a quick beach trip

we got back last night from an overnight trip to charleston, sc. we had a great and eventful time. these little trips have changed quite a lot over the years. bringing a one and three year old to the ocean is definitely not relaxing, but it is such a joy to watch them experience new things.

memories from our little trip...

we visited fort moultrie and viewed fort sumter from afar. it was SO hot.

jobot and i got painful ant bites.

jeremy walked into playground equipment and got a minor but bloody gash on his forehead.

we saw a very interesting beach house.

jeremy and i caught a minnow (after a near-argument and an intense exercise in teamwork - ha!).

we flew our kite on the beach.

we spent sunday afternoon at a wonderful beach with tide pools - perfect for the kiddos!

jeremy, love, and jobot swam in the atlantic for the first time (i already had).

we walked and walked and walked downtown charleston trying to find a place to eat on sunday night. it was all too fancy and expensive. finally, we drove away from downtown and got some food.

we saw an amazingly beautiful sunset that we wouldn't have seen if we hadn't walked for so long looking for a place to eat. (as usual, pictures couldn't capture it).

the kids tried {free} cotton candy for the first time. love happily dove in and jobot was a little timid...until he tasted it.

we all successfully slept in one hotel room overnight. it went pretty well. (also, for some strange reason it looks like jeremy has a tattoo on his upper arm in the photo below. he doesn't.)

the kids watched t.v. in the hotel room. we don't have a t.v. and we learned that love didn't even know what a commercial was! funny!

we spent part of monday morning exploring a beach for sea life. love was thrilled when we found a dead jellyfish on the sand! she had high hopes of seeing a jellyfish on this trip! we found another one later in the day. she was a happy camper!

 we also found a crab. he wasn't too happy that we caught him. we all got a good look at him and then let him go.

jobot showed off his little bum at the beach.

the beach was beautiful.

we went through an entire tube of sunscreen and no one got sunburned.

the kids and their daddy had a blast in the public fountain in downtown charleston. i had a fun time watching them!

we spent a rainy part of the afternoon swinging on the pier.

we walked the public market, visited the animals in the big red barn, marveled at the horse carriages going by, and the kids got ice cream. we loved the cobblestone streets, colorful houses, and beauty of the city.

we hardly took any photos because we were both too busy chasing kids!

our trip home took an extra two hours due to bad traffic and then a torrential downpour/severe thunderstorm that was so bad we had to pull off the road for a bit. the kids cried and screamed...a lot. it was all quite stressful.

when we got home we put the kids in bed, dropped all our stuff in the house, took showers, and collapsed into bed.

this morning was an extra cup of coffee morning. we did laundry, unpacked, and even had time to wash all our shell treasures.

love drew this picture today. apparently the jellyfish left quite the impression.

new house tour {our bedroom & bathroom}

continuing with our house tour...

OUR BEDROOM & HALF BATHROOM

pros:
- lots of natural light (3 windows!)
- wall color is nice and works with our quilt
- it's a large room
- has 1/2 bath
- large closet
- ceiling fan
- we already had curtains that worked in this room. (they might not all be the same color...but we are working with a very limited budget here.)
- toilet used to sound like a fire siren when it flushed. then someone (who shall remain nameless, but it's the only person who attempts to fix toilets in this house...and that's not me) tried to fix it the other day and dropped our screwdriver down while it was flushing. as of wednesday, we have a brand new toilet!

cons:
- this room also houses the furniture that we couldn't fit in the rest of our house (basically, all the furniture that used to be in our dining room minus the table and chairs).

overall thoughts:
- this is my favorite room in our house. even though there is extra furniture and even though the toilet sounded like a fire siren, it is a really nice room that feels relaxing to me. i enjoy keeping this room clean and also toy free.

oh, and by the way, i LOVE having everything on one level in our house! while i wouldn't mind a basement for storage/extra space (no one here has basements), i am totally going to go for ranch style houses from now on. it is so much easier to keep clean this way! it's also easier with little ones to not have to take them up and down stairs all the time. so...that's a win (i kinda knew it would be)!

new house tour {living room and kitchen}

it's about time for some photos of our new house, so here is a little tour of the living room and kitchen.

LIVING ROOM

pros:
- fireplace with mantle (it even already has four hooks for our stockings)
- wall color (it was already here and i like it. we haven't painted and won't paint any of the walls...too much work)
- wood floors
- two new windows in the front of the room
- window on front door very similar to window on front door at our old house

cons:
- two really old and dirty windows
- the place where we have seen the most cockroaches
- no keys to the front door
- fireplace that jobot frequently walks into and bumps his head on

overall thoughts:
i really like this room. it is where we spend most of our time. arranging the furniture was a challenge, but i think we figured out a good set up. the two chairs by the front windows are perfect places for reading (except when it is dark...we need another light on that side of the room!), the couch is perfect for snuggling, and the floor is great for playing (though a rug would be nice).

