First few weeks of school, last few weeks in Alabama

At some point during the past few weeks I had a little bit of a spiritual revelation.  I was feeling pretty sad about the fact that we are moving away from all of our friends here in Alabama.  I was even starting to think that maybe it was time to start distancing myself from everyone and everything here.  I didn't want to get hurt by getting close to anyone new and then moving away. I was thinking that since our time is almost up here there is really nothing else that I can accomplish.

As I was pondering on this I had this STRONG feeling that there are still plenty of things that I can do here.  Even though we aren't staying as long as I thought we were there are still people that I can help, and programs that I can have an impact on. 

So for the past few weeks I've been seeking out things I can do while I am still here. And I've been happy to find several places where I could make a difference.  It's nice to know I'm needed.     

The three older kids have all started school.  The night before school started was "sneak a peek" night.  We were able to go meet the kids' teachers, see the classrooms, and find their seats and their cubbies.  We also got to walk around the school and see places like the library and the lunch room.  The lunch room had this cool mural that the kids wanted to get a picture with

Charlotte wanted to be by the tiger picture.

Derrick was so happy to see his classroom.  He's officially in Pre-K this year, but it's the same classroom as last year.  He sat right down at his table and looked at me and said, "bye."  He wanted to get to work.  He was pretty sad when he had to leave with me.  

Charlotte and Lydia had their first day of Kindergarten on August 4th. That's super early for school, but I don't mind.  The kids get a week off for Thanksgiving, Three weeks for Christmas, another week for Easter and are out of school before Memorial Day so it's worth starting early.  Plus it's so hot that we haven't really done anything outside anyway.

 They were both nervous, but also really excited.   Here's Charlotte with her sign and outfit. Charlotte loves dresses and has worn a different dress to school every day so far.

And Lydia with her sign.  She has started wearing shirts and leggings.  She says she's dressing like  a real kindergartner.

Derrick wanted a picture too, but he didn't have his first day of school until two weeks later.

And here is Veronica.  She is holding a stack of puzzle pieces. 

And here are all four kids together.

Our bus stop was pretty busy this year.  There were three neighbor boys at our bus stop.  Two more boys (including Derrick) would start pre-k two weeks later.  I was hoping that we'd be able to get a picture of all 7 kids lining up together, but two of the boys moved out of their house the day before the pre-k boys started school.  So nevermind on that picture.

Kindergarten is an all day thing here so the girls are gone until 3:00 pm.  That's a long day.  Sometimes I'll look at the clock and think, "the girls are still in school."  But we've all adjusted to the long day really well. I just keep telling myself that if they'd been born 2 months earlier they would be in 1st grade and going all day this year anyway. 

While the kids were in school I kept busy with some decluttering.  Over the next few days I sold off several of our larger items that we don't want to take back to Utah just to put into storage for a few months.  One of the things was our slide.  As far as I know the girls still haven't noticed this is gone.

Another thing I sold was our guest bed.  I've wanted to sell this for a while so we could have room in our toy room again, but I was hanging onto it in case we had any family come visit us for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Now that we know we'll have moved by then I was just fine with selling the bed.

I was planning on keeping the wagon, but Charlotte and Lydia told me that they'd outgrown it and I could sell it. I tried to tell them that we still needed it, but I realized they were right.  We haven't used it since the 4th of July and whenever we used it before then the kids just fought over who got to ride in it.  I suspect that by the time we get it out of storage the kids will have completely outgrown it.  So I said good bye and sold it.

Brandon cleaned out our garage and we said goodbye to a large dresser that he's been storing things in.  The garage was getting pretty clean, but I still had a lot of clothes in there left over from my clothing swap.  I was saving them for the next one.  My pile of clothes got even bigger when a lady in our ward donated 12 garbage bags full of girl clothes for the swap.

I was going to sell this dresser that we no longer use, but when I went to take a picture of it for the classifieds page I noticed that Charlotte had it set up like a little desk.  So we are hanging on to it for a little bit longer. (But it's not going on the moving truck.  If anyone wants to put dibs on it I'm selling it for $10.)

Brandon has quite a bit of free time these days so when I casually mentioned that I wanted a nice travel bag for my make up he decided to MAKE me one. He designed, cut out, and sewed this bag together all by himself.  I am super impressed and super excited to use the bag.

