road trip--st. louis!

This past weekend we took a Meyer family road trip to St. Louis to visit some of our dear friends. 

It. Was. Awesome.

Tom has been in a fantasy football league with the same group of guys for at least eight or nine years.  For the past four years all of the guys in the league have gotten together in St. Louis for a live fantasy football draft, which we have sadly missed while living in Korea.  This year was epic because Tom was able to attend!  Not only that, but some of the wives and children came to hang out too, so really it was a big reunion of some of our best pals.    Here are some pics of our weekend! 

E creatively playing in the car: 

While driving to STL we stopped at Mc Donalds for a quick dinner break.  This McD's had a toddler play area (which kind of freaks me out with all the germs it has...but I digress...) but Everett kept wanting to play with the big kid toys.  How does he know about video games at such a young age?

Everett "helping" me feed the twins (my friend Carly's girls) a bottle: 

Carly took us to this awesome park by her house.  The kids loved it: 

E riding the twin's princess chariot (how great is that thing?):

Carly had a plate of food and the kids were like pigeons swarming her for food! 

We attempted to get a group shot of the mommy's with their kids.  My friend Sara chronicled this really well on her blog (she is such a good writer/photographer), but here was Tom's best attempt to capture the moment on our camera.  It is not easy to get a good group shot with this crowd! 

We miss Korea every day.  But when we were in Korea these were the things we missed; road trips across Missouri, seeing friends for a long weekend, watching Everett play with his "cousins."  It's great to be present here in America with some of the folks we love so much. 

So do we miss our lives in Korea? Absolutely.  Has all the adjustment been a bit tough at times? Yep.  Are we happy here in KC? Did we make the right decision to move back? Yes and Yes. 

We are very blessed.

It's here!

After 2.5 months at sea, resting in LA, and on a truck our stuff from Korea finally came today. I won't go into all the details about the saga that was our delivery date. Let's just say we thought it would be here over two weeks ago. We didn't take up the whole truck below just 31 boxes of it.

First day

As is tradition, here are our pictures from our first day of school! 

This was Everett on his first day of daycare last week: 

Here we are today before our first day of classes with students. 

To get pumped up for the new school year we got E a little back pack.  He looks so old with it on! 

He also got to pretend to be one of my middle school students during an inservice day.  I wish he was at school with me everyday!!! 

We survived the first day.  It was a success.  Now it's time to crash....the school year has officially begun! 

Our new home

As we mentioned earlier, we bought a house! We started moving in at the very end of July and we've settled in a bit.  We're actually still waiting on our shipping container from Korea (which has been about 3 weeks delayed!) before we can be completely moved in.  Here are a few pics of our new place. 

Here is what you see when you walk in the front door.  There won't always be an ugly baby gate in front of the fireplace; bubs is a bit of a ridiculous climber right now. 

Front door/entry area:

Kitchen (sorry about the blurry photos...)

Dining Room: 

Playroom: 

E's very bare room...we need our container to get here stat! It has most of E's stuff in it. Oh, and see that blanket held on to the crib by socks? Yeah, that was Tom's middle of the night solution to Everett biting on the crib.  It's not pretty but it works. 

Master bedroom: 

Basement:

We've done a lot of unpacking but we still have a few boxes to go....

Guest room:

Guest bath (there are also two bathrooms upstairs I didn't get pictures of):

Lastly, this is our backyard.  When we started to be under contract on the house all of this grass was super green.  Now you can see what 100+F Missouri heat /draught will do to a yard. 

We still need to arrange some things, paint some walls, and get some new furniture, especially for the living room, but for now it feels good to have a place that is our very own.  Come by and visit us sometime. As you can see, we have a guest room for you.  For the first time in our lives we are homebuyers! We feel very blessed. 

House guests!

This weekend we were blessed to have our first house guests! Lori-Ann Leigh taught with us our first two years in Korea and her daughter Selah was a student at GSIS (Lori-Ann's husband and son stayed back home). The past 10 days they have been on a road trip from near Toronto, Canada through Ohio and Illinois and then on to KC. It has been a blast having them here and it make us excited to continue to have visitors!

A Very (belated) Happy Birthday Post

So this is coming out way late but it has been a crazy summer so that is my excuse.  For my 30th birthday Bonnie was hard at work putting together a nice little series of fun surprises for me.  It started Friday, June 22nd (even though my birthday wasn't till the 28th). when my sister Lori, her husband Aaron, and their boy Mo came in.  

That night Bonnie's parents babysat E and the rest of us headed out to the K for a Royals game.  I had bought the tickets and was told the game would be with Bonnie's bro and his wife but I was misled.  The Royals stunk it up but the game was a blast.

Then Bonnie informed me that I needed to be ready to go golfing the next morning at 6:30AM because that is when my partner was arriving.  This turned out to be my dad and step-mom Jean.  Dad and I played 9 holes at a course just outside Platte City.  It was the first time I had been golfing since we moved to Korea.  When we got back my sister Jill, her husband Eli, and their son Leo had arrived.  This was the first time that all three cousins had been together all at once.  It was really fun to see the boys interact and play.

Later that day we got a chance to Skype with my brother Jim and his wife Jen.  They couldn't make it in but it was really awesome to get to chat with them.  Saturday night Bonnie's bro James and his new wife Jennifer brought up some Oklahoma Joe's BBQ and we had a nice little KC style feast.

It was all capped off by yet another surprise on Sunday.  A bunch of my aunts, uncles, and cousins came over for a great lunch gathering.  I felt so loved from all of the people that gave their time and resources to come celebrate with me.  Bonnie did an amazing job of coordinating all of this in and amongst the craziness that was the beginning of our summer.  I think my favorite image of the weekend was this one of the three cousins hanging out in the wagon.

Homeowners!

It's official as of today...we are homeowners! We also started our first day of work today so it's been a big day for Team Meyer!

As you can see from the pictures we were able to move into the house this past Friday so we had a few days to settle in before work started up. We couldn't buy the house when we moved in because of some new lending regulations that require you to be working to buy a house. So as a result we rented for a week and closed today.

It made for a long day but we are really excited to now be home owners. It is a little scary but pretty fun!