My update

Sorry I haven't done much updating, I love the pictures nicci, I miss seeing the tuplips so much. One of these years we will have to visit my family in the spring to that we can go see them.

Things have been pretty good here. I have been taking a gardening class. It has been so much fun, I am so ready to plant our garden, but that is not wise until may. It is actually snowing here today. We are also excited because we can see some of the grass seed we spred out in the fall starting to grow. It will be so nice to have grass that the kids can play on. We even got them a swing set, it the snow would stop, they could even play on it.

Right now I am really excited because my parents are coming to visit this weekend, and then the kids and I will go down to Utah with them to visit grandparents. Stephanie is graduating from BYU next Friday, so Robert will come down on Wednesday and meet up with us. I am way excited to be able to spend so much time with my family. I love being with them. I so with that we lived closer so that it could happen more than once or twice a year. But I guess I will just have to be happy with the time I can get.

We will be comming to visit in the summer sometime, so I will have to let you know when I know when we will be there. We are thinking the first of August because Jenny will be blessing her baby then. I would love to be able to go after she has her baby so that we can see him. She is due the first part of July, they haven't decided yet if she will be scheduled for a C-section or go natural yet. It will depend on how things are going with her and baby towards the end. She tends to have some medical problems.

Well, it looks like I have used all the time that Lilly will let me. She is bringing me books and saying 'book, book, book'. She talks like crazy, seriously, I dont know if you read my other blog about it, but at 15 months they said she was talking like a 2 year old. and she has just been talking more and more. It is fun.

Well, I think that catches you all up a little, hope you are all doing well. How is Aimee doing, I see her comments of Facebook, but that doesn't always say very much.

Tulips!

Every year we go to the tulip fields in Mount Vernon. This year, because they bloomed so early, we went Easter sunday. We got up that morning and hunted for our baskets, mom likes to hide them still so we humor her and go on the hunt. We mailed Beth her basket so that she could still get hers. She was very excited to get the box! Beth called us so we got to talk to her for a bit and then we went up to the fields. It was a beautiful day out but super windy up north (which is nothing new). I was able to get a bunch of really good shots for Beth since she wasn't here to go with us this year.

How is everyone else doing?

Texas

Ahhh, Texas. I will not miss you at all. That is the craziest place! The roads are totally backwards, they all go in circles so the only good part is that you can't really get lost because if you stay on the highway long enough eventually you will circle back to where you started. It was a good trip though overall and it was really great to finally be able to see Beth again. I missed my sis!

This was the morning of the graduation parade. The sun doesn't rise until like 0730 in Texas, it was weird. But Friday morning was freezing cold and super windy and we had been at the parade grounds since 0700 so that we could find a place to sit. All of us huddled on the bleachers and prayed for the sun to hurry and come out to warm us up. The little people in the picture are all of the female T.I.'s that marched the flights. March is apparently Women's month in the Air Force so the day of Beth's graduation was the day that the AF let the female TI's march the flights instead of the TI's that they had had for the past 9 weeks.

I took a ton of pictures but there's one of her sayin the oath. The other one is a picture of her after she got done in the ID office. She was very excited to have her ID, it was very stressful for her to get it.

We didn't do a whole lot while we were there. Hung out with Beth a lot. We drove by the Alamo but didn't stop, no one wanted to go see half of a brick wall. We did go down to the Riverwalk one night and it was packed, so busy! The AF let the grads have a few extra hours off base one night if they bought discounted tickets to the Spurs game so we saw our first NBA game. All in all, it was just really great to be able to see Beth again. She's in California now for school and was told that they'll maybe be able to come home sometime in October or November maybe, but for sure she'll be able to come home for Christmas! And she has her cell again so we get to talk to her a lot now.

How are your worlds? Love ya!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Those darn faries are so stinkin unreliable! They never showed!!! LOL Saturday night I got the bathroom, laundry room, and my/Sierra's room cleaned. Scrubbed, swept, mopped, vacuumed, dusted. I don't know why I'm being so anal, I just don't want this girl to come to my house and think that we live like slobs. We don't, I promise! I have 2 dogs, 2 cats, 5 people living in the house and don't forget the toddler that we watch once a week. I could clean all day every day but I just don't have time. I've reseigned myself to the fact that the house is as clean as it's going to get and everyone is just going to have to live with it.

