona this week, but I still think we made the right decision. I never thought in my life I would ever say I'm in love with rural Wisconsin but... I'm in love with rural Wisconsin.

New Pictures

Nora had a photo shoot this week with our friend Jessica from Church. It's hard to get a smile out of her but we got a more than a few great shots of her. Here's a link to the album: 

Nora's Album

And here's a preview: 

But this one is my favorite...

because of how much it reminds me of this picture...

Moving

Nora is becoming a pro at crawling. For some reason she only uses her left leg to crawl and her right leg is dragged along like she has a crawling limp that she got in the war. But she is also cruising now which is exciting too. I still have to be near her in case she falls back but she has the general idea.

It's strange to think that a few months ago she couldn't even roll over on her own. And it's really neat when we work on something and I finally watch her master it - clapping, crawling, walking, our names, etc. Well, so she hasn't actually mastered walking yet or our names but she's awesome at cruising and saying mama and nana. We're working on Dada. Anyway she's doing great and I'm very grateful to Heavenly Father for a healthy and sweet baby.

Our Modest Super Great Valentine's Day

This is our third Valentine's Day together and our second one married - and I really wanted to make it special. I'm not much of a gift giver, I'm pretty terrible actually. But I decided to start early this year and do my research. John had been talking a lot about planes and has been youtubing rc flights so I knew what I had to do. After a month of reading reviews and shopping around I found this bad boy:

Soo.... He doesn't look super cool, but I knew that this was a great starter plane, ready to fly, and not easily broken. Unfortunately John showed up for lunch just a few minutes after it arrived at our doorstep (a whole week before Valentine's Day) so he saw the box and I told him if he wanted to he could open it. So he did and he was so excited! We flew it that night after work. He offered me a turn at flying it which I warned him against but finally I gave in and flew the plane into the ground breaking a wing in the process. John was able to glue the wing back on and we flew it again the next day. That was when he broke the wing.

We glued it again and plan to fly it some more this weekend. Am I the best or what?

 I decided to make some naughty sugary breakfast for our Valentine's Day dinner and call it good. We covered our desk with a bedsheet and set Nora in front of Yo Gabba Gabba and had a pretty nice evening.

Yes those roses are made of bacon. I accidentally started a grease fire making them in the oven but it was totally worth it. And those are banana chocolate chip pancakes and maple peanut butter syrup. Thank you OurBestBites/Pinterest. I put on my favorite dress and John put on his suit pants and my favorite blue shirt of his and it was really fun. John got me flowers. I LOVE flowers. I wish I could wake up to flowers everyday and I am always sure to walk by them in grocery store even though I never buy them. Have I mentioned it was a great day? Okay I need to stop bragging. But really I love Valentine's Day. And it's not because I've always had a date. In fact John was my first real Valentine. I still have the card he gave me. On the front were two Iguanas and the caption read: "Iguana love you forever." But before John, I enjoyed valentine's day because of the candy, the expressions of love between my Mom and Dad, the stuffed animals that would always be waiting on my bed in the morning courtesy of two really thoughtful parents, and just the overall romance and thoughtfulness of the day.

Nora had a fun day too. She finally figured out how to crawl. I guess I shouldn't say finally because she is right on schedule at seven months. She is enjoying her new freedom by pulling power cords, window blinds, and getting stuck in corners behind furniture. Really though, I am trying my best to watch her. I was talking to John about how she is always crawling to our laptop to bang on the keyboard. And he said:

"She can't help it, she has it in her blood."
I hope your Valentine's Day was great too!

Dandelions

So as usual not much has happened this last week. You're probably asking yourself, "Why does she bother writing when she has nothing to say?" but aha I've got you now! Because I've been thinking about that a lot in the last few days - about how even though there doesn't appear to be a lot going on right now, there's so much I feel like writing about.

