Today's Story

Alison and I picked out a new cookbook to cook through while Ben is gone.  We went through the Vitamix cookbook last year and it was something she still remembers and taught her some cook "cooking" skills.  We upgraded to real food this time, but a kid-friendly version.  It's making meal planning easy, which is a huge bonus.  This morning we made 'potato coins with a fried egg'...it was a huge win in this house.  I accidentally bought purple potatoes, so that helped the fun.

Alison started working on a project she's had on her list for a long time.  Maya's favorite thing to do is sneak stuffed animals out of the kids' rooms and "play" with them, which has equaled several animals missing eyes or having torn seams.  So Alison opened up an animal hospital this morning and stitched back together all of the injured patients. 

Clearly the boys played legos while she worked.

 

Poor pinky's eyes fell off, so I taught Alison how to sew on a button for new eyes.  

Nana, Alison is very excited to show you! 

After lunch I asked Eli if he thought we could finish the puzzle today.  He sat right down and helped me finish the whole center in about 10 minutes.  He's pretty stinkin' amazing.

 

It sprinkled and we ran outside to feel the raindrops.

Colin still frequently has his shoes on the wrong feet

Now for the real story.  We got out the sewing box for the animal hospital and while we were busy in surgery, Maya found my grandmothers pincushion and had some fun playing with it.  What puppy thinks playing with needles is fun???  How did we find out about this disaster?  Colin started crying that he stepped on a needle and Alison told him that he was just making it up because she was holding the needle and he kept going on and on about how bad his foot hurt and she kept telling him to stop being a cry baby...and then I walked into the schoolroom and found needles all over the floor! It was crazy.  I had to go inch my inch on my hands and knees searching for needles and looked over to find this:

It cracks me up!

Colin added a hand and foot to his body and wrote his name on the belly.

While I was cleaning up the needles, the boys asked if they could play monsters in the bathroom.  I admit, I didn't really think about what they were asking and said yes.  Never say yes to monsters in your bathroom...lesson learned.  This is what my shower currently looks like:

 

Apparently, monsters need a walkie talkie, a marine hat, an otter, a broom, a guitar, a gun, a sword and trail mix.  Just in case you ever need to be a monster, now you know what to have on hand.

Safe and sound

I realized our parents might want to know that Ben is safe on the base now.  The chaplain he is replacing let him use his cell phone to call me and let me know he got there okay.  I think I spent the whole conversations saying, "Please tell him thank you!".  He was also able to send me a couple of texts late one night while he was at breakfast (the place had wi-fi).  I haven't heard anything for a couple of days while we wait for him to set up his personal wi-fi there, but he's safe on base and that is giving me huge peace of mind.

The kids have not talked to him yet and are already missing him.  Eli was the only one up for awhile yesterday and requested sending daddy lots of pictures of him and Maya.  I think I have 50 pictures of Eli and Maya now...

She always has to give each kid a good-morning kiss when they first get up

Even Maya notices that Ben is gone.  Every evening, Ben watches a show on the TV and I watch something on the iPad in our room.  That probably sounds really lame, but it's just what we do.  Maya always comes and lays in her spot in our room and waits for Ben to come give her a good petting before she gets in her crate for the night.  Well, since Ben's gone, I've taken over the TV and Maya doesn't know what do to with herself.  Last night she drug out this blanket and formed it into a little bed for herself and was clearly not happy that we were still downstairs.  Then it took me about 10 minutes to get her in the crate because apparently my pet-downs are not as good as Ben's.

We went to Hastings yesterday; they're going out of business this week and everything is dirt cheap.  I may have gotten carried away, but I found some great school books that we'll use for many years.

Colin was one big goof yesterday.  He wore this apron all day pretending to be a maker (baker) and an artist.  Then he turned into a photographer and was telling me to do these crazy poses, like this one:

 

Having 3 kids and a puppy certainly keeps my days entertained, which I am so thankful for right now.

And so it begins...

So many things to say...

Ben met the kids and I at the park on Friday.  The kids were doing their first homeschool PE class and he showed up with coffee and scones for us to have a little date while we watched them play.  It was awesome...until Eli ran over to us crying, saying he didn't feel well and proceeded to throw up.  I actually wasn't surprised because when it rains, it pours and knew many more things were to come.

On the bright side, it is finally "cool" enough for us to go outside!!!  97° feels wonderful now and the kids have been outside a ton.  Maya also loves being outside and really loves the kids company. We no longer have to worry about her having accidents in the house, but her new favorite naughty behavior is digging holes in the yard and digging up our sprinkler system hoses. 

The favorite climbing tree:

 

Thankfully Eli didn't throw up again and was fine after some rest.  So strange, but I'll take it.  