KITCHEN

pros:
- nice space above stove to store spices and cookbooks
- window above sink with a view of our street
- nice little window sill above sink
- garbage disposal, ice maker, and dishwasher
- plenty of outlets
- cute curtains (recently sewed by me)
- lots of cupboard space

cons:
- awkward and crowded space by table/back door (difficult to navigate with two kids and a bag)
- garbage disposal switch at perfect spot for jobot access (covered by the neon pink tape below the sink. seriously...who thought that putting the switch there was a good idea?)
- no dining room (i really miss having a dining room)
- lack of natural light. room is usually quite dark and the red paint doesn't help.
- a big, blank red wall (we don't have anything to put on it!)
- cupboards/drawers are difficult to open and close
- love's bedroom is right off of this room (narrow door by table is hers)

overall thoughts:
this kitchen is okay. the arrangement of the cupboards/counters/appliances make it very practical to work in. to me it feels crowded and dark. not my favorite, but it could be much worse, and i am thankful to have a functional kitchen.


we are slowly making this house into our home. stay tuned for photos of the other rooms. for the post about how this house came to be ours, click here.

little critters

the world is truly our classroom and we certainly find our share of small critters! thanks to grandma mary back in michigan, we now have a book so we can identify some of these little friends we find. yesterday love and i found and correctly identified a dead stinkbug! we also used our little book to identify and learn about love's plastic bugs. we had fun making our "bug chart" - we drew a circle around each bug, figured out and labeled what kind of bug it was, and learned about and wrote down what it eats. we also noted if it was a stinging bug!

each kid currently has a dead bug in a little plastic container that they carry around. love had one first (the stinkbug), and jobot wanted one so he could be just like her. thankfully, our porch has a never ending supply of dead bugs, so it was easy to find one for him. they are the most loved dead bugs i have ever seen. they get carried around like little trophies and i often see the kids sitting down staring through the lid at their bug. last night we just about had to pry them out of their hands so they could eat dinner.

the beautiful luna moth (first photo) took up residence in our carport for two days last week. we loved looking out the window and checking to see if it was still there. we were all a bit sad when we woke up one morning and it was gone.

never a dull day around here.

eight weeks in

two months ago we were deep in the throes of packing up our house in michigan. this saturday will mark eight weeks that we have been living here.

this move has not been easy for me. i was very ready and excited to move, and we were both in agreement that this was the next step for our future...but it has still been hard. at first, i felt completely lost and disoriented. then after we were here for a week, jeremy started his program, and i felt so lonely and so bored all day. i didn't know one person in this entire city...there were no other moms to spend time with, no friends to spend part of the day with, and no community here to help us get through this transition.

i would drop jeremy off at the hospital for the day and watch as all the professionals walked into work chatting with their co-workers. i envied them because they belonged to something and they had a purpose, and i felt like i wasn't part of anything. i felt discontent, moody, irritable, frustrated, exhausted, and not like myself. in all of this, i have certainly thrown more than my share of tantrums and pity parties.

i found myself desperately searching the internet for moms groups and any way that i could possibly find some friends. the kids and i found ourselves at the zoo, children's museum, and library story time. i soaked up any little conversation i had with another mom...anything that made me feel like i connected with another person and like i belonged here. it was pretty sad.

well...eight weeks in and we have made several positive steps towards being a part of this community. the kids and i have had several get togethers with new friends and we have started going to a weekly mom's group. i have several new friends numbers programmed into my phone, we have attended the same church three weeks in a row, and we actually ran into someone we knew from church when we were out and about last week.

it has taken a lot to get here. it's pretty out of my comfort zone to show up to a stranger's house and spend a morning with several other moms i have never met. driving through a completely unfamiliar city to have a playdate with a new friend is not easy. finding a random mom's group online and going to one of their meetings only to feel very uncomfortable and not very welcomed is disappointing and frustrating.

thankfully, my experiences have been more positive than negative. i have been surprised at how easy it has been for me to jump into new friendships and situations. i have also been surprised at how open our new friends have been to welcoming us into their lives and city.

i still don't feel at home here and it is still hard. i think of simple things from our old life and feel twinges of homesickness...the natural light coming in the windows of our old house, our little neighborhood health food store that i loved, driving down our street and pulling into our driveway, driving out to the farm to pick up our milk, mornings with the kids at the botanical gardens, evening walks by the lake, and knowing my way around. even more so, faces of dear friends we left behind.

since we moved, there have been many hard days...times of feeling overwhelmed at the newness and unfamiliarity of this place, tears shed at what was left behind and given up for this. good mornings spent with new friends but then finding myself missing friends who already know me and who are so comfortable to be with. days of feeling like we were on our way to thriving in this place, and then days that felt completely opposite. and the reality is that it is much easier and more fun to be a full time mom when you are surrounded by friends.

the good news is that it seems that the good days (or moments!) now outnumber the bad. i think i am on my way to finding a place here. it is going to take more work, more experiences outside my comfort zone, more energy and time. i know that there will be more tears and more hard days...i am human and this is hard.

but...we are getting there. we are slowly finding our people and our places. we are making memories here.

one day at a time.

in the south

as of yesterday, we are official residents of the state of south carolina. it took two trips to the DMV, crying kids, and lots of snacks, but it finally happened.

i have yet to say the word y'all, but we did try the southern delicacy of boiled peanuts at the farmer's market on saturday. we thought they were interesting...probably not something we would eat again, but they were a good thing to experience anyway.

when jeremy's dad was here we also went to a local restaurant and tried okra, sweet potato pie, pickled beets, and some other southern foods.

in the midst of transition and feeling disoriented, it is fun to experience a new place. we have also experienced and appreciated lots of southern hospitality...that makes it a bit easier as well.

june 21.

from our anniversary.

root beer floats with silly straws, just like at our wedding,

and fun with a new sprinkler in the backyard.