Weekend happenings

What a fun filled weekend!!

• Friday morning breakfast with my friend, Stef, and getting to hold Greyson for the first time!! Kendall did so good with him as well so that was a big bonus!



• Getting Kendall's new 3 in 1 so that we can start working on sleeping in the toddler bed.



• Ordered Kendall's new bedding for her big girl room.



• Ben had his Kangaroo court on Friday afternoon (something fun for the guys in his squadron)



• Maddie's bday party where Kendall's behavior was a little bit questionable but she started to enjoy herself right at the end.



• Lt.Col Braatz's wetting down on Saturday night

Update for our family

Hello everyone!
So here I am finally sending out a mass email after the last one back before Christmas :-) Guess we have been a little bit busy. Let's see I am going to try to answer everyone's questions and not be verbose about it.

For our biggest news......Yes, we are pregnant with #2. I am 9 weeks and 5 days so almost 10 weeks. For those of you that spotted the picture of the pregnancy test on Snapfish and emailed about it.....WOW eagle eyes! LOL. We are due on September 18th. I know that there are several b-day and anniversaries about that time so go ahead and put your wish list in! I have been ok. I had a horrible sinus infection with sore throat and vomiting that kept me down on the couch for close to 3 weeks. I now feel good minus being so tired that sometimes I find myself drifting off to sleep in crazy places! We have seen the baby and heard the heartbeat so that really made it seem real.

Onward to Ben.....
No he is not going back out on deployment.
No we still do not have definate orders but Ben talked to the XO yesterday and it seems that he will be placed in 1 of 2 places in Cherry Point. (I want the hard copy of the orders before I will rest easy.)
Yes, he will be commuting to Cherry Point. (There is a back road that he can possibly take which would make the commute 40 minutes.)
Kendall......
What a girl!!! She has been keeping us laughing as usual.
She continues to do Parents Morning Out on Monday & Thursday mornings which allows me to get errands, cleaning, doctor's appts, and other things done.
We have a play group and Laptime at the local library on Wednesdays.
She is starting to put little 2 and 3 word sentences together & has the Heider withering stare down pat.
We just got her 3 in 1 this week so we are going to see how she transitions into her toddler bed since she will be in her "big girl" room hopefully May or June.
I have been continuing to work my one day a week on Tuesdays. It has been going well. The normal drama but that is to be expected I guess. I had a very scary experience this past week but the patient is fine so that is all that matters.

****For our Heider/Lucas/Spencer/PA friends and family......we are going to try to make it home around Memorial Day. Obviously, if we are able to make that trip we will be at the reunion and we want to try and see our friends as well.
****For our Beach/Schwalbe/Denton family......we are also planning on coming to Missouri in July for that reunion. We got the update on the activites that are planned & are super excited.
****For our Pensacola friends.....we are still up in the air about whether or not we are going to come to Dana's wedding. We will have to see how old the baby is and what is going on. I hope to be able to see ya'll though!

Other than that it is life as usual. We have been doing household projects and some home improvement stuff. We are starting to get some grass so those of you that know our frustration with that should be glad!!

Hope all is well with you guys and we hope to see/talk/email with you soon.
Take care and God Bless.
Love and miss you all!
Ben, Jamie, Kendall, and the rest of the family

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Happy Birthday Share-Bear!!

Valentine's potluck

Kendall and I went to her playgroup today which was also a Valentine's potluck for the mommy's or parents since there were a few dads there today.
We had a blast hanging out with some old friends and some new ones. It is weird seeing Kendall be so clingy when she is normally Miss INDEPENDENCE. I think that her other activities don't invlove me being there so when I am here at the rec with her she decides that I need to stick to her side like glue.
Tomorrow, I will be going to a "mom's morning out" breakfast at a local coffee shop called Beans to start off the Valentine's day celebration. I tell you I am not used to all the activities in one week and this week has definately been packed with them! It is taking its toll on this poor tired mommy :-) It is great to be out of the house with friends though!
Happy Birthday to Nancy today!!!

Dedicated to my BHOT gals! (Memories from P'cola)

This morning I was reading my friend, Andrea's, blog from yesterday. It really had a profound impact on my thought processes today. To make it short and sweet, she was talking about having problems making friends and about having friends that were in the military that have left the past few years.

I must say that I count myself blessed as I have never really been terribly shy and I love getting to know new people so I have had and still like to count a lot of people as close friends. I guess I never really thought about how it must feel to live in a military town full-time and to be the one left behind all the time. We definately know how it feels to say good-bye as we have had to do it with many friends but seem to "collect and keep" friends as we go along. (Those of you on my mass email list can attest to that!)

