Not much going on

We’ve been doing well lately, I just haven’t had anything super exciting to post about, which is why I haven’t lately.

Mark’s doing the I-course and he’s pretty busy with that, although this schedule is still better than Italy’s.  Apparently there are a lot of people deploying from Luke, so there’s a very real possibility that he could deploy again while we’re here, but we’ll cross that bridge if/when we get to it.  He’s currently sick and in bed, though.  No fun.

The kids are doing well.  Abbie just loves her school and has lots of fun there.  We enrolled her in the Montessori school for fall though, so she’ll be heading there in August.  We’re planning a trip to Disneyland for September and I’m hoping my parents will join us for that.  She wants to go swimming every single day and we’re going to put her in swimming lessons this year, which reminds me that I need to get her signed up for those.  And her 4th birthday party is this weekend and quite honestly, I completely forgot about it until Monday.  For some reason I was thinking I had another week before her party.  Time gets away from me here.

I’m still trying to get this house together.  I can’t decorate to save my life or find the motivation to actually do what I think of if I manage to think of something.  I know I’d love to print off a bunch of canvas photos that I’ve taken, but going through literally thousands of pictures isn’t fun and I just don’t have time to sit at the computer for hours going through them and then trying to narrow it down to like 5-10??  Right.  It’s going to take a while.

I want to get a Ninja Blender since my current blender doesn’t even blend ice cream for milk shakes without “help”, and I’ve heard great things about the Ninja.  I want to start making fruit smoothies for the kids and myself.  AZ has the perfect weather for smoothies.  We just upgraded our phones to the iPhone 5’s and we like them so far.  And I found a brand new lens on Craigslist that I REALLY want (the 24-105mm f/4L) for $400 off of what it would cost other places, but I’m just not sure if I want to take that money out of savings to get it.  It’s a great deal and I’m not sure I can pass it up, but I don’t know.  I need to start selling my saddle and horse stuff so I can get money for my hobbies that I’m currently doing.  I have an ad on Craigslist now, so hopefully I’ll get a bite or two on it soon.

That’s about it for now.  Life is good.  We’re enjoying AZ (although it’s 103 right now and that’s hot…) and we’re thankful for the opportunity to live here.

 

Daddy/daughter date!

Abbie just loves watching me put on make-up and she is always asking me to put some on her.  I will pretend to put make-up on her with my brushes and then she’ll run and ask her daddy how she looks.  She loves it and it’s pretty cute.

I found this little compact of old make-up and I was going to throw it out, until Abbie saw it and decided that she wanted to play with it.  So I got her a few Q-tips and let her go to town and she had a ball.  The last picture doesn’t show it well but it pretty much looked like she got beat up since she had pink, purple and blue eye shadow all over her face.  And there’s a nice shot on the bottom of the 2 places she decided to cut her own bangs…  Ugh.  I don’t understand what kids fascination with scissors and their own hair is.  Hopefully she won’t do it again!

Abbie’s school and a daddy spaghetti dinner night so Abbie got all dressed up to go on her date with her daddy.  (No, she didn’t wear any make-up, except for a tiny bit of shiny lip gloss.)  She was really excited about it and so was Mark, although from the sounds of it, over half of the students there have pilot dads, so all the dads hung out and talked while all the kids ran around.  Typical…  I just asked Abbie what her favorite part of daddy date night was and she said playing with all of her friends and daddy letting her eat 2 brownies.  I think we need to re-think the concept of this daddy date night thing.

Ben at 17 months

Our little Ben is rapidly turning in to a little boy.  He definitely still has his baby qualities about it, but it seems as though every day he’s breaking out of the “baby” mold.

Ben is getting a lot better at communicating lately.  He now points all the time for what he wants and he’s added shaking and nodding his head, along with his pointing which is quite helpful.  He sometimes gets his “uh-huh’s” and “uh-uh’s” mixed up so you think he’s telling you no when he’s actually telling you yes.  He now barks every time he sees a dog and he LOVES dogs.  He wants to touch any and all that he sees.  He says “cookie” now, which is more like coo-kay.  It’s adorable.  I could listen to him say that all the time.  He says “Ah-boo” for Abbie also.

Speaking of Abbie, they have a love-hate relationship.  He LOVES to chase her around and try to copy everything she does.  Sometimes she loves it, sometimes she hates it.  She tends to view him as her little play puppet and he’s getting to the stage where he doesn’t always comply with what she wants him to do, so then she gets mad and so does he because she tries to make him do whatever she wants to do.  He loves to climb things and he’s much more brave about doing physical things that Abbie was at this age.  He’s pretty much running and loves to run away from you now and he climbs on everything.  He’s managed to get on the couch by himself a few times and then he likes to jump on the couch which drives me nuts.  He’s fallen off once, but apparently that wasn’t enough to stop him from doing it again.

