Summer of swimming.

Wow our first year on swim team and it was a lot of fun. Sydney only competed in 3 meets but she did really well. At the beginning of the season she couldn't even swim the whole length of the pool but by the end she was only touching the wall twice during her race. She had lots of fun and met some really good friends. Sydney also got a t-shirt for being a record holder in the 6 year old group for one of her races. It is not fast but she got the record for the girls at the club.
Julia on the other hand figured out how to swim by herself. I was going to start her in swim lessons but then I figured what 2 year old learns how to swim maybe next year. Well she figured it out and by the end of the summer she was jumping off the wall and swimming back to the side by herself. We had a lot of fun and especially liked going off the diving board.

Sydney's 6th Birthday

Sydney celebrated her 6th birthday at Rainbow Playsystems. It was a great location for the summer so we were not dependant on the weather and we could invite all our friends and neighbors. The party was a great time and all the kids had fun. The guest list included molly moon, Lynch's, Delaney and paige(neighbors), Burdette's, Cheng's, Claire Kube, Molly Immesote, and many other friends.
We had a small family party too.

The Norwoods come to Peoria!

Diane and the girls came to Peoria in April 2010 for almost 2 weeks. We were so happy they could come and visit while Brian was off cruising on the USS Nassau. The kids were just so happy to be able to play with each other. Diane left for 4 days to go to Chicago and take a course for her special diabetes certification so that it wouldn't expire. I survived 4 days with 2 two year olds, a four and a half year old and a 6 year old. We had a great time and I was very organized to get all those kids fed 3 times a day. That organization left with the Norwoods though.

Mommy takes a cruise!

In February of 2010 Diane Norwood, Kim Bryant and Darlene Miller took a cruise with me to the Bahamas. The day started with a call from Kim at 0545 while I was still driving to the airport, she was running up to the door to get on her plane and the lady closed it right in front of her. She then proceeded to go and buy a new ticket on another airline that would hopefully get her there in time. I arrived in Atlanta late because of mechanical difficulties and as soon as I got off the plane I went to a ticket counter far away from all the craziness surrounding my planes arrival and asked the person if I could get on the next flight to Ft. Lauderdale since I missed my flight. She got me a seat on a plane leaving in 15 minutes. I made it on and now was just worried if we could get to the boat on time. I arrived and went straight to the baggage claim and found the van people that transport us to the ship, I was the last one to arrive and the van didn't really want to wait for my luggage and I didn't know if it would make it anyway. Kim had arrived and was waiting for me on the van. My bag arrived and we made it with plenty of time. Diane and Darlene had drinks ready for us when we entered the ship and we had a relaxing 4 days. We ate great food, sat out on the desk and got some sun with goose bumps, read our kindle's, shopped and just enjoyed ourselves.
It was a great get away!

Christmas 2009

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The year of the pink motorcyles! Santa brought the girls motorcycles this year and left them under the tree. The spend the entire morning riding them upstairs and then the entire evening riding them downstairs. Julia received a jumpy jump and enjoyed jumping on that for a long time. Sydney's tummy was upset that morning so we traded off going to church without the girls and by 1030 she was feeling better and ready to open her presents. There of course were big piles of stuff from mom, dad, nana and papa so it took a while but we sat back and just watched while taking pictures.

The girls received sleds which Julia really enjoyed watching TV in and even taking a nap that afternoon. Sydney received roller blades and was in the basement trying them out immediately. She really enjoys them and is getting ready for the roller rink.
Grandma Eve and Granddaddy arrived the next week with a trunk full of presents, Christmas seems to go on forever in this house. Uncle TC and Aunt Jenn also sent a big box of presents that the girls just loved.

