In the World of the Thomas Familie...

And so it begins...

2009-02-10T11:18:00.001-05:00

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!

2009-02-10T09:13:00.003-05:00

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

2009-02-10T08:33:00.002-05:00

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!

2009-01-27T14:02:00.004-05:00

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

2009-01-27T13:00:00.003-05:00

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...

There goes another one!

2009-01-27T12:12:00.002-05:00

Caitlyn's other super loose tooth finally fell out with the aid of her Mamaw's magic fingers. I love this smile...if only it was a little before Christmas so she could get her wish! She already has 2 more loose on the bottom, so she could have a real hard time eating in the near future!

A warm January day

2009-01-11T11:40:00.000-05:00

This has been a very odd January with temperatures fluxuating constantly between near zero up to over 60 degrees. And because of that, the girls haven't been able to use their new sleds they got for Christmas. So, their dad, being a good sport, and clearly enjoying getting to play with his toys too, agreed to give them a sled ride in a different way. Yes, he was towing them all over the yard behind the lawn tractor! I'm not sure who was having more fun...Bear or the girls!

It finally came out!!!

2009-01-08T21:46:00.003-05:00

Caitlyn's 3rd loose tooth has finally fallen out tonight! The past couple days, her tooth has been poking out so funny, but it wasn't quite ready to come out. At dinner, she was going to get a drink, and I don't know if she hit her tooth on her cup or what, but her tooth fell out onto her chair, and she spilled her milk all over the floor. She was so excited that it came out on it's own, and that it didn't hurt at all! She quickly put her tooth in an envelope, sealed it, and put her name on it so she could put it under her pillow. She's still too stinkin cute...even with her missing teeth! Love you Caitlyn!!!

Happy New Year!!!

2009-01-08T13:25:00.010-05:00

So this year, one of my resolutions is to quit using our slow-as-pond-water dial-up internet as an excuse to not update this blog, and just keep up with it! We'll see how it goes. Since the last update, my Allison turned 3 years old!!! It doesn't seem possible that she is 3 already, but she certainly thinks she is big. She has finally made it over 30 pounds. I thought she was going to stay 28 pounds forever, but at her yearly check up, she was a whopping 30 1/2 pounds and 37 inches tall. By that standard, she should be around 5'4" as an adult, which kind of suits my Tiny. I wasn't sure when we were going to be able to celebrate her birthday, because the night before, she was up throwing up with diarrhea and was completely not feeling good. Thankfully she recovered quickly and was able to celebrate her birthday on the actually day! For her birthday dinner, she asked to have hot dogs, ketchup, mustard, chips, and beans and cake, but no ice cream. Goofy kid, but that's what she wanted. We had a small crew come over to help celebrate the day with us, and she had all kinds of fun!

It had been a while since I took a picture with the 3 girls, so I had them all lay down together on the couch...I love this picture of my girls!!!

Bear was going out hunting one day and Caitlyn really wanted to go along, so she got suited up in blaze orange with some binoculars, and was ready to go. She had all kinds of fun out with all the guys in the cold until she needed to go potty and was nearly refusing to potty out in the woods and freeze her little tush. Of course, she went, and was fine, but she was not happy about it!

I finally captured a picture of all the varieties of our chickens we have. We get brown and white eggs from them, and have been lucky enough to not have to buy eggs since the day we got them! They are so fun to watch wandering around the yard and pasture. Unfortunately, Maggie has already eaten one of them, but she is learning the hard way that our chickens are not her dinner!

Allison's job every day is to give the chickens their food and water, and open their door, so they can come out if they want to. She loves to take care of her animals. She seems so big sometimes going out to do chores, but also so little, as Elmo frequently has to help her do chores (or one of her blankies).

We got a few inches of snow, and the kids got sent home early from school. The good thing about Bear's job is that when the post closes due to inclement weather, he gets a paid day off too! So, he got home a little after Caitlyn did. He borrowed his dad's truck and took all the kids up to Sweeny's hill and we went sledding for a while. Allison enjoyed herself much more this time, but still prefers to have a big person go down with her. Caitlyn on the other hand was doing just fine by herself. Bear was even having fun going down the really steep side, until he went through the brush a few times and decided he had better quit before he went head first into a tree. Anybody know anyone who would do something like that? I don't remember...I gave Elijah's snowboard a try and didn't get too far because my boots were too big to fit in the straps, and it was rather difficult to control one-footed. We had a blast anyways!

Lauren is still my chunkabuns! She is much more mobile now though. She can go from sitting on her own to playing on her belly, and rolling around. She gets up on her hands and knees and makes like she is going to crawl, but usually ends up going backwards. I'm sure she is going to take off one of these days! She has 2 teeth already, and 2 more are pushing their way up. She hasn't been too terribly cranky, and only spiked a fever once.

We got a little bit of an ice storm, but nothing like what it was last year, thank God!!! It was still pretty though. I managed to fall down our back steps and bruise/scrape up my legs, but nothing real serious.

I have been terrible about not having my camera with me when I really needed it. Not that I would have taken pictures from the front of the church, but I could have passed the camera to someone else to take pics for me. For the Christmas Eve service at the Coal Creek United Methodist Church, my whole family was involved! Since we have the youngest baby at church, even though she is a girl, she got to be baby Jesus in the nativity scene. That also meant that Bear was Joseph, and I was Mary. Caitlyn and Allison were both angels. But, Allison totally stole the show. She had to bring one of her stuffed bears with her, which she was pretending to give a piggy back ride to, and was pretty much petting the 2 year old boy's hair that was standing next to her, on top of constantly adjusting her halo to make sure it was perfect. Too funny! Through it all, Lauren just laid in the manger trying to chew on the hay. We had such a wonderful Christmas with the extra company of my parents for about a week. Despite a few obstacles while traveling, they made it safely here and back home again! New exhaust anyone?!?!

Our family is going to be growing again...but not because of me this time. Maggie is pregnant! She should have her pups towards the end of February. Hopefully she will be a really good mom! I plan on taking her to the vet in a couple weeks to see if we can have an ultrasound to find out how many puppies to expect. That will be an awesome picture to post if I can get one!

Caitlyn had her first holiday concert, and I forgot my camera then too. I don't know what I was thinking to not bring it. It was so cute and she did such a wonderful job! She stood up there and sang her little heart out without waving to everyone she knew, despite the efforts of her silly, arms flailing all over trying to embarrass his granddaughter, papaw. It was funny to watch anyways. We should have some more toothless pictures coming soon as Caitlyn has 4 loose teeth right now.

We were truly blessed with a wonderful year in 2008 and are looking forward to what the Lord has in store for us in the new year. May all of you be blessed in the year to come...our Saviour reigns!

A Very Badly Overdue Update!

2008-11-21T15:33:00.020-05:00

Okay, I know this has been neglected for a while, so bear with me on how long this one will be! So much has happened since the last posting! To start our whirlwind past couple of months was Lauren's baptism over Labor Day weekend. See how far behind this is?!?! We made a mad dash up to Oshkosh for a few days. We took the girls to play at Little Oshkosh park which they absolutely love! Lauren's baptism went very well, and she didn't complain at all through having the cold water poured over her precious little head! Ali Parks is her Godmother, and I am so grateful that Ali accepted that role for Lauren. Even though we live far away from her, I hope that my girls will have the relationship with her that she did with me when she was a little girl! Caitlyn took a picture of Ali to school to show everyone her Ali. Too sweet!!! Misty and I went and got some ink done, but I don't have any pics of that for some reason. I added a butterfly on my back with the other 2, and of course Lauren's name too. Misty got her "something blue" permanently attached to her in the shape of a very pretty blue heart with some scrolling on her ankle...that works, right?!?!

After the baptism, it was back to Fort Knox for us to start preparing for our move! For anyone that has not taken part in a military move, it's a crazy procedure! We had to sort everything and pre-pack for two trips...one back up to Oshkosh for Dan and Misty's wedding, and the second for what we would all need for at least a week until our household goods arrive in Kansas. Once all the pre-packing was done, we had to get everything else ready. The people that pack do just that. They will pack anything to include full trash cans and dirty dishes! It's their job to pack, not sort. Our entire house was packed up in 4 hours! That is absolutely insane! We ended up having 94 boxes and 98 separate items that could not be boxed. The next day the movers came out and moved everything out in a little over 4 hours! Thank goodness for air mattresses and our card table! I had forgotten how bad our quarters echoed!

As soon as the movers left, we packed up all our stuff for the wedding and were on our way back up to Oshkosh. We even remembered to bring all of our dress clothes and gift! Not that I could have taken any pictures from the service since I was in it, but I ended up forgetting my camera at home, so we don't have any pictures! Caitlyn was so cute as the flower girl. She did a wonderful job sprinkling the flower petals for Misty to walk on. And Misty was absolutely gorgeous! Best of all...my brother is happy. Misty is truly lucky to have a guy that will bend over backwards for her in a moments notice. Congrats to both of you!!! I wish you the best luck in the world! We had to leave bright and early on Sunday morning to get back to the base so we could clear our quarters and get ready to leave Fort Knox for the last time. We got in late Sunday night and were too exhausted to do too much, so we all crashed. Monday morning, Bear had to go and do some final outprocessing, which left me at home with the girls to clean our quarters before the inspectors came out to get the keys and lock up our quarters. Thank goodness he came home quickly because we had to wash every single wall, baseboard, appliance, sink, toilet, bathtub, sweep and mop all the floors, and clean up the front and back yards. It took us an exhausting 4 hours, and we got done just 5 minutes before the lady showed up. The floors were still wet from mopping, but we did it! We didn't get charged anything extra, and were able to turn our keys in the first time! That night some of our neighbors we had met over the summer decided to have a little farewell dinner for us. It was so wonderful to have a get together to reflect over the time we had known them and to get in our last few hugs goodbye. All our girls had grown close to the other kids, and it was very difficult for them to have to leave each other. That is one of the down sides to the military life. That night we stayed in the lodging on post. The next morning, Bear had to get into uniform for the last time and go sign out from his unit. We loaded up in the car and truck and left Fort Knox for the last time. It was kind of sad. Kentucky had been our home for the past 5 years! But, we were on to a new adventure! We made it to our house in Kansas on Wednesday. We had told Caitlyn that she could wait to start at her new school until Monday, but she wanted to start the very next day, so we made sure to stop in at the school and let them know we were here. She gets to ride the bus to school and back home, which is very exciting for her right now. Allison has been enjoying herself out here as well. There is all kinds of dirt out here for her to play in! She loves to go outside, barefoot of course, and check on all the animals. I think she had been trying to feed Sugar some grass in this picture.

My mom and dad came down shortly after we got here to help us get settled and do some work on the house. During one of our trips to town to get some more supplies, everyone was getting hungry, so we decided to get something to eat. Dad actually agreed to go to Taco John's and ate lunch there. I knew that no one would believe me, so I had to take a picture of it as proof!

Bear's official last day in the Army was 23 October 2008. Congrats on a job well done in the Army...we are glad that you will be home with us now Bear!!! He now works as a civilian LPN for the Army at Fort Leavenworth in a clinic. And like every guy does when they are on leave or gets out, they have to grow some facial hair and not get a hair cut for a while. I don't have any pics of him and his scruffiness, but he finally broke down and we cut his hair and he trimmed his beard to just a goatee.

Sadly, Caitlyn's dog Roscoe died. The goofy critter went over to the neighbors house and ate a bunch of gravel where bacon grease had been dumped, and was unable to eat, drink, or pass anything because his bowels got impacted. RIP Roscoe!!! Caitlyn misses you dearly...she loved you very much.

And then it was time for Halloween. Caitlyn was planning on being Sleeping Beauty until my mom sent a box of my old costumes to the house. Then she changed her mind and was going to wear my old devil costume. It's really cute...a red skirt with the pointy tail on it, a red shirt, and a red hood with the horns on it. She was so excited to go trick or treating, but ended up getting incredibly sick and didn't even want to get her costume on. She spent her halloween throwing up and feeling horrible! I felt so bad for her, but Allison was trying very hard to comfort her. Allison couldn't make up her mind about what she was going to be. It changed 20 times a day for a while. Finally she decided to be a panda bear (another one of my old costumes). She was the cutest panda ever! I don't know what she did with her ears though. She's still cute anyways. When we took the girls to Great Papaw's, he let them pick out their own candy, and as much of it as they wanted. I bet Allison got half of her bucket from him! Lauren was a pumpkin and didn't really care about what was going on. She just liked people coming over and smiling at her.

Lauren had her 6 month check up which went very well. We were nervous about having to find a new doctor after having the same ones on the base for so long and not knowing who was going to be a good one to go to. But we picked a good doctor! Lauren weighs 19 pounds! She is doing wonderful though, and I'm sure will lose her baby fat when she gets more mobile. She still doesn't roll over, but scoots all over the place whether on her back or her belly. She gets all up on one side or the other, but just won't roll all the way over. She has started using a walker, which she absolutely loves! She scoots herself backwards all over the place, and her sisters take turns pushing her everywhere.

We have also started her on veggies/fruits and cereal. She is doing wonderful and learning to use the spoon better. She now realizes what the hi-chair is for and gets excited when she gets put in it. So far, she doesn't like squash at all (check out the face below), and has a hard time with pears...probably from the texture.

Overall, we are all doing pretty well getting adjusted to our new life here in Kansas. Here is one last picture of my girls being goofy and trying to help Lauren stand with them. Don't worry, no babies were hurt in the taking of this picture!

Now that we are mostly caught up, maybe I won't get so far behind again! It only takes about 15 minutes to upload one picture on dial up internet...oh boy! I think this is enough for now. Back again some other day!

Gatlinburg, TN

2008-08-23T14:12:00.001-04:00

On a whim, we decided to go to Gatlinburg, Tennessee this weekend. Bear had been wanting to go there for quite some time, so we figured we should go while we were still over in this part of the country. It's a little over a 5 hour drive (if all goes well), but of course, ours was longer. After leaving the house for the second time (we had to turn around and go back home to get Bear's meds) we were finally on our way there about 1730-ish. The trip seemed to be going very well...almost too well. Then, somewhere in Tennessee, Bear ran a red light trying to figure out where we were supposed to go, and of course, a cop was right there. He turned the corner to follow us, but never turned his lights on. He followed us for quite some time, but eventually had to pass us because we got behind a very slow driver, thank goodness. He never did pull us over! Then a little further down the road and around 10PM, I told Bear to turn and follow Hwy 441. He turned and it was this crazy twisting and hairpin winding road. Caitlyn, who had been sleeping for quite some time, woke up, and because of all the winding roads, proceeded to get sick all over herself. Poor kiddo! Only after we made it to some straighter roads did we realize that we had been following Hwy 411 instead of 441 (I hate it when I turn dyslexic!). So we had to go back through that nasty windy road to get back to where we should have been nearly an hour ago. We eventually made it to our hotel and got everyone in and ready for sleep. The first thing Caitlyn asked when we got to the hotel was "Do they have food here?". She was already feeling better. When we got up and around the next morning, it was time to go have some fun in Gatlinburg! The first thing we saw after breakfast was the Herbie car which Caitlyn loves, so she had to have her picture taken with him!

Next, we went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. Some of the things in there were a little gruesome, but overall we had a lot of fun! Love the pic of Bear and Allison in the goofy mirror!

This chair is so huge that Allison couldn't get out of it by herself even with the steps there.

Both girls tried to climb in this humongous tire!
Then we went to the Ripley's Mirror Maze. That was certainly one of the highlights of the weekend! Before you go in, they make everyone put on plastic gloves so that there aren't finger prints all over the mirrors. Once you walk through the curtains, good luck to ya! There are no lights except for the strips of red lights on the floor, and there are mirrors all around you. Caitlyn did so well getting through there, so we let Allison have a turn at leading us. That was the funniest thing ever! She would take off running, and smack into a mirror, fall down and do it all over again. She eventually learned to keep her hands in front of herself. Instead of finger prints all over, there are little Allison face prints on their mirrors! We laughed so hard, and Allison was laughing too!The Ripley's Aquarium was by far the best one we have been to! There is a moving sidewalk that takes you in tubes underneath the aquarium, so you get an awesome view. Plus, you don't have to worry about people pushing their way through the crowds since the sidewalk moves you! And of course, you can get off if you want to gawk at something for an extended period of time.

