Back to Plan A

Well the big news this week is that I'm not moving to Alabama as soon as I thought I was.  Brandon is still going in the middle of March, but the kids and I wont be joining him until a few months later.  

The first thing he'll do at Fort Rucker is Warrant Officer Candidate School (WOCS).  This is an intense course and there is a change that he might not make it through.  His chain of command doesn't see the logic in moving our whole family out to Alabama if there is a chance that Brandon wont be staying there. So that was one strike against moving to Alabama in March.

WOCS is similar to Basic Training which means that Brandon and I wont be able to have a lot of contact while he is there.  So it makes a lot of sense for me to stay here at Fort Hood where I already have an established support system.  And so that was the other strike against moving right away. 

I'm kind of bummed about this change of plans.  I was really looking forward to moving on to the next phase (and house) of my life.  But I'm also really happy to stay here for now.  I have good friends here that I will definitely rely on while Brandon is away.

And really this is actually what we thought was going to happen anyway.  It was only recently that we started hearing that I would move with Brandon from the start.  So we are back to Plan A.

This week has been pretty uneventful.  Most of the pictures from this week are from last Friday.  I've been eating a lot of Steel Cut Oats lately and Charlotte and Lydia like to play with the cans.  On Thursday night Charlotte started pretending that one of the cans was a vase.  I thought, "hey we could make it into a real vase."  So that is what we did for Little School on Friday.  

I cut out scrapbook paper in the size of the can.  Then I had the kids color it. 

 Then we glued/taped the paper to the cans and put flowers in them.  I loved how they turned out.  This is Derrick's.  He's getting really good at scribbling.

 Here is Charlotte's.  Her paper had some large flower designs that she had fun coloring in.  (BTW you know you succeeded with a Halloween Costume when your kids are still wearing them months later.)

 And here is Lydia's.  You can't see it in this picture, but she wrote her name on her paper.  She and Charlotte have been very creative with their names for months.  Usually Lydia's looks something like LHIAJ and an any other letter she happens to like.  Charlotte's will look like CHttL.  A few weeks ago I printed out their names and put them on the wall.  Now Lydia likes to copy the letters of her name from that paper.  She's getting pretty good at it.  (Aside from the fact that she thinks the "a" in her name is a "o").

And here are the girls together with their cans.  They were both really proud of their projects and put them up in their room.

Little school has been really fun lately.  We finished up shapes on Thursday.  I love that the girls always like to add extra things to their pictures.  

 Veronica is usually awake during little school.  She has a problem with biting markers so I usually stick her in her high chair and make her color with crayons - which she HATES.  She's usually screaming through the first half of little school.  She quiets down when I get out the treat for the day.  I think treats are most of the reason my kids like little school so much.  I started out giving them Oreos when they were done coloring.  Then we moved on to mother's cookies.  And now we are doing Dumdum suckers.

Veronica is always happy to get out of her high chair.  She's recently learned how to climb up onto chairs which means she can get onto the table.

And two minutes after I took her off the table I found her on the counter.  I forgot about this stage.  Derrick was such a cautious kid that he wouldn't climb on stuff that often.  But Veronica has all of Derrick's physical ability without any of his caution.  She's a crazy climber like the twins were.    

 On Friday I was going to go to a move out information class with housing.  The kids were going to go to my friends house, but then Lydia threw up a tiny little bit.  She milked that for all it was worth and convinced me to not go to the class.  (Which turned out to be fine because I'm not moving as soon as I thought I was anyway.) She wanted to sit on the couch and watch movies and she wanted a throw up bowl just in case.  Well this is what she did right after I told her I wasn't going to the class.  Faker!

Saturday was probably the most unproductive day that we've ever had.  Brandon wasn't feeling well, I was tired, the weather was bad, and the kids were just fine watching movies all day.  It was pretty awful.

Sunday was better.

By Monday things were back to normal.  We started a money unit in our little school.  Brandon found pictures of coins online and I put them into Adobe Illustrator to make our coloring sheets.

Charlotte and Lydia like having their own separate beds, but sometimes I find them like this when I check on them at night.  I love that they are holding hands.

And here is the final thing that was on my camera for this week.  It's a video of the kids running around our living room. I love how they are all so cute with Veronica.  

 Well that's pretty much us this week.  We'll see if there are any more changes to our plans to report next week.