April Pictures

Here are pictures from Six Flags, the aquarium, my parents visit and just hanging out around the house. The last picture of me and the kids is from Easter. :)

Visit

We had a great time with my parents this past week. It ended too fast, like always. Mom and I did a lot of shopping, we always do, Jeff and dad played wow together and we also did a lot of walking. Just about every evening we took the kids and the dog out for a nice walk around our housing area. Its pretty big so we enjoyed taking new paths each time. Gaber had fun running, Josiah enjoyed riding his bike and Tara relaxed as we pushed her in the stroller. :) And of course we made stops at the parks. The only down side to all of the great walking is I lost my nice sunglasses! We looked for them 3 times and they were never found. Pretty sure this woman who was only a couple minutes behind us found herself some nice free sunglasses!
Tara warmed up to my mom with in the first minute! Surprised me, that's for sure. She slowly came around to my dad, she would give him night kisses and a few hugs. She also shared his cereal with him, but as soon as he was out she took off! Josiah and Gaber really loved having them here. They were wondering when we would see them again. I don't think they understand that even though we are in the states, they are still a good distance away.
I'm hoping to drive to Missouri this summer to visit everyone for a couple weeks. My mom and I are already trying to work it out! :)
Keep us in your prayers as we are trying to figure out our next step in Jeff's career. It seems we have 3 different paths to take and so we are praying for God's guidance in this.
I'll try to post some pictures soon of my parents visit.

Atlanta

Last Monday and Tuesday we drove up to Atlanta with the kids. On Monday we went to Six Flags. It was a lot of fun, but about 1/2 our time was ate up with having Tara. Jeff would go stand in a line with Josiah while Tara, Gaber and I would wait for them to get back. We probably won't take her again until she is older. Even with that, we had a lot of fun. Josiah rode his 1st roller coaster ride, the Mind Bender! Jeff said it was hilarious! He looked over at Josiah as they approached the top of the first hill and Josiah's face had terror wrote all over it! (Jeff can demonstrate it for you sometime :) At the end of the ride Josiah grabbed his chest and said he wasn't riding any more roller coasters! For the main part of the day I stayed in the kid land watching the boys run from ride to ride. Tara even got to ride a couple with her brothers. I never thought I would spend so much time at kid rides while at a Six Flags park. I guess parenthood will do that to ya. :) Later that night we got a hotel room and took the kids swimming until about 10.
The next day we went to the aquarium and the children museum. The aquarium was a bit expensive for us and just not as good as we thought it would be. Not planning on going back. The children museum on the other hand was a blast! There was so much for all three of our kids to do...but poor Tara napped threw most of it. By the time she woke up she had only 30 minutes left to play before the closed. It was funny to see the difference in our boys here. Josiah pretty much stayed at one machine on the same controls the whole afternoon. Gaber on the other hand zipped around the building trying out just about everything! We do plan on going back to the museum, its called Imagine It. We'll probably make it an all day thing this time.
I'll try to get pictures up soon of our mini vacation. :)
All has been going well here. Jeff's sister had her baby last Monday! We have a new little nephew, Brody. He sure is cute too! We can't wait to get down to Florida to see him!
Had to take our van in today. The passenger side window got stuck down. Blah. It will cost us 300 some bucks to get it fixed. Yay. We could have paid just 85 dollars to have them put it up but Jeff wanted it working, I guess I agree. :) 300 dollars is a whole lotta green just to put a window up and down. Oh well.
My parents are coming down here on Thursday!!! I'm so excited! They will be staying until Tuesday. I wish they could stay longer, but I'll take what I can get! The boys are so excited about having mima and papa here. They want to show them their room and toys and yard and bathroom and everything. :)
I think I'm gonna lay down for a bit before I have to pick Josiah up from school. So, that's it for now.

Too Much Yellow!

It is allergy season here in Georgia. We knew this when Jeff started suffering with allergies a couple weeks ago. I thought maybe it was just from him being out in the field all week playing in the weeds. Surely his allergies will die down when he's been home for a couple days, but they didn't. Now I know why. Yesterday afternoon when I got in the van I saw yellow covering our van, and then noticed it was all over the roads, sidewalks and even in our house. Yep, it is pollen all over everything! No wonder Jeff is having such a hard time. Last night he washed our van and mountaineer. This morning we had a new covering of the yellow dust. I've never seen anything like it. Jeff had said he is allergic to Georgia. He was joking before, but now he's serious! The weather man said there will be no relief for the allergy sufferers until we get some rain, and there is no rain in site for a while. I do love the blue skies but for Jeff's sake I would love some rain right now!
Other than that, today is a good day. Jeff got the oil changed in our van, hadn't done that since we bought it in November. He is at the church right now doing a car wash with the teens. They are raising money for church camp. (Today was a good day for the car wash with the pollen all over everyone's cars!) Tonight we have a teen activity. Jeff is teaching them a new game, I forget the name. Tomorrow of course is Easter. Looking forward to a good Sunday in God's house. I get to teach the teen girls so I'm excited and nervous about that. I've only taught them twice before. We will have Easter dinner alone. We invited some people over but they all have plans to eat dinner with their parents, grandparents, cousins...what's up with that? Eating with family? Who does that? Oh yeah, people that live near family do that! ha ha. We've lived far away from our family for so long that we've forgotten that people actually do things with family on holidays. Overseas you celebrate the holidays with your friends from church...they are your family. But boy would I love to celebrate with our parents and siblings.
Anyways...
This coming week is Josiah's spring break!!!!! WoooooHOOOOOOOO! Can you see I'm excited? I love sleeping in and I love spending time with all 3 of my children. Jeff also took off work for the whole week...YaY!!!! So Monday we are driving up to Atlanta for a couple days. Our plans are to go to Six Flags, the aquarium and the children's museum. I'm so excited about this coming week. I sure hope we have a good safe time.
I will post some pictures next week of our fun time in Atlanta.
Hope you all have a blessed Easter weekend. Take some time out to remember why we have Easter. Why did Jesus die? Why did he rise from the dead?

