Patience....or a lack thereof!

I must apologize. I have been a very bad blogger. To say I am consistent with anything is a stretch. I will admit that is a weakness of mine. I tend to overextend myself and then things just start falling by the wayside. I will try to do better about posting. Especially pictures and stuff for friends and family that are reading this and wondering where I am and where the pics are.

Patience is another one of my weaknesses. I will admit I do not have much. This is something I am continually struggling with and trying to remedy, with God's help. But one thing I do not want to be patient for is our orders. I mean, seriously, Ben graduates in 9 weeks and we still have no idea where we will be going. It could be anywhere. Any one of fifty states or dozen or so countries. Just give me a little hint. I have to know. I need to know. I need to know now. The suspense is killing me. I am just so excited and nervous all at the same time. I mean I know this is part of the military life being moved place to place but this time there will be a little bit more stability in the sense that we "should" be there for around four years. It's just nice to think that after the past two years and moving three times that we will be able to settle in somewhere and call it home. I am so ready to do so many things and you know a girl's gotta plan for these things. I want to find a good church family, I want to start a garden, I want to paint the kids rooms, I want to organize all of my crafty things so everything has a place, I want to order curtains! (I know that might sound crazy but when your constantly moving there is no point because you know the next house isn't going to have the same windows) I know that these things might be so mundane and things you don't even think twice about, I am just so ready to get started I don't want to wait anymore. But alas, I don't think we will be finding out for a few more weeks. So say a prayer for us and hope that we will be seeing our orders soon and know where we will be calling home, at least for the next four years. 

Mommy Papparazzi....random pics of the kids

Getting so big! I love my toes!

I love these next two photos. This boy is so hard to capture on film because he never stays in one place for that long. 

My little man!

Chillin with my toy.

So tired of mommy taking pictures.... just stop already!

Showing of her soccer medal!

It wasn't me! Hayden got a hold of Madie's tambourine from school.

Playing in the bubbles when mom wasn't looking!

I got in the bubbles too!

Fighters, Jets, and Bombers...Oh my!

We took the kids to the armament museum here on base last weekend. I don't know why we had never thought of taking Jack over there with his love of all things mechanical. But we hadn't and so we decided to try it out and they had a blast. We only got to cover half due to an impromptu bathroom break by DD... but we will be back. Jack and Madie both loved it. I think Jack more than Madie, he was in awe!

Some Halloween pics.... better late than never, right!

For some reason my blog is poting the last pictures first so.... this is Jack at the end of the night. He just couldn't hang with the rest of us. He hit that sugar high and just crashed. He and Hayden rolled together in the double stroller and by the end of the night it had turned into a caddy for 4 of the 6 kids who were with us. We trick or treated on base with some of our good friends here, Shannon and James and their three kiddos.  Had a great time, had lots of candy, but glad the night came to an end. 

Here is Hayden in all his garb.

Princess Madalyn. Funny how my older two kids picked out costumes this year and then Halloween afternoon they decided they wanted to be the same things they were last year. Oh well, they had a great time. I'm surprised Jack's still fit.

Jackson as a dragon.
Here are all of the kiddos in front of another friends house on base. Their little boy is so stinkin cute!

Save the pumpkins!!!

As you can tell from these photos, Jackson was more than taken by the pumpkins. He absolutely loved walking out the door every morning to take Madie to school and seeing them there. He loved coming home and seeing then there. He always alked about the pumpkins. He is still talking about the pumpkins and that was three weeks ago.  Although now he tells me the pumpkins are in the trash and he gets a sad look on his face. Well, he loved the pumpkins but he did not like the fact that we took a knife to his precious pumpkin in fact the following picture was what went on when he saw that Mommy had carved his little pumpkin. Absolute horror. He yelled, "No cut pumkin, no cut" for like 10 minutes afterwards. My little peacekeeper. He loves little animals and things and I guess this was right up there with them in his book.

The Best Day ever....

Out of the mouth of a babe. Today I had some errands to run and figured I would take Madie with me. I decided we would run my errand and I would surprise Madie and take her to paint pottery with me. I have painted plates for both Madie and Jack but yet to have painted one for Hayden. So I figured that would give me the chance to do that and spend some one on one time with just Madie. It's not very often that I get to that these days and I often feel like she gets overlooked sometimes with the chaos of our house these days, i.e. new baby, 2 year old that has so much energy you could run a house off of it, a husband that is finishing his last year (THANK GOODNESS!!!) of PA school, preschool, soccer, gymnastics, laundry, dishes, laundry, dishes.... sometimes it almost feels like Groundhog Day! Anywho... I got sidetracked, that's something else which has started happening a lot more recently too. Please tell me I am not alone! Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled program.... Madie and I went to paint and had a great time. We were there about an hour and half and then she was ready to go, she wanted to paint this really tacky Dolphin sculpture and as much as I don't want that thing displayed on a shelf forever I decided to let her. I think I try to control too much and I am trying very hard to relax and just go with it. Anyways, she decided she was done and thank goodness because right at that moment a group of about 10 kids came in and I didn't want to be in there when they got into the paint. So we left and I figured we were having such a great time and Ben wasn't blowing up my phone yet we would go to the movies and make this a Girl's Day Out. We went and saw Madagascar 2. It was cute, popcorn was great, and poor thing fell asleep on my lap the last 5 minutes. That doesn't happen much anymore. Good thing she only weighs 32 pounds. We finished up the day with a trip to Panera bread. We split a soup and sandwich, she loves the broccolli soup. Then as we were sitting there she said it. She looked up at me and with the biggest smile said, "Mom, this was like the most perfect day ever. I had so much fun with you today! I'm glad just us got to go and not the boys!" She was so happy and seemed so grown up all in that moment. I could have frozen time. So this is going to be our new thing. Once a month she will go with me to do something like the park or something,  and then once a month with Ben. I know I cherished today just as much as she did and can't wait till our next little excursion. 

Any kind of sick will do....

Madie was putting off the inevitable tonight. She had had her bath, eaten her dinner and her desert, but decided she just wasn't ready for bed yet. She had had a long day and was extremely tired, way tired, but still was fighting it all the way. She came out of her room so serious and said to Ben, " Daddy, I don't feel so good, I think I'm seasick!" Ben laughed a little and then he turned to me and said listen to Madie. He told her to tell me what she had just told him. She looked at me with her little puppy dog eyes and said, "Mommy, I think I'm homesick, I mean seasick, I mean homesick and seasick." I asked her why she felt that way and she said it was because she had run to much earlier today ( we had gone to the Track to walk). I guess she figured one of those would work!