Catching Up...

My plan for this post is to share the photos that I have uploaded tonight from my camera which encompass Amelia's first birthday, our trip to San Antonio from this past weekend and our Trick or Treating adventures from tonight... With that being said, I don't plan for a lot of words... Mostly just photos!! Enjoy!!

First up... On Friday we celebrated Amelia's birthday a day early since we would be in San Antonio for her actual first birthday... Here she is!!











Friday evening we drove to San Antonio, ate some dinner and went to bed. Saturday morning we got up and headed to a really great children's museum!!

Amelia hanging out in the pretend airplane. :-)






After we left the children's museum, we headed over to Sea World... We didn't get very many photos there, but here are a few!!







Sunday morning we got up and headed to Randolph Air Force Base for the air show. The girls didn't last long at the air show, but had fun checking out the planes for a couple of hours!! :-)







Tonight, we went out with some of our friends to Trick or Treat. The kids had a ball, and we had fun hanging out with our friends, too!! After Trick or Treating, our neighbor had us over for pizza. We had a GREAT night!! :-)






We've been having a lot of fun lately!! Next up is our whirlwind weekend... We. Can't. Wait! :-) Love you guys!!

In Case You Haven't Heard...

...Today was a VERY exciting day for us!!! We found out where our next Permanent Change of Station (PCS) will be!! We will be moving to Ramstein Air Base in Germany!!!

We still have a little time before we'll be heading over "the pond", but at least now we know where we'll FINALLY be settling for 3-4 years!! We won't know any dates for at least a few more weeks. We DO know, however, that we'll be leaving here and heading to Little Rock, AR for more training. Bryan will be flying the C-130J at Ramstein, so he'll need additional training in Little Rock to learn how to fly the J model. We'll be in Little Rock for about 6 or 7 months. The Air Force will move us with all of our belongings to Little Rock for this time. Then, they'll pack us up (again) in Little Rock to move us to Ramstein!!

We are VERY excited as this was our first choice for our next assignment!!!

Pilot training is almost complete!! Bryan is finished with all of his classroom stuff and flights. Now, we just have to wait for his winging ceremony which will be on November 10!!! We are so glad that we're almost done!! There's a light at the end of the tunnel!!

In other (equally exciting) news... Amelia will be ONE on Saturday!! Can you believe it?!?! This last year has been SO CRAZY!! I can't believe she's already a year old!! We'll be heading to San Antonio this weekend for a much needed family get-away, so we'll be opening gifts and doing a small celebration tomorrow before we leave. Saturday we plan to take the girls to a children's museum and Sea World in San Antonio. Sunday we are heading to the air show at Randolph Air Force Base, then we'll head back here. We will have her actual birthday party during the weekend of Bryan's winging ceremony. I am so excited to celebrate this with her!! We've wrapped her gifts and are all ready to watch her open them tomorrow. We're also going to get "fancy" cupcakes for tomorrow!!! I. Can't. Wait!!!

Well, that's what's going on with us!!! We hope your week is coming to a nice close!! We'll check in again soon!!

Love you guys!! :-)

Updates...

It just dawned on me that I didn't post about 2 very important things that have happened recently... Going in chronological order...

First, we just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on September 30... Here are a couple of photos we took to remember where we were for our 5th anniversary!! :-)

All of our handprints on the beach on a heart made out of sand. Bryan and my handprints have our wedding bands in the sand with them... :-)



A close-up of Bryan's ring...


A close-up of my rings... The diamond ring was my gift this year. We used my original engagement ring diamond in the center!! :-)



Second, MADDY IS CAST-FREE!!! Thankfully when we went for her check up with the Orthopedist on Tuesday, they did x-rays of her arm and said that it healed PERFECTLY!! Was there any doubt that this perfect child would also heal perfectly?!?! ;-) We celebrated by taking a "super fun bath" with bubbles on Tuesday night, then we went to the beach on Wednesday afternoon!! :-)

Oh well... Off to Maddy's 3 year check up at the doctor this afternoon... I took Amelia in this morning because I thought she had an ear infection. Thankfully I was wrong. The doctor and I deduced that it must just be her molars coming in that have made her a little cranky. Amelia was 22 pounds this morning!! Maddy was 19.5 at her one year check up, and we still have 2 weeks until Amelia's one year check up!! HaHaHa. I am anticipating a very uneventful check up for Maddy today!! :-)

Talk to everyone later!! Have a GREAT weekend!! :-)

Happy Birthday Maddy!!

