When we first moved West, Matt & I were young (oh, so young) DINKS embarking on a great adventure. We marveled at the new topography of our surroundings and stopped a LOT to take pictures of all the neato rocks. Just like the cliffs we stood on, we were staring out at the metaphorical horizon of our lives knowing that there was no going back once we took the next step. My Air Force career was done and our career as parents was just beginning.

 

(Me, three months pregnant with Ava)

(Matt, pre-TPS and Vegas.  Notice the lack of under-eye bags!)

When we drove back from Kansas in early June, we stopped at the same spot.  The rocks haven’t changed much in the last four years, but wow, our family sure has!

It’s been a crazy ride from there to here and seems like it has gone so fast!  Grateful for every minute and this wonderful little family we’ve grown!

I mentioned before that we brought home a bunch of Matt’s childhood train stuff in the load we carted back from Texas.  Since we unpacked and settled back in so quickly, we had time to play with it as soon as we got home.  Matt & Ava got it all set up in the front room and spent a couple of hours watching the choo-choo go!

I see lots of train time in our future!

In what can only be described as a fit of awesomeness, when we arrived home from our roadtrip to San Antonio on May 1, I downloaded all the photos and videos and selected winners for this blog post.  Monday morning, I had them uploaded.  Now, more than a week later (in what can only be described as a fit of not-awesomeness), I’m finally getting around to posting them.  Since I’m long on photos and short on words and time, here’s a list of ten great things about our trip!  (Brace yourself, this may be the longest blog post EVER.)

1.  Roadtrip!  We chose to drive to San Antonio this time, so got to take Noah on his first-ever roadtrip.  Considering how hard we pushed the mileage per day, both kiddos did great.  Ava watched a TON of movies (Incredibles, Peter Pan & Little Mermaid were big winners) and Noah was either eating, sleeping or fussing the whole way.  We crashed in El Paso for the night on the way there and got to go for a quick swim before going to Chili’s to eat dinner.  We were all exhausted at the end of the first day, but still got up crazy early on Day 2 to hit the road.  You know that any driving before the sun comes up doesn’t count, right?

2.  We got to San Antonio early on Good Friday afternoon and settled right into playing with heirloom toys and a few we brought along.  By the end of the day, we’d already played in the kiddie pool and had an amazing dinner.  When we woke up on Saturday, Auntie Moe had joined us and we could hardly believe we’d only been there for about 12 hours!

3.  The weekend was packed with church and cooking and Easter celebrations.  We dyed Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon while dinner was cooking…and just in time for the adults to clean up and rush out the door to Easter vigil.  To say we were packing in the memory-making would be an understatement!  Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the grown ups dressed up to go to church.  Since I had a great dress, I consider this to be quite sad.

(Matt’s great idea for keeping Noah occupied.  Trap the sippy between the table and tray.  Dude has some serious perseverance.)

4.  Easter morning was fun.  We were up turbo early with the kiddos (have I mentioned yet that Noah was sick and running a low grade fever up to this point?) and watched some TV while we waited for grandparents to come play Easter baskets/eggs with us.  Turns out Grampa was sick, so we didn’t see him at all that day.  We did get around to hunting Easter baskets though, and Ava was pretty excited with what she found in hers (a ladybug watch!).

5.  Easter afternoon was a party at the White’s house.  It was supposed to be at Caspers’ but had to move since we were passing around the sickies.  We even made sure to get photos of the kids in their Easter best!  Just for fun, here’s last year.  And the one before that.

The kids had a great time at the party and were officially wiped out by the end of it!

6.  Our kiddos are so lucky to have two sets of their great-grandparents around.  And we’re so lucky to get to take them to visit.  We got to see Mahgie & Poppie at the Easter party and again at their house while we were in Texas.  Such a treat to get to see your babies loved on by their great-grandparents.  Noah met them for the first time at the Easter party.

And then more visiting at Air Force Village.

7.  We did two “special activities” with the whole family while we were visiting.  On Thursday, we went to the San Antonio Zoo.  Special highlights were the elephant demonstration, the reptile house, making a toy with the mold-a-rama, and popsicle treats.

That same night, we got to go see a Missions baseball game.  It was Noah’s first ever!

8.  Speaking of firsts, we had two this trip.  Noah spiked a fever on Monday so we got our first “see the doc while traveling” experience.  Ear infection…boo.  Not the most fun of firsts.  But, by Tuesday afternoon, it was like we had a whole different baby.  So much less fussy and so much more fun!

But, Matt and I had a fun first in that we got to go spend a night downtown on the Riverwalk.  It was our first time leaving the kiddos overnight.  We had a great time watching crappy cable TV (with no one asking us for anything!), going out to dinner, and sleeping for eight blissful hours in a row.  We only got one picture of such a momentous occasion…in the mirror of the elevator of our hotel.

9.  In our down time this visit, we just did a lot of eating, drinking and hanging out.  Ava played in the back yard a TON, which was great because she doesn’t get to do that much here.  Mostly, she played Ladybug Girl with her trusty sidekick, “Bingo.”

We got to share a meal with Ken, too, which was a total treat.  Ken married Matt and I, and we love to see him; but, he usually travels in the summer and we’ve missed him the last few years.  So many years, in fact, that he hadn’t met our kids yet!  There’s something special about a meeting like this, I think.

10.  Our return trip was pretty smooth sailing and we learned lessons from the first leg.  We left more pool time at the hotel and landed in a smaller town to spend the night.  So much less stressful!  We got home on Sunday at 12:15pm and were completely unpacked with kids down for naps by 2pm.  Matt and Ava even ran the train we hauled home for a while that night!

