Welcome home!

I've had to explain to several different people in the process of getting settled in that we just moved back from Japan (like when I give an excited yelp to discover a box of strawberries less than $6 at the grocery store and have to justify my outburst of joy to the boy stocking the produce shelves), and most of the time they say something like, "Well, welcome home!" in response.  It always puts a big smile on my face.  It is nice to be home.

And it is nice to have a home!  I shall take you for a quick tour.  First, a map, for orientation purposes.  The red dot is the house, the blue dot is where Drew works, and the light blue line is his commute.  The purple lines are how we drive if we want to get to Seattle or the SeaTac airport, and the orange dot at the bottom is the Tacoma Narrows . . .

. . . where the Galloping Gertie used to be!

Anyways.  Here is the front of our house.

And here is the back.

The deck is almost as big as the family room and kitchen combined.

Here is the entryway with living/dining room to the right and garage, laundry room, half bath, and family room to the left.  Kitchen right behind the stairs.

The family room has a gas fireplace, which has been wonderful for after bath snuggles . . .

. . . and warming up in the morning.  Lots of the places we looked at had wood fireplaces.  While I would very much like to get better at starting fires, it is really convenient to be able to just flip a switch.

Here is the kitchen with gas stove that I am still getting used to.  The kids are in love with the ice dispenser on the fridge.  Annie leaves little puddles wherever she goes.

Here is the upstairs.  I am standing in the master bedroom.  Going clockwise: stairs you can't see, an overlook to the entryway, linen closet, guest bedroom, kids' bedroom, full bathroom, and baby's room.

We got to move in November 3rd.  It was not hard to move in, considering all that we had was our luggage.  The moving company that had our express shipment was really backed up, so they couldn't deliver our "living essentials" to us for about 2 weeks.  Luckily I was able to borrow a bin of kitchen equipment from the loan closet on base.  It doubled as our table for awhile.

Pizza Friday!

They also lent us some sleeping mats that were definitely better than sleeping on the floor, but only just.  They made good forts.  And they may have been used as sleds for sliding down the stairs . . . I rented sleeping bags from the outdoor recreation office on base and we borrowed pillows from some nice people in our ward who only just moved in 2 months ago themselves.  

The kids have enjoyed playing in all the empty rooms and closets and cupboards.  They are especially fond of the kitchen cupboards, but only when the drawers are open so there is some light inside.  Annie likes to close the drawers on their heads, so I usually have to take the whole drawer out and put it on the counter when they are playing in there.

We did decide to buy a couple of things to get us through until the rest of our stuff arrives.  Rafe needed a new camp chair because his got broken in Japan, Annie didn't have one yet, and we thought we might as well get one for the new baby too (Vivi's is in our stuff), so we bought those and some camp stools for ourselves.  We also got a roll-top table with our REI dividend.  Our guides in Mongolia had one and we really liked it, so it was on the list anyway.

Unfortunately the table is rather tall for children, so if the food was messy, Annie got banished to the sink.  

One of our last packages of good Japanese ramen . . .

I bought some kitchen mats too.  I like to see the Baby Goose's footprints in them after I hose her down from meals.

I had the chance to fill up our freezer.  A steakhouse meat salesman came by one of the days we were home with a buy one case, get one case free deal going, so there's Sunday dinner for the next 6 months.  The salesman told me his kids were 17, 15, 13, and 11, so our little family brought back lots of memories for him.  

The day before Veteran's day they delivered our express shipment.  We were very happy to see our air mattress.  I thought the person who labelled our shipment in Japan's handwriting was fascinating, though it took me quite awhile to decipher "helmet" at the end of line 17.  

At tithing settlement last week the ward clerk wouldn't hear of us sitting on our camp stools or the floor, so he brought us one of their extra couches.  

When he delivered it he happened to glance at our camp table, then left and came back with some folding chairs and a sturdy fold-up table an hour later.  So, now we are living in the lap of luxury!  Annie has rejoined us at the table and has learned to use a spoon.  Rafe is singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in the background.  It was stuck in my head while I was doing dishes earlier that day.