WOW!! How is it possible that our sweet little Maddy is THREE?!?! We had such a great time celebrating her big day!! We had a couple of families over for her party on Saturday. We rented a bounce house for the kids to play in. Our family had fun in it after all the guests left, too! Even Amelia enjoyed the bounce house!!! This year the party theme was The Little Mermaid!! Here are a few of the best photos from the day!!


We decorated Maddy's bedroom door after she went to bed on Friday night so when she woke up on her birthday on Saturday morning, the celebrations could begin!!! :-)



The inaugural use of the cloth Happy Birthday banner I made!! Maddy has had a lot of fun telling me what letters she sees!! :-)



Birthday breakfast with her special day plate!! She and I made cinnamon coffee cake on Friday afternoon and Daddy made sausage and biscuits in the morning!!



Amelia really enjoyed the coffee cake...



Showing off her new Little Mermaid T-shirt:



Maddy and Amelia bouncing...




Maddy's sandcastle cake... Complete with an Arial candle!! :-)





The "loot bags" for the party guests:


A little family bounce house action:

Maddy woke up at 3 AM on Sunday morning asking to get in the bounce house!! I'd say it was a hit!! :-)

We had SO MUCH FUN!! Happy Birthday Maddy!!!

Only A Couple of Days Late...

I know I promised a photo of Maddy with her cast after she got it, but we have had a CRAZY week!! I think we might finally be getting our heads above water again... So, here she is!!!


She chose purple for her cast, and, clearly, you can see that she's devastated by having it!! HaHaHa. Honestly, though, the ONLY complaining she does is at bath time because she can not play in the tub. She has always LOVED her bath time, so this is a HUGE disappointment to her!! I have promised a "super great bath time" when the cast comes off... I guess I better figure out how to make that happen!! She goes for a follow-up appointment in 4 weeks at which time they'll do another x-ray to make sure it's healed. If it's all healed, then she'll be done with the cast!! Woo Hoo!!

The fracture is in the bone just above her elbow. The doctor seemed optimistic that in 4 weeks it'll be all better! I sure hope so!! :-)

Hope everyone's week is coming to a nice close!!

Love you guys!!

Oy vey!!

I'd like to ask you to join me with a cup of coffee for this post. Ok, so I don't drink coffee... I mostly drink water, but you get the point. This is probably going to be a long post...

Friday night we had a friend and her 2 children over for dinner. Neither of my kids had napped all day, so they were pretty worn out. My friends' kids were pretty tired, too. All 4 kids were doing the best possible thing... Playing individually!! This meant there were very few "incidents" over toys. Sharing becomes MUCH more difficult when the kiddos are tired!! Maddy was riding her rocket ship in the kitchen. This was a gift for her first birthday, so you can imagine it's size... It's pretty low to the ground... Seemingly safe for an almost 3 year old!! I'm not entirely sure what happened, but while Bryan and I were working to get dinner served, Maddy fell off the rocket. I thought she banged her head on the wall, so I scooped her up to comfort her (she was crying). Maddy is usually a trooper with little bumps and falls. She is often known to fall down, stand back up and yell, "I'm ok Mom!!" That being said, when she laid there crying, I felt like she probably did get a little hurt. We sat down to eat, and she was being very sensitive about EVERYTHING. If her friend looked at her or anyone spoke to her, her eyes welled up with tears, her lip poked out and she tried not to cry. VERY uncharacteristic!! I got her some Tylenol and told her I thought she'd feel better soon. After dinner, I sent her out in the yard with the other kids and told her to play. She played, but wouldn't really use her arm much... When I was getting her ready for her bath, she told me that taking her shirt off hurt, and putting her PJ's on after bath hurt, too. I told her to get some rest, and we'd see how she felt in the morning (that was about 7 PM). Around 10 PM, she woke up crying. I gave her some Motrin, and she fell back asleep. I called the on-call doctor to see what she suggested. She suggested that we take her to the ER considering that the pain woke her up.

Bryan stayed home and slept (someone needed to stay with Amelia), and Maddy and I ventured to the Children's hospital in town. We arrived around 11 PM. We watched the movie Bolt in the waiting room... The WHOLE movie... Around 1 AM they finally called us back to an exam room. They looked at her arm, and there was a little swelling around her elbow, so they sent us to radiology for an x-ray. The doctor looked at the x-ray and couldn't tell if it was broken or not (there was no radiologist working that night), so they put a splint on it, sent us home and told us to make a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician on Monday...

Maddy was SO well behaved at the hospital!! She stayed awake the whole time, didn't complain and sat with me the whole night!!! She was so brave!! I was so proud of her!!

