Yeah, I'm a bad blogger loser....

It's true, I'm behind and feeling like a loser at the blogging thing. I hate that saying "it is was it is," but in this case, well.......it is! Allie had her baby in October, which was AMAZING and beautiful, and I'm so thankful that I could be there. I quickly settled in to falling in love with her new little bundle of joy. What a sweet little guy! I swear that my uterus contracts everytime I get to love on that little guy. Makes me want a baby again...except for the fact that I need 9-10 hours of sleep a night. (It's legit, I'm not making this up. I really do get run down and sick if I don't get it.)


November was a blur with birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. December, if it's possible, was even more of a blur. Holly and Grace turned 10 and 9, respectively. We celebrated at home with a pajama birthday party and a bunch of their friends.


John celebrated another birthday at the beginning of the month, then we snuck in a visit to Florida in late January (I think!), which was good, given what was soon to come.


In February we started feeling really anxious about John's job and decided that we needed to start seriously looking for another position for him. The economy was continuing to fail and the outlook with his current employer was not good. With that in mind, we began to search in just the southeast; our hope being that we could stay close to John's side of the family and our older kiddos and their families. When that didn't yield anything, we decided to open it up to places that we'd like to live, as well as the southeast, and we prayed. It was, well...... so dead that it you could almost hear crickets chirping. Scary! At this point, about two weeks had passed since we started the search. It was then that John received notice that he would be laid off at of the end of April. We tried hard not to freak out, opened our search to the entire nation, and prayed harder.


He had phone interviews with companies in Oregon, North Dakota, Louisiana and Tennessee, plus a couple that I've forgotten about. We travelled for interviews in Louisiana and Tennessee, and started looking for rentals in those places in case a job was offered. We were hoping for Tennessee. We reallyliked Tennessee. Then we waited for an offer to come. And waited. Sometime in the middle of waiting, he got a call from a company in Kansas. Kansas, really? We had never even thought about Kansas. It caught us by surprise. He interviewed via phone with them. Then they flew both of us out for him to interview in person, and for us to check out the area. It was cold and windy, but it felt....right, somehow. Our focus shifted to this Kansas job, as did our hope. We went back home and waited some more, praying that an offer would come soon. About three weeks into the search, and feeling foolish about starting to pack our house up, John got notice that he would be laid off two weeks earlier. Awesome. No pressure!


Then, late one afternoon, and offer finally came in. From Tennessee. And we were confused. We WANTED Tennessee, only it didn't feel right. Added to that was the fact that no other offers had come in, and that we were running out of time. In the minutes after the offer came in, we were rather frantically reviewing our situation and talking about what we should do. WHAT THE HECK SHOULD WE DO?!?! And no kidding, not five minutes after the offer came in, the Kansas company called to see how we had liked Kansas, and how John had liked the company. It was a risky thing to do, but he told them that he had actually just hung up from receiving another offer, but that his preference was to come to Kansas, both for the job and the location, and that if they were considering making an offer soon, he would REALLY like to consider it. We fretted and prayed a lot. At 7:30 the next morning, they called with an offer.


That was almost three weeks ago. In that short amount of time, we packed up our lives and all of our stuff (wow, we have TOO MUCH stuff!!) and moved it a thousand miles away from our home in the woods of Alabama. We are now residents of Wichita, Kansas. John starts his new job in just a few days! We are happy and blessed, and so incredibly thankful for divine providence.


And that, my friends, is why I am a bad blogger loser. Sorry, no photos! I did say that I was a loser, didn't I? Update coming soon!!!

Roadtrip!

We got a call at the beginning of May from Rikki (Sean's wife), to say that Sean was going to be coming back early from Iraq! He wasn't due back until July, so it was a real treat. When the weekend rolled around, we gathered our stuff, boarded the hounds, and headed for Ft. Campbell.
























It was a nice weekend! We enjoyed a great couple of days with Sean, Rikki and Madison. Maddy is growing by leaps and bounds---so big, so smart! We picked up a dress-up dress for her while we were there, and I don't think that she took it off the whole time.

Thanks for having us up, guys! We're especially thankful to have Sean back safe and sound, and for the service and sacrifices that he and his family make as he serves 0ur country.

A budding artist, a passel of pigs & a bun in the oven.

First off: Not my bun, not my oven. SERIOUSLY. But we'll get to that a little later. It's awesome news!

Well, we just finished up with Holly and Grace's Art In The Afternoon classes. I must confess, I'm kinda glad. The classes getting out at different times was kind of a pain for me, but I digress. Holly took art/painting. Aren't her pictures wonderful? That's the friendliest lion I've ever seen, her sun has top oral hygiene skilz, turtles have long been one of my faves, and check out the diving action on that dophin! Yeehaw, Holly! (She threw in the house with pink tree trunks, just for good measure.)

Grace took drama, and her group just completed a production of The Real Story of the Big Bad Wolf. The premise of the story was basically that the wolf got a bum rap and ended up in prison for murdering those piglets. (That's the short version.) And Grace was a cell mate. Even the door jam and paint job contribute to the effect, albeit unintentionally....

Here she is (far right, back row), with her cast mates. Aren't they all cute?

She had a fun time, but I don't know that she'll go for drama again. She says that it's embarrassing to talk in front of all of those people. Although singing a song about a wolf puffing and huffing and snuffing, then sneezing out a booger wasn't too embarrassing at all.... Allie drove down from Birmingham to attend the play with me. Here she is. In the room that looks like the visitation center of a prison. Seriously. It was bizarre.

And that brings us back to the bun. It's Allie's bun and Allie's oven! Our little Allie recently found out that she's going to have a baby. She's very excited and we know that she'll be awesome. She's a wonderful Mommy already and we're so proud of the amazing woman she has become. Congratulations, Freddie! The little bean should make it's appearance sometime in late October or early November. And since Allie can't handle surprises, we should have a pretty good idea of whether it will be of the male or female persuasion well before it shows it's little head.

Next Stop: SPRING BREAK!

Four stops, cartwheels, wet feet and a white dress.

What a difference from last Sunday! Today was warm and beautiful, the perfect combination for an afternoon of picture taking. And since we're gearing up for Grace's baptism at the beginning of April, we needed some shots of her in her white dress too.



The location turned out to be a major fiasco, though. We raced home from church, ate lunch, fixed hair, then set out. Destination? Gee, so glad that you asked! Four stops later, it was the reflecting pool and fountain across from John's office. Well, how was I to know that everywhere I wanted to go was closed on Sunday? ....And gated. We never go anywhere on Sunday except for church and home! To say that I should have done my homework turned out to be an understatement. But aside from the brown, dormant grass, it was all good! Personally, I find brown grass a little UN-springlike, but we worked around it! Mostly. Don't they look pretty in their dresses?



G is all about cartwheels these days. I'm so glad that it's warmer outside now, because the girl was about to drive me crazy with the cartwheels inside of the house. She had a grand old time here though, and turned cartwheels until she was dizzy.



We had a nice time and got the mission accomplished. I think that we probably could have gotten a ticket for wading in the fountain, but thankfully it was dead downtown and no one else was there to witness the dirty deed. Plus, H had a great time. And doesn't G look pretty in her white dress?