The Last of our Brooklyn Adventure

I stopped updating the blog for so long I missed out on posting some really cute pics of the kids squeezing the last bit of Brooklyn in before we moved. We went to Coney Island and did Astroland. Keahi liked the little roller coaster but it was too much for Jarom. The free fall ride Keahi insisted on riding was also a poor pick. But it was all very entertaining--and expensive--and I'm glad we made it there. And we finally made it to the sea lion show at the aquarium. And Jarom even got a kiss out of it. We tried to do a 3D motion ride with Keahi--Plante Earth--but he again got freaked out. It wasn't as bad as the Monsters of the Deep Iz took him on before, but I guess even gentle humpback whales are intimidating when they're swimming right toward you. I thought it was awesome-especially the jets of water spray and the bubble machine. Apparently another little boy was even more frightened by all of this than Keahi since he peed in his pants. I gave my only diaper to the mom, crossing my fingers that Jarom held off on number 2 till we got home.

Of course we had to return once more time to the Bronx Zoo and ride a camel since the Skyfari had been shut down. Keahi finally warmed up to feeding the farm animals and we all got front row seats to a peacock mating dance.

And we all loved the new exhibit Fly, Jump, Run at the Brooklyn Children's Museum. It actually made us want to get a Wii. So here's some of my favorite moments from our last few weeks in Brooklyn.

Jarom's subconscious view of the world

Took me 2 months to finally finish this with pics.

Jarom is far more into pretending and imagining things than Keahi was at this age. He surprises me with his comments as we walk around town. He got all excited and started babbling about all the Wal-es and it took me a while to figure out he was talking about this fence.

And he calls this stoop's decorative handrail peanut butter(actually here's a pic of "Nutella" since I forgot to take a pic of the peanut butter one--which was lighter and more stylized). I love the way his mind works. (Of course, then you compare his seeing pretend peanut butter to Keahi's exclamation that a particular tree looks like bacteria.) And it's even more fascinating how he sees his family.

He is Cars. He doesn't call himself Lightning McQueen. Just Cars. The title of the movie, the center of everything. Then he calls me Chic--which I'm taking as a comment about my gender (even though he's never heard of girls being called chicks) instead of a comment on how much of a bully I am. Iz is Doc Hudson. Again, very appropriate. And Keahi is Mr. The King. Yeah, Keahi's got no problem with his designation.

This is what he calls us all the time. When I call him Jarom he says, "No, I'm not Jarom. I'm Cars." Or if I'm lucky he remembers to ask politely for me to call him by what he will legally be called as soon as he's capable of changing it. But recently he decided we were also like a family of planets. He quickly called me Venus. Hey, I'm okay with that one. Iz is Mars. Jarom is Earth. And Keahi is Jupiter. Yeah, somehow without any knowledge of Roman gods Jarom has pegged us pretty well. How'd he do that?

Grosse Pointe _________

I like John Cussak and I like Grosse Pointe Blank. And now I love living in Grosse Pointe, MI. For those unfamiliar with the area, we live in Grosse Pointe City and are surrounded by GP Park, GP Farms, GP Woods, and GP Shores. We're a few blocks from Lake Saint Claire and following a detour off the freeway on my here from NY I almost headed into Canada--our very, very close neighbors.

So, first the house. It's 2 stories--3 including the basement. Three bedrooms, 1.5 baths. We have a basically unused living room since we couch potatos spend most of our time in the TV room which opens onto our deck and backyard. Hands down, my favorite thing about the house is the basement. When we first came inside the boys ran down there since they knew it was designated to be their playroom. Their eyes lit up when the saw how much room they had to run wild. Aside from Keahi's need to inform me of every single spider he sees down there, it's been a boon these last 2 weeks in helping me get us settled in. And now with the new firetruck playhut/bookshelf thing (see vid), Keahi has multiple places in which to do quiet reading time every afternoon. I bet he's gotten some funny looks from passing neighbors who look into our covered porch area to see a little boy sitting on top of a bookshelf reading by himself. That's my climber boy.

I also love that Keahi chose the pink room as the boys bedroom. So metrosexual.

One of the few downsides of our new place is that basically all the doors have issues shutting all the way. Oh and all the floorboards creak. Not a few scattered ones easily avoidable. Every. Single. One. At least we'd hear any potential robbers.

Garage sales have really worked out for us so far since my first time out I got the computer desk I'm sitting at, a picnic table/bench for the kids, and tons of fun new games including the Cat in the Hat one we did on Monday for FHE. I am really glad we got those 2 free couches in Brooklyn right before we left though cause mostly the free furniture I've seen here all come from the 60s or 70s. It's been really nice organizing and figuring out how to best use our new space. It's all the non-house issues that have been killing me: MI license, car registration, (anything to do with gov. branches), registering Keahi for school, and all the large and minute details of moving to a new state. But at least I can relax in my big new house on my comfy "new" couch and veg for a bit when I get frustrated with people telling me what other steps I need to do first before completing the one I was working on.

