The Latest

Hi from NC! It has been awhile since our last post. We have had Thanksgiving here with the family and soon we will be heading up to OH for Christmas.

The boys are doing well. They were happy to see everyone visiting at the beach house and they are anxious for a visit to OH. I promised them a trip to their old house (since we still own it!!!!) Yes....it has not sold yet so please cross your fingers for us that it does soon! Who knew the market would fall apart the way it has!

You can see from the pics that everyone was able to enjoy some beach time over the holiday. Kerry also had me get the boys new big wheels and they LOVE them!

Kerry is doing well....just really ready to get home and back to a normal life. He and his Marines did get a small tree in a care package and some decorations so they will have a little something.

We hope everyone is well and we will see many of you soon!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from NC!

The boys had a great Halloween. A few weeks ago they got to go on a hayride with some friends Hayley and Connor to get their pumpkins. Yesterday they had a party at school and then trick or treat. Our neighborhood was busy and they came away with 2 big bowls of candy (just what they needed!)

I had to include the pic of Officer Jake "arresting" Sammy the ghost :) The others are the hayride and their school party.

The Grandma's are here visiting and next month we will have more visitors for our beach Thanksgiving.

We hope everyone is well and keep in touch

Field Trip

The boys had their first field trip Friday. They visited a firehouse. As you can see from the pics they stand out a little from their average size classmates...Jake looks like a 1st grader! They are enjoying school and Sammy even ate some new lunch foods they served that I never got him to try like peanut butter and jelly.

My job is working out really well so far and not interferring at all with my mom duties. I am able to fit in my teacher visits while the boys are in school and I do all other work at home.

We visited Brad and Cynthia and my mom last weekend in DC. I wish I had better pics but Jake and Sam don't like the camera flash so they always close their eyes. We went to the zoo and the natural history museum. That was pretty much 30 min of just looking for all the dinosaur bones then leaveing :)

Kerry will well.....drop him an email if you have some time. He is still thinking he will get home sometime in March.

We hope everyone is well and we will talk to you soon!

Miss you Daddy!

The boys took this picture on base today and I know I am their mom but it is pretty cute :)

First Day of School!

Well, today the boys started school. Jake is in the 4 year old class and Sammy is next door with the 3 year olds.

They were both excited, but Jake was a little more nervous. I think he was unsure since it was a new school for him and he was used to St Joe's in Maumee. Sammy did not even watch me walk out the door! He was at his seat with his box of labeled crayons ready to go!

Jake told me he was not so excited but he did fine too and when I left he was playing with a toy.

They started with a special first day of school breakfast of mini chocolate chip pancakes and then we were out the door.

They are going to First Presbyterian in Jacksonville about 10 minutes from the house. It seems like a great place. They each will go 3 days a week and they have about 15 kids in their classes.

I will update with any big schools news :) Talk to all of you soon!

PS I added a video of the boys at the beach too just to see how that works on here. Please leave a comment to let me know if you can view it or not. Thanks!

The Beach

With summer ending soon I wanted to get a pic up of the boys at the beach on base. There is a nice beach on base (Onslow Beach) and as you can see the boys love it and they made a friend! :) Check out Sam lounging with his new lady :) Jake is such a third wheel!

It is a little less hot here but still pretty humid and we could use alot of rain! The beach or the pool are really the only places you want to be outside.

I have accepted a part time job with the school district where I used to teach when we lived her before. I will be running their new teacher mentor program. It will work out great so that I can work at the schools when the boys are in preschool and I can complete all other work at home.

The boys start school the 5th and both are excited. Especially Sammy. He has wanted to be like Jake for 2 years now and be in school.

I will be sure to get some "first day" pics up after the 5th.

Kerry is doing well and almost ready to move to his new job where he will be until he comes home. He will still be on the same base....just a new role.

We hope everyone is well and we will talk to you soon!

Hi from hot NC!

Well, it is finally cooling off...a little. Instead of 100 with a heat index of 115 and LOTS of humidity we have 90 with alot less humidity :) At least it does not feel like an oven outside!

With the heat we have been trapped inside most days. As you can see Jake passes his time arresting the criminal mastermind Sammy!

The boys are doing well and talk alot about dadddy coming home. They seem to understand it will be awhile but that it will be for longer this time.

Kerry is doing fine. Sometimes I forget and complain to him about the heat! I think he has it a bit worse :)

We hope you are all well. Write soon....visit soon and if I sent you the link about the kids books...........shop soon! :)

Visit With Dad

I wanted to get some pics up of Kerry with the boys while he was home. As you can see Daddy took them to get some new toys (Sam's piano included). Jake played so much he needed a milk break!

We had a nice trip with our families in Myrtle Beach for the annual Father & Son golf tournament Kerry and my dad play in. He managed to plan his R&R so they would not miss it :)

He got home July 15th and he heads back tomorrow, the 31st.

We expect him home sometime in Feb or March. We are choosing to look at it like we are almost half way done at this point.

The boys had a great time and I am sure I will have a fun few days as they adjust to life without dad again, but they will do just fine.

Kerry did a few things around the house. Since this was the first time he has seen the house he had more he wanted to do than he had time, but he can start new projects next spring!

We hope you are all well and we hope to see some of you soon!

Summer

Well, it is VERY hot here and the boys just got a new pool. They are a little too big for the baby pools so we stepped it up a notch in size. I can even sit in this one with them :)

As you can see, Jake and Sam love it. They would be happy to be in the water every afternoon. We hit the beach on base Sunday and we also have a pool we can use at the Officer's Club so we have enough options ;)

We hope everyone is well. Have a fun 4th of July if we do not post bef0re then!