My Evil Plan

So here's the thing. I have a picky eater. It is my #3, my only girl, my sweet little princess...Tara. I've been noticing lately though, that #3 will eat off Gaber's plate, even if its something that I have previously tried to feed her and she has predetermined that she does not like it PERIOD. Today at lunch Gaber was eating some chicken, she walks up to him and says her, "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-AHHH!" (mouth open wide like a little bird). So I take a piece of Gaber's chicken and tear off a small bite, and WALAAA, she eats it! Not only does she eat it, she DOES like it AND she eats the whole piece. (little stinker) So, I tell Gaber, "I have an EVIL plan. Would you like to be a part of it?" (saying all evil-ish). Gaber gets a big smile. I explain to him how #3 likes to eat what he is eating so tomorrow we will put her chicken on his plate and then let her "share" with him. After I finish telling Gaber my evil plan I did my evil laugh....mwuh-ha-ha-haaaaa as I tap my fingers together. Gabers is all giggles at this point and joins in with my EVIL laugh...mwuh-ha-ha-haaaaaaa! :D
So, that is my EVIL plan! I will let you know if it works! Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAA!

Thursday

Jeff came home yesterday, but boy was he tired out. He had only been getting 4 hours a sleep at night all week. He said he had a lot of fun out there and I guess his team finished faster than any team ever has. So, Yay! :) He is graduating this morning, then off to tear down their building and clean up and then I guess he's coming home. Last night we did a little birthday celebration for him. We ordered pizza and I made him an ice cream cake. Yep, I made it. :) I used ice cream sandwiches and chocolate ice cream with girl scout thin mints cookies in it. No whip cream in this cake b/c Jeff doesn't like it. The cake wasn't very pretty but it tasted pretty good. :) Then Jeff and Josiah played Call of Duty together, Jeff told him when he turned 8 he could play. And then the whole family played Mario Party on the Wii. So it was a fun night. I'm glad Jeff is home. Not looking forward to any future deployments. I hate it when he's gone a long time.
The kids are all doing good. Josiah did great on all his tests last week. Gaber has been doing very well in school. No complaining about doing it any more which makes my day so much easier. I think he actually enjoys it now. He can read most 3 letter words, only if its a short vowel sound though. :) Tara yesterday found her eye lashes. I saw her messing with her eye so I thought she had something in it. After looking in her eye and not seeing anything and then noticing that she was pulling on her eyelashes, I figured it out. Then she proceeded to pull on my eyelashes too. I told her what they were and so the rest of the day she would say, "ssshhsss". So it seemed she was trying to say it.
Its time for lunch. Better go get busy before the Tar-Bear gets too hungry and starts fussin'.

#28

Today is Jeff's birthday! #28...he's an old geezer now! :) I am about 5 1/2 months older than Jeff, so whenever I turn that one age older he calls me an old geezer until he catches up with me. So now that he's 28 I won't hear about me being old and being a geezer and all that for the next 6 months until I turn 29.
No birthday cake or presents today for Jeff though. He's away this whole week in training. I'm sure he's having fun though, even w/out the cake. :) He is training on how to start a base in a foreign country and how to defend it and to get communications set up. I guess they will be attacked and all that stuff and then hopefully they will be successful in getting their tasks done. If so, he will graduate on Friday. :)
Jeff is a great dad and husband. He loves his boys and his girl. Loves to play with Siah and Gaber. He teaches them everything from playing football, riding bikes, skating, and then the more important stuff...he teaches them about God. He involves them is just about everything he does, at home and church. Jeff loves his baby girl. I think his favorite thing is her big hugs she gives him. He does so much with her and has since she was a newborn. He holds her whenever he can and takes care of her whenever he can. Jeff is a great husband. He works so hard which allows me to stay home with our children. Still to this day he can make me laugh so easily. He is a loving, faithful, kind man. I could go on and on. ;)
Happy Birthday Jeff! I love you!