4th of July

As is tradition, we all gathered at Kelly's sister Sher's home and celebrated 4th of July. This is actually the 1st time we have been able to attend in 5 yrs so it was awesome. There were tons of activities, and I'll admit I got super competitive during the corn shucking contest. Kelly and I made a great team as usual. The kids had a blast on the trampoline, riding bikes/scooters, and shooting off fireworks. Everyone had all their body parts intact when it was all over so I will call it a huge success.

A one post update...

Ok, I took some time off from blogging but here is the quick and dirty update. The pics are: Our new house, my 7th time celebrating my 29th birthday, and Kelly's 1st day going to Naval Postgraduate School. Thats right, he's not wearing a uniform...he gets to go to school and basically pretend he isn't in the Air Force for a couple of years (but we still get all the perks - how cool is that?)

We're in Texas, Y'all

Just wanted to pop in for a quick hello. We have been in TX for about a week, and we've been staying busy. We have been going to the pool almost daily and have been also going to the library and bowling. Kelly's coursework isn't really intense so he is around quite a bit. He has been back from his deployment for about 6 weeks or so and it has been great to be able to spend so much time together.

We are really looking forward to moving back to CA in a few weeks, and moving into our new home the 1st week of July. Kelly starts his Master's degree July 6th so it will be a very busy week indeed. It will be so nice to have our own home again with a yard for the kids. They are doing great here but I am looking forward to be able to send them outside to play when they get crazy. We are staying in Temporary Living Facilities (TLF) which is very nice but the walls are thin and I feel like I am shushing the kids constantly. I really don't like doing that, I think kids should be free to be crazy and loud (within reason).

Grand Canyon

Greetings from Flagstaff, AZ! We are on our trip out to Texas, and took a day to go to the Grand Canyon. It was really beautiful. Kelly and I went there back in 1994 (also on our way to Texas!) and it was so wonderful to come back with the kids. We walked out to the lookout point on the South Rim and Julia said "It looks like a picture." We also saw some beautiful scenery on the way to Flagstaff from the Grand Canyon, we got a close look at San Francisco Peak and saw some aspen trees. We got all the way up to an elevation of 8049 ft.

We took lots of pictures, of course, and wanted to put them up to share. Enjoy!

Goodbye for a while

The movers will be at our house at 8 am, so we are packing everything up right now. We are going to spend a month in Texas while Kelly completes a class, then we are moving into our new home in Seaside, CA (near Monterey) the 1st of July. We found a wonderful home and already have Julia registered at our fantastic neighborhood school and Kenneth is on a waiting list for Pre-School 3 mornings a week.

We are grateful for our time in Fresno during Kelly's deployment and for the tremendous amount of love and support we received from everyone. A very special thank you to my own parents, who not only helped me out tremendously last year, but who also gave Julia and Kenneth an endless amount of love and support. So thank you, thank you, thank you Mom and Dad.

Disneyland Pics Part Deux

On the second day of our Disneyland trip, we went to California adventures. This turned out to be a big treat for Kenneth, as he got to meet Lightning McQueen and Mater from the movie Cars. On the 3rd day, it was back to Disneyland where we went to Pixie Hollow to meet with Iridessa and Tinkerbell herself.

Disneyland Part I - Fit for a Princess

We took our recently reunited family on an awesome vacation to Disneyland! On our 1st day, we treated Julia to a visit to the newly opened Bibbity Bobbity Boutique where she was given her own Fairy Godmother who transformed her into a Princess for the day.

Julia was such a rock the year Kelly was away. She did so well in school, helped around the house and with her little brother more times than I could count. Thank you, sweetheart, for everything you do and for just being YOU. We love you more than you will ever know.

Family homecoming party

We had a homecoming party for Kelly and some of his nieces and his nephew who had also returned home from school, a church mission, and Chicago. It is always so great to see everyone and their families together and to hear how well everyone is doing.

Finally.

I was in la-la land didn't get too many pics but...

KELLY IS HOME!!!!

I will post a pic as proof, and then come back to tell the tale another time. We are all home and getting Kelly unpacked and settled in.

One Year Later....

Sigh. Gotta love a man in uniform. This was taken right before his departure from the desert.

He will be arriving back in the states this afternoon. We will see him some time next week. But, he is no longer overseas, and that is good news!

