What We've Been Up To

Welp, Ty graduated.  It was pretty cool.  He still has had a few things to do to finish up his thesis course, but THAT is a long and frustrating story I'm not going to delve into.  Technically he's still not completely done, but he has a culminating conference call to attend to in about an hour.  THEN he'll be done!!!

Oh, and one minor detail that must have slipped my mind.  We found out at graduation that we had ONE week to move, instead of two.  That was a shock to our systems.  Suddenly our leisurely attitudes about packing, seeing the DC sites we hadn't seen yet, and sleeping in changed to babysitters, frantic packing, staying up late and getting up early, and lots of fast food.  But with the help of some great people, we were able to get it all done and hit the road on Saturday morning.  Phew!

Among everything else, the lawn also got mowed (with little exclamations of "Whoaaa!  Whoaa!! Whoooaaa!!!" included, of course).  This is the only picture I have of us getting stuff done that week.  I wish I would have taken more pictures, especially to help us remember all of the kind people that helped us survive.

Waving goodbye to Maryland

This was the first leg of the trip.  It was an exhausting week for Afton too.

 First stop, visiting Mount Vernon with Uncle Joe who was in town on business.  It was great to see him!

The next stop was Tappahannock, VA, home of Ty's cousin Levi, his wife Emily, and their three cute kids (and Aunt Lynn happened to be visiting that weekend too!).  We have absolutely loved living near them.  They have been so good to us.  Not only have we spend many nights in their home and enjoyed that thoroughly, they've been there to help us a lot.  We especially appreciated this past week that Levi got to go up to DC for a day to help us pack the moving truck.  We might have died without him.  Literally.  Thanks guys!

In regards to our stop, as usual, I did a poor job taking pictures.  This is all that I have from our visit.  And aside from the video, these pictures could have been taken anywhere and do a terrible job documenting our visit.

Did I mention that we always have fun at Levi and Emily's house?

I've taken a lot of pictures like this recently.  I think it's so funny how she always sleeps like this!

This is the face of a little girl who cannot resist the temptation to climb stairs.

That picture of Afton's road rash reminds me... let's take a time-out to discuss one of my worst nightmares.  I have always feared, especially since having a daughter as cute as Afton, that some childhood injury would permanently disfigure my child's face.  Although I'm positive we're not looking at permanent damage, Afton managed to temporarily disfigure her face three times in eight days.  It's becoming almost comical each time it happens because it's so ridiculous.

The first one was actually at graduation.  Ty and I had a little miscommunication about who had (or hadn't) buckled Afton into her stroller.  As we were walking to the graduation ceremony, Ty was taking the stroller down some stairs, but gravity pulled Afton down a little faster.  I can't even explain the sick feeling I had when I ran ahead to make faces at her, and instead watched her fall helplessly and thud on the ground.

The is the face of the Worst Mom of the Year award coming my way... at least that's how I felt.

Luckily, she's one tough cookie and got right back up on that horse... errr... turtle, after the ceremony.

 The next injury was the aforementioned fall down the stairs.

Then on Monday, at our lunch stop at Chik Fil A in northern North Carolina, the play place wasn't kind to Afton either.  She took a nose dive in one of the tubes and got a nice fat lip.

I promise we try to take good care of our child!

Monday night, we stopped outside of Charlotte, NC.  Adrienne, a good friend from high school years, and her husband Dan, and their daughter Vanessa live there.  They were kind enough to have us over for dinner. I thought about taking pictures, but had left my camera in the car.  Luckily I was able to swipe these ones from Adrienne and her blog. :)

A new state for both of us.  And that's our moving truck--to prove we were there since we didn't get out. :)

Kisses goodbye.

Cartoons in the morning while mom and dad pack up

Tuesday, we drove through South Carolina and down into Georgia.

And another new state for us.

We stopped at Hartwell Lake, right on the border of South Carolina and Georgia for lunch and for a chance to stretch and let Afton get some wiggles out.  It was beautiful!

Afton didn't enjoy the lake quite as much as we had anticipated.

She enjoyed the playground much more.

And the food.

 And the grass and dandelions.

 

And the geese.

Then we made our way to Columbus, GA where Uncle Abe and Aunt Grace live.  (I missed the Georgia state line sign, but we'll have another chance really soon).  We were so glad to finally make it!  We had a delicious dinner, went out for ice cream, walked around an amazing park, put Afton to bed, played games, and had a great time.  The next morning, Ty and I took off for Mississippi to go get checked in, and left Afton with Abe and Grace.  Apparently things run a little differently than we thought, and our one-night-stay has to be two due to some leave regulations.  My little mommy heart hurts a little, but I've decided to use this opportunity to rest (finally), have some fun with Ty, and of course write a monster blog.

Aunt Grace doing Afton's hair. 

We've been to Mississippi before, but not to this Air Force Base!

We saw our new home last night, walked around the perimeter, and peeked in as many blinds as we could.  We get to move in on Tuesday after some maintenance work is done.

Here's some pictures I've gotten from Grace:

Afton loves her cousin Clara.  She gets excited when she sees her in our family
picture book and squeals "Baby! Baby!"

PB&J

Aunt Grace made this cute dress for Afton.  She also gave us a smaller matching one
for the baby coming in a few months.  They're really cute!  Thanks Grace!

And now I'm just sitting in the hotel room, Ty's finished his conference call, and he's waiting for me to get my rear in gear and go run some errands.  And there you have it.  The monster blog of our journey thus far.