As far as outings go, we visited the Bremerton Naval Museum. 

 I will take everyone who visits us to this museum, because there is an excellent exhibit about life on the USS Stennis, which is Drew's ship.  Also, there is an exhibit on tattoos.  Because sailors. 

They had a great play room for the kids too.  One wall was the galley, well stocked with toy food . . . 

. . . and the other wall was a puppet theater with tons of awesome sea creature puppets.  Rafe has the sting ray.  

We went to the Undersea Museum too a different day, but I didn't take any pictures there because most of it freaked me out too much.  Watching U-571 and reading Dead Wake have ruined me for submarines.

On Veterans Day we took the ferry in to Seattle.  We had a great view of Mt. Rainier for some of the way and were able to spot some seals fighting for space on a buoy.  And I mustn't forget our awesome seagull escort. 

It was fun to be back in Seattle.  Though I think the amount of tent dwellings under the highways has doubled in the three years we've been gone, which is sad.

Pardon my Smee belly in the reflection.

We headed straight for Rain City Burger for old times' sake.  When we got there, we remembered why it's inconvenient to live in Seattle as we searched 2 blocks in every direction for a parking spot.  We finally parked in a shopping center and stopped in at a Daiso (!) that just opened last year.  Drew and I thought the sign outside that was advertising "Japanese quality" was a little misleading, since the goods inside are Japanese dollar-store quality.  We bought piggy banks for the two older kids, because we are starting a family experiment with weekly allowances so the kid stop asking me for every little thing they see at the store (We're a week in and so far, so good.  The dialogue has shifted to, "I want to save my money to buy that!"  Though Vivien did despair in Target for a minute: "Why is there nothing in the store that's the match of the money that I have?").  The parking bother was worth the burgers, as always.  Annie required half of Drew's shake in exchange for not throwing herself from her highchair in a fit of screeching.  Her love of ice cream is out of control.  We drove by our old house for a peek after lunch.  It is not red anymore, and the driveway was very full of cars so we didn't stop, but it was nice to see it.  Good memories!  

We decided to go the zoo for Veteran's Day because Drew is a veteran and therefore we got in for freeeeeeee!

 I love the Woodland Park Zoo.  They are involved in so many conservation projects around the world that their exhibits are full of information.  Like this map that blew my mind:

And their exhibits are so beautifully designed and cared for that you actually get to see (and sometimes even interact with) the animals without feeling bad for them for having to live in a cage.  I am now going to write down all the cool things we saw, so feel free to skip ahead.  We saw a male lion yawn his amazing yawn, hippos swimming and diving and walking on land and opening their huge mouths to drink out of a fountain, weaver birds actively weaving nests in the savanna aviary, a warthog using its tusks to break up a log, a giraffe chewing and showing off its long, black tongue, the tapir licking its salt cube, orangutans eating orange slices (and one picking its nose and eating the treasures it found there . . .), a small clawed otter grabbing a branch three times its size and dragging it to the bank where it surprised its three siblings who dove into the water in a panic, the great gray owl turned its head to look at us, the Stellar's eagles were eyeing some squirrels in their enclosure suspiciously with cocked heads, the elk was walking majestically around his domain with a full rack of antlers, the grizzly bear brothers were shambling about and playing with cardboard boxes, the jaguar was pacing through its beautiful jungle habitat, the red ruffed lemurs were screaming up in their tree, and the mountain goat even condescended to be viewed.

 Its beautiful coat made us miss our lambskin rug a little bit . . .

 AND.  I ran into some old friends from our Seattle ward there--Michelle Turner and Stephanie Roche. All the children are 3 years older and we've each added another baby to the mix in the interim, so there were many introductions to be made.  And speaking of babies, there is a baby gorilla at the zoo right now.  She just turned one this week.  Her name is Yola.  We caught her just as her mother was taking her back inside for the day.

It was a great day at the zoo.  We stopped on our way out for a little impromptu magic show with Magic Mike.  He was definitely around first, but I'm afraid this man is not the man I picture when I hear "Magic Mike."  Regardless, the kids were thoroughly entertained.

