Beach Weekend!

Well, for the first time since we have been married, we took a vacation that had no other purpose than just getting away. We went to Va Beach. Not to check out a school. Not to see family (not that we don't want to). Not for a special get together. But just to get away for us. And it was great. Sound selfish? It was. We had a blast. We were unsure whether or not to go for a bit, because the weather looked like it was going to suck the whole time. But we said "why the heck not." And the weather was beautiful.
We went to the beach on Friday and stayed for a few hours. We tried to get Abby to go into the water, and it was cool for a bit, then when I tried to go further into the waves, she would say "Abby don't like that!" She would go down into the water some, then run screaming when a wave came. It was funny. She at least loved playing in the sand.
That night we walked out on a pier and watched a bunch of people fishing. We also got to see dolphins swimming around. Every now and then they would poke their fins out and Abby would get all excited. And the sunset was gorgeous.
Saturday was another great beach day. And Abby was a lot braver. Not only was she not scared. but she would go charging into the waves and want me to take her out into the deeper water so she could "swim"(kick her legs and flail her arms while I hold her up). When I would tire out and suggest we go in, she would get upset. She had so much fun. And we built sand castles, played on a playground, walked the boardwalk, drank the seawater, got tumbled by waves - everything.






Luckily, Abby was able to take a nap in her stroller during lunch so that we could stay at the beach and not worry about what to do for a nap.



On Sunday, we went to a huge park near the beach called Mt Trashmore. Oscar the grouch would love the name but hate the place - they beautified and built a park over what was a landfill. It had the biggest playground I have ever seen, along with a huge hill (full of garbage, presumably) and a pond with ducks.



Some of the ducks were very friendly, and quite gentle, too.


Abby was stoked. Unfortunately, we didn't see the sign on the other side of the fence that said, in big letters, DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS AND GEESE. Oops. Heh, sorry, we're from out of town. Jerk tourists.
The only problem with the weekend was the fact that I am a white boy. We shlackered Abby up with sunscreen, but applied only a minimal amount on me, because I'm no sissy boy. But, like a stupid tourist visiting the beach, I paid no attention to warnings and am now paying the price. I am pretty crispy all over. But that is a small price to pay for a wonderful weekend with my family.
So Abby started daycare today, while Jodi worked and I went downtown to test the buses and see how my commute was going to be. And she loved it. When I woke her up this morning, she was rolling away from me and grunting, then I said we were going to her new school. She popped up immediately and said, "oh, we have to bring my elephant and blanket!" (for nap time). Then she quickly cooperated in getting ready, only to be disappointed that she had to eat breakfast and wait for us to get ready. She was so excited to go. It was hard to leave her there - we kept asking "are we doing the right thing?" But I think we are, and either way, she was not turning back. And she had a really good day - didn't give them a hard time at all, got along great with the other kids, danced and sang, and just really enjoyed herself. She had such a good time that she didn't want to leave. But I let her know we would be going back and it went over okay. What? I have to convince my kid to leave daycare to come home with me? That doesn't sound right. Am I doing something wrong? We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, I am a little disappointed to know that my free time with Abby is going to be severely slashed. Maybe I'm the one getting separation anxiety.

Blackberries for all!

So we found a little treasure trove here at our place. There is a huge area covered in blackberry bushes. And they are definitely in season. We can't get to most of them, because the growth is just too thick and the thorns just hurt too much. But there are still more than we can handle on our own (and that is after the birds have had their share)






Abby loves picking and eating them. And we get tons. So if anyone comes down in the next few weeks, and you like blackberries, you can have as many as you want. We're going to look into making jam with them, so anyone out there who knows how to do that let us know your secrets.

Richmond has a zoo about 30 miles out of town, and we went to check it out the other day. Abby had a blast. There is a little petting zoo area that she loved.









These little squirrel monkeys were so cute - they would take little pieces of food right out of your hand if you get close enough. I jumped Abby over the fence so that she could reach them, but she was just a little too scared to let them eat right out of her hand.



