Socialism Rocks!

The girls and I slept in this morning while Jeramy headed to work. It was good to do something normal! :)

Once we got up and got dressed the three of us had breakfast down in the hotel restaurant. Ryleigh had hot chocolate. I think the favorite thing about this place to her is that they serve hot chocolate almost everywhere that we go. She says that it makes her ears warm...so cute. After breakfast we did a little car investigating, but had to rush back to the hotel so Jeramy could go take a physical to make sure he is fit enough to visit a rig in the North Sea. He passed just fine and dandy and we even scored some good preschool names from his doctor. Not that we can visit any tomorrow, it's going to be a holiday. Canada Day, which is sort of like our 4th of July. After his doctor's visit he came and picked us back up at the hotel and we headed to the local university for my appointment with the graduate studies department. I had a great meeting and even got to meet a few profs from the Geography department. I'm feeling totally psyched and it is going to be amazingly affordable. I'm going to shoot for enrollment in the spring semester.

After we wrapped up there we went to a few more car dealerships and I picked my ride.....mama got a Land Rover. It too was amazingly affordable, much cheaper than the Toyota Highlander I had my heart set on...and better gas mileage! Then Jeramy sealed the deal on his vehicle and the poor boy that has been driving a Jetta ever since I started staying home finally got his Tundra. For those that remember him, Dusty Wayne (brown stepside truck from our younger years) has finally been replaced. We wrapped up the day with dinner and now we're getting ready for bed and regrettably, starting to pack.

I can't believe how quickly the week has gone. We've accomplished most all of our goals. The only thing that we haven't gotten to is looking for a preschool, but since tomorrow is a holiday, that will have to wait until we return. Tomorrow we plan on just joining in on the festivities and enjoying our last day here....until next time.

Pictures for today are courtesy of the current occupants of our future home. This is from last fall and is something that we hope to see again this fall. Enjoy!

Lighthouses, Whales and More Eating!

This morning we got up and walked across the street to a little coffee shop for breakfast and coffee. Then we jumped in the truck and decided to just start driving. Next thing you know we were one cove over where there was a working lighthouse and a museum. Jeramy and Ryleigh got out and hiked up the hill to see them both while I sat in the truck with sleeping Avery. They were gone for about an hour but that didn't bother me at all because I had the whole ocean spread out before me to look at. While I was busy looking I saw a bunch of whales come up and blow spary in the air. A couple of times I ever caught a glimpse of a fin or two. Awesome.

After driving around we headed downtown to this little fish place where they served fried cod tongues. Yeah, no thank you. We did chow down on some fish and chips and pasta. After doing a little shopping down there, we looked around at a few car lots and then headed back to the hotel. Ryleigh and I went for a great swim in the indoor heated pool and then we went out for dinner. I swear I've gained 5 pounds this week with all the eating out!

My camera went dead today so here are a few pics that I took yesterday of the town and few things that we've learned since being here:

• St. John's received the first trans-Atlantic wireless signal ever sent in 1901


• The lighthouse that we saw today is the eastern most spot in North America


• St. John's has more bars per capita than any other city in Nort America


• Newfoundland is 2 1/2 hours ahead of CST.


• In Canada a corn dog is called a pogo stick.


• The sun comes up at 4 AM in this town during this time of the year!

What a Day!

Last night we all four slept for 11 and 1/2 hours! With all that's going on I think that we just needed to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Today we had breakfast in our room and then set off to visit the current occupants of our soon to be home. First though, we stopped at Wal-Mart and, if you do not like Wal-Mart in the States, you will hate Wal-Mart here. The lines to check out were horrible and they seem to have just accepted that fact because there were longer than normal ailes roped off Six Flags style to accomodate the lines. So, that was fun.

We also stopped at a look-out point while the fog briefly let up and got to look out over the Atlantic a bit. Soooo beautiful.

So, here is our (sort of, we're renting) new house. It's an adorable little three bedroom home with a hell of a back yard, complete with a hot tub. The current occupants are from the U.K. and will be heading back in July. They told us that they've had several moose walk up into the backyard and there are always lots of squirrels, rabbits and birds visiting for a bit of food. In the pics you can see the house, the kitchen (the windows look out into the backyard), the backyard and last but not least, our Ski Doo. Yes, we are now the proud owners of a snow-mobile.

