Nick and Jen Lloyd

My new favorite thing that Jonah does is when he gives a big cheesy grin and scrunches up his shoulders for emphasis…silly.

Met my good friend Rachel in Philadelphia this weekend…it’s the halfway point between us. I haven’t seen her in two years, but every time I see her it’s like no time has passed at all. Love this girl. We walked all over the city chatting away and stopping at random places for lunch, hot chocolate, and snacks. She’s engaged to be married next November, sadly I won’t be able to make it…I’ve heard Jewish weddings are a blast.

At one point while we were walking around we came across this street where all the cars were stopped and spaced out strangely…even though the light was green none of them moved or even honked (they loooove to honk in Philly). It was like the twilight zone. We stepped through the cars and all the drivers just stared straight ahead. We asked a woman standing nearby what the heck was going on…they were filming a movie, “safe”…maybe we’re in it!

We have been wanting to try medieval times for awhile now. It was fun, the food was mostly meat with no utensils. Followed by some great entertainment. My favorite was probably the fancy horses that could do neat tricks like jump up(all four hooves off the ground)and dance around. I was expecting more jousting, but they didn’t do much of that. (Maryland Renn fair had awesome jousting so I was a little sad they didn’t do it at medieval times…) Jonah liked it, he did pretty well. We did have to give him his binkie, but he made a friend, the old lady sitting next to him paid more attention to him then the show! It was cute. We cheered for our blue knight and booed at the green knight who in turn stuck out his tongue at our section a few times.

At what point in your life is it time to start having Christmas on your own? I stress out so much over what to do for Christmas every year. This year we had a plan in place, we were going to stay home. Then we found out we would be leaving for Italy in March. We will probably be there for the next three years, so I found myself re-evaluating our holiday plans. But it doesn’t seem like a financially smart decision for us right now to spend $1000 on plane tickets to get home when we just saw everyone only a few months ago. At the same time though, should we decide to come home from Italy at any point, those tickets run $1000 a piece…for three of us that’s a bit painful. So I think we will probably be sticking with the plan at this point. We may try to get back west in February, when the tickets are cheaper than holiday ones. But we’ll see.

Then there are the brothers…Cody is out on his mission and won’t be back until June or August. So we won’t be seeing him for five years! This might happen with Taylor as well…we are scheduled to be in Italy until after Taylor turns 19…

The moral of this story is, don’t move so far away from family unless you are a millionaire!!! haha. We do miss and love everyone…wish we could see your faces more often.

This Thanksgiving Jen, Jonah and I made the long drive from our home in Maryland to my Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Steve’s house in Cincinnati Ohio. We started out the day before Thanksgiving around 7pm and didn’t make it there until around four in the morning. I was pretty tired by the time we got there but Jen woke up for the last few hours and helped me stay alert. The next morning after all three of us got some good sleep, we headed upstairs to say “Hello” to our gracious hosts. Jonah was at first weary of their Yorkiepoo Sammy, but quickly warmed up to her as soon as Sammy stopped being so excited!
As you can see, Uncle Steve greeted us with a calm disposition.He quickly regained his composure though, and began to slice up the turkey! This year they brined the turkey, which made it about the moistest, most succulent turkey Jen or I had ever tasted!Soon we found ourselves sitting down to a traditional Thanksgiving spread, complete with food, family, new friends, and good conversation.After dinner we all played Catchphrase, adults vs. children. It goes without saying the adults wiped the floor with their kids.In my mind the highlight of the evening came when we played a game in which a paper bag was set on the floor and you had to pick it up with your mouth without touching the ground with any body part other than your feet. Even Jonah played (albeit from mimicking and no real understanding of the rules, but it was cute non-the-less).


The game ended in a three way tie between myself and two much younger cousins. I think I won for my height and weight category!

Anyway, we were SO grateful to our wonderful hosts who took us in over Thanksgiving. It was wonderful being around family, especially since we will soon be leaving for Italy and probably won’t have much chance to see any family for quite a while. Happy Thanksgiving!

We were told a few weeks ago that we would be told by the end of this month when and where we will be PCSing (permanent change of station = moving).

Today we found out that we will be going to the land of pasta, leather and gondolas.

Our report date: March 10, 2011.

I almost had a heart attack on the report date…we were thinking May or June. Nick’s marathon is March 26th and we thought there was no chance we’d be PCSing before that…sooo much to do!!!!!!!!!!