Our Family Adventure!

New Beginnings

2009-08-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

It's been quite some time since I've written on this blog! I'll try to fill you in on some things that have taken place between summer and now. We've had a few changes take place recently. We had a wonderful time in TN; it was wonderful seeing all of you! We actually missed KS a little bit while we were gone, so that's a good sign that we're adjusting. Most of you see our pictures on picasa, so I won't post any this time.

Taylor has had a great time being a part of the youth group at our church and getting to know the kids; they have had many youth functions and have taken many trips. It's has been fun, and at the same time it has been good for her on a spiritual level. She got saved and baptized at age 6, but recently said she felt like even though she knew and understood in her head what it meant to be a christian, she didn't understand it or feel it in her heart. So, she gave her heart to the Lord at a youth function! She's been reading her Bible and is learning a lot. She got her bible out the other night and was practicing talking to Ben about God :) She decided she wanted to go to the christian school at our church this year for the 8th grade. So far she has really enjoyed it and seems to be doing well. They wear uniforms, which isn't as bad as she initially thought it would be She started volleyball this week. We are excited to watch her play this sport for the first time ever.

Joslyn started Kindergarden a week ago :( She was not looking forward to it at all. She didn't want to go unless Riley could go with her. On her first day she was nervous as we walked up to the school, and I thought she might cry as she lined up and walked into school with her class, but instead Riley cried. She burst into tears and went running up to the door to try to catch her. She cried the whole way to the van saying 'I want Jwosyn' :) Joslyn has done really well so far, except that she has already gotten her name on the board for talking too much to her new little mexican friend, Trinity. Her teacher tells me that Joslyn finishes her work quickly and then wants to do Trinity's work for her, to help her get finished. She ties her shoes for her too, so Ms. Watson is afraid Trinity will not learn to do things on her own with Joslyn helping her do it all, so now Joslyn will have to be moved to another table. I guess at least she's being moved for doing something good instead of doing something bad.

Ben and I have started a new herbalife business. It will be a slow startup but has good potential for the future. We will keep you informed as it progresses.

Joslyn

2009-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Several of our family members used to love to hear 'Joslyn stories' and have recently mentioned that they miss hearing them, so I figured I would share a few. This first one is very embarrassing, and I would only tell this to family and people that I am closest to, those of you that know Joslyn quite well.....we were sitting in church one Sunday morning and there was a rather large lady sitting infront of us. She was of normal size from her waist up, but her bottom half was several times larger than the rest of her body. I noticed Joslyn was staring at her from behind and had a strange look on her face. After studying the lady for quite some time, she tapped me, wanting to say something to me. Knowing how children can be quite honest with their thoughts, and fearing what might come out of her mouth after noticing what she had been looking at, I quickly put my ear to her mouth so noone would hear what might possibly come out. She said, 'momma, that lady's hiney is too big to fit on the potty...how does she use the bathroom'....!!!! She was very serious about this question; not even a hint of a smile. So, she wasn't being mean, she was just honestly asking what was on her mind :) Thank God it wasn't a moment where the comment was blurted out. How embarrassing that would have been! Another story, one which is typical of Joslyn and without going into much detail, is when we went for her 5 yr checkup. She does not like shots. She has no intentions of ever getting any shots. We had been discussing all morning that she would have to get shots in order to start kindergarden, and all of her friends would have to do the same. She was prepared..so we thought. Needless to say, 4 other nurses ended up in the room. One was holding Riley for me while the other 3 were each holding a limb as I practically layed on her to restrain her so that our poor nurse could quickly give her the shots. She was screaming the entire time. Poor Riley...I wonder was she was thinking. On the flip side, Joslyn can also be very sweet (just in case you ere wondering :) ), and I just love how much she loves Riley. We were recently riding in the van to the store, and Joslyn told me thank you for bringing Riley to us. I responded, thinking she meant bringing her WITH us to the store. She said, 'no, you know when you were at the hospital and Riley came out of your belly..thank you for bringing her to us'. Another day she said the prayer before lunch, 'Dear Jesus, thank for this food and thank you so much for Riley because she is just so cute'. These are among the many daily comments she makes about her little sister :)

Birthday Weekend in Wichita

2009-05-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

Happy 13th birthday to Taylor and Happy 2nd Birthday to Riley! Taylor had a track meet all day on her actual birthday, so we had pie and a few presents very late when she got home that night. We decided to take a birthday trip this year to celebrate the girls birthdays instead of having a party. We went this past weekend to Wichita, KS, which is the largest city in KS and is about 3 1/2 hours away. It was SO NICE to have good restaurants and malls and fun things to do for a change! We had a great time. We went to an indian pow wow one evening, which was neat, and was something Ben has always wanted to do. Taylor chose Chilis for her birthday dinner and we all chose ChuckECheeses for Rileys birthday dinner (she had a blast)! We spent the rest of the time at the Starbucks drive thru and shopping at teh malls.....Taylor asked only for money for her birthday so she could buy new clothes, and she got quite a bit of cash to spend (a big thanks to Pa for the majority of it)! Thank you all for the cards and gifts. We missed you celebrating these special days with us!