So, to start off I'll talk about John who is an amazing Dad to Nora. After driving home from church we all got out and I was ready to dash into the kitchen and cook and eat anything and everything in our fridge. But John who was holding Nora, stopped in front of our building and set Nora down in the grass. He knelt down with her and started blowing dandelions and picking flowers and holding them up to her and describing them. She stared at them for a while, gave John a funny look and then tried to eat a few of them. But the whole time this is happening I'm thinking... who does that? I had never even noticed the flowers on the minuscule patch of grass next to our apartment building. Sometimes I let Nora pull the leaves down from the trees on our walks but I never sit and talk to her about them ask her what she thinks, etc. John has this amazing gentle way of talking to Nora and teaching her and he's never in a rush the way I am. By the time John stood up to get into the apartment there was a puddle in the place where my heart should be.

Unfortunately Nora's attitude about their flower lesson was the dictionary definition of ennui. I felt bad for John about how little she cared about their time together until I heard him say this on our way up the stairs:

"I'm so proud of you Nora.  Just like Dada taught you. Flowers are dumb."



So I guess even though I'm not snowboarding in Patagonia or even graduating this Spring like I thought I would be, my life is so happy and made up of small, wonderful (though not super exciting) experiences.

Happy Valentine's Day... almost. Have I mentioned that Valentine's day is my 3rd favorite holiday right after Christmas and Easter? I guess I'll talk about how ours went next week.

Rachel

Our Happy Eater

Hello!

This week we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day (one of the few days John has off) and racial and cultural diversity by going out for curry and spending all our money on technology made in China. Our babysitter (who we love) came over so we could have a date night and I'm confident that Nora had way more fun with her than she usually has with me. We ended up at Best Buy which may be John's favorite store. He's always really excited to play with tablets, check out monitors and screen resolution, etc. etc. At one point while we were walking passed the televisions I noticed he was looking me up and down - like oggling me. And I was super flattered until I realized he was oggling the tv screens behind me.

Anyway, in our happy date night euphoria we accidentally spent more than we had expected on a shiny new wacom bamboo tablet and a wireless keyboard. But really, it was worth it. We came home that night, put Nora to bed and started playing with our new toys.

Nora is getting super big and is so ready to crawl but just hasn't figured it out yet. On the bright side, after almost a month she is finally eating solid food without screaming at me. Her gateway drug was peas I think. At first that was the only food she would eat so after mixing it with everything else in our pantry, she's finally a happy eater.

And by the way she's biting this stuffed cow, I have the feeling she'll be ready for meat in no time.

Sorry that there's not much else to report. John did finally get a copy of his orders so he is reporting for duty on April 4. Wish us luck!

Orders

Last Monday started the week off with crying. Lots of crying. I have no right to complain, especially when today I was sitting in the "mother's room" at church listening to stories of nightmare nights where babies were waking up ever 45 minutes to eat - and not from a bottle. Nora started sleeping through the night pretty early (2 1/2 months) but then went to one feeding at night around 4 months but is back to her normal routine. 8:00pm bedtime, 5:00am breakfast then back to bed and wake up 7:00am. I have it easy. That is why I was really frustrated when she kept waking every few hours Monday night. I ended up just leaving her in our bed (which I hate more than anything else in the entire world. Co-sleeping is a bad word in our apartment.) Anyway it turns out the poor thing is sick. She's been getting better and fortunately, has learned how to breathe out of her mouth. A few days ago I had her in the moby wrap while I was doing dishes. I noticed that my arms were getting really wet. I just thought I was being careless with the faucet. When I finished and went to dry my hands with the towel I realized my arms weren't soaked in dish water but in baby drool and nose drippings. I looked at Nora and she was smiling at me, her entire face covered baby drool and dripping down onto me. It's ridiculous what she could get away with by smiling at me.

John also got orders - sort of.
His class got called up one by one to pick orders from a list. We were hoping for shore duty but there were only two on the list and both were overseas which we can't have because it's our first duty station out of c school. But there was sea duty on a ship docked in San Diego. So at the end of March we're moving! When we first joined the Navy I could only think about what it would be like to have our family separated. But the bright side is while your husband is away on a ship you get to hang out in beautiful places surrounded by water. And actually it's likely John's ship will be dry docked for a while once he gets to it. (A year?) So we have a lot to look forward to.