One part of the aquarium is barely lit, which proved to be a little spooky, but cool too.
Here's me and the girls inside one of the little tanks where the seahorses were (my favorite critter of course!)
Caitlyn and Allison got to experience what it is like to be inside a fish bowl.
Caitlyn is staring at their enormous tank asking which fish we are going to get.
Lauren even enjoyed herself! She loves to look at our little fish tank at home, so this was really fun for her with all the different colors all over.
Allison would put her hand in the water, but wouldn't actually pet the horseshoe crabs...too scary for her!
And it was only natural that after we spent most of the day looking at fish, we went out and had fish for dinner! I ate shark which was a little scary at first, but very good! Bear had scallops for the first time and really enjoyed them. What I am going to miss the most about this area is the bluegrass bands which pop out and play just about anywhere. One was playing right below us while we were eating dinner!I had everyone get dressed up for an old western photo since the last one we did was 3 years ago and our family has changed just a little bit since then. I love Allison's face in this pic!

It was a very long, but fun-filled weekend! Best of all...we didn't get lost on the way home and no one got sick!!!

A call from the school

2008-08-22T09:44:00.000-04:00

This morning a little before 10, the phone rang and it was Caitlyn's school. Instantly I was worried that something bad happened. The nurse was on the phone and said that Caitlyn was in her office complaining that her belly hurt. She said she would let me talk to Caitlyn and then decide what we were going to do. When Caitlyn got on the phone, she immediately started crying. I asked her what was wrong. She said her belly hurt. I asked her if she needed to go potty to which she whimpered no. I then asked if she felt like she was going to throw up, and again, she said no. I asked her once more what was making her belly hurt. She blubbered out "my belly hurts because it's hungry". I couldn't help but burst out laughing, even though my heart still went out to the poor little turkey. I told her that lunch was just a little over an hour away, and asked her if she could make it til then, and she said yes she could. The nurse got back on the phone and was concerned because of how much Caitlyn was crying. I told her that Caitlyn was fine, but was just hungry. So, the nurse took Caitlyn to get a snack, and then headed back to class. How can you not love this kid?!?!

Birthday party at Blazers

2008-08-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

The girls were invited to go to a neighbor girl's birthday party at Blazers, which has a bunch of huge blow up jumping things for the kids to play on. They absolutely had a blast! Allison was a little timid at first, but as soon as Bear threw her in one (literally), she took off and had lots of fun. Trouble with her is that because she is so little, she was getting stuck on some of the obstacles and would get lost through the mazes. Thankfully she had lots of help getting around. She wanted to go down the big slide, but wouldn't go unless I went with her, so off we went. She giggled the whole way down and wanted to go again, and again, and again...

As soon as we came in the door, Caitlyn's shoes flew off and she was gone! We saw her for a little bit while everyone ate pizza and cake and opened presents, but then she was gone again. Every now and then we would hear her giggle and see a flash of her running to another obstacle.
I don't think we will get the chance to go back again, but the girls had a lot of fun celebrating Brooklyn's birthday. And the best part...they both crashed out as soon as we got home!

Kentucky State Fair

2008-08-16T09:17:00.001-04:00

This weekend we decided to go to the Kentucky State Fair. Apparently we weren't thinking when we decided to do this, as this was the first weekend of the fair, so everyone and their brother was at the fair. Kentucky fairs aren't our favorite to go to...too many snobby people accompany their unreasonably priced horses that aren't good for much but expensive lawn ornaments, and they all think rules don't apply to them because they drive a Mercedes or a Lexus...ooh, I'm impressed! Anywho, once we made it through all the crowds and of course a couple stops at the bathrooms, it was time to go look at animals. We went to look at the chickens which proved later to be the highlight of our trip! Caitlyn went to look at the roosters, and said that this one was her favorite...this scrawny lookin' like it's inches from death rooster is her favorite. I laughed so hard and said she had to take a picture with him. Gotta love this kid.

So of course, Allison had to have a picture with her favorite chicken as well. She's so goofy.
When they were done posing with their chickens, we walked down the other aisles of chickens/roosters. The girls discovered that if they crowed at some of the roosters, they would crow back. Yeah, you know where this one is going. The rest of the time we were in there, all they did was crow at the roosters to see if they would do it back. Several of them did, which made the girls giggle hysterically. Allison was probably the funniest about it because initially she didn't want to crow, but rather growl. She's lucky she didn't get pooped on! And of course we had to go watch the border collies herd up some ducks (one of my favorite things to see). We missed out on all the horse stuff because it didn't start til the day after we went. We usually like to watch the draft horse pulls. It was a very long and exhausting day...my knees felt like they were on fire (guess it's time for a new pair of boots!), but it was a good family day none-the-less!

She finally did it!!!

2008-08-15T13:09:00.002-04:00

Caitlyn finally realized that she can ride a 2-wheeler! She just needed a little confidence that she could really do it. A neighborhood kid came over with a tiny 2-wheeler, so Caitlyn got on, and Bear gave her a little push, and off she went riding all by herself without training wheels! Then she tried out another friend's bike that was a little bigger, and she could ride that one too! Her bike is the biggest one, so it took a little more work, but soon, she was off and riding like a mad-woman! She was so excited and only crashed a couple times, but I know she'll get better the more she does it. Soon she'll be riding all over the place...look mommy, no hands!

Allison of course wanted the training wheels off her bike right away, but Bear left them on for now. It wouldn't surprise me if she could do it though the way she rides her bike already! Gotta love her posing for a pic after we came back from our walk...she's too stinkin cute (just ask her!)! She has been doing wonderful with the potty training progress as well. I usually don't need to have her sit down anymore...she just goes on her own or asks if she needs help! I'm so proud of you Allison!!!
Lauren got a new chair that she seems to really enjoy! It can be either a stationary seat that lays back pretty far, or it can be converted into a rocking chair. She has been playing with the little elephants hanging down like crazy and talks to them a lot.
Gotta love my turkeys!!!

8 years ago...

2008-08-12T12:38:00.001-04:00

Eight years ago, I met some more of Bear's family for the first time when they drove up to Oshkosh the day before our wedding. I had only been back home for 4 months from my AIT and had to quickly make arrangements for our wedding and my conversion to active duty. Bear was still in AIT out in Ft. Lewis and was flying in with the other guys standing up in our wedding the night before the festivities. His mom and dad went down to pick up the guys from the airport, and on their way back to Oshkosh, totaled their van, but by the grace of God, no one got hurt. And thank goodness that some of his family drove up in a big truck and another van, because the wrecked van had to be towed back to Kansas somehow, and the rest of his family needed somewhere else to ride! The morning before our wedding was absolutely crazy!!! We had to first get our marriage license (thankfully my dad worked for the county and hooked us up with a special meeting with the lady to get our license the same day as the wedding!!!), then we had our wedding rehearsal, the guys had to pick up their tuxes, the girls went to get our hair done, and after my mom's car died and she got a ride to the church, we were finally able to get married!

It has been a wonderful 8 years and I can't wait til we make it to our 50th! And to think that lots of people were questioning us and telling us that we were too young (19 & 20) and didn't know what we were doing, and that we wouldn't make it. We still love each other and have a very strong relationship..."Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" Mark 10:9
Bear and I were able to go out to dinner with just us (and of course Lauren since she is still dependent on mom) while our neighbor watch Caitlyn and Allison. He even took me to get my toes done before dinner! I have heard our song "When you say nothing at all" by Alison Krauss several times over the past few days...that song still makes me melt! Anywho, enough mushy stuff for now. Bear, I love you more than you will ever know and couldn't have found a better husband if I searched all the earth! Like your ring says, forever yours in 3! I love you!!!

Our babies are getting big!

2008-08-08T12:19:00.000-04:00

Lauren is now 3 months old and I'm guesstimating her to be around 15 pounds or so...the girl is a good eater!!! She just recently had her first bottle. Surprisingly enough, she took it better from me than her daddy. I had to give her some Karo syrup and water to get her bowels back on track, so it was 2 new things to take in at once, but she did very well. I'm confident that she'll get better with the bottle the more she is exposed to it, but so far she is doing good! No rice cereal yet...she is doing more than fine with just mommy's milk still! She is now in 3-6 month clothes and size 2 diapers, woohoo! She stays awake quite a bit and has some very ticklish arm pits! She still puts herself to sleep and doesn't want much to do with a pacifier of any kind (we have tried 3 different kinds, and she doesn't like any of them...doesn't bother me if she doesn't get attached to one!).

Scout on the other hand, seems to like Lauren's pacifier! He had a hard day of playing outside and crashed out by Bear on the couch. Since he was out so hard, Bear decided to have some fun with him. The goofy dog never woke up!

First day of Kindergarten

2008-08-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

Where did the summer go?!?! For the kids that live on post, school started on 04 Aug (seems early, doesn't it?). Caitlyn was so excited for school to start. She has become very eager to start reading as of late and of course, couldn't wait to see all her friends from preschool. She is in a rather big class, 25 students! The last night before school started, which means early bedtimes, Bear set up the sprinkler for the girls in the backyard for them to burn off some energy and be able to get a good night sleep before the first day of school. They are such water worms...they loved it!
Caitlyn did an excellent job getting up in the morning and getting ready for school pretty quickly. Since we missed the open house night at her school due to being in Kansas, we wanted to get there extra early to meet her teacher and see the classroom and such. Before the bell rings for school to begin, all the kids have to gather in the cafeteria and sit at their assigned tables. Caitlyn was sitting down, but looked to be on the verge of tears. She came over by me and said she scratched her finger on something. I kissed it and said she would be fine. Then she asked how long I was going to stay there. I told her that I would stay until the bell rang, and then she would go to her class. She asked if I would come with her, which almost had me in tears, but I told her no, that her teacher would go with her. Then a bunch of her little friends showed up and she spent the rest of the time talking and giggling with them! When the bell rang, she got in line and went to her class. She looked a little nervous, but did great. And, I was very proud that neither of us cried! I had to take a couple pictures from her first day of school though!
Here is my Caitlyn, all ready to go!
Waiting in line to go to class at the start of the day.
Even though she is just in kindergarten, her teacher said that she will have homework almost every day! Nothing big...just coloring, counting, working on site words and the like. I'm so proud of you Caitlyn!!!

Continuing a barbaric tradition

2008-08-03T13:18:00.000-04:00

Caitlyn and Allison both got their ears pierced when they were little bitty, so we thought we would do the same with Lauren (hence the barbaric tradition, he he!). She cried a little bit, but her daddy cuddled her up and made everything better! So, here is Lauren with her new fancy earrings showing everyone the new trick that her Mamaw taught her...to stick out her tongue!

Gotta love those chunky cheeks!!!

Mini garden gone wild!

2008-08-02T13:06:00.000-04:00

Since we live on the military base, we are not supposed to have a garden. Oops! This is our second year having a garden and it is doing very well for no bigger than it is. Our biggest producer is the tomato plants. There are 4 celebrity (red tomatoes), 4 lemon boy (yellow tomatoes) and one grape tomato plant. This picture doesn't do them justice as each of them are over 6 feet tall! When we got back from Kansas, Bear picked 4 gallon buckets worth of veggies and had enough to give 3 other families some and still have a ton left over! Each day since we got home, another 10 or so have been picked. Our cucumber plant has been vining up the fence so the cucs have been growing in between the slats, making for some unusually shaped ones. The girls love to pick the ripe veggies and eat them right away. It is such a great learning experience that every kid should have!!!

An exhausting 2 weeks!!!

2008-08-02T10:51:00.000-04:00

First of all I need to say a huge thanks to Bear's dad and brothers for all the help they gave us while we were working on our future home! And of course another huge thanks to Bear's mom for keeping watch over Caitlyn and Allison so we could get the work done without little ones getting into everything...we couldn't have gotten anything done without your help!!! We had a very busy and exhausting 2 weeks while in Kansas recently. Bear's time left in the Army is dwindling down quickly, so we were anxious to get some work done on the house to get it ready for us to move in and to be better prepared for winter. We put in new windows throughout the whole upstairs which were very badly needed! The first room upstairs that is going to be remodeled is the room that Caitlyn picked for her own, so we got busy taking the drop ceiling down and removing all the plaster (a very VERY dirty job that I know my parents are elated to be finished with in their own home!) that had been damaged from heat from the old chimney. We removed all the carpet from the house except for the room where we took the plaster out, but it will be coming out shortly as well. Under the kitchen carpet was some old vinyl flooring that needed to come out so we could put down some new tile. That proved to be an exhausting job, but it turned out well! After several applications of adhesive remover, all the goo left behind the vinyl was finally gone and Bear got busy laying down a new sub-flooring. While he was doing that, I laid new tile on the back porch! Once Bear got his portion of the floor done and the skim coat applied, it was time for me to start laying tiles down! This is a rather large kitchen, so it took a few days to get done, but we finished it just in time for our appliances to arrive at the house! The downstairs will get carpeted in the very near future, and we can't wait to see how that will look! We still have some more wallpaper to remove so we can start painting, but we made a lot of progress in just 2 short weeks!

The front of the house with new windows!

Back of the house after windows installed
Lauren getting her first tractor ride with her daddy

The kitchen with appliances and tile laid down
Love the new floor!!!
Bear getting dirty taking plaster down

The living room minus wallpaper and carpet

The dumpster, nearly full to the brim at the end of our 2 weeks.

The entire 2 weeks wasn't devoted to work...we did play a little. We made it out to a couple county fair parades. The girls got so much candy it was crazy, but they were fun to watch. Most of the time, Allison wouldn't even run out to get candy...the people would drop handfuls in her lap!!! When Caitlyn saw Ty riding her horse in the Jackson county parade, she said she would like to do that some day...who knows! I learned how to operate our riding mower...pathetic, I know, but it was exciting for me as growing up we only had push mowers. Sorry no pics! Our calves are getting big and have been weaned off the bottle. And Maggie has been getting in trouble again, this time killing 2 chickens! Allison shocked us all by making the whole trip there and back home without any accidents!!! Just writing about all this makes me tired again!

Scout

2008-08-01T10:40:00.001-04:00

We would like to introduce the newest member of our family! He is about 11 weeks old with pretty hazel eyes. His name is Scout, and he is a chocolate and tan miniature dachshund (& Maggie's hopeful boyfriend). He does pretty well with kennel training, but still whines quite a bit when he doesn't get to come out and play when he wants to. Allison is very excited about this little puppy because she can carry him everywhere (that is if Caitlyn puts him down). Hopefully he won't develop allergies like Roscoe has. Gotta love these pics!!!

Stats of a 2 month butterball

2008-07-11T16:07:00.002-04:00

Lauren is now 2 months old and a whopping 13 pounds 4 ounces and 22 1/2 inches long! She sleeps 6 hours at night which is awesome for me, but I feel a little bad for her when she eats the first time in the morning because she kind of gets shot in the tonsils sometimes. She has really discovered her voice lately and loves to babble. She is also smiling more on demand instead of just when she gets done relieving herself. So, here are some pics of my butterball. Sorry the second one is a little fuzzy, but she was very excited about something...maybe her ability to make mom act like a fool just to get a smile.

Along with turning 2 months old, comes her first round of shots as well. She got 3 shots in the legs, and a new vaccine was administered that she had to drink, yes, she had to drink it. Neither Caitlyn nor Allison had to do that one when they were little. Lauren has been bad about spitting up every now and then so I was real nervous about her having to drink this vaccination. But, she loves her daddy so much that she saved the spitting up part for him (and a nasty diaper too!!!). Thank goodness she didn't get him as bad as she usually does, and he was wearing scrubs at work, so he had plenty of clothes to change into at a moments notice. My butterball just woke up and thinks she needs to eat again, so I guess this is it for now!

Bear got a job!!!

2008-07-10T16:20:00.001-04:00

God has been so good to us with all of our worries about completely separating from the military and all of the securities that come with it. Bear literally found a job, sent his resume in, and got hired the next day! He is going to be doing nursing at the clinic on Fort Leavenworth! The fact that it's a clinic and not a hospital ward is awesome because he won't have all kinds of crazy shifts to rotate through. Plus, it's a GS position, so all of his time in the Army counts towards his years of working. Thank you to all of you that have kept us in your prayers through this rather trying time. It's just amazing how things work out sometimes, isn't it?!?! Now we can start buying him scrubs to eventually trade in his Army uniform for. Love you Bear!!! Congrats!!!

Sleep study and my short hair

2008-07-03T15:22:00.002-04:00

Bear has been spending a lot of time lately getting all of his medical ducks in a row so that things will be documented for when he gets out of the Army this October. One of the things recommended that he have done was a sleep study, which he just got the unofficial results from. He had to sleep in the sleep study clinic over night hooked up to several monitors with about 15 different cords stuck everywhere from on his head down to his legs. He was told by the techs that he has moderate sleep apnea with 10-20 episodes every hour throughout the night, which means he stops breathing 10-20 times every hour. The tech thinks that he might have to use one of those cpap machines in the very near future. At least he's getting all this testing done before he gets out!!! Please keep him in your prayers that all of this works out as best as possible for him.

