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The desert smells funny when it gets wet.

“Ben, can you ride a sheep?”
“Um. I dunno. How fast does a sheep go?”

I think I can officially say that Lucas is crawling! It’s more of that army crawl, but still a crawl. He can get to whatever he wants. Nothing can stop Loco Lucas (crazy Lucas in spanish, very fitting for the area we live). Here’s proof:

I swear I put him NEXT to the bin! He crawled his way into his little toy bin. Of course, he was screaming for help, so Mommy went and grabbed the camera! I told him to get used to this!!! He is just too cute for words!

“Ben, why are you up so early?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“Come here and give me a hug. What was your dream about?”
“I got took away.”
“By who?”
“A hedgehog.”
“…”

We’ve started to make friends out here. Yeah! Of course, it is kind of weird to ask your new friends to pose for pictures for your blog. So we take pictures of their kids instead. That’s much more normal.

Yes, I know, he’s 8 months old today, but I thought you would like to see his 7 month pictures! Here you go! (Sorry so late)

Too Darn cute for words! He loves his binkie!!

The shirt says it all!

I just want to eat him! There is a 7 on his shirt, but it didn’t come out good! It looked better on the camera while I was taking them.

I was going through my pictures and realized that we didn’t post any to ghentblog. Well, here are just a few for you all to see!

Yes, that is my 7 month old standing! He LOVES to play standing up, but he can’t quite get himself up without help.

Here’s Sam playing at a new park we found! They had 3 playgrounds to play on! We will be back!

Ben climbing a rock wall and Sam’s not too sure if he wants to go down that way!

Ben loved the wall with the rope to climb! He did it over and over again!

Me: “You realize that there are now five of us in this bed.”
Heather: “We’re going to need a king.”
Ben: “Lucas can be the king!”

Today marks four months working in California. I read somewhere that the first four months are the hardest, that you will doubt your move, hate yourself, wonder what you were thinking, and generally be stressed the heck out. I can say, true, true, true and true. The person who was writing also said that those kinds of things are completely normal, and to wait until at least your fourth month to gauge your decision, to gain some perspective and then evaluate your position.

So, here goes. First, I miss everyone. Terribly. Way more than I could have thought I would. One thing that I would change about how we moved is that I’d have saved enough money to make a trip back there before Christmas. Alas, we did not and now we can only hope that someone comes and visits us. Hint, hint. Seriously… HINT, HINT. Unfortunately, the whole sewer debacle and having to buy appliances and a car when we moved out here put us a bit behind financially. Overall, we’re making out better than we were in NY, so that’s a plus.

Work is good. This assignment is definitely a stretch for me. I knew absolutely nothing about the field I was getting myself into, but I am learning something every day. Working with what I’m working with (I’m not supposed to say anything about it in a public space) is really awesome. Trust me when I say you can all sleep a little easier knowing that this stuff is going to be out there keeping us safe. Assuming Obama and Gates get their shit together and stop cutting defense budgets to fund their little social experiments. Obama Care won’t do us much good if we all end up speaking Mandarin.

I think Heather and the boys are adjusting to the move. Ben is excited about starting school and soccer next month. We’ve been working on his reading and math skills to make sure he’s not behind after the few weeks of Kindergarten he missed. I don’t think he has anything to worry about, though. And Sam starts school shortly after Ben. He’s a little smarty pants, too. Heather works with him on pre-school learning stuff and he picks it up like crazy. And don’t get me started on Lucas. He’s gotta be the cutest little momma’s boy on the west coast, I swear. And they are growing every day. I can see it… they look older every time I walk through the door. All three of them are constantly surprising me. “I didn’t know he could do that” is coming out of my mouth constantly.

I’ve turned into one of those fathers OBSESSED with saving on utility bills. With a house this big, I feel it is my duty to my wallet and the environment to make sure we don’t waste water, gas or electricity. Especially electricity. Of course, a $400 electric bill will do that to you. Thanks, Edison. Since last month, Heather has been a real trooper, only turning on the A/C when it gets really unbearable. It’s not unusual for our house to be 80+ degrees. Of course, its dry and we have ceiling fans, so that makes it somewhat bearable. That and I spend most of my day in a 68 degree air-conditioned office.

The days and weeks blend together out here in the desert. It’s hard to explain, but it really becomes a blur. Back east, we had weather to break things up. You plan your activities around bouts of rain… when to mow the lawn, when to have a party, when to go shopping and when to chill inside. We haven’t had that here. It has rained almost none. And when I say almost none, I mean I have seen literally… no, seriously, literally a dozen raindrops since we moved here. Back there, you can sweep out the garage and the rain will wash it away in a few days. Here, it stays FOREVER. And the wind just pushes more of it against the house.

And we’ve got pigeons. Friggin’ flying rats. They shit all over my stucco. One of my home-ownerish duties will be to pigeon proof the house and then scrub the pigeon crap off of my roof and walls. Whee! Come for a visit, won’t you? I’ll give you a toothbrush and we’ll make a day out of it.

So, overall, what do I think about the move after four months? I haven’t really cleared anything up, have I? I just kind of rambled for the last 748 words (thanks WordPress word counter). I guess four months just isn’t enough to be sure. I’ll let you know in another 4 months when WE COME HOME FOR A VISIT.

I can’t stop referring to back east as “home”. Don’t read too much into it, okay? Eventually, you will all be the backwards crazies who don’t know any better that living in California is the only place on the planet anyone should ever want to live. Because that tends to be the attitude out here. “They do it HOW in New York?! That’s just dumb.” From the DMV to the doctor to the school. We must be the first people to ever move here from out-of-state. Anyway, enough of that.