What's this? A book with a carrying strap?

A Kindle case! So proud of myself.

Teacher gifts

For teacher gifts this year, I used Wordle.com to make word clouds of Cael's teachers' names. He gave me the words to use and I typed them in and printed them out. I cut them out and mounted them on scrapbook paper and framed them.

I also found a few cute jars and filled them with M&M's. I found the idea on Pinterest.

It's that time again

for Christmas programs. Cael's school program is tonight. Robin and I have been hearing the songs for it for quite a while. I'm sure we'll be able to sing along. Allen comes home on Sunday, so we'll be getting a DVD of the performance so he can see it. The church program is on Christmas Eve, of course, as it is every year. The great part of Cael's school program is that it's directed by Brenda Lambert. She was our band teacher when Allen and I were in high school. The other day she was walking across the parking lot going into school when I dropped Cael off. He ran to her and they walked into school together. That was a little weird seeing my old teacher walking into school with my son. I think he's her first 2nd generation student. We get to go get Allen in Omaha on Sunday. A couple of friends from church are going to be there as well so we can all hang out and "play." Allen and Keith have been looking forward to this for quite a while. I believe go-karts are involved. We're excited to have Allen home for longer than a 4 day weekend. He'll get to Nebraska on Sunday and leave again on the 4th of January. He gets longer than I do for school! He'll be going to the doctor while he's home for his hip. He's pretty miserable. All he wants to do is to be able to run again, but right now, it's so painful, he really can't even walk too terribly far without a lot of pain. Please keep him in your prayers. I'll post pics of tonight as soon as I can. You can be sure there will be pics of Sunday as well!

Thanksgiving

"Oh, let us give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. And His mercy endures forever." He truly does. No, this Thanksgiving was not perfect, but there is still so much to be thankful for. Last Tuesday I had to go get Cael from school since he had thrown up. I came home with him and didn't go to school on Wednesday. He seemed to be doing better, so he stayed home with Robin, while I went to Omaha to get Allen. We were on our way back Thursday morning, when Robin sent us a text. Cael had thrown up at 5 that morning. In her bed. Oh boy. We're on our way. Luckily, Robin has a pretty strong stomach, not to mention a pretty good washing machine. She's awesome. So on Thanksgiving day, we went to Allen's mom's house and had lunch. Cael didn't eat much, of course. After that, we headed to Arapahoe to have supper with my family. Cael seemed to be doing pretty well by that point. Since Allen has been having an issue with his hip that is not being resolved, we decided to try to get him some help when he came back. My mom was amazing and called around to find someone who could get him a cortizone shot. There was a guy in McCook that she had worked with at one point and was very willing to look at Allen. We headed up there Friday morning around 9am. Holiday hours = open at noon. Ok, so we headed back to Arapahoe to Kerrey's house. All of Allen's siblings came, as well as his dad and aunt and uncle. Lunch was great, and in the afternoon, some of us went out to shoot some clay. We borrowed Allen's nephew's bb gun, and Cael got to shoot for the first time. He's right-handed, and left-eyed. Problem. Allen's says he's going to teach Cael how to shoot left-handed. Once we got things figured out, he was hitting those clays! Pretty cool! I'm not sure who was prouder, kiddo, or his daddy. Guess who's probably going to get a bb gun for Christmas? Around 5pm that afternoon, we headed back up to McCook. The guy we were supposed to see wasn't there. Very frustrating situation. We called my mom on the way back and she wanted to take Cael to the movie, so we dropped him off and headed back up to Kerrey's. I wasn't feeling the best, but I thought it was just because of the stress of the situation stirring up my stomach issues, not a bug. We headed back down to my mom's. Allen's stomach had been getting bad for a couple hours, and I got sick right away. No one really slept all night. Between Allen getting sick, and me moving to the couch so I wasn't squashed in between the boys, it was a bad night. My mom got up in the middle of the night to get Allen some medicine, then she made us some soup for lunch the next day. Allen and I agreed that she's a saint. I'm sure she's going to get sick, and I feel really bad. Unfortunately, Robin is sick in bed right now. I'll do my best to take care of her. Hopefully I can get back to 100% soon. I hope Cael and Allen can, as well. Even though it was a rough weekend, we still have so much to be thankful for. We are thankful that everyone traveled safely, and that we got to see everyone. We are thankful for moms who take care of us, even though we're 32 years old. We are thankful for amazing friends that don't get mad when our kid throws up in her bed. We are thankful that God has a plan, even though we have no idea what it is yet. The doctor wasn't in McCook for a reason. Not sure what that reason is yet, but we know that there is one, and we are thankful that the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith. Allen's situation is a difficult one, and it's putting a lot of stress on him, as well as me. Thankfully, it's not putting stress on our relationship. We could be yelling at each other, and focusing our fear and stress on the other, but instead we pray and trust the fact that there is a plan that we know will come to fruition. We just need guidance from above. We are thankful for all of you, and we hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving. We are truly giving Thanks Unto the Lord.

