Luminatis find a home

Here's our new house! This is the side view and shows our and our neighbors carport. For those who are unfamiliar with the military, these are very typical military homes. (Kate is waving hello to you from our driveway.)

Here is a front view. The "courtyard" is ours as well as the shed. There's lots of great storage in this house. Kate likes to call the shed "the barn" which is pretty funny. The ocean is behind us and you can just see strips of blue on really clear days. (And there's that cute little girl following me again...maybe she needs a home?)

What a joy to be settled and not be moving around anymore. It's funny--on July 19 we moved out of our townhome in VA and on Sept 19 we moved in to this home in CA. Whew! Our current house is about half the size of our old house, so most of our furniture is waiting in the carport, to be stored at a later date. It certainly is a bit of an adjustment living here, but we keep up frequent visits to the beach (and commissary) which are wonderful additions to life in Monterey. It's very foggy most of the time but when the sun shines through it's just gorgeous. Jon started classes this week and he's thrilled. We keep kidding him about his starting 21st grade. What an overachiever! Well, every PhD needs another masters degree, don't you think?

We are also thrilled that both moms are here this week to help us finish setting up the house. They have been such a magnificent help. I can't begin to list all their fantastic accomplishments, but will attempt to at a later date. Thank you so much to both Nana and Gram! We miss you Grandpa and Pops.

And one of our newest additions: Kate in her big girl bed. She was so excited about her bed when the movers were moving the stuff in she kept shouting at them "my big girl bed with blankets and pillows!" It was great. They laughed and smiled at her, and how could one not? She and Ellie are sharing a room, but considering Ellie is still having trouble sleeping through the night, Ellie is consigned, once again, to the closet. We're working on it, though!