Just the Girls; The Men are Doing Manly Things

This weekend Jeff is taking the boys camping with the men in the church. I guess our church men attend this event called Annual Men's Wild Beast Feast every year. There will be all kinds of manly stuff going on, no women allowed. There will be skeet shooting, turkey shoot, pistol range, archery range, bb range and then for all those hungry men they will have a pig pulling. Pig pulling? Never heard that before. It says they will be eating hog right off the grill! I know Jeff is excited about all that meat and the boys are excited they will get to shoot bb guns. I'm sure they will have a blast!

So this means it's just Tara and I this weekend. Its going to be so quiet! Right now she is laying down for her one and only nap today, I'm hoping it will last until 4 or at least 3:30. That would be awesome to have all that time to get chores done around here. I'll probably spend the evening playing with her and maybe a walk if its not too cold. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get her and I out of this house to do some shopping at Hobby Lobby. My mom and dad gave me a gift card for Christmas from there and I'd sure like to spend it! :) I think I want to buy a big black clock or maybe some new picture frames for our family photos.

I hope this weekend goes well for us. Our Friday morning started out with a flat tire on the way to Josiah's school. Jeff had to come rescue me early in the morning. I have no clue how to change a tire. When he got out the spare tire and put it on he noticed it looked a little flat too so he had to walk over to K-Mart and buy a tire repair kit and pump so he could just repair the main tire there. He said it had a nail in it. Nice.

So that's it for now. I think. He are some pictures from our vacation to Hawaii...




First night in Hawaii, extremely tired Tara couldn't stay awake at Red Lobster.


The family posing at Matsumoto icee place, best icees every, seriously! So good!!!


Josiah eating his icee. Not sure what he's thinking, maybe not another photo!


Gaber at the luau


Tara at the luau


Jeff and Tara at the luau


Mom and dad enjoying their food at the luau


and another picture at the luau


Josiah and Gaber on the north shore


mom and I at north shore.

This Week

I enjoyed this week staying home, besides going to church and taking Siah to school. It was so nice to stay home and just clean, do laundry, cook and play with my kids. I feel like we are finally getting back to our normal. I love it.
This week Tara learned to "shhh" her brother. I had told Gaber to shhh b/c I was trying to hear what they were saying on the radio. The next thing I know Tara shhhh-d him. I started laughing, which led to me coughing/hacking (I can't laugh these days without going into a coughing fit). Then Gaber started laughing, he still thinks she's funny...I know that won't last long when she becomes older. Tara and I have also been reading this Noah book. On one of the pages all of the animals are sleeping, so I say, "shhh, the animals went nigh-nigh". So now, whenever we turn to that page Tara says, "shhh". To Adorable!
This week Siah did great in school. No homework because he worked hard every day to get his seatwork done, which means no homework! :) Siah has also been practicing his skateboarding. He looks a little more controlled on it now. He has been loving it and I'm so proud of him for not giving up. He told me it is harder than he thought it would be. ;)
This week Gaber did great in school too. We have been doing school at home together. He's been practicing his cursive b's and a's and writing his number 5's. He can actually write all the numbers, but his workbook pages have him practicing them so we are doing it. Gaber also painted a picture, but then it turned into a big black blob when he got a little too creative with mixing his colors. He gave up on skateboarding this week, he stated that its not fun when it won't let him ride. :) I guess he fell off one too many times.
This week our finance packet finally was accepted. We will finally be reimbursed for our PCS. Its about time since they're the ones who made us move....well,,,I'll stop...I won't get going on that.
Its been a good week here in the Rybold house. Hope all my blogger friends had a good one too!

Twenty Ten and What I Missed

Happy New Year! What a year 2009 was. We had such a busy year, I knew it would go too fast. The end of the year was great, we got to see our family and friends. I missed blogging about so much. I didn't get a blog up about Gaber's 5th birthday and I was going to do some pictures of him from over the past years, maybe I'll get some pics of him soon. I didn't get to blog about Tara's first birthday, or her first steps. :( So much happened while we've been trying to get settled in here. I'll try to sum it all up on this blog, lets see...
Tara started walking a couple weeks after her first birthday. She would take 3-5 steps but then crawl. When we went up to Wisconsin for Christmas she started walking for like 7-10 steps, and then before we knew it, she was walking from room to room! Now that we are back home, she is walking even better. She steers around objects and even steps over things to keep from falling. I just sit back and watch, in unbelief that she's already so big. The time really goes to fast. I remember as a child, I thought the days and weeks went by so slowly. Summer seemed to last forever to me. Now a year seems like just a couple months.
Tara has 6 teeth now, 4 on bottom and 2 on top. The top ones have been real hard on her. Her gums bubbled and bled before the teeth broke threw. She was so good though, barely fussed. Just had fevers and she wanted to sleep longer.
Now its 2010. I have no clue what this year will hold for our family. We may be moving again just before we get settled in here. Please pray for us, we want only God's will for our lives.
As for now, we are enjoying our time in Georgia. We love our church here. We have started working with the teen group. Jeff went to their teen activity on Saturday night and he did the devotional for it too. The kids and I stayed home b/c I've had a bad cough and chest congestion. Josiah is loving his school, and Gaber is doing school at home with me.
Well, that's a real quick summary of it all. I hope to get back on the ball with this blogging thing!
Hope you all had a wonderful New Year!