And of course, it's the time of year when the humidity is crazily high and I have contemplated shaving my head to help stay cool. But, I have opted to just cut it short again. My hair hasn't been this short since I met Bear in AIT back in 1999. I got my hair cut while Bear was grocery shopping with the 2 younger girls, so he had no idea what I was getting done. I told the stylist how he usually hovers over whoever cuts my hair to make sure they didn't chop too much off. When I was done getting it cut and styled, all the other girls in the shop crowded the window to watch his reaction to seeing how short my hair was (she cut about 4-6 inches off!). All the girls cracked when his eyes got huge and he muttered...WTF??? At least I didn't streak it purple like I thought about doing...yet! So this is my new do!

Laptop and bike crash

2008-07-02T21:03:00.003-04:00

Allison has recently learned how to ride her big girl bike with training wheels instead of just her tricycle. She is going around like crazy on this little bike...makes her look so big for being so little!!! Well, she was riding around in the parking lot really fast and tried to turn too quickly and her little bike toppled right over. She literally landed on her head first. I guess she just couldn't get her hands down fast enough. This picture really doesn't do justice to what she looks like. But she's a pretty tough little girl and after some tears, she was back on her bike, riding while standing up. If I don't look it won't bother me, right?!?!

I have been a bit slow about posting updates lately because our laptop is out of commission. The back light for the screen burnt out and we were told that it was going to cost over $500 to fix it, plus the cost of shipping it to the company...crazy, right!!! So, I'm back to using our desktop computer in our room, which makes keeping an eye on all the girls a little more difficult. Anywho, more to follow soon...

Goodwill and a haircut made me cry

2008-06-29T21:59:00.003-04:00

I was brought to tears a couple times this weekend...Bear says I was being goofy, and it was over goofy stuff, I guess, but it's well within the rights of a mom to cry over little things like this. Since Caitlyn was born, we had kept all of the clothes from newborn size on up. We knew we were going to have more kids and didn't want to get rid of things if we could use them again. Allison had her turn at wearing some of them and passed them down to Lauren (that is, what survived Allison and her love of being dirty, got passed down). If we have a say in things, we don't want to have more kids until I am finished with school (if we even have any more), which is going to take 6 years for me to complete. So, we packed up my maternity stuff and a bunch of 0-3 winter clothes that Lauren can't wear now anyways, and donated them to Goodwill. Such a simple thing, but it had me upset a bit. I know we don't need to carry that stuff around forever, but it was still very sad for me to see it go. That was the first time I was teary-eyed.

The second thing that had my eyes leaking was that Allison had asked to get her hair cut for the first time. I know it's just hair, but now her baby curls are gone and she looks even more grown up. She did pretty well having to sit still and was very excited to feel her hair when I was finished cutting it. It looks really cute on her and at least it will be cooler over the summer. Caitlyn wanted her hair trimmed too, so she got hers done second. Bear needed his cut also, but since he has to go to work early tomorrow, he decided we would do his tomorrow night since it took so long to get the girls hair done tonight.

Otherwise, we had a fairly quiet weekend at home and even got to fall asleep to a nice thunderstorm Saturday night. That's something I have always loved. Anywho, enjoy the pics!

My big girls posing before going out to play hard and get dirty.
Lauren was pooped out after being outside for the afternoon and loved sleeping on her daddy!

She too stinkin' cute...even with short hair. Hard to tell, but I cut a couple inches off Caitlyn's hair. She still wants it to grow down to her butt!

Lots of love to you all!!!

Gone fishing!!!

2008-06-23T09:39:00.002-04:00

Bear had promised to take the girls fishing over the weekend and since he didn't get his licenses until Sunday, he was a little short on time and had to get them out there! It took us about 15 minutes to get all the fishing stuff together, load the gear and the girls in the truck, the half of our house in the truck, and finally get ourselves in our seats. Then it was a 10 minute drive to get out to the lake which to get to, we had to do a little bit of off roading. No sooner than we could see the lake, it started to downpour massively! We sat there for a little while, and since the rain wasn't slowing down, we headed back to the house. And of course, as luck would have it, as soon as we got home, the rain completely stopped. Bear was determined to get out and get at least a little bit of fishing done with the girls, so we had to load back up again, but this time went to a different lake that was easier to access. We got everything out of the truck, and Caitlyn was so excited to get fishing that she broke her and Allison's poles. She completely snapped off the very top of each of them trying to put the poles together. So, Bear used his Gerber to cut off the broken end, and now the girls have slightly shorter poles, but they don't even notice. The girls idea of fishing was about the same as mine when I was their age and it mostly involves throwing rocks in the water. Both of the girls have been afraid of worms lately, so Bear told them that if they wanted to fish, they had to at least touch one of the worms that we brought along to fish with. Caitlyn absolutely refused to touch it, but Allison was brave and even held it in her hand. Bear was the first and only one to get a bite, so he let Caitlyn reel it in. She got a big kick out of that! Allison was just content to play with her pole in the water. At least they got to get out for a little while. As for myself, I don't really get to fish...I'm just there for kid control and to get my legs sunburned when I forget sunscreen. Maybe we'll have better luck next time!!!

6 weeks

2008-06-18T09:12:00.000-04:00

It is so hard to believe that Lauren is already 6 weeks old!!! We were curious about how much she weighs since she has been filling out so much and of course is noticeably heavier. So, Bear had her sit down on our scale the best she could (with assistance of course). She already weighs about 10 pounds! And the best part about it is that she slept for 8, yes I said 8, hours last night! I must have really needed to sleep because I didn't wake up all night until she did. It was so odd waking up feeling rested, so I knew that she had slept a long time, but I never would have guessed that it would have been 8 hours!!! Yeah baby!!! I don't expect her to do that every night just yet but it was a nice treat anyways.

We were going to get pictures taken at Walmart, but the lady didn't seem like she knew what she was doing at all and even forgot about putting Lauren in our family picture, so we just left and decided to do our own pictures at home. I think these turned out better than if we would have done them at the store! These pics are extra special because the quilt that Lauren is laying on was the first quilt that Granny ever made which has been passed down to Lauren (and we all know how precious Granny quilts are!). Enjoy the pics...no leaking eyes, Mamaw!!!

Happy Father's Day

2008-06-15T22:00:00.000-04:00

The girls all love their daddy to pieces, and I couldn't have asked for a better one for them to love!!! And let me tell you, my big girls were very excited to celebrate Father's Day this year! Even Lauren got to participate in the festivities. I came up with the idea of getting Bear a new coffee cup because the one he uses all the time is cracked all the way around the cup and I'm just waiting for it to fall to pieces one of these days. But, I didn't just want to get him a plain old boring cup or buy one that says something cheesy on it, so we decorated it ourselves! The girls hands are just small enough that they each got to put a hand print on his cup, in different colors of course, and then I painted their name by their hand. I put a clear coat of paint over the whole cup to keep the hand prints from chipping off and let it dry. It turned out so cute and was an excellent idea...that is until we poured hot coffee in it and Bear took a drink. The heat from the coffee caused the paint to become slightly tacky to the touch and released a not only the smell of fresh paint, but the taste as well. Sorry Bearamus...it was a great idea that sort of flopped in the end. Oh well, at least he has a really cute pen/pencil holder now!!! He didn't really have a lot that he wanted to do, just spend the day with his girls, which included his favorite activity...nap time!!!

Daddy and Lauren slept longer than the big girls did, so they escaped from being in another picture. But all my girls like to snuggle together for pictures frequently...no escaping this time!

I know that my girls are the luckiest girls in the world to have their daddy in their lives! It would be so easy for him to not be very active with them because they're little girls and like little girl things, but he takes such pride in doing all those little things that mean so much to the girls. No, he doesn't partake in their princess dress up games, but will do just about anything else for them! I love to watch them all cook together! Of course, sometimes daddy has to be tough on them, but the girls always fight to sleep in their favorite spot...right on daddy's chest where he has put them to sleep since they were all babies. Bear, I love you so much and am so grateful that you and the girls have the relationships that you do. You are the best daddy our girls could have ever hoped for!!!

How time flies...

2008-06-10T09:18:00.003-04:00

Good grief...where to start?!?! Okay, so I haven't been the best about keeping this blog updated lately, so this will be a long one! All our girls are doing wonderful! Caitlyn and Allison are enjoying having a baby sister to help take care of and Lauren is growing like a weed! She is already a month old and for some reason, seems as though she is getting bigger quicker than the other girls did at that age. Maybe it's just because the other two are getting so much bigger too...I don't know! I would guess that she's about 8 pounds now and close to 21 inches long. Lauren doesn't go back to the doctor until she's 2 months old, so we'll find out more in a month. She is starting to sleep for 5 hours at night every now and then, which is great because then I get to catch up a little on some sleep. She is staying awake more too and is getting better at holding her head up.

We recently made out first trip since Lauren was born, and things went relatively smooth! We left for Kansas pretty early in the morning so that Caitlyn and Allison could sleep some more in the car and we drove straight through. Ten hours and 3 outfit changes for the baby later, we arrived to catch the last couple of hours of Great Papaw's auction. It was so great to see every one there, even though it was only for a couple hours. During our week there, we had lots of excitement! The girls wanted to see our calves and had lots of fun trying to bottle feed them. We also learned that Allison is terrified of the chickens. Any time one of them would come near her, she would scream and try to get away as fast as possible! She wouldn't even let Papaw chicken come near her and that is a very friendly chicken! The goofy bird jumped in our car when we were getting ready to go to town like it's a dog or something, but got kicked out before I could get a pic of her sitting in the driver's seat.

And what do grown-ups do when they have too much time on their hands? They play with the kids toys! Bear got out the little go-kart and fired it up and took it for a ride...too funny!!! Austin liked driving the go-kart so much that he kept looking back at us and smiling and laughing when he was driving and nearly went through the barbwire fence, but decided to pay attention to what he was doing just in time.
We even got to go to a couple of Elijah's baseball games. Mamaw made some t-shirts for all 5 grandbabies to wear to the game. Elijah has his own little fan club going on! Too bad I couldn't get them all to sit down at the same time to get a pic of them all.

Caitlyn lost her second tooth while were there as well. She wouldn't let Bear get near her tooth this time since he poked the other one out last time. But Mamaw and her magic fingers got it to come right out without Caitlyn knowing it! While we were down there, we went over to what will be our home to see what all work needed to be done. Bear sprayed weed killer around the lagoon in the pasture and all of the driveway, mowed the yard, and trimmed the pony's hooves as much as she could tolerate. In the house, we took down the drop ceiling in 2 bedrooms and the hallway upstairs, took some carpet out only to discover that the floor had been painted like a checkerboard over a nice wood floor. We've got some more work to do over the summer and are looking forward to all of our projects. The first thing Caitlyn said when we went into the empty house (it was/is Granny and Great Papaw's house) was that she wanted Great Papaw to live with us. But the girls liked to go over to Great Papaw's new apartment and check things out. Plus the two bowls of ice cream and handfuls of candy he fed each of them helped a bit too! As far as when we will be moving to Kansas, it won't be until around the 1st of October. I was talking with Caitlyn one day about school and asked her again if she still wanted to start kindergarten in Kansas. She initially said yes! I explained to her that if she wanted to start in Kansas, we would have to move without daddy. She about burst into tears at the thought of being without her dad again. So, on that note, she will be starting school here on base and we'll all move at the end of September sometime. The girls have spent enough time away from their daddy...I don't want to make them go through all that again!!!

So, here we are, back in Kentucky and it's the year of the locusts. These things are everywhere and are very loud!!! You can hear the constant buzz from them when we are in the house with the windows closed and the ac running! I hope they go away soon!

Pre-school graduation!

2008-05-23T22:23:00.003-04:00

Today was a very big day for Caitlyn...she had her pre-school graduation! She was very excited and was trying to show us how she had been practicing the day before at school. Caitlyn personally invited everyone to her "gradulation" as she called it, even our new neighbors. Bear was even able to get off work for a little bit, so that made her day! When we came into the classroom, all the kids were sitting down on their chairs very quietly. As Caitlyn told us ahead of time, they weren't supposed to get up and say hi to everyone, but they could wave from their chair, so Caitlyn waved like crazy when she saw us.

Her teacher Ms. Pickerell talked a little bit about what the kids have accomplished throughout the year and then it was time for them to show us what they learned. They stood up and and said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang a song about the colors of the flag, and then sang the 5 songs they learned while making their maps of the world. Caitlyn's favorite one is about the countries of South America...she can show you where all the countries are and tell you their names! It was just too cute to hear all the kids sing the songs with their squeaky little voices. My eyes were a little teary, but I was fine until her teacher turned around while she was talking about all the kids and saw me with teary eyes, and she said she couldn't look over at me because she was going to cry too...I swear that leaky eye syndrome is contagious! Then it was time to call up each student to get their graduation certificate and progress report.
Caitlyn did a great job walking up to get her certificate and remembered to shake everyone's hand that she was supposed to. Our neighbors came to watch her "gradulation" and even made a cap for Caitlyn out of construction paper with a ribbon as the tassel that said "star student"...too cute!
Caitlyn wanted to get a picture of her with her teacher and Ms. Mary, the teacher's aide. I know that Caitlyn will miss her teacher, but she is very excited to start kindergarten in Kansas.

It's hard to believe that Caitlyn is already done with pre-school, but she learned a lot and is eager to start reading. We all love you Caitlyn and are so proud of how well you have done this year!!!

Our first week as 5

2008-05-20T20:54:00.002-04:00

How time is already flying by...! We have survived out first week as a family of 5 with not too much stress. Caitlyn and Allison are loving having their new baby sister at home to help take care of. Every time Lauren makes any noise, both of them are right there wanting to know what's wrong and what they can do to fix her. Well, Caitlyn wants to help and Allison just covers her mouth and says oh my gosh over and over until Lauren is done crying. One of our fears with bringing home Lauren was that Allison would digress with her potty training and stop using the toilet. We are extremely happy to report that Allison is still doing wonderful! Every now and then she still has accidents, but no more than before. And for some reason, as soon as we brought Lauren home, Allison seems to have tripled in size! I know she hasn't grown that much, but Allison just seems so much bigger now. Caitlyn too of course. She does so well holding her baby sister and loves to every chance she gets! Bear and I are getting used to being parents of a newborn again. But Lauren is a pretty good baby. She has been nursing very well and usually sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. She has been staying awake more throughout the day which everyone gets a kick out of. Her cord came off a couple days ago, so the big girls were very excited to help give Lauren her first bath. The water scared her a little at first, but she calmed down quickly and enjoyed it a little. Here are a few pics from her first week...there would have been more but the camera died.

More to follow soon.

Love
Bear, Erin, Caitlyn, Allison and Lauren

Lauren Rene

2008-05-08T21:06:00.001-04:00

Our baby girl has finally arrived!!! Praise God for a very healthy baby and a great delivery! I had an OB appointment Wednesday afternoon and at that appointment, my water broke! We were all just grateful to have made it this far in the pregnancy, but were more than ready to have the baby out. Luckily Bear was able to come to this appointment with me and the girls were staying with a friend of mine, so we just had to make the short walk to the labor and delivery ward next door and get admitted. After getting my first round of antibiotics (I'm a group B Strep carrier) we were able to get out and go walk around for a bit. That was a first for us, so we were excited to not have to stay stuck in our room. I was contracting pretty regularly right off the bat. They were coming every 3-5 minutes, but were tolerable. After getting the second round of antibiotics, the contractions started to dwindle down and talk was initiated about using pitocin. When that came up, I finally said that I was ready for an epidural because I know how pitocin intensifies things. After 2 somewhat painful tries, the epidural was in and we were ready to start pitocin. Shortly after they started the pitocin, they decided to up the dosage to get things going a little better. Then I started getting contractions piggy-backed...2 at a time, back to back, every 30 seconds! Even the epidural couldn't take the edge off those! They turned down the pitocin by half and when they checked me, we were ready to start pushing! After just 4 sets of pushes, she finally made her appearance! Lauren Rene was born at 2:57 AM on 08 May 2008. She weighed exactly 7 pounds and was 19 1/2 inches long. She has a little bit of hair which has sort of a reddish brown color to it, and blue eyes of course! This little turkey has the longest fingers and toes I have ever seen on a newborn! And boy was she hungry right away too! She is doing great with nursing which is a relief for me.

Caitlyn and Allison were more than excited to meet their baby sister! Allison insisted that it was her baby and didn't want to share with Caitlyn initially, but eventually decided that it was okay to share her. Bear's lap is rather full with all his girls to hold these days, but he wouldn't have it any other way!