Doesn't it look fun!!! We can't wait to hit the trails in this baby!

The one thing that we didn't get to do today was find me a vehicle as all the dealerships are closed on Saturdays. Hopefully we can get to that on Monday or Tuesday. Oh yeah, we also did a little exploring in downtown where we had dinner. Hopefully we'll get to do a little more exploring down there tomorrow. It's really a cute little piece of the town, full of small shops and eateries.

That's it for today. We're so glad to have the housing issue solved. I don't think we could possible asked for anything more perfect. It might actually be nicer than our current house. There are even some children in the surrounding homes that are Ryleigh's age and a park, though not near as grand as our duck park, a few homes down.

On the home front, we have sold our Tahoe (thanks dad) and still have the Jetta for sale. We are also officially selling our eight year old washer and matching dryer. Both are in great working condition and the washer is a larger capacity washer. Let me know if you're interested!

Off to put the babies to bed. Love to all, the montys

Pictures from Today

These are some pictures taken from our hotel window:

And these were taken about a half mile from our future house:

We're Here!

We made into St. John's last night without one single major issue! We wrapped up in customs around 11:30 and headed to the hotel. The girls were all sorts of wound up, but we got them down eventually. Out our hotel window we could tell that there was water, but this mornng revealed so much more.

The water outside our window is actually St. John's Bay. Just beyond the bay you can barely see the ocean. Barely because this morning the whole city was covered in fog and there was a slight drizzle. We're told that this is pretty normal around here. So, basically, when you go to the grocery store you don't sweat a gallon walking from the car to the produce (as in Houston), but you will need a rain jacket. Sounds like a fair trade to me!

The architecture here is amazing and the terrain is sort of like Austin. There are lots of ups and downs when you drive. We're in Jeramy's office right now, but we're about to go see our potential house. I also need to go buy some socks for my poor sockless baby. It's about 58 degrees here right now and the baby, she owns no socks. Don't really need them when you live where you are constantly coated in a warm blanket of 100 percent humidity.

I have taken some pictures and will take more today and post tonight. Off to explore!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

It's 11:51pm, all three of our bags are packed and in just 7 hours a car will show up at our house to take Ryleigh, Avery and I to the airport. Jeramy has been in St. John's since Sunday and tomorrow we will join him.

I'm a little nervous about tomorrow. I have gone over the entire day in my head over and over. I have made lists upon lists over the past few weeks and have checked and rechecked to make sure that every item has been packed. Everything should be fine. Just fine. Really. If I tell myself this enough, it will be so. It must be so. Fine. Fine and Dandy. Just a little nervous.

So, thnk of us. I'm sure that it will all be fine and if someone cries on the plane, well, they won't be the first child to cry on the plane. They won't even be the first child of mine to cry on the plane. Oh, and yes, I will soooo be bragging about the great weather on this blog while I'm there.

That Crazy Internet

I came across one of those random internet polls today. The poll asked: "Do you think you are a better/same/worse mother/father than your mother/father?"

My answer: I try to equal that woman every day.

Strange thing is, if five years ago, I would have come across this poll: "Do you think that you will be a better/same/worse mother/father than your mother/father?"....my answer would have been so incredibly different.

Amazing what children and time can teach you.

I love you mom...this is hard.

But, if in the end, I end up with daughters as fabulous as you did, it'll all be so worth it!

:)

One of MY favorite things

AMC's Mad Men is one of the best shows that I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever. Yes, it's that good.

You can read more about it at amctv.com, but it breaks down like this. Set in the early 1960's, the main character is an advertising exec in Manhatten. He has a home in a suburbs, carefully tended by his doting wife, two children and a dog. His wife and his social life have little to do with each other and the only women in his office are secretaries. The show captures so much of the era from smoking in the hospital, down to the way the women shape their fingernails.

I highly recommend, though it's a little racy for the kiddos. They're running the first season on July 20th starting at noon with the new season kicking off on July 27th. All I can say if no matter where I'm living on July 27th, there WILL be a TiVo(DVR), oh yes, there will be TiVo.

