Foto Finish Friday

Not too sure about the "nate".

Not too sure about the giant tortoise, either.

But the huge lizard? Oh yea, I'll pet that!

Birds of a Feather

I am not the type to have "lots" of friends. At every stage of my life thus far, I've had a handful of really good, close friends. In high school, it was Christy. We were nearly inseparable. We were together every spare moment at school, and out of school. We even stranded ourselves together in a snow storm once and spent 3 days of no school at her house!

After high school, when the rhythms of our lives changes, we were separated geographically. She moved north for schooling, I moved south after getting married. Inevitably, we lost touch. Prior to our reconnection 2 years ago, we hadn't seen each other or spoken to each other for 10 years. I often thought of her and wondered where life had taken her, I searched as much as I could. Her family had relocated away from our home town, and I had no idea if her name had changed through marriage (and yes...it had!). Two years ago, through the power of the internet, we were miraculously reconnected. I will never forget that day, catching up on 10 years of time lost between us. It was like only a moment had passed! As I learned of the struggles she and her husband had been through, it sounded all too much like our life challenges. We decided now was the time we were meant to be a support to each other. Turns out, her older son is only a few months younger than Kai! That was the biggest (and happiest) shock of all! We immediately started looking for opportunities to get them together.

As sheer luck our have it, we've now been able to see them 2 times in the past 5 months! What a treat! Our first visit was last fall when we went to Disneyland, and the second was just a few weeks ago after disembarking our cruise ship! We spent a fun day at their house while waiting for our flight home! Let me tell you... our boys could not be better buds. At their first meeting last fall, they hit it right off and were running around together, squealing with delight after only a few seconds! This time was no different. They are so alike in so many ways, it is so fun for them to see each other, and great for Christy and I to know that our very active sons are totally normal! Enjoy the pictures of our day together.

Kai and his buddy Wiley

Holding hands... adorable!

What good is water if you don't get wet??

Me, Christy and their other cutie Ivan.

Foto Finish Friday

Kai with his fancy cruise chocolate milk!

Yes, we are still alive! As I predicted, it's been a fun and exciting last few weeks for us and I've had no time for blogging! Still don't, but taking a few minutes here for ya'll!

So, first... we took Kai on his first cruise! We've been on several and we are absolutely addicted to it! We had a blast on our first family cruise, which also included Joe's Mom (it was her first cruise)! We also had our fare share of tough times, as will happen anytime a 3 year old is involved! We all ended up being sick at some point during the week, and Kai was the first. He woke up sick the day we left our house (1 day before setting sail). So, none of us were feeling 100% and he was definitely feeling out of his element. All said, we made lots of fun family memories and loved having Grandma with us!

When we got home, we learned that our house sale was ready to close! We encountered some last minute problems with my VA loan which we're still trying to sort out, but our buyer (and seller) both wanted to get things going. We closed on the sale of our old house 3 days after we got back, and worked out a rental agreement with our sellers until we can close. We moved to our new house 5 days after we got back from our vacation! Talk about a whirlwind of activity!! We are all loving our new place and neighborhood! Despite this having been a very stressful and stimulating 2 weeks, K is holding up fabulously, sleeping well and in a pretty good mood now that he's well. I was worried this might disrupt his good potty training work, but so far so good!

Hopefully lots of pics to come soon! Vacation pics and new house pics! We're still buried in boxes, and trying not to focus every moment on house stuff.

Looking forward to the forecast of a beautiful weekend, hopefully enjoying our new nice and big backyard!! :-)