Bday, Turkey Day, Cub Scouts and Baby K!

Gary, Caleb and I celebrated my birthday at home with a yummy dinner, and Gary and Caleb made my favorite cake – yellow with chocolate icing.  Simple, but yummy!  We celebrated my birthday with the rest of my family when we visited Waco during Thanksgiving.  Caleb and I were able to spend a whole week at home in Texas, and Gary joined us on Turkey day.  I had a great time visiting with friends and family over the week, and celebrating Thanksgiving with the family.  I didn’t really have any belly pictures before that week, so there’s a couple my mom took of us at my grandparents house. 

The week after Thanksgiving, we had our monthly Cub Scouts Pack Meeting.  Caleb received his Bobcat and Tiger badges that day.  Each time the boys get a badge, they put that badges pin on a parent.  Good work, buddy!  We are so proud of you!

The Friday before Thanksgiving, I had a doctor’s visit (checkup for the belly) and an appointment in Radiology for my ultrasound.  Very exciting day!  We found out that day that we’re having a boy. J  As excited as I was to go to the appointment, I was even more anxious and excited to tell Gary what we were having when he got home from work!  And a very odd thing, in my opinion – the Army doesn’t give you the ultrasound picture that shows the sex of the baby.  Really?  Honestly, what am I going to do with the picture but just keep it for m yself?  Stupid rule.  So, here are two of the best ultrasound pictures they did let me have.  Can’t wait to meet him!!  We’ve talked about names, but since we already know that he’s a boy we may be keeping that part to ourselves – because we can.  Haha! J 

I’m very excited about Christmas, as always.  We have our tree and decorations up, so now I just have to finish my shopping!

Updates from the Peach State

Gary’s doing well in his course, staying busy busy. He’s been hunting a couple of times each weekend trying to find a doe. Well, luck finally came last Sunday evening. He knew what he was getting himself into, but it turned out to be a very, very long night for him. Hours and hours later, we ended up with a bunch of deer meat in our freezer. I must say I was initially very sad for her (there may be reason for that if you’ll read on), but Gary was very sweet about it and thanked God for providing her to us. And I must say, the steaks we had for dinner last night were VERY yummy. Good job, babe.

Caleb has been doing well at school, also. He does well on his homework, spelling tests and reading AR books. He was a very cute Darth Vader for Halloween, but I didn’t have my camera. We went trick or treating on post around the officer’s housing with some friends and we all had a great time. Cub Scouts has been going well and we continue to enjoy being a part of it. We had a Cub Scout camping trip at the end of September and had a BLAST! This past Friday the first grade classes at Caleb’s school had a field trip to Butts Mill Farm up by Pine Mountain, and I tagged along. The kids had a great time petting animals, riding horses, playing, riding on a kiddie train and a hayride, although I must say it would have been nicer if it hadn’t been so COLD outside that day. Caleb and I developed some cold symptoms because of it. Oh well…the sacrifice for fun in the cold. Here’s one of my only recent pictures of Caleb – his school pic.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been busy with a 6-day course for Spouse Leadership that goes along with Gary’s course. It was a great class that was very informative, fun and I was able to meet many other Captains wives. We were taught A LOT of different things, from resources the Army has, protocols, customs and courtesies, FRG (Family Readiness Group) Leadership, stress management, crisis coping and grieving, etc, etc. Many or most of you may not have heard about FRG’s. It’s mostly led by the wives of the commanders, though it doesn’t always have to be the commander’s wife, and it’s completely voluntary. It’s a group that leads and coordinates for events, fundraisers and is a great support group, especially during deployments. It isn’t just made up of wives, but families also including parents of soldiers (especially those of single soldiers). When the guys are deployed, it’s a great way for families and parents of soldiers to keep in touch and get information about the unit and what’s going on. When Gary becomes a commander at our next unit, I hope to be the FRG leader for our company, so this class was incredibly helpful. Speaking of which, we have received our orders for our next duty station, and we’ll be at Fort Campbell, KY (Clarksville, TN) with the 101st Airborne. I’ve heard it’s a great post and I’m excited that we’ll be living in Tennessee. If you have heard of the Battle of the Bulge or have seen the Band of Brothers series, that company was a part of the 101st Airborne during WWII. GREAT series to watch, by the way.

