My first baby blankie & new toy!

I decided to get brave and teach myself how to crochet so I could make our new baby a blankie. I started it in early December (with the intention of not knowing the sex of the baby until birth) and picked out more gender neutral colors. By the time we had the ultrasound and found out it was a girl, I was too far along in the blankie to start over with more girlie colors. I still like the colors though. I finally finished my first crochet project ever this weekend. It's not perfect, but I think it turned our alright. I might even try to make a hat or bonnet since I hopefully still have a little time until our new munchkin makes her appearance. Anywho, here is the blankie...

Lately we have been making all of our bread at home, and it seems that I make a banana bread at least weekly. All of us enjoy finding new recipes to make and tasting the results. Since we have been doing so much baking/mixing and the like, Bear decided to spoil me a bit and we got a Kitchen Aid mixer! It's awesome and totally saves my arms when getting all the doughs and batters ready to be baked. So naturally, we had to try it out right away! The first thing we were needing to make was another banana bread (don't want to throw away some perfectly spoiling bananas!). So we gave it a try and it worked great! We got the dough ready, put it in the oven, set the timer, and then went upstairs and got in the shower and completely forgot it was in the oven while we were all getting around for the day. By the time any of us remembered it was still in the oven, it was way too late and the bread was scorched a bit...oops! So we whipped up a batch of cookies the next day, and they were wonderful, but have already disappeared! Good thing Caitlyn is on spring break all this coming week so we can make all kinds of things.

We went to a small circus in Brandenburg this Saturday, but the girls didn't sit still long enough to get any good pics, sorry! We did discover, however, that Allison is afraid of either clowns or whistles. There was only one clown there, and he had a whistle that he would blow instead of talking. Every time he came around and got his whistle going, Allison would freak out and run back to us in tears. Caitlyn loved the acrobatics (and cotton candy of course). It has been a great weekend, and I am looking forward to having the whole week to spend with both of my girls!

Easter

We had a cold but of course wonderful Easter! Such a glorious reason to celebrate...it's hard to have a bad day! And we had a very early start to our day. The girls were up shortly after the sun came up. Caitlyn came down first and saw Allison's basket immediately. She got pretty upset because she couldn't find hers (it was right next to the stairs and she walked past it at least 4 times). After getting very frustrated, and a little encouragement to look closer, she found it and was happy as a clam. Allison came down and saw her basket right away. The funniest part was seeing how each of them sorted through their baskets. Caitlyn had to empty everything out and put it into separate piles according to what it was, and only when her basket was empty, did she dig into the chocolate. Allison would open a plastic egg, and have to eat the contents immediately before finding something else, and would have repeated the process until she was sick if we hadn't taken it away from her after she got into a few eggs. Caitlyn asked if we could eat some of the eggs we had colored, which lead the girls to discover that the eggs were missing. It was a bit cool outside, but the girls went out in the back yard and found all their eggs. Allison only cracked one during the whole process, which we were excited about. Despite our efforts, we ended up missing church, so we did our best at home to explain/celebrate the real reason of Easter instead of the whole bunny thing.



Later on in the day we were able to get outside for a bit and play with some of the things that were in the girls baskets. Allison was very excited about her Elmo kite and did her best at trying to fly it. With lots of help from her daddy, and only getting stuck in the tree a couple of times, Elmo flew for quite a while. We couldn't have asked for better kite flying weather. And of course, both girls really enjoyed being able to color with chalk again, or roll around in it in the case of Allison. All in all, it was a great day! Hallelujah, He is risen!

Bear's D-day

Yesterday was Bear's so-called D-day, as he had to make the decision about signing a DCSS (Declination of Continued Service Statement aka dec statement) in regards to his recruiting orders. He wants nothing to do with recruiting (and neither do I!) because we would never see him. Recruiters generally work at least 6 days a week and at least 10 hours a day. And that's if things are going well for them. If he was having a hard time getting new recruits in, we would almost never see him as the hours a day and number of days a week to work would drastically increase. Did I mention that recruiting is a 3 year tour? He might as well be deployed...at least then he would get paid better for his time away from the family (not that we want that either!). When Bear went in to meet with the Army Career Counselor, the counselor wanted to know why Bear intended to get out now and if there was anything he could do to change Bear's mind. Bear mentioned to him that he wants absolutely nothing to do with recruiting and that before he came down on orders for recruiting, he had considered reenlisting if we could go to Germany. The counselor then asked what Bear would do if he could make his recruiting orders disappear and get us on orders to Germany. Bear had less than 4 hours to give him an answer. To make an extremely long conversation a little shorter, we came to the decision that it would still be better for him to sign the dec statement and get out rather than to keep playing the Army game. Bear loves being a Soldier and is a very good one, but it seems to us that God is asking us to take a leap of faith with him getting out, so that is what we are going to do. Sure Germany would be awesome for 3 years...living on the economy, all the traveling and site seeing, we would be debt free in less than 6 months, Bear would get promoted at least once more, and it would be just incredible for the whole family! So many enticements and temptations, but, Bear could still deploy, and then the 3 girls and I would be stuck there completely by ourselves and there is no way the Army would move us back to the states just because of that. We think we are on the right path with what God wants us to do with Bear getting out. We got over our moment of temporary insanity, and are more excited now for him getting out than we had been!