So today I wanted to take the time to remember all of the fun friends that we have met along the way and have had to leave behind.

Andrea was part of a solid group of girl-friends that I had in Pensacola, FL. BHOT....Baptist Hospital Oncology Team. Besides Rebecca, Liz, and a few friends from 4-West, the BHOT girls were some of the greatest girls that I have met. They helped me through several rough patches in FL and stuck by my side through thick and thin. They were there for me when I first met Ben and helped to guide me in the choices that I made about him....which by the way were some of the best that I have ever made in my life! Thank-you girls :-)

We count ourselves lucky to have gotten to know so many wonderful people in our travels and I hope that it continues to be such a rewarding journey.

Miss and love you girls!!

Fun with the dog beds from Gma/Ma Beach

In a nutshell.....

The past weekend that is.......

• Ben indulging me in Domino's pizza that I was desperately craving on Friday night.
• A beautiful NC day on Saturday that included Ben's flag football and softball game.
• Shopping for some new house remodeling ideas.
• YUMMY chocolate covered pecans from a dear friend at church. YUM!!! Did I tell you how good they were?
• An engaging guest speaker that was pretty darn funny at church.
• Cuddle time with Benny on a Sunday afternoon then shopping for our Valentine's Day craft project.
• Even though it isn't the weekend.....today we saw the baby for the first time!!! She/he is an inch long with a heartrate of 189 beats per minute.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE ANTHONY!!!

Shadow Games

Yesterday afternoon when I was picking Kendall up from PMO she just tickled me pink. I am sure that it goes unsaid that every parent loves the fact that their child repeats a new word, understands a new concept, or does something new everyday. I try to write down some of the major things that Kendall does so that I can remember them when she is older.
We were walking out of St. Anne's and Kendall kept tripping. Not normal as she is normally running without difficulty. I stopped to check her shoes and make sure that I put them on correctly, all while talking to her about her day. I look over to see her bent over patting the blacktop and talking to it. I watched her for a few more steps and she was pointing to her shadow. Kendall was fascinated with it unlike her friend, Ally. I told her "shadow" which she repeated then tried to chase after it. I finally had to bring her over to the car since she was running all over the parking lot trying to touch her new found friend. She said, "bye-bye shadow." I hope that maybe today we can find her shadow pal again!

Teacher Appreciation

I got together with Linda today to complete the teacher appreciation gift for the teachers and help at St. Anne's where Kendall goes to PMO. They do something for the teachers every month which I think is neat. It was pretty fun....we decided to buy vases, place little cards with ribbon around them and fill them with some special treats for those hard-working souls. Unfortunately, Catherine wasn't there with the treats so we just had to picture what they will look like tomorrow :-) Fun to do a little crafting. I will post some pics when Ben gets the other computer hooked up so that I can download off the camera.

Congratulations Scott and Andrea on your new baby girl, Arianna!!!!

A fun time!

Kendall and I tried out something new today. She has recently been doing kindermusik and a few months ago sign & sing at the local dance studio. I could tell that kindermusik just wasn't satisfying her urge to run and be herself but I am too tired and sick right now with this pregnancy to do mommy and me gymnastics so I had reached a crossroads of trying to figure out what I was going to do for her.
My friend, Linda, invited me to go with her to the local rec center where on Wednesdays they have a toddler play group. How wonderful it was to let Kendall run free with plenty of toys, kids, and other adult supervision plus a snack! (Kendall's favorite time of the day~) I signed us up at the end because it seems so perfect. It is only $40 for 5 months and that was what we were paying per month for kindermusik!
Just thought that I would share our excitement! Oh and I have hardly been nauseous today so that is also cause for celebration :-)

Insomnia

So here it is 0230.......I haven't been sleeping since Kendall was up at o1oo. I had this problem when I was pregnant with Kendall as well. I think that I am going to try to take my prenatal vitamin in the morning and see if that helps but besides that any other suggestions? I hate not sleeping then being so sluggish all day!
Well Ben's bday dinner didn't go off quite as planned last night.....He loved his air compressor that we all got him. I guess it was bigger and with more tools than what he was anticipating but I guess that was better than getting one that was too small! After presents, we thought that we would go to Olive Garden early (5:30) to beat the crowds. It was a 45 minutes wait which wouldn't be so bad for adults but Kendall started to lose it about 25 minutes into it. We decided to get take out.....that was going to be another 3o minutes so we ended up going through the drive through at Chick fil A. Poor Benny. We went there because I had been craving it earlier in the day only to discover when we got home it didn't taste that good to me. Gotta love pregnancy hormones! We are going to attempt going again tonight so we will see how that goes. I will post pics later on this weekend!