And last, but certainly not least, Caleb is finally going to have a sibling. :) We’re expecting!! I am about 17 weeks as of now and I’m due April 18th. Luckily, we will be able to stay here at Fort Benning for the birth and while Caleb finishes this year in school. We were a bit worried that we’d have to be moving around that time. Thankfully, the pregnancy has gone very well so far. I have a sonogram picture but it’s quite fuzzy, so I’ll wait until we get the next one. We don’t know yet what we are having, but we will be able to find out soon. I’m kind of hoping for a girl, just because we already have Caleb, although I know that Gary is wishing for a boy. No surprise there. :) I am sure that we will both be very happy with whatever God chooses to bless us with. God has already blessed our family in so many ways and continues to do so, and we are thankful and happy for what we have been given.

Labor Day Weekend

So this post is a bit delayed, but better late than never!  My parents came to visit us on Labor Day weekend and we had a wonderful time!  They got in on Friday soon enough to go with us to pick Caleb up from school.  Caleb was so excited. :)  We went out for some yummy catfish on Friday, and Saturday my parents took Caleb to see Despicable Me.  Saturday we went to some hole in the wall restaurant, but they had wonderful food!  We were stuffed! That was Gary's belated birthday dinner (great choice on the restaurant!).  Sunday we all woke up super early to watch Gary compete in his second triathlon, which was up in Callaway Gardens.

Beautiful place with beautiful weather!  Gary did great - he placed in the top third in his age group!

That day we also got to go to the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning.  Really neat place - lots of history about the infantry, plus a lot of history about the different wars.  Here's a picture of Caleb and my parents in front of the museum.  We get to see them again in a couple of weeks - can't wait!

Gary's Birthday

Gary turned a wonderful 29 this week on Tuesday. He doesn't make a big deal of it, but I like to make people feel loved on their birthdays (especially my own husband!). We mostly went about our usual day, but I asked Gary to help me make his birthday dessert since I'd never made a pie before. :)

 Thanks to our friend Laura Leigh and her recipe, we made an amazing apple pie (with a homemade crust!). Here's the apple pie, minus some of the crust that came off with the aluminum foil. Caleb was SO anxious for Gary to open his cards and gift, but we kept telling him he had to wait until dessert after dinner.

He was so excited when Gary opened his gift. Caleb and I both made him homemade cards and gave him a new cycling shirt. Once all that was done, Caleb decided to be a superstar and model daddy's new shirt.

Oh, and I have to throw in the picture of Caleb with his toy gun modeling Gary's Army boots and backpack, and a very mean face. :)

Happy Birthday Love!!

First Grade and Air Assault

So last Monday (August 9th) Caleb started first grade at Blanchard Elementary School in Mrs. Moody's class. He has a great teacher and he seems to be fine and doing well. He wouldn't let me take pictures of him the first day of school (first day jitters I suppose), so he let me take a few after school on the second day. Better than nothing!

 Since I'm not working right now, I volunteered to be the "room mom" to help with a few things. This week we worked on getting money from the kids to buy supplies for a teddy bear sewing project. Thank goodness the project was today - I was really tired of cutting teddy bears out of felt (44 of them) and shopping all around town for the supplies, plus threading the needles in advance. All the kids had fun sewing and putting the eyes, etc. on the bears. They turned out pretty cute. Caleb did a really good job sewing his teddy bear.