Happy Birthday Sammy!!

Sammy's birthday is Saturday June 23rd

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY SAMMY!!!!

House Pics

Here are some pics of the new house.

Our New House

Hi from North Carolina! Thanks to my mom and Kerry's mom we are settled into our new house.

They came down to help me with the boys for over a week so I was able to get the house in order. We moved in Thurs the 7th and by Sat the 9th it was all done!

The house is wonderful and it looks great all painted. We had some sod put in (we had black dirt and Apple would have destroyed the house if she had gone out in it) and we are having a fence put up this week so she can run again.

We had a nice time in Surf City before we moved in and the boys had some fun at the beach.

It will take some time for the boys to settle in. Jake said he liked it but he needed to get used to it :) I think Sam is not so sure we are staying here.....he has lived in 4 houses the past 2 weeks (Maumee, Medina, Surf City and here:).

I will post some pics soon. I need to get back to regular life when I have time for things like that.

We hope all of you are well and we will talk to you soon!

Sammy's 3rd Birthday

We celebrated Sam's 3rd birthday a little early this year since we are moving before the real deal (June 23rd).

Thanks to everyone who came!

He was really excited about it this year. I think he really gets it now...presents, cake....all really good stuff! He was going up to anyone who would listen the whole week before talking about his Doodlebops party.

Everything is still on schedule for us to move out of our Maumee house May 25th. The house has not sold yet so please tell all your friends Maumee is wonderful and they need to move here and buy our house! :)

The NC house will still be ready May 31st. We will be home at my mom and dads May 25- May 28 if you want to stop by for one last visit before we go.

Kerry is still doing well. Just tired of 12+ hour work days seven days a week, but he is fine. He taped a video reading a book to send to the boys and they really liked that. They think he can hear them so they talk to him on the TV :)

We hope you are all having a good spring and we will see you soon!

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms out there!

School is In Session

Jake and Sam got a new book at the bookstore. It is a flip chart with different learning posters like numbers, letters, bones (the one Jake chose to teach). Luckily Jake happened to have a pointer already :) As you can see Sam is a willing student, but I am not sure how much was actually being "taught." It was alot of "No Sam....." and Sam trying to leave the room :)

As for our move....we are all set to have the truck here May 25th. We will stay at my mom and dads a few days and we plan to leave for NC May 29th. Our new house closes May 31st. Needless to say we have a busy May ahead of us.

Kerry is doing fine...just ready to come home. His R&R will be for 15 days in July so we are counting down to then...not 2008.

We hope everyone is doing well. See you soon!

Warm Days

It has been great here lately weather wise so the boys have been able to get out a play a little. As you can see they like to wear their helmets and Jake looks like he means business :)

I also took a shot of a #1 Jake wrote in chalk. It is the first time I have seen him write it. He has been writing just as a line but as you can see he has more detail now........big time preschool stuff!

Kerry is doing well. If you have sent him something and have not heard back...you will. He is still working 12-14 hours 7 days a week so that leaves little time for writing and email.

We will see many of you soon for weddings and Easter. Enjoy the nice weather!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Jake made this lovely leprechaun face in school so I had to share and say

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I also wanted to put up this photo of the boys with their Little Patriot's bears since I sent all of you the link to their site. You can see they are really cute and the boys were sharing a movie and snack with them last night.

See you soon!

The latest

Hi everyone! It has been awhile since I posted. Not much to report. Kerry calls and emails when he can. Sometimes it is 3 days in a row and sometimes we have to wait 5 or 6 days to hear from him. It just depends.

Jake and Sam are doing well. Both boys are very excited that the newest Power Rangers now have their show on. The pic of them on the couch was taken moments before the premiere :)

They also have a new train table thanks to mom :) I have to say...it was definitely a "Daddy" job usually, but I think it turned out OK. They have had the train table for quite sometime but they rarely set up the tracks and when they did they would destroy them soon after. I noticed that anytime we went into a store where they had a permanent track set up they played with it so today we got new track, found a layout and glued it down! Now they can just fight over the same 2" of track all day tomorrow :)

We hope all of you are well. We know we will see most of you in a month or so for Easter and Brad and Cynthia's big day. Until then take care and talk to you soon!

PS Thank you to everyone who has emailed and mailed Kerry. Even if he can't get back to each of you right away he wants you to know that he appreciates it.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Day!!

We hope everyone is doing well. Jake and Sam wanted to blow everyone some kisses for Valentine's day.

We are all fine here. We talk to Kerry most days whether it is email or a phone call. He is well.....just tired from working 13-14 hour days.

I also put up a Power Ranger picture for any of you who doubted Jake's devotion to them :) Sam is not far behind in his love for them either. Anything Jake does he can do too!

We hope to see many of you soon for showers and weddings. Keep in touch!

PS If you look closely you will see the Power Rangers were attending a "dance" Jake arranged for them. The boys dancing with the girls :)

Long time no post

Hi everyone. It has been awhile since I had added a new post. We have been a little busy :)

Kerry left Jan 20th so we were back and forth between NC and OH.

Jake had his family birthday party this past weekend. Thank you to everyone who made it. He had a great time (imagine that!:)

We are settling back into our routine here at home. Jake has school, we joined the Y and Sam keeps busy running errands with me while Jake is at school.

I have added some photos from Jake's friend and family birthday parties as well as some other news ones. We will see lots of you soon for all the wedding activity in the next couple of months. Have a good February!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy 4th Birthday Jake!!!!

(pictured with bday present from mom and dad)