Now that we are at home, we can all relax a little bit and enjoy Bear having a week off work to spend with all of us. And I was excited and surprised to be able to wear regular clothes...not maternity pants or sweats just 2 days after she was born! Yeah me!!! Our family has truly been blessed again, and we look forward to watching Lauren grow into her own person (with lots of help from her other 2 mothers, Caitlyn and Allison)! Thank you to everyone who kept us in your prayers through this journey!!!

A visit from an oriole and the tooth fairy!

2008-04-26T21:15:00.005-04:00

What a busy and exciting day we had today!!! We started out our day getting some things done around the house. Bear put the gate back on the crib, we went through the girls room and sorted through more toys to sell, and got our shopping list ready (as always, we ran out of milk). We took all the toys/things we wanted to sell to a second hand baby store and found the stroller I really wanted to get (it has a tandem seat for a bigger kid to use as well as the regular stroller seat...we don't need a double stroller, so this is perfect!) so we put our earnings towards that as planned! We will pick it up Wednesday after Bear gets done with work. Anywho, we got done with the rest of our errands and came home to grill out some steaks. While I was in the house getting a salad ready, Bear called for me to come out back. He and the girls had seen a Baltimore oriole and it seemed to have been sticking around. I brought the camera out and these are some of the shots I got...

Here it is coming in for a landing at the hummingbird feeder

Ya gotta love the color!!!
He sat there for quite a while working at getting the nectar.

And of course I had to try to get a picture of our hummingbirds, though it seemed that every time I turned the camera on, they flew away. But, with some patience, I finally got one of a pretty little boy sitting on our fence behind my impatience (he he).

After spending lots of time outside, the girls were completely grubby and needed baths so they wouldn't look gross for church tomorrow. Caitlyn got her jammies on and finished brushing her teeth when we asked how her loose tooth was doing. Bear wiggled her tooth a bit and it was very loose! He pushed on it a little bit and it came out! Caitlyn got a little scared when she saw the little bit of blood in her mouth, but was and still is excited beyond words! She is growing up so fast...it's hard to believe it's already time for her to start losing teeth! Allison was in the bathroom brushing her teeth as well, and when Caitlyn's tooth came out, she tried to grab a hold of one of hers to pull out...she's so goofy! So of course, we had to put her tooth in an envelope and daddy helped her write a letter to the tooth fairy. She signed her name all by herself and ran up to bed with it to put it under her pillow! She hasn't been this motivated to go to bed and get to sleep in a long time!!! She already has another loose tooth, so we'll see how long it takes for another one to fall out. Anywho, here is her first baby tooth that fell out...
And here is my extremely happy and toothless Caitlyn! She will have quite the story to tell, as always! Hopefully the tooth fairy will get his job done tonight successfully!

27 years and 36 weeks

2008-04-22T20:52:00.002-04:00

Today I turned 27 which, for some reason, sounds so much older than 26! Goofy, I know, but I really can't complain. Today was a great day! Bear got to come home early for spring clean up, so we had most of the day to spend with the whole family...doesn't get much better than that! And in keeping tradition with our family, the birthday person gets to pick the meals for the day and the best part was that I didn't have to cook!!! Bear made dinner to include brownies and homemade ice cream (yum-o!!!). He even took care of the girls baths so my back got a break from bending over the side of the tub! We spent most of the day outside in the sun (with sunblock of course) and got to enjoy the hummingbirds coming around more frequently (I see one right now!!!). Here's a couple pics from the day...

Purple roses...my favorite!!!
Here is Allison being chocolate beard the pirate. Of course the pic doesn't do justice to what she really looked like, but she was enjoying her ice cream a lot!

And now we are past 36 weeks with this pregnancy, so the stress of delivering crazily early has been relieved! I would still like to make it to May, but we'll see how things go. I now get to start going to the doctor weekly to be checked and should probably go see anesthesia at some point. The belly is growing just fine, though bending is becoming rather challenging lately. Thank goodness it's warm out so I can wear flip flops and not worry about having to tie shoes or pull on boots!!!
Love you all and see you soon!

Earthquake, a loose tooth, & hummingbirds!

2008-04-18T06:00:00.001-04:00

What is the deal?!?! This is our second earthquake we have experienced in areas that earthquakes aren't common. Our first was back in 2002 while we were out at Ft. Lewis, WA. That one registered 7.6 or so and was an incredibly creepy feeling as the hospital I worked in churned for several minutes. This morning, we had a very rude awakening! The earthquake struck at about 0540. I was still in a dead sleep and Bear said he was awake, but waiting for the alarm clock to go off. We have a glass water jug/cup on my dresser which was making all kinds of racket and all the metal drawer pulls were clinking loudly. Honestly my first thought was that it was a train going by (later Bear said he thought the same, how funny!), but then remembered that there aren't train tracks that close to our house. Once the reality sunk in that it was an earthquake, my heart started racing! Our house shook for several minutes, but nothing got damaged, and the girls slept through it. This earthquake measured at 5.4 starting in Illinois and took only a couple minutes to travel over 150 miles when we felt it. When Caitlyn came downstairs she said that she had a dream that a monster shook her room. I told her that it wasn't a dream and that the whole house wiggled. She got a kick out of that. As Caitlyn was telling her story, I noticed that her lower teeth looked a little funny. I told her to open up her mouth so I could look and we discovered that Caitlyn has her first loose tooth! So of course she wanted to know if the tooth fairy would come to our house. I guess we'll have to wait and see when the tooth actually falls out! To add to the excitement of our morning, we had our first hummingbird of the year at the feeder this morning! It was a pretty little boy with a bright pink neck. I was really surprised by that since we just filled up the feeder late last evening. What a way to start a Friday! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!!

Only at a military school...

2008-04-15T14:10:00.002-04:00

If only I had known about this ahead of time, I would have brought my camera when I went to pick Caitlyn up from school today. For those that don't know, we live on a military base and Caitlyn goes to school on the base as well. Caitlyn's preschool has their own fenced in playground by their classroom, and right next to their playground is a paved area with basketball hoops and the like. Today the students of Mudge Primary School got the opportunity to talk to some Apache helicopter pilots (Soldiers of course), and how do they get around? In their Apache, of course, which landed about 100 feet from the fence of the playground which was plastered with the kiddos watching it land right in front of them! After it was safe enough, the students got to go over to the helicopter and talk to the pilots and ask them questions. Gotta love preschoolers...I guess they were asking why they have to fly at night because it wakes people up. To which the Soldiers apologized. Then came up questions of what do they do when they need to go potty...they have to land of course! Caitlyn thought that was funny. Today was supposed to have been library day, but because of the helicopter landing, they didn't get to go. For some reason Caitlyn wasn't too upset about that today. When Allison and I got there to pick Caitlyn up, the Apache was still there. The principle told us that they would be taking off soon, and said that anyone who wanted to could stay to watch. The girls had to stay! Both of them were up against the fence when the props started moving. Once the noise picked up a bit, Allison came running back to the safety of mom saying "it's winding on me". Caitlyn watched it hover and then turn and fly off. It went right over our heads (just like the C-130's do at the house) which Allison can't stand! She started covering her head saying her usual "the airplane got on me". She cracks me up. Gotta love life on an Army base (sorry no pics for this one)!

Tessa Jo

2008-04-14T08:54:00.002-04:00

Bear has been wanting to get a dog of his own; One that would be good for more than just licking your toes like our other two!!! So, we found this little girl at a humane society in Louisville over the weekend, and Bear completely fell in love with her. He named her Tessa Jo (Tess). She is 2 months old and is an Aussie and something mix. She gets along with Roscoe and Maggie pretty well, but Maggie still has to be the alpha dog...that will be interesting when Tess gets bigger! And of course, Allison is convinced that it's her Tessa, not Bear's! Tess is very cautious in new situations to the point that she is afraid to walk on any type of floor except the carpet. But she manages to get over that fear when it's time to go in the kitchen to eat (as long as the dryer/dishwasher isn't running). Bear and I haven't completely decided whether the girls and I will leave Kentucky before him, but if we do, he will surely have some good company!

Pooped out!

2008-04-03T11:13:00.003-04:00

I'm sure that in years down the road, Allison would be mad to see that I put this picture on the blog, but it's just too cute and funny not to share this story! Caitlyn has been on spring break all this week, and since it has rained basically every day so far, the girls and I have been spending much of our time in the house playing around and enjoying some time with each other. Allison hasn't been napping very much and is getting up early and staying up late so she doesn't miss any of the action. The other day, she was wanting to go outside with Bear so she could watch him cook on the grill (yes, in the rain), but I told her she had to go potty first. She has been doing so good with wearing her big girl panties...she tries pretty hard to keep them clean and dry. So, she went in the bathroom to take care of her business. She was in there for quite a while, so just being funny, I asked Bear when he came in if he would see if she fell asleep sitting on the pot. He came out and said she was doing fine. When I walked by, I saw her head fall forward so hard that she nearly hit her head on the toilet, but she caught herself, and laid her head against the wall. By this point, her eyes were closed and she was completely out! I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Bear came over to see what was so funny, and also burst into laughter. She had only sat down for a couple minutes to go potty and was out for the count. Our poor little booger was literally pooped out!

But hey, at least she kept her panties clean! After we were done laughing, Bear went to get her off the pot and clean her up. She completely freaked out because she hadn't realized she fell asleep, what she was doing when she fell asleep, or where she was. After a bit of a struggle, she was cleaned up and recharged from getting her cat nap on the potty. Gotta love that little turkey!

My first baby blankie & new toy!

2008-03-30T18:45:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-23T18:01:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-19T08:40:00.002-04:00

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!

2008-03-16T21:18:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-15T15:09:00.000-04:00

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!!!

2008-03-09T08:06:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-08T16:34:00.004-05:00

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!

A rental car and 8 hours time...

2008-02-27T16:11:00.002-05:00

Today we had to take my car in to get treated with a stain resistant product, and therefore had a rental car and about 8 hours to kill. The dealership is quite a ways away from our house, so instead of driving home and back again, we decided to spend the day in the Louisville area. The girls love to go to Bass Pro and see the humongous fish tank and all the animals around there (and Bear and I like the coffee shop in there too!), so that was our first stop. Allison didn't quite know what to think of some of the huge fish there, and when a scuba diver jumped in to clean the tank, she was a little frightened, but had fun waving and making faces nonetheless! I love this pic of my turkeys! We went to several other places throughout the day and had a great day overall. We stopped at a cookie factory and everyone picked out a cookie or two. Allison was completely covered in chocolate, and Caitlyn wasn't much better off, but for fear my camera having the same destiny, I didn't take pics of them there. Maybe next time!

My new ride

2008-02-22T16:21:00.000-05:00

After much debate over the topic, Bear and I finally decided that we needed to dx the Durango for something that wouldn't cause us to go bankrupt trying to keep gas in it. Whether I will be going to school or just working until I can start school, I will have at least a 40-50 mile journey 5 days a week, and keeping the Durango would kill us! Don't get me wrong, it has been a great vehicle for all of our trips/vacations and the extra space was great, but for everyday life, it wasn't really practical. Bear gets out of the Army this October, so it was smarter for us to buy the car now while we don't pay tax on it! We tried out several cars and brought extra car seats along to see how everything will fit having 3 kiddos. We ended up getting a 2008 Honda Accord, and I love it! It is a little odd going from such a big rig to a little car (especially when most people do just the opposite as they have more children), but we think it was the right thing to do. Surprisingly the Accord even had a bigger back seat than the CR-V, not to mention a bigger gas tank, and it gets better gas mileage!

The dealership we got the car from was the best we have ever worked with, and this is our 10th car that we have bought together, so we have had plenty of not so good experiences to recognize a good one. We are excited even more now for our trip to Kansas to see how a long ride goes in the new car!

The girls can feel it now

2008-02-20T15:40:00.001-05:00

I have been feeling movement from the baby since I was 16 weeks along, which of course is completely awesome and also reassuring at the same time. I have been trying to get the girls to feel it, but they wiggle around so much themselves and the baby's movements haven't been that strong until recently, so they have had a hard time feeling the little bumps. Finally this morning, when Caitlyn and Allison came into our bed when they woke up, the baby was being very active and reacting to being "played with" by poking back. Caitlyn's eyes got so big when she felt the baby move! She quickly pulled her hand back and got the biggest grin on her face, and put her hand right back on my belly to see if she could feel it again. Allison just looked a little confused about the whole thing, but was having fun nonetheless. Everyone came to my last appointment, and that was another neat experience for the girls to hear the heartbeat. We are already at the point when we need to start going to the doctor every 2 weeks...where did the time go? Maybe next time we'll do an ultrasound so the girls can see that too since my midwife said she would get us in for another one now that daddy's home! Sometime before we go to Kansas, I have to go in for that wonderful glucose tolerance test to see if I have gestational diabetes, and I am not looking forward to drinking that super sweet drink! Oh well, I suppose it's for a good reason. Here is the most recent belly shot at 27 weeks.

As far as names go, Bear and I agreed that we would like another Irish name but at least it should end in n like all of our names do. Caitlyn has been stuck on the name Shannon for a while, but we aren't going to use that since it's already used by an extended family member. So far, Bear and my favorite has been Lauryn/Lauren (still not sure how we will spell it), and Caitlyn has finally agreed that it's okay! We'll figure it out eventually.

Time to adjust

2008-02-18T09:49:00.000-05:00

We knew there would be an adjustment period for everyone when Bear came home, and things are going wonderful! The girls missed their daddy terribly (me too of course) and are enjoying having daddy helping them with everything...shoes, hair, clothes, everything! Caitlyn took to her dad right away and was extremely excited to have daddy take her to school, like she was taking him for show-and-tell! And of course our house has once again become a wrestling ring thanks to their reunion, but I am grateful that Caitlyn has her daddy home to jump on again instead of me! Allison has always been a bit of a mama's girl, so I was a little concerned how she would adjust to daddy coming home. In the airport, she ran right up to him without a problem. The next couple days at home, she wasn't sure about having another person at home. She didn't want daddy to help much with getting her dressed, or going potty, or anything. She still wanted mommy, but for the most part, she is over that now, and occasionally even says she doesn't want mommy to do something, but that she wants daddy instead! And after seeing Caitlyn getting wrestled with, Allison even joined in some and the both of them are keeping daddy pretty busy. Bear has really been enjoying having conversations with Allison that he can actually understand. He and I are adjusting pretty well too. It has been so great having him home! He just jumped back into the swing of things like he was only gone for the weekend. I have been really spoiled with him making breakfast most mornings! But that has turned into time spent elsewhere as the laundry seems to have quadrupled, probably due to all of his military clothing needing washed as soon as he came home!

With the new baby due in just a few months now, we realized that we really needed to figure out how we are going to have all the sleeping arrangements. Allison has been doing so wonderful with her crib converted to a toddler bed. We really didn't want to have one of the big girls in the same room as the baby, so we decided to get Allison a twin bed now and move her and Caitlyn to the other bedroom we had been using as an excercise room. That triggered a huge domino effect of changes! We had to clean out and go through essentially every closet upstairs because the girls dressers are in their closet (it's pretty big, and they have more room to play that way). All in one day we moved the excercise stuff to our room, switched the girls room, cleaned/organized 4 closets, and assembled Allison's new bed. The girls love their new room! Allison has only fallen out a couple times, but sleeps so hard that she didn't even wake up...she slept the rest of the night on the floor. And now the new baby will have her own room and not disturb the big girls all night long...just mom and dad!

The first time Bear tried to rub my belly a little, he got his hand kicked off right away, which made both of us laugh pretty hard. It is so nice to have my family under the same roof again! We are eternally grateful for all of your prayers and love! Thank you and we love you all!!!

He's home!!!

2008-02-12T22:19:00.002-05:00

Our winter storm finally let up enough for Bear to get on the plane and make it to Louisville as scheduled (early even!!!). We had decent conditions for driving up there, but the cars in the ditches along the way reminded me of our trip to Kansas over Christmas and those goofy Missouri folks parking in the medians and ditches. We made it safely and only about 50 minutes early! It's a good thing though because his flight landed nearly 20 minutes early! The girls were very anxious and had so much energy, they were chasing each other in circles until we saw his plane pull up to the terminal. They were so proud of the sign they made for daddy, and Caitlyn brought along a card she made as well. We propped the sign up against the stroller so no one had to hold the sign, and were able to just go and give hugs (or take pics!).