Thanks, Caspers, for a great trip!  We’re already resting up for another one!

I think someday Matt & I might look back on this part of our lives and wonder just how we managed to do it.  Sleepless nights, two people working outside the home, and two little kiddos makes for busy days.  We’ve also started to add exercise and more eating at home into that mix, so that adds a little more complexity to the “get home from work” routine.  In an effort to make more time at the end of the day to hang out as a family, we’ve created a routine that seems to be working for us.

We started counting our Weight Watchers points six weeks ago and so we’ve been carefully monitoring how much we eat.  That means that home cooked is easiest and healthiest.  It also means no lunches out while at work.  But, since evening time is limited, we do most of our prep on the weekend.  Dinner is cooked fresh every night, but can be on the table 15 minutes after we walk in the door.

Each weekend, I cook a big batch of oatmeal for my breakfast all week, a big batch of brown rice or whole wheat rotini pasta, and Noah’s oatmeal cereal for the week.  Then, I spend some time slicing up veggies for the dinners and for my lunches and making Noah’s vegetable purees. Finally, I slice up either chicken breast or pork tenderloin into 1 oz. chunks and dump some marinade over it (it gets stashed in the fridge and doled out over the week).

Dinner prep is as easy as cooking a measured portion of meat in the skillet, cooking a vegetable (fresh or frozen) in the same skillet, and warming rice or noodles in the microwave.  Whoever isn’t cooking feeds Noah dinner and then he gets to sit with us at the table while we all eat.  Dinner this way is yummy, it’s easy and, maybe the best part, Ava eats every bite.  No more dinner time squabbles and everyone is eating a super healthy meal.

To make the rest of the work week evenings go more smoothly, lunches are packed every Sunday and go to work on Monday morning for the whole week.  I also carry a thing of little yogurts, a bunch of apples, a bag of baby carrots and a bag of string cheese.  It sometimes looks like I’ve got the whole grocery store with me on the way in on Monday, but this way I only have to remember my lunch once a week.  Since sleep deprivation is such a powerful thing, only having to remember once a week is key here.

I also prepare Noah’s breakfast and lunch for the whole week on Sunday.  They get labeled with dates and then stacked in the fridge in order.  Then, when I do bottles each night, I only have to grab one dish off of each stack of food to add to his bag.  One less thing to think about in the hurry of the evening.

As far as exercise goes, we don’t have time to get to a gym so we’re making workout time family time whenever we can.  Since we added a double jogger to our stroller arsenal in October, we can all go together when the schedule doesn’t allow time for Matt & I to run separately.  I’m in week six of the Couch to 5K running program and, while it wouldn’t be challenging enough for Matt on its own, it’s tough enough when he’s pushing two kiddos in a stroller to make it possible to go together.

Of course, all this healthy living can get a bit tiresome and we like to break from routine on weekends.  We usually just cook a more involved meal from the Weight Watchers cookbook, but Sundays nights will often see us gathered around a non-supper at the coffee table rather than seated at the dining room table. (Twizzlers were a very special treat for a finicky Mommy this weekend…and most of the bag is still hidden in the pantry.  A major feat for this sugar shover!)

And, this weekend, Matt and I had date night right here at home.  In spite of a pukey pre-schooler and a baby with a cough, we managed to get two kids to bed at the same time and then made ourselves a fancy steak dinner.  Loaded baked potatoes, sourdough bread, a nice bottle of wine and some yummy asparagus made our place the place to be on Saturday night.  We even broke out the fancy dishes!

The company was pretty good too.

So, we’re six weeks in and things are going pretty well.  I can see this being a plan that we stick with long term.  But, Matt & I agree on two very important keys to success – we all do the same thing together (no prepping multiple meals for different groups of family members) and it’s ok to take breaks if we need them.  We keep each other on track and either of us can step in to get the family gathered ’round the table at dinner time.

I hope that when we look back on these days the bustle of it all fades a bit and what we remember is the time we made for sitting down, sharing a meal, chatting about our days.  I think that will make for pretty good memories.

My very dear friend, and fellow Bond girl, Carrie, ran a 5K on Sunday morning.  Since she’s a runner and has completed a half marathon, that’s maybe not so impressive.  But, you might remember that I mentioned that she has been very ill for the last six months.  In fact, she’s still receiving weekly chemo treatments to combat her diagnosed MAS.  That makes this story very impressive indeed.

Carrie is an incredibly strong woman.  During TPS, she was our go-to girl for the tough projects and she always had more on her plate than any three of us put together.  So, it’s been no surprise to the Bond girls to see Carrie fight her disease with equal measures of tenacity and grace.  She’s been supported beautifully by friends and family in Florida, but Bond girls all over the country (world!  Hi, Sari!) are fighting for her too.

The Florida Team (Carrie on the far right, Debbie & Lynette right next to her)

The Edwards Team @ the TPS finish line

Sarah & me in Vegas

So, Carrie ran a 5K on Sunday.  But, so did all the Bond girls, in her honor.  It’s been so inspiring to me to see these women, who I love like sisters, get themselves together and overcome scheduling, deployments, illness, & injury to get on the road and running.  Carrie is our inspiration, but the challenge has made us all get up and moving…together.  Of course, we all have our supporters.  David marked out a 5K route for us to follow Sunday and he & Matt have both been supportive of Sarah’s and my efforts to get out and train.  And I know the other MOTOs have stepped up to help the other girls prepare too.

Our girls waiting for us to finish

Almost Done!

I’m so proud of these ladies.  I’m so certain Carrie will be well.  No matter what happens, the Bond girls are going to be there for her every step of the way.

Team Carrie

I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid.

Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.