I'm a New Englander!

It has happened.. we have arrived in Rhode Island. It is absolutely BEAUTIFUL here! I can't take it in fast enough. I can't believe the beautiful old buildings and towns. I'm in love. (ask me how I feel when the weather gets cold!)
We arrived on Saturday evening. Nick and I were thrilled to be starting this chapter of our lives. We were anxious to get Alex here to live with us and have him be a full time part of the family.. FINALLY!
We arrived around 5:00. We grabbed all of our luggage, the rental car, and checked into our hotel. Alex was due in around 10:00. We intentionally stayed close to the airport instead of driving down to the base so we could grab him that late.
As we're going to dinner, Alex called. He's delayed leaving Fargo. Mechanical problems. He had a total of 40 minutes between flights to get to us. I had a bad feeling. He ended up being delayed a full hour and we knew he'd never make the connection in Philadelphia. As luck would have it, he was booked on the very last flight of the day coming in to Providence.
Plan B: Re-route him to Boston and take our newly rented vehicle up north to get him. That's what we did. We snagged him right around midnight and got back to our hotel around 1:30. Of course his luggage wasn't with him. We were just relived that we weren't leaving a 15 year old in the Philadelphia airport overnight by himself. We contemplated driving up there, but by the time we would get there, he could've spent the night.
Sunday we drove on down to the base, checked out our house (the door was unlocked, I had to go in). The house is small. Smaller than the house in Hawaii and much more plain. That's military housing for you, at least the housing that was built 20 to 30 years ago. The stuff they are building now is much nicer.
I do have a view of the harbor from my back yard so I think I can suffer through for 10 months.
Today we drove down to New Jersey to pick up our vehicle. It was a 10 hour round trip drive but with the downpour going both ways, it was longer. We were supposed to go back to the housing office and pick up our keys but decided we would wait until tomorrow after that drive.
I'm looking forward to getting keys tomorrow, hearing from the movers on when our stuff will be here, and shopping for the essentials. I love getting new shower curtains, bathroom stuff and all those little things that you can use to start settling in.
I haven't taken a lot of photos yet, but here are a few. I will post about my trip to Arkansas in the next few days. It was mostly uneventful but we did do a few cool things and see lots of family.
I'm enjoying having Alex with us. It's a new experience that we're all loving!

The license plate from our rental car. I have to admit I didn't know Rhode Island was "The Ocean State" I'm so excited to be here!

This is where we had our first Rhode Island meal on the advice of the hotel staff. It was delicious!

Our appetizer at the restaurant. Stuffies! These are quahogs and they are so yummy!

We also had the best seafood chowder I've eaten and a calamari salad. I swore I'd eat lighter once we arrived. I am having a hard time with that so far.