On the bright side, I was able to get some stuff done. I had a pedicure yesterday and I got my hair cut today. I packed the bag that Beth asked me to pack for her and I am almost conpletly packed. The only things that I have left to pack are the daily essentials that I can't pack until I get off work tomorrow. Our flight leaves tomorrow night at 1155pm. I'm so excited to go and see my sis!!! I'll try to post pictures and everything while I'm down in San Antonio but if I don't I'll post when I get back. Adios!!!

Where are my faries???

I am T-Minus 5 days and counting until I leave for Texas and I am so NOT ready. The floors are dirty, the bathrooms and bedrooms look like war zones (and I just did the bathroom 4 days ago). I was able to dust one, yes only one, room yesterday but the rest of the house still has to be done, the bedding needs to be washed, and there are a million loads of laundry that need to be washed. I'd like to know where my cleaning faries are? It's so hard to find good help these days, and the cleaning faries seem to be so unreliable. So, faries, if you're reading this, could you please stop by and clean for me!

The good news, the girl that will be staying at the house was finally able to come over last night and meet the animals. They really liked her so that's one less thing that I have to worry about. I forgot to tell her about a million things so I started a list, it's already 2 pages long.

I'm totally excited to go and see Beth, it's felt like forever since I saw her last. It's really only been 8 weeks but it feels like longer when I can't see or talk to my sis everyday.

Hopefully the faries will show and get some stuff done. If not, I have Sunday off so I'll be cleaning then. Yea!!!

Oops

So if this says anything about how often I check my camera lately......

I was uploading the pictures from my camera so that I had 2 clean memory cards for the trip next week and this is what I found. It's from October when I had Connor for the night!!! Jess took my camera that night and was playing with it at the hockey game. I think this was the only time that Connor was calm, he played with the pink glow in the dark bracelet for awhile, he loved it. He was so great the whole night. I think I laughed the entire time I had him because he yelled all through the hockey game and really got into it when the players fought! He's such a great kid. Thanks again Krista and Chris for letting me keep him for a few hours!

Bethany Update

So I thought I would update you guys on how Beth is doing. Still no phone call (apparently that's a privilige that they have yet to obtain) but we have gotten a couple of letters. She sounds like she is doing very well and was even proud to admit that she has not cried yet! Go Beth!!! Her letters are very upbeat so it's been good to know that while she is a little homesick, she's not crying herself to sleep like a few of the girls are. She said that last week everyone got 3 shots per arm and 1 in the bum for a total of 7 shots and then her TI thought they'd have fun running up and down a hill a few times and then doing some push-ups. Ha ha ha!!! Apparently they all also got a trip to the eye doc but she said that he was nice and played music from his IPOD for them and updated everyone on what is happening in the real world. She does miss real food and having the opportunity to eat it at her own leisure but she said that along with the privilige to call home they will also be awarded a trip to the vending machine! Her last letter said that her flight will be the only all girl flight for the year so she said that there's a little more pressure on them to do well because the higher ups are watching them closer. She is staying very positive and even said that most of the girls (including herself) have been attending church on Sundays as a group. Beth did say that there are a few girls in her flight that are mean and one or two that are a little slow and need to be recycled (her words). She said that her TI is pretty laid back (in comparison to the rest of them) but he likes to torture them just a little bit... She said that they went to the BX and the TI made them stand outside of Burger King and smell the goodness, knowing that none of them could eat it. I laughed at that part because Beth does not like fast food so I know she's desperate when Burger King smells good to her! All in all she's doing very well and I'll keep you guys updated on how she's doing.

In other news, Sarah started online high school. She was having a tough time on campus and was being bullied pretty badly so she's going to finish out the year with the district's online schooling. She is very excited and thankfully things have calmed down in the house now that she no longer is being picked on. Jess took this quarter off from the community college to think about what path she wants to take. She's thinking about going into nursing, so we'll see what she decides.

Other than that, not much else to report. Love ya!

Still alive

So in case you guys were wondering, yes I am still alive. Most of the time I feel like I am going crazy, but I am still here. I even check this blog about once a week or so, but I just can't ever seem to write anything. I have even started a few, but always get distracted (amazing that that could ever happen with two under 3) :)

So as for your questions that I need to catch up on.

Favorite Movie

Seriously, this question left me really thinking. I have so many favorites I think I will tell you about a few of them. For me when I think of a time in my life, I usually remember a movie that went with that time.

Through out high school and Collage I would have to say that my favorite movie was Emma. Seriously, I could quote the whole movie. Even now when I watch it, I can say every line with every actor, I usually end up falling asleep in it now.