Kelly's last webcall from the desert!

He's outta there! Our family will be intact again very soon. He will be in the states, but working on some other projects until next week. We should be reunited with him in the next 10-14 days.

I will let Kelly blog if he wants to give out more info than that.

Happy Easter and Unhappy ER visits

We were lucky enough to be able to share Easter festivities with both sides of the family. We had a great time catching up with Kelly's family at the park, it was fantastic for the kids to see their aunts, uncles, and cousins. We had plans to see another set of family members that day, but Julia had a fever and a headache the night before, and went to see the pediatrician after hours. He cleared us to spend a bit of time at the event at the park, as it was outdoors.

Unfortunately, all did not end up great at the park, Julia came to me and just about passed out in my lap and complained of her neck and head hurting. Without really saying goodbye to anyone, I loaded the kids up in the car and rushed to Valley Children's to their ER. Because of her high fever and other symptoms, we were taken back right away. Her temp was 103.5, and she was very out of it. The ER doc performed some tests on her and concluded she most likely didn't have bacterial meningitis, but it was possible she has viral meningitis. We will never really know for sure. The bacterial kind is life threatening and they admit you, the viral kind they send you home. He didn't want to subject her to the horrors of a spinal tap to deterimine she had meningitis as he was quite certain if she did it wasn't the bacterial type. We were sent home with instructions to call an ambulance if she started to have worsening symptoms.

Julia seems to be on the mend today, a bit on the tired side but otherwise pretty normal. We were able to go over to my parents and dye more eggs and give them their Easter Baskets. We had a wonderful time with them and have one more day off of school for Julia for her to fully recover. As long as she has been fever free for 24-48 hrs she can go back.

Yes, the ticker has moved quite a bit...

...in the last couple of days. You aren't just seeing things. I would say more, but our good friend OPSEC won't let me!

Stay tuned...

Getting so grown up

We were playing around with the camera today, and Julia was striking some fierce poses. She is already quite the heartbreaker in Kindergarten, so we are in big trouble.

Take a look at my ticker, y'all

Only 2.5 weeks left of this crazy no husband garbage. Just sayin'...

We are so ready for him to come home. I told Julia that on April 1st, she was going to have to move back into her own room. She did with no problems at all. What I WASN'T expecting was for her little brother to move out with her. He just got into bed with her a few nights ago and said "I'm going to sleep with Julia now." He did last night too. So it was just me and the cat the last couple of nights. I didn't know it was possible to sleep without a pair of feet in my spine. So I just stretched out and enjoyed.

I told Kelly that both the kids were moved out of our room and he had only one word. "Outstanding."

Outstanding, indeed.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Kenneth!!!

Our sweet lil guy turned 3!!! Kenneth was born in Landstuhl, Germany March 31, 2006 at 4:26 pm CET (Central European Time). He has brought so much fun and laughter into our lives, and has made our family complete.

His grandma and papa came over with pizza and presents. I made him a Thomas cake that was really yummy. We hung out and played with his new stuff and had a blast!

He got an additional birthday present of an ear infection. He looked really glassy eyed before bed, took his temp and it was 103. He woke up screaming 20 minutes after I put him to bed and told me his ear was hurting. I sat with him in the recliner most of the night and he was able to sleep some.

I'm glad it held off long enough for him to enjoy his birthday, so I am grateful for that.

11 months!

We've come a LOOOOONG way in all this! 11 months ago I stood on my front porch at 5 am and watched him drive away from us. I distinctly remember coming back into my dark, quiet house, leaning up against my front door and thinking "Now what?" It really hit me at the point what was happening - and how long a year really was! I think I was in serious denial from the moment we found out about the deployment to the day that he left.

So what has it been like? Well...the only way I can explain how we have been getting through it is that life goes on no matter what - and we made a CHOICE everyday to be happy. Some days that decision was harder than others for sure, I'm not saying that it was all cupcakes and roses, no, it wasn't like that at all. There were definately some sad times, some scary times, some lonely times, some teary times. If you know us really well you know that there is a lot of fun and laughter in our lives, and that definately prevailed over those other times.

So, like Homer Simpsons declared, "What I'll mostly remember is the laughter."

