Happy Birthday Kate!

  Andrew's training was timed just so that he missed out on all of the birthdays that have happened this year so far (3 of the 4).  Oh well.  Kate lucked out and was able to have Uncle Jared and Aunt Kristen come help celebrate, otherwise it would have just been her, me, and Abby.
  We have been celebrating a little each day this week.  We opened her birthday package from Grammy and Paka on Monday, one present from Grandma and Grandpa on Tuesday, the other on Wednesday as well as visited the zoo, yesterday she got her present from me and Andrew, and this morning she got her present from Uncle Jared and Aunt Kristen, ...and got birthday cake and ice cream for breakfast!  She is a loved little girl!

Kate was happy to have Abby help her open the present

The girls loved the petting zoo

The sheep acted like they were starving and flocked to the girls whenever they walked past.

The Budgie cove is probably Kate's favorite part of the zoo

Abby's favorite part of the zoo was the merry go round.  

Kate was very excited about her Rapunzel cake...

but was rather overwhelmed when we sang Happy Birthday to her.  I had to convince her that she needed to blow out her candles or her cake would catch fire.

It barely worked.

She was happy to dig into the frosting afterwards though!

Kate was excited about her present from Uncle Jared and Aunt Kristen but, being super shy, didn't show her excitement at first.  She eventually warmed up though and had a blast on her new ride!

  I'm excited that my baby is growing up, although it does seem to be happening a bit too fast some days.  She is becoming such a great big sister and is looking forward to being a big sister times two.  She kisses my belly often and prays that her baby sister is healthy and strong.  ...She also prays her baby brother will be healthy and strong.  Maybe one day she'll get one of those too!

Goodbye Texas, for now

  Gosh, I am good at procrastinating.  I feel like it was last week that I was still contemplating blogging about Christmas.  Well, that time has definitely passed.  So, skipping ahead 4 months and keeping everything as short and simple as I can (which is never short and simple)...

  Andrew left the last day of February and drove to Little Rock, AR to start his training in the C-130.  Two weeks later, the girls and I flew to Salt Lake City, UT to visit my family.  Two days after we arrived we drove up to Boise, ID to visit my Grandma Sarah whom I hadn't visited in 3 years.  It was a great visit even though it was a short one.

  We stayed with family for 2 1/2 weeks and were scheduled to fly home Monday morning.  At least, that is what I thought.  As I was trying to get checked in on my flight I realized that I had booked a PM time, not AM.  Instead of arriving at 11:51 AM, we were arriving at midnight.  Talk about a dam bursting.  I was a mess.  I was already stressing because once I got home I had the whole house to pack up by myself.  And, Abby had come down with Croup just the day before.

  Well, I'm proud to report that I have the BEST parents in THE world.  My dad booked a flight so that he could arrive a few hours before me, pick up the Durango from long term parking, and greet me once I got off the plane to help with the girls and our luggage. Talk about stress relief.  I felt like I no longer had this huge burden to bear.
  And low and behold, my mistake turned out to be a blessing.  Not only was my daddy going to come home with me and the girls but Abby slept horribly that night.  She could hardly breathe and had the worst sounding cough.  I even contemplated taking her to the ER in the middle of the night.  Once morning came she wasn't in quite so awful of shape but if I had booked the AM flight, we would have been driving to the airport at 5 in the morning.  I believe that when I was booking my flight, Heavenly Father made me see AM instead of PM because there was no way I would have booked that flight otherwise.  No way.  Miracles - they are still happening.
  Everything went well with our flights.  The few days that my dad was in town were wonderful.  The girls LOVED going to the park with him and having Grandpa push them on the swings for as long as they wanted!