Outings a little closer to home have included afternoon walks around the neighborhood.  There's a house one street over that has a little tiny library in their front yard.  We borrowed "The Masque of the Red Death" the first time.  The kids liked my recap a little better than the actual reading, but that's to be expected.  We got a Dora the Explorer Halloween book on our next visit.  They can't say Dora without singing, "Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-Dora!"  It sounds like a weird stutter.  

 We can also hop in the car and be in the middle of the forest in about 10 minutes.  We did another section of the Illahee Nature Preserve trails this week.  Annie found lots of things to eat.  "What? Oh, what is this?  Pinecones!  Oh my goodness, they're my favorite!  Mmmm!  Delicious."

 On Saturday I took Vivien and Rafe to the Stake Primary activity.  It was family history themed.  Every child in the stake received one of these coloring books at the beginning of the year.

Every page has a family history activity.  The kids were promised that if they completed their book they would get a special prize.  We only had a week, but we did every activity but two--one involved finding and reserving a name for the temple, which I knew would take more research than I had time for, so I just showed them how one would reserve a name on FamilySearch.  The other was to visit an ancestor's grave.  I showed them a picture of their great grandfathers' graves instead.  One of the coloring pages involved filling out your family tree.  I like how Vivien did her daddy and Papa Mark.  "Papa Mark's hair is always spiky."

 They started the activity with Primary song yoga.  They gave one child a stack of papers that had stick figures doing poses on them, and the kids had to copy the pictures while they sang.  Such a good idea!

 Then they had them all squish together for a picture.  Rafe and Vivi have their arms around each other.

 They broke the kids up into four groups and had them rotate between stations: tracing a hand print and gluing leaves onto the finger "branches" to make a family tree in the RS room, family history themed carnival games like bean bag and ring tosses in the gym, a lesson in the chapel about temples and family history, and singing time in the primary room where they learned one of the family history primary songs.  At the end they gathered in the gym for chocolate milk, pretzels, string cheese, grapes, and beautifully decorated white sugar cookies and they handed out the prize for finishing the coloring books (a little family tree charm).  Vivien wanted hers put on a length of yarn to wear as a necklace.  Rafe wanted his hung on a sword that he wanted me to make out of yarn somehow (???).

A few more funnies, and then I shall sign off for this week.  

Vivien crawled into the family room wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and announced, "I'm a little dragon with a tattoo of a giraffe on my chest."

Vivien was following Annie around and trying to make her wear the hood of the jacket she had on.  Annie was not enjoying the attention, so I asked Vivien why she was bothering her sister.  "I want her hood on.  Now she's 'child-hood.'"  Drew was indecently proud of her pun.

I tried to talk to the kids about inappropriate and appropriate places to burp and pass gas.  The conversation was obviously a complete fail, because somehow I managed to convince them to loudly announce EVERY passage of air from their bodies and giggle incessantly over it.  I called so much attention to it that it has even became a major topic of their play.  One of their favorite pretends recently is to be "The Tootio Monster."  

Vivien explaining to Rafe how she could find things in the dark: "When the door was closed, I used pictures in my brain to show me where I was."

When Drew was little and used to beg his dad for a story at bed time, sometimes Mark would tell them this nursery rhyme:

I'll tell you a story 

About Jack a Nory

And now my story's begun.

I'll tell you another

About Jack and his brother

And now my story's done.  

So now Drew tells the kids the story of Jack a Nory, but it has turned into an epic adventure tale that has been going on every night for months.  I'm not usually around to hear all the material presented in the story, but Drew has a vivid imagination, so I was not really surprised when Rafe came up to me the other day and said, "The new baby will have horse legs and a cow body and I want to name him Jack a Nory."

Trying to eat lunch the other day.  I gave Annie a slice of apple, which she would chew a little and then spit out.  Rafe and Vivien started watching her regurgitating food and both started gagging and almost threw up.  I made them turn their chairs around and swear not to look at her again until they were done eating.

Rafe asks me really hard questions to answer, like, "Why is chili made out of chili?"  I just don't know these things.

How Rafe asks me for a drink: