Military support system

The squadron Michael is in is quite small and a fairly close-knit operation and that has definitely been a finer thing for us during this time!

I am so blessed to receive at least one phone call and several emails per week checking in on us and asking if there's anything we need assistance with around the house or babysitting, etc.

The Command Team of this squadron are among some of the most awesome people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Here's a sampling of how wonderfully they treat their squadron families:

~ Last Monday when Rachael wasn't well and I spent the majority of the day at doctors and eventually the hospital with her, the Major's wife (awesome lady - cannot say enough about her!!) came over to babysit the boys so I wouldn't have to take them along with me.  She (and their 14 y/o daughter) ended up spending nearly the entire day and half of the night at our house.  And she did it because she wanted to, not out of an obligation due to her husband's rank/title.

~ Last Friday was also the monthly deployed spouse dinner on base and we were the only family from the squadron there, yet, the squadron Commander (photo: in uniform) and one of the NCO's (photo: holding Rachael) came to support us and give me a little break.  I knew no one else at this event (because I don't participate in any of those "wives' club" type events).  They stepped in to entertain the kids while I got our food, then later took over while I waited in line with the boys for face painting.  I also ended up winning one of the door prizes (an 18" boys bike) and had help getting it loaded up to take home.

It has been such a pleasure and blessing being a part of this squadron and experiencing the wonderful leaders Michael currently has.  Not all military superiors are as dedicated to their people as these gentlemen and their families.  I pray many return blessings on these families and will terribly miss the friendships we have cultivated during our time here when we move away this summer.


Note: I have written, deleted and re-written this post several times and still feel I haven't adequately conveyed how blessed we are.


This post is linked to: Finer Things Friday.

Burns of the second degree variety

This weekend was Michael's section camp out. It was suppose to be Friday night thru Sunday, but we opted to skip the camping part and instead decided to head to Denver's Cherry Creek State Park to meet up with everyone for the cookout yesterday afternoon.

We packed all the gear - and snacks - we would need to spend the rest of the evening visiting friends and having fun. We arrived just before 4:00 and unloaded. Michael took the boys for a walk around the camp site, then they came back and roasted their own hotdogs over the open fire while our host grilled up everything else. (The face painting was from the zoo in the morning).
Our hosts allowed the boys to use their camper to watch movies, so they spent a bit of time watching a movie, then outside playing and eating and were really well occupied and safe since there were so many adults and older children present. And Rachael was her normal, happy self!!

We enjoyed our evening, but figured that by the time we had driven the hour home and gotten unloaded and everyone settled it would be pretty late, so at about 7:30 we began packing up. We had EVERYTHING packed and were ready to load the boys in the van (Rachael had already been buckled in and was snoozing!), when Eli said to me "mommy, that was hot" and pointed to a stray hot coal on the ground outside the fire pit. By this point he was squeezing his finger with a panicked, painful look on his face...

I took a look at his fingers and asked him what happened and he told me he had picked it up. Yeouch! I immediately sent him to dunk his hand in a cooler full of ice and water. Then looked over to Jacob and it turns out he had done the same thing. Repeat.

So, we gave them cups of ice water to keep dunking their hands in on our drive home - it was quite an interesting journey home with two boys crying and in quite a bit of pain. We made a stop at Walgreens for some BurnStuff and proceeded home to bandage them up. Turns out they both have 2nd degree burns in small spots on their fingers. Eli has blisters on his left thumb, index and middle fingers. Jacob only managed to touch it with his thumb, but his blister is a bit larger and looks worse.

(Bedtime last night with bandages on fingers.)

They both seem quite a bit better today and aren't in nearly as much pain. It's funny how these things happen just as you're getting ready to leave, when you think you've made it through the outing without any injuries...

Too much sugar

This is what happens when you're playing Monopoly World with a friend (it was me, Michael and Sarah) and you eat too much sugar and drink too much caffeine.