Now for the neighborhood. This place is fantastic. People smile and say good morning. We've met our neighbors on either side and they seem really nice and helpful. And understanding of our two active boys and all the extra noise involved. The first thing we did after waking up in our new place was go to our city park to get our photo id. Every GP ___ has their own park and pool and facilities and you have to have a resident pass to get in or be a guest of a resident. I'm excited to try out all the places since the playgroup at church rotates through them all. I'm already impressed with ours. Of course, coming from Prospect Park, no other park seems to really deserve the title. But this one has a large grassy area full of picnic benches, a nice playscape with a couple of play structures and fun excavation ride-on things in the sand, and 2 pools--a regular one with diving areas on the side and a large kid pool with tons of water features. Plus after you swim you can take a warm shower and change in the beautiful, completely atypical community center bathroom. High ceilings. Granite countertops. Impeccible floors. Rows of private shower stalls and separate, large changing rooms. W-o-w. BBQing on Independance Day at this park was awesome. I never worried about leaving our things at our picnic area while we swam for hours since only residents can come and judging from the houses--er, mansions--er, estates surrounding the park we are the poorest members there.

Aside from that park, there's a fun Tot Lot 2 blocks from our house with lots of free tennis courts that we'll have to check out after we find some free/cheap rackets. There's free ice rinks in the winter and lots to do in the summer. I can't wait to visit the Henry Ford Museum and I saw that the Detroit Historical Museum is free this month. And while I'm missing out on Shakespeare in the Park back in Brooklyn and all the other awesome free things, we do have a weekly free concert right around the corner in the Village shopping area. Speaking of shopping, we are 3 doors down from the Trader Joes which on the strip of shops including Einstein Bagels, TCBY (with $.99 waffle cone Wednesdays), Krogers, Ace (the nicest and largest one I've ever seen, offering complimentary coffee and popcorn--yeah, the kids love that), and some restaurants and clothings stores. Everything is closeby. And with a vehicle, we can always head to the bigger Krogers 10min away or hit the Chuck E Cheese 15 min away--which we did yesterday and I won the 250ticket super bonus my first time....I may have found my hidden talent.

Let's see, what else......Keahi's school (once I get him registered, anyway) is one street away. You can get a pound of strawberries for one dollar. Keahi and Jarom scampered off to primary and nursery on Sunday, no problem. And I'm finally getting around to updating the blog. Life is sweet.

Our First Big Move

Since Keahi was 2 we've moved.....7 times. But this was the biggest move. The only one in which we took any furniture. I remember when we moved to Brooklyn we were so distraught in the taxi on the way to the Richards' place. I seriously almost broke down in tears. The city looked huge and ugly and most of all unfamiliar. In retrospect I think the two biggest factors were the quick week to prepare for the move and the temporary nature of our living situation both those first few days when we bounced around from the Richards to the Palmers till our place was available and the 2 month lease deadline looming over me, shouting at me that I had to find some place else quickly. In any event, with this move to Michigan we felt much more at ease and prepared (as much as possible) for this new stage in our lives.

Speaking of prepared, I'd thought I'd planned out rather well the game plan for the big move, scheduling the moving truck pick-up just before street sweeping so we'd be assured a long parking spot in front of the apartment. Of course, my planning didn't take into account Budget's inferior scheduling skills. It took 2 hours to get the truck and 45 minutes of waiting around for them to tell us one was being picked up in Queens for us and it would take 45minutes longer. We were missing street sweeping times and cutting into our moving time and having to get creative with the kids and parking (thank you soooo much Nicole) because Budget just stinks. I think we'll go back to Penske in the future. Anyhow, that ended up being the biggest snag in the move. When we brought the truck to the apartment we discovered that Ben Tano, Julie's dad, and ______ had already moved most of our stuff onto the sidewalk for us. Fantastic men. The usual moving aches and pains and loss of sleep ensued but I thought it went pretty smoothly.

Of course, with the loss of sleep we didn't head out at 6:30am as planned. But we made it out by 8:30am and made great time. Both Iz and I only stopped twice to fill up gas and I'm amazed I didn't have to make any additional stops for food or the potty. I kept asking Keahi if he needed to go but he said he wanted to keep going and not get out of the van. So, we stopped for a total of 45minutes the entire 11 hour journey. The boys were pretty good about it, too. And we got to the house ahead of Iz. I have to call our first long road trip a success. Especially since I never even came close to falling asleep which was my biggest fear. I guess going 85mph was engaging enough to keep me awake. The van done good.

And we were amazed at the turnout when we got here. Cameron Grange was here with the help of 3 elders and the YM president. They made quick work of our stuff. And later the bishop, yw president and some of the youth came to welcome us to the area. They even picked up some pizza for us and Cameron took me shopping at Trader Joe's. Seriously, people are awesome. I love the midwest.

I wish I'd taken pictures of us cleaning out our old apartment or moving into our new one. I wish I had a video of the kids' first look at their new playroom. I really, really wish I had a picture of the ghetto-est Budget Rental office in Dearborn where we dropped off our truck. Maybe I'll have to go back just to show you what both Iz and I passed by the first time around--me because I thought it looked like an abandoned outhouse--and only stopped because of the lone truck parked there.

I miss Brooklyn, the ward, and all the awesome people we got to know there. For the first week or so Jarom kept suddenly breaking down and crying to go back to his "trapezoid house." But we're settling in and we do love it here. I'm grateful (most of the time--when not actively moving) we've been able to live in so many different places. So many different kinds of beautiful.