  When it was time to leave Del Rio I had got the house 90-95% packed.  Those last few things though.  They sure do fill up quite a few more boxes than you plan.  We said our goodbyes to our friends and drove out the morning of April 20th.  We hadn't gone far, only 45 minutes, when the tire flew off of our trailer.  I called roadside assistance and after getting everything figured out I realized the guy helping me had my location wrong.  Got that corrected and 3.5 hours later (from when the tire flew off) the tow showed up.
  Of course, I called Andrew and was keeping him updated through the whole thing.  We decided to ditch our trailer (the tow guy paid us $100 for it.  cha ching) and rent a uhaul.  Once we got all our stuff transferred we were back on the road.  We picked up my mom (who had flown out to help me with the drive - again, BEST parents in the world!) in San Antonio 4 hours later than I was planning but hey, we were heading East!
  We stopped just before Houston for dinner and gas and were back on the road, hoping to get to Beaumont, TX for the night.  Well, like 15 minutes after getting back on the road we were driving through Houston but pleasantly surprised we weren't in horrible traffic.  My mom was driving for this leg of our journey and all of a sudden we hear and feel a big crash!  She immediately pulls over to the left side of I-10.  My mom calls Andrew and I call roadside assistance thinking it was our stupid hitch that had broken.  After trying to explain the damage to Andrew over the phone, Andrew asks my mom for a picture.  After seeing the back end of the Durango Andrew tells my mom it looks like someone crashed into us.  My mom and I then go to the back of the trailer and sure enough, someone had hit us.  And then, of course, not stopped.  Because really, who stops after crashing into another car!!?
  I get off the phone with roadside assistance and call the police.  30 minutes later they show up.  He tells us we need to get off the interstate and that the Durango will drive just fine till we get to the nearest gas station.  He turns on his lights and we lead the way.
  Simplified story of the night:  the officer gets our info down; a good Samaritan sees us looking at our Durango at the gas station and offers to follow us for 20 miles and signal to us if anything looks bad with how the Durango is driving; we make it to Beaumont making half the time a normal drive would've taken and go to sleep at 1AM.
  I got up early the next morning to get the trailer switched out.  While figuring out my stuff, I loose my balance on a patch of slippery mud and drop my phone face down on the cement.  My phone is shattered.  I bawl my eyes out and beg God for a miracle.  Phone is still shattered.  I take my mom's phone and head to the uhaul place. While there I get a really bad feeling about trying to take the trailer off our hitch.  I leave and return to the hotel.  We all pack up (didn't take long) and get back on the road with our broken trailer.  Side note:  because of how the trailer was hit, the door was impossible to open so we had to live in what we had on for three days and two nights.  Yum.
  On our way out of Beaumont we are able to get my phone fixed for more than the stupid thing was worth but you know you can't put a price on all those thousands of pictures, so it was totally worth it.  We were able to get into Hurlburt AFB lodging around 11 PM.  The next morning I returned the uhaul.  It took the man a good little while and a bunch of effort to open the door just enough to get all of our stuff out.  After it was all unloaded he had to pound our hitch off of the uhaul trailer.  He said that with the way the hitch was bent that we were crazy lucky that no one got hurt.  Oh and that horrible feeling I had earlier.  I'm glad I listened to it cause there was no way I was going to get another trailer onto our hitch.  Like ever.
  Not to get all spiritual and all that but I do want to note that my mother and I firmly believe that we were watched over by angels that day and were taken out of harms way.  There is no other explanation for how the crash didn't make the trailer jack knife and the Durango not flip.  We were all kept safe and had no injuries or soreness or anything of the sort.  I will never forget the experience and will always be grateful to God for watching over me, my mother, and my precious babies.  God is Good.

  April 29th we signed for the house (I signed for Andrew).  We are now homeowners!!  Our beds, dressers, washer and dryer were delivered a week later.  Andrew will deliver the rest of our belongings the first week of June when he is done with training at Little Rock.  In the meantime, the girls and I are finding plenty to do to keep us entertained and preoccupied... ish.  We still miss Daddy a ton.

  Fast forward to this past week.  Our Durango has been totaled.  The crash bent up the entire frame of the Durango and even bent the back end of it down so that you can't see straight back out of the rear window when driving.  So, two weeks after buying a house we will also be buying a new car.  Annnd Andrew's jeep is getting it's transmission replaced for $2Gs tomorrow.  And yet we are still doing fine financially.  I am stressing quite a bit, as is Andrew, but we are doing okay.  We are so blessed and so grateful for all that we have.  It has been a rough six weeks but it's also been eye opening to how blessed we are.  God is Good.
  Kate and Abby are adjusting well to the move.  They are loving the increase in space and play super sweetly together, most of the time.  We go shopping quite a bit to stock up on everything that is packed up in TX.  They love playing at the beach and look forward to getting our money's worth out of our new zoo membership.  Church is great.  People are super nice.  Everything is a drive but at least we now have options!  We so look forward to when Daddy comes home so we can show him all the fun things we've been doing!

Short update

  Well, we are now back to our 'two kids, two dogs, two adults' family. We decided last minute to go house hunting over Thanksgiving weekend which was the perfect excuse to have to give the 4 foster dogs back. We have (mostly) enjoyed having the puppies to look after but they just kept getting to be more and more to handle the older they got and I just didn't want to do it anymore. At least not for a little while.
  So, we did go house hunting.  We were able to see everything we wanted to see which was wonderful.  I was, however,  surprised after walking through the home I though was more than perfect for us. We nixed it before even walking out the door. 
  I'm grateful we were able to go and narrow our list of potentials down to four houses.  Now that we know what we want, we are ready to make an offer as soon as Andrew gets his orders.  Hopefully this week or next.
  An update on the girls. They are as sweet as ever!  Kate has made it her job to "wake up" Abby in the morning and in the afternoon after Abby's nap.  She goes in and plays with Abby for quite a while most of the time.  It usually gives me an extra 30-60 minutes of sleep in the morning, which is so nice, and it makes me so happy to watch and hear my little girls get along so well with each other. Definitely one of the best things in the world is to watch your kids play sweetly with each other.

