We are celebrating a year well-lived.
It wouldn't have been such an exciting year without our BIG move. We left our awesome house and wonderful friends in Virginia to move to Seattle (Southern Alaska). It has been an amazing year full of new adventures and new friends to share it with. This book contains our happy times spent together as a family.
We are living the life!
dear jones family,
the kids and i wish we could have packed you in our luggage and brought you to Seattle with us.
miss all of you.
City life.
Sorry suburbs, I never want to come back.
Just plan to stay here and play for a while longer.
this duo is what keeps me entertained during church Sunday school.
bottom line, they are the best distraction ever.
…yes, yes, yes!
We’re going to have a new address!
Sweet Dallin was in a comatose state of mind fighting both strep and mono. Talk about bad luck! Poor guy was carried from bed to bed, until there was nothing left to lay on or to cover him up with. Hopefully he doesn’t remember too much about those 2 days, because they were pretty miserable. Thankfully he is on the mend now.
Everything else ran without a hitch.
We’re all moved out and temporarily living in a high-rise in Metropolitan Reston Town Center.
Another great adventure!
he’s on break right now.
you can find him somewhere between the board games isle and the matchbox cars isle at target.
it’s the Lego isle and that is where he is dreaming his life away.
his dream job: designing for Lego
his career highlights include:
his vision for the next Lego line….Robot Ville.
…and the stories they tell.
it is now a tradition, because this is our second year doing it.
take a look at last year's post.
we call it peep stories night! it usually falls on a family night after easter. it could be before easter, but I prefer buying puffed up partially hydrogenated oils coated in colored sugar at a discounted price. thank you.
the idea is to pick a story from the bible or book of mormon and make a scene with peeps, frosting, pretzels, matches, cardboard, legos…. during the time it takes to make our master pieces we each tell the story we chose and what we can learn from it.
alexander was seriously disappointed that not one peep was burned at the stake this year. I was too. with dad out of town I can only juggle so much and fire is not one of them. better luck next year.
i wouldn’t be lying if i said we have the most passionate airplane-loving 4-year-old on the east side of Dulles airport. i have posted about this in the past.
it’s tradition to ride home with dad from church, park the car as close to the runway as possible and watch the international flights come in. the 747, 787, 767. he lives, breaths, and sweats airplane power.
he does some of his best research at the library.
he clears the shelves of ALL (fiction and non-fiction) the airplane books (there are 11 in our library) every week from the public library only to return them and wait for them to be placed back on the shelf and then checks them out again. it drives his older brothers CRAZY. “alexander, you read those books last week and you have already watched the documentary on the Big Air Show enough to narrate it yourself!”
an ajax recommended show:
zachary surprised alexander the other day by checking out a new airplane book from the school library. it’s a new favorite and not available at the public library which makes it completely golden to alexander and a huge bargaining opportunity for zachary.. “alexander, if you bring the trash cans down instead of me I will check out the air show book again.” he’s mastered the art of manipulation. smart kid.
the new tool::
his passion is so contagious his teacher had a pilot visit the preschool to visit alexander. she’s awesome like that.
the air and space museum is literally in our backyard, (okay a 5 minute drive, 8 if you get stopped at the light and 20 if you’re my dad). it has been alexanders playground on rainy days. he dreams of flying in the concorde, the super sonic jet. I know it doesn’t fly anymore, but he refuses to believe that.
it was april 17th when the 747 flew the space shuttle into dulles airport. we could see it on the runway from our sunday watching spot! on april 19th when all the kids got home from school we hopped in the car and headed for the museum. it was the grand ceremony of the space shuttle entering the “our” museum.
we were there, front row (completely squished by all the newspaper photographers, but we didn’t care!)
here’s a great article in the washington post about the welcoming of this amazing aircraft.
he’s been floating in space ever since.
I have an incrediable mother who at a moments notice hopped on a plane out to Virginia to help get our house “show ready”. honestly it was her magic that got us the full price offers. with the small budget we gave her, she made pillow covers out of kitchen cloth napkins and cut king size blankets in half to make two matching bunk bed blankets at a fraction of the cost. brilliant I say! switching side tables from one room to another and adding fresh flowers to the front porch also knocked the home buyers off their feet. no joke. you know you staged the house well when you get emails from realtors asking where we purchased pieces of furniture and flowers baskets . fist bump all around!
while I am in the mode of thanking my mother, I have yet to introduce one of her creations that I am beyond words thankful for. this is something I personally am head over heels about.
reese’s baby blanket.
