Friday, July 31, 2009

Is July already over?

At this moment I sit here with Naomi on my lap and type with one hand, we watch the light rain fall and we are enjoying the peace in our home. As I watch outside I am humbled in my heart to realize that I need the rain in my own heart in order for me to grow spiritually. I must admit that the past year or so I have allowed my life to be consumed by everything other than what I need the most in life. I realize I have three young ones now but I don't feel that should be an excuse to where I am spiritually. I need Him more now especially since I have young ones because if I am not where I am supposed to be how will I teach them in the ways they should go? If I am not teaching them then who will? Anyways this has been on my heart for the past couple of weeks but this week it has affected me the most.

Other than my spiritual life so much has happened since the last time I posted. As I mentioned in our last post, Alex's conversion status has been approved. With this new development we were able to finally put in for orders. We are just waiting for the papers to be finalized and then we will share where we are moving next. If everything goes as planned (what we have been told) we should be not far from our current area.

We celebrated Nathanael's second birthday this past Sunday. The day before his birthday we pulled the clippers out and the bar stool and we gave both boys a haircut. The significant change was Nathanael's haircut though because this was the first time he really got a haircut. He no longer has a bowl cut and no longer looks like my baby. I put off haircuts until two years old because I want them to be my babies as long as possible. I was not ready to admit that until Isaiah's got his first haircut and then his baby features all faded away and he began to look like a big boy. I remembered this so I held on to Nathanael's baby look until the day before his second birthday the way we did it with Isaiah. When his hair hit the ground I almost shed a tear because I realized that my little baby boy was no longer a baby. He is my little boy now. He is so handsome and I am so grateful for the gift that God gave me which is also the meaning of his name. (Nathanael = gift of God) We celebrated the birthday by going to Chuck E Cheese and letting the boys run around having the time of their life.

This week has consisted of much cleaning and preparation for our vacation. We are going to be having a three week vacation which is so exciting for us. We are doing it for that long because this is our last big trip before our move. Our plans are to go to Corpus and visit for a few days before we head to Amarillo to visit my brother. We are actually vacationing with my parents but my dad's vacation doesn't start until Sunday so we will be in Corpus until then. After visiting my brother we will head to Colorado for about a week and then we depart from my family and will visit the friends in Albuquerque before we head back to Maine. We plan on taking our time and enjoying every moment of it. Now I must go and finish packing. I am actually almost done with the gathering of things that we need for this trip and tomorrow should consist of cleaning the car and getting it loaded so all we have to do on Sunday is pick up Alex from work and then head to Texas.

Maybe we will see some of you during this trip.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Conversion Status

After many months of waiting Alex's rate conversion has gone through. This is exciting for us because we actually get to receive orders to our new location soon. He spoke with the detailer this morning about some possible locations and we should find something out within the next few weeks about our new location. We are excited because it makes our next move a little more real. We know our time is ending here in Maine but we haven't known where we are going next. According to the detailer though we will be detaching from this base in December which is only 5 months from now and will be reporting to our new location in January. So please pray that the Lord will put us where he wants us.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Can you believe we are in the second half of the year?

It seems like yesterday that we started the year 2009 and now we are in July. This just makes me realize how fast time goes by. So much has happened in this first half of the year that I am anxious to see what is going to happen in the second half of the year...

Recap of first half of year...

January consisted of much snow so that had lots of time on the sled during the fresh snow because the next day would be too icy. This winter wasn't as much fun as the year before only because it turned icy so fast and it wasn't very soft snow. I was a little over five months pregnant here.

February consisted of more snow and more of the same as January. Six months pregnant here.

March...Alex and I celebrated 4 years of marriage. Seven months pregnant. We decided that Alex should try to do a rate conversion which basically changes his job and title. He is currently an electrician but will try to become an aviation electrician.

April...Pretty miserable at this point because I am hitting the end of the pregnancy. Many walks to the park. Many walks period because I am ready to have this baby. No word yet on the conversion status.

May...Our beautiful baby girl makes her appearance. My parents come for a two week visit. The day my parents leave Alex's parents come in but due to the untimely death of Alex's brother only stayed for two days before turning around to head home. Alex visited Texas for about two weeks and had to learn how to manage three kiddos with my sister.