Julia's 2nd birthday

We had a little pizza party birthday for Julia at our house and had a great time. Mike, Hattie, Molly, Winnie, Grandpa and Margie were here to celebrate. When it came time to cut the cake after singing to the birthday girl, she wasn't going to allow that to happen. She was so excited with her Nemo cake that she wouldn't let me take it away or put a knife anywhere close to the cake. Grandpa even tried to get her to taste it so she would want to eat some but she wasn't interested. At one point we thought everyone would leave without being able to eat any cake but then I convinced her to let me cut the top of the cake. We then opened presents and Julia got lots of goodies. One of her favorite presents was Mrs. Potato head from Winnie but the best part was that Grandpa thought the hands and arms should all be in the right place but Julia didn't want them all in the right place and they kind of faught about it. It was funny to watch and made everyone laugh.
I almost forgot that on Julia's birthday morning she received a new train set from us and she loved it. She played with it that morning and then got busy flossing her teeth. I was able to capture about 100 pictures of this because we were trying to get one for the office and she was too cute that morning.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2009 was celebrated at Grandpa and Margie's house this year with most of the family and friends in attendance. Grandpa, Margie, Mike, Hattie, Molly, Collin,Ron, Deborah, Bill, Rhonda, Kelsey and Brett McCarthy. It was a nice holiday for us to be home and one of the best parts was to spend the holiday weekend at our house and we enjoyed the long weekend. Harry and I went to the UFS for the wine tasting on Saturday with Margaret and it was a good time.

Daddy Daughter Dance

The Daddy Daughter dance is one of the highlights of the school year. Harry and Sydney went shopping the weekend before and picked out the perfect dress for the event. The corsage and botineir were ordered and they dinner was planned. Sydney got to pick where to eat and of course she picked McDonald's. The night was a great time and Daddy carried his date into the house asleep. She had so much fun and can't wait to do it again.

The bike crazy madwomen!

The girls are bike crazy this spring and we have only had a handful of days which we could ride our bikes. Julia got it, you know what I mean within a couple days of nice weather this spring she officially understands how to pedal a bike. I remember when Sydney got it February 2007 when we returned from a trip to the US. It is so much fun to do a lap around our neighborhood and Julia be able to ride her bike with only a little help, she does get worn out after one lap but it is a quarter of a mile so I will give her little 2 year old legs a break. Sydney just enjoys going down the hill as fast as possible.
I hope to get my bike ready soon and put a seat on it so we can all ride this summer. Sydney is quite the little roller skater also. She got them for Christmas and has been skating in the basement for months, Julia really wants to skate too so she may be getting some for Easter or something. Anything to be like her big sister.

The things we learn at Church!

Since we arrived in Japan we have been attending church every weekend. It has become a way of life, which it should be but wasn't. While in Japan Harry converted to Cathothism and Julia also was baptized. Now we are all Catholic and enjoying our church. Sydney has started at St. Thomas the Apostle grade school last August and she really enjoys the school. We are enjoying meeting people there and getting to know other families. Last Sunday at church Sydney said to me "the people with grey or silver hair will be going to heaven soon." She has been learning about heaven a lot at school and talks about how we should all go there soon.
We like that she is teaching us prayers that we didn't know like Angel of God, which is now one of my favorite prayers and I even caught her hoola hooping and praying.

Our house!

We purchased a house in Dunlap Illinois on July 28th, 2009! It is located at
11602 Ballymore Avenue in Waterford Place. We have 4 bedrooms upstairs and 2 full bathrooms. The middle level has a large family room, kitchen with granite countertops and formal dining room. The basement is unfinshed but perfect for the girls toys, roller skating and riding our cars in during the winter. We have a TV set up and the treadmill also.
The neighbors are all so nice and there are so many kids for the girls to play with. During the summer months we spent many evenings outside playing with all our neighbors and enjoying the warm weather. Now that we have lived here for over 6months I am finally getting to organizing the basement and making piles for trash and sell. There is a neighborhood garage sale every spring so we hope to get rid of some things there. In march I am going to paint Sydney's room and she would like purple and pink so that is what it will be. I hope to paint the whole house because it was painted using flat paint originally and over time the girls have destroyed it.

Leaving Japan

We finally received our orders, May 12th, with the help of Congressman Schock's office to get things expedited. The following day we went to the out processing place on base to set up our household goods move and express shipment. They needed 10 business days from the time we filled out the paper work so we counted 10 business days and we were in business. The time it took for us to receive our orders and to actually leave the country was almost exactly one month. We arrived home to the Short's house after 24 hours of travel. The final jet lag we would experience was difficult but we made it through with lots of dvd's at 2am and lots of naps. Harry joined us the following Friday and it was nice to have the family back together. We started looking for houses that weekend and had good babysitters to help us out. Kelsey McCarthy was home from college so she was so helpful in those months to watch the girls.

