And so it begins...

Lauren is now 9 months old! At her well-baby check up, she weighed 20 lbs. and 6 oz, which brought her down from the 97th percentile (at her 6 month check up) to the 85th, so apparently crawling is doing her some good! She is 27 1/2 inches tall, which still puts her around the 50th percentile for height. She crawls all over the place and has started pulling herself up on everything! She is going to take off one of these days trying desperately to keep up with her big sisters. Currently, one of her favorite things to do is to take all the movies off the shelves and chew on them...everything goes in the mouth of course! She still prefers to get milk from mom, whether it's in a bottle or otherwise. But we are working on her taking a bottle from someone besides me. The dogs food and water bowls have also become a favorite of hers to play with. And yes, she tries to eat the dog food...like I said, everything goes in the mouth! I just can't believe she is getting so big and will be walking soon!!!

Gotta love that smile! We are so blessed;)

Meet Cricket!

I finally got my horse!!! She is a 12 y/o quarter horse, a little over 14 hh, and is very sweet! We are calling her Cricket. Bear and I spent a while on Saturday getting things ready for her. Bear didn't mind too bad because he got to get the big tractor out and move around some dirt. I'm not sure if you call it good or bad timing, but just as he was finishing the tractor work, one of the front tires went flat. Bear even cleaned out the tack shed and reorganized it! We went over to Uncle Larry's to get the new saddle and tack fitted to her, and of course to take a little ride and make sure everything fit right. We got done with all that and were getting ready to go home when we noticed there was a fire across the street from their house! And of course, because this is Kansas, the wind was blowing, so we were worried about how bad the fire was going to spread. A couple minutes later, we heard sirens coming down the road. Thankfully someone had called the fire department! But, we ended up getting parked in by a firetruck and had to stay there for a while longer. Thank God that no one got hurt, or no horses for that matter either! Since it was completely dark by then, we decided it was best to have the horse brought over the next day so she wouldn't have to move to a new place in the dark. Larry and Teresa brought her over Sunday morning before church, and she is doing absolutely fine! She has a nice big area to run around in. After lunch, Bear and I got her out and ready to ride for the first time at home.

Even Bear got up and took her for a ride. Usually when he gets on any horse, it has to throw a little fit for him, but she didn't. She was a little unsure of her new surroundings, but did a good job. Mamaw got up and gave her a test drive too! Here she is with all her gear on getting ready to go...

Sorry, no pics of me riding her. I forgot that I had the camera in my pocket...oops! But this was right after I had just finished riding her and was getting ready to lead her back towards the barn.

YEAH...I HAVE A HORSE!!!!!!!!!! I'm not too excited, can you tell? Thanks Mom! And a big huge thanks to Larry and Teresa for being incredibly patient and very helpful to me as I'm new to this horse ownership business and am learning tons from them! Thank you so much!

Mischief with scissors

How bad is it, that even with both Bear and I home, Caitlyn and Allison got a hold of some scissors, went and hid in the playroom, and proceeded to cut their hair without us having a clue about it?!?! Terrible, I know! We couldn't tell at first where on their head they cut their hair, because both of them had their hair up in some variety of pony tail. And when I took their hair down, the girls were both incredibly lucky! Most of the hair they cut was right around their face, and almost made it look like some layering was done. So, neither of them have butch haircuts like I thought they would need. Caitlyn cut about 6 inches off her hair, and Allison cut about 4 inches off. They were so lucky this time! Let's just hope they don't do it again.

We're on the front page!

Our family was pictured on the front page of the local paper with a story about our transition from military to civilian life here in Halfmound...

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Thomas family adjusting to life at Half Mound
by Sara Peterson-Davis, The Vindicator

Living in Half Mound is a bit of an adjustment for Clinton and Erin Thomas after living at Fort Knox, Ky. The couple and their three daughters — Caitlyn, 5, Allison, 3, and Lauren, 7 months—were used to life in the military where everything they needed was within the fort’s gates and life orbited around the U.S. Army.

“They (their daughters) grew up where the PX and commissary is normal and they’d have an Apache helicopter land near the playground and they could climb on tanks,” said Erin Thomas, who served as an Army surgical technician at Fort Knox until October 2006. But while Army life was something the Thomases loved, it wasn’t always the best for their family. Deployments were beginning to take a toll. “I’d still be in if it wasn’t for the hardship,” said Clinton Thomas. This fall Clinton Thomas left the Army and moved his family back home to Half Mound, five miles northwest of Valley Falls. The family lives in his grandparents’ old house on the Half Mound Road.

