Hair cut

The day has finally arrived. Today, we cut off brams shaggy mop.  I had a deal with john,that if I agreed to cut it for school, we could let brams hair grow for the summer. Welp, summer officially ended last week, so, it was my turn to follow through. Not gonna lie, if it were up to me, we'd begin the growing out process tomorrow, but a deals a deal. And really, it's just hair. And he's a boy. 

Ode to the shaggy mop....

Here he is the after 

Summer break

I hadn't planned on taking the summer off from blogging, but whatya know.





Let's see if I can get us all caught up :)

Our 4th of July was spent at a BBQ with some new friends. The boys were stoked to play with sparklers and see some of our friends put on a fire works display of their own (turns out they sell some nifty fireworks to your average joe shmoe to shoot off the end of their drive way!). Bram was in a perpetual state of shock.

I could fill an entire page with beach pics, but I'll spare ya and include just a few. We are still digging the beach, and try and make it about once a week. 

I'm mean...we live here! We LIVE here!

We also did a little blueberry picking with some friends, and it was a tons of fun as well (sweat for days, but fun none the less).

Remember when

Bram went from this..

to this.....



When the boys hand hand foot and mouth *shutter*

 

When we were in a facial injury phase.




When both boys were toe heads.

Ambrose was a tank 

 






* guess how old he is here....anyone guess 5 months? The pic has got some sort of optical illusion going on, because he was big, but good grief, not THAT big!



This boy gave the best gummy smiles

The blue bath bucket

When this was a place we just visited

This face....

Father's Day

I didn't fully love and appreciate these two....

Until I had these two...

Finally....

I'll spare you more unnecessary complaining, but my computer has recently been the Pandora's box of problems and curse words. As I type I am alternating between typing and picture transferring so that we can take this thing and drop it off the nearest ocean dock. Then promptly, buy a PC. God bless the right click.

Anywho, not a whole lot is going around here. We are finally making our way out of the moving haze, and settling into our new normal.

Moving reminded me of a few things...
1) I have too much stuff. I'm pretty sure that if the Air Force didn't force us to move every few years, I'd sooner or later be feature on Hoarders: buried alive. Moving forces me to purge and organize, when otherwise, I'd rearrange the clutter rather than get rid of it. My kitchen here is significantly smaller than my NM kitchen, and I quickly realized that although I did some purging while in NM, I needed to do more...much more. I was loosing the battle of kitchen tetris. Familiar with that game? You open a cabinet, place a  few items in, grab another carefully selected items of specific size and shape, rotate and flip them, and BAM, it's a coffee mug puzzle. However, there comes a time when you can't select, flip and rotate your way to and organized kitchen, and at the point, I started 2 giant goodwill boxes. This was taken immediately after I ran out of cupboard space...

2) I suck at painting. I haven't had much experience painting walls, so I never knew how awful I was. Turns out, pretty awful.
3) It's dang expensive. Between first months rent, deposit, buying a new car, hotel, gas, eating out, utility connection fees, restocking a pantry...the list goes on and on...moving is the largest money suck EVER!
4) Procedures change: the movers used to pick up your used boxes and paper, now, not so much. So it was our responsibility to dispose of the 200+ boxes and bags of packing paper.

5) The movers quickly scribble a description of the items that are supposedly in each box, however, the explanation is completely useless. Case in point,  in a box labeled lamp shades, I found one small night light lamp shade and then a ton of kitchen tools/dishes and glass wear.

In other, not moving news....

 Our landlord left this awesome play structure, and we are using the heck out of it!

We have finally started to potty train Bram. He didn't show a single readiness sign, but we can't wait forever, so we reluctantly started the process. We use the Three day potty training method. Basically, you go all out, stay home for three days straight, don't go back to pullups or diapers (confession: we use a diaper at night) and give them gentle reminder to let you know when they have to go potty.  It is the anti "set your timer for every 10 minutes and force them onto the potty" strategy. I guess the thinking behind that is you get yourself entrenched in a battle of wills with a toddler that way. We knew Mr. will of steel would loudly and strongly protest if we tried to force him, so, we put the ball in his court and waited for him to tell us. It's been fairly successful, but not completely... We still don't use pullups out and about, we just deal with accidents if they happen, and we are back in the stage of life where we carry a baby bjorn potty with us everywhere we go. 

The boys and I love the beach. We try and head out there at least once a week, and just soak it all in. 

 John on the other hand... not a beach fan. The sand, sweaty-ness, crowded touristy-ness of it all, just drives him nuts. He enjoys the ocean from the nearest dock or pier with a fishing pole in hand (not to say he doesn't go with us sometimes, but, he does so for the boys). Fine by me, because we are finally at a point where he also takes the boys along with him :) Hallelujah.

Here's what's going on...

We are moving into our house today.... during a tornado warning and Flash flood warning. How about them apples? I have no idea how they plan to keep our stuff even remotely dry or keep the floors and carpets in our house semi dry and clean, but I guess we'll find out.Spoiler alert: the move didn't happen. Not a single solitary box, piece of furniture or random last minute item, came off the truck today. bummer bummer HARDCORE BUMMER! They will try again, but the forecast suggests that tomorrow may be much of the same story.

Today the schools shut down. I still am unsure why. Maybe because the torrential downpour, maybe it was the fact that some streets were impassible due to flooding, or maybe it was the tornado warnings (tornado, yup, I get it...but how about that late start. The tornado warnings all passed before 9am)....all three maybe? I don't know. Odd though. It reminds me of that snow day when the high was 52 degrees.

Have you ever lived in a town that is the home to a tofu hot dog factory and a paper mil? No? Be grateful! Turns out Panama City is hands down, the stinkiest town in the history of towns. I can't tell you how many times I look to the back of the car and accusingly ask the boys if someone farted. It's like living in a giant fart Dutch oven around here. Please folks, come visit!

Since we haven't had enough (expensive) change in our life already, we decided to buy a new( to us) car yesterday. I was driving a CRV, and we had begun to outgrow it. It had been our plan to upgrade at some point, but doing it during this insanely expensive time in our life was not our plan, however, a few maintenance issues began to pop up which led us down the fast track to replacing it. We went in to have the issues fixed, while at the dealership we came across a used Pilot. The stars aligned..it was in our budget, our CRV trade in value was decent so we went for it. The third row will allow us to actually travel WITH our guests when the come to visit rather than force us to take two cars as well as allow John to drive without eating his knees. Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.