Halloween

I know, I know. It's the middle of November. My camera was broken over Halloween, and I just got the pictures today. Sorry. Cael was...Green Lantern! He told everyone. No. Seriously. EVERYONE. "Trick or treat. I'm Green Lantern!" And if there was someone else in the house that didn't come to the door... "Hey! Hey! I'm Green Lantern!" Kids on the street. "You're a cute kitty! I'm Green Lantern!" EVERYONE. He was pretty darn cute. By the way - Elly was Minnie Mouse. But she didn't tell everyone. :)

Scare-a-thon

Last night LeAndra and I went to McCook to run in the AmFirst Bank Scare-a-thon 5k. LeAndra was an elephant and I wore my viking helmet from the Warrior Dash. We were pretty darn cute, I must say. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture. We went to Walmart after the race and kept our costumes on. We got a few weird looks, but we really didn't care. We had an awesome time. It was a fun race!

Weekend in Missouri

This last weekend, I took 3 kids with me to Missouri for a mission trip/race. Thursday night we met my friend, Dan Wing in Carthage so that we could go work in Joplin the next day. We were sent to Emily's house. She's a shut-in that didn't actually suffer any tornado damage, but still had some clean up to do. Technically, all of Joplin's residents are tornado victims, but some have houses, and some do not. At Emily's house, we picked up a lot of trash, took out 5 bushes, and got a dead limb out of a tree.

Emily showing our crew what bushes need to be taken out. The little boy is Louie, Emily's 8 year-old grandson that lives with her. He attatched himself to Dan for most of the day. You could see that he needs a male role model quite badly.

Josiah getting the dead limb out of the tree.Me picking up trash.

Joplin. You could tell the line of destruction. There were houses, and then there were not.

The hospital. We were told that there used to be trees all around it so that it was hard to see it.

My favorite picture.Aren't these flowers beautiful?

This is what they were growing on. This is a pile of what is left of someone's house. There were Christmas decorations, children's toys, towels, a baseball cap, and who knows what else in this pile. I can't even imagine having all of your belongings bulldozed into a rubble heap like this. Heartbreaking.

Amen. and Amen.

Me and my kids at the Precious Moments chapel in Carthage.Pre-race. We ran the Warrior Dash in Old Monroe (by St. Louis). It was awesome!

This is a huge pile of dirty shoes. You could donate your shoes when you were done.

We met up with a good friend, Jennifer Leonard, that Dan and I went to college with. The boys ran together while we took pictures, and the girls ran together.

The Warrior Fires. Yes, I jumped over that.One of the 30ft. obsticals. This was one of the easiest ones.

Mud pit! Loved it!Jen and I finishing together.

The dirty Warrior Dash crew.:)The kids and I are going to do a chapel on Tuesday to share our Joplin experience.