Pictures

A Long Journey

We finally made it to Georgia! We left Japan October 18th. Our plane left at around 11 am that Sunday morning, we flew to mainland Japan which took us 3 hours if I remember right. We had a small layover in Narita and then took off for Hawaii. That flight took us 8 hours, but with a time difference of 19 hours! Needless to say, we were tired. The funny thing was we landed at 7 am on that Sunday morning...before we left Japan :) We stayed in Hawaii for almost a week, vacationing there with my parents. The weather there was awesome, the hotel was nice and the food was great! We really enjoyed our time in Hawaii...but like all vacations it ended too soon. We left Hawaii, and my parents, on Friday morning...they had a later flight than us. Next we flew to Chicago, I think that flight took us around 8 hours also. Again, we were so tired b/c of another lovely time change. At least this time it was only 5 hours. We hung out at the Chicago airport for 2 or so hours and then finally boarded a small plane for St. Louis. By the way, our dog Chloe accompanied us through this whole trip. When we were sitting on this plane we realized we hadn't confirmed our dog being loaded. While waiting for the flight attendant to make her way back to us so we could ask her to check, Josiah yells out, "There's Chloe!!!" Sure enough, there was our dog, panicking in her crate as she is going up the conveyor belt onto the plane. :) Well, she wasn't really panicking, just pacing in place. Poor dog. She was probably wondering what was going on...while in Hawaii she was in quarantine the whole week. We finally take off for St. Louis, which was a wonderful short flight and there to meet us was Jeff's parents, such a nice sight to see when all the other airports you arrive at are full of people you don't know. We arrived in MO on Saturday morning. And again...needless to say, after all this flying and time change, our family was hit with jet lag. I took a nap that afternoon and that was the wrong thing to do. It was so hard to wake up, and napping made me feel much worse. I spent the rest of the day in a fog, just drifting around the house, trying to talk and be sociable....but praying for bed time to roll around. Amazingly, Josiah and Gaber did the best, they stayed awake all day and slept great that night. Kids are amazing creatures! I haven't mentioned Tara yet, she did great the whole way from Japan! She was an amazing flier, thanks to God answering my prayers!, and she did well with the time changes too. I don't think we ever had a hard time getting her to sleep, the boys as well, we just had a hard time getting them to wake up! I had to start setting my alarm for 9 am so that we could get on central time, we were all sleeping in to noon! Eventually we made it down to 8 am. We stayed in MO for 2 weeks, there we celebrated Gaber's 5th birthday at Bonkers and then had a delicious DQ cake at the Rybold's house. A couple days later we were all hit with a nasty plague! Jeff started it, then Gaber, then Siah, then Rose, me, Tom, Megann, and the ones who got it at the end of our trip was Mark and my mom. Not sure if Alicia and her other little ones got it or not. Boy was that not fun. Lets just say nothing would stay down and for some of the sickos nothing could keep them off the toilet! LOL
Enough about that, I don't like thinking about it...the next part of our journey took us to south MO to visit Jack, Cassie and their 4 kids. We spent 2-3 days there, eating and holding their precious new baby girl. After that visit we started our drive down to Georgia which took us 3 days to accomplish. We would have made it sooner if Jeff wouldn't have to stop so many times, I think he was drinking to much soda! :) The boys loved the drive, especially Josiah. He just stared out the windows, in awe of the landscape in the states. It looks so much different than Japan. The boys loved seeing the cows, trains, wide open fields and the beautiful trees. Jeff and I really enjoyed the view too, it had been too long since we've seen our country. Its so nice to be back after spending 6 years overseas. It was a great experience, one that I'm so thankful to God for letting us do, but I'm so happy to be back.
This Saturday we are taking off, again, for MO. We will stop there for a few days and then drive up to Wisconsin for Christmas. We are hoping for snow so the boys can experience building snowmen and sledding and snowball fights!
As soon as I find my wire for the camera I will post some pictures!

Last Blog from Okinawa

Tonight our computer will get boxed up for our move so I thought I would fit in a real quick blog. Today the movers came for our unaccompanied baggage. They got here early, thankfully, and were done w/in 30 minutes! We've had the rest of the day to prepare for tomorrows pack out, the big one. We are still preparing for it actually, probably will be until I go to bed. We have to pack our suitcases and get them put away so the movers won't box them up. So I gotta figure out the last things I would like to have with us in Hawaii and Missouri.

We will be so busy for the next week. We have to junk our car, pick up another car to drive for our last week, take care of the dog for the move, clean our house for inspection, Jeff has to final out at his squadron and then the base. We found out today that the TLF, "hotel", has us leaving on Saturday instead of Sunday...yeah. *sigh* So we may not get to stay in our room for our last night here. They may make us move to a different building and be in a one room instead of a two room. We're hoping there will be an opening for us to stay in the building that we will already be in.
We are so excited to move! I can't wait to get to Hawaii and then Missouri and lastly Georgia!
See you all soon!
Bye Okinawa, our home for the past 3 years! *sniff*

Almost There

Josiah this morning was so excited when he saw on the calendar that it is October 1st. He has had a countdown going, for when we move, for a long time. We are now down to 17 days!!! Yesterday we had our preinspection for our house. We have some light cleaning to do for the final inspection. It shouldn't be too hard. A guy from the moving company came yesterday too, to see how much stuff we have, so they know how many boxes to bring. We get packed out on the 8th and 9th! Just one week away! We are almost there!
It's been a busy week here. Jeff has been working on out processing and we've had a missions conference this week. The Chappell brothers were here to preach at it. We had a great conference, I heard some decisions were made for full time service, one saved and our church promised $210,000 this year for missions! Pretty awesome! I love conferences, revivals, all that stuff...but it sure does wear ya out! We didn't get home from church until closer to 9 on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm sure looking forward to hanging out at home with my family tonight. Enjoying dinner together and family time!
Please keep us in prayer for this move. We sure would love a smooth move! Also keep praying about our new house in Georgia. We haven't heard yet if there are any available on base. If there isn't any, we'll have to look off base which can be difficult with having a dog.
Lastly, Tara finally cut another tooth! So now she has 3 little teethers! :)