The Olympics started the day after school started. I've really wanted to watch the Olympics this year because they are in Brazil which is where my parents are on their mission.  I wasn't sure if we'd be able to watch them since I didn't know what channels we get with our regular antenna here.  It certainly says something about our TV habits when we've lived here a year, but this was the first time we've bothered to find out what broadcast TV channels we get. I was pretty happy when NBC was one of the three channels that we could pick up.  

We did some kid swapping with my friend Becca's family so her kids came and hung out while Becca and Shawn went on a date.  We had fun watching the Opening Ceremonies, but WOW the Parade of Athletes was long.

Brandon was at an overnight scout camp so after the other kids went home I let Charlotte and Lydia sleep out in the living room with me.  They slept on the futon and I slept on the couch.  I planned to stay up and watch the torch lighting, but I ended up falling asleep.  I woke up hours later and some sitcom was playing on TV.

Brandon came home from camping on Saturday afternoon and we dropped the kids off at Becca's house for our turn for a date.  We went to Enterprise and window shopped at a ton of stores there.  We also made sure to get some ice cream at Milky Moos.  We've been trying to get ice cream together since our anniversary in May, but we've kept putting it off.  So it was nice to finally do that.

On Sunday I got all dolled up because we have 1:00 church so I actually have time to do things like curl my hair.  It also worked out because I needed some nice pictures of myself for my linkedin profile.  I was super happy with how I looked in this dress.  I actually got this dress from the clothing swap that I put together in July.

Derrick and Veronica like to wake up between 5:45 and 6:30.  And once they are up they are UP.  They both usually are asking to get dressed and eat breakfast.  Here they are at 5:55.  

Antler's bead nose fell off and Charlotte decided to change the nose to a heart shaped bead.  Lydia decided that Nose needed a black bead.  So I spent some time sewing on the noses and sewing up some little rips.  Charlotte found a lacy sock that doesn't have a mate and turned it into a dress for Antler.  Both reindeer were very happy with their changes.

I had my second (and final) clothing swap on August 10th.  I actually remembered to take pictures of this one.  

About 10 women came (none wanted to be photographed) and were able to find many many clothes for their children.

I was so excited by how many clothes we had. When it was all over I still had probably 12 bags/boxes of clothes left over. But they were different than the ones I had earlier in the day. If we weren't planning on moving so soon I'd have hung onto everything and done another swap in about three months.  But I didn't want these things taking up any more room in my garage any longer.  So I donated everything to a local thrift store that provides free back to school outfits for families in need.

Charlotte set up a whole "house" in the toy room.  She wanted me to take pictures of it when it was done.  Here is her office.

Here bedroom.

Anter's area.

The babies room.

The kitchen.  Complete with a garbage can and liner, empty sprinkle bottles, and a cook book.

The bathroom.  The bucket is the bath tub.  The wrench on the box is her tooth brush on the counter.

For about two weeks straight it rained every afternoon.  Derrick and Veronica were starting to get a little stir crazy so Brandon took them on some errands.  Charlotte and Lydia stayed home and set up a fancy tea party.  I made them hot chocolate to drink out of their cups.

On Saturday morning I went over to the community garden to take care of my poor neglected plot.  I haven't been there since around the 4th of July.  It's just been either too hot or too rainy to go. I was sad to see that all the weeds had taken over and all the food plants were dead.

I spent about two hours pulling weeds and clearing out the plot.  If we were staying I would be getting ready to plant things in the fall.  Instead I let the guy in charge know that he can find a new owner for plot 6.  I'm going to miss this bit of earth.  It's taught me a lot and I'm looking forward to one day having my own yard where I can have a massive garden.

The air conditioner in the Honda started acting weird so Brandon went to investigate.  That yielded this awesome pose.

One nice thing about the rain is that it makes the air a lot cooler after it passes.  So sometimes - if it's not raining- we go out in the front yard in the evening. Derrick has rediscovered bubbles and he loves to watch them blow away when we are outside. 

The girls love to get their bikes and ride them around in the drive way.

Last Sunday Veronica fell asleep on the way home from church and stayed asleep when we got home.  That never happens.  Lydia fell asleep too and so it was just Derrick and Charlotte away.  Charlotte wanted to take our picture.