We had bought some food to feed the animals in the petting area, and she would give them like two or three pieces at a time, and was pretty stingy with it. I was trying to explain to her that one little pellet for a camel was not quite enough, but she wouldn't give it anymore. Eventually, it became obvious why she was holding on to it all - on the way in, we passed a moat with a bunch of fish that people were feeding. She wanted to feed the fish. I tried to explain that we could go to Petsmart and feed fish, but this was the only place we could feed a baby zebra. She wasn't buying it. Oh well, she had a really good time.
Jodi's job is going well - she is working 3 12s a week, that have been turning into 14s. They are long days, but she is learning a lot and doing great things for the patients there. There are some good people working there (and a few that are not so great, but you'll get that anywhere you work). She has to be in some sort of class this week, and she is not looking forward to it, but it's all part of this process known as the Bon Secours orientation process from hell. She'll get through it eventually, we hope.
So I was looking at the calendar today, and I realized that we are halfway through July. When we got here, I told myself I have 2 months until school starts. Then MCV planned this little optional prep week (which I am going to). So I realized that I have very little time before I start. I'm getting a little scared - do I really know what I am getting myself into? Nope. Let's be honest. But I am optimistic that I might figure it out at some point.
Oh, and Jodi got sustained today as Laurel advisor. She is pretty excited about the new calling, as she should be. She sat in with the young women today and said it went well. she is happy that she will now only be teaching a few young women as opposed to most of the women in the ward. They tell me that they have a calling for me too, they just need to get in together. He said the same thing last week. What does that mean? For now, I'm just giving a talk next week. We dodged having to speak before leaving Charlottesville, and somehow Jodi dodged speaking here on arrival. Not that she is complaining - she has gone quite some time without speaking; ask her the last time she had the privilege.

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Happy 4th!!!

Okay, okay, today is not the 4th. But I started this blog a bit ago, and was trying to finish it yesterday and was expecting to post it, and since Abby did this little pose for me I just had to post the pic. And it only makes sense yesterday. So...whatever.

Sorry for the lapse in posts here. I am still trying to get adjusted to things here, and wanted to be able to put pictures up but just haven't really been taking any. Then I had to figure out how to get them onto our laptop. We haven't found a way to set up our desktop in such a way as to not clutter up one of the rooms too much, so we are just going to use our laptop here. And since Bill Gates, in his infinite personal financial wisdom keeps coming out with new versions of windows, has made it so that only Vista is available, this laptop runs off of Vista. And our camera software was for XP. And I couldn't find help on any website, Microsoft or Canon, to fix it. So me, being the computer savvy guy that I am, went to the best website for getting answers: google. And I found a way to make it work. So we have pictures now!! Here is our apartment.

Front room

Kitchen/dining

Abby's Room

Mom and Dad's room

That's the basics of it. The wood floors came out really nice after we scrubbed them and polished them. And we've been able to get everything placed in such a way in all of the rooms so that they look pretty good. The best thing by far in the house is in the kitchen - two little things we like to call a washer and dryer. Well, not that little - they take up a good amount of space - but they are totally worth it. In 6 years of marriage, for the first time we can do laundry in our own home. That is pretty awesome. So when Abby wakes up in the morning with blood everywhere from the night time beatings, her comforter, blankets and pillowcases can be done without us having to get dressed and worry about whether or not we have 3 bucks worth of quarters lying around (just kidding - she was bleeding because that dang finger of hers seems to be magnetically attracted to her nostril. It's obviously reached a breaking point - when the kid wakes up with blood everywhere, something has to change. If anyone has any suggestions, we're open to them).

We really want to catch and squish one of these bunnies. Abby gets so excited to see them, and they are less afraid of us than the squirrels around here (though that is maybe because Abby will run after the squirrels and tiptoe around the bunnies). The other day we were talking to some neighbors (a really cool younger couple, it'll be nice to have them around as friends) and a rabbit was eating some clovers about 10 feet away, when it suddenly realized that it wanted to go to the other side of us. Instead of running around us all, it cautiously hopped between us. And I'm not kidding when I say that we were maybe 5 feet apart. It was crazy to watch.