He can point at his nose, eyes, ears, hair, belly, mouth, tongue, foot, fingers and we’re working on knees, elbows, armpits, cheeks, etc.  You can tell him to go get his shoes and he’ll go find them and plop down on the carpet so you can put them on him.  And he will also go lay down for diaper changes sometimes too.  He loves to dance and his version of dancing is usually doing some crazy low squats.  Pretty impressive for a little guy.

It seems like just yesterday Abbie was Ben’s age and now she’s a few weeks away from turning 4 years old!  Makes me nervous about how fast the next 15 years are going to go!!

Ben at 17 months (top).  Abbie at 17 months (bottom).

The intimidating curtains

A few weeks ago, I bought these things to make curtains for Abbie’s room.  Yes, I said weeks…  Her room is on the west side of the house, so in the afternoons (during nap time) her room gets pretty darn bright and hot, even with her blinds closed.  So I knew I needed to make curtains for her.

The white-ish fabric that you can barely see on the left is black out fabric.  The lady at the store told me to just buy tension rods and sew a loop at the top of the black out fabric and cut it to fit the window and you’re done.  So I bought the fabric, plus some extra to do that.  And then I decided that I wanted to be able to use her windows so I didn’t want to put black out fabric on tension rods behind her blinds because then we’d never use the windows.

So now I have the fabric to do it all, and I just don’t know where to start or exactly how to do it, which is why it’s been sitting here for weeks. I don’t have enough black out fabric to completely line the curtains, so I’m going to have to figure out how to strategically place the black out fabric on the back of the curtains so it covers the opening of the window.  Sounds easy enough, but it’s really hard to concentrate on how many inches need to go where when you have kids running around and have to stop and go find them every 2 minutes.  Maybe some people can plan and do math in their heads with distractions, but I’m not one of them.

I have started a little anyway.  I evened up the black out fabric and I cut 3 pieces of the curtain fabric to equal lengths.  And then I realized I didn’t have an iron so I stopped and ordered one, and it got here a few days ago.  I just haven’t gotten the courage to attempt to make them again.  I will soon though.

And the 2 fat quarters on the top are for pillows I’m going to make for her room also.  Never made a pillow but it can’t be that hard right?  I’d say I’ll have the curtains and the pillows done by December.  Maybe.

I hate going to the dentist

I am one of those people that DREADS going to the dentist.  I hate it.  I never have liked it.  I have friends that say they actually enjoy it, which just boggles my mind.  I get stomach aches every time I think about going to the dentist.  But I have good reasons, I think.

Even when I was younger, I disliked the dentist.  We went to a good dentist growing up.  He was gentle and kind, but I was still afraid.  They would give me the happy gas, and I would hold my breath when they put the mask on me, as long as I could because I was afraid of the gas too.  Haha!

When I was pretty young, I had a baby tooth break and I had to go to an oral surgeon on the weekend.  It was the old guy who did NOTHING to be gentle or ease my fear.  It was the first time I saw that MASSIVE needle they stick in your mouth to numb you, and he jabbed that thing in multiple times without putting the topical numbing on at all.  And he squeezed the outside of my jaw so hard I had bruises on my face afterwards.  So that helped my fear a lot….

Before we went to Italy, we had to get dentally cleared.  I went to a dentist up in Surprise, who immediately told me I needed like $1800 worth of work, including a crown and a bunch of other things, and that I needed to pay them upfront and I would get reimbursed by my insurance and then they’d sign my release for the clearance.  Convenient, huh?  Thankfully I went to get a second opinion with Dr. Kim at Litchfield Dental Care, and he said there was nothing wrong with my teeth and signed my release.

So I went to an Italian dentist in Italy who did a few fillings, but managed to mess them all up because I had one redone back in the States and the other one also needs to be redone.  I was having a little bit of pain on one of my teeth in February of this year, so I went to the dental clinic on base at Aviano and they told me there was a cavity underneath the filling the Italian dentist did and that it would need to be fixed but they couldn’t do it so to have it down when I moved back to AZ.