A Night at the Grand Ole Opry!

Part II of the highlights of our weekend was going to the Grand Ole Opry! This was sort of a spur of the moment trip, so we had seats way in the back of the balcony, but all in all, it was probably better for the girls that way. We could still see everything, and it wasn't blaring loud. Plus, when the girls got a little restless, they could play around on the floor and not bug people on all sides of us. This was a much better trip to the Opry than last time. For those who remember, our first trip there, Caitlyn was only 6 months old (still being nursed), and we had seats down on the floor where it is very loud and hot. I ended up walking out of the show within the first hour (it's a 2 1/2 hour show) because she was hot and crabby and it was just too loud. Bear got our things gathered up and we just went back to the hotel...not a good time for our first trip! Anywho, we all had such a great time. And I apologize ahead of time for the terrible pictures. The downside to making a spur of the moment trip is that I didn't have time to charge my camera battery, and was trying to not take too many pics and run down the battery completely. And our camera doesn't have the best zoom, so the singers somewhat resemble ants.

After 3 tries, this is the best one that we could accomplish. Yeah, I know that most of me is missing, but at least everyone is looking at the camera, mostly smiling. Here we are in our seats waiting for the show to start!
The first performance in the line-up of stars were the Irish Clog Dancers. They are all little kids and it was so fun to watch. Later on Caitlyn said she would like to try to do that, but that she would probably fall and bust her butt...but she would still like to try!
The first big name that performed was Carrie Underwood (one of my favorite artists!). Yes, the one standing in the spotlight is her! Caitlyn has seen her on CMT and was convinced she would get to talk to Carrie. Caitlyn wanted to tell her that she saw her on tv, and that her dress is ugly (gotta love the honesty and innocence of a child!).
One of the songs she sang was one by Randy Travis, "I told you so". When she finished singing, Randy came out on stage to announce that Carrie would be the next artist to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry! It was just too cool to see and it seemed that there were lots of weeping eyes around the auditorium as she accepted that great honor in tears herself!

Other artists that performed were Randy Travis of course, Little Big Town, Vince Gil, Rhett Akins, the Whites, and of course Little Jimmy Dickens! There were several more, but I can't remember all their names. Caitlyn said that she would like to get up on stage and sing the most beautiful song ever...the A, B, C song! Through the whole show, Allison mostly paid attention, but was enjoying her Smarties candy and Nemo fruit snacks just as much when she got tired of sitting still. When we got back to the hotel, both girls had crashed out, completely exhausted from the super busy day. Bear carried both girls in at the same time, which was very entertaining to watch! Allison was out so hard she kept flopping all over, making the process rather difficult for her dad. I didn't have the heart to get the camera out since Bear was working so hard carrying nearly 70 pounds of kids! It was a great weekend!

Adventure Science Center

We decided to go to Nashville this weekend to have what will probably be our last vacation as a family of 4. April is approaching fast, and after the first week in April, I will be too far along to travel too far. Saturday was such a busy day! We went to the Adventure Science Center first. When we walked in, the dinosaur exhibit was right there complete with sound and moving dinosaurs. Allison completely freaked out and ran back to us and wouldn't go near them. So, we walked down another hallway and came across this thing where you can try to lift a car. Caitlyn of course had to try it out, and Allison just wanted to swing on the rope!

