Our walk to remember

us and the kids

Sam finally did a photo shoot for me last Saturday, I had been bugging him to do a shoot with me and the kids and then switch and I would do him and the kids since November.  He finally was able to commit to last Saturday & since the weather was bad that day I were worried it might not happen.  But, we had a small window of opportunity between the end of the rain and the starting of the crazy wind.  We didn't have long but Sam still pulled through and got some good shots.  My new picture on the top left is from this shoot too!

Preston:

Carlee:

me and kids

Sam and Preston:

done till May

Sam had his interview on Wednesday and he said "It couldn't have gone any better".  So happy to hear that, Sam got all of his questions answered and the interviewer said he really liked Sam and that a lot of people, those that go into the flight training he'll have to do in the Air Force, would kill to have as much training as Sam has already had.  The plan is for Sam to go through the next Review Board which is in May, the next after that is in October.  He'll see them and we're hoping that there will be enough flight positions open for him, if not he'll go in October, and so on and so on.  As of right now the wait to get in to OTS (Officer Training School) is a year and so once Sam is accepted he'll have to wait his turn, about a year after the Review Board, to get into OTS then he has 3 months there (without me and the kids, I might add).  And he'll be off to his flight training.  I'm talking like he's been accepted because I'll be very surprised if the Review Board doesn't accept him.  As you can tell we have a long wait ahead of us, so that's great for me to get use to the idea of it all

tag

10 years ago: I was a Freshman in H.S., 14 years old, just had my ears pierced and got contacts so I wasn't quite a nerdy looking.

5 things on my to do list today: blog this tag & an update on Sam, clean the floors, call the property management place, call Shannon (sorry Shannon it wasn't a "need to do" type thing, I just kept forgetting to call you), & make dinner.

Snacks I enjoy: soft chocolate chip cookies from Albertsons, so good, no thanks to Bethany for introducing me to them!

What I would do if I were suddenly a billionaire: Pay off debt, get a home, get all the things I'd like to have but can really afford, & save!

3 of my bad habits: stressing when Preston cry's (I'm slowly trying to accept that he is stubborn & doesn't like sleeping much during the day), picking at my face & nails, & eating bad.

5 places I have lived: Glendale, AZ / Thatcher, AZ / Ft. Pierce, FL / Sebastian, FL / California

5 jobs I have had: Clerk for 2 different Oral Surgeons, Clerk for a Dentist, Jamba Juice, delivering Pennysavers & babysitting

5 things people don't know about me: click here to see a post on that

I'm going to leave this post open for anyone that wants to do it!

bubbles & laughs

This was a video from a few weeks ago but couldn't get the video together because of some video editing problems we were having.  Anyway, we were playing with some bubbles & Preston was making what sounded like the word bubble.  I think it is so amazing how young babies are able to make the sounds of words & make it sound so close.  I do believe that he is getting close to saying mama and dada too.

Here is another video of his new laugh.  He does it a lot and he'll do it just while playing with a toy, it makes me smile every time I hear it & watch him.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

my bad

With the help of my father-in-law and Sam I have come to realize that I made it sound like Sam plans to be a fighter pilot.  While he probably would love that, he does not plan to be a fighter pilot, he plans to be a pilot of a carrier plane or something like that.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about see the underlined portion of the post below.  I was trying to say the test he'll be taking is to see if he qualifes to be a fighter pilot even though that's not his specific plan he still has to take that test to see what he qualifies for.  I was also just trying to make sure everyone understands that there are many pilot positions in the military since I only really know because Sam is my husband.  Anyway, sorry!

so many steps

I wanted to do a brief update about Sam.  As you know he's trying to get into the Air Force and he took his written test just over a week ago, the physical test Wednesday which he passed with absolutely no problem.  Now, he has a rod in his leg from his motor cycle accident from back in H.S. which was a concern to getting into the Air Force & I was still concerned about it & not sure of what they were going to do, but talking to Sam last night he said oh yes that since he passed the physical test it was completely fine.  He just has another Pilots physical test in which they will determine then if he can be a fighter pilot or not because of the rod in his leg (there are many other pilot positions other than just a fighter pilot).  So finally a few days ago we heard about how Sam did on his written test & he did so awesome.  The average rate that people get on the tests are between 60-70 points (highest is 100), the lowest Sam had was a 68 on his math, his highest was a 98 on his aviation portion (go figure.... he's good at what he does), and all the rest were on the higher end.