This past Tuesday Gary graduated from Air Assault school. It was a ten day class that taught everything about the integration between helicopter and ground combat forces. He had A LOT to learn in those ten days, which were very long days. Every day of the class some guys had to leave because they couldn't keep up either mentally or physically. Gary worked really hard at it every day, and sometimes I helped him to study. The last day was the kicker. They had to be there at 2:00am for a 12-mile road march with their ruck sacks that weighed around 40 pounds or so. If you had completed the class up to that point but couldn't complete the road march within three hours, you didn't graduate. There were quite a few guys who didn't, and several guys who fell out because of some medical reason - possibly either dehydration or just exhaustion.

The graduation was at 11:00am that same day. I went to go see Gary graduate, which was neat. And thank goodness the stands were covered, it was hot!  They did a demonstration of a typical person rappelling from a helicopter (but obviously this was just done from their rappelling tower, not a helicopter).

 There were three graduates (at the front of the picture facing us, Gary's on the left) who were the three best in the class of 143 graduates.  Gary received the Distinguished Honor Graduate award from the Battalion Commander - good job baby!

 Now we're just enjoying spending the extra time together until Gary's MCCC (career course) starts in September. I really enjoy that I'm able to pick Caleb up right when school's out. It's the first time I've been able to do so. Hopefully finding a part-time job will still allow me to do that. Gary and I both love reading, and right now we're reading Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover (thanks to Robin!). I have to say, it's my favorite book ever (you sense the sarcasm, right?). It's a great book and we're learning a lot of valuable things. I highly recommend reading it. I finished a book a while back called My Sister's Keeper. They made a movie out of it with Cameron Diaz. The story is amazing - we bought the movie and I can't wait to watch it now. Definitely a great read!

Excited to be a blogger!

Ok, so I finally decided to start a blog!  After spending lots of time getting it setup, I am finally happy with it and ready to post!  My mom thought it would be a good idea to keep people updated on our life as an Army family and I thought so, too.  For my friends and family I've left in Texas, I will do my best to keep in touch, but hopefully the blog will help.

Since the wedding in June, our house was packed up (and I LOVE the fact that we didn't have to do it ourselves) and we spent time with family before leaving Texas.  Gary left a few days before we did to check into post and let the movers into the apartment.  Then my parents drove Caleb and I to Nashville where my aunt lives, and Gary met us there.  My parents flew back home the next day while the three of us headed to Michigan to see Gary's family for a few days before getting settled in Georgia.  It was REALLY hard for me and Caleb to say goodbye to my parents.  Caleb has definitely missed them and has had to learn that it's a bit more difficult to visit when it takes about 12-14 hours in a car to get there.  But they're coming for a visit in a few weeks and we're excited about that.  We put a printed calendar in Caleb's room so that he can cross off each day that passes, and I highlighted the weekend they'll be here (also my mom's idea).  It gives him a better perspective of time.

So we have an apartment while we're here.  It's nice, but it's definitely much less space than our house.  Thank goodness for all the closet space!  We're in a nice area with a great strip mall and we're pretty close to Caleb's school and our church, and not too far from post for Gary.  I do miss having a neighborhood to bike, run and walk in.  We don't really have that around here unless we drive somewhere, but there's a nice trail by Caleb's school.

So Caleb started school on Monday, and he's in first grade now.  The first day of kindergarten last year was hard; he cried and it was hard for me to leave him.  He's grown up a lot since then, but he's still my sweet Caleb who still needs me (and I will certainly take advantage of that while I have it).  He did great on the first day of school (no tears!) and he seems to like it so far.  We met a little girl, Emma, and her mom the other day, Sarah, at the pool.  Emma is also in first grade at his school (different teacher), so at least he knew someone.  Sarah is also an Army wife and the first friend I've made since I've been here.  :)

Gary starts his MCCC (Maneuver Captain's Career Course) in September, so he's been taking a few shorter courses since then.  Right now he's in his third course, which is Air Assault - something about helicopters, hahaha.  I try to keep up, but it's like speaking another language.  Last week he was in a Combatives class learning basically hand-to-hand combat with specific moves (watch out! haha).  He would practice on me and Caleb, and Caleb thought it was hilarious.

That's all for now, more to come!