Christmas Morning, New Year, and the reason for crickets...

So back to Christmas morning...we had an amazing breakfast of our traditional Eggs Benedict. It was fantastic as always. If this is someday my job, I definitely have big shoes to fill. My grandmother makes it for 10 people and does it in stride. I kinda feel like that sauce is so delicate...one wrong move and WHAM..you have to start over. I need to start practicing!

I must have been a good girl because I was spoiled over and over and received some much coveted boots! I gave over control to Daniel once I figured out that Rebecca could go with him to make the actual purchase! LOL! I say this with pure love - He has a history..and.if.you.know.it...you would not blame me! Daniel, you know I love you to the moon and back! They were both armed with styles and actually hit the nail on the head with the exact ones I wanted Oh SO BaDlY! I may have worn them almost every day since Christmas! :) Thank you to Ben and Ann as well..I love them!  I am one stylin' girl between the jewelry, clothes, and boots! :)Thank you again everyone we were certainly spoiled and incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful family!

 Though Wyatt cried in Santa's lap, he was on the nice list! He got a neat-o tricycle, lots of puzzles, and trucks, books, blocks, clothes, and so much fun stuff! He and Connor were so cute playing with all the fun stuff Santa brought!

 During/Before                                                             After...

 

While we were opening presents it began to snow (a White Christmas..Neat!)  Daniel and I were pretty excited. I hoped it meant that Daniel could stay that night but when we looked at the map, it wasn't far enough south. We were able to take Wyatt out to play before Daddy left that evening. Daniel and I decided that since my parents were in town Wyatt and I would stay for a few extra days.  It worked out perfectly that they could take us back before we had to head to Austin to celebrate the holidays with Daniel's side. Daniel was able to get ahead on school work and we got some family time. It also meant that we got to see some of my grandmothers friends, shop, play, and relax.

My parents and I drove over to meet Daniel on Friday and had dinner at the favorite local spot "The Sale Barn." It lived up the to hype and they enjoyed dinner. Daniel and I headed to Austin early and left my parents antiquing on the way to Austin. They enjoyed spending a leisurely day seeing the area.  We arrived at Daniel's parents to everyone waiting on us. That is pretty normal. We are the ones that travel so we are the ones always walking in at the last minute. When they say noon..they really mean 11:45. We haven't learned this and never will because with my parents that actually means 12:15..or later! :) 

 

Anyway, we had a nice time visiting with family and exchanging gifts. The kids had fun playing with new games and toys. We actually all piled on the living room floor and played a game about brands or logos and it was pretty hard.  We enjoyed watching all the kids play and visiting with family.

As we were packing up to head back, Wyatt woke up from a late nap with a 102 temp. We were supposed to stop over at my brothers house to see the family one more time (since we weren't sure if we were moving) but ended up in the emergency room as it was Sunday at 5pm. I couldn't leave for small town east TX knowing that a doctor was at least an hour away and that a holiday was the next day. I needed piece of mind and the what ifs about Daniel's job, insurance, etc. They decided he just had a virus..regardless I was happy to know everything was fine. New Year Eve was a completely uneventful evening as we both fell asleep and I happened to wake up 5 min before midnight. We woke up long enough to watch the ball drop. Big Night!!  HA!  

It is obvious the holidays of 2012 were fantastic however in our minds, Daniel and I were stressed with the unknown of our future. Our fears happened and on his final day of the current assignment we were faced without a contract. We decided to stay put so that we could leave at a moments notice when an assignment opened. It caused major crickets...we were stalled! :)

We tried to make the best of our impromptu "vacation" and site-see around the area when it wasn't raining or to cold for Wyatt to be out. We were able to see several things including Old Fort Parker and other local sites. It was our attempt to try and decrease the stress of not knowing....