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day! I hope you all had as good a weekend as I did. The only thing that would have made mine better would have been to see my mom. Our sermon at church was on the Proverbs 31 woman, and I consider my mom to be closer to that than anyone else I know. It is my goal to be more like that.
Friday night I took Taylor and Joslyn to a Mother-Daughter Banquet at our church (Riley stayed home with Ben; I knew it would be more enjoyable that way since she doesn't like to sit still for very long). We had a great time. On Sat Taylor had an out of town track meet, and right as the little girls and Ben and I were about to leave home to head that way, Taylor called and said she was about to run her hurdles, earlier than expected, so we ended up staying in town and went to the Liberal Air Museum, which was pretty neat. On Sunday we went to dinner at an ilalian restaurant here in town. It was a Mother's Day/early Birthday dinner for Tay since she has her last track meet Tues and will get home too late for dinner. Here are a few pictures from our weekend.

Taylor's Track Meet

2009-04-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

Taylor had her first track meet yesterday. She was gone from 8 am-8pm, and as you can see, she got very burnt! It was sunny and in the 80's. She ran the 100 meter hurdles and won first place in her heat and 4th place overall. She also ran the 200 meter hurdles and was 5th place in her heat but somehow 4th place overall (someone got disqualified). She is holding her little metal in the picture. Ben and I both had to miss it :( since it was a work day for us and the meet was out of town.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

We had a fun Easter weekend. It started out with a trip for Taylor (and her youth group) to Oklahoma City for a night of laser tag on Friday. They had the entire place rented out from 11 pm-5 am! She had a blast. While she was there, I spent the evening at a scrapbooking party. It was my first time to scrapbook (even though I've wanted to do it for many years now), and after being there for 6 hrs, I only completed 1 page! On Sat I took Joslyn to a kid's craft party where she made a picture frame. She had a great time. After naps that day, the kids got to open some Easter goodies from family, and then we made cookies together (Joslyn's been begging to make something with dough like Barney does on one of his movies) :) Today, we had a great sermon at church. After talking about Easter this week at home and at church, when I asked Joslyn this morning to tell Ben about Easter she said, "it's when the Easter Bunny brings us candy and also when Jesus died on the cross and then went to heaven to take our sins with him" :) It turned out to be a rainy day (only the second time it's rained the whole time we've been here), which caused the church Easter egg hunt to get canceled, so Taylor and I hid eggs while the girls napped after church, and then we had our own hunt. Riley really enjoyed it and ended up with more eggs than Joslyn. Tonight we will have our family dinner together. We typically spend the day at GG's house, so I decided to fix all the same foods that we typically have there, plus a few extras! We miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Easter! 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 "..that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.."

I'm SO excited!!!

2009-04-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

As you all read a few posts back, I had a very disappointing cake experience on my birthday. Earlier this week, my friend Amy told me to be expecting a late birthday gift in the mail. I received the package today, and you'll never guess what it was...........a personal size cake from Sweet and Sassy, my FAVORITE bakery in the whole world!!!! She felt so bad about my horrible birthday cake, and she heard from a friend that you can ship a cake by freezing it first and mailing it frozen, so she decided to try it! As you can see it made it in one piece, with the icing intact, and it tastes very fresh. After a few bites, I decided to save the rest for tonight after dinner, so I hid it since my little ones enjoy icing as much as me and there isn't much to go around (it's pretty bad that I get so excited over a cake huh?)! Anyway, THANK YOU Amy! You made my day! That was very thoughtful of you!

Joslyn's 5th Birthday!

2009-04-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Joslyn's birthday is actually on Monday, but we celebrated over the weekend. We typically have a party with our whole family, all of my best friends, and a few friends of Joslyn's at our house. I have been trying to prepare Joslyn for the fact that none of the typical people will be able to come to her party this year since we live far away now. She was disappointed at first, but then she asked if a friend from church and the girls across the street could come instead. It's a good thing little kids are pretty easy to please :) She was just as happy with this party as she would have been with her normal party (although she would have loved for EVERYONE to be here). The little girls across the street, ages 6 and 10, are the first people we met in our neighborhood. They are always outside riding their bikes in the road alone with no parent in sight :) The girl at church that she invited is 10 yrs old and belongs to the lady Ben works with named Teresa. We have been visiting their church. She also has a daughter Taylor's age, so we invited their crew to come over for cake and ice cream today, along with the girls across the street. Joslyn was so excited when they showed up (we didn't tell her they were coming). I tried to post pictures of Joslyn opening the gifts all of you sent. Thank you...she liked them all. You can tell in the pictures her favorite gifts were the princess drawing booklet (it has paint and scissors and glitter), and the barbie; who would have guessed! We also wanted to go somewhere fun for Joslyn's birthday to make up for the lack of her fun party, so yesterday we took the girls to Garden City, which is an hour away, and we went to the zoo. It was smaller than the Nashville zoo, but it was nice. The weather was warm and sunny....however, there was a wind advisory out all day.....and the wind blew SO hard that it made us all freeze and practically blew us away. It made the day a little less enjoyable than it could have been. We still had a good time but decided we need to go again on a more pleasant day. I got a starbucks drink and a visit to Target out of the trip, so the wind was worth it to me!! We missed all of you today...GG, Grandmother, Aunt Tracey and girls, Nanny, Jamie, Aunt Sonya, Dvonne, Amy, Elly, Piper, Hannah, Michelle, Grandaddy and Grandmamma!

