Still Nomadic But Hopefully Not For Long!

A lot has been going on the last couple weeks, but we are still nomadic and my camera has been taking a shnooze in my suitcase since we have arrived in Anacortes, WA. It randomly snowed for five days straight upon our arrival, which is very unusual for the area. It did not help us with house hunting, but we pushed through it and used Google Earth to get aerial views of homes to help supplement our walkthroughs ("Aaah, so there is a lawn back there. Ooh, and a garden, too!"). We did buy a house and are currently pending inspection, appraisal, all that jazz. I will share more details on that in posts to come, but I'm excited because it's the perfect little neighborhood for our growing family.

We are currently staying with our good friends Emily and Sergio, which - coincidentally - live in the home two doors down from the home we just purchased. Hilarity shall ensue, I'm sure. They have a little girl a few months younger than Landon and they have been co-habitating nicely for the most part while we stay here. He's a tad brutish at times towards sweet Vivian, but I consider it an interesting social experiment on the male verus female relationship. It turns out that even as young toddlers, men are from mars and women are from venus.

Stay tuned for housing updates! We hope to close within the next month!

Christmas Times Four

The joy of being home for the holidays is multiplied many times over as we have multiple celebrations to attend when visiting. Our cross to bear is that our families live within an hour of each other which means we don't really have an excuse to NOT bounce back and forth. This can be quite overwhelming and exhausting, but I always try reframe it as a blessing... is it really a problem to have so much family that loves you and wants to see you? I take a few breaths and remember this between the eye-twitching moments.

Christmas number one was spent at Grandma Marian's:

Uncle Bobo seems unimpressed with the speed in which Landon opens presents. 

But Uncle Bobo does score with one of the best gifts, an empty Cheez-It box.

Landon mistakes Pequena dog for one of his plush toys.

Hooray for all the craziness!

The next morning was spent at Grandpa Jim's house (where the heat runs a little higher so it was a shirtless Christmas morning for the little guy):

Another empty box? Wonderful!

The next day it was back down to Maryland to Papa Dude's to hang out with the extended Halvorson clan:

Yay, we're all looking at the camera in this one!

Papa Dude photobombs our pic with Great Grandma Halvorson.

Would you believe we hit the road again a couple days later to head back up to Pennsylvania for another celebration? This time at Aunt Jill and Uncle Bob's; despite her best efforts, Landon proved most baby-proofing efforts futile as he found other things such as pulling register covers out of her floors and stuffing blankets down the HVAC chutes. Gosh, I love that little guy. *Sigh*

Landon finds a stash of party paper goods in a corner cabinet. Exaltation ensues.

There's a lot of cool stuff here!!!!

Aaaand then we were back to normal hanging-around-the-house moments, like catching a nap in Daddy's arms.

Snore.

This is officially our last week here on the East coast; Landon and I will be flying on Friday evening to Washington to converge with Erik to head to our new home town. I cannot wait for the day when we are in our new home, boxes are unpacked and life is normal. Even if it's boring - I'll take boring.

Hope your Christmas was wonderful whether you sat on your buns in your own home or party hardied at four or more holiday functions.

Snow Day

It snowed last week while we were at grandpa's house so we took our little Texas nugget outside to experience the cold white flurries. Yeah, he didn't even notice them. This kid has no concept of hot and cold weather... just that he's annoyed by the constraints of additional clothing and accessories.

Cue music: "You're going to make it after aaalllll."

That rusty gazebo looks perfect for some tetanus - let's head that way, Mom!

Nature show voice: "And here we can follow the tracks of a homosapien of the 14 month old toddler variety. He stealthily approaches hazards such as creeks and horse shoe pits, yet survives. Fascinating."

Surprise! It's a... Surprise!

There is no big news to report on baby número dos - I am going into my 16th week and am happy to be rid of the nausea, which wasn't that horrific anyways. [As a side note, my beloved Moby carrier wrap is quickly becoming max capacity with this rapidly growing baby bump in combination with a rapidly growing toddler... I have to find a way to stretch that magical sleeping machine thing out!] 

Anyhoodles, we are a bit in limbo since I had my last appt at 12 weeks before I left TX and am waiting until I get up to WA to see my new doctor which will be around 18 weeks. The one thing I wanted to do differently this time was select a doctor who was engaged in my care and had enough heart to ask how my son is doing and who would remember to call me Kate instead of Katherine. I am excited because I had a bunch of glowing personal reviews to work off of this time around. 

The other thing we are doing differently is that we decided to not find out the gender of the baby this time around. Say what? Yep. There are not many things in life that can surprise us, so why not embrace it and have some fun. This was not an easy decision for my type A planning personality, but once we said "Yeah, let's do this!" I started to get really excited... In a good way. I figured there isn't much planning to do anyways. If it's a boy, we'll officially pull out all of Landon's old clothes and if it's a girl, well, I'll probably still pull out a good amount of Landon's old clothes. Nursery planning? Pssh, you know I was just going to paint it green anyways.

What's my guess? Well the pregnancy has progressed very similarly to Landon's thus far, so I'm tempted to say there is another human with a wiener on the way, but we've got a ways to go before final guesses are tallied.

Happy New Years and All That Jazz

Things have been a little nutso as we have been - and continue to be nomadic - in between our move from TX to WA over the holidays. Erik was here with us in MD for Christmas and New Years (in which we spent our fourth anniversary eating unsexy amounts of Indian food) and that was a blur of family, friends, toys, meltdowns, giggles and any other craziness you could think of. Erik is now back in TX with the movers and to scrub-a-dub-dub the ol' homestead to prepare for the next round of flight students who will soon be musing "Wow, is that peanut butter shmeared on the baseboard? Have you been finding Cheerios everywhere, too?" Sorry, dudes. 

I am way behind on posts such as Erik's soft winging and official winging, our Christmas photos, updates on the baby planning (hello, glorious second trimester!) and house hunting, etc. I'll belatedly post about all that once I find a computer to upload some photos. In the meantime, I have a couple grainy gems from my iPhone. 

Taking a carriage ride through Frederick with daddy and friends. 

L quickly learned how to open and empty the adult beverage fridge at Grandma's, but at least he is very orderly about where he sets the contents and he knows what kind of beer I like.