Medial Gastrocnemius and Achilles Tendon Part Ways

So, it turns out, I have 20 year old instincts while playing volleyball, but a 36 year old worn out body. Back on 11 Mar, while playing volleyball and pushing off my left foot, I felt a snap when someone hit my calf with a tire iron, well at least that is what it felt like. I stumbled off the court, put some ice on it. I was still able to hobble around with pain, so I wasn't sure what happened. I subbed myself out, put some ice on it, and just coached the rest of the game instead of playing. After the game, stopped by the med clinic, got some pain killers and headed home. The next day, my calf had swollen up about twice normal size, but that was nothing compared to the bruising and bleeding that were about to appear a couple days later. At any rate, a week later I went back to the clinic and saw the orthopedic surgeon who confirmed it was a Medial Gastrocnemius Muscle Tear (it seperated from the Achilles Tendon). He said I wouldn't need surgery, but would need 3-6 months for it to recover. I've been doing physical therapy most every day, they have me do exercises, then do a soft tissue massage (this does not feel good at all, they basically stick their fingers in the torn area and move stuff around) and finish up with some Inter Ferential Current (this means they electrocute my leg for about 15 minutes).

A couple of days ago the therapist decided to tape up my ankle, and sort of make me a second achilles tendon using eleastic tape, and this relieves a lot of stress on helps me walk so much better, almost without a limp.

Despite the improvement in getting around, its still not strong enough to play volleyball, which means I missed the final two games of the intramural season and will miss the play-offs something I've been looking forward to for 4 months now. I've played the previous two seasons, when we have come in second place to the Services Squadron, but we finally had the team to beat them. BUT, our back-row specialist went TDY up-range, our best setter went on R&R, and I'm the other setter, so we are going to be hard pressed to beat them now.

Oh well.

Just 40 more days here, and I'm headed home, so I'll have to focus on that instead of volleyball.

To my sistas out there...(miss u guys!)

This is how my group of friends in Germany and I dealt with the stress of being Air Force Wives! We would hang out and act CRAZY!

Oh, I am hugely pregnant with Kenneth in this photo, so I pretty much look like a marshmallow, but whatever...

This was at Ramstein AB, Germany in early 2006. Lisa, Brandi, and I were pretty much the Three Amigos. Lisa and I were neighbors, (she lived upstairs from me) and Brandi lived in town. All of our kids were buddies too and attended the same Montessori preschool.

Good times! Love you guys! Hey Lisa, want to come to Cali and play BUNKO?

Air Force Wife's Prayer
(Alexandra Benakis)

An Air Force wife has so much to bear,
She's everything at once, no one could compare,
When God made her, he had perfection in mind,
For nowhere on Earth is another of her kind,
She leads a life not many would choose,
For her job is the hardest in the military to do,
She is courageous and strong, one would say made of steel,
But way deep down is a heart that can feel,

She stands by her husband, so proud and so tall,
And waits many nights by the phone for a call,
She's Mommy and Daddy all rolled into one,
She'll never rest easy until her job's done,
She sits all alone and in silence she cries,
Did I do a good job, is my family all right?
But deep in her heart she knows that it's true,
God is right beside her helping her through.

In about 6 weeks...

Kelly will be on his way home. Amazing to me that he has been in the Sandbox 10.5 months now.

Very much looking forward to his homecoming, and spending many, many more happy years together.

This year will be our 17th year together, it all began for us in August 1992. We actually met for the 1st time December 1991 (my friend Kathy drug him to one of my band concerts, I think he was kind of "meh" about going but didn't have any other plans so he went along with it) but I didn't see him again until I started college the next year.

What is really interesting is that our paths had crossed many years before we met. We discoved a few years back that we both had group pictures from the Clovis Band Festival from 1987. I was a 7th grader at Computech and he was an 8th grader at Kastner. It's so weird to think that my future husband and father of my kids was present that day and I had no idea.

My best friend from high school/college, Kathy, (the same one who introduced us at the band concert in 1991) discovered that she and Kelly used to be neighbors and they played together when they were 3 yrs old.

My other BFF from high school, Brooke, was dating my good friend Andy who went to Clovis West with Kelly and knew him. Kelly recalls that he saw Andy and Brooke at a movie theater one night, I'm pretty sure another friend of mine and I were supposed to be going as well but we didn't for some reason. So I probably would have met Kelly at that point if I would have gone!

It was meant to be, what can I say?