Caitlyn ran up to him the second she saw him and gave him the biggest hug possible. Allison waited to see that her sissy was okay, and then ran over with her arms wide open! He snatched up those girls right away! Caitlyn told him that our family with just three people doesn't work, so he has to stay home. The girls wouldn't leave his side for a second. The whole way home they had so much to say...Allison has always played her own little version of marco polo with Bear where she says daddy, and he says Allison. But now that her vocabulary is so much better, the ride home was filled with a constant "Know what daddy?" "I love you daddy" "I miss you daddy" and so on. When we finally made it home, the girls had so much to show him, and wouldn't get off his heels for a second. I literally had to kick them out of the bathroom so he could take a shower without an audience, and as soon as they heard the water turn off, they were upstairs. Soon after, everyone was in jammies and cuddled on the couch!
Finally, my family is back together! Hopefully that will be the last separation of our military experience. Thank you all of you for your awesome continuous outpour of loving support and prayers. For now, I am exhausted and have some cuddling to catch up on! Check out the video of the girls welcoming their daddy home under the menu on the side...too precious!

The weather won :(

2008-02-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

It's just our luck that Bear arrived to Ft. Benning over the weekend and was not able to outprocess at all until Monday. And on Monday, he flew out from Columbus to Atlanta, expecting to fly to Louisville late that night. Yesterday, we got hit with a snow/freezing rain storm...thank goodness we had been in good contact with each other. Bear knew that I was planning on getting things ready to leave 2 1/2 hours early because of the weather threats. He called at around 2100 when I was just getting ready to buckle the girls in the truck and said that his flight had just been cancelled. The girls were pretty upset because they knew we were getting ready to go pick up daddy, but understood that it just wasn't safe for him to fly or for us to drive. Bear really doesn't like Georgia at this point in time...who could blame him? He worked out a new flight plan, which had him arriving in Louisville tonight, again around 2300. He didn't want to sit around at the hotel all day, so he went to the airport a little after 0700 this morning to check in and see if he could move up his flight. He is now scheduled to fly in a little before 2000, which is much better than his other flight. Our winter weather advisory only goes to noon today, and we are supposed to stay above freezing past the 8pm hour, so hopefully there will be no more cancellations for our family! We are getting rain right now, and it is near 40 degrees.

I had the feeling last night that I was fighting a losing battle. As I was scraping the ice off the truck windows, I would no sooner get one finished and start another, that the first window was full of ice again. The trees are covered in ice and drooping over...reminds me a little of Kansas! But we still have power, and no flights are being delayed/cancelled at the Louisville airport. To make the girls feel a little better, we had a sleepover downstairs last night and they got to watch movies til the fell asleep. It took a while since Allison had a good nap earlier. Bear and I were up late too because we were both hopped up on caffeine, expecting to have a late night of driving. Oh well.

Hopefully things will work out better today. We are all anxious for him to come home and I know he is tired of staying in hotels! We will keep praying for better weather and him to make it home today!!!

Now it's up to the weather...

2008-02-11T07:21:00.000-05:00

Bear has officially cleared out of Ft. Benning, much to our relief with no statement of charges from CIF (central issue facility, where all the field gear is issued from). The way the unit down there wrote up his paperwork, he absolutely has to fly from Columbus, GA to Atlanta, GA. It's only a 20 minute flight, and caused him to miss the early flight to Louisville. He has to fly to Louisville because it's the closest to Ft. Knox. He is scheduled to arrive at the Louisville airport a little after 2300 (11 pm). But of course, now we are having a snowstorm. We are under a winter weather advisory until noon tomorrow. The weather guys have predicted that we will get anywhere from 3-6 inches of freezing rain/snow mix, and driving conditions are supposed to deteriorate rapidly as the evening goes on and temps drop below freezing. Hopefully his flight won't get cancelled and we can drive there and back safely!!! So all we can do now is pray and wait to see if his flights will go as planned!

Congrats to Sarah & Tuck Dalton as they became parents again today. Their baby boy, Ezra Owen was born today via c-section and both mommy and baby are doing wonderful! Ezra was 7lbs 11oz, and 21 inches!

So much closer!!!

2008-02-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

Bear just called and has arrived safely on US soil!!! What a relief! He wasn't able to talk very long because he still had to go through customs, but since he's back in the states, he can call at any time on his cell phone and let us know how he is doing! I loved seeing his cell phone number pop up on our caller ID. Now he just has to wait to fly out to Ft. Benning. He is scheduled to fly out tomorrow morning, but I'm sure will try everything possible to fly out earlier. Thank you all for your prayers to get him closer to home safely. Just a little more to go and he will be back home with us...and then we can all sigh a great big sigh of relief!

Ecstatic,
Erin

Country #4, still not in the US

2008-02-08T08:46:00.000-05:00

Bear called this morning a little before 0700 to report that he made it safely to Portugal! He said he thought it might have been Ireland when they were getting ready to land because of all the stone fences everywhere...he says it is just gorgeous there! He was even happier when he found an espresso stand to help him stay awake closer to our time zone's schedule. The best part of it all is that he should be on US soil this afternoon sometime!!! I look forward to seeing his cell phone number come up on the caller ID more than ever! We are hoping to have him home by Tuesday at the latest, which makes our countdown only 3 days and a wake up! (that's how we got used to doing countdowns in the military...the current day doesn't count, and the last day is just considered a wake up since that's the day the event occurs) This weekend I plan to make some meals and store them until he comes home so I won't have to spend too much time in the kitchen after we pick him up from the airport. Caitlyn is getting very excited and likes to help me track where daddy is on our world map (it's really a laminated place mat of the world, but works perfectly to draw/put stickers on)! Allison't excitement will come when she can run to and give her daddy the biggest hug ever. I know that Bear was worried that Allison would forget him, but we have lots of pictures of him around the house, and she can pick daddy out of every one of them, so I don't think that will be a problem. Have a great day!!!

Countries 2 & 3

2008-02-07T23:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know it's late...what am I still doing awake?!?! Anywho, Bear just called! He is now in Italy, via Greece. He couldn't call from Greece because the only way to use their phones was to use a credit card...yeah, that wasn't about to work. But, he is doing great. He is taking commercial flights the whole way back, which means he gets to fly in civies! Each stop so far has left him grounded for at least 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours. His next stop should be Portugal, and who knows from there! He wanted me to let everyone know that he is doing very well and can't wait to get home! Well, I really need to get to bed now, but I will keep posting updates as I hear more from him.

Good night!

Bear has officially left!!!

2008-02-07T17:37:00.001-05:00

I was very surprised and excited to hear from Bear at around 1100 today (1900 his time). He made a 2 1/2 hour flight to the island of Bahrain where he was expecting to be stopped over for a couple hours and head out somewhere else. He couldn't remember where they were going next, but assured me that he would try to call if he was able, regardless of the time. In Bahrain, they are in a separate military only area, so that is comforting as the last time he was there, some shootings occured out in the public areas just shortly after he left. He really sounded a bit relieved to have finally left and start his journey home, though very tired. I will try to keep this updated as I hear from him along the way. Pray for a safe return!!!

Love and thanks to you all,
Erin & munchkins

Zero day!!!

2008-02-06T21:49:00.000-05:00

The day has finally come that Bear gets to come home (well at least start making his way here)! When I talked to him this morning he said that he didn't know when he would be able to call again. He is supposed to check in for the flight out at 1400 on the 7th, which would be 0600 here, and he doesn't want to call that early and get the girls woke up. I was very surprised when the phone rang around 1900 and it was him! He had gotten up at 0300 to get going for the day and thought he would call one last time while he knew he had the chance, how sweet?!?! He of course sounded very tired, but thought that getting up that early might help him get closer to our schedule. Plus, he will have opportunity to sleep on the plane back. He said that they will be stopping in 4 or 5 different countries en route to the States to include Italy and Spain. Hopefully he will be able to deplane at some point and give us a call and let us know where in the world he is (literally!). Otherwise, he is scheduled to arrive in Norfolk, Virginia late evening on the 8th, and will get into Ft. Benning the morning of the 9th. He said that he may be able to do some clearing on Sunday which would be awesome because then he could come home earlier, but will otherwise have to wait to clear on Monday. Now of course it seems that time has flown by, though through the journey, seemed to move in slow motion. Hopefully he will get to keep some of that cold-weather gear he was issued. He is a bit worried about acclimating to the temps here. I can't wait to see the girls run him over in the airport when they see him for the first time! I hope to have the camcorder going to catch the excitement, but I can't garantee how anything will turn out at this point. We are all just excited beyond words to have him coming back home! Please keep him in your prayers for a safe journey home! Love you all and we'll see some of you very soon!!!

First step towards coming home!!!

2008-01-28T20:26:00.000-05:00

Today was Bear's last day out in the field before returning to the base to start outprocessing to come home!!! And we are so ready to have him home! Especially Caitlyn, who has been having a difficult time lately missing her daddy...it's just taking forever for him to come home! She said that after daddy comes home, he can only go to work for one day at a time. Bear was told that a common place to to stop and refuel the plane on the way back to the states is Ireland, so he is very excited about the possible opportunity to stop and get an Irish beer (and of course something sparkly for his wife!!!). At least he is finally taking steps towards coming home!

The girls and I have been sick with stuffy noses, and coughs and the like for a week or so, and haven't done much outside the house. But they were acting like they felt much better today, so I had to take some pics of them being goofy little girls. Allison was jumping all over Caitlyn, practicing for daddy coming home, I'm sure! Caitlyn has been wanting to wrestle sooo badly lately, but for those of you who haven't experienced a wrestling match with her, she isn't a girly fighter at all, so I don't let her wrestle with me right now too much for fear that she will jump on me and hurt the belly. I tell her to save it for when daddy comes home, and I'm sure it will be completely welcomed then! Look out Bear!!!

My girls pretending to be horses.Caitlyn was upset that her dog Roscoe didn't want to play fetch (I really don't think he even knows how or would be able to bite a toy and carry it all the way back to her anyway), so she enlisted her little sister to do it instead...ah, yes, the misadventures of having a little sister!
The first belly pic, now that we are 24 weeks along! Our little munchkin (I still have a hard time saying she and her...oh well) has been moving and kicking around like crazy, but Caitlyn still says she can't feel it. She will before too long. Both girls have fun putting their hands on my belly to try and feel something though. Some days my belly gets more hugs and kisses than I do! If all goes as we expect as far as Bear coming home around his birthday, he should be able to make it to our next baby appointment!
Thanks to all of you for your continued love, support, and prayers through all of this! It's hard to believe that he will be home in just a few weeks!!!

A Little Update

2008-01-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

Bear and his group made their way back to the base on the 22nd, and weren't sure if they would even return back to their missions in the field. There are some kind of elections going on for the locals, which has a history of causing terrible riots, and the Army doesn't want their Soldiers out in the middle of nowhere with that going on. So Bear was getting frustrated waiting to see if the post was going to get put on lock-down, or if he would be going out for one more mission before he starts his journey home. I don't know exactly when these elections are going to be held, but the Army apparently feels it is safe enough for them to make one more trip out to the field, so he headed out on the morning of the 24th. I had written in a previous posting that his host unit submitted paperwork for him to start the process to go home. Apparently they did that while the 1SG (high up enlisted guy in charge) was on leave, so he had no clue about it being done. He met up with Bear over this last trip to the base, and flexed his rank a little on Bear to let him know that he doesn't have to let him go because his orders say "120 days or until relief arrives". But after making it known that yes, he is in charge, he also told Bear that he had no intention of keeping him there any longer than need be, and that he would still try to get him out with the first rotation in February. Let's just pray that the 1SG keeps his head about him and doesn't decide to be a prick just because he can! At some point, Bear talked to some personnel guys who told him that his name is on the flight manifest to leave on 07 Feb!!! YEAH!!! It's hard to believe that he will be home in less than a month already! Hopefully the girls and I will be over our colds by then. But for now, he has made it back to his home out in the field, which means we're back to those darn satellite phones that lose reception completely if a cloud floats over his head. He will be returning back to the base on the 29th for good, and will be able to start outprocessing!!! Needless to say, we are so ready for him to come home! And soon after that, we can start making plans to all go home, away from the Army!

Pics from Bear!

2008-01-18T21:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I hoped to get these pics posted sooner, but the forces were working against me! The day after we received the camera in the mail, I tried to get it developed at the closest place available, but their machine was broken and it took me a couple days for me to get back out to another store. Anywho, here they are!!! The girls were really bummed out that there are no pics of their daddy, but they will get to see him very soon (should be less than 30 days now!).

These critters are mascots so to say of the house they are staying in off the base. Don't ask me the city because I honestly don't know it! The dog is AJ and the cat is Kitty. Dogs aren't liked by the locals very well, and AJ was rescued from a huge thorn bush he was stuck in by some Soldiers several tours ago.

Here is one of those thorn bushes like what AJ was stuck in...look at the size of those thorns!!!
This is the hill close to where they are staying...
Some local scenery...

The next few pics are from the Cheetah Refuge he took a trip to a while back. All the cheetahs are sectioned off in pens and are eventually released back to their original habitat. Some other animals have taken advantage of the safety of the refuge as well!

There is a gazelle taking cover under the trees in the middle.

Lots of turtles around!!!
All is good otherwise in Africa. It sounds as though he will only have one more week out in the country on missions until they bring him back to the base to start processing out of there!!! I can't wait to see him get pummeled by the girls when we pick him up!

At my last OB appointment, my midwife was asking if there was anything she could do when he came home. I asked her if we could squeak in another ultrasound for him to see in person, and she said all we had to do was give her the day and time, and she would make sure it would happen! She's so great! Caitlyn was being very helpful in trying to decide on a name, and suggested we call the new one Oscar...she's so funny. And I am happy to report that Allison had an excellent day with her potty training, and even made it through a small shopping trip with no accidents!!! She is getting too big!

Love to you all,
Erin

I know what we're having...!

2008-01-15T20:39:00.001-05:00

Today was our major ultrasound day! Ultrasounds are so neat to see...so I thought I would share the pics with everyone. First of all though, everything went very well! Our little munchkin was very active and trying desperately to get away from all the poking and prodding, but had no where to go, and had to suffice with just kicking at the ultrasound doppler. The tech guesstimated that it weighs a little over a pound already and otherwise, was measuring perfectly for how far along we are. The tech tried to get some good pics of the face, but our baby wasn't cooperating the best.

This one shows the head (facing you) and both hands!

This is another facial shot...looks like a smile, doesn't it?!?!?
This is sort of a side view of the head, the rt. arm, and part of the rt. leg.
In keeping with tradition with our past 2 pregnancies, we decided against finding out what the sex is. Well, I couldn't not look at the screen during the ultrasound because it's just too cool to see, and I saw some very distinctive figures, and therefore, found out what we are having on my own. What I saw is called the "3 line sign" and is indicative of a girl! I confirmed it with the tech afterwards too. Maybe the Lord was looking out for us and knew that we would never come up with a boy name we could agree on, and blessed us with a girl instead!

Bear was a little shocked when he called and the first thing I asked him was if he wanted to know what it was. After hearing the story of how it came about, he gave his blessing to tell everyone as long as they knew that we found out purely by accident (& a keen eye!). All else is alright in his world. He will be returning to the base around the 22nd-23rd to restock their supplies on a day trip, and he may be coming back up to the base as early as the 27th to start processing out of there!!! YEAH!!! He is already corresponding with some folks about his flight plans to come home. We can't wait to pick him up! We have basically come to the conclusion that we will pick him up in Louisville instead of driving down to Ft. Benning. Even if he only has to stay down there for only a couple days, there is no telling that he would be allowed to drive back with us, so he asked that we pick him up a little closer to home! I received a disposable camera full of pictures that Bear has taken, but the one hour film developer was broken at Walmart, so I will make a trip out tomorrow to somewhere else, and hopefully have some more pics to post soon.

Today is my moms xx birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

Thank you all for your loving support...today was one of those days that I needed a little lifting up, and I can't express how grateful I am for all of your prayers!

Milestones

2008-01-12T08:54:00.000-05:00

Our first week back at home has been a rather busy one! Caitlyn was so excited to go back to school and tell all her stories from Kansas. I could tell when she was at the front of the line to go in her classroom on her first day back because the line was at a standstill for a while when she was telling her teacher all about her trip. Caitlyn had a couple days off this week because of parent/teacher conferences (which, by the way, never occurred...how frustrating) and on Friday we got her first progress report. She was rated at exceeding the standards in all areas that they were measured on! The only comment her teacher wrote down was that Caitlyn is a wonderful student! That makes a mom and dad feel really good. The past few days, Caitlyn has had a runny nose, sore throat, and a low-grade fever. I assumed she was getting the start of a cold...I couldn't have been more wrong! She is cutting some more teeth! It has been so long since she got any new teeth, I overlooked teething as a possibility for all of her symptoms. She has another molar poking through about 1/3 of the way!

