Vacation!!! Part 8 (The Frio!!!!)

We spent the last week or so of vacation at the Frio River. It was tons of fun! We used to go every year when I was a kid but it got a little sporadic as I got older and Gordon and I had only been once together which means this was only the second trip in 10 years! Crazy! The river was waaayy down this year due to a SEVERE drought in Texas but we still had fun. We went with a big group of our great friends unofficially adopted extended family and had a blast. Here are just a sprinkling of my favorite pictures from the trip:

I know its blurry but I still love this one ;)

I can't believe they are 10!!! Seriously??

First big girl ponytail!

Wiped out

I love these guys!

Me and Gail :)

Love this one of Addison and Papa

Love this one of Kaitlyn with Nanny and Papa!

And this one :)

I promise we both had bathing suits on, I just took my straps off to work on correcting my tan lines :)

I had fun jumping off the rock with the boys :)

Love my little family!

Love this pic of all of us!!! 

Me and Mika. Mika is one of those friends that I can go long periods of time without seeing but pick right back up where we left off :) Hopefully the long periods of time part will go away when we move home!

 All in all we simply had a GREAT week!!

Public Service Announcement

I will interrupt this ridiculously long overdue series to announce that we may or may not be moving HOME almost a full year early.

This caught both of us by surprise but Gordon just "happened" to be talking to the detailer (guy in charge of who moves where) asking him about making a dream sheet for next transfer season. I guess he just had some questions since it is our first time doing this and he mentioned that we really want to be stationed in Corpus Christi. The detailer said, "Well if it's Corpus you want, you can move there now! All you need is command approval." NO WAY.

I must say I have run through the entire gamut of emotions.  At first this just sounded insane and I could have easily said no. I mean, hello, we own our house!!! Will it sell in a reasonable amount of time? My parents have oh so graciously said we can live with them pretty much as long as we need to but still. Plus, I kinda feel like this is stealing our last 10 months away from our friends here. I mean, it will be hard no matter when we move but still. Plus, this house has lots of memories... ok that one's not as big of a deal. I walked in knowing that we would not live here forever but for a couple seconds it made me sad ;) Most of all, this was not part of my plan!! I'm not so good with sudden changes. You could approach me and say we won a billion dollars and my first reaction would be to call you crazy, say that's not possible, and a million other negative thoughts all because you interrupted my safe little bubble. LOL

BUT, the more I think about it and the more time that passes, this would be perfect in SOO many ways.
1. This would guarantee we get to move home. If we wait for next summer we may or may not get it.
2. We would not have to try to live here while showing our house. (yikes!!)
3. My mom is still not working so we will be able to really live that up.
4. If we get pregnant, I will get to be at home for the whole pregnancy and the grandparents will get to experience that more.
5. If we then have another baby, the grandparents won't miss long periods of time in between visits.
6. We will be home for the holidays!!! We were not planning on driving home this year because we have used up so much leave lately.
7. We would also be home for both the girls' birthdays :)
8. We may even get there when its still warm enough to swim.
9. The girls can ride their bike endlessly on my parents' driveway.
10. This will guarantee we move to somewhere where we have friends, hehe.

Those are the big reasons I guess... I'm getting pretty excited but still feeling very cautious until its completely sure and we get those orders ;)  I'm sure I will be a basket case as I start thinking about saying goodbye to our friends here but I'm trying to not think of that part. Would you pray with us that God will open and close the doors according to His will?  We haven't told the girls either, waiting for that time where there is no reasonable doubt. Addison is going to be SOO excited but when the realization comes that she will be far from her friends it is going to hit her HARD. Trying not to think about that part either...

Vacation!!! Part 4 (Grown Up Time)

I absolutely LOVE my girls and I LOVE being a Mommy.

That being said, I think that every Mommy and Daddy need some time

 to be grown ups and maybe even be called by their first names ;)

Just so happens that we were able to get together with some of our favorite 

people who we have adopted as part of our family :)

Gordon and Colby catching up

Just chillin

We love Ted and Gail's new pool :)

And their HOT TUB!

Sadly, this is the only picture I have from our trip to Schlitterbahn.
We had an absolute BLAST. Soo fun!! 

A big thanks to Tammy for keeping the girls for us!!!

Vacation!!! Part 2 (Baseball)

Last year, right after baseball season was over, Addison decided she LOVED baseball.

She had gone to games before but didn't remember and wasn't old enough to understand the game at all.

My parents have season tickets so I really wanted to go to a game while we were home.

We got there way too early because there was a giveaway... 

they had plenty of the prizes and not many fans. oops ;) 

It was actually fairly interesting watching them set up the field :)

 Just in case you are wondering, yes I do realize how completely gross it is that

she had her face in there. I either didn't notice at the time ??? or maybe the picture makes it look worse than it was. HA!

Our little baseball fan patiently waiting for the game to start. 

I thought she looked SO cute :) 

"binoculars" 

 

This is why there aren't as many pictures of Kaitlyn. 

We took turns letting her walk/ run up and down, up and down until the game started.

I paced and paced with her until she eventually fell asleep.

I promise I took quite a few pictures of her but they all look essentially the same :)

Addison and her "two friends". 

This trip she really turned that corner from looking up to them 

to thinking she is one of them. O boy.

As always, Kaitlyn needed to be doing everything the big girls were doing. 

Resting with Papa after the game while 

Mommy and Daddy worked toward getting them in bed. 

I just love making memories like this... except that in hindsight I'm pretty sure this was when we lost the cash :/ Gordon told me to just think of it as giving to the poor, being confident that God directed it into the hands of someone who needed it...

Vacation!!! Part 1

This vacation is going to take a few posts, hehe :) It was a super fun 3 weeks and even though there were many things that I have no pictures from, I still have tons of pictures! Please excuse my nonsensical rambling today- I have the WORST headache that just will NOT go away...

Anyway, back to vacation...

The girls love being spoiled while we are home, imagine that ;) 

Nanny got some really cool paints last time we were there and they continued to be Addison's favorite throughout this trip too. 

Grammy is great about coming over while we are home and visiting and playing with the girls :)

Carting them around non-stop for two weeks is too much so we really appreciate her coming to us!

Papa bought Addison her very first bike a while back to keep at "Texas" and

Kaitlyn has become quite jealous so we were all in agreement that Kaitlyn needed one too :)

Yay Papa for coming to the rescue! This trike is supposed to last through age 5 so

we should get tons of use out of it!

While we were home, Wendy and the girls came down to visit and then,

as it turned out, Richard got to come too! Avery and Olivia have struck up

a great friendship with the boys so we had them come over too :) 

Addison LOVES playing with all the big kids and they were very sweet

and tried to include her in their games.

In this picture Zane was playing iPhone or DSi games with her and generally just being SUPER sweet.

We turned around and she had her arm around him and was leaning on his shoulder :))

I just love all the memories they get to make on our trips home!!

That same day it had been raining off and on all day (yay!!) and when I looked out the window,

there was a gorgeous double rainbow that stretched all the way across the sky.

Everyone made fun of me because of this video but it was an amazing sight nonetheless ;)

More to come...