My favorite movie to watch with Stephanie was Newsies. There was one summer we watched it at least once every day (except Sundays). We would watch the song king of the world so many times that we actually wore the tape out. you couldn't hear the first part of the song anymore. When we would drive around we would put on the sound track and sing along at the top of our lungs. It was so much fun. Sometimes we would pick a character and say all their lines with them through the whole movie. Yeah, we watched it a lot.

When I moved to MI the movie that I watched to most was probably Disney's The Kid. I watched that so much because it was the favorite movie of the guy that I was dating.

Now, I don't think that I really have an all time favorite there are just a lot that I really like. I have to say that I really like Speed Racer. It is probably our whole families favorite. Josh would rather watch this than cars or the other little kid movies. My sister-in-law Heidi introduced me to North and South. It is kind of a pride and prejudice type of movie. It set in England. It is 4 hours long, but I strongly suggest that you all watch it. It is good.

Betrayal

So you guys will probably think that I am, well I don't know what, but I can't think of any time that I betrayed anyone. I mean I am sure I have, or at least come pretty close, but I can't think of anything right now. I know that you guys have never betrayed me and I sure hope that I haven't betrayed any of you. Maybe you guys know of a time that I betrayed someone. I usually went out of my way to not do things like that. But I also have a pretty spotty memory when it comes to somethings like this, so it just could be that I don't remember.

I don't even have a boy friend brake up because the only boy friend I had before my husband was actually kind of a jerk and we both were glad when we broke up. I mean I was a little sad, but then again I was able to hang out with my other friends after we broke up so, it wasn't so bad.

Well that is probably not as exciting as you guys were wanting, but at least I tried to answer rather than just not. Which is was I tend to do when I don't know how to answer the question.

I hope that you all are doing well. I will try to do better at writing on this blog. I have also been updating my blog, so you will have to hop over there sometime.

Betrayl

Good pick Krista! I hope I didn't ever betray you guys, and if I did I am so VERY sorry. And Krista, I forgive you for not telling me you got married. :o)

I dated this guy off and on through our senior year and after we graduated. He joined the Marine Corps and went to Basic when I was 19 (he was a couple years older than me). Anyway, he left and I stuck with him even though he was talking about wanting to get married when he got back from Basic and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had no intention of marrying him. We dated for almost another year before I told him that I had no intention of ever marrying him. Looking back I realize that I should have been honest with him but he was one of those super nice guys that you don't want to hurt because you know it will crush them. I know I hurt him when I told him no but it did work out for the best, he ended up meeting a very nice girl who already had one kid and getting married. I know that it all worked out for the best but it didn't make me feel any better at the time. Thankfully I can now look back and say I was young and dumb and that I would never intentionally do that to anyone.

K... Can we pick a less depressing topic next time please? :o) I hate being reminded of the bad decisions I made! But I guess, confession is good for the soul! :o)

Betraying

Have you ever betrayed someone close to you? If so, what did you do and did they ever figure out it was you?

I figured since I have some time tonight, I will answer one of the hard questions on the list.

I don't think I've ever purposely betrayed someone but there are a few times someone might say I did. I hope I didn't do that with any of you guys.

So the first one I remember is James Sweeney. I dated him right after Prom until he left for basic training in July. We talked about marriage and everything after he was done with Tech school. Then I dumped him while he was in the last week of Basic.

Looking back, he was just a rebound from Kyle. Someone to hang out with before I went to college. I'm sure I heart his little heart. Especially during Basic training! It wasn't nice of me.

But I'm glad I did it. I can't imagine being married to him now... Oh the drama!! :)


Second was when I got married. We didn't tell a lot of people and I hurt lots of people. I'm sorry if I hurt you chicas. That was not my plan at all.

We decided Friday night to get married. We called Bishop Brower and he said we needed to meet with him. So we scheduled for Sunday. Then we left to go to Spokane for a friend's birthday party. We came back Saturday night, met with Bishop Brower (Scott Brower's grandpa) and set a date for Tuesday.
We went to Chris' house first to tell his family. They were pissed and actually hit Chris. We left there and told my parents. They were just as pleased. Or not. My dad almost hit Chris.

So from that, we were really hestiate to who we told. We didn't want anymore fights. Or people telling us it was dumb. So we told our families and my roommates left it at that. I didn't have a lot of faith in people at that point.

I now know that I should have called you guys, and some other close friends. Your guys support would not have stopped because you thought I was stupid! :)

If I could go back, I would have changed how we got married. We would have told everybody and dealt with the consequences. We probably would have waited a bit longer, like a weekend.

I think the most common question we still get asked was if I was pregnant. Ha ha it took us two years to get prego with Connor but it's a reasonable question. I would have asked it too!