Three kids, puppies, and ballet class

  What a long, busy, and exciting week this has been.
  Slight catch up from the past two months:  Our first week back from SOS, our best friends moved to Florida which was super hard.  That whole week we helped them pack up and tried to spend as much time with them as possible.  After they left I was able to keep busy with the girls and time went by just as fast as it ever does.
  I, however, started wanting a little bundle of something to take care of so I asked Kate if she wanted to help me foster a puppy.  Silly question to ask a little girl...and well, anyone else really.  So the next day we went to A Pet's Wish, a dog and cat rescue center in town.  They didn't have any young, small puppies which is what we had wanted, so K brought out a bunch of smaller dogs for us to look at.  Two of the males hiked their legs as soon as they came out marking their territory.  Nope, that's not gonna work.  One of the females started barking as soon as she came out.  I'm not a fan of loud, yippy dogs so nope, she wasn't gonna work either.  Another one jumped a little too much and the other wasn't really interested in us.  First impressions were a bust and I was let down.  I wanted a baby to take care of.
  I wanted to keep face and obviously these dogs were excited to be out of their kennels so we just started playing with them.  Abby wasn't really a fan.  Too much doggie happiness to handle at once.  But Kate really took a liking to the little female that had barked when she came out.  We played with her and after asking Kate a few times if this was the dog she wanted to take home, we loaded the dog up and went home.

  A few days later K was brought an abandoned little baby puppy, only 5 weeks old.  She texted me that night if I wanted to take care of it.  Um, yes please.  So the next morning we were picking up another foster dog to take care of.

  Fast forward to this past week.  A friend came back in town for some hearings her husband was a part of.  She wanted to be with him but asked if I could watch after her little girl.  I was happy to help.  Kate had a great time with little R.  Abby was content to watch the fun and games but only participated a few times.  However, the third and fourth day that little R came over Abby was not happy.  Started crying immediately and became super clingy.  It was like we had brought home a newborn baby and she needed to fight for attention.  All in all, we had fun.  But like with any day spent with more than one child, fits were thrown, tears were shed, there were little tiffs over toys, snacks and momma's attention.  But there were also squeals of delight, fun games of chase, sweet kisses given, and funny things said.

  So that took up my Mo Tu Th Fr.  Friday evening, I noticed Penny (our female foster dog) was acting off.  We've had her for a little more than three weeks now and I have been noticing her tummy getting bigger. I suspected she was pregnant, like maybe 6 or 7 weeks along.  (Dogs are pregnant for 9 weeks).  Well, Friday evening she was having body shakes and panting constantly.  I got a video of it and messaged it to K at A Pet's Wish.  I was in the process of messaging K when Andrew got home.  I was telling K that I didn't know what was wrong with Penny and telling Andrew the same thing when he looked down and pointed at Penny and said, "Well, she's having a baby." 

  I looked down and sure enough, there was a puppy coming out of her right in our kitchen!!  Trying to not let myself totally freak out, I grabbed my phone and called K.  I told her what had just happened.  She said she was on her way to help.  I then looked down at Penny.  There was no puppy.  I looked in her bed, under the towel.  Nothing.  The puppy had gone back inside her. 

  Simplified story:  K came and went.  Penny had settled down quite a bit.  We put the girls to bed.  Andrew then sent me to bed because I'd possibly be up with Penny all night.  A short time later at 0026 Penny gave birth to her first puppy.  The puppy was breach and took a minute to come out all the way after the feet had shown.  It was amazing to watch.  I did help pull the puppy out just a little bit but Penny did the majority of the work.  She was awesome.  An hour later at 0116 the second puppy came out.  She came out much easier than the first.  Penny probably knew what to do this time around.  I made sure both puppies had latched and nursed for a bit before I felt I could go to sleep.  I set my alarm for a couple hours later to make sure the puppies nursed again.  Repeat that again.  Then Kate got up for the day. 