"On May 19th 1836, a band of Indians came to Parker's Fort asking for beef, water and a place to camp. When greeted by the Parkers the Indians attacked, taking five captives! The most famous these was 9 year old Cynthia Ann Parker.  She was adopted by a Comanche family, grew up to marry Chief Peta Nocona and later gave birth to the last great Warrior Chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker." Per Website

Limestone County

 After a few weeks of talking continuously with Daniel's recruiter, the future of a traveling job did not seem any closer. Though we really were not "ready" to stop traveling, we were facing a reality over the past several assignments that the new healthcare laws were affecting the market of traveling positions. IE They were few and far between. We had made a plan that after the first of the year and another traveling assignment we might be pushing our luck.  We decided that during that assignment depending upon our gut feeling, we were going to begin looking for more permanent work.  Long story short after many weeks of uncertainty Daniel was offered a permanent position as a Rehabilitation Director in far southeast Texas. I am so proud of him and know we are incredibly lucky to have a job with benefits. Ultimately our timeline was moved up and though we had no control over the situation, this is what he has been working towards in school.  In the end, Daniel's recruiter looked for an assignment for 9 weeks without any lucky, so to say we feel grateful for this opportunity is an understatement! It is hard for both of us to believe that we hit our 5 year mark on the road almost to the day!! Where did time go?

Last Day before we moved. Park Fun!

Once he accepted the job we still had another week before he started work. We decided to head to Austin to attempt to have some fun on his "vacation." We stayed with the S family and as always completely welcomed us with open arms. We could not have been more thankful to be around civilization as well as, have space to move. We had been couped up for several weeks in the rain and cold waiting, waiting and waiting.

All hooked up to the vehicles, slides in, and ready to roll out.

Travel to Austin was uneventful only stopping to check tire pressure. While in town we were able to see Ben and family as well as, Daniel's mom and sister Melissa. Going to Austin turned out to be a good decision as Daniel had a lot of paperwork, doctors  appointments, etc to do before everything (insurance) changed for the new job. I went to mug night with Terri and had a great time. It was nice to have an evening just the ladies! :) We spent one day unloading our 5th wheel and cargo trailer with things we knew we would not need into storage (snowboarding and cold weather gear, the random stuff we never use, some kitchen items, clothing, etc) and had some fun! We also did a lot of work on the 5th wheel  (well I did a little it was mainly Daniel and Shelbi) and this little guy had some much fun entertaining himself in the leaves!

 

 

We celebrated Wyatt's one a half year birthday (18 months) with ice cream. He loved it!

 

Quickly the week was over and it was time to head to our new location. We loaded up early and hit the road. This move felt different even with the two legs of the trip. I think it was more because we knew we wouldn't be leaving in a few months.

Happy Traveler!

Luckily, this leg was uneventful as well even with the navigation of leaving Austin and going through Houston. We arrived mid afternoon and were able to find a park rather easily. It is nothing special but has a lot of acreage for the dogs to run, for us to explore, and for Wyatt to toddle about. The weather has been gorgeous and we have spent a lot of time outside!

The job is going great and Daniel has some really nice employees. We have been taking in the area and are enjoying it. More to come....
 

I think you could hear crickets and for good reason...

In total honesty, things have been super stressful here. We were in limbo for several weeks. Things are looking up and hopefully the blog will be buzzing again shortly!

We appreciate all the thoughts, prayers, and support. Hopefully soon I will have an update post..and no a baby is not the reason. Apparently if you are silent people start guessing :)

Hope all is great with you and for now enjoy  fun in the leaves!

Christmas Eve

I kinda feel like this year was stressful. The not knowing of our move, the impeding date of a job ending, and the fact that Daniel only got Christmas day off made it..well I will be honest, hard. The past several years Daniel has taken the week off between Christmas and New Year and it has been great. This rotation would not allow it. We decided to wait until Christmas Eve to head over to meet my family. Initially Daniel was going to drive us over for the weekend, back to work, drive back for Christmas, back to work, etc. We decided it wasn't worth him being on the road all that extra time as well as, essentially adding more stress.

We spent some time at the park on Christmas Eve Eve.  The weather was perfect!