Then she wanted to be in the picture.

I knew it was raining a lot here, but I wasn't really paying attention to the rain until my friend Morgan started posting stories about the flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Morgan is from Baton Rouge, but she's here while her husband is in flight school.  She and her husband both have family members that were affected by the massive amounts of rain that were falling in Louisiana.  

If you haven't heard, Louisiana had an insane amount of rain fall within about 2 days. I read somewhere that it was the equivalent of all of Seattle rainy season falling in 48 hours.  In some areas the odds of this type of flooding were once every 1000 years.  Entire neighborhoods that had never seen flood waters were being evacuated by boat.  It was crazy. 

I spent a lot of time reading the things Morgan posted about the floods.  Two articles in particular stood out to me.  Both were written by Rod Dreher. The first one is What you lose, What you gain. The second one is Flood of Misery Flood of Grace. I highly recommend you take some time and read these yourself.  

Soon Morgan was posting about a friend who was renting a U-haul and taking a load of supplies from Fort Rucker to Louisiana.  At first I was kicking myself for being so quick to donate all those clothes to the thrift store.  I didn't think I had anything to donate.  But then I realized that I had a few things that I'd posted on the classifieds pages, but that hadn't sold yet.  And so I did have things to donate afterall.  

These burp clothes, bibs, and blankets are now probably being put to good use.  

As well as our pack n play that formerly was just used on camping trips.  

And the last of four high chairs is now holding another baby.  I was a little sad to think about saying goodbye to these things, but knowing that they were going to people that NEEDED them made it super easy to let go.

Our involvement in this flood is going to get a lot more personal.  Next weekend Brandon is going with other people from our church to help with the clean up.  Part of me keeps thinking, "why are they waiting until two weeks after the flood to help? They need to be there now!"  But there are still many places where the water still needs to recede before people can start cleaning.  That's where our group of volunteers will be able to help.

This whole thing is terrible, but part of me is very grateful for the timing. About a week before the flooding happened Brandon and I started to get little promptings that maybe he should look into applying for a job with FEMA. (Federal Emergency Management Administration.) Brandon LOVES emergency preparedness and so working for FEMA would be a great career for him.  So going to Louisiana to help clean up is kind of a nice way for him to see if this is something he'd like to do for a living.

Anyway, meanwhile back in our non-flooded home we continued to enjoy our front yard in the evenings.  Charlotte and Lydia have been pretending the Peaches from the Ice Age Movies is their imaginary pet.  They set up a whole area for her under the tree.

And they brought out some of their farm toys and played for a long time.

On another night all the kids got out their bikes.  Even Derrick sat on his bike for the first time in pretty much ever.

Another night Brandon took Charlotte and Lydia on a bike ride around the block.  Veronica was so mad when they left her.  She screamed about it for about 10 minutes.  When Brandon came back Veronica hopped in her trike and started scooting down the street.  She made sure Brandon came with her.  Every time he asked her if she wanted to stop she would point ahead and say, "I go this way."  So they went on an extremely slow walk down the road.  They finally made it to a park and Veronica got of the trike and went to play on the park.  Brandon was pretty sure she'd had that in mind the whole time.

Derrick finally started Pre-K on Thursday August 18th.  I was planning to get a picture, but I didn't because Derrick was super upset the whole morning.  He didn't want to get dressed, he didn't want to put on his back pack, he didn't want to put on his shoes, he didn't want to go to the bus stop, he didn't want to do any of it.  This was so out of character for him.  I figured he was just nervous, and I hoped he would calm down when he realized it was the exact same as last year.

My friend Deb works in Derrick's class and she said he was just fine when he got to school.  She loves Derrick because he is always so happy and excited.  She said that he seemed to be looking for Charlotte and Lydia when it was time to get on the bus.  That sounds about right because he always gives them long hugs when they come home from school.

I celebrated having all three kids back in school by going to the Employment Readiness Class here on post. It was great to get lots of up to date info about job hunting.  (Did you know that resumes can be two pages now.)  I'm super excited to dust off my resume, get it polished, and start looking for a great company to work for.