Really the main reason we got married so fast was because Chris wanted to join the Air Force but couldn't because of Veronica. (You can't be a single parent and join the AF.) I was graduating school that next month and we both had no 'good' jobs lined up. Domino's barely paid for my cell bill let alone rent and food. SOoO joining the AF was the best thing for us. Little did we know, it was going to take 6 months to even get to Basic.

Well anyway those are my times I think I betrayed people. Please enlighten me if there are more!!

What are yours?

Happy New Year!

Hey ladies! Just wanted to say Happy New Year! And a belated Merry Christmas. I hope everyone's holidays were fabulous.

Things have been super busy around here. I totally meant to to Christmas/Holiday cards this year and had even started making them but then I had a huge allergic reaction and ended up in the ER a few days before Christmas so all of my best laid plans have gotten tossed out the window. Turns out that something like 90% of all tablets (pills) use lactose as a binder so I've had to toss all my pills and go to liquids. Even my prednisone pills had it in them but we didn't realize that until the other day so now I get a few more days of prednisone but in liquid form this time. I can honestly say that it is probably the grossest thing that I have ever had to take and I am going to work today to beg my pharmacist to flavor it for me, it's that bad! I'm still a little grumpy from all the prednisone but good to go otherwise.

Christmas here was good. I was still pretty drugged so we just stayed home and played with the new toys and I slept most of the day. No big plans for New Years Eve. I close in the pharmacy and then have to be back at 10 tomorrow morning so no parties for me! Mostly we've just been busy helping Bethany prepare to leave. She leaves for basic training on the 19 of January and is in a hurry for the day to just get here. I'm not sure Mom is ready for her to leave but we're all so proud of her and excited for her. I think Mom and I are more excited to be able to travel to see her than anything else. Her tentative grad date is in March so the family will head to Texas to see her graduate basic training and then her linguistics training is just outside of Monterey, CA so we're excited to be able to travel down there and site-see (and maybe see Beth!!) LOL Dad has no desire to travel (and getting him on an airplane takes LOTS of drugs) so Mom and I are already making plans.

Krista, any helpful hints to pass on to Beth before she goes? You and Chris both have given us a lot already and she is very greatful so, any last words of wisdom to pass along before she goes?

How was everyone's holidays? I'll be better about updating here, I promise. It's my New Year's resolution.

Love you!

Favorite Movie

Krista, we have the same favorite movie! I love the American President. I can recite all the words. My family doesn't mind though, they think it's funny and they know quite a few parts too. Every time I watch it I remember spending the night at Krista's or Krista spending the night at my house and we would watch it.

A Bed of Roses was on the other day and I recorded it so I could watch it when I got home from work because I hadn't seen it in forever. It was as good as I remembered it!

Favorite Movie

I know I haven't been updating anything lately but I just don't have the energy. So here's to my updating!!

My favorite movie of all time is American President. I can quote most of the movie and still do when I watch it. I can't watch it with Chris cuz he gets upset at me! :)

Nicci and I used to watch American President or Bed of Roses almost every weekend in elementary school. It just depended on which house we stayed at. We would rent other movies but after those were done, we always put our staples in.

I still have the movie. But I don't have a VCR. It's more of a token now than the actual movie.

"My name is Andrew Sheppard and I AM the President!"

Bad Dog!!!

I have to share this because Sierra has only chewed one towel (we wipe their feet when they come back inside) and that was when she was a baby and since then all she has done is dig holes outside, and even then she justdigs in the holes that the mole has already put in the ground.

So, I get home from work Friday night and Bethany informs me that Sierra put a hole in my bed spread. I didn't really think anything of it because she's never chewed anything so I just figured that she ripped it when she was trying to make her nest (she likes to bunch up the blankets and make a little nest to sleep in). It was late and I just wanted to go to bed but when I went to climb in this is what I found...

Yup, she did this. I was so mad! But I couldn't yell at her because the damage had already been done hours ago so she wouldn't know why I was yelling. And I hadn't taken her for a walk in almost a week because I've been so busy so I knew she was probably mad but still!!! So then yesterday I had to go shopping for a new bed spread. Thankfully I had an idea of what I wanted but still... So I finally found my new one and got smart and also bought a blanket (that is bigger than my bed spread) so that I can keep it covered. We'll see if it works, so far so good.

This is what I got! It's a quilt (Krista, had I been able to wait I would have begged you to make me one after you got settled in your new house but I couldn't). It's cream colored with burgandy around it and flowers sewn on it in burgandy, light green, light purple and light blue. I would have taken another picture of it but the battery in my camera died.