Fun at the park on Christmas Eve Eve

Ultimately things worked out fine and not as we had planned, even better than we imagined. We headed to my grandmothers house much earlier on Christmas Eve and even had time to finish up the shopping. (Yep I apparently have become one of those that waits until the end!) We arrived and I began the extreme wrapping of the presents I had delivered to her house. Every year I have visions of decorating each present with individual attention however, in the end I am always racing against the clock and tie an easy ribbon with a little decoration.
We had hopes to make cookies with the kids and read Christmas stories before bed. That said, I know in reality the kids will really be excited next year and we can do all those fun things!  I love the picture below from the evening:

Wyatt - Now listen this is what is going to go down tomorrow..
Matty - Whaaatttt??

My parents arrived, we had dinner, put Wyatt to bed and in an instant Santa arrived! He was greeted by a card Wyatt made and of course cookies and a Coke. Santa has to stay up late and he needs some caffeine!

We must have all been good kids this year!

 Daniel really enjoyed assembling a Tricycle and he was right in all my apprehension that Wyatt loved it! My mom and I assembled the other toys with Daniel's help..because who knew they were so hard to put together! LOL!

 

Christmas Eve was a success and we went to bed around 3am because Santa had quite a bit to finish up when he came down the chimney. Regardless we had a blast and were excited about the next day! 
Luckily, we aren't in that wake up super early stage of kids on Christmas morning and that makes for a fantastic day!! Wyatt woke up around 7:30-8ish had some breakfast, played, and went back down for a nap around 10. We ended up doing presents 11:30 after breakfast. It was fantastic! I know many of you are up at 5:30..sorry!
Up next Christmas "morning" and day! 

And no..still no assignment! Hopefully we will hear something early this week! Keep your fingers and toes crossed!

Well I get asked this a lot..so here goes a post about cloth diapers and how it works on the road

Some of you know that we use cloth diapers. Some of you don't. Many people think I am crazy to use cloth in the first place and then marvel or actually laugh at the fact that I do it and travel. Then they learn we don't have a real washing machine or a dryer and they kinda don't believe me. (Some of the details in this are for those of you that travel full-time visiting from families on the road blogs/sites and are wondering about space.)
I have many reasons for using them some of them being: the planet, the space to store several economy boxes of disposables, a kid with extremely sensitive skin (like as in he still breaks out with cloth), and we are saving a ton of money. So many websites have statistics and most say that you spend around $1700 to diaper a baby for around 30 months. We have spent about $200 on cloth total on the extremely high side. I have managed to purchase every diaper online and to only buy the diapers and inserts on sale or found them for buy one get one free so our cost is less than most. If you can deal with the minimum amount in the beginning this is how I suggest to build up your diapers. I read a lot about cloth and several people suggested to do this and it really helped ease me into cloth to make sure I could do it, liked the diapers, and saved us money.  We also do not have the space to store a lot of cloth (much less disposables) so this keeps my "stash" low!

Cloth has come a long way from what your mama used. There are websites, blogs, and stores devoted to them. They have so many kinds on the market: All In Ones, Pockets, Hybrids, Flats, etc. It is overwhelming. I decided way before we had kids that I wanted to use cloth, so when the reality hit diapers were coming people thought I was crazy. This included Daniel. He wasn't really on board until he saw first hand the cost of diapers and how easy the cloth was to use. He was convinced he wasn't going to be able to "assemble" them.

Anyway here goes. This is how I am able to cloth diaper on the road. I have a bin in which I keep all the inserts, covers, wipes, and wet  bags. I really do not have room for much more. Although Santa did bringing two new diapers for Christmas...so be jealous! :)  We mainly use the Flips brand of diapers although we do have a few others in the mix. The Flip Diaper System is a flexible, hybrid cloth diapering system that provides options for every occasion.You can choose from a few varying kinds of inserts. The cover is one size meaning that is snaps open (bigger) as he grows and will adjust with him. Through trial and error I use a microfiber insert  that lays easily inside the cover as well as, an organic flat or liner over it due to the extremely sensitive skin. I do have to change diapers more often with cloth as opposed to disposables because of the rash battle.  