Thomas now works as a licensed practical nurse at one of the clinics on Fort Leavenworth. “He’s a civilian but he works for the Army,” Erin Thomas said. “He gets his Army fix with no attachment.” Thomas joined the Army after graduating from Valley Falls High School in 1998 and spending a year studying pre-med at Washburn University. He had worked as a phlebotomist and a nurse’s assistant at Holton Community Hospital throughout high school, so joining the Army to become a nurse seemed like a logical step. “I kind of fell into it (nursing),” Thomas said. “It chose me more than I chose the profession.”

A native of Osh Kosh, Wis., Erin Thomas joined the U.S. Army Reserve while still in high school with plans to train as a surgical technician. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school, but I thought the reserve was a step in the right direction,” she said.

The couple met in San Antonio in 1999 as they were waiting for a plane to take them home for Christmas leave from Fort Sam Houston, where they were both receiving medical training. On the way home, they were booked on the same flight out of Kansas City International Airport back to Texas. They met again a few days later in the mess hall and started dating. Thomas proposed at the Alamo in February and the couple was married in August 2000. As Thomas put it, “the military doesn’t issue orders to the whole family.” So when he received orders to Fort Lewis, Wash. Erin Thomas had to decide whether to leave the reserve, go active military and hope they were stationed in the same place. “It really took weighing her options,” Thomas said. She had to go through the entire recruiting process again, but Erin Thomas went on active duty and was stationed at Fort Lewis with her husband. But just because they were stationed at the same fort, didn’t mean they couldn’t be sent off for training or deployed anywhere in the world. At one point Thomas served in Louisiana and Erin Thomas was in California. As a member of a combat field hospital, Thomas was constantly gone for training. He was gone two out of the three years the couple was stationed at Fort Lewis. The last six months he was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq. “Those last six months were a crazy time,” Erin Thomas remembered. “Caitlyn was born two weeks after he left.

Next, orders came down to move to Fort Knox. Erin Thomas worked as a surgical coordinator at the fort’s hospital. Clinton Thomas worked at the hospital too, but his deployments continued. “The very day we found out I was pregnant with Lauren was the day he got orders to go to Africa. We got a lot of news that day,” Erin Thomas laughed. “The only time he came down on orders for deployment was when I was pregnant.” In Africa Thomas was assigned to a U.S. Navy civil affairs team. The team toured several countries, including Somalia and Ethiopia, assessing medical facilities. Thomas served as the team’s medical professional, caring for the health needs of the team’s members. Meanwhile, Erin Thomas and her daughters followed where Thomas was on a map. This time the deployment was hard on the girls, especially Caitlyn. Once Thomas decided to leave the service, the Army didn’t make it easy for him to leave. He was offered a $20,000 bonus and a chance to spend three years in Germany if he re-enlisted. While the offer would have given the family a chance to travel throughout Europe, the Thomases decided against it. “They deploy from Germany,” Thomas said. “I could have been deployed and Erin and the girls would have been there alone.”

Once he made his decision to leave the Army, Thomas began hunting for jobs online. It was a scary process after 10 years in the Army where many things from housing and health care to discounted groceries were among the benefits. “My last day, I couldn’t sleep because I thought the world would end,” Thomas said. “In the Army you’re so sheltered.” Now the family is adjusting to civilian life. Caitlyn is learning that her dad’s first name is Clinton not Sergeant. “The girls have figured out what a grocery store is,” said Erin Thomas.

The purple room

The girls room is finally ready for them to move in! It's not completely done yet, but the only thing left to do is the trim. That is going to be a long process since we are going to use the old trim, but modify it a little so it will look a little more modern and fit in with the room better. The old trim around the floor boards was really wide, so we are going to cut them in half, and possibly router a simple detail on the top edge, and try to find a stain to match the original color. The fan looks awesome installed! Bear did a great job on that. And the carpet is wonderful!!! The girls were so excited after the carpet got installed that they couldn't wait to move in, and actually slept on the floor for a couple nights while Bear and I were deciding what to do about the trim. We probably won't get to do any of the trim work til spring when it gets a little warmer out, so we figured we might as well let them move in right now. Only Caitlyn and Allison ended up in the new room. They originally wanted all 3 girls in there, but this way, they actually have some room to play on the floor instead of bumping into beds and dressers all over the place. They love their new room! And now Lauren is in her own room, which also means that we finally have our room to ourselves too! So now we can start getting rid of some more boxes and put a few more things where they need to belong.

I can't wait til we are ready to put carpet back in the rest of the rooms upstairs! It will be so much warmer up there! On to the next project...