With our upcoming move, we’ve been in one-last-time mode for a while now. A couple of weeks ago after Bug’s birthday party we stayed the night at a hotel with Sue, Heather, Rapunzel & Superchic so we could get up in the morning and meet Brenda and Bug for doughnuts and lattes at the beach one last time.

Not like Annalie needs a special reason to go to the beach. This time, even though it’s January, I was smart enough to bring a swimsuit so the poor kid wasn’t doomed to wearing soaking wet clothes home. I did forget a towel though. Oops. Good thing Brenda had extras to share.

Rapunzel and Superchic didn’t have swimsuits with them, so they just rolled up their cuffs and tried to stay dry. The water wasn’t as cold as you might expect it to be in the middle of winter, but it wasn’t exactly warm. You wouldn’t think it would have been that hard for them to stay dry.

Of course that doesn’t take Superchic pretending to be a puppy into account. And we all know puppies love water.

Then there’s the fact that Rapunzel loooooves the beach and would happily camp there all summer long if she could talk her parents into it, I think. She has the same problem as Annalie, she loves the water too much to care about the fact that she’ll have to walk home in wet jeans full of sand.

Swimsuits or street clothes, all the kids had fun splashing in the water and playing in the sand. Sue and Brenda sat up on the lifeguard tower for a while, enjoying the view.

Heather and I mostly sat on the towels by the stroller and drank our lattes and guarded the doughnuts the kids were too busy playing to eat.

Bug wasn’t much interested in the water. She’s little enough and cautious enough to be kind of afraid of the waves. That makes life easier for Brenda, of course. If Bug is content playing in the sand or snuggling with Grandma, then Brenda is free to talk or read or sketch.

I, on the other hand, spent the morning calling out reminders to Annalie that she wasn’t supposed to go in the water deeper than her knees. Ever since she learned to swim and lost her fear of the ocean, she’s been so bold about going in the water. In the grand scheme of things that is awesome and I’m very happy about it; on the beach in mid-January I don’t want to have to charge into the water in jeans to rescue my kid, if I can avoid it. So we aim for the happy medium of knee deep.

All in all it was pretty much a perfect doughtnuts-and-lattes-on-the-beach day. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, the water was deep blue. We all knew that rainstorms were coming later in the week, and we were grateful to have such a gorgeous morning with friends before we go.

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We got a postcard in the mail today from Troy, from Dubai. And by “we” I mean, clearly, our cats. Oh yes. Wanna see what he wrote on it?

Katy & Lily,
This place is a kitten’s dream! Three words for you:
World’s Largest Catbox
And this time of year, it is purfect!
xoxo,
Papa

If you’ve been following my Flickr photoset 180+ Photos for Troy, and you know that today was Day 179, you might be wondering if Troy is coming home tomorrow. But then you might notice that I added that plus sign to the name of the set.

Nope, Troy isn’t coming home tomorrow. I’m being vague about the actual date because of a little thing called national security. You’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know) by the things Troy isn’t allowed to tell me, and the things I’m not supposed to publish here on this blog. You might notice I’ve never mentioned the name of Troy’s ship, for example. I don’t tell you where he’s been till after he’s been there. And I won’t mention the day he’s coming home till he’s here, probably. That’s just the way things are in a post-9/11 world. But don’t feel too bad for us; Troy will be home very soon. The rest of his shipmates won’t be home for a few more months, so we’re actually getting him back early. I’m counting that as a blessing and not getting upset about having to add a plus sign to the name of my photoset.

And very quickly after Troy gets home, we’re up and moving across the country again. We’ll have a few days to relax first. We hope to see most of our friends once more, we plan to take Annalie to Disneyland, we’ll eat at our favorite restaurants. The packers and movers will descend on our house like locusts on a field, quickly and efficiently wrapping and packing and boxing and taping, and taking most of our earthly possessions with them on a giant truck. We’ll follow a few days later: Troy, me, Annalie, my mom, both cats and the portable litterbox, driving across the country in our so-very-worth-it minivan, stopping once or twice to see family and friends along the way.

When we get there we’ll make ourselves comfortable in a hotel or base lodging before we start looking in the local classifieds and online for houses to rent and following up on the houses Troy’s already been researching from the ship. We’ll look at so many houses and neighborhoods in the span of a few days that they will all blur together. It’s all rather crazy but it’s also part of the routine of moving. I’ve been doing this every couple of years since I married Troy, nine days shy of my 21st birthday, and I kind of love it and look forward to it every time.

Of course I’ll miss it here. I’ll miss the sunny, warm winter days when we could go to the park in short sleeves and flip-flops. I’ll miss our fantastic house and the view from our deck and the palm trees and the bougainvillea. I’ll miss our town and our little mall with the pottery studio and all the fountains and the two-level Target. I’ll really miss all the good friends we have around here and I’m trying not to think about that just yet. I want to enjoy my last times with them, to hang out and talk and laugh with them, and not be dragged down by a heavy heart. So I’m putting those emotions off till after we’ve left. They are there, hovering around the edges, but I’m keeping them at bay for now.

And by the time I give those emotions free reign, Troy will be home. I’m pretty sure we’ll be so happy to have him with us again that we won’t spend much time being sad. Aside from being kind and thoughtful and just generally awesome, this is the guy who sends his cats postcards about how they’d like the desert because it’s the world’s biggest catbox, just because he knew it would make us laugh. He’s good at making people laugh, and he does it a lot. Even 3,000-mile road trips are a blast with Troy.

Hey, that reminds me! A while back I painted Troy a mug. He’d mentioned that he would like for me to paint him one, and I told him to let me know what he wanted, and then he got distracted and never did. And then I had a fantastic idea and painted him a mug to send him for Christmas. I never blogged it because I didn’t want him to see it and ruin the surprise, but he’s had the mug for a couple of months now so I think I can post the photos.

It’s a fact: Troy is awesome. I regularly thank him, after I’ve heard stories about someone else’s husband being obtuse or irresponsible or neglectful, for being awesome. I painted this mug half in serious tribute, half as an inside joke. And at least once, when Troy was carrying this mug down a passageway on the ship, someone read the mug out loud as he passed by and he was able to cheerfully say, “You’re welcome!” See? Like I said: AWESOME.