Moran Family Fun

Here's the update on our life and progress toward being settled one month after landing in the States. Housing: Our search for a home was kind of all over the place. Our first week in Maryland was spent looking at house after house trying to find on that we liked enough to buy.  Our goal was to find a home and make an offer by the end of that week.  We didn't meet that goal and since we were kind of on a limited time schedule we decided to switch our focus to finding a house to rent.  We figured we could just keep looking for a house to buy but at least we'd be out of a hotel and in a real home. Our plans changed again when the price on a house we'd looked at on our very first day of house hunting dropped significantly.  It was my favorite that day but because it was the furthest from the base we didn't put it high on our list - but a big price cut made us reconsider the commute for Jared.  We made an offer and it was accepted.  If all goes according to p...

We found ourselves with a free evening last week so we decided to head into DC for a National's baseball game.  Instead of braving the DC traffic and worry about finding parking, we took the metro.  It was a quick four stops from the station closest to the base and then a short walk to the stadium.  The road leading up to the gate was packed with people going to the game, vendors selling water and peanuts, and a couple of guys with megaphones calling everyone to repentance.  It was different from pretty much anything our girls have ever experienced before! If we had decided to drive we could have parked at the parking garage right there at the ballpark.  We loved the enormous silver baseballs arcing along the walls of the structure. It really was a beautiful ballpark. Just inside the park there were mascots  - former US presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Abraham Lincoln.  Abigai...

Jared is usually the one to suggest that we get out and do something when we have a free day.  I'm usually the one who is content to stay home but is then happy that we went out and found somewhere to visit.  So when Jared came home from work one morning last week and announced that he was done with work for the day, we immediately started talking about what fun place we could go visit. We settled on Annapolis, which is just a little over half an hour's drive from the base.   Since we'd done a little research about Annapolis online before we left we kind of had an idea of what we wanted to see that day. We found the visitor's center, parked, got some recommendations and a map, and headed out to explore Annapolis. Our first stop was Chick and Ruth's Delly, a tiny diner that is home to a six pound milkshake that was featured on Man vs. Food.  The restaurant was crowded, a bit loud, and kind of kitschy, but it was a fun place to eat and the food was pretty goo...