Saturday morning, Ben requested burritos and donuts from Arizona Donuts and then we spent too much time in Target getting him a new toothbrush....strange things happen in deployment and his trusty toothbrush became obsessed and was randomly going on and off.

That afternoon, we gave Ben a going away present.  We made him a calendar and pillowcase to take with him.

We grilled dinner and played at the park and put the kids to bed and then it was time to say "see you later".  All I could think was, "and so it begins..."

Legos with Eli

Eli decided to play with his big legos this week because they're easier to clean up. It cracked me up; either it's really lazy or really genius. He spent an entire afternoon playing "ships" on our bed and seeing all of his different creations was so fun.

Spelling with Colin

Our family has this thing...it seems like we all say "see. look." but it morphs into one word. Colin says it numerous times in this video.
We've been working on spelling Colin's name for what feels like forever. He can tell you how to spell it, but then writes 'Coiln' and the 'n' usually turns into an 'm'.

Perks of deployment

I remember Kent saying last year that as much as it stunk that Ben was gone, he enjoyed all the extra blogging it brought.  Yes, it's true...Ben being gone=more writing for me.

This coming deployment, we are trying to focus on the blessings and choosing each day to be thankful.

#1 perk: more pictures and stories of our family.  I saw an inspiring instagram hashtag #extraordinaryintheordinary.  Essentially encouraging moms to embrace the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life.  I hope to do this the next 7 months.  I've only had a few freak out moments and one of them came when I realized Ben would come home just in time for Eli's 7th birthday.  SEVEN.  I'm not okay with that.  So, I choose to soak up every bit of 6 I can.

I am thankful that Ben has a job and for technology that allows us to talk to each other even when he is across the world.  I'm thankful he'll be on a base and will, Lord willing, be safe.  I'm thankful our kids are old enough to help me around the house and can do some things for themselves.

 

In a way, I'm thankful for deployment.  It makes us really cherish our time together and it gives us time to miss one another and really remember how much we love one another.  Plus, the moment that we are reunited, is one of the best experiences in life.  I'm also thankful that it enables us to sympathize with so many other families.

Sunday breakfast together

You may be wondering how we are doing, leading up to deployment.  It's easy to type that we're trying to see the positive, but it doesn't always mean we feel that in our hearts.  It still stinks.  I've had lots of questions and all I can answer is, "I don't know".  My brain is having a hard time processing all the change.  Not only is Ben deploying, but we are about to start up school and activities and trying to figure out what our year looks like is a big mystery to me.  I just know we're going to take it a day at a time.  I don't feel anxious about taking care of the kids or the house and I feel very safe where we are.  Our neighbors are boarder patrol and police officers and Ben has talked to them about keeping an eye on us.  Plus with our furious puppy, we'll be well taken care of :)  Actually, deployment was one reason we got Maya.  Research shows that military kids who have a dog, fair better than those who don't.  It gives them a constant in their life, even when homes changes and daddy's are gone.  That's a lot of pressure on a dog, but I'd say she's been really good for our kids so far.

Colin's perk of deployment is that he gets to keep sucking his thumb.  This stinker.  I put the yucky nail polish on his thumb this week and he just kept on sucking.  But Ben feels too bad to take it away right now, so I guess he's just going to suck his thumb forever.

We have less than a week together and they say this is the most stressful part (they also say that the second deployment is harder than the first).  If you think of any more positives, pass them our way!

Music themed randomness

Yep, still a thing that the boys are never wearing clothes.  Ironic how much laundry I do for the lack of clothes they are wearing whenever I take a picture.

~Youtube uploaded the videos with blurry lines.  Anyone know how to fix this?

The Benard's (the other Chaplain Ben works with) had everyone from the office over for dinner last night as a send off for Ben.  Colin and Annabelle really hit it off and were dancing around the house.  She kept calling, "Where is my prince?!".

When your puppy isn't the size of a puppy anymore...

Ben and I went to our first Marine Ball last week.  The first praise of the night was finding a great babysitter!!!  We rarely hire babysitters, but I am so thankful to have found this girl...I might actually use her for frivolous reasons when Ben is gone.  It was strange getting dressed up, especially because I wore my prom dress.  When I came downstairs, Eli said, "Your eyes look weird." (because of my make up) and Alison said I should put on a tiara.  Ben scooted me out the door before anymore insults could change my mind about going.

It was a really fun night.  We even danced 1 song *gasp*.  

16 years ago.

The kids said they think Ben has changed the most over the years.  I think he just keeps getting better with age.  We'll all have a good laugh when I try to put that dress back on in 16 more years!

Our first Marine Ball

Ben deploys in a few weeks and I am more stressed about this ball than him leaving.

