Christmas

Well, we are back in NC after a trip to Hershey and OH for the holidays. Hershey was cold, but a good time. We visited Chocolate World, went on a Christmas trolley ride and the boys had a chance to swim at the lodge.

You can see Jake got all of the Legos he wanted and Sam got his biggest wish (his drum set). The boys have had fun playing guitars, drums and singing in Sam's room with Sam's new disco ball :) It is quite a site! Our next house NEEDS a finished basemet :)

We hope all of you had a nice holiday and enjoy New Years. A special hello to Justin and we hope he gets home and well VERY soon!

Merry Christmas!

We will be seeing many of you soon, but I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We had this photo taken last week. Our realtor had Santa at her house with treats for everyone in the neighborhood so we stopped by. It is one of the few famly photos we have with all 4 of us so I am glad she did it. You can see Sam was less than thrilled at first, but he did go back later to actually give Santa his list :)

We are heading to Hershey for 2 days before our visit to OH. We wanted to get a small trip in before Kerry leaves for Iraq again. He is set to leave mid January until at least the summer. He is also up for promotion so keep your fingers crossed :) 

I will post after the holidays but for now...Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Halloween

Happy Halloween from NC! 

You can see that Jake chose Peter Pan for school (He had to be a fairy tale character) He chose Darth Vader for Trick or Treat. Sammy went with Harry Potter. A BIG thank you to Christy who made his great costume. Both boys had a great day and we now have about a ton of candy :) Talk to all of you soon!
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Preschool!

Sammy started his 4 year old preschool this past Wednesday. It is the same place where he was last year but he is with a new teacher (the one Jake had last year).

He was ready to go and it seems like he has adjusted to not having Jake with him. You can see on the video he was about as chatty as Jake on his first day :) 

Kindergarten!

Today was Jake's first day of Kindergarten. As usual, he did not have much to report. He said he had fun and that was about it. His teacher told me he was ready to come home at 12:30 :) It will take some time to get used to a 7 hour school day (pre school was 4 hours).

Sammy has his open house for preschool tomorrow and he starts next Wednesday. He was a little lost without Jake today. He was asking me to play ALOT more than usual :)

Jake's first few days were staggered to let smaller groups of kids come in T-R. He will go back on Friday to be with all 17 of his classmates and starting next Tuesday he will go everyday as usual.

We will post again when Sammy is up and running and now that soccer has started, I'm sure we'll have some of that to post too.

By the way....from the video you can tell Jake was a little tired this morning. He was not talking unless directed to :) He normally sleeps 7:30-7:30 but school has him up at 6:45 now and he is not adjusted yet :)

Talk to you soon!

Late Summer Update

Hi everyone! It has been awhile since my last post. We have been busy at the pool and we took a trip to Myrtle Beach mid July.

School starts 8/26 for Jake and one week later for Sammy. We are taking advantage of these last days without a real schedule. They will also both start soccer in a couple of weeks.

Jake will need to take a break from Tae Kwan Do so he can try soccer. Last week he earned his Tiger Cub Green belt. When he returns to Tae Kwan Do later in the fall he will be moving up to the junior class. He really seems to like it alot and he is always excited to get a new belt.

Jake has learned to swim this summer and his latest thing is trying to learn to dive....pretty funny to watch :) Sammy has taught himself something that sort of looks like swimming :) Maybe next year he will want lessons.

Kerry is getting ready to work up for his next deployment which means moving to a new office and having some longer hours. In the meantime, he is having fun riding his new dirtbike when he can and golfing. We went to see him in action on the track last week. The boys think it is awesome. I think I may enjoy watching more when it is not 95 degrees with all that dirt flying around!

I quit my job here in Jones County. The drive was taking a toll (40 min each way) and I found some tutoring I can do here 10 minutes from the house instead at a local middle school. That will keep me a little busy while the boys are in school along with my online stuff.

We hope everyone is well. The pics are Jake getting his new belt and the boys playing at home last month. Talk to you soon!