The next steps he has is next Wednesday he goes back to LA again to have an interview.  If that person likes Sam then his next step will be to go to the Review Board, then after that he has the Physical test for all pilots.  It's a long process but we are so happy things are moving along so quickly, but at the same time it makes me so nervous to think about what our future will hold!

This picture is the first and only time Sam has taken me up flying.  We had been married for almost 1 year and we were living in Florida, his boss at Velocity basically said it was okay for him to take me up flying.  Before this point I'd never seen him fly at all, for all I knew he could have been lying about being a pilot.  With the permission, we jumped at the opportunity, so we went for a quick little flight and I loved every minute of it even when he purposely did what he did to make my stomach turn in knots. 

I know Sam has done so much to get to where he is with flying and it most certainly has not been easy, hopefully one day soon he can say it has all been worth it.  Thanks for all your hard work & faith Sam to get this far.  I love you!

a happy day

I was in such a good mood waking up yesterday, prepared to get back into exercising daily, so excited for mine and Sam's date & a few thing I had planed for Carlee.  After I had the kids breakfast done I started to scramble some eggs for myself.  I put some salsa in the eggs and turned to put the salsa back into the fridge & bumped it against something and dropped it.  The large PLASTIC container that I had just opened yesterday broke a large hole in the bottom and went everywhere.  When I was cleaning that huge mess I realized my breakfast was burning.  After all was finished with that I was no longer hungry so I had toast and called Sam to say poor me, I was mad because I'm so clumsy and it always happens right when I'm in the best mood (Satan knows how to get me).  On the phone with Sam, he just could laugh at me, he knows how clumsy  I am and doesn't know how I manage to do these things, me either.  But lucky for me I got over very quickly and had a great day!

Carlee and I made cookies!  At first she was scared to hold the hand mixer because it shakes, she's funny.

Sam and I went on a date!  I was so excited, I had a babysitter like 3 weeks ago.  We have very few young women in our ward so I did really have to plan early for such an evening.  Our plan was to see a movie and dinner at Olive Garden since we had gift certificates to both all we'd have to pay for was the babysitter.  We planed it too so that we wouldn't be getting home too late since it is a school night.  We went and saw "The Spiderwick Chronicles" at 4:15, it was very cute, we both really liked it.  Then we went to Olive Garden after, we got there at 6:00 and we were very prepared to have a long wait but when we got there and the wait was 2 hours, I was bummed.  Since we weren't willing to wait that long plus that would get us home too late for the babysitter, so we decided to come home.  When we got home I took our babysitter home and got the kids bathed and ready for bed and while we were doing that we order take out from Olive Garden, that was still an hour long wait.  We got the kids to bed and a half-an-hour later Sam picked up our dinner, he said he saw someone just getting in to be seated that was there we were first got there, we were happy because we didn't have to wait & we were still able to finish our date without kids.  It wasn't exactly how I pictured it but it was still fantastic, Sam held my hand all night and there were no kids to worry about for a few hours so we were happy.

I had made the cookies with  Carlee earlier and left the decorating for the babysitter to do with her, I figured Carlee would be good for her with something like that to do.  When we came home we all got to enjoy the cookies together.

I'm always really bad about getting a picture of food before we start digging into it!  It's a LARGE heart shaped cookie.

These are the only pictures I took all day and as you can see Preston isn't in any of them, poor neglected boy!  No, but I am making a little video clip of him to put on here soon so that should make up for it.