When I change a diaper I immediately rinse the it in the shower if it is just wet or dispose of said products and rinse outside. I never have to touch said products as they go into the toilet. The wet diapers go into the diaper pail.  More often than not I wash diapers every day so they go directly into the Wonder Washer. If putting diapers directly into washer I fill it with hot water and add soap at that time so they can soak for a few hours before washing.

Basic of basic pail kept in bathroom

The Wonder Washer is a "portable" washing machine that I crank to wash the clothes. It is like a HE washer in that it doesn't have an agitator. It is easy to use. I fill it with HOT HOT water, drop in a small squirt of detergent, apply the lid, crank it for a minute and a half, drain, and repeat with water to rinse. I do two to three rinses based on if suds are present or not. I have learned to get all the soap out to help with rashes and have read that helps with decreasing a "build up" that causes problems with absorbing. Rinsing is key!

Filling up the Wonder Washer. It is stored and used in the bottom of the shower.

Full of diaper inserts/covers and ready to go.

Then I drain the WWasher and wring out the diapers. I want to get a "dryer/spinner" however, I haven't figured out the storage of one so I have been wringing them out for a year and half! F.u.n. HA! Then I hang them on a foldable hanging dryer from Ikea. Obviously if it is sunny and the least bit warm they go outside to be sunned and dry much faster. Then sun also provides an opportunity for them to disinfect. Currently it is raining so they are in the shower until they stop dripping then move out into the living room for faster drying under a fan. I do use disposables more often when it rains as it takes longer (days) for the diapers to dry and I can't be super mom! LOL!

 I also wash them at the laundry mat once a week for a good deep wash to keep the "stink" away. I have been very lucky with our system and we have not a problem with stinky diapers like so many that use cloth. I think the main reason is because I wash them almost daily so they don't have an opportunity to sit.

Anyway, there you have it. Yes it is a little more work for me but not much. Really, I am proof you can travel and cloth diaper. I completely understand that it is not for everyone however, many people have asked so I decided to do a post on it.  We have been using disposals at night and have recently started playing around with using a disposable with a thin cloth diaper over it. I am so over wet sheets and jammies!! That said it is hard for me to even find room to store one box of disposables! LOL! I hope this helps those of you wondering about traveling with cloth. Let me know if you have more questions!

Happy Holidays and a Joyful New Year

No news on the move..please keep your fingers and toes crossed for us!
Hugs!

Not knowing...

Well, we know we are moving again in early January. We do not have an assignment as of today, so please keep your fingers crossed and say some prayers. One of the most frustrating things about traveling is going into the holidays knowing we do not have an assignment after the first of the year. It can make it hard to justify certain things...

Anyway, last weekend we headed to Dallas to babysit little C so his parents could go to a work function. He was such a good boy. We had seen him a few times however, had not been able to work out a weekend trip. At one point on Friday evening Daniel said "this is why I don't want more than one!" I laughed because all I said was "Daniel, you check on Wyatt and I will check on C so we can make sure they are both asleep." We had just put them down and just wanted to make sure.  LOL! Daniel you crack me up! It could not have been easier! We even had pizza delivered to really make things easy.

 We have the same wagon and Wyatt loved having one to play with inside. We were all sitting in the other room and heard him talking. R walked around corner and he had climbed into it. He did this several times, we all thought it was so funny, and were pretty impressed. We never caught him in the actual act, but he was quick and careful! He even got a few wagon rides through the house! Silly boy!

Trying to catch him in the act...

 Playtime with C. He is so cute and is getting strong. He is such a good baby and makes this whole infant thing look easy. I told them before they know it, he will be all over the place!

 We ventured out for Pluckers. It has been a group favorite since we met almost 7 years ago! Two babies in tow makes for a fun time getting a table!

Love them!