Sammy's 4th Birthday Party

Sammy had a party with his friends this past weekend. It was a Power Ranger theme (as you can see from the Power Ranger swim gear he is wearing:) and all of the kids had a fun time.

Both boys took swim lessons last week. Jake has become a fish and is continuing lessons. Sammy likes to be in the water but he was not too keen on the lessons so he will put those on hold for awhile.

We joined a local club that will let us take the boys swimming and play golf. It will be nice to have somewhere to take them this summer in the heat...they already want to go everyday! Work is slower for me now since school is out and with the boys out of school too we have lots and lots of time on our hands :) The pool will help us keep busy.

We head to Myrtle Beach in a couple of weeks for the annual father/son golf tournament which will be fun. We will get to see the grandmas and grandpa as well as Aunt Michelle.

We hope everyone is having a fun summer and we will talk to you soon!

Party

Darth Vader and his most trusted Storm Trooper will see you at Jake and Sam's birthday party.

Summer news

We have had lots of activity since my last post. Sammy got his "big boy" bike. He is doing really well on it and he is very happy to be like Jake now.

The boys also had "graduation" from pre-school last Thursday. It was truly Jake's last day as a pre schooler, but Sammy has one year to go. As you can see...the true "graduates" wore the robes :) The three year olds got to sing some extra songs as their "special" part of the day :) It was very cute and we got it all on video too. It has really been a wonderful school. In the pics you can see the boys with their teachers. It will be interesting to see how they do on their own at different schools next year as Jake moves onto the big K.

Jake also earned his yellow belt in Tae Kwan Do. It is the second belt for him (they all start at white). He had to "test" last week with all of the TKD students and adults. He had to stand in front of everyone with one other student and show some punches, blocks and how he can stand still for 30 seconds (toughest part!). He was very happy...he has wanted yellow for awhile now.

Sammy is taking a break from TKD :) It is just not something he enjoys all that much right now. It could be his age or maybe it is just not for him. We plan to try soccer in the fall.

We are heading to OH this week for Jake and Sammy's bday party so we hope to see many of you this weekend. We hope everyone is well and we'll talk to you soon!

Summer visit

It has been awhile since my last post. We are finally back to "normal." The boys are back in school after spring break, Kerry is at his new job and I am on my usual schedule.

It is getting warmer here each week. Pretty soon we can add the beach to our list of activities.

We will be heading to OH the second week of June (13-17). Kerry may be heading to a school in VA later in the summer so we wanted to get a visit in before then. We hope to see as many of you as we can.

Jake and Sam are doing well. Jake is really, REALLY into Star Wars. He has now seen all 6 movies (numerous times) and he loves to play with Star Wars toys and Kerry has Star Wars Lego on Xbox. He gets his 30 min a day to play. It is a nice thing to hold over him when he starts to misbehave :)

Sammy like to play Star Wars too (because Jake does:) and he is really into sports and anything physical. He loves the playset Kerry built and we got him a little nerf bball hoop for his room he plays with alot.

They have a month left of school. I register Jake for kindergarten tomorrow!

Not much else to report. The pics are from my Mothers Day Lunch at school and a look at Darth Jake using the force to "choke" Sammy :) Talk to you soon!

DisneyWorld

We are back from our Disney trip! We had a great time with Ben, Jennifer, Eric and Ethan. We had good weather and the boys were really good. With four boys between 3-6 years old you never know but they were really great. We hit all four parks during our week there. I have tons of pics but here are some of the better ones.

Our first night was Mickey's BBQ and we got a welcome home cake for Kerry. At Epcot all four boys got their faces painted. We had a bear, a tiger, a super hero and Sammy opted for a less flashy pair of stars :) At Downtown Disney the boys got soaked after dinner in the pop up water fountains and at MGM they spent some time chatting with one of the characters before the parade.

This is still our favorite vacation and all 8 of us plan to go again, like always, in a couple of years.

Here is a link to our other photos if you want to see them. Ben and Jen have theirs up too.

www.disneyphotpass.com

Use my email (kkgump@gmail.com) and the password belle1

We hope everyone is well and we hope to be in OH sometime this summer to see all of you!