A couple days ago, I decided that I had better get all of our Christmas stuff down so that the housing management folks don't get upset by it being up too long. The girls and I got everything inside the house put away, and when I was getting ready to start on the lights outside, it started pouring rain with thunder and lightning. Not a good thing to be on a metal ladder during that kind of weather, so that will have to wait til another day! With nothing else to get done, I was going a bit stir crazy, and needed to find something to do. I ended up taking the gate off Allison's crib and converting it into a toddler bed! I don't know what made me think of doing that, but it's done now. Bear and I had talked about waiting to take the gate off til he got home...I guess it's one less thing we'll have to do now! Allison has been doing so good! Her first night in her big girl bed, she was asleep within 15 minutes, and never got out of bed once! I had to wake her up in the morning so we could take Caitlyn to school or she would have slept longer. She thought it was pretty neat to be able to get out of bed all by herself! Last night went the same. She was awake for maybe 20 minutes, but stayed in bed until she fell asleep! I think it really helps that her big sister sets such a good example. She hasn't fallen out either, which Caitlyn used to have a hard time with sometimes. Her speaking abilities have really blossomed lately too! Most of the time now she speaks in no less than 3 word sentences! We never know what is going to come out of her mouth!
The girls got to pick out some new fish now that we are back home. They picked out angelfish this time...Caitlyn's is all white, and Allison's is black and white speckled.

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers for our family!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

Okay, so lots has happened since the last time I posted anything, so be prepared for a long one! Over the weekend we all went up to the Lawrence Aquatic Center so Issac could celebrate his birthday (late) with some friends. I wish I could have got some pictures of the little kids while we were there, but there was no way possible for any of us to take our eyes off any of them for even a second to take a picture! Caitlyn, Austin, Allison & Madison got used to wearing water wings while swimming at Mamaw's, but were not allowed to use them at the aquatic center. They didn't care one bit! All 4 of them took off all at once in different directions, and were trying to get to the really deep water which even Caitlyn couldn't touch in. Sometimes the little girls would lose their footing and go under, but they didn't slow down a bit. Both of them ended up getting bruises on their heads from slipping on the stairs of the little dragon slide, but there was more fun to be had! And Elijah didn't get a bloody nose for once! Issac was able to play around with his friends the whole time. When we were ready to leave, I think the adults were just as worn out as the kids! It was great though!

Our plan for New Year's Eve was to stay up late playing games and eat junk! I worked it out with Bear so that he called us a little before midnight, and was able to bring in the new year with family the best way we were able. It was great! I think we all talked for almost 1 1/2 hours! Issac, Caitlyn, Allison, and Austin didn't make it to midnight. Poor Madison brought in the New Year in her own unique way! Around 2230 or so she started throwing up and didn't stop for quite a long time. Every time she would start another bout, John and Elijah would have to run to another room to keep from getting sick themselves...thank God for moms and their strong bellies!

Bear had some interesting experiences over the weekend. Their mission over the weekend was to remodel and update a school building. When they were finished, some of the locals had questions for them. There is no running water in that area to clean up with, and since they do not have toilet paper, they have to use rocks, yes rocks, to clean up with after they go to the bathroom, and were asking for better ways to clean themselves. And all we have to do is go to the store... Another day he and the other Soldiers got to partake in a goat roast in one of the local Djiboutians homes. He said there was no table, just a big rug on the floor with pillows around to sit on. They were served a whole roasted goat, which he described as a curled up goat lying on a bed of rice on a really big platter. They also had chicken, macaroni, and spaghetti with some variety of meat sauce and some salad. They didn't have utensils to use to serve or eat with, so when someone asked him for a goat leg (I guess he was sitting closest to it), he just had to literally rip off the leg and hand it over. After dinner, they dunked their hands in some kind of perfumed oil or alcohol to get the smell of the food off their hands. I guess a few of the Soldiers were having gastric issues and were attributing it to the goat, and swear they will never eat goat again! Bear said he was trying to stick to chicken!

The pics below are from New Year's Eve day. Everyone decided to go sledding in the ditch this time. Caitlyn got a kick out of snowboarding with Elijah. They did very well having both of them on the board at the same time.

Elijah got in a few good jumps over a shovel stuck in the ramp he made. He was even able to land on his feet after making a 180 turn in mid-air!

Issac tried to stand up on the sled to go down the hill...maybe he should try the snowboard next time!!! Earlier he was pulling Roscoe around on the sled, but I wasn't able to get pics of that, darn it. Roscoe was just grateful to not have to walk in the snow, even though he was still freezing just being outside.
Calamity was busy looking for snowballs we had thrown for her to retrieve, but was having no luck in the deep snow. It was funny anyway!Elijah and Caitlyn heading up to the house after a hard day of playing outside (love this one!!!)

That is one happy Mamaw...sled full of giggling/arguing grandbabies going in to warm up, a full cup of coffee, and a beautiful sunny and snowy day!

I tried so hard to get some decent pics of Calamity and the cattle next door at Great Papaw's. She is a border collie/labrador retriever mix, but she has a lot of the instincts of a border collie (herding). She is so fun to watch trying to work the cattle. Borders are known for locking eyes with whatever they are working to intimidate them with the rationalization that where the cattle's heads go, the tails will follow (and after the tails go, they will nip at heels if necessary for motivation). Here, Calamity has eyes locked with one of the cattle at the balance point of the small herd. With a little direction, she would outrun and round up one of the cattle that got away from the group that was getting curious about what I was doing in the pasture...I love that dog!!!

Love to you all (sorry for the book),

Erin

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T21:42:00.000-05:00

Christmas morning I was very surprised to be woken up not by the girls and their uncontrollable excitement, but by Bear calling at 0800 to see what Santa had brought. I had to wake the girls up!!! I guess all the running around they have done up until this point has finally caught up with them! Bear was of course completely shocked that we were still sleeping. He is normally an early riser, but it gets worse with his excitement around Christmas morning. He said that he just couldn't wait any longer to call us. While the girls and I were getting around, he was able to talk to his mom and dad for a while, so that was wonderful! It's hard to share the phone time with others, but I know I'm not the only one who misses him. That darn leaky eye syndrome snuck up on us again, but we all talked through it and hugged bunches. Finally the girls made their way over to their stockings and gifts from Santa.
Allison loved her Elmo paper! She was very excited about her new baby stroller! And it didn't take her long to figure out how to spin very fast on her sit-n-spin.

Caitlyn figured out how to use her Leapster without any help and has had a hard time putting it down since! And she had to put on her Sleeping Beauty dress right away...she just couldn't decide what she wanted to play with more!

Eventually we all had to get around and head over to Brad & Judy's for the family party. The gift exchange was very entertaining with people stealing gifts and nearly fighting over a couple. Allison was having a bad hair day of sorts and kept throwing little fits, but she made good use of the pillow we got from the exchange by throwing her head into it to cry during each fit. Almost the whole family was there, so it was great to see everyone again!

Bear spent his evening packing since he is scheduled to leave for a short mission on the 26th. He will be staying in Djibouti somewhere and will be returning to the base on the 29th or 30th to spend New Year's with the rest of the Soldiers, and should leave out again some where around the 2nd of January. He was told he will spent the rest of January out on missions and return to Camp Lemonier on the 1st or 2nd of February. After that, the first rotation starts heading home on the 8th, and he should be out on that one! He was told by some other Soldiers that the redeployment process through Ft. Benning is a 24-48 hour process. Can't wait for him to come home!!!

Keeping Christ in Christmas,
Erin & munchkins

O Holy Night

2007-12-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

O leaky eyes was more like it! It was so wonderful of course to hear from Bear, but probably some of the more difficult conversations we have had in our 8 years together. He is doing great and we are doing great, but it's still hard. Even writing about it now makes the tears start to flow...but we were all grateful to hear his voice! What a blessing for him to be able to call and talk to all of his family even when he's 8,000 miles away. The girls even managed to slow down for a little bit and talk to daddy, so that's awesome! I am truly grateful to be around family for the holidays so the girls can have somewhat a normal holiday.
This morning almost the whole crew was outside building a snowman and having fun in the snow! The rest were in the house making food, well okay, I was mostly snacking, but you get the point.

We exchanged the family gifts in the afternoon. And wow, there was paper and boxes everywhere!!! When all the little kids were done with their gifts, Caitlyn and Austin made it their job to help everyone else open their gifts. There was absolutely no stopping them when they found something still wrapped regardless of who it belonged to! And of course, Allison and Madison had to fight over all their new toys! Great Papaw brought over another bowl of grapes, which Allison immediately confiscated. Issac still hasn't been allowed to have one!

After eating way too much good food for dinner, it was time to get ready for church. That meant Erika and I had to hurry up and find the accompanist to practice with for the first time before everyone showed up expecting to hear us sing. Erika had a last second song change to Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire but still sang great! I still sang O Holy Night, and made it through it alright. I ended up not having to sing Silent Night in German because nothing was said to the congregation, so they just sang all the verses in English instead. Oh well. Erika has a video of me singing, but I guess I forgot to mention before hand that videos can be taken with my camera too, oops (he he!). All in all, it was a great day!

We made it to Kansas!

2007-12-23T21:05:00.000-05:00

We made it to Kansas safely and I still have the majority of my hair! Woo-hoo! Traveling with just the girls and I really went well. We even had great weather for traveling! Well, we did. Bear's mom and brothers weren't so lucky. They drove through snow, sleet, rain, and finally sunshine as they approached the hotel. But they too made it safely. Bear called while we were just getting into Indiana, and was very nervous about us traveling on our own. Papaw was tied up helping recover NE Kansas from their ice storm, so he couldn't make the trip, but I had orders to call him and keep him informed of how we were doing nonetheless. We left St. Louis Sunday morning and as we were nearly home, received the sad news that Bear's childhood dog Tippy died. She had become deaf a couple years ago. Tippy had a terrible habit of digging holes, then falling asleep in them. Bad habit considering she couldn't hear when a vehicle was approaching to get out of the way. She will be terribly missed, especially by Calamity, but she lived a long life and was loved by many! Anywho, shortly after arriving and unpacking a little bit, we decided to go to Sweeny's hill to do some sledding before it got too dark. Caitlyn was a little nervous, but excited to go since this was her first time sledding on a really big hill. She and Elijah went down together and had an excellent ride!

Next was Allison and Issac's turn. She was kind of scared to go, but she clung onto Issac tightly! They made it to the bottom, but ended up hitting a huge snow drift and Allison got a face full of powdery snow. Not the most pleasant experience for a first time sledder! After the boys got her up to the top, she decided she had enough of this sledding business! All she wanted was to take her Papaw and go home! Well, okay, so Papaw carried her to the truck to warm up while everyone else finished up sledding...that was okay too.

Caitlyn went down again, and even I took a turn. Thank goodness there are no trees on this hill as I have been known to hit them head on! Caitlyn was very tired trying to get up the hill a second time and her boots kept slipping and she would slide down the hill a little, so I ended up giving her a piggy-back up this enormous hill. Closer to the top, I too was having trouble walking up the hill and ended up crawling, literally crawling, up the rest of the way with Caitlyn on my back. Eventually Papaw saw us struggling up the hill and came to my knees rescue! The moon was gorgeous as night was aproaching and we all finally made it back in the truck to head home.

Oh what a day!!!

There be whale sharks here!

2007-12-14T22:57:00.000-05:00

Bear had an incredible opportunity, not jut to see whale sharks from a boat, but to jump in the water and swim right next to them and touch them! He said initially everyone was really cautious about getting in the water, but eventually got use to swimming by a mammal that can eat the whole! Bear said that one of the guides was pointing out to him where one of the whale sharks was, and he jumped in and was swimming as fast as possible to try to find it so he could swim with it, but wasn't seeing it. The way he put it was that "he was molested by a whale shark". It came up from below and behind him, and he got a dorsal fin a little too close to his assets! He spent quite a while with the whale sharks, then got to go snorkeling at one of the local reefs where he saw all kinds of neat tropical fish. We have cichlids in our tanks at home, but he got to see many different varieties of them in their natural habitat. Someone along on the trip was able to take videos under water, so as soon as he sends them to me, I will post a link for everyone to see! At least he didn't get eaten and had the experience of a lifetime. And the private survived too!

Bear will be changing to another unit, and with that comes yet another address change. As soon as I get that, I will be sure to send it out to everyone. The reason for the change is that he still hasn't gotten his government passport, and this other unit is going somewhere that doesn't require a passport. Their missions too won't start until the end of December or early January. His 1SG has said that he will be sure to send Bear out with the first rotation leaving in February, so that is wonderful. And, if for whatever reason he has to stay with the unit until they leave, he will be coming home in early March. Caitlyn told him that he has to be home for her next birthday, so we'll see if that can really happen.

We were so relieved to hear that power has been restored to our family in Kansas! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! They are still in our prayers to recover from everything and that hopefully no more bad weather comes their way (even though they are supposed to get more snow tomorrow).

We truly appreciate all the support and prayers we have received!
Erin, Bear & munchkins

Ringworm :(

2007-12-10T15:22:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, I noticed that Maggie had some dry spots of skin on her. While trying to remove the "dry skin", the patches of fur came off with it. That immediately sent up red flags. I did some research online and determined from what I read that it was either a form of mange or ringworm. I was able to get Maggie in the vet today, and they confirmed it is ringworm. The treatment isn't too bad, but can take a while to clear. She has to have a bath twice a week with an anti fungal shampoo (ringworm is a fungus, not a worm), and topical anti fungal cream applied daily. Unfortunately ringworm is contagious to other animals and humans as well, so until she makes some progress healing, I am quarantining her from everyone. She looks so pitiful in the kennel...those brown eyes look so sad! The girls were a little upset that they can't play with her for a while, but understand that they don't want to get owies like Maggie has. Ringworm is a rather resilient fungus that can be picked up virtually anywhere that other infected dogs have been, and it can survive for 18 months in most environments (even in fall and winter climates). Hopefully this will pass quickly so she can join our family again and get tormented by the girls on a regular basis!

After her first Miconazole bath.

What a sad puppy!!!

As for news with Bear, not a whole lot has changed. He still hasn't got his government passport back yet, and because of that is very limited on what he can do. His chain of command is trying to find something for him to do, somewhere to go that he will not need a passport. They have a couple places in mind, but if he isn't really needed, why not just send him home?!?! I know he doesn't need a passport for that! We're almost to the halfway point already. At least he isn't in Iraq!

Thank you all for your continued loving support and prayers!

Unbelievable!

2007-12-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update about Bear. He called today and said the infamous, well, do you want to hear the good news or the bad news? I said to just lay it on me! So, his good news was that his orders to report for recruiting school in December have been completely deleted. The not so good news is that he now has to report for recruiting in June! Why is this bad, you may ask? He has absolutely no intention of reenlisting or extending for any reason. He just wants to get out of the Army and move on with our life. Because he is DA select for recruiting, he has two choices: 1) extend/reenlist for the service remaining required since recruiting is a 3 year tour, and he is supposed to get out in October, or 2) sign a DCSS, Declination of Continued Service Statement, get barred from reenlisting, forfeit eligibility for any type of award on his way out, and hopefully be able to get out without being screwed with too badly. Historically, Soldiers that have signed a dec. statement are labeled as "dirt bag Soldiers" and end up getting put through the wringer for no reason until the day they get out. Bear is at a rather critical point is his career in the eyes of the Army. He has been a great Soldier and is nearing his 10 year mark. After he has been in for 10 years, if he wishes to reenlist, his only choice is to reenlist for an indefinite amount of time. That way the Army figures you will stay in for at least 20 years and retire, so they can get their moneys worth out of a person. Bear is planning on signing a dec. statement when he comes home. No one is better at playing the game than those that invented it!

Please keep him in your prayers as yet another trial has been laid before him!

Our baby is 2!!!

