Preparing for deployment

Rob has been gone now for 8 days for annual training with the National Guard at Camp Gurnsey (about 2 hours away from Casper), with 11 more days to go. My mom is here to help, but we have stayed really busy. Emma and Garrett were able to go swimming two times this week at the Rec. Center they have a special "Toddler Swim". Plus other things were were able to be out doing with the extra help of Grandma. Grandma plans to come help as often as she can while Rob is gone for a year.

Most of my spare time has been been busy and I try to get as much quality time with Rob as I can when he is home. He is scheduled to leave for Kuwait as early as April 16 or late as April 22. The Saturday before he left for Annual training we were able to have the whole day together with the help of our church members babysitting for us. I even left Jenna barely 4 weeks old for 4 hours (it was very worth it so Rob and I could have some time for just us) as we went out to eat and to "Pottery By You", where we were able to make some things for the deployment. See above I painted the mug and he wrote the message on it for me. and then he painted the jar and we will leave thoughts from him in it for the kids. The chicken on the side represents the chickens we plan on getting when Rob returns home. Not something I wanted to do by myself while he is gone.

We are so blessed to have a wonderful church family, they live up to what the Bible commands us to do in taking care of each other. There is no better place God could have placed us!

Jenna Grace

Jenna came home on Tuesday. Emma and Garrett have been great to their little sister. So far Jenna has been sleeping good. She sleeps from about 10:00 to 2:30 AM... then Betsy wakes her up and feeds her and she falls asleep again until 6:30. We had a wonderful photo session with her yesterday, our neighbor Brooke does photography and she spent a few hours doing some really neat poses with Jenna. We can't wait to see the pictures.

Candy Land

"Our favorite meal"

While Rob was gone for a week (he was in Denver working on his Doctorate of Ministry program) we were a little more flexible with our meal. Several times the kids were able to enjoy a meal of smoothies and edamame. Emma would be content with this at every meal. Garrett really enjoyed Emma peeling the edamame for him.

Burning wood

I think these pictures can speak for themselves. We have been enjoying a warm fire since Tuesday.

Addition to previous post

As we were in church yesterday, I look beside me to find Emma's backside up in the air with her dress hanging down. This is not the first time, we have seen that view in church, but I thought it was funny since I had just written about it. So we are still working on how to sit properly in church.

I have a headache.

Emma enjoys very much being on her head. Garrett on the other hand, as some have found out, becomes terrified when he is upside down. Emma will just randomly run to a chair or couch and do her head stands....after leaving the table, bathroom, or anytime she feels like it. But she did admit to Rob today that while doing that she had a headache, maybe she is onto something.