Moran Family Fun

Natalie is officially a big kid now and we've left the land of littles behind. Can you believe she's ten years old already? Seriously, when did that happen? Natalie was so happy that Madison would be coming home on her birthday. In the weeks leading up to the big day anytime anyone would mention how many more days it was to her birthday, Natalie would respond with, "You mean x-number of days until Madison comes home!" That Natalie, she's a sweetheart and the perfect caboose for our family. The only thing Natalie wanted for her birthday was lumpia . Okay, lumpia and Lego Friends, but mostly lumpia. It's a dish that I don't often make because it's so labor intensive. Making the filling, separating the wrappers, rolling the lumpia, and then frying them all up in small batches takes forever. I knew Natalie's birthday would be busy this year with Madison arriving on the same day so I was smart and did all the prep work the day before, including...

Madison's back! I think we were all looking forward to being together again.  I was so nervous about Madison flying and navigating her way through the process of checking in, checking bags, getting through security, finding the departure gate, and all the rest of flying by herself. I'm pretty sure my sister-in-law, who drove her to the Salt Lake airport, thought I was insane! Of course, Madison handled the whole process like a pro, including the delay in her second flight.  We had sent her directions with information about the shuttle bus that runs between Heathrow and the base and where to find the bus once she landed. To make it even easier, I rode the shuttle bus from the base to the airport so we could meet at the airport and ride back together. Once we were both at Heathrow things got complicated.  She texted me when she landed so I knew she was there. I texted her about 30 minutes later when I arrived and headed for the bus station, our prearranged meeti...

We finally have a second car!  While we were living on base in our temporary lodging it wasn't such a big deal to be a one car family because we really could walk everywhere. The only trouble came when we all needed to go somewhere together. Six people in a car with five seats becomes challenging, not to mention illegal. But for a month and a half, we kept squeezing six people in the Camry until we felt we have found the right car. Four in the back seat all the way to York, all the way to Birmingham, and all the way to church every Sunday. We got quite good at double buckling and ignoring the squabbles that come from such close quarters. We actually found and test drove the car we ended up buying in the beginning of November but we didn't have the cash on hand to buy it quite yet and we didn't want to settle for a different car or to finance this one. So we crossed our fingers and waited for another month before heading back to the dealer and buying it! I would check the d...

When we moved into our house in Maryland my mom mentioned that she had a hard time imagining us in our new place because she'd never seen our home. I put together a little blog post - a virtual tour of sorts for my mom and anyone else who might like to see our new home and, surprisingly, that particular blog post became one of the most viewed of 2014.  Now we're in yet another new home and are mostly settled in so it's time to do another house tour. This is the entry hallway, the first thing you see when you walk in the house. Our front door is tiny and there is no foyer at all just this hallway. The door on the left in this picture leads to the living room. The door on the right is to Emily's bedroom, although the room was billed as a study when we first looked at the house. The second doorway on the left, at the end of this hallway, leads to what we call the in-between room which is a medium-sized space that connects both the hallway and the kitchen kind of l...

Over Thanksgiving we had a long weekend and we wanted to take advantage of every day. First though we had to wrap up our Thanksgiving festivities which included a delicious meal at the chow hall on base. Why cook an entire Thanksgiving meal when you can have it cooked for you? Once we had eaten our fill at the chow hall we crowded into the car and started driving. We were a bit worried about traffic because we'd heard the motorways could be little better than parking lots but we were lucky and the cars just kept moving along. For our final weekend of travel in November, we headed north to Yorkshire where Jared found a perfect cottage to be our home base for our weekend away. It used to be an outbuilding of a nearby farm and was turned into vacation cottages with stone walls, beamed ceilings, and three of the cutest little bedrooms I've ever seen. If we ever head back to Yorkshire I would happily stay there again. We had such a great weekend and took so many photos it...

November weekend three found us driving north for an overnight trip to Birmingham. On the itinerary was a trip to Cadbury World and then some time at  Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas market. We found a nice hotel in the heart of the city where the six of us squeezed into a room meant for four.  Once we got settled in our room we headed downstairs to the pool! We all packed our swimsuits when we left Maryland and it only took a month and a half of hotel living to finally find a hotel with an indoor pool. We actually left Emily in the room to work on her mountain of homework but everyone else had fun playing marco polo, sharks and minnows, and just goofing around.  I think swimming at the hotel pool may have been my favorite part of the whole trip.  Three to a bed was a reason to complain at bedtime but everyone seemed okay with it by morning. We ordered room service for breakfast and learned that anything in its own little container tastes better. ...