Okay off to clean, that's a whole other story I'll tell you guys tomorrow. Love ya!

Hey!

I promised I would be better about posting so...

Sierra and I graduated dog training last week! That is exciting for us because I honestly didn't think it would happen so fast, but we both caught on really quick so it's a relief. She still has her momentary lapses in judgement however. She refuses to listen to Bethany and she got a little wild when my cousin and her husband came over with their new puppy yesterday. Oh-well, we just keep working at it.

How was everyones fourth? I closed at work that night so I didn't get home until almost eleven but got to see the show on my way home. The neighbors did kareoke and fireworks until about 3 am but I slept through most of it.

I'm super excited that you guys are coming! Krista, it had better not take you until Christmas to get here. :o) I'd totally laugh if it did though!!! And I'm open to getting together whenever you guys want. I close at work so my days are free for playing!

Love ya! Nicci

plans?

So what do we want to plan? I know that my mom wouldn't mind if we had it at my house this year. I believe we will be there the 31st - the 7th or 8th. I am pretty sure that first weekend, Jenny and Andrew will be in town and we will be doing stuff as a family. But the next week, we don't really have any plans yet. So let me know what everyone is thinking.

Julie

Comming

So we are comming to Wa July 24-Aug 10th or there abouts. We will be in prosser for the first week and then we will be in Marysville. I don't know when you will be there Krista, but hopefully we will overlap. I would love to get together.

The best commerical EVER!

Hi

Hi ladies! So since it has been awhile I thougth I should maybe update everyone. There are some new things but a lot, mostly I just feel bad because Krista posted a month ago and I've been really bad. So...

I got a job at Rite Aid. It's not my dream job but my shift supervisor really likes me (although I still don't know why) so her and I close at night together. There are some young people working there that really need to grow up and some days I feel more like a babysitter for them but I just keep telling myself that I need the paycheck. Some days it works, other days..... I have also been taking Sierra to dog training. We just finished up our fifth lesson (we have nine total) and she is amazing. I did not like her very much when we first started and now I like her again. I can take her for a walk and not have to sprint behind her and she no longer acts like a wild dog. Lol

You all probably know that Jessica graduated, since she sent you the announcements. Mom and I made those and she wanted to send them to her "other sisters" since you guys aren't here to see. Her graduation was nice, some of the families brought air horns and used them during the ceremony and other families brought beach balls and blew them up and tossed them down for the kids. It would have been fun except they tossed them down at the beginning of the ceremony instead of at the end.

Sarah is her usual self. She's 14 and there's really no other word to describe her. She kind of has this Jeykle/Hyde thing going so we mostly leave her alone unless she comes out to socialize and then we just have to be careful. :o) We are all praying that the phase will pass quickly before mom kills her. It would be justifiable though!

Bethany just joined the Air Force and we are all very proud of her. She took her medical last week and was sworn into the delayed entry program, which means she can still back out but there would be a lot of red tape to cut through so it's not recommended. Her recruiter helped her narrow down a career choice and she chose Linguistics so she'll be a translator, for what language she doesn't know yet. She took her language test today to make sure she can take that career and she did really well. The AF requires that you score 100 out of 170 and she got 124. She just missed the last batch of recruits that are being sent so she will be in the next group that they will put together in mid-July. Then she has to wait for a spot for her (and her career) to open up before they send her to boot camp. The earliest it would be is mid-August so she has a little time but it could be later, which is what she is hoping for because boot camp is in Texas.

Mom and Dad are good. I hardly ever see them because I close probably four nights a week and I'm gone before they get home from work and I get home after they are in bed and they leave for work before I get up (cause I don't get off work til 1030 at night).

So, that's about it. I'll try to be better this month, I promise.

Love ya!

Most Embarassing Moment

Oh boy, there are so many... Where does a girl start? The most recent was probably when I was working nights with the police department. I was in a two person car and the officer I was with had yet to inform me that when we deal with stupid people, and are a two person unit, that when the officer is ranting about the stupid person, the other officer (me) should not key up the mike for the radio when said officer is climbing back in the car to rant. Well, I keyed up the mike to ask our dispatcher a question just as my partner climbs back in the car, in full rant. Oops!!! The entire county heard the officer say a not very nice word. I just kept going, like nothing had happened but for weeks after that the Sergeant had to remind me at shift briefing not to key up the mike until the coast was clear, so to speak. And everyone that was on that night laughed for weeks. It was pretty funny but still embarassing.