I know what you’re thinking, it doesn’t look so baby size. that’s because it’s not, it’s a twin size. reese was showered with the most beautiful quilted baby blankets (thank you grandma valerie, kim, liz, jenna d., lizbeth, francine, michelle, karen).
photo by dion seneca photography.
she still uses everyone of them.
I petitioned to my mom to make a twin size so reese could use it once she was in a big bed. smart thinking on my part. yes?!
she created it from an idea and a small picture I gave her of floating pink squares.
you love it too.
for now it is a decoration in the guest room.
so while my mom was visiting it was not all work. we played in georgetown.
you want some? we were sharing the last crumbs of the cupcake with you.
then it was all about the globetrotters!
we challenged dallin and his buddle to go run around the court. they did. quickly.
going to a real (as real as the globetrotters are) basketball game made it the best day in his life. glad to be apart of it.
mom, thanks again for your help!!
the house is on the market.
we plan to review the offers tomorrow.
yes, multiple offers. so, so blessed.
that was going to be the post….
….but there is SO much more juicy information to share whether or no you want to read it that is up to you.
spring break is not the time to have high expectations of keeping the house spotless. that is why placing the house on the market that week was a one way ticket to looneyville. trying to keep the house clean with 4 energetic kids and friends running around…not possible. oh, another thing, my husband was out of town. do you feel the stress piling up? side note: to the fault of my own I felt urgency that we needed to put it on the market this week. inspired or not? it is yet to be determined.
the house, an absent husband, kids…it was just too much for me to juggle, so I packed the kids up and went to a hotel in the area that had an indoor pool (it had to, we needed something to entertain my posy).
an email below describes the first 15 hours solo:
Hi Love!
We left the house clean and pretty for all the buyers. fingers crossed.
After a delightful dinner at the Dirty Bird or better known as Red Robin we headed to the hotel. Side note: a family came to talk to us about CI’s. Turns out they have 2 kids with CI’s who have Ushers, that takes away their hearing and their sight. (Okay, I was humbled again). Beautiful family.
Anyway…..we checked into our hotel, took a look at the rooms and then realized we left Reese’s porta-crib at home. (Where are you to keep track of my…everything?) The kids and I loaded back into the car to head back home and retrieved it from the house.
When we got back to the hotel the kids were ready to swim. We ALL got in our suits, even Reese and I, and got in. Alexander jumped in right after Dallin and Zachary…..which meant he was sinking right behind them. It’s been a year and he obviously forgot how to swim. Thankfully Dallin heard me call his name in a quiet panic to push his brother to the wall. Phew. Alexander then popped out of the water and asked, “mom how do I swim again?” Needless to say, he stayed close to me. So close that after 10 minutes of jumping off the side and swimming to me at the stairs he began to hold his tummy and inflate his cheeks. Uh-oh. Not good. “Hey, Alexander you all right?” (Wait he can’t hear me. perfect.) I’ve been a swimming instructor long enough to know the signs of upset stomach from drinking too much chlorine water. With Reese in one arm and Alexander in the other they were pulled out of the water just in time for Alexander to puke his guts out of chocolate milk, apple chunks and hamburger. It happened so quickly. Thankfully his aim shot the gallons of throw up towards a drain and not into the pool. That would have killed the night for everyone in the pool.
Gratefully it was too loud in the pool area for anyone to really notice our scene. I actually had to physically tap a mother on the shoulder to ask her to go get someone from the front desk to bring a mop, a bucket, a fire hose, anything to get rid of the throw up inches away from the pool steps.
After a warm shower all the kids got in their pj’s (they were all laid out on their beds, you would have been so proud. We gathered around and listened to The Friend on my phone. We prayed for you and for the house to sell, and the kids even prayed that we would find a new house that had friends to play with. I guess this means we have a lot to pray about too. It would be nice to know that Heavenly Father is mindful of us during this time of transition.
Was your evening as eventful as mine? I know you are saying…”you chose to put the house on the market this week and good luck with that”.
Tomorrow we’re playing tennis and heading to the library. Then more swimming after dinner.
Love you always!
m
It’s a busy, busy time of life! The next day we did play tennis, went to the library and headed to the pool for more swimming. No throw up this time! Instead it was diarrhea falling from his swimsuit as we ran to the restroom. The fun never stops!
we knew we had to tell the kids the news so we quickly thought of wrapping three gifts each with a connection that would tell a story.
they opened the gifts…..
a mariners jersey, a picture of the cousins and a ski hat…..
yup, you guessed it. Jon’s new job is taking us back to Seattle!
their reactions…
ok, that was better then we thought. we shouldn’t have been too quick to promise a trampoline at the new house.
we’re thrilled to be with family and old friends again. there is no doubt we will miss the “family” of friends we have made here so keep blogging so we can stay in touch.