Fast forward to this morning... As soon as the clinic opened, I called to make an appointment. We had an appointment for 8:15 this morning. As soon as the doctor came in, she already had all the information from the hospital and a radiologist had already looked at the x-ray and concluded that her arm is fractured. We were sent home with some Motrin, arm still in the splint and sling and a promise of an appointment with a pediatric orthopedist.

I got a phone call about 2 hours later with information about tomorrow's doctor's appointment for Maddy. Looks like she'll be wearing a cast for the next 4-6 weeks... Poor kid!! She's been SUCH a trooper, though!! She rarely complains about the arm!! She's figuring out how to do things one-handed!! She even put her sandals on all by herself this morning!!! I feel so bad, but it was just one of those falling-just-wrong moments!!! The biggest disappointment is that I'm assuming our beach days are over!! I'm so thankful that we got so many days in before this!! I'm also thankful that she wasn't in a cast for the whole summer... and long-sleeve winter clothes would be tough to deal with, too... Here's hoping that this heals quickly and the time flies by!!

So, there you have it!! The whole long saga of Maddy's fractured arm!! She's doing GREAT!! I'll just be glad when all of this is behind us!!

I'll try to remember to post a photo of her tomorrow after she gets the cast... I'm hoping they let her choose a color, so it can be more "personalized"!! :-)

I hope everyone's week is getting off to a good start!!

More Than 2 Months?!?!

Has it really been more than 2 months since the last time I posted?!?! Wow!! Betcha missed me, huh? No No No... I get it. I apologize... I hope you are able to sleep better tonight now that I've checked in... Over and out!

HaHaHa. Just kidding. There isn't a whole lot going on around here... Just hanging out... Catchin some rays at the beach... Trying to not let 2 mobile children DESTROY our humble abode!! LoL. No, really, everyone is healthy at the moment!! ::KNOCK ON WOOD:: Amelia is crawling up a storm, pulling up on EVERYTHING, but not all that tempted to take that first step just yet!!

Maddy will be 3 in just over a month!! Can you believe it?!?! I've been informed that we'll be having a Little Mermaid themed party with a bounce house. Hey! The girl knows what she wants!! Who can argue with that? Oh, wait, I'm the mom? So I can veto this? Yeah, I'm sure I could, but I know it'll make her SUPER happy, and I have a lead on a very affordable bounce house rental, so I think we can oblige... Just this once... HA!!

Amelia will be ONE in just under 2 months!! Oh. My. Goodness. Has it really been almost a year already?!?! We're gearing up for another Williams Whirlwind Weekend in November to celebrate her birthday (among other things). I'm trying very hard to get some Save the Dates done, but one of my photo subjects has been too busy to stand still long enough for me to capture his face... Yeah, for some reason Bryan thinks that his pilot training takes precedence over my photography hobby! Geeze!! How rude!! HaHaHa. As soon as I can get him and Amelia still and in the same location and happy and smiling for 3 seconds, I'll be sure to snap that photo... So, watch for your Save the Date cards in the mail. Or, better yet, just mark Veteran's Day Weekend on your calendar as the Williams Whirlwind Weekend of 2011!! Seriously, though, I'm hoping to get the photo tomorrow and get to gettin' on those Save the Dates!! I've been told by a reliable source that the perfect photo op will present itself tomorrow... Let's see just how reliable he is!! :-)

Like I said before, though, we're just hanging out and enjoying our last couple of months in Corpus. Bryan and I started talking logistics of our next move yesterday while we were hanging out at the beach. Rough life, I know!! Do we have any takers to drive 12-14 hours with a toddler and a preschooler for us?!?! No? That's what I guessed! HaHaHa.

Here are a few photos from yesterday's beach trip... Hope we don't make you too jealous!! You are more than welcome, though, to come visit!! Now's your chance... It's not likely we'll live here again after this short stay as this is a Navy base, not an Air Force Base!

Until next time, enjoy our beautiful bathing beauties!! :-)









Until Next Time... Love ya!! :-)

Grandmom Came To Visit!!!

We had such a great time with Grandmom here visiting!! The girls had a little photoshoot with her... Here are the results of wrangling a 2 1/2 year old and an 8 month old who just learned to crawl... Enjoy!! :-)












I believe Amelia is saying, "Maddy just walked in front of the camera AGAIN!! Ugh!!" LoL.





Check out the concentration tongue:



"Please don't hit me... Please don't hit me... Please don't hit me..."




We had a great time, and are so thankful that she was able to visit us!! I hope it's not another 6 months before we see her again!!! :-)

Hope everyone's week has gotten off to a good start!! Love you guys!! :-)