The girls got a big kick out of the huge piano on the floor and probably would have stayed there for hours trying to play songs!
I think Bear enjoyed this more than the girls...it's an organ made of huge whistles that instead of just blowing in them, you have to use some massive vacuum cleaner hose that blows the whistle when you put the hose up to the little hole in the whistle...Bear was trying to use both hoses to harmonize with the organ!
Since I am not quite as able as Bear to crawl through all the tubes (and carry our stuff), he had to keep up with Caitlyn and Allison with all the exploring they wanted to do, which meant is was his turn to crawl through all the tight spaces!
I did crawl and climb through some tubes, but I had the camera with me, so sorry, no pics. At least I didn't get stuck though! They have a huge tower that is 3 or 4 stories high and has all kinds of activities at each level, as well as slides to go all the way to the bottom floor. Both girls had to go up and down a couple times! We didn't bring the stroller with us, so Allison had to walk everywhere, not that she would have stayed in the stroller anyway if we had brought it. By the end of our time there, she was completely exhausted, and Caitlyn was too!

They both caught cat naps on the way back to the hotel. But, once we got there, the girls decided it was time to go swimming! We all swam for about an hour, and then had to hurry up and get ready for our next activity. After all the exercise they got early in the day, it didn't take but 5 minutes for them to fall asleep in the car on the way......and our evening was just beginning!

Happy Birthday Caitlyn!!!

Caitlyn turned 5 years old over the weekend which made Bear and I take a step back and wonder where the time has gone! It doesn't seem that long ago that I had to put in the Red Cross call to Bear in Kuwait to let him know that he had a beautiful baby girl!

And on her first birthday, Caitlyn had the chicken pox to spoil the occasion.

Now my Caitlyn is a very (very very) talkative and creative little girl who isn't afraid to try new things. She received some birthday money and was able to buy things on her own for the first time ever. It was a great learning experience for her, yet somewhat difficult for Bear and I. She was so excited to get to pay for something on her own, but had a hard time initially understanding the value of her money, and it was just so hard having to tell her that she couldn't afford something when she was so excited about it. But she finally picked out a couple things (princess fingernail stuff and a book) and handed the cashier her money. Such a simple act, yet Bear and I were nearly in tears over seeing our little girl doing such big things. Goofy, I know, but it was a really big thing for her! She ended up having 2 family parties, one while we were in Kansas, and another when we got back home to Kentucky with my parents. Caitlyn got a big kick out of seeing her Mamaw make the oreo cookie ice cream, and thoroughly enjoyed decorating her birthday cupcakes!

Caitlyn with all of her birthday gear on!

Allison, Caitlyn, Austin, and Elijah stopped just long enough for a picture

Caitlyn loved her princess outfits, which was obvious by her constant "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!"

Even the dogs dressed up for the occasion!

Back in Kentucky, she got to celebrate again, but unfortunately couldn't ride her new bike right away because of all the snow:(Caitlyn loves her Leapster. She figures the games out before we ever need to show her how. It is a good distraction to use inside until she can get outside and ride her bike!

Happy 5th birthday Caitlyn!!! We all love you very much!

Kentucky blizzard and a lesson learned

We made it home from Kansas safely and just in time! We were a little worried about our journey back home because of the threat of snow/icy weather (between Topeka and Kansas City we saw 30 cars in the ditches), but we still made it back in about 10 hours! When we got home, it had already begun snowing, but not very much at that point. When we got up the next morning, this is what it looked like out our windows!


For you folks used to this weather, it's no big deal, but it's a majorly big deal when it happens down in Kentucky! They don't have much for snow removal services as far as the roads are concerned, and people just don't know how to drive in it! We ended up getting about 10-12 inches so far. The girls are anxious to get out and play, and Roscoe would rather hide in the house all day long (too bad we don't have a sled to pull him around in!)

Since we have been in Kansas for the past week, we really needed to get to the store and get some things (milk, what else?). Bear and I went to the store while my parents stayed in with the girls. We came home to a very upset Caitlyn! Apparently when she went upstairs to her room to get dressed, she put her favorite puppet in the world, her dragon as she calls it, on the lamp (and consequently light bulb) for some reason. When she was done dressing, she left her lamp on and went downstairs by grandma and grandpa. After a while, they noticed that something smelled smokey. My mom went upstairs and thought the girls room looked a little smokey, so she called for my dad to come up. He looked at the lamp just at the right time to see a little puff of smoke rise from it and immediately knew what was going on. Oh how lucky we were!!! I heard a fire marshall say once that it wouldn't take more than just 7 minutes for these extremely old buildings to become completely engulfed in flames! Thank God it was caught in time! Caitlyn was in tears about her dragon, but has now learned the lesson that she can not put anything on her lamp! No one got hurt, and hopefully she will remember this lesson for a long time to come! Poor dragon!