Last week I went to a new dentist here because I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember Dr Kim’s name or where he was located.  So I went to a different dentist by my house.  I’d been worrying about this appointment for 3 weeks so I wasn’t exactly excited.  I have a fear of the dentist, but I also have a fear of being screwed over by a dentist also, and it turns out, for good reason…

The cleaning went okay – the girl was REALLY rough – and then she told me I had 2 teeth that might need looking at, which was a first since normally the hygienists don’t diagnose anything.  But she spent more time looking at my teeth and poking around like the dentists do than the actual dentist did.

Then the dentist comes in and he’s looking at the x-rays, and spends about 2-3 seconds per screen shot and starts rattling off teeth and numbers and by the time he was done, he said I had NINE cavities.  I about died.  Considering not even TWO months ago I was at the dentist and they said I had ONE.  Oh, and the one they said I had, this idiot tells me that that’s not a cavity, it’s just left over filling that the Italian dentist didn’t get out.

I was about beside myself.  I never realized how many crooked dentists there were until I lived in AZ, and then they all seem to be about screwing you over.  So that lit a fire under my butt and I quickly figured out who I went to before while driving around where I thought it was and I made appointment with Dr. Kim for today.

He spent a while looking at my teeth – for no charge – and told me that I have 2 cavities – one the original one, and one on the tooth right above that one – and that I’d probably need crowns on both of them (which the Aviano clinic had told me I’d need a crown on the one they saw too).  But there is a huge difference between 2 and NINE for God’s sake.  Pisses me off.  I’m just glad I found Dr. Kim again.  Hopefully my appointment next Weds won’t be too bad….  But I’m not exactly looking forward to it.

For those of you not living the military lifestyle – be very thankful you don’t have to change doctors, dentists, hair stylists, etc very often.  It’s NOT fun trying to figure out who to trust and who’s trying to screw you over…

The Burley

We have been putting our Burley to good use since we’ve been in AZ.  It’s been SO fun!  The kids love it and we love it and it’s a great way to get out after dinner and go for a little ride!

Both of the kids fit in it and there’s also a little trunk it it, but Ben’s head get pushed forward funny when he wears his helmet in it, so he’s in the baby seat for now until he’s able to sit up a little better in the mesh seat.  But both kids absolutely love going to bike rides.  Sometimes we’ll ride our bikes to Cold Stone Creamery (MY FAVORITE) after dinner for some dessert.  It’s about a 10-15 min ride up there and I don’t feel like such a cow eating 1200 calories worth of ice cream when we ride our bikes to get it.  I want to get the little headlights and bigger tail reflectors for our bikes and the Burley’s since sometimes it’s dusk when we come home, but we ride on the super wide sidewalks most of the time, or the bike lanes.  (Yes, our house is surrounded by roads with bike lanes.)  We bought this thing to use in Italy and I wouldn’t have been caught dead with my kids in that thing on those crazy roads.  Actually I probably would have been caught dead, quite literally.  Have I mentioned how happy I am to be back in the States?

These were taken in front of our house after we got back from getting Ben’s hair cut and having lunch at McDonald’s – both places about a 5 min bike ride from our house – or less.  And kind of a funny – I was talking with a friend online the other day – I have a dentist appt tomorrow and I HATE going to the dentist and have major anxiety, but low and behold, the dentist is about a 10 min walk from our house (as is everything else you could think of).  I told her I should just do a few shots or something right before I go in to help with my nerves since I can just walk home afterwards.  =)  Except I don’t really drink and doing a few shots would probably have me passed out, which might not be that bad actually… 

Ben’s first hair cut

So we lasted 16.5 months before we decided to cut Ben’s hair.  I really wish my friend Rachel had been able to do it for us, especially since she did Abbie’s first cut and she’s my good friend, but she’s in IA and we’re in AZ so that’s a little hard.  (Second haircut Rach??)

He had this pretty long tuft of hair in the back and there were some really cute curls around his ears, but we decided it was time.

This might be one of my favorite photos from the day.  He’s not too sure what he just got himself into, but so far, so good.

And the one below on the right is probably my second favorite.  He was so curious, but he didn’t cry (at first).  He wanted to see what she was doing, but since Mark was holding him, he didn’t freak out too much.

And these are just a few of the pictures I took….  I know, I’m a bit obsessive, but he’s just so darn cute!  And I was having fun playing with my 50mm 1.8 lens, although I really don’t like it all that much..  I kind of want to upgrade to the 1.4, but we’ll see.  It’s 4x’s as much..  Ben held really still for the first few minutes of the cut and then he started to get a bit squirmy.

And the last couple minutes he completely lost it, even though he’d done FINE through the electric trimmers part.  Silly boy.  He looks cute as ever now though, but I didn’t get an “after” shot since he was still pretty worked up.  Don’t worry, I will.