2007-12-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

It is so hard to believe that Allison is 2 years old already! She surely brought in her birthday in her own style. The poor thing woke up crying last night a little after 2300 having a major coughing fit. I went to go see if she was okay, and she had completely stripped down...not even her diaper was on this time! And of course she was absolutely freezing. I got her in warm jammies, rubbed some vicks on her, and cuddled her for a while. She ended up staying awake until after 0100! I think she just wanted to make sure she spent her last moments as a one year old with her mom! She finally settled down enough for me to get her back in bed and get some rest myself. Being the procrastinator that I am, I needed to make her cake (well, we did cup cakes), and wrap her presents today. Caitlyn helped with everything while Allison was napping. I think Caitlyn was more excited for everything since she is older and knows what goes on for a birthday. She was begging me to wake Allison up from her nap so we could celebrate her birthday. Allison got to open her presents before we ate dinner. She loved her princess crown that Caitlyn gave her and was having a hard time deciding what to play with first. That was until Caitlyn wanted to play with one of Allison's new toys of course. Both girls rushed through dinner because they really wanted to get to their cup cakes! Caitlyn and I just baked them...the girls got to decorate their own! Allison was eating hers more like an ice cream cone, licking off all the frosting. When she got down to the cake part, she didn't want to eat it, but rather crumbled it in her hands and rubbed it all over the table and on the floor. Thank goodness for our two little vacuum cleaners (Maggie & Roscoe)! Allison even got to talk to her daddy this morning so he could wish her happy birthday. She has really grown up so much lately it seems. She is doing wonderful with her potty training! She tries very hard to do everything her big sister does...sing the alphabet, counting, and of course improving her vocabulary! Her favorite thing lately is to call everyone goofballs! All in all, today was a great day. Enjoy the pics and make sure to see the new video I posted of us singing happy birthday!

Anywho, I am exhausted after being up late last night and Caitlyn getting up around 0600 this morning. Have a wonderful day!

Love to you all!

Deck the Halls!

2007-12-03T20:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, so here are some pics of the girls putting up some Christmas decorations. Caitlyn had been begging me since the beginning of November to put up decorations. Folks around the base have been putting things up since the first weekend in November, and an unusually high number compared to last year! It was very odd, to say the least, to have to do the decorating without Bear. He was always the one to get out all the boxes, assemble our dinky tree, and put the lights on the house outside. But we accomplished everything we hoped to. The girls had so much fun decorating the tree! They took turns picking out ornaments and tried very hard to put them on the tree by themselves. I think Caitlyn was most excited about the deer, and Allison was just thrilled to find the two small boxes from the deer that I tried to put away so they wouldn't get demolished...yeah, that didn't work. Both boxes are now in the trash, in pieces! But hey, they were so much fun while they lasted! And now that the tree is up, my ornament supply has slowly been diminishing. Thank goodness I didn't let the girls put up any of the good glass ones, but curious fingers still find ways to get in trouble. That and I think Roscoe likes to chew on the tree...he's so goofy!

Today was another baby appointment. Everything is going well. We are 16 weeks along, and so far I have gained one whole entire pound! Woohoo! The heart rate was at 150, which is less than it was last time, but still well within a normal range. Allison was dancing to the heartbeat on the doppler...she's always good for a laugh! I ended up spending more time at the hospital than I anticipated because I forgot about the labs that needed to be done (triple screen to rule out down syndrome, spina bifida...and a cystic fibrosis screen), and I had to go to radiology to try and schedule our ultrasound (yes, it's the one where you can find out the sex if you want to...we still aren't sure we want to know early though). I have started to feel some movement already which is always a very exciting thing. I can't wait to see how the girls will react to being able to feel the baby move in my belly!

A couple things occurred while I was trying to leave that I found rather humorous. First, I was introduced to a new Soldier by an NCO who knows I'm not in the Army anymore as SGT Thomas. That made me kind of chuckle as I saw this PFC stand a little taller and look nervous about what I was going to say to him after being called SGT. But then I ran into an old co-worker who actually called me skinny! I just sort of burst out laughing at that one...skinny has never been in my vocabulary, especially during pregnancy! If nothing else, it gave me something to smile about!

Thank you all for your continued support and prayers for our family!

Bear's Pics

2007-12-02T10:44:00.000-05:00

Bear was able to get a hold of some of his comrades cameras and sent some pictures so we could see what he was up to. He has finally decided to take advantage of some of the trips offered through the base and local areas, so that will be some good stress relief and a healthy way to take his mind off being away from home during this time of year. He has made at least one trip to a local orphanage to spend time with the kiddos there...he always was a sucker for kids! He found a church service that he likes pretty well, it's similar to the church we go to on post, and they have recruited him to sing with the praise team for services, and he will be going caroling with them around the base on the 18th! And here he thought he would get out of singing, ha!

He looks so serious, doesn't he?

The little boy he's holding's name is Hussein 3
because there are 3 Husseins at the orphanage.

This is the daytime playpen for some of the babies.

Goats are just wandering around in downtown Djibouti

Here are some camels hanging out near some of the locals houses.
Bear said he saw 2 grown men get in a fist fight over a cardboard box
to use as shelter for their home!

Trash is everywhere!!!
Sunset over Camp Lemonier; the tents shown are transient tents for when Soldiers first arrive or are preparing to leave.
I'm not entirely sure which body of water that is. Here soon he has the opportunity to go swimming with whale sharks and go snorkeling at one of the coral reefs close by. I can't wait to hear how that trip goes!!! He is a little nervous about big bodies of water and whatever lurks beneath the surface, so he was joking with the lowest ranking person there who is going on the trip, saying that he was going to throw her in first and if she didn't get eaten, then he would go in. RHIP (rank has it's privileges, just kidding!!!)! His 1SG is also making arrangements to go to a local beach again. Thank goodness they sell lots of sun screen there!

These pictures couldn't have come at a better time for Caitlyn. Yesterday she had her first major "I miss daddy/when is daddy coming home?" breakdown. It just kind of came out of nowhere when we putting up some Christmas decorations. We got through it with a lot of tears and the understanding that daddy misses her as much as she misses him, and that he would rather be at home too. She was asking for a picture of her daddy she can keep by her bed, and now I have something to give her! She even asked if I could mail her to him. If it was that easy, I would mail us all!!!

I will post some pics of our decorations hopefully tomorrow...this one is long enough already!

Love you all!!!

Black Friday!

2007-11-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, everybody's favorite day of the year...the day after Thanksgiving shopping madness! It wasn't too bad for us though. Today we took the girls to see Santa. I wasn't sure how the girls would react to him, but both did very well. Allison was a little unsure, but once she saw her big sissy sitting on his lap, she figured it was okay. Caitlyn told Santa what she wanted for Christmas (just a princess dress like Belle's!), and then we took some pictures.

To celebrate Allison's birthday a little early, we took her to Build-a-Bear so she could finally have her own bear! She had so much fun through the whole process. If she got her way, she would have had one of every animal in the place to take home! Her bear is really fuzzy and has some colorful patches on her, so we called her Patches! Caitlyn got to help make Allison's bear too, so that was really special. Caitlyn's bear is Bearemy, and since the day we got him, has been a boy. She brought him along to the store so she could pick out an outfit for him. Once she saw the pretty dresses to choose from, Bearemy instantly became a girl...she cracks me up. Her bear even has "glass slippers". Needless to say by their faces below, they both really love their bears!

Since Christmas is approaching and Bear doesn't exactly have the means to go shopping himself, he told me what he wanted to get for me (some diamond earrings), but asked that I go and pick them out myself. Talk about a dangerous task...sending me to a jewelry store to buy something! Today I found the most perfect ones! What a sweet guy I've got, huh?!?!

Today was a long day for all of us. Both of the girls fell asleep in the car on the way home clutching tightly to their bears. We were all grateful to come home and get into our jammies!

Bear, Caitlyn wanted me to tell you that she loves you and that she misses you! I guess Allison was saying the same thing when she was hollering for you earlier today. We all love/miss you like crazy and can't wait til you come home!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2007-11-22T14:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, I finally decided to sit down and do some updates (sorry it has been a while!). That being said, bear with me as this may be somewhat of a book! Our flights went very well overall. The girls did so good with all the juggling of our stuff we had to do, and even enjoyed the flights. The worst part was trying to get through security check points since everyone had to take their shoes off, and everything else that is metal. I had to take Allison out of the stroller, and break the stroller down to send it through the scanner. But thankfully the staff were very helpful and patient with us. When we finally got on the plane, the girls were glued to the windows, though Caitlyn got upset every now and then because Allison was trying to kick her out of the way so she could sit by the wind0w. But, once we were up in the air, we put the little tray tables down and the girls got a snack and drink, and colored almost the whole way there! Caitlyn and her love of checking out new bathrooms of course just had to go potty when we were on the plane. Yes, we squished all 3 of us in a tiny airplane bathroom...reminded me of clowns in those little VW Bugs! It was even snowing in Minneapolis, so the girls were tickled to see that. The second flight wasn't near as cheerful. Allison didn't get a nap because there was so much going on, and it was very hot on the plane. She let the world know she wasn't happy about it! But once we got going, I laid her down on the floor where it was a little cooler and let her play around with her blanky and bear, and life was better for everyone within listening distance.

Our first day in Oshkosh, we decided to rake some leaves and of course make a big pile for the girls to jump in. Even Grandma did a belly flop on the leaf pile! The girls played hard, and of course now their coats are wet leaf stained and need to be washed...oh well. We had lots of fun!

The next night, we went to try on dresses with the bridesmaids for Dan and Misty's wedding. Since the moment Caitlyn found out she gets to a flower girl, she has wanted to go dress shopping and find some mittens (the long gloves) to wear with her dress. Needless to say, she was very excited! Almost immediately, she came across this dress, and it is just perfect! She looked so grown up...hard not to tear up with a beautiful princess in the room! It took a lot of convincing to get her to take the dress off and understand that she will get a new one of her own in a little while.

So, here we are today and we have snow! The girls were so excited to see the snow! Caitlyn wanted to make a snowman right away, and Allison was content to try to eat them as they were falling near her face.

It's Thanksgiving, and our family is very grateful for many things! Even though Bear is far away, he was still able to enjoy a good dinner! He said the command went all out for the festivities. The chow hall staff were dressed in costume as pilgrims and indians, and they had more food than imaginable! They had oven roasted turkey, smoked turkey, whole hog on rotisserie, baked ham, trout fillets, lobster...and that's just the meat! And here we are stressed out over cooking for a group of no more than 20 with a menu that doesn't compare to that! Tomorrow some Secretaries of something or other (Bear couldn't remember who it was) are coming around to visit, as well as the USO tour. Coming with the tour are Fezz from That 70's Show, some band he didn't know, and a comedian that is supposed to be very good. He was excited today to have the day officially "off", not like he has a lot to do any other day, but today he got to wear civies! That's almost enough to make you feel like a real person! Anywho, I hope all of you have the most wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thank you all for your love and support for the girls and I and of course for Bear!

My Turkeys!

2007-11-15T21:15:00.000-05:00

I just couldn't resist taking some pics off my turkeys today. They were up in their room playing very well together, and then they came downstairs wearing these outfits! The one that Allison is wearing is actually Caitlyn's gymnastics outfit, of course made of spandex, but there was no stretching needed to fit on her! How can you not help but laugh/smile with these two around?!?!

I was very surprised, and excited, when I looked out the window and saw snow flurries! It only lasted for a couple minutes, and of course, it didn't stick, but we got snow!!! When it gets cold out, the snow somehow makes it seem worth being cold.

I really got spoiled today by getting to talk to Bear for a little over an hour! He got the ipod today and was very relieved to be able to have some music to listen to that doesn't have the F word, every other word (that's apparently mostly what they play in their common areas). And now he has some more pics of me and the girls too! He had the day off today as they were just now recognizing Veterans Day, so he didn't have to show up for his 2 daily check ins. Anywho, it's late, and I am trying really hard to kick this whole not sleeping very well thing.

Love,
Erin & munchkins

89 days to go!

2007-11-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

Hi y'all, just wanted to give a quick update on Bear. First of all, he only has 89 more days in country to go until he can come home, yeah!!! As you may have read in past blogs, he was told he would be doing his missions in Uganda. Not anymore. He was told just the other day that now they are wanting to send him to Ethiopia!. The real kicker is that the missions for Ethiopia don't even start until January and will last maybe 2-3 weeks! How ridiculous is that?!?! And, there are four medics that belong to that unit normally coming in this Thursday, so his replacement is essentially already on it's way! He has also been told that when/if he ever makes it to Ethiopia, he won't have much of anything to do. Apparently they are going to be going to a really nice area, and the only reason they need him to go is so that they can say there was a nurse present. They should just send him home til they really need him! So what will he be doing with all this spare time? Well, today (last night for us) he took the convoy operations officer course, and as part of that had to use a satellite phone and call someone so he could prove he knew what he was doing. So he called me about 0500 this morning, and don't get me wrong, I love to hear from him, but it was the first night in a long time I had actually been sleeping all night! Darn the luck. He's hoping he won't have to do too many more classes...he said that he hopes he doesn't ever have to use the things he learned in this last class! All in all he is doing pretty well and is taking advantage of the down time to read some new books, go to the gym, and eat 4 meals a day! The poor guy always gets such terrible sympathy cravings...even when he's 8000 miles away!

Today Caitlyn insisted on wearing her boots with spurs to school. Hopefully she doesn't get into trouble for wearing them...guess we'll find out as the day goes on! Anywho, we have just five days until we fly to Wisconsin. I am a little nervous, as this will be the first time flying with both girls by myself, but thank God I can bring the stroller! That puts my mind at ease quite a bit since I won't have both of them to chase around, and we'll have a place to store all the things we are going to need to bring with us instead of me having to carry everything! I should be able to post more updates from my parents house, and hopefully some new pics!

Thank you all for your loving support and prayers; they really comfort us!
I know this is a couple days late, but thanks also to all the veterans and Soldiers still serving for everything you provide for this country...you are not forgotten (at least not where this family is concerned)!!!

Erin & munchkins

Fish and things!

2007-11-09T00:31:00.000-05:00

Oh, it's late! It took me a while to figure out how to add the family video links on here. I hope you all are able to access the links I put up. Caitlyn had to sing her favorite 1, 2, 3 song and gave me a terrible headache with her tambourine. Allison just started to sing that "all aboard the choo choo train" song from Disney...it's kind of hard to decipher, but for those of you who have heard it, you may recognize it a little bit. Hopefully this post won't be too long so I can hurry up and sleep. It's a school night you know!

Anywho, the girls have a new fish tank in their room! The other one's light got completely fried, and I'm not the most electrical savvy person, so instead of electrocuting myself, I opted for something safer. They love the tank, and their new fish! It duals as a nightlight for them. Right now, there are 6 platte's and 1 sucker fish in there. Allison was even kind enough to share her cheese & peanut butter crackers with them! I'm sure they were hungry...she just wanted to feed them! We'll see what else shows up in there.

I finally had to put the quilt away that Granny made for us. Some of the stitching was coming apart, and the seams were starting to fray. I would hate for it to fall apart...we love it so much! So, I ordered a new bed set for us. When we got the new quilt, it was too small, even though it said online that it would fit a queen bed, ha! I had to order a king size one, and it is a little big, but much better than the other one was. I love all the little deco pillows too...they're cute, and Lord knows I need as many pillows to sleep with right now as I can get a hold of! I even fixed our broken bed post! It only took an hour at the hardware store the other day to get the correct threaded stud! They didn't have any that were pre-ordered, so the poor guy helping me had to take a longer bar, and cut it down to the length that I needed. He apparently was having a rather hard time with it (hence the hour long wait!). I still want to cut the legs off a little bit...that bed is just too tall! Oh well.

As for my Bear, not much has changed. He is still hurrying up and waiting to find out if he will ever leave Djibouti! He should receive his second package by this Sunday (I hope). He has been finding comfort in going to the different church services they offer on the base, and every now and then going to the area where they play music so he can try to relax a little. As always, thank you all for your loving support and prayers! We are under 100 days til he comes home to us!!!

Only 2 people have died for you...Jesus, for your soul, and Soldiers, for your freedom!

12 weeks!!!

2007-11-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

We are now 12 weeks along with this pregnancy, and life is starting to get a little better for me. The nausea has almost completely subsided, and now I am just hoping to get some energy back! Sleeping better would really help too, I suppose. My midwife said that if I'm still having a hard time sleeping once I reach the second trimester, she wants to test me to see if my thyroid is overactive. Personally, I think it's related to the stresses of Bear being deployed, and me being home with the girls by myself. But, what do I know? I am still not showing yet, though it is very uncomfortable to wear regular jeans, so I have been mostly sticking to athletic pants, and that sort of thing. Caitlyn loves to come over to me and kiss the baby...she's so cute.