Hope you had a great Valentine's Day.... we did!

moomay

Carlee's cute when we put on her Little Mermaid pj's, she says "moomay".   Thanks mom and dad for their Christmas jam-mies, I've wanted to post a picture since then, just now doing it.  I wanted them to be able to see the pj's, Preston may not fit into his by the time we see them in April, I thought I better get on it . 

Carlee has been talking so much it puts a huge smile on my face every time she points to a Jesus picture and says, "seeses".  The other night I was looking through a book Sam's mother made and gave all the kids a copy of it.  It's a book filled with all the poems Dan has written over the years to Teresa.  So as I was looking through the book, Carlee points to a picture and says, "Papa" (Papa is Sam's dad), super sweet.  But by far the two words she says the most is "bood" which is bird, she'll point out the window all day long and point and show me where the "bood's" are.  The other is "zeet zeet" meaning blanket!

Preston has got two bottom teeth now (this is an old picture he only has one here) & he likes to play with them with his tongue, so his tongue is hanging out a lot.

Carlee and Preston play together a lot, the hard parts of having two kids 14 months apart is starting to pay off.  He loves to be around her (he always has) but they love to do what the other is doing, even if the other doesn't want them to join in!  He seems perfectly okay with letting her steel the toy he's playing with (I wonder what he's thinking), so I pay pretty close attention to what he has at the moment & when I turn back and suddenly Carlee has it, she knows she's got a quick 3 seconds to give it back.  It's funny because I do the counting to 3 thing with Carlee, it works well with her but at first I would do it slow & she started realizing she could take her time.  Now I count pretty fast and she moves pretty quickly too so she doesn't have to do time out.

Do you love my super hero's. Sam had a bear that has this super hero cape and mask on it (the cape says super sammy).  So I thought it would be fun to put it on Preston, the next day Carlee brought me the bear and says, "on", so she got to be a super hero too.

Sam took his Air Force written test last Thursday in LA and he took his physical test today in LA.  He sill has not heard from them on how his written test went but he past with flying colors on his physical test today.  He left this morning at 2:00am to get to LA in time, the test started at 4:45am & went till 1:45pm, that's 9 hours.  He was there with about 20 guys and they had to do different variations of things, but for 9 hours, can you believe that, that's forever!  I hope things continue to go speedy with that as much as they have been these last few weeks.

thanks a million

I seriously feel a bit selfish putting this on here, but I have to say a HUGE thank you to Sam's parents.  I can't even put into words how excited I am about this new bed, so, thanks a million times.  For Sam's college graduation gift (one class left to go, he'll be done very soon, woohoo) his parents got us a new bed and mattress.  See, when we got married we found a great deal for a used bed and mattress for $100, well there was a reason for that, & I would recomend to anyone never to do what we did.  The mattress was bad!  Many many a night Sam slept on the couch because he couldn't sleep on our bed, for many reason; not comfortable, I'm a bouncer at night and this bed multiplied that.  Anyway, we had been sleeping with the mattress on the floor for several months because Sam was playing with Carlee on the bed and busted it, none fixable.  Anyway, with serious generosity from his parents we got the dream mattress for Sam and the dream bed for me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

the assembly:

the finished product!

I know, I'm spoiled, I know!

Everything about it is perfect the bed is way high up, standing up next to it Carlee isn't even as tall as the bed!  I love the canopy, picture two sheer white pieces of fabric hang across the top and down the sides.  The mattress, oh, so comfortable and the best part Sam doesn't feel me rolling around at night.  Thanks a million we really do love you & not because you spoil us!

craft time

I found a fun Valentine Craft to do on Martha Stewart, to see the details click here.

 

Carlee & I just did it real quick tonight.  I did the cutting,

while she used the crayons

to color some of the hearts,

to make her very own Valentine It turned out pretty cute,

I used a vase that Carlee got last year for Valentine & put the Dum Dum sticks in a straw so they would stand a little taller & put it on the table as the center piece.  I thought this would be a really cute Valentine for kids to give out at school to their friends.  Super easy and fast, but cute!  And while I finished putting them together Sam & Carlee started watching Meet the Robinson's.