June...Alex gets home from Texas. My sister flew back to Texas. It is now one month of having our little girl and it has been such a huge blessing. Every day we have with her makes us count our blessings. The boys are falling in love with Naomi more and more and have been extremely helpful with everything. We realize we only have 6-7 months left here in the state of Maine so we decide to try to do something every payday to visit the rest of Maine and the surrounding areas. Alex's conversion package fell through with the rate he was wanting but a new package was put in for him to become some kind of aviation technician of some sort. We should hear back soon. We are now getting so much rain it has been very depressing. We visit York's Wild Kingdom on a non rainy day but it is very cloudy. The cloudiness prevented it from being too hot so it was a blessing in disguise. The kids enjoyed the zoo. The boys fed the deer and could have stayed there all day. Took a paddle boat ride. Rode an elephant. Visited the butterfly exhibit. Took the boys to ride the rides at the amusement park portion of the park. The zoo was much bigger than we anticipated and had a lot of exotic animals. We truly enjoyed this day. I have many pictures but I am unable to post them because my computer is broken. I am having to use the laptop which doesn't contain the programs to upload pictures so pictures will come at a later date.


So that recaps my first half of the year and now we are in July. Naomi had her 2 month check up last week and she is now weighing in at 10 pounds and is in the 35th percentile for weight. She is doing extremely well even if she looks really small. As I mentioned we have been getting lots of rain and we have pretty much had rain off and on for the past five weeks so it has been a little upsetting. We were going to go camping during the fourth of July weekend but because of the rain we decided to go to Pennsylvania for four days. We were going to go to Pennsylvania during the second half of the month for Nathanael's birthday but since it was going to rain in Maine and not Pennsylvania we went where the rain was not going to be. Friday the 3rd we spent our day driving to Willow Grove which is about 30 minutes away from Philadelphia. It took us 11 hours to get a 7 1/2 hour drive done. On the 4th we went to Sesame Place. Sesame Place is a theme park for kids completely consisting of Sesame Street characters. This was the main reason we went to PA. We went to see Elmo. During our time there we were able to see shows, ride rides, and have a good time. We even got good seats to see the parade at the end of the day. My boys were so excited to see the characters and then when they were able to touch Elmo and then Cookie Monster they were in awe. They asked us later if we can see Elmo again the next day but we told them we would have to see. (What makes us laugh about wanting to see Elmo is because we are amazed how our kids even know who any of these characters are because I kid you not we have not introduced our kids to Sesame Street at all. At our house they only watch Veggie Tales and now the Ice Age movies. They may have seen one show but this was probably about a year ago but if you ask who that character is or the other one they will tell you exactly who they are. Well Isaiah will tell you because Nathanael just knows how to say Elmo and attempts to say the other character names.) The next day we planned on visiting Philadelphia to visit historic attractions but we were starting to run low on our budgeted funds that we decided we would have to come back at another time. When the kids asked about Elmo we told them we would have to come back at another time. So we decided to head home a day early but after driving for 6-7 hours I was ready to pull over and so were the kids so we pulled over in Connecticut and went swimming in an indoor heated pool. It was very important to find an indoor pool to us because even though it is warm/hot outside the water in any pool area is freezing because it is just not like Texas heat and water where you are comfortable in the water. We had a lot of fun and then on Monday the 6th we headed home and celebrated the two months that we have had our Naomi. We got home around 7:30ish so there was still plenty of time to just rest. We took our time to get anywhere and really enjoyed it. Now we are home and resting and looking forward to celebrating Nathanael's birthday at the end of the month. He will not be getting any presents this year but he knows he is loved regardless. I will probably make some kind of dessert but who knows because I think we may try to go camping in Bar Harbor and go whale watching. This is one thing I want to get crossed off my check list. I want to go to Bar Harbor to see whales and penguins, Acadia National Park which is in the Bar Harbor Area, visit the areas surrounding the Canadian border, visit Augusta which is in the Moose River Valley area of Maine, and the western lakes and mountain area of Maine. We have many things we want to accomplish and that is only the areas in Maine we want to see so we will definitely be busy these next few months.

Although we will be busy I will do my best to keep you posted with photos and our journeys along the way. Hope you are all doing well.