  Saturday morning was Kate's first ballet class!  My friend had told me about it the previous week so I called and signed up Kate.  In December they will be performing the Nutcracker!  It's going to be adorable.  I'm thrilled.  Anyhow, I got Kate ready for her 9 o'clock class and we left.
  Being as that Kate is extremely shy, I figured she wouldn't do much.  She wouldn't do anything with me in the same room so I left but was able to watch from another room.  It took her a while to warm up but she eventually did a few thing that the teacher asked her to do.  I loved watching.  There were two other girls in her class that morning.  One didn't do hardly anything, then there was Kate, and the third girl did everything wonderfully well.  It was a delightful continuation to my already exciting morning.

  And it's General Conference Weekend!  What a great way to end a great week.  I look forward to watching/reading the talks again and giving them my full attention, lots for the first time.

The last four weeks of SOS

  We got back from Alabama an entire two months ago.  I can't believe how long I have procrastinated updating this blog and how fast the time flew by!
  Alabama was great. We went to the zoo twelve or thirteen times.  Maybe more.  I ended up losing count after five. The girls absolutely loved going, though.  Their favorite part was probably the Parakeet Cove where you could feed the Parakeets.  I ended up buying some bird food at a local pet store so that I didn't have to spend $2 for ten pieces of bird seed stuck to a stick.  Whenever we went in with a hand full of bird seed the Parakeets would swarm us, which Kate absolutely loved.  The girls also enjoyed the Giraffes.  We fed them a couple times as well.  I had never done that before so that was probably my favorite part.

  Our second weekend in Alabama we were able to drive down to Hurlburt Field AFB, FL to visit my brother, Jared, and his wife, Kristen.  It was only a 3 hour drive verses fourteen hours from where we are in Texas.  Jared deployed a week later so we only went down the one time but it was awesome!  We hung out at the beach the majority of our time there.  When we first got to the beach we made both of the girls get in and try out the water.  You don't know if you like something till you try it, right?!  Well, they didn't like it, like hardly at all.  So we set up some towels and they ended up have a great time playing in the sand and finding sea shells.

  I was able to try snorkeling and boogie boarding for the first time!!  Both were a lot of fun!  Jared said that the water was not good for snorkeling, and it wasn't.  We couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us, but I was just amazed at being able to keep my head under water for long periods of time and being able to see under the water - even if it wasn't very far.  It was great!

  Our third weekend we went to Atlanta to visit the Georgia Aquarium.  It was SO awesome!  I felt like a little kid when we first arrived.  The fish and whales and sharks were HUGE!  I couldn't believe it. Because we spent quite a bit of money on the tickets we decided we were going to get our money's worth and spend all day there so we walked through some of the different exhibits a couple times.  Both the girls napped in the stroller which worked out great.  We through the gift shop while they were sleeping so that we could get our souvenir without them begging for all the toys while doing so.  After they woke up we went to the Dolphin show.  That was amazing!  Very entertaining to watch and the perfect way to end our day at the Aquarium.

  Fourth weekend was Independence Day and my brother Jon was able to come out with his wife, Noreen, who just arrived in the states from the Philippians! It was a miracle she was able to get her visa so we were incredibly happy for them to finally be together after being apart for their first year of marriage. And! We were able to meet Noreen in person!  She a wonderful person and we are so happy that she is apart of our family.  Kate attached to her fairly quickly although it took a little bit more time for Kate to fully open up and talk to Noreen, but they had a wonderful time hanging out together.
  Saturday we went and watched the fireworks. We went to a little town that was setting them off at their high school stadium.  The show was fantastic.  And the food!  Yum!  Wonderful time had by all!
  Sunday we went to a different church we hadn't been to yet because it started at 11 o'clock instead of 9 o'clock.  We sat down and Jon immediately leaned over to me asking me if I remembered a friend of Jon's from when we lived in Minot, ND.  I said yes and then Jon pointed to the stand.  His friend was in the bishopric.  We met up with them after the meeting was over and caught up on the past few years.  Because my parents were set to come in the next week we exchanged numbers to set up a dinner date.
  Last weekend in Alabama my parents, my sister Kiersten, Jon and Noreen, and Kristen all came up for a half of the family gathering.  It was great.  We drove around Montgomery, did some sight seeing, went out to eat, swam at the hotel pool, and played games.  It was a short visit, like all our visits tend to be, but it was wonderful!

  Andrew, the girls, the dogs, and myself all packed up and drove out Sunday morning.  We did 7 hours each day.  Andrew stopped in San Antonio on the way back to pick up his mom from the air port while the girls and I continued home.
  When pulling into the carport Kate teared up because she was so happy to be home.  We went inside and it was like Christmas for the girls, seeing all their toys that they hadn't played with in ages.  Kate jumped up on the couch and gave it a big hug and a kiss!  Made me laugh.  I guess it's always nice to be home no matter where you live, as long as your family is with you.

...pictures will be posted later.