Chopped Liver

Well, I am back to being chopped liver now that Daddy is here. They have gone on walks, read books, played with balloons, snuggled in the hammock....lots of fun. Sometimes I do stuff with them, I did go on a walk with them tonight.  I tried to go back to Emma’s room where they were, but Emma told me I was supposed to be on my phone on the couch. Poor kid missed her Daddy! Pretty sure there hasn’t been any fits thrown since he has been here either. 😏 I’m not complaining though...I’m enjoying the break. It is weird to have so much extra time on my hands. I may even read a book! 

Today he did some in processing, we got our unaccompanied baggage and Emma stayed home from school. She really could have gone, they had a field trip, but she was too excited about Daddy and getting the rest of our stuff today. I am very excited about those things, too! We may have also watched the NFL draft while he was running errands. 

She set up her fan so that it keeps the ballon up in the air.

Playing in packing paper.

Not a great picture, but all I could get. 

Update: I will say that they did bring me flowers from their walk and they were drawing me pictures in her room apparently. So I’m not completely chopped liver. :) 

Daddy’s finally home

Guess what I’m doing? Nothing. (Well, the blog actually.) But I have the house to myself! Steven took Emma down to the playground. 

She got home from school and I had the cake stuff all ready to go. The front bowl is the over mixed marscapone cream. The bowl behind it is the better one. 

My little pastry chef. 

She wanted to make a sun.

She decorated it all by herself. 

All done!

Our neighbors were selling a double wide hammock on FB, and I bought it. Steven has already set it up. Emma calls it a swing. She loved snuggling with Daddy in it...unfortunately for Daddy she is super wiggly and got out and back in several times. But they had fun.

I posted a video on Facebook of her open the door when he came home. I will post it on here later. She was pretty surprised. And she has been VERY chatty ever since he got here. :) 

Back to baking

Shhh! It’s a surprise! We are making Daddy a surprise cake for him when he comes home! It is a fancy cake...way more complicated than we have tried before. But my friend made it in CA and it was delicious! I also see why now...it’s so rich! I mostly found all the ingredients...but this will be the most expensive cake I have ever made. In fact, it was taking so long that Emma just started doing the dishes. 😂 But that needed to be done, too.  Today we made the elements: lemons curd, blueberry sauce, baked the cake and did the marscapone cheese stuff...which I may need to redo. All the stuff they do on tv is harder than it looks!  We will finish it Thursday. 😉 

Since we had so many egg whites left over, we tried a recipe we found on Facebook. They were good, too.

My little helper! 

Here are our recipes:

https://ciaoflorentina.com/lemon-olive-oil-cake-recipe-berries-mascarpone-lemon-curd/

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/262604/flourless-chocolate-cookies/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=alr_20180421&utm_content=alr_internalcrosspromo

Pretty things

This morning, Emma wanted to give her teacher some old, faded fake flowers that she found when we were unpacking. She even wrote her a note. It was so sweet...and she was very upset and cried when I wouldn’t let her. I promised her we would go get a real flower after school to give to her. So we did. Such a sweet girl! 

Pretty colors!

Daddy made this for Emma, and he is going to give it to her when he gets here...in a few days!!!

Unpacking

We finally have stuff! Yesterday our house hold good arrived and we began unpacking! The movers got here right at 8, and got to work unpacking crates in the basement while FMO moved out the temporary furniture. It only took a couple hours to get it all in. I took a friends suggestion and had the movers unpack the kitchen...probably won’t have them do that again. They only ended up unpacking half of it, by mistake. They unpacked things like glasses, jars, vases, and since they had already filled the counter tops, they put the glass on the floor...right in front of cabinet doors. I ended up unpacking the plates, bowls, mixing stuff....what I really needed. But it is done. Next I unpacked Emma’s room...which was very exciting for her. It helped me out too, because then she was busy while I did some more work in the kitchen. I feel kind of bad for her...she keeps asking me to play, but there is so much to do! We went to bed late last night, and unfortunately I am learning there is not much sleeping in here since the sun comes up so early. (I’ve ordered new curtains for our room, because if we want to sleep past 5 we need to get curtains up.) Even with not getting enough sleep, Emma woke up in a great mood. She swept and mopped the floor right after breakfast. Then talked to Daddy and finished unpacking. 

As of right now, I would say we are 95% unpacked. All the boxes have been opened. We still have a couple unpacked, because I am waiting for Steven to get here to help arrange a few things. But we took all the broken down boxes and paper-filled boxes to the basement, which helps the mess a lot. I have some pictures, but is a mess...we still have a lot to do. I will probably get a lot done this week while she is in school. But it is SO nice to have our stuff. It makes it feel like home. I can feel us settling in, and I think we will even more when we get the rest of the mess under control. 

Emma had a rough start to moving day. So this is what she ended up doing while the movers were here. It was just too hard for me to keep track of her and deal with the movers.

Unpacking my kitchen for me...seemed like a good idea at the time.

Living room day 1.

Dining room day 1.

Kitchen right after they left. Ugh. Emma of course wanted a snack, which is funny now that I look at the picture.

While I worked on the kitchen, she set the table. :) A Chaplain’s wife brought us dinner. Emma ate like an adult. 

For those that have never moved with the military...these packers pack everything. This time they packed things they weren’t supposed to...lighters, liquids in glass jars, etc. 

She decided to vacuum. Our normal vacuum is in unaccompanied baggage.

Emma’s room.

So nice to have all of her things in one place.

She cleaned before bed.



Living room day 2.

This will be my next project.

Our room.

Bigger than our other rooms we have had. Also, I need a dresser, there are no shelves here!

Mail

Well today we checked our mail for the first time since we got here. I had gotten the combination to our mail box earlier, but I hadn’t checked it since my packages were not scheduled to arrive yet. One was scheduled for today, but they were both there. I’m wondering how long it actually takes stuff to get here since it seems like they got here earlier than Amazon said. But we are excited to have our packages...and I will be ordering more soon. I know our BX is bigger than usual, but honestly it still doesn’t have a lot. 

She tried to guess what color it was at the bus stop...Frozen? Green? Light green? Poop colored? 🤦‍♀️ 

She never did guess pink, but I think she likes it .



My new rain boots since mine broke right before we moved. 

Japanese or Spanish? Yes

So last I told you, Emma has Spanish class. Then last night, she came home speaking Japanese. I didn’t know what she was saying, so I had her speak into my Google Translate app. She was saying either “What is your name?” or “How old are you?” Or both. I was confused. So today I asked her teacher. They have...both! I can’t remember the details, but I think the teacher said they have Spanish class on Wednesday and Friday, and ‘culture class,’ where she would learn about Japanese culture, every few days, as part of a rotation with music, art, and PE. Hopefully she can keep them straight! I know enough Spanish to be able to telll the difference of which language she is speaking at least. And thank goodness for Google Translate! I have a feeling we will be using it a lot. 

Work from Culture Class...which really confused me.

Walking to school in the rain. It’s nice to be able to walk. She is definitely a California girl. Yesterday it was about 50 degrees when we were walking to school. She said it felt like winter. But tomorrow the sun comes out!