Kerry is Home!

Kerry got in around midnight last night. The boys were tired but excited. They set up some snacks and games in one of the gyms on base and then told us to head outside once the buses and vans were 5 minutes away.

There are some pics of last night and one today by our welcome home sign. You can see me and boys waiting inside for Kerry and then the boys with him after he got out of the van.

Kerry has alot of catching up to do but he will have some time to do it. He has to go in for 4 or 5 days for post deployment items but then he will take 3-4 weeks of leave which will include our Disney vacation.

Thanks to all of you who sent cards, emails and packages while he was gone. We hope his next deployment is not anytime soon!

Return Date

We have a return date and time for Kerry! Of course, it could change...and most likely will, but only by hours or maybe a day.

He is set to head to Kuwait tomorrow around 9AM EST. He will spend a couple of days there before he flies to Germany and then Cherry Point here in NC. From Cherry Point (another Marine base nearby) he will take a bus to Camp LeJeune where we are supposed to pick him up at midnight on Easter Sunday.

We are all getting pretty excited. We have our signs ready and we will decorate the yard on Friday. For those of you who do not know or live near a military town...when any of the Marines come home families put signs up near base or in their yards. Ours says welcome home with a block O of course!

I will be sure to get some pictures up once he is back so you can also see the signs the boys made. They are counting the days and they have agreed to let the Easter Bunny come one day late so daddy can take part too.

We will keep you updated!

SOLD!

I had to post that we finally sold our house in Ohio! It took about 14 months and we cut it pretty close with Kerry coming home in 2 weeks but it is gone!!

It was a long process and our timing was awful...who knew the market would get so bad?! The good news is it is gone and a young couple with their first baby on the way is moving in. They can enjoy all the hard work Kerry put into that house.

Kerry is still on track to be home Easter weekend, but as I know all too well, things will and probably will change. I will keep everyone posted. Talk to you soon!

February

Hi everyone! It has been awhile since my last post but things have been busy. Sadly, we could not make it home for my Grandma Sellman's funeral because we were all sick. We are all feeling better now, but it was a rough week last week.

It looks like we may finally have some good news on the home sale front. I do not want to jinx anything, but I can say we have an offer that we are working on and we are hopeful it will all fall into place. Owning 2 homes for 8 mos was never in our plans!

Kerry is still set to come home March 20 something. When I get an exact date I will let everyone know. We have a family trip to DisneyWorld planned for his return in early April. The boys are getting pretty excited. It will be a wonderful few weeks for all of us..Daddy home and Disneyworld! It does not get much better!!

We hope all of you are well. The picture is of Mr Gump and Mr Gump eating at Mommy's restaurant. They like to act like "grownups" and eat out :) Notice the difference in dress...Sammy went casual with no shirt and flip flops while Jake was more conservative :) Talk to you soon!

Party

Jake has his birthday party yesterday. He had three friends over and Sammy of course :) You can see it was Pirate theme. The photo is a little dark but they all have on their eye patches and were saying "ahoy matey!"

The kids all had a fun time and Jake is still running around playing pirate today. He is excited to have his family party with Sammy (and Daddy) this summer in OH.

Talk to you soon!

HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY JAKE!

This is one day late, but his party is today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Holidays

Sorry it has taken so long for a new post. December was a busy month!

We had a nice trip home to OH. The boys were really good in the car and somehow we made it in record time both ways. It was nice to be back in OH and to see everyone. It would be nice if we lived closer but at least you have someone to visit at the beach!

The boys are now back in school as of this week and I am back to work. We are settling back into our routines.

Kerry is set to be home late March so we will not make it home for Easter as we had planned. We would not want him to come home to an empty house!

I have put up some Christmas pics. The boys attended a Teddy Bear Tea for Toys for Tots at the Officers Club and as you can see they decorated cookies with the grandma's. I will soon have some up for Jake's birthday party. We will have his family party later this summer together with Sam.

Talk to you soon!