The 19th is A Big Day Around Here

Archie, our new Labradoodle.

Mackinley 16 months old.

Tayton and Korbin having fun in the hay loft.

Three out of five members of our family birthdays that fall on the 19th of a month. And now so does the new dog. This month, on the 19th Archie will be 4 months and weighs in at a whopping 29 lbs. Mackinley will be 17 months and weighs 26lbs. Korbin will be 8 years 5 months old and weighs in at 55lbs. Oh and lets not forget Kirke, he'll be 32 years 9 months old and weighs in around 180 haha.

There's a lot going on around here. Tayton will be 10 years old next week on the 23rd. He's very excited. Our moving truck comes to take our household goods back to NY where we belong on the 24th. We'll be heading back up there ourselves later in September and hopefully have our soldier home in October. The welcome home signs will be the last thing on the moving truck!!

~Till They All Come Home~

Fake Meteor Showers

We went camping this weekend. We had heard there was supposed to be a meteor shower. A storm blew through fast on Saturday so we went to town for dinner and when we got back the campsite was flooded. After we dried it all up and got settled in around the fire pit for some s'mores we saw something glowing in the sky. We got all excited and I'm certain we shouted out to the whole campground to come and see the meteor shower. Idiots. It was far to cloudy to see meteors AND "the meteor" was way too bright. Idiots. They were those stupid floating lantern things that people make in order to make people like us think there are real UFO's overhead. I'm sure glad everyone else at the campground seemed to know they weren't meteors.

Image Credit

~Till They All Come Home~

I don't have a title.

I haven't blogged in a long time. I do read all of the blog posts that show up in my blog reader though. So this is going to be a boring catch up post....or I'll just throw out a funny story and pretend you haven't missed a year of my life. Yeah, that's gonna work for me too!

I'm constantly making up random stories or jumping into someones story because they paused to breathe for way too long and I toss out some random statement finishing their sentence in some awkward way that might only make me laugh but I do it anyway.

The boys have picked up on this finally!!! and no longer believe every single thing I say. Even better than that is that they are now doing it as well! I'm so proud.

Whenever we go through a big change in our lives or things are stressful Tayton goes through phases of needing to know my every move or he goes into a panic! So I was in the bathroom a couple days ago and I overhear this conversation:

Tayton: (slightly panicked as he noticed I'm not in the living room) Where's Mom?

Korbin: She left.

Tayton: What do you mean she left?

Korbin: (in his evil little up to no good voice) I don't know, I was sitting here and she just ran right out the door.

Tayton: (in his very panicked, high pitch, I'm gonna freak out voice) What? Where did she go?

Korbin: I don't know, she just ran out the door. Maybe she went to Grandma and Grandpas.

Then I walked out of the bathroom.

Korbin: (totally nonchalant) Oh look mom's back.


UPDATE: The kids are old, Kirke's still in Afghanistan and we have a puppy. The End.

~Till They All Come Home~

We Were Whole For 2 Weeks And It Was GREAT

Kirke came home on R&R for two weeks in March. He was home for Korbin and Mackinley's birthday which was fantastic. We went to the Great Wolf Lodge for one of those weekend and had a great time. Here's a few pictures of our time together.

~Till They All Come Home~

We Built A Sign and Then We Built Some More

Recently Megan from BuildASign contacted me and offered me a chance to design and customize some products for my family. In the past we have made FREE Banners for our soldier from BuildASign. I love that they support the troops/families and give away these HUGE banners for us to welcome home our heroes with! I was going to post a picture but they are in my old computer, sorry. This banner we designed for this deployments homecoming next fall. We would have put it up for R&R but he got home the day before the sign came. Which by the way was way sooner than I had expected our items to arrive.

For Mackinley we choose to customize a simple name sign using fun shaped letters. Basically she could care less about it but once we move it will hang on her bedroom door and she'll love it! Customing the signs to make what we wanted was fairly easy. The only problem I had was finding letters in the same font to make her full name but I mixed and matched a couple types to come up with this sign.


For each of the boys we decided to go with a customized parking sign which we changed around to make signs for their bedroom doors.
These signs were so simple to customize and I had them done in a flash. The boys chose their colors and helped me decided on the text for their signs. They can't wait till I get off my butt and hang them up!

The boys were so excited and so was I! Thanks BuildASign!

~Till They All Come Home~

**We did receive free products from BuildASign.com in exchange for my honest opinions about the products. All opinions are my own.**

The Wonderful World of Tayton

Yesterday I tricked my amazing aunt into taking Tayton grocery shopping with her. I convinced he'd be super helpful. However I did not warn her how he would obsessively talk her ear off about things that ONLY he finds to be of utmost importance.

He's recently decided that RedBox is the most ridiculous invention of all time. He can't seem to understand why anyone would invent something that people could just steal a movie from for a buck. He refuses to understand that you pay with a card and they continue charging you until it's returned or you reach a capped amount of payment. He says someone could just use someone else card. I explained that the RedBox people would still be getting paid. He argued his point about this with my brother and I for about a half hour the other day. I thought he had given it up. Apparently not because Aunt Sandy said she heard about it too.

He's also big on finding the most cost effective deals on items. He was sure to point out to her why she should or should not get certain items because of price/quantity. His reasoning skills are awesome. His off button however, seems to be broken.

He had a great time though, and he hugged her when we left! That's a BIG deal!

~Till They All Come Home~

I am a bad blogger

Korbin, Tayton, Cadie and Cassidy

Cassidy, Korbin, Tayton and Cadie

This Wendys has a little kid seating area it was cute!

Tayton made Cadie a bracelet and was helping her put it on. She never took it back off while we were there. I love these two together, they are such great friends!

Mackinley and her Daddy Doll she got for Christmas.

Things have stayed busy around here. I'm glad the holidays are over and hopefully we'll find something resembling a routine and normal around here.

The kids are doing well. Tayton and Korbin actually LIKE going to school and don't complain. However Korbin informed his teacher that he would not be at school on March 19 because he plans on staying home and having way more fun because it's his birthday. She laughed.

Taytons teacher is amazingly sweet and so understanding of his needs. I recently read a book called Can I Tell You About Asperger Syndrome? by Jude Welton. It was an awesome breakdown of aspergers for friends and family and was so right on track with describing Taytons uniqueness. He's such a cool kid. He got to spend some time with his one and only best friend ever last week. It made me miss our whole group in Missouri even more especially being that we are mostly all already on another deployment.

Korbin is missing his wife a lot more now that Tayton got to see Cadie. We're going to have to work that out soon so he can see her again. It's been almost a year for them. It had been 14 months for Tayton and Cadie. We really all become family when we go through deployments and live together at one duty station for years without biological families around. We don't need a blood relation to make us family. Military families are amazing that way!!

Mackinley is doing well. Cruising the furinute, blowing kisses and waving bye bye, copying sounds and faces. She's amazing. She's having surgery on Thursday to repair her blocked tear duct which has become a very gross little situation. She wakes up with her eye matted shut and constantly has goo oozing out. Its bad enough that people notice all the time and that bothers me.

Kirke is doing well, just getting through one day at a time. That's about all we can do.

~Till They All Come Home~