We've never been to a ball and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into.  I've asked around and everyone just answers "it's formal".  Like get your hair done formal or try to remember how to curl it yourself, formal?  AND P.S. we live in Yuma and there's not a lot of options for buying/getting formalled up.  So a few weeks ago, Ben and I were talking about what I should wear (it's SO not fair guys have the easy way out and get to wear a designated suit) and contemplating what store's we could go shop.  Ben suggested I look through my closet to see what I had before we went shopping, which is kind of hilarious because I have very few clothes.  I dug to the back of my closet and pulled out my "keepsake dresses".  I really kept these dresses for Alison but they're still in good shape.  I tried to squeeze into my matron of honor dress from my sister's wedding and Ben rolled on the floor in laughter...apparently my rib cage wasn't full grown when my sister got married, reminding us of how little we were when we got married.  Sigh.  It was all fun and games until I slipped into my prom dress and Ben's face lit up.

"You have to wear that.  It's perfect."

He fully admits that maybe he was just being sentimental, but he still really wanted me to wear the dress.



When I was in Michigan, I went to Charmin Charlies with my friends.  There was a whole patriotic section that we thought would be hilarious if I actually decked myself out in.  Prom dress + patriotic jewelry=success.

Or maybe if I wore a mask, no one would notice the dress...

My friends did help me find some winning accessories that might class up the 16 year old dress.

Ben casually mentioned one day that we're at the command table because he has to give the opening prayer.  Awesome sauce.  Me and my prom dress are going to be at the command table.  Just call me the queen of awkward.



It was finally game time.
I spent the afternoon trying to get ready while doing all things mom.  The kids were in a tiff over a fort they built and who destroyed it and who should have to pick it up and there was pouting and crying and I was just thinking, "I DON'T HAVE TIME TO PARENT YOU RIGHT NOW!"  Things came down to the wire, which resulted in me painting my nails while giving instructions to the babysitter and then Eli told me my eyes looked weird and Alison tried to convince me to wear a tiara.  Ben scooted me out the door and we were off!  I was just hoping and praying that I actually had everything on that needed to be on.

I found a few tips on Pinterest for your first ball experience and they were right!  As long as your chest and your booty are covered and you don't get drunk, you'll be great.  As soon as we walked in, I knew exactly what Pinterest was talking about.

The ball was one of the coolest experiences of my life.  I fully own that I'm not the normal military wife and this gave me a close up look at Ben's everyday life.  I was overly proud.  In a sea of enlisted marines, Ben stuck out.  He was one of maybe 8 officers there and every single one of the head commanders came and shook his hand.  They knew his name, they called him sir; he was distinguished and poised and I was a puddle of mush.

At the command table

And guess what?  No one knew that I was rockin' my prom dress!

Senior year prom...I was SO excited to be going on a date with this super cute boy.  I knew he was different and I could definitely see spending my life with him.  Military life I never saw in our picture together and I can't say it's been the easiest journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Flagstaff, pt 2

Someone from church warned us that it rains a lot in Flagstaff and we were thankful for the heads up.  The cool thing about being in the mountains was, we could see it raining on one side and completely sunny on the other side.

We took our chances at hiking in the rain and went to Sunset Crater Friday morning.

One of Alison's favorite parts of the trip was this lizard climbing on her back. 

 

 

Colin is such a goof.  He was pretending to be sleeping...

 

It didn't rain on us until we got in the car and were down the road a little, but there were definitely some sounds of thunder that made me walk a little faster.  BUT I love this picture.

 

Really you can only hike around the lava rock in front of the volcano.  Eli was SO disappointed that we couldn't go to the top and look inside.  This was as close to the top as we got:

 

Lunch was at the Mix; another really good choice.  I got the sweet potato bisque which Ben recreated for me when we got home because we all loved it so much. 

We made another stop at the park before our drive home.  It was pretty wet, but we promised the kids we'd go rain or shine...just don't get muddy before we have to sit for 5 hours!

 

On the drive home, we were asking the kids what their favorite part of the trip was.

Eli: "Um, I would say Jimmy John's."

Face palm.

Trip to Flagstaff, part 1

Ben is set to deploy on the 25th of this month.  He'll be in Bahrain for about 6 months, serving the marines on base there and will travel some to Kuwait.  Although we feel like we just did this, we are encouraged by the news that we should have more communication this time...and he won't be on a ship in the middle of hurricane season...or was that just me that that stressed out?  Anyway, Ben wanted one last family trip before he left and picked Flagstaff so we could cool off and soak up some time outside.

I got home SUPER late Monday night from Michigan and woke up Tuesday to these handsome boys.