Playing in Sissy's new shoes

Crazy Weather!

2009-03-28T07:42:00.001-07:00

In the few weeks we've been here, we have had beautiful weather, sunny and in the 70's, for the most part....until yesterday....we had a blizzard! The news says we got 12 inches of snow, but we actually have close to 20 inches in some areas, like up against the house. This morning when I looked out my bathroom window, the snow was all the way up to the window sill! We played outside in it yesterday for about 30 min, but it was very cold and very windy, so we couldn't stand much more than that. Riley didn't like being out in the snow...between the wind blowing snow in her face and the snow coming up to at least her knees, she spent most of her time standing in the garage watching everyone else! Joslyn enjoyed it but she was cold (we didn't have any snow gear for her to wear). When she came inside, her hands were frozen and she couldn't even feel the heat of the fire on them for awhile. Ben and Taylor had a blast! I sent my time in the garage with Riley and Belle taking pictures :)

Our First Few Weeks

2009-03-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

Things are going pretty well for all of us. Ben is enjoying his job. Taylor has made several friends on our road, at church, and at school. She had her first full day of school today. It started out rough with a few tears, but it ended up great. Everyone knows she's the new girl, and everyone is friendly to her. She likes most of her classes, especially Spanish! After being in gym class today, the coach invited her to be on the cross country track team, and they even want her to run with the high school students because she's faster than the kids at her school! She misses her friends from home of course, but she's doing very well here. God answered our prayers! Joslyn knows we live far away from our friends and family, and she says she likes it here, but she'll ask here and there if we can go to Nanny's house or if she can see her friends. She says we can just drive there to see them! Riley doesn't know anything's different :) We have visited several churches that we like so far and will continue to visit before picking one. My job situation is the main thing not going so well. I have a job in OB at the hospital and am set to start in one month working two nights a week. However, I found out that I will have eight weeks of Mon-Fri all day long orientation, which is not good due to the fact that there is no childcare here. I am looking for something else that doesn't require the long orientation, so in the meantime I can use your prayers!

My Birthday

2009-03-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful birthday! Thank you all for your cards, phone calls, and notes on facebook. This was my first year to spend my birthday without my family and friends, and also my first birthday in a long time to not have a Sweet-N-Sassy cake :) Ben and Taylor did their best to make sure I had a great day. They even ordered a cake from the one and only bakery here in town (besides the grocery stores), but it didn't turn out so good. As you can see them in the last picture eating the cake with smiles on their faces, they later told me that they were eating it and thinking about how bad it tasted, but trying to pretend it was good for my sake since I was so excited about it! Needless to say, Ben took it to work the next day.

The Land of Oz

2009-03-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

Liberal, KS is the end of the yellow brick road from the movie The Wizard of Oz. The year the movie was made, they built this house to resemble Dorothy's house, and now they use it as a museum and tourist attraction. We toured it while my mother-in-law was in town, and it was pretty neat. In Oct of every year, Liberal has Ozfest, which is a big parade with food and games where the actors from the movie that are still alive all come together for a reunion.

Hand and foot prints of the dwarfs in the movie.

Dorothy's room

Welcome to Kansas!

2009-03-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

What a long trip! Taylor, Joslyn, Riley, Belle, Claudia (Ben's mom), and myself headed out on a Friday evening for Liberal, KS. The entire trip, including stops, took 18 hours! Even though it was long, it went very well considering we had a brand new puppy and a 22 month old on board! We made quite a few stops for the puppy to potty (and Taylor, who has a baby's bladder), but she slept otherwise. We barely heard a word out of her or Riley (thank goodness we had plenty of Barney movies, which kept Riley happy)! The trip isn't bad the first time because of the different scenery, but you may not want to drive it a second time. Here's a few pictures of the flat bare land and a picture of the house we are renting. It's very plain, but it looks like most of the other houses in town. We keep reminding ourselves...it's only temporary!

Our New Addition!

2009-03-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is Belle, the new member of our family. She is a lab mix. We got her at 6 weeks old the week we left for Kansas. Most of you know I'm not a dog person :) and that we've given the last two away, but we figured getting a puppy would be a good distraction for the kids during the transition of moving. The kids love her. Joslyn even enjoys using the pooper scooper in the backyard (Taylor was thrilled for Joslyn to take on this job, since it was origianlly Taylor's responsibility)! Riley initially liked feeding her until Belle realized that Riley's hand tastes as good as the food! Now Riley's favorite words are "No Belle"!

Our Last Days in Cookeville

2009-03-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of our family and friends who made our last days in TN special! We had many going-away gatherings, and we appreciate your thoughtfulness. We will miss you all!