From our back steps:

From the front porch:

And a few with Abby

Abby is enjoying herself down here. She will still ask about her friends in Charlottesville when we talk about church and nursery, but I think that she realizes that they don't live here. I just can't wait for us to make new friends with kids her age so that she can have some playmates. She will start up with daycare at the end of this month the week before I start up with school, and is so excited about it. We went and saw the place last week to talk with the people and check it out, and when we told Abby that we were going to go see her new school, she said happily "Go see my new school!! Woo-hoo!!" And now she asks frequently if she will go to her new school tomorrow. She can't wait to start.

She is really getting into coloring - and is getting pretty good. She sat down and colored Goofy pink the other day, and stayed in the lines really well. She gets the artistic side from Jodi. And she likes singing songs, too - the ones she likes and kind of knows now are her ABCs, Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. She doesn't know all the words, but will frequently be heard trying to sing them. At the end of Sunbeam, she does the Rowlett-y "doo-doo!" (you all know what I mean). The other day in the car, she was singing it in the back seat and couldn't get all the words and would stumble around a bit. After some time, she just went "doo doo!" to signify that she had finished so we could clap for her. It was way cute.

Jodi's job is going pretty well so far - the first week of orientation was, well, awfully boring and mostly pointless. She is on the floor now doing patient care, and it is going better. I;ll let her post more on that when she has time (or I will when I get more time). That's all for now, I'll try to do better with my posting this month. But there's just so much to do and see here, so we'll see what happens.

Welcome to Richmond!

Well, it's done. It was kind of weird, looking into a 24-foot semi (borrowed courtesy of Tracy Sodders) and realize that all of my worldly possessions, minus the car, were inside. We were truly blessed by the amount of people who showed up to help us move. It was done in under 40 minutes - my incredible wife had been diligent in packing everything up (I helped a slight amount) and we had taken apart all of our stuff. So people came, loaded, and we were done. We left Charlottesville a little after 10, and we know there were at least 2 people who showed up after that to try and help (sorry guys, but thanks for the effort!)
The trip to Richmond was quick and pain free. When we got here, Ryan showed up almost right away. Our fireman in training unloaded half of the truck himself. We unloaded in just under an hour - the only problem was the box spring on our bed. It did not want to go up the stairs. But Ryan and Tracy weren't about to leave it there - with the removal of our front door, the removal of the plastic things, and the removal of some paint and a tab bit of ceiling through their pushing, the two beasts got it up. Way to go, guys!! There was at least one guy from the ward who showed up to help, but unfortunately didn't have our number and had the wrong time, so we were inside and done before he showed so we didn't get to see him (I was sure to thank him on Sunday, though).
So we're here. And we're tired - the first few days have been long. The place was surprisingly dirty when we showed up, and we didn't realize how bad it was until everything was already moved in. Abby's little tootsies were black within an hour. So we went out today and got some floor cleaner and polish, and we are going through, room by room, cleaning and polishing. We did our room today - what a nightmare, moving all the furniture back out into the hallway, bathroom, and Abby's room to get at everything. But it helped a lot. Jodi cleaned the stairs real well, but no polish - don't want to slip down. So we'll need to attack Abby's room, the downstairs, and the hallway upstairs. We;ll get it all done this week so we don't have to worry about it once Jodi has started work. For now, we're all walking around inside in sandals except where stuff has been cleaned.
Now, I have never had gas appliances before, so I don't know how they are supposed to work. And the ones here are new, so maybe this is normal. But whenever we run the stove, we both feel like a gas smell permeates the place. We called maintenance, and they showed up and they said they couldn't smell any. We ran a burner for a few minutes, and I smelled it, but they didn't. I mentioned maybe I was more sensitive to it and that was it, and one of them claimed that he had a nose for it - that if there was a leak, he would have smelled it when he walked through the door. He said "I don't smell gas - I smell heat, but no gas." Ummm...excuse me? I didn't feel right making a wise guy comment, so I just stared at him and said, "You smell heat?" He said that the stove was working properly and there was nothing else they could do. They tried to make it look like maybe I had run a burner without it being lit, and that was why I smelled gas. They seriously took a few minutes to explain how to work it, making me out to be some kind of moron. Whatever. When I made mac and cheese later, Jodi, who was upstairs, called down and asked if I was using the stove because she smelled gas. We're going to go out and buy a gas detector, I think. Maybe it's just the heat that I'm smelling.
Enough ranting for now. Want to hear some perks? Rent here is actually cheaper than what we were paying. We have an attic storage place (which is much needed!!) that can actually fit quite a bit of our crap. The hardwood floor in our room actually looks pretty good after our treatment, and we have high hopes for the rest of the place. One of the coolest things here is our neighbors. Not the two legged ones (of whom we've met very few) bur the little woodland dwellers - there is a small colony of rabbits living in the bushes in the surrounding areas, and we see them frequently - they come to graze on the clovers. Right out our back door. Seriously, I've got a couple of pics taken from our stairs, the rabbit being no more than 10 feet away. Abby loves them. We went out to get some rabbit food and will see if we can make friends - they look so squishable and cuddly, I can't wait to try.
We had our dryer delivered today!! We need to wait on the washer, something about some storms somewhere holding something up. So although the setup is a bit strange (you have to see it to understand), we will be able to do laundry in our own place. That is so awesome to me.
We already love Richmond - we live about a half mile from where Jodi is working, but still live in a very residential, nice area. And about 3 minutes away is the main road in town, with everything you could want - Target, grocery stores, restaurants, you name it. We went out and went to Target, Kroger, Home Depot, and Petsmart all in about an hour. A trip like that in Charlottesville would have been a few hours at least. Everything is so convenient, it's amazing. We picked the perfect location. Plus, we saw a rainbow today.
I think that's enough for now - Sorry for the long post and no pics. Our desktop is not yet set up (not sure if we'll have the space for it) and it has the software and everything for the camera. We'll get stuff going soon, just give us a bit of time. For now we're working hard to make this place feel like home. Our first night here, Abby was upset going to bed (understandably) and Jodi was trying to calm her down. Abby said "Abby's sad. Abby wants to go home!" :( What do you say to that? How do you explain these things to a three year old? Not to worry, she seems to be adjusting well, and is being really great about the whole sandals thing. I guess we can't ask for anything more than that.