Avery Milestones

Avery has achieved full speed with her crawling. There are not too many places in the house that are out of her reach. She's even doing a great job at pulling up on the couch. I can't believe that it's already time to lower the bed in her crib so that she can't pull up and fall out. She's eating a pretty good assortment of solid food. Her favorites are peaches and bananas, but she eats sweet potatoes, avocado, peas, carrots, yogurt, cereal and a few others.

Jeramy left today for Canada. He lands tonight and the girls and I will join him on Thursday. We might have already found a house that his company currently has under lease, so that's one less thing to have to worry about. My dad has decided to buy our Tahoe and Rocky is currently at my sister's house for a test run.

So, all is well and we're just chugging right along around here. Avery is in bed and Ryleigh and I are cuddled up watching Pocahantas right now.

Chillin'

The girls and I drove up to Arlington yesterday and are spending some quality time with Aunt Becca and UNCLE BLAKE!! I write it that way because that's the only way that I can express the excitement that is in Ryleigh's voice when she says UNCLE BLAKE!! Those two are such great friends and have spent some great time together doing things around the house and out and about.

We will head back to Sugar Land on Saturday, just in time to see Daddy off on Sunday. He's heading up to St. John's to get acquainted with the place before we get up there on Thursday. We've gotten in touch with a realtor that has already started sending us links to potential homes. Hopefully we'll be able to see several next week and at least one of them will jump out at us. It's going to be weird looking for a rental again after two glorious years of home ownership. I just don't know how I'm going to adjust to not being reponsible for fixing the roof when it leaks, having to buy a new oven when the old one craters or having to watch some fat dude stick a line down the sewer trap to clear up the line. On second thought, maybe I'll be able to adjust just fine.

Aggieland

Last week the whole family spent the day up in College Station seeing some old friends and visiting some old stomping grounds. We got there around lunch time and had some nice greasy hamburgers at Fitzwilly's and then went around town visiting some various friends. At one point we were driving across campus and had a this conversation:


Jenn: "Look Jeramy, there's a corp guy all dressed up! Turn around, Ryleigh would love to see a real Aggie"


Jeramy: "Okay" (turns the car around)


Jeramy: "Look Ryleigh, there's an Aggie!"


Ryleigh: "I know dad, I saw him when we were driving the other way"


Apparently she's an old pro at this whole Aggie spotting business.


We ended the visit with dinner at Wings and More with one of Jeramy's grad school buddies and his family. It was a great visit overall. I always feel like I'm home when I pull into that town. We realized the other day that there's a good chance we may not be able to watch an Aggie football game for several years. Yikes, how ever we will make it through the fall!

Our Big Announcement

Some major things have been happening for us and our family. Shortly after we made the decision for me to stay home we decided to put in for an international assignment with Jeramy's company. We've always wanted to go international at some point and decided that now is a great time to do that. After months of talks with Jeramy's company our assignment came through.

We're moving to Canada!! St. John's, Newfoundland to be exact. We are very excited about this move. We feel like it's going to be a great thing for the girls, a great move for Jeramy's career and there is even a graduate program in St. John's that is of interest to myself.

We met with a realtor last night and she had some great things to say about our house. We're hoping to get it on the market in about a week. Jeramy will be taking a trip to St. John's in two weeks for about a week. He'll be taking a look at some housing options and getting a feel for the place. After Ryleigh's birthday party on July 12th, the whole family will be heading up for a week long trip to secure a home, find Ryleigh a daycare and to sort out a few other things. After that, it's all about the packing and shipping. We get a 40 ft. container to fill with our things which will go by sea and 500 lbs. will be shipped by air. 40 ft. is not a lot when you're looking at a whole house worth of stuff. So, we'll be doing some thinning out over the next few weeks. We'll also be selling the vehicles at some point. (2003 Tahoe and 2006 Jetta if anyone is interested) We're still on the fence about Rocky. He refuses to go outside when it's 40 degrees here, not sure how he would take to the snow. Plus, there's the trip that he would have to make. My sister is considering fostering him while we're gone, but we'll just have to see.