HAPPY 31st BIRTHDAY BENNY!!!

Happy Birthday to my BeeGee! I can't believe that another year has flown by already! Ben said yesterday that he still felt 25 so I guess that is good. He will get his present later on tonight so I will post pictures of that when we get them. It was a combined effort this year from my parents, Ben's parents, and some of our siblings. He has been hankering after something for quite awhile so I just had to get it for him :-) I won't ruin the surprise by telling you what it is!! just tune in later to see.
We had a great surprise package yesterday from Ben's little brother Daniel. We got all kinds of fun trinkets from Japan and Hawaii. Thanks to Daniel our house has many items from all over the world. It was pretty neat to go through all of the stuff and see what was buried in our box! Ben's mom also made us some new dog beds that were included. Now all we have to do is get the stuffing for them and hopefully the doggers will stay off the beds. Yeah right!
Thanks to all of you that have been asking about my health. I have finally started to feel better after my trip to the doctor on Tuesday afternoon. It is embarrassing to admit how bad my sinus infection had become. I ended up on antibotics, vicodin, sudafed, afrin, and a few other things. All safe for the baby but I don't like taking anything this early on!

Links

My sister's response to the NY Post's article on teachers and the standardization testing.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01312008/postopinion/letters/testing__testing_______1__2__3_796404.htm


The obituary for Mrs. Cader

http://www.clawsonfuneralhome.com/obits.html

The Beach girls day of rest

Kendall and I are holed up in the house today taking a much needed day of rest. I got the first night's sleep last night that I have had in 4 nights. It was so great. We are getting geared up to celebrate Ben's 31st bday on Friday. It seems so crazy that last year I was going out of my mind for his surprise party and we were all getting ready to let the guys go back to Iraq again. Thank God we are not doing that this year!

Prayers for Nancy

Please keep my friend, Nancy, in your prayers today. After a very long battle with cancer and complications from it, Nancy's mom lost her battle this morning at 6:15. I still remember Mrs. Cader's dry sense of humor and how she would yell at us in band. I am sure that as much as what they wanted her suffering to end it is never easy to say good-bye.

Our weekend

We had a pretty low key weekend due to my cold but it was fun in what we did do!

• Friday was early to bed for some much needed R&R
• Ben got to play in a softball game on Saturday
• We had dinner with our friends, Ryan & Eleanor, on Saturday night. I wish that I could have tasted that Hakata!
• Ben finished his work bench today.
• Yummy pizza for dinner tonight
• I am starting to feel a little bit better :-)

Yuck,yuck,yuck!

Here is what yesterday consisted of for us.....

• Ben took Kendall to PMO & she walked in without a fuss!
• He came home to do some training while I got a shower.......
• I threw up and almost passed out in the shower while he was gone
• We went to Wilmington and finished out our errands there....
• I came home and promptly ran to the house to throw up again!

Pregnancy + Flu= unhappy Jamie! (I am praying that it is the flu making me throw up!)

Daddy goes to Kindermusik

Ben took today and tomorrow off of work (thanks to some extra leave that they are getting for their service in Iraq) for some extra things that we are doing here at the house so we brought him to kindermusik class today. I think that both he & Kendall enjoyed seeing each other in that class.
Ben also got to make it over to the wood shop and finally got his wood bench planed down so that he can get it attached and finish up some projects. I know that he enjoyed being over there and working on that stuff. I am hoping that we will be able to get him his heat gun so that he can work on the bed posts of our bed.
I have succumbed to the germs of Ben & Kendall's cold. I am hoping that is where my nausea is coming from....not the pregnancy. I was able to eat a cheesy gordita crunch for supper which is a HUGE improvement from the last 3 days.

work,work,work

I had the unique experience of getting ready for work today while Ben stayed at home. He is still off for their MLK leave. I think that he and Kendall had a good day together.
We were going to go to the aquarium yesterday but both Kendall and I were under the weather. Kendall has a little cold and unfortunately pregnancy nausea has set in just like when I was preggers with Kendall. We are going to try to take Kendall another weekend.
Benny has been taking good care of all of us and enjoying his time off. Poor thing he will be here through the whole pregnancy so it is a long road ahead of us :-)

Lazy Days

• family naps on a rainy Saturday
• church & relaxation on Sunday
• having Ben home for a few days on their MLK leave.....woohoo!
• cheering on the Packers in my STEELERS sweatshirt!