It's Spring.....

And still snowing.

I'm not a fan of the white stuff but lucky for me I (1- don't have to drive in it, and (2- it melts by noon, if it sticks at all.

Things have been fairly uneventful around these parts. The kids are still in their regular activities. The boys have reached their blue belt in Tae Kwon Do. Jacey is becoming a live Gumby, and can bend and contort into all kinds of uncomfortable positions. Everyone is getting tired of the cold wet weather around here and the kids and Duke will run out to enjoy the 5 minute breaks of sunshine we are blessed with every so often. I'm getting antsy myself for some nice weather.

Spring break is approaching fast and we have some big family fun planned, a birthday, a building project, and most exciting would be that Dustin should be here to enjoy it with us. We've sure waited a long time to enjoy a couple weeks with our soldier and are SUPER glad it's right around the corner.

Logan's health has been good up until recently. His sweet sister shared her cold with him. He turns 14 in a couple of weeks! He's so stoked. Eighth grade has been good to Logan and he seems to be mister social. He excels at tae kwon do, still loves a good book, and is ready to get back into swmming.

Gavin hit double digits and celebrated his 10th birthday with a lunch date with Mom, followed by a shopping spree, then dinner with everyone and ice cream cake too! He is my sweet smarty pants, and he's becoming a challenge for his teacher. Just today he told me that he "mostly takes naps in the morning at school because he gets his work done too fast". He's an extreme reader, loves math, and enjoys hanging out with his friends from school.

Jacey is finally settling into kindergarten and learning it's not all about her. It only took her 6 months to realize nobody at school can see her crown. ;) She's still in love with dance, and is amazingly strong and flexible, which landed her a solo in her acro routine for recital. She loves to color, decorate, and organize. She loves make up, but hates to have her hair fixed. She insists on wearing her purple and red tie dyed cowboy boots with everything.

I have had my fill of doctors and complications for the year already. What started as a visit to the ENT for MRSA and a recurring sinus infection, turned into 3 pulled teeth, secondary infection, a botched root canal, trips to the endodontist, more secondary infections, a slew of crazy medications, trips to the ER (3), allergy testing, CT scans, and imunosuppressive therapy. That's just within the last month (and off the top of my head). I follow up with the surgeon in a week to find out when my next sinus surgery will need to be scheduled, and crossing my fingers it's after August is over.

Dustin has been busy busy "over there". He has been studying for the board, but it keeps getting pushed back so it's looking like he won't go until May now. He was a part of a big reenlistment ceremony, where he resigned for another 2 years of active duty. It was a big tough choice to make since he wasn't able to follow his original plan for reclassifying into a different job. Hopefully everything happens for a reason and this change of plans will lead us down an even better path than what we'd hoped for. He's looking forward to r&r soon and the end of deployment.

So that's our update so far. I'm hoping to get a post together with some new pictures. Not much exciting going on around here yet. Soon living in the pacific northwest will pay off and we'll be blessed to enjoy the amazing area!! Going without sun for soooo long really makes you appreciate it when you get it. I've already started planning our spring and summer bucket list. Hopefully the Dad man is as willing a participant as the kids were (forced to be) last year ;)

Christmas In Pictures

What are holidays without muddy puppy prints to clean up?

Jaceys most favorite gift turned out to be a hair set for her dolls.

Teenagers.... music, headphones, new books.... he's a happy camper.

The coolest new Nerf alternative.... no foam darts for the dog to eat!

The flash! it's too bright! Can we open our gifts now that you've blinded us?

Bitty Twins Ava and Aiden. Jacey is loving them!

Duke found his gift under the tree and was mad the kids wouldn't stop opening theirs to play with him.

Gavin loves art! He got a set of pencils and nice paper to practice on. Maybe his school work will have more work than doodles now? It was worth a try!

A Brand New Year

Well, as the first day of 2012 ends I'm feeling very optimistic about everything that will unfold this year. It will be a year of many changes for our family, both big and small. I'm excited to see how it will unfold, since we still have no idea what direction things will head.

We're nearing the half way mark on this deployment, and I'd thought that would feel like a big hurdle. I was hoping for a sense of relief, for a weight to be lifted, a feeling of "it's all downhill from here- the hard part is over"...... but that is far from how I actually am feeling.

I'm more annoyed with the whole thing. I'm tired of it. I'm fine, emotionally I don't feel much different. I will say I find myself getting aggravated easily over little things though, and that's not my style. It's a feeling of not being able to do anything to change the situation even if I wanted to...

There's also the reality, that if all our best laid plans come true, Dustin will be gone the majority of this year too. Our goal is for him to go back for additional training to allow him to change jobs after this deployment. He'll only be home approximately 2.5 months out of 2012. We only got him for about We only got him for about 4-5 months in 2011. So.... about 6 months together out of two years adds up to a lot of alone. And after a while, alone gets old. I will be the first to admit that there are times I love alone. I'm the perfect person to be alone.... but even I get over it at some point.

I wonder sometimes if our communication options were better if I'd not be so aggravated lately.... who knows. Too many what-ifs to really know. What I do know, is I'm super happy to be getting our lives back to busy! We took a break from everything over the Christmas holiday, and getting back in the swing of things will be helpful. We all do better when we have our routines as close to normal as possible.

Now that I've spent plenty of time complaining, I will try to be better about some fun exciting picture filled updates!