So, that's it in a nutshell. We are incredibly excited but it is a huge thing to be staring in the face. There is much to be done from washing windows to choosing a new bank (we're still using good ol' Aggieland Credit Union). Also there is the enormous task of sorting through all of our things. To take all the things that we've accumulated over 8 years of co-habiting and try to squeeze them into a 40 ft. container is kind of surreal.

And no, my mom is not thrilled...that's the first thing everyone seems to ask when we tell someone we're moving overseas. But, we'll be seeing her as much as possible. And, there is the internet, oh wonderful, beautiful internet.

Keep checking our blog as I plan on documenting all the ups and the surely to be downs of making this move. Pray for us and celebrate with us this great new adventure in our lives!

All our love, the montgomery clan

Feeling Enlightened

I know, 3 posts in one day, kind of crazy. I've had some wonderful sleeping kids today, so this is what you get. And now, now is 10:46pm and I'm up alone because Ryleigh didn't have a nap and went down at 7:45, then went Avery at 8:30, then went Jeramy at 9:30. So, it's just me searching the internet and then I had a moment that I wanted to write about.

I've wrote about it before. About how the art of writing is going to shit. About how kids today think that "What is up?" is spelled "Wuz up?". Becuase, that's the way that you text those words and it gets much worse.

I'm reading a book right now titled "The World Without Us" by Alen Weisman. AWESOME book. I don't think I've ever read anything so comprehensively informative. In it, Weisman describes the salt domes in New Mexico that are currently being used as a dump site for this nation's radioactive waste, something that I've heard about before. He goes on to describe how once these domes are full, that they will be sealed and that warning signs will be posted warning future cultures of what lurks below. However, languages tend to only last about 500-600 years on this earth, so 25,000 years from now, when the waste will just begin to lose a fraction of its radioactivity, there will need to be a way to warn future inhabitants about the dangers of digging up this death dump. Weisman doesn't describe this, but I've read elsewhere that the plan is to post a sign of a man digging with an "X" over him. Genius, that should do it just fine. Because as a human, when I'm told not to do something without further explanation, my initial reaction is to totally walk away....NOT!

Anyways, so I read this and was thinking, how do languages manage to diappear in a mere 500-600 years?? Then, tonight, I was surfing the web and thought I would look in on my 16 year old cousin's myspace page. The answer just started blaring at me in the form of comment posts like this:

yepp.suree did. she txted backk 1nce andd then stoppedtxting mee.?? it was kindaa werid.woo mr..ii got a bonee 2 pickk w/yu..but ii really can't say over commentsyu know..lol

Seriously.....what???? Is that English???? People, I present to you, the deterioration of the current English language as we know it. And, you saw it here first. 500-600 years from now, I'm totally going to get to say...I told you so!!!!

Last night I went to put Ryleigh to bed while Jeramy jumped in the shower. He sat Avery down on the floor with a few toys and this was the result. We just stood over her not really knowing what to do next, but I did go ahead and pick her up and get her in her own bed.

Summer, Summer, Summer!

We've had a great first week of the summer. At least the girls and I have...it's budget season for daddy. On Monday we went to the zoo, which sounds so much simplier than a day at the zoo is for the girls and I. It was a trip that I thought about for a week, all the things that would have to be done. We were riding in with a friend and her two children and meeting up with our MOPS group. So, the back seats had to be put in the Tahoe and Ryleigh's extra car seat had to be installed for her friend. I needed to pack lunches and water, make sure to put sunscreen on the girls, pack extra clothes and grab our zoo membership card. The truck needed to be gassed up and I would definitely need some coffee. It all came together and we had a great day and wonderful nap when we got home. On Tuesday we went to a little water park at a local public park. Ryleigh had a blast and Avery got some sun too. On Wednesday we had one of Ryleigh's friends over for a play date and yesterday we went to the park, then had lunch with daddy, then headed up to the new outlet mall in Cypress and got Ryleigh some new shoes and me a swim suit (grrrrr). The pool opens during the week on Monday, so we're looking forward to that next week. Ryleigh starts her gymnastics and dance lessons next week. She's really looking forward to that. We had a play date scheduled for today, but we decided that staying in our pajamas is way more fun. Not to mention, there is much laundry to be done! As always, laundry, laundry and more laundry.