It doesn't take much of either of those to make me a bit crazy! I don't eat a lot of conventional sugar or have much caffeine intake. Michael is pretty much the same way. We went a bit bonkers with goofiness.

Sarah stole one of Michael's hotels on the sly (he was TOTALLY winning and had way too many, anyway)! It then got flicked across the table and this is where it landed.



Want a better view:

Feeling so blessed!

When we first found out we were having a girl this time around, I was totally happy (not that it would have been any different if we'd been told it was a boy...) but then a few days later I realized that since we had two boys we had virtually nothing girly - or even slightly girlish. I know what you're thinking, buying for a girl is SO much fun - and it truly is - but we have a budget and we allot very little to things like clothing, etc. in a effort to get all our debt paid off.

So, now I have to buy a wardrobe (albeit not a ton of items for those first few months since they grow so fast), but still.... So, the very first thing I did was have Michael pull out all the itty-bitty baby clothes from the crawl space and I sorted through those and pulled out everything that a girl could possibly wear and she not be confused as a boy! I actually came away with more than I though - lots of white onesies, socks, some yellow and green colored clothing and plain colored bibs. Certainly not enough to keep me from doing laundry every 3 days, but a pretty good start!

My other issue that arose was every store still had summer clothing out and when Rachael arrives (next week!) it will be cool out (it's forecast in the upper 60's next week) and we actually need wintery type clothing - so I hesitated to start buying anything because I didn't want it to be useless when she arrives. I had picked up a few sleepers, but not much.

Then, to my surprise a friend of mine who just had her 3rd (and final child) said she would like to give me a whole bunch of 0-3's that her daugther had outgrown!! I accepted this wonderful donation and thanked her profusely! And when I got the clothes from her, they were spectacular and oh-so-cute!! She gave me enough to last thru Rachael's entire 0-3 month stage!! God is so good!

Then...... a friend from church said she'd like to throw a shower for me!! WHOA! How kind of her. There were about 8 of my friends who attended and I came home with more wonderful clothes, hair accessories and other goodies!! How blessed I feel to have such wonderful friends.

There's more - on Tuesday, Michael sent me an email asking if I was available to come to his office on Friday at 2:00 because some of the civilian ladies in his squadron wanted to throw us a shower!! You betcha! He also asked if there was anything specific we still needed - so I responded that we were set on 0-3 clothes so larger sizes would be greatly appreciated. We had a wonderful time yesterday! The boys each got a gift from Captain A (a/k/a Mr. Jim to the kids) and Rachael got lots more wonderful stuff - including 7-8 things in 3-6 and 6-9 sizes!!! We also came away with $50 cash and $100 worth of Target gift cards! How amazingly blessed we feel to have received all of these wonderful items.

And I don't feel like having a heart attack thinking about how much more I still need to find to at least get thru a few weeks without having to shop for clothing for her!!

I am so thankful to all of our wonderful friends from church and Michael's office. We have truly been blessed in an amazing way! God is so good and so long as we are faithful, He always provides!

In the land of sick kids...

(Warning: if you get disgusted easily, you probably shouldn't read this post.)

Eli has had a very off week. It all started on Friday with a severe seasonal allergy attack. The weather had been warm on Thursday and I had let both kids play outside and roll around in the grass, etc. Boy, did I regret that when they both woke up Friday with the worst case of seasonal allergies we have experienced since we moved to Colorado almost 18 months ago - they had sneezing, itchy faces, runny noses, watery eyes, dry hacky coughs and scratchy throats galore.

They both got Zyrtec'd up (with an extra dose of cough suppressant during the night). The most severe part of this round of allergies lasted about 48 hours with things starting to get a little better by Sunday evening. Jacob was completely better in about 4 days and Eli still has a runny nose from it.