Rebecca and I were able to get out on Sunday afternoon for a few hours to do a little shopping. Wyatt napped and C was in and out while the daddy's had baby duty. They always get the easy tasks! :)

 Sunday we also went for a walk around the neighborhood and over to the live nativity at the church before heading back home. They live in such a friendly neighborhood and it was nice to be doing the types of "community feel/neighborhood" things we often miss out on. We enjoyed walking around and Wyatt loved outside time!

 We had such a nice visit spending time with our friends. I can't believe we both have babies. It seems just like yesterday we were running at Town Lake during lunch. We hope we can visit again soon.  We always enjoy our time with them as we are able to relax, recharge, and have some fun friend time! Lots of laughs! So excited for your family and love that little guy! I know we have lots of fun times with the boys ahead. You are great parents and little C is incredibly lucky!

This week I have been busy gearing up for the holidays. Yesterday we had a marathon day of shopping and I am almost done. Woop!  Can't wait for the excitement of all the little ones and to spend time with family in the coming week! More blogs to come!

Another Woo Pig Attempt

Calling the Hogs...in Ikea. We were shopping while in Austin a few weeks ago and he started the Woo part all on his own. It was obvious to me he was trying. We tried to help, so I apologize for our Wooo Pigs..LOL! I think many people have this problem. Oh well. I know the gparents will love it regardless.

Christmas Decorations 5th Wheel Style

Yep this is decorating in a 5th Wheel. Don't be jealous! It look 10 minutes. I am kinda embarrassed to show this, because it really is just a mismatch of small random things that won't get broken however, I do want to remember it. My sweet mom has had her students have make us ornaments for the past 5 years and they decorate our tree. They send us sweet pictures and holiday creations all the time. It does makes us feel loved!

I know that when we are done with this adventure I will always have at least one tree filled with these ornaments. We also buy an ornament or something we can hang on a tree as a memento of each location we have lived/traveled..so that tree will be eclectic! I also bet that once we have a house, I will go crazy because this really is all I can do with our space! It is lovely isn't it! HA!

Drum Roll........

I know it is amazing. The holiday season has arrived at Basham Travel!

Ok now I want to see your decorations! Thanks for visiting from the Christmas Tour of Homes!

Here for now...

Just like everyone else we have been going non-stop. We are still here however, honestly I am not sure how much longer. That has made for a stressful time leading up the holidays. One day we might move, the next day we are staying put for another few days...

Anyway, that said blogging has been on my mind just not on my schedule or little man's :)

We were in Austin this past weekend and H and R were in a Christmas parade. Since Shelby was driving one of the floats for the baseball team Daniel and Wyatt both ended up being in it as well. Terri and I were on the float then opted to get off. (That was a good decision as the parade was long!) Anyway, Wyatt loved it and Daniel said he took it all in. I am glad we were on the side lines to watch and capture memories!

 A few from the parade

It was a great parade and a fun family memory. I know we have many more Christmas parades in our future!

Thank you S Family for letting us stay with you! We had a blast..other than the unfortunate migraine I had on Sunday. You will never know how much I appreciated that you helped take care of Wyatt while I was down. A million thank yous!!!

I stayed in town  a few more days for doctors appointments, essential errands (car inspection, etc) and was able to get some Christmas shopping done. Melissa (Daniel's) sister and family had us over for dinner and Wyatt had a great time playing with the boys. Funny side note..Wyatt has started randomly calling the Hogs. Even in Ikea the kid was raising his arms. People took note and it was really funny!  I will have to upload the video in another post.  Mary I enjoyed spending time with you and I know it was good for both of us to have some "girl" time. :)

Wyatt obviously enjoyed the space...Dapper Dude

 

 I hope to have a few more blog posts up before we leave again this weekend..but we all know how that could go! :)


For now I hope each of you are enjoying: cooler weather, the reason for the season, some fun family time, and are making memories! This time of the year really  really makes us miss our friends..so know we are sending lots and lots of hugs!