Ben did a good job of spoiling the kids while I was gone.  He sure did spoil me!  I came home to a spotless house, happy kids and a family trip completely planned out.

I had just enough time on Tuesday to do some laundry, repack and catch up on sleep before hitting the road Wednesday morning for Flagstaff, or as Colin says 'Flag stack'.

#1 priority for our trip was to go to a park, so that was our first stop.  Yes we did drive 5 hours so our kids could play outside and it was worth every minute.

Alison was craving a big burger so we went to a local place downtown.

I didn't have time to do my usual stock up on road trip snacks, so I promised the kids we would pick up a treat along the way.  We actually made it the whole 5 hours without a snack...complete craziness, I know.  There was a sweets shop across the street from the burger place, so we stopped in after dinner to make up for my treat-fail.

Alison got her first caramel apple and the boys got marshmallows on a stick.  I'm not even going to think about how much we paid for a marshmallow on a stick.

After dessert, we went to the Lowell Observatory.  The kids and I watched an I Max movie on the observatory at the Children's Museum in Virginia.  I was excited to see it in person, but Alison kept asking  *insert 9 year old drama voice*, "Why do we want to see the stars???".  Her radar went up when she thought we were trying to be educational, which we kinda were because she's studying astronomy this year, but then the coolest of coolest things happened...my goal in educating our kids came to life...her attitude changed and a huge smile came over her face and she was SO excited to be looking through a giant telescope.  We saw Saturn and she was jumping up and down and talked about it for days.  That's what I love; seeing them love to learn and see what they're learning in real life.

picture taken the next day when it was light

See?  Happy 9 year old.

at the telescope Pluto was discovered through

This year of traveling has made Ben an expert at navigating hotel rooms with 5 people.  Hotels don't like it and will often make us get 2 rooms and 99% of the time they aren't connected.  Ben finagled us a "conference" room, that had a large living room and joining room with 2 double beds.  We made up camp for the kids in the living room and then we had our own little area to watch HGTV after they crashed :)

Thursday morning, I went for a run in the glorious, cooler air.  Altitude had a fun time laughing at me during that run.  Between high heat and altitude running this year, I think I'm set for conditioning.

Then we went to Walnut Canyon.

We were walking up to the canyon when I realized that all of the kids' pants were above their ankles!

It's a good thing we won't be wearing pants for awhile in Yuma so I have time to find pants for all of them.  I really wish kids would give you a heads up when they're about to hit a growth spurt.

Colin pretended to be Spiderman the whole time and said that when he put his hands on his hips, he was shooting out webs.

This was a historic hike for our family.  It was about a mile long, but with steep steps and a narrow path along the cliffs, but everyone walked the entire time!  There wasn't any complaining or carrying kids and we were SO proud of them!  Minus the watching kids like a hawk so they didn't fall of a cliff, it was a great hike.

We explored the ancient ruins along the path:

And Ben got the absolute best picture of Eli on his phone...I will definitely be framing this!

We were reading about what the different rooms were used for and Eli asked some really great questions like, "Why did they leave the caves?" and "How did they take all their stuff with them?"...I loved it that he was really thinking through what we were seeing.

In my angst over the snacks, Ben assured me that our "conference" room came with complimentary snacks.  Little did we know that they really meant a big box full of chips and candy.  Well, our kids were happy with their snack choices, but they didn't make great hiking food.

Colin was trying to put bunny ears on us and somehow it turned into a 4.

The beauty of hiking with boys.

Talking about what it must have been like to live in the canyon.  I sure do love his sweet smile.

When we were talking about the day's plans in the morning, Eli said that we needed to find a stuffed animal.  Ben and I just started laughing as we realized that somehow we've unintentionally created a tradition of getting stuffed animals on our trips.  I blame Ben.  Colin decided to be a rebel and picked a Ranger jacket and I am still kicking myself for not getting the matching hat because he is so stinkin' cute in it!

 We went to lunch at a place I discovered on my run.  It was like Panera, but better.  Colin devoured my chicken coconut curry soup...he's got good taste, that one.

That afternoon it rained and while crazy Ben went for a run, the rest of crashed.

Eli requested pizza for dinner so we found another local place.  To be honest, it wasn't kid friendly, but the food was great and even better, our kids did great.  I'd love to start steering away from the kid menu anyway and have them eat real food.  Alison and Colin shared salads with us and every slice of pizza was gone, so I'd say it was a win.

Clearly they were a little wiped from the day:

After dinner was walking in the rain to REI.  I'm pretty sure it's impossible to not want to go camping after being in REI.  Someday we'll camp...some day.

Did you notice how it's impossible for Alison to NOT pose?  She can sense the camera coming out!