Bear is still stuck in Djibouti. He is working on getting his security clearance, and has yet to receive his new passport. At the rate things are moving, he might be in Djibouti for the majority of his time over there! That being said, for those of you that have requested his address, please keep using the old one since he doesn't know when he will be moving. If you have sent something to the new address, I would hope they would sent it to him up in Djibouti, otherwise it may sit there until he arrives. Go figure, the Army is making him hurry up and wait yet again!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and remembered to turn their clocks back. (BTW, they don't do the whole daylight savings thing over where Bear is, so he is now an extra hour ahead of everyone)

Love you all, and thank you for the support and prayers!
Erin & muchkins

Happy Halloween (& ultrasound)

2007-10-31T22:15:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween to all! We had such a great time, but I am glad that it is over and there are no more costumes/projects for me to complete for a little while. We ended up going out with a group...me & the girls, Carrie, and Nonie & Mark and their boys Darian and Deltha. I need to send out a huge thanks to all of you guys! Tonight would not have been anywhere near as fun if you all were not along to help me out...thank you so much!!! Caitlyn was very excited and wanted to go faster than what the rest of the group was (Allison walked almost the whole time!), but eventually got tired and slowed down. Allison was trying desperately to keep up with the big kids, but we didn't dare try and hold her candy bucket for her, even when it got so heavy that she couldn't lift it up to get more candy! She gave in and let us carry her for a while...as long as she got to eat a sucker! I think Maggie was a little disappointed that she didn't get any doggie treats, though she was very excited to get to go out (even in her pumpkin costume, thank you Mamaw), and all the attention from hundreds of kids made up for it! Caitlyn was afraid to wear a wig, so we tried that color hair spray...it looked cute, but after washing it out, I have a black bathtub. With as cold as it has been lately, we were all grateful for a warmer evening. The bad thing about having so many people living in government quarters is that they don't all pay attention to all the kids that are around when driving. Caitlyn and Darian almost got ran over because someone was backing out of their stall and wasn't paying any attention to their surroundings. Luckily nothing happened...except that Nonie and I probably looked like ghosts from being scared half to death!

The cutest witch ever!

My Allison puppy

Yeah, I'm a pirate.
Nonie & Mark as "The Incredibles"
Carrie, the scarecrow.
Allison, Deltha, Caitlyn, & Darian.

Today was our first real appointment and ultrasound. Questions about twins have been answered...there is only one baby! I repeat, only one baby! The heart rate was about 160 today, and everything looks perfect! I love being able to hear the heartbeat...it just makes me smile like crazy. I lost a little bit of weight from the last appointment, but it's probably due to the nausea...nothing to worry about. Here is our munchkins first picture!

My Bear is doing well. He is still in Djibouti, but will be moving soon for his missions. He has recently had the opportunity to see some hypnotist shows which, according to him, are absolutely hilarious. Our first package has finally arrived there...it only took about a week! Not bad when you consider that it took him longer to get there himself! His only complaint was that the banana bread smelled like my perfume that I sprayed on the letters I wrote to him and put in the box. Sorry! I sent out another package today with all the civilian clothes he needs for any evening outings. He said that anytime they go out in the evening, they are supposed to wear informal business attire. He may even need some business suits (as many as 3), as it is highly likely that he will be having meals with some ambassadors over there. All in all, he is doing well. We just miss him like crazy and can't wait til he comes home to us!!! Love you Bear!

Back again soon! (sorry this one was so long)

Pumpkin time!

2007-10-28T20:04:00.000-04:00

Once it finally quit raining, it was time to get busy with our pumpkins! It turned into a two day affair, since I'm the only one who can do the carving (along with all the other Halloween preparations). Yesterday, the girls helped gut their pumpkins. Allison was pretty funny! She would reach in like she was going to touch it, but then pull her hand back and giggle like crazy as soon as the touched the pumpkin guts. Caitlyn was very eager to dig in, even with bare hands! That was all we got done with the pumpkins on Saturday, though I did roast some of the seeds, yummy! Today was the day to carve. The girls kept themselves busy playing with their light bright in their room. It's big fun with the lights off! When I went to bring the pumpkins in the house, one of them had been completely full of tiny ants. That took a while to clean out (again)! But I was finally able to sit down and get all three of them carved up, and it only took about 2 1/2 hours! And I was even able to finish our cute centerpiece for the table. The girls love their pumpkins! Bear, sorry, but I wasn't able to take pictures of myself while I was carving them!

And, for a little update about my Bear, he is doing as wonderful as can be expected! He has met the team that he will be going to Uganda with for their rebuilding projects. He found out that there will also be 5 medics coming with the same sort of assignment as his. He of course is worried about the redeployment process and how he will be getting his orders to come back home. He talked to someone in the unit he is assigned to, and they assured him that they will not do anything to keep him there any longer than he has to, and would even start the paperwork process 45 days prior to when his time is up, rather than the normal 30 days prior. It sounds like they are really going to take care of him like they should! I am so grateful that he is with some decent people over there!

All of your prayers are deeply appreciated! We thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Playdate at Anna's

2007-10-24T21:02:00.000-04:00

Today was Caitlyn's first day back in gymnastics, but I couldn't get any pics of that because parents are only allowed to watch on the last day of the cycle, darn it. And being her first day back, she had to tell her instructor all about how she fell in the firepit at Mamaw's, oh how dramaticly she tells that story. After gymnastics we went out to her friend Anna's house so the girls could play. They all had a blast! They painted Halloween decorations, played princess, and Allison tortured their animals for the duration of the stay (she just wants to love them and hug them...). I knew it would have only been a matter of time before she climbed in the kitten's play house, and sure enough, she did!

I nearly missed talking to my bear today because of a major oops, but thank God he kept trying to get in touch and finally did (again Bear, I'm sorry!)! If only my cell phone got reception in the gymnastics building...! Anywho, for now he is still on the base, waiting to find out what will happen with all the missions (and enjoying crab legs for lunch)! I know all he can think of is coming home to his family, and that's all we want too. He learned that the civil affair teams missions are supposed to be completed by 08 Feb 08, which would put him on schedule to return by the 15th if it takes as long to come home as it did to get there. Every time the phone rings, the girls yell "daddy!" and come running. We just can't wait til the day he comes home!!!

Thank you all for your support and prayers!

Pics from Bear!

2007-10-23T17:17:00.000-04:00

Hey all! Today Bear e-mailed me some pictures that another Soldier took while on their journey so far. He didn't say where exactly in the 7 countries they have been in these pictures are from, but they're still great! This person even managed to get Bear in one (not an easy task)! He is doing well...he was able to call again today, again on a DSN line. Going against everything you learn in the Army, he volunteered for a mission! But this one has potential to be a good thing. Apparently one of the colonels in charge over there was asking for a volunteer from the group of the 10 LPN's to stay in the base and prepare the medical packs that the ones leaving the base will need while out with their teams. A chance for stability (even if just for a little while), whodathunk? I sent out his first package today, and even had enough time to make a banana bread for him, so between that and the pics of the girls I sent, he should really enjoy it!!! Well, enjoy the pics that Bear sent!!!

Look!!! There's my Bear!!! Love you!!!

Thanks again for all the prayers...they mean so much to us!

Cute pics of goofy girls!

2007-10-22T09:52:00.000-04:00

Here are some pics I thought everyone would enjoy! Caitlyn was having so much fun trying out her dance/gymnastics outfit all day long. I couldn't convince her to change into anything else, and she was having too much fun, so why not? And of course, monkey see, monkey do, so Allison was entertaining us by trying to dance like her big sis. Enjoy the pics!!!

Love you all,

Erin, Caitlyn, Allison, & Baby T#3

At last!!!

2007-10-21T12:41:00.000-04:00

a very tired and hot bear was able to call quickly this morning. he has finally made it to djibouti (safely, thank you God!). he said the area outside of the post is incredibly dirty like they have no waste management plan, so there is trash everywhere. but for now he has a bed. an actual real bed! he is staying in the conex's (it would be like half of a semi trailer and no wheels of course!) and even has an air conditioner! he said the chow hall is pretty nice and they will give you as much of everything as you want. last night they were serving steak and lobster, and some Soldiers were eating like 3 lobster tails a piece! but of course, he's not much of a seafood guy and was afraid to try it. goober, but ya gotta love him! as far as his mission, he's just picking up bits and pieces for now. they will be inprocessing over the next couple days and will get the rest of the details. he deployed with 9 other LPN's and that's it! what he knows so far is that he will be going outside of the base (he doesn't know if it will be day trips or to stay off permanently) with a civil affairs team, and will pretty much be treating that team for whatever comes around while doing their rebuilding projects (building schools, drilling wells...). he will be the sole medical care provider out there! each of the 10 of them will be out with their own team for the same purpose. things that make you say hmmm! but he does not have an address yet, darn the luck. at least he doesn't have to pay for his room and meals this time! back in qatar, he was told he had to get this eagle card (to be used like a credit card that you put money on from your own account to use) as it will be the only source of acceptable money in the area. well, go figure, he can't use it in djibouti! but they do accept other debit/credit cards. so now he has to figure out how he can get the money that he put on the card back into our account! he has been told that no matter where he ends up staying while he's there, every place has communication abilities of some variety, so that is a big relief! thank you for keeping my Soldier in your prayers!!!

back again soon!

He'll get there someday!

2007-10-19T13:15:00.000-04:00

After our crazy storms (& power outage) last night, I was surprised to learn that the power was back on when Bear called around 0630 today. I figured, once again, that he would be in Djibouti. Not the case. He flew from Qatar to Bahrain. It's a small island in the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He is at a naval base, home of the 5th Fleet, that has no chow hall! I didn't think that was possible!!! I guess there are places where you can buy food, maybe like a shoppette kind of thing. And he's staying in a "hotel" which is really more like a barracks that he has to pay $5 a night to stay there. He was told he will be staying there until Sunday. This is becoming goofier by the day!!! That makes it now 7 countries he has been in since leaving the US, and he still hasn't made it to his final destination! Maybe he'll get to travel by boat this next trip...gotta love the Army!

We sincerely appreciate all the prayers!
Back again soon...

Fall Festival!

2007-10-18T21:32:00.000-04:00

Today was the Fall Festival at Caitlyn's school. It proved to be a much needed evening out with lots of laughs! Caitlyn's friend Anna (& her mom) came out with us. There were all kinds of activities for them all to do...face painting, fishing for candy, pin the nose on the punkin, limbo, monster dance, and more! Plus when we were done and heading out the doors, there were a couple of hummers (the military variety) parked out front that the kids can climb on and check out. They even got to look through the scopes of their guns!

Allison loved the duckie game!!!

Caitlyn won the cake walk and got to take home the cake of her choice (all chocolate of course!)

Caitlyn & Anna with their vampire teeth after doing the monster dance.

Even Allison got some teeth!

I think Caitlyn liked holding on to the big gun a little too much!

Bear was able to call the other day, and either he heard wrong, or was told wrong, but he will be flying to Djibouti on Friday, not Thursday! He said he will be leaving very early in the morning (no breakfast!) and will hit the ground running. He may be in an area away from the main post, and therefore not have much for communication means...we'll see.

Until next time...

thank you all for all the prayers!!!

Qatar or Vegas?

2007-10-15T09:08:00.000-04:00

Bear was able to call again this morning...thank God for modern communications! so far he hasn't had to use a calling card either. he's been able to get on a DSN line (kind of like a toll free military only phone line), and even though the lines are monitored so that you get disconnected if you talk for longer than 16 minutes, it's still great! he does have access to the internet as well, but for only 20 minutes at a time. i figured he would have been in djibouti by now, but he said he'll be stuck in qatar until thursday! something along the lines of that they're waiting for a bigger plane instead of a leer jet full of colonels! in the meantime, he has been putting his "spare time" to good use. he woke up this morning and went to the gym for an hour or so, then went to breakfast in the ginormous chow hall. after that, he shot pool for a while and even played in a texas hold 'em tournament! he ended up in 6th place out of 6 tables of people! even he was thinking "i can't believe i'm getting paid to be out in the desert like this!" all in all, he's doing pretty good!

our window is finally getting fixed today! this window repair guy has the absolute worst follow-through skills i have ever seen! our window got broke back in july when bear was weed-eating. that's the second window he broke this year while weed-eating, what bad luck! anywho, they refused to replace the first window (on our front door), so i went to a vacant set of quarters, and took the window off their door. we needed something, and were refused help! the other window broke sometime in july, yes july. the guy came out and measured it, and ordered some new glass, assuring us it would be in within a week. a month and a half later, i called and wanted to know what was going on. the repair man called back, and said that he never came to the house, and that he has no record of it. well, when he came to the house for the second time, he said that he found the order, but that the glass had broken in his truck and had to be reordered, so he had to measure again, and reassured us that it would only be a week or so. now it is october (starting to get cold!!!) and something really needs to be done! i called this morning, slightly irritated about the situation, and low and behold, the man came over with the glass, saying he finally got the glass in (like he really just got it in this morning!). at least it is getting fixed! now if i could just figure out how to replace a bad belt on my vacuum cleaner, i would really be happy!!!

have a great day :)

I'm sure he'd rather be fishing...

2007-10-14T09:44:00.000-04:00

this is the one picture he let me take of him while we were camping a couple weeks before he deployed. i'm sure he would much rather be fishing, even with the girls throwing huge rocks in the water and swimming around him.

but, bear has landed safely in Qatar!!! he will be there for not quite a full day, and then very early tomorrow morning, they will be flying to djibouti. at least he got a chance to get a hot shower, and eat a good meal. he landed at an airforce base, and he said the chow hall is incredible! it's bigger and they have many more options than the chow hall in the hospital here! he said they had the usual main line and short order, but they also had a deli bar (for sandwiches), an enormous salad bar, a dessert bar, an asian cuisine bar, all kinds of protein bars and gatorade and more! a full belly can have a big effect on Soldiers when they are tired and missing home, so i know he was greatful for that. the last time that bear talked to me before he left fort benning, he was told they were going to fly to germany, and we didn't have a chance to talk much about anything until he called early this morning (around 0440). i guess it's a good thing that it was another nearly sleepless night for me because i was actually awake when he called! we got to have a real conversation instead of him having to keep saying 'are you still there?' thinking that i fell asleep on him. his flights went completely different than i thought! he went from ft. benning to newfoundland, canada, then to budapest, hungary, then to kuwait, and is currently at Qatar waiting to go to djibouti. overall he seemed to be doing very well, except for being tired. he said he didn't sleep much on the flights, except the hour long flight from kuwait to qatar. he said he crashed as soon as he sat down...he didn't know they had taken off or landed! now that is one pooped out Soldier!

back again soon...
erin

The eagle has landed (for now)!

2007-10-13T19:48:00.000-04:00

Bear was finally able to call home a little bit ago. he only had a couple of minutes to talk since there was a long line of Soldiers trying to call home and not much time to do it in. it has taken 17 hours of flight to make it from ft. benning to germany and then to kuwait, but they landed safely, and may be leaving very soon to fly to Qatar! he will eventually make it to djibouti. at least this time he got to fly on a commercial plane instead of a c-130 (imagine flying in a very large and noisy soup can)! thank God he is safe and everything has gone well thus far! i can only imagine how tired he is, and the scenery doesn't help much either.

until next time...
erin

Bear's journey continues and Baby T#3 update!

2007-10-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

Bear has been in Fort Benning, GA since 06 Oct to get ready for his deployment. After misreading his orders, the infamous "they" have finally got things straightened out as to where he will be going, and they even managed to get him on the right plane! He left somewhere around 1900 (7 PM for you civilian types, he he) on a 9 hour flight to somewhere in Germany. He didn't know where in Germany, but hey, he didn't need to know that much, right? Hopefully he won't get stuck at the airfield to fix the plane every time they land like he did on his first deployment. After Germany, he has a 5 hour flight to Kuwait, and one last flight into Djibouti, Africa (I'm guessing it will be maybe a 2-3 hour flight). Djibouti is where he will spend his deployment of "120 days or until relief arrives". We're praying for the 120 days, or less!!! His orders said that he should be leaving on his birthday, 15 Feb. What better present could you ask for than to be coming home?!?! Please keep him in your prayers as he goes through this journey, whatever it may be. We need him to come home safely!!!

As far as the pregnancy goes...I will be 9 weeks tomorrow! Our little munchkin is about an inch long from the top of it's head to it's butt (about the size of a green olive) and is now able to start moving around! I have been feeling very nauseated for a few weeks now, but as usual, I avoid puking at all costs! I'm just afraid that if I start, a habit will be formed! I am still favoring salty foods, which is odd for me being pregnant...I have always gone for the sweet stuff with the past 2! Bear says he's convinced it will be a boy, but we'll have to wait til it's born to find out. I guess I'm just too old-fashioned to find out early with ultrasounds. Whatever it is will be perfect! We're just praying for a healthy little munchkin, and a later delivery! I tend to deliver earlier each time. Allison was considered a premie because I was barely 36 weeks along when she graced us with her presence. This one is due 18 May 08, but I pray that we can at least make it to May!!!