Quick update: more to come

Well, it has been shamefully long since I posted on this blog!
We have arrived in Maryland and we've got the essentials set up, so I can take a bit of time to update things.

First, I'll just tell you about how things are here. It's good, but a lot to get used to :)

Our ward (church congregation) is wonderful. And they have a whole bunch of activities going on. I'm helping to plan a chili cook off, and they've got a playgroup (they go to DC regularly and hang out at all those museums), a book group, a group that meets to eat breakfast together, a temple swap group, and a shindig for every holiday it seems like.

The school has been great too. It really is like a 3 minute walk out the back gate. The 5 year-old boy next door is in Cameron's class, lucky kid. He's doing a whole lot of gluing, coloring, and cutting. Good thing he LOVES that. He says his favorite part of the school day is gym where the kids get to do gymnastics and play games. He also tells me there is "NO TALKING" at lunchtime. And if you do, then they have you go up and eat your lunch on the stage. But overall, he's loving it. I'll give you first day pictures when I get Brian to find the camera cord for uploading pictures onto the computer.

The weather- IT IS SO WET HERE, I AM GOING TO TURN INTO A FROG. It has blown me away. Not only is it super humid, it rains all the time! For a loooong time. Like, all day. I am not used to that. I miss my sunny Boulder. The mosquitos in our area are insane. The first week we were here, I got eaten alive. I counted about 30 or so mosquito bites one night. And I have a hard time resisting the urge to scratch. Despite using the Off! bug spray (7% deet), they still got me. So, no more shorts for me. And thankfully, that's helped. Everyone warned us about the heat here. But, in my little opinion, it's not that hot. It's just humid and that makes us all sweat a LOT (ESPECIALLY the already sweaty guy, Brian). Is that weird? We get sweaty, but I don't think it's that hot. Maybe I say that because it's been overcast almost every single day we've been here...?

Oh, and I think you should hear about our trip to Mount Vernon. We spontaneously decided to go check it out on Saturday. Do you know the song, "George Washington Bridge" by Sesame Street? That's the only time Cam has ever heard the name George Washington. So, as we were getting ready to leave, Brian asks Cameron, "Do you know who George Washington is?" And Cameron said, "No... does he wash bridges?" Brian and I had a good chuckle out of that. And as we were walking around Mount Vernon, Liesel was singing over and over, "George Washington Bridge...George Washington Bridge... George Washington Bridge!" Anyway, we took the tour through the mansion (in hindsight, I think that was a mistake to do with small children) and as soon as the tour finished, it started to downpour. And so, we were the Westerner suckers walking back to the car, all of us, baby included, getting thoroughly drenched. Everyone else had these big golf umbrellas or at least those expensive rain ponchos they sold in their gift store. Thankfully, none of the kids seemed to mind!

Other happenings:
- we have a large-ish Japanese Maple in the front yard that's a pretty good little tree for climbing. Cameron was playing on it and fell out and smacked his back and head on the scalloped bricks that line the tree. He sure cut open his head and I called Brian in a bit of a panic and we hurried in the car and found an urgent care place that looked at him and we were able to avoid going the stitches route and they used skin glue to patch him up. (We don't have medical insurance here yet, so that was kind of an additional stress there, but it ended up well. $145 for the whole incident. Not too shabby for out of pocket medical care, I think. I'm glad we didn't take him to the ER like we were originally going to do.)
- went for a walk this afternoon on the town path behind the house and as soon as we got people on their bikes, helmets on, baby in stroller, out the gate, and onto the path, it started to rain. Again. And then I yelled out loud, "IT IS TOO WET HERE!" I just wanted to go for a stinkin' walk, man. So I made everyone go anyway. It rained-sprinkled on us, and we waited under a tree or two and then the school gazebo. As we came home and were trying to put all the bikes and stroller back in the shed, we hear this loud, wet, rushing sound. I looked toward our street, expecting a car to drive by on the wet road. Um, nope. It was a heavy downpour. You could HEAR it! Brian made this mad dash into the shed that startled me, so then I yelled, "HURRY! Get in!" to the kids. And Liesel got mad at me for scaring her like that, poor thing. And it did it again as we were trying to get inside too.

This photo is from our Oregon fam reunion at Lincoln City. (I couldn't bear to write a blog post without pictures. So here's one. That doesn't have anything to do with what I wrote, but oh wells.)

 I hope to give that its own post soon too.