Marinos Soccer Game

We went on an adventure with the O'Connor Family to a Marinos soccer game. We looked it up as best we could on the internet to figure out where there stadium was and how we were going to get there by train. We were doing well on time and made it to the stadium right as the game was to start only to find not many people at the stadium. We finally found some nice people that explained to Jen(she speaks Japanese) that the game was being played at a local park 2 train stops back. I guess Japanese teams do this and play at a smaller field from time to time. We arrived at the game at half time and still had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves. We bought many souvineurs,enjoyed Japanese stadium food, and the adults enjoyed a dollar a minute worth of beer for the half. The kids had a great time and enjoyed cheering on the teams and hopefully have great memories of our time at the soccer game.

Rakutan Eagles!

In April we were lucky enough to get tickets to a professional baseball game given to us by our good friend and professional baseball player, Rick Short. We had never met Rick but I had talked to his wife often on facebook and though we didn't know each other well in high school we had the bond of living in Japan. Rick left us tickets at the Japanese version of a will call window which we were escorted to once someone understood we had tickets saved for us by a player. We went and watched the Rakuten Eagles play the ....... We were joined by our friends the Bryants and the highlight for Kim and I was getting our picture taken with Sumo wrestlers. Unfortunately the Eagles lost but we enjoyed the roller coaster at the Tokyo Dome and a nice evening of adult dinner before heading back home on the train.

Happy 5th Birthday Sydney!

We celebrated Sydney's 5th birthday on June 14th because with jet lag June 13th was a blur. We joined all the family minus Daddy unfortunately for a party at the farm. Sydney had a great time surrounded by all her cousins though we were all still jet lagged.
This of course was Sydney's second birthday party. We celebrated in Japan at the bowling alley with many of her friends, it was also the last time she was able to see many of them.

Back in the USA!

We traveled back to the United States on June 12th 2009. We left Japan at 5:20 June 12th and arrived in Peoria like 5:30 that same day. Harry unfortunately had to travel to Seattle to process out of the Navy so we were on different flights back to the US and he stayed in Seattle for about 6 days, then joined us in Peoria. The girls did well on the trip and we had 4 seats for the 3 of us which was awesome. I did end up bringing Julia's car seat and it came in handy for her to sleep but it was great to have it in a spare seat. In all my travels back and fourth to Japan to take or not to take the car seat has occupied many hours of my preparation for the trip. The 11 hour flight went well with me watching one movie while the girls slept and the rest of the time watching the in flight monitor on the TV to see how much longer we would be on the plane. We arrived in Chicago and I had to claim all our bags, go through customs, with one tired almost 5 year old in tow and one 18 month old sleeping in her car seat in a stroller. Stating that going through customs was horrible would have been an understatement. We then traveled though the airport and finally found our way to the other terminal (there are better directions in English at Narita than at O hare). By the way this all took place with only 1 hour until our next flight was to take off. We made our difficult way through security ran towards our gate only to find out half way there that the gate had changed and we needed to run back the other way. We were the last ones on the plane and I couldn't have been happier when the doors closed the wheels were up and we were on the final leg of our journey.
We were welcomed home by Grandpa and Margie, enjoyed a nice dinner at Aggitucci's and then went home to our new place, the Short house. The Short family was kind enough to offer up there house to us to stay while we where house hunting and they remained in Japan for the baseball season. We lived there for 6 weeks and it was the greatest thing anyone did for us when we were coming back. We can never thank them enough for the kindness of opening up their house to us.

Keeping up with the girls!

I have decided to try and write a blog to keep up with the day to day things that go on here at our new house in Peoria. I kept such a good blog of our lives in Japan and I want someday the girls to realize that life for there mom and dad wasn't always a bowl of cherries.
Our life back in the US has been full of ups and downs for the adults in our family but the girls seem to have all ups. We have looked at them during our downs and know we have to steamahead and get through our downs. It is difficult to move to a new place, make friends and to leave a world that you had kind of gotten used too. We enjoy being home and close to family and things that we missed but the adjustment has been difficult for us.
Sydney started Kindergarten at St. Thomas this past august and has enjoyed making new friends at school and learning lots of new things. She also started piano lessons this past fall through the Peoria Park district. We have played 2 sessions of indoor soccer and that has been fun. She is much more aggressive that I would have thought though she doesn't totally understand the game yet but has fun and has even scored a couple of times.