Last Days!

Well today is Robby's Last Day of Work! Woo Who! Our house is a boxed mess. And we only have three more days in Charlottesville! I can't help but be excited. I mean we're going to have a place with a washer and dryer! Well I'm excited that Robby doesn't have to slaughter mice anymore and I get to practice nursing. Richmond is going to be so much fun for us and it's almost time!

A little heat, anyone?

6 days to go.

I can't believe that it's so close - we only have a few days left before starting the next big chapter in our lives. We have boxes everywhere, a few dismantled pieces of furniture, and a few more...mantled pieces of furniture that need to be taken apart. And I've come to learn again that moving sucks. Not going to a new place, getting a new residence, or doing new things, but the actual act of moving - it sucks. Luckily I have a wife that is incredibly good at packing and getting ready early, so that at D-day minus 6 we have basically only the essentials unpacked. There is still a little bit to do, but well over half is done. Our place looks pretty jumbled at times, and it drives Jodi nuts. Poor Jodi, being married to me who can live in a jumbley place for a bit and be fine. All I can say for the packing part is I'm glad that I work where I do - I've been able to get all of the boxes we need from the loading dock there. Just sneak in when nobody is looking at swipe what I need - nothing to it. What are they going to do if I'm caught - fire me?
Jodi got a wonderful surprise the other day - beautiful flowers from "the Rowlett girls"

She wanted to be sure that those involved were thanked publicly - if this can be considered publicly. So to the 3 people that read this, Jodi says thank you if you helped send the flowers.
Over the weekend, we were fortunate enough to go and see a house burn. Over and over. It was awesome.

Ryan is finishing up with his firefighter course, and on Friday night they simulated a house burning so that they could show off to their friends and family what they have been learning for the past few months. The main thing they learned? If a house is on fire, run in (with protection, of course!) If I see a house on fire, I stay away, unless someone is inside. They have learned to run on in, and many of them are excited to. What? That doesn't make much sense. But it's what they do.