We still don't really know when we are moving back to Utah, but it is soon.  Brandon ran around to many different appointments last week.  Basically the only thing he accomplished was to make more appointments for this week. But all those appointments should actually get things moving.

In the meantime I just keep looking for things that I can do to help out while I am here in Alabama.  I don't know how much time I have left, but I'm going to make it count.

So, here's the deal

Okay, it's time to update you all on what's going on with us career-wise. I've been dancing around this  topic all summer. I've gradually started telling people what's up, and now I'm starting to lose track of who I've told what.  So that means it's time to update everyone with a blog post.

Let's just rip the band-aid off quickly:

Brandon is not returning to flight school, and he's leaving the Army.

And we are moving within the next two months.

Crazy huh?

I'm sure you have a ton of questions so let's do a little Q and A.  Starting with the obvious one:

Why is Brandon not in flight school?

There are a lot of reasons.  Basically the simplest answer is that Brandon is good at learning, and he's good at handling stress, but he can't learn under stressful circumstances.  And Army Flight School is just one long stress-fest.  Plus Brandon doesn't sleep well anyway, and the stress was making it so he wasn't sleeping well at all.  The lack of sleep made it so he couldn't remember what he was supposed to learn so that led to more stress, and more sleep loss, and the whole thing spiraled down from there.
Even with all the stress and sleep problems Brandon was willing to just put his head down and keep pushing through it. However, after talking to several of the higher ups, he realized that this probably wasn't the best course of action.  According to the higher ups, things didn't get less stressful after graduation.  Brandon wasn't looking forward to years of stress as an Army Pilot.

Brandon had pretty much made up his mind about leaving the flight program when we got a visit from our home teachers (for my non-LDS friends, home teachers are men from church who are assigned to check in on several families once a month).  One of our home teachers is also a flight student who is a few months ahead of Brandon.  We told them some of what was going on and our home teacher talked about how he thinks of Flight School as downhill skiing.  He talked about how he fells like he always has to be on the lookout for obstacles to avoid as he's speeding down the hill toward graduation. This metaphor was helpful, but probably not in the way that our home teacher intended.  

After he left I turned to Brandon and said something like, "yes, you need to leave flight school because we have never ONCE thought of this as downhill."

For us flight school has always seemed like an uphill climb. Think back over the past few years.  SERE, HOST, and WOCS were all extremely difficult for Brandon to complete, heck even putting in his Warrant Officer Packet was like pulling teeth.  And honestly the only reason he made it through the Primary Phase of flight school was that he was already a private pilot with an instrument rating.  He was already very familiar with a lot of the flight concepts they were learning.  

As we considered whether or not Brandon should complete Advanced Training we realized that yes, he could keep climbing this mountain.  And he might make it to the top. But we started to question whether or not this was even the mountain that he should be climbing.  Brandon and I both admitted that finishing flight school wasn't something he should do.

So why is Brandon leaving the Army?

Brandon has never felt at home in the Army. All the saluting, and the rank system, and the bureaucracy have annoyed him to say the least. He's put up with it all in order to fly. Now that he can't fly he doesn't want to be in the Army anymore.

Can't he transfer to a different job in the Army?

He could, but most of them would require him to go back to being an enlisted soldier until he meets the requirements to be a Warrant Officer again.  That would mean a pay cut in $1000 a month, and we just don't want to do that.  Plus there's that who thing of not actually liking being a soldier unless he gets to fly.

How is he getting out of the Army so quickly? Doesn't he owe them more time?
If he'd finished advanced training he'd owe the Army 6 more years of service - whether in a cockpit or not.  But he didn't finish advanced training.  Perhaps in a different time they would have still wanted him to finish his initial 5 year enlisted contract, but the Army is currently downsizing the number of soldiers.  Every person they can get out voluntarily is one less person they have to cut involuntarily.   So it's not a big problem for him to get out.

Is he getting out with a Medical Discharge?
Brandon has met with some sleep specialists, but they couldn't find any medical causes for his sleep problems.  So they aren't classifying it as a medical problem.  If his sleep problems stemmed from PTSD or a traumatic brain injury he'd get a medical discharge.  But that's not the case.