Daddy's home! video

Too short of a weekend

We had a great weekend with Allen. He came in Friday night to Grand Island, so it was very convenient for me to go get him. Robin kept Cael that night, and in the morning, we went over to the house. The look on Cael's face was priceless. I got a video of it, so I'll post that as soon as I can. Allen needed to go to Complete Nutrition to get more vitamins, and then he picked out some tires for my car. He also went to the chiropractor, and he's feeling a lot better. Hopefully he'll be able to start running middle of this week. We met up with his family for lunch at Hunan's, of course, and then headed out to Helgoth's Pumpkin Patch. I'll have pics up soon. We were planning on going to church, but family snuggle time at the hotel was just too comfy, so we didn't get there. We got to take our time getting ready to go to York for lunch with Allen's dad. It was a relaxing afternoon. We got back to GI and the boys each got a Dilly Bar. That's been a tradition since Cael was pretty little. They never miss a chance when they're together. I made Allen's favorite supper for the boys and Robin, and then we spent the evening watching tv and snuggling. This morning was kind of rough, of course. We got to the airport and Allen checked in. They let him stay with us until the last possible moment he had to be on the plane. This was the first time that Cael has really cried when Allen left. Broke my heart. Thanksgiving is only about a month away. Much better than 3 months.

Update

Allen is officially a 1 Charlie candidate! Yea! Only 2% of his MOS are chosen for that. It's the elite of the 25S. He got in to the chiropractor on Saturday and is feeling a little better. I'm sure he'll be going every week for a while. Sooooooo, he also found out that he won't be finding out if he's in 1 Charlie for sure until January 15. If he's let in the door, he made it. If he's denied access, then he goes and finds out where he needs to go for duty station. Crazy, huh? Since that's the middle of January, and it would take 6-8 weeks for just the paperwork to be done to get me to Georgia, I would just stay here for the school year. If not, I'll be with him as soon as I can at the duty station. That's all I know for now!

I missed one

I can't believe I missed posting this one! What was I thinking? This is on the Niobrara Wildlife Refuge. We just decided to go on a whim. So glad we did!

Labor Day weekend

My friend from college, Louisa Jerke, and I took Cael on a fun Nebraska roadtrip. We started out in Columbus at a bbq with the Blake siblings. Then we went to Valentine to Fort Falls and Smith Falls. Then on to Chadron to the State Park, Alliance (Carhenge), Bridgeport (Chimney Rock), and North Platte. It was a fun weekend!

News

Allen called me this morning with the news that he was selected to go Strategic. He's very happy about that for a myriad of reasons. He was told that there might be a 6 week hold-over until he got into class again, but he actually gets to start on Wednesday! Yea! No mowing lawns or raking lines in sand for him! Also, he'll be back on days! Yea! ALSO, his class is a feeder class for the 1 Charlie group. He was on the lower end of the high GPA's, so there's still a chance he could get chosen for that. That would be awesome, since 1 Charlie guys are 100% non-deployable. He doesn't know when he would know about that, though. So, to summarize, Allen got great news this morning, and we still have no idea where we're going or when. :)

SOLD!

Yes, it's sold. The house, anyway. It was truly a God Thing. It always is, but He made it quite obvious. I had been praying fervently for the house to be sold, and even was praying Sunday (8-14) afternoon when I was mowing the lawn after coming back from Arapahoe. I was making supper and was covered in eggplant parmesan when the doorbell rang. There stood a young couple with a printout of our house in their hands. "Can we see your house?" SURE! Come on in! After looking around, they obviously loved the house and told me that they would call their realtor and bank on Monday. They actually called their realtor as soon as they got into the car. I was planning on hearing from them on Thursday or Friday, but they REALLY want my house, so I signed papers on Wednesday. God is Good! Check one thing of the stress list. Now I need to get moved. Closing date is Sept 15. I'm hoping to get my stuff moved the weekend of the 10th. I've got 4 senior boys and our assistant principal coming to lift my heavy stuff. Hopefully I'll have a stock trailer as well. My goal is to have all the little stuff (boxes, tubs, etc..) moved before then. I've been making trips in the evening with a car load here and a load there. I'm thinking I need to get another unit just because I don't want to say "Oops, not enough room," on the 10th with everyone waiting on me. Cael is doing ok with the move so far. It was kind of rough at the beginning, but we sorted out the facts that we're not leaving any of our stuff, and we'll be going to be with Daddy soon. If we can't sell the house, we can't be with Daddy. He had it in his mind that Daddy was coming back to live with us, and if we didn't have our house, we couldn't be together. Poor kid. He's happily helping pack his things now, though. Speaking of Cael, he started Kindergarten! My baby is a big kid, now! I did fairly well with the first day of school. No tears for either of us! He is loving school and is making lots of friends!