Luke's Room

Luke's room needed the most work for a few reasons. It had been Madison's room, so I had to paint over the purple to create a blue room. All of Madison's things had to be cleared out for Luke, and the biggest problem was the closet. It was never setup correctly by the builder, so this seemed like the perfect time to fix it. 

The before as I emptied the closet...the main problem was the set of closet rods. The bottom one is so low that even kids' clothing hangs on the floor, which doesn't allow for you to put any shoes on the floor. The closet loses space too because the a/c outtake is on the backside of this wall , cutting into the closet space. Something had to be done!

In progress-I ripped out all the shelving, and as expected, the drywall screws left some big holes, so I spent a few days mudding/filling in the screws.

A couple days later, I was able to paint the  closet.

By the next weekend, Edward was home and was able to help. He put up the closet system that has made a HUGE difference! I am so glad I ordered it.

So much better! Thanks to this, there is plenty of room everywhere, and the shoes can finally be seen on the floor. No hanging door shoe rack is needed anymore .

The finished room after I cleaned out, painted, and decorated.

Luke is so excited to have his karate kick bag in his room now.

Alex's Room

Luke and Alex have been sharing a room for years. He is happy to have his own room now. The room switch has been a lot of work, but it has been so worth it!

The Great Room Switch

We have been waiting to here our moving status for months, specifically since last July when our plans to stay were thrown for an unexpected, but interesting loop. When budget issues didn't work out, we found out we get to stay at Bragg, which is great. Many projects and purchases have been on hold waiting to here. Edward found his boat, we have been planing to get new carpet and soon will, and the kids have been begging to move around their rooms. We have had the boys sharing a room, with Madison next door, bit we recently moved her to the guest bedroom and split up the boys. That has been a project of mine for the last month, and we are finally about done with it. Here is some of the progress, starting with the bathroom.

All three kids used to share this bathroom, right by their bedroom, but now it is just for the boys.

Madison now has her own bathroom, which used to be mainly for guests (we still welcome any guests, and she promises to share).

A Boat

Edward has been wanting a boat for years, and now that we are staying here for awhile longer (and hopefully he won't be gone these next three to four years), he has been looking for one. Edward had a very specific boat in mind, a Yamaha Jet Boat, and has been looking for it for awhile. He found it a couple of weeks ago, and Friday, he picked it up on his way home for the weekend.

Day we looked at the boat

Stopping by the house on the way to storage 

We are looking forward to testing it out in the local waters!

Saturday School

After missing eight days of school did to two ice storms, the kids had Saturday School during March. It made for LONG weeks, but the days have been made up. They couldn't tack on time to the end of the day as some places do because they already go an hour longer than required, which made up for two of their days.  Daddy made it home a couple weekends to see them off to the bus stop.

Alex

Alex and I spend a lot of time together.  It is hard to believe he will be going to kindergarten soon. Alex has quite a personality, and he keeps me laughing all the time. Here are just a couple of his recent pictures.

Alex absolutely loves the "Letter of the Week" at preschool. Each week, they cover a new letter and with that, they create a list of words that start with that letter. His teacher tells me that he is definitely the most obsessed with words...we think of letter words all week. They also have "Show and Tell" based on their letter. Above, he took in a shark for "S" and came up with a ton of "S" words. His teacher asked me if we had family in San Diego because that was the very first word he came up with that week...no, our family just grew to love that city when we lived out West. Recently, we did "U" week, and let's just say that I'm glad we didn't go with Alex's "Show and Tell" idea of "pictures of my uncles in underwear..." Yeah, I put an end to that idea quickly.

When at home, Alex and Jonah spend all their time together. That cat is MIA all morning, but he knows the sound of the garage door, and as soon as Alex walks in, that cat starts following him around the rest of the day.

Washington DC

Back in February, Edward had the opportunity to go to Washington DC for a few days to participate in some meetings.  It was a really cool opportunity, and I went along with him.  He was even excused from his ILE classes in Virginia to go, so I'm very, very grateful my parents could watch the kids so we could both go.

Day 1-All ready to go.  His uniform looks so great.

He spent one day here, adjacent to the White House (it's on the property, and it is very, very secure).

I had the days free, so I played tourist.  Edward was just to the left of the White House in the above building for his meetings.

Close up shot

They had a bad winter storm a couple days prior, and everything had snow piles/ice.

When we visited my brother this past summer, the scaffolding covered the whole building, so this is progress!

Iced over

The FDR Memorial is one of my favorites to see.  I have always liked all of his quotes, written throughout the memorial.

The MLK Memorial was a new one for me.

This is another of my favorites, the Korean War Memorial.

Still sightseeing alone  :)

No water in the National Mall

Madison LOVES studying Lincoln, so when we walked by this, down from our hotel, I knew she would want to see a picture. Someday, we'll take her inside on the tour.

Day 2-Edward had to wear a suit instead.  Here, he's sporting his brand new suit because when you are in the Army, do you really need a lot of suits when your Dress Blues work for most everything?  

Great trip to DC!  It was stressful with everything Edward was doing, but overall, it worked out really well.

BBQ

Alex loves BBQ, especially BBQ restaurants with pigs.

More Snow!

Yes, winter came to North Carolina this year. We recently enjoyed our second snow storm. It brought eight plus inches of snow and an inch of ice. That shut things down in town for four days, to a region that rarely sees snow.  Even Fort Bragg was completely shut down for two days.

Here is our rate sight...a palm tree in the snow. I tried to document the snow as they day went in because we never knew how much we would really get. This was is the morning, around 9 AM.

By lunch...

Palm tree just after lunch

Madison took to a fort city.

Small snowman

The city continued to grow as the snow did. 

By mid afternoon

Dinnertime

The snow was not done yet, and you can see the accumulation on the table.

The worst part about this storm was Edward was trying to drive home from Virginia in it for the weekend. The first day of the storm was snow, but we got all the ice the second day, which was Wesnesday. Edward's classes were cancelled due to the storm, so he was trying to drive home in the ice. It took him five hours when it normally takes three. Thanksl goodness for All Wheel Drive! I went out that night and shoveled some tire tread marks for him. The roads and driveway were a sheet of glass with all that snow and the ice on top.  The snow and ice were extremely heavy. As he drove in, it was eerily quiet due to no one on the roads. I could hear him plowing his way down the subdivision. The noise was so loud die to all the ice. We are bye glad he made it home for a few days.

The gnome was rescued!

Great sight on Thursday morning! There are only 17 plows in our whole large county, and we loves seeing this come through the subdivision. They honked and waved to us too.

Crunching in the ice

Chunks of snow and ice

I was very glad to have help shoveling the driveway during this snowstorm :)