That's Ryan in the middle, looking out at Devan taking pictures. It was a lot of fun to watch; even Abby was enjoying the last one, when it was dark and you could see the huge flames shooting out of the windows and car they burned. She was really tired by then, but sat there watching and saying, "Put the fire out! Good job, uncle Rah-rah!"

It was a mild 90 degrees with about 1000% humidity. Not too bad. I was drenched within about 10 minutes, but it was nothing compared to Ryan and his classmates, who didn't complain nearly as much as me. I could at least wear shorts and a t-shirt and didn't have to lug around a hundred pounds worth of stuff. To see some much better pics and explanations of everything, see their blog, link over there ->
Today was our last Sunday here. It's a weird feeling. The other day, a couple in our ward pointed out that of the "non-permanent" members of the ward (i.e., students) we were the senior-most family. 6 years we've been here. That was pretty weird to hear, and made us almost more anxious to leave. Then they pointed out that we would be passing on that "honor" to them - they came a year after us, and have outlasted the other students that came that year. While we are really excited for what lies ahead, there are tons of people that we will really miss. We've felt such an outpouring of love some several people, sometimes from unexpected places, but always welcomed and appreciated. Jodi has been a teacher in Relief Society for several months, a daunting task for anyone, but especially so for her with nursing school and everything. And I have been lucky enough to be Deacon's Quorum adviser for the past 5 years. People sometimes thought I would only come for Sacrament, then leave. But our young men are great, and several expressed a desire to come help on Saturday morning, despite the fact that they would probably rather be sleeping. Maybe the offer of free donuts helped, I'm not sure. :)
This afternoon, we went to a party for my work that they were throwing for all of the departing people. We originally weren't planning on going, but decided kind of late that maybe it could be fun. There were tons of people there, and the food was awesome. When they got up to say a few words, I wasn't sure what really to expect, maybe a toast for good health and luck or something. Instead, my boss gets up there and talks about me a bit, says what I'm doping and where I'm going, then says they have some parting gifts for me. I was shocked, and a little embarrassed. I didn't know what to say. They had me open them right there. The first on was a joke gift, a play doctor's kit kind of thing. But the second one was an incredibly nice stethoscope. I was speechless. It was so nice and unexpected. I have been so fortunate to work for the guy that I work for these past 2 years. There are many people in our few labs that are totally awesome and who will really be missed.
Luckily, that "joke gift" was not so much of a joke for Abby - she knew immediately that it was for her.

She starts by checking Mommy's heart....

then takes her BP,


checks reflexes,

and temp.

She then finds the problem - a little spot which needs a band-aid.


What a cute little doctor!
So we're getting excited for the move. This Saturday doesn't look like it'll be nearly as bad as this weekend was, so hopefully nobody keels over from dehydration while going down the stairs with our dressers. I wouldn't want anything broken, we're trying to save money. So this time next week, I'll have to remove that little "almost" from our title. There is a Rowlett's bicycle shop in Richmond. Think they'll give family discounts? I'm sure we're related somewhere along the lines.

I PASSED!

Well to all those who have been keeping up with our adventure of me in nursing school for the past 18months I have more news. I graduated with my ADN degree in applied science in May and was waiting on the boards. This past Thursday I was released to setup a time to take them and my time was this past Sunday at 2:00 in Vienna. I crammed for three days. I stayed up until 2 am the night before and even felt like studying the day of and I did. And it has to be said that my Dad who's a Dentist was there with me for it all!!! It was such a comfort! He even took me to the test and walked me to the elevator! After 1 hour and 35 minutes and 86 questions later...the test shut off. I came home. At 12:55 on Monday a phone call to the State board of Nursing and I'm a NURSE! WE DID IT! So it's on to Richmond to invent a Doctor! (And to finish BSN degree for me and a NP graduate degree after that!). HURRAY!!!!
We are at a great high in our success but we know that we stand on the shoulders of giants-that being all who support and love us.
-Jodi