On top of all this, Eli has had something else going on. I have no idea what because he exhibits no signs of anything actually being wrong (unless he's getting a molar, which I have been able to feel for several months, so I have no idea if it's actually about to rupture or not....). He just hasn't been himself. He will be completely happy and then will just burst out crying for seemingly no reason and will cry off and on for ages. He has also had random diarrhea throughout the week and his eczema is seeming pretty bad right now. The poor kid, just doesn't feel well and I don't know how to make him feel better.

Last night we met some friends that are visiting from Oklahoma at Zio's for dinner and he pretty much just sat there and cried the entire time. He wasn't really disruptive, just whining and crying (not that loud, obnoxious, take-your-kid-out kind of cry...), he just wasn't settled. He also didn't eat much. We all came over to our house after dinner and put Eli to bed pretty close to 9 (normal bedtime is 7:30) and he was exhausted and went straight to sleep. He woke up once during the night kind of whining and all I had to do was go in and settle him and he went back to sleep until about 7 this morning. 7:00 is good for me, because as I've mentioned before, Friday's are my off days and I like to be left alone until as late as the kids will sleep!

However, I definitely didn't expect what happened this morning.... I laid in bed for a few minutes after they came in with their "good mornings!" and they went in their room to drag some toys out of the closet. About 7:10 I was making my bed and Jacob comes in and says "mommy, I just stepped in something that was yucky." So, being the uber smart mom that I am, I asked him what it was and he didn't know! Honestly, I thought it was snot because I had just heard Eli have a sneezing fit and since he's had a yucky nose, I figured he'd sprayed snot on the carpet while sneezing - I ONLY WISH IT WERE THAT SIMPLE.

I went in there and he showed me in the hallway a very yucky, slimy BROWN spot. EWWW, no, no, no, no, nooooooo, it can't be! Oh contrare my friend, it WAS. Eli had just had some of the most disgusting diarrhea I have ever seen (thankfully it had just happened and he hadn't climbed back in his bed or sat on the carpet or anything). Let me just say it was GROSS. It was running down his legs, the leg holes of his shorts were covered in it, there was some on his shirt and a few drips here and there on the carpet. Thankfully he hadn't tried to play with it or wipe it or anything. I had Jacob rush to get me a towel from the bathroom to lay Eli on, got the entire bag of unopened wipes out and began to get as much off of him as possible. Then, Jacob was sent downstairs to the container in the laundry room where we keep our extra "walmart" bags and was instructed to bring me two, which he did wonderfully! I cleaned Eli as much as possible and then plopped him in the tub for a good scrubbing! And a scrubbing he got! While he was soaking for a minute in the bath (yes, I kept a close eye on him and didn't let him drown) I cleaned the remaining spots from the carpet - did you know Huggies baby wipes work amazingly well on carpet.... gathered up all the poop-infested cloth items into one bag and all the cleanup materials into the other.

Eli got out of the bath a happy and clean camper, got dressed and went on his merry way like nothing ever happened! I was left with rinsing poopy shorts in the toilet (yes, the rubber gloves came in handy once again!) then a load of laundry using VERY HOT water (too much soap and a TBSP of vinegar were also added) and then spraying half a can of air freshener throughout the house, because you do know that diarrhea doesn't smell like just regular poop, right?! Then he got a mega does of a probiotic (good bacteria to help level out the intestinal bacterial imbalance he is experiencing).

Oh yeah, and all of this was accomplished before 8:00 this morning, what a way to begin the day!

Congrats to my friend...

Our friends, Meredith and Mike, just found out that the young lady they were suppose to meet with later this week who has chosen them to adopt her baby gave birth to a healthy baby boy yesterday!!! This is extremely exciting for them, yet they have a 3 week wait ahead of them for paperwork and sickle cell test results before they can go get him. This is their 2nd child. Jack was born in South Korea in October, 2003 and came home to them in April, 2004.

Please keep them in your prayers as they endure these rough weeks waiting for their precious baby boy to come home. Also, even if you don't know them, please hop on over to their blog and leave them a comment. It will mean a lot to them to know people are thinking and praying for them.