Monday, March 29, 2010

A place to call home

Johnni and I rolled into town this past weekend and are proud to share with you our new home here in Killeen, TX. Are you ready for it? Here it is...


If you're thinking that our new home looks a lot like a La Quinta Inn, you are correct! The picture makes it look a lot nicer than it is, but we agree with TripAdvisor's 3-star reviews. Joella is doing great sleeping in her pack-n-play but I think she's getting tired of driving around all day. K-dawg (that's Ft. Hood slang for Kaeda) doesn't like that she has to walk all the way across the parking lot to "get busy," but otherwise doesn't mind the place and finds the [dog]food palatable.

We arrived from Ft. Rucker on Saturday morning and unloaded an entire home's worth of belongings into a storage unit not too far from here. Thanks to a couple of good friends (Dave and Ryne), it only took a couple of hours to empty the truck when it could have taken all day. We've since been living in La Quinta until we can find a new place to rent. We like the free breakfast, though it is getting a bit repetitive (Thursday and Friday nights were in La Quintas too, along the way).

We've been really busy with all of the packing and traveling that we've been doing, but we did find time to go to church yesterday and got to meet some really great people. We're excited that we found a church so soon so that we can get involved right away.

We'll have more posts to come once we get a bit more settled, but for now we are enjoying great weather and loathing the traffic and busyness that is Killeen.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

I have something to say...

to a very special lady!
I hope you have a great day, Grandma Deb! I love you :)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Bragging Rights

Matt a few days ago

Matt today

Look closely - do you notice a difference? Can you find the new aviator wings? Matt's parents and brother made the long drive down to help celebrate his graduation from flight school.
The socks never stay on...

Joella got a little sleepy, so Steve helped take care of her during part of the ceremony while all the flight school graduates' names were being announced. She didn't have to wait very long to see her daddy get his wings because his name was called 1st. Surprise - surprise... Matt was #1 in his graduating class. I was a little surprised yesterday when Matt told me but at the same time I wasn't because flying seems to come so naturally to him. He was actually a bit uneasy about it because he doesn't like having the spotlight on him if he can help it. I figured this is our blog, so I'm going to be the proud wife I am and spotlight him :)

Joella is proud too
She grabbed his certificate on her own...
Even though she was tired, she gave us a lot of smiles

It's tradition for flight school students to present their spouse with a "pushing honey through" gift.
so I got my own wings to wear :)

Friday, March 12, 2010

Sweet as can Bee

We haven't posted lately... we've been busy as bees trying to get things together for our move. We have less than 2 weeks left here in "sweet home Alabama" (love that movie by the way). It's gone so fast! We have been doing our best to sort through things we don't need anymore before the move so we're somewhat organized when we get to Texas. We're headed to Fort Hood. From there, Matt will deploy sometime this summer and Joella and I will make our way back to Iowa for a year or so. That means lots of planning, packing, and driving to come!

Kaeda loves to "help" with whatever we're doing. She has always had some odd fascination with hard plastic surfaces. She made herself comfortable in the tub as well as the bottom level of the white shelf several times throughout the night as we were organizing.

Meanwhile Joella is having a blast being herself... Check out her new shades.Matt and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary this week. One of my favorite things to do is go on walks together -- we went on a family walk that day. It's been pretty warm, so we have gotten to go on quite a few lately!
"Sweet as can Bee..."

I had a hard time narrowing the pictures down, so I just didn't in some cases...

One of the things Grandma Jane did to calm Joella down a few months ago was sing "Jesus Loves Me." Since then, I've discovered that it's one of the things that will almost always get Joella to smile. It will also usually get her to laugh, but only if you sing it in a high child-like chipmunk voice. That usually does the trick -- she's still a little stingy with the laughs...
Here are some of Joella's latest moves.

She doesn't roll over completely, but she gets about 95% there from back to belly. She has "ninja-rolled" twice from belly to back, but I haven't seen it (hence the "ninja-roll").
I didn't do a great job of capturing this one, but Joella likes to kick her feet up really high and slam them down. Sometimes we wonder if she's going to give herself bruises on her heels. So far so good though!
This is a modest mid-diaper change shot. One of the recent challenges in changing her is that Joella has started lifting her legs up really high and grabbing her thighs / sometimes her little booty. It's a race to get there first to get her cleaned up before she sticks those two fingers in her mouth. I have learned to try to keep her hands occupied...
 

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