So why are you moving so fast? Didn't you say you had 6 months to a year left in Alabama?
Well part of the reason is that we didn't realize that 3 months had gone by, and yet we were still saying we'd be here for 6 months to a year.  But even then we are still getting out sooner than expected.  Basically, the paperwork for Brandon to get out of the Army is progressing faster than originally anticipated.

So now what? What job does Brandon want to have now?
He still loves aviation, so he'd love a job in that field.  Right now his top job pick is with the FAA  (Federal Aviation Administration) as an electronic technician. Long time readers of this blog will remember that 5 years ago Brandon was trying to get that job with the FAA.  That plan ended when he was told that if he had military experience he would have a better chance of getting the job.  He joined the Army partly because of that.

He's interested in other aviation related jobs too so if you have any leads or suggestions please pass them on to us.

Where do you want to live?
We want to live in the Intermountain West.  Utah would be great, but he'd have to have a dang good job for us to be able to afford the house prices there.  Colorado is one place we'd be interested in living.  For some reason Boise keeps coming to mind. Really anywhere that we can have a good income with a low cost of living.

What are you going to do while Brandon looks for a job?
We are going to TEMPORARILY move in with his parents near Ogden, Utah.  We've always been really resistant to the idea of living with either set of parents.  But in this case it just makes the most sense.  Honestly, no matter how I run the scenario in my head we end up at his parents for a few weeks anyway.  See, Brandon hasn't been to Utah or seen most of his family in almost 3 years.  If he did have a job right out of the Army we'd probably try to plan an extended trip to Utah before he started the job.  Or if he gets a job with the FAA there is a three month training in Oklahoma that he'd have to attend, and I'd probably move in with his parents during that time. So it's really not a stretch to just plan on stopping over there no matter what.  

Everyone in the family is THRILLED about this idea.  The kids are excited to live with their grandparents.  The grandparents are excited to see the kids after so many years apart.  Brandon is excited to actually live in the house that his parents started designing when he was a teenager.  And I'm, well, I'm happy for everyone else.

Honestly, I'm not looking forward to the idea of being a stay at home mom in my in-laws house. I just feel like no matter how nice everyone is I'll always feel like my kids and I are doing something wrong or messing something up. And that's why we decided that the best thing to do while we are there is for me to be the working parent and Brandon to stay home.

Both of us are excited about this idea. This will give Brandon time to focus on his job hunt.  And I'd be able to get some recent job experience on my resume.  So if anyone knows of any temporary office type jobs in the Ogden area please let me know.  I'd even be fine with call center stuff.

So what was the point of joining the Army and going to Flight School if it was all going to end like this?
Ha, I've asked myself that plenty of times in the past several months.  

There is a story about a man whom God asked to push on a boulder.  The man pushed with all his strength for years and yet the boulder didn't move.  Many times he felt he was failing and thought about giving up.  Finally God appeared to the man and the man told him that he'd failed him because he wasn't able to move the boulder.  And God replied with, "I didn't ask you to move it, I just wanted you to push on it."  He explained that by pushing on the boulder the man had become stronger and proved his loyalty.  And then God moved the boulder.

I've thought about that story a lot during the past few months.  I think the Army and Flight School have been the boulder for Brandon and I.  We thought that Heavenly Father wanted Brandon to graduated from Flight School.  But now I think he just wanted to teach Brandon and I that we could do hard things.

So no matter how scary this next phase of life is, (and trust me I'm really scared about a lot of it) I know that we'll figure it out.

But please keep us in your thoughts and prayers because the next few months are going to be full of changes.

Time is passing by

I figured out why I'm always so frustrated when I let more than a week go by without updating this blog.  It's because everything is always changing.  Seriously, I don't think we've had two weeks that have had similar schedules since we moved to Fort Rucker.  As soon as I start to get comfortable with a routine - that's when something shifts.

The past few weeks have been no different.  In some way's I feel like I've lived three separate lives in the past three weeks.  Let's start with the middle of July.

The Busy Week

Somehow it seemed like every project or idea that I've committed to in the past few months all came to fruition in one week. 

First up was a clothing swap that I put together and hosted on July 20th. .  Last year I had to get school clothes together for three kids to start pre-k.  It was a little daunting to make sure we were ready, but thanks to thrift stores, and donations from friends my kids ended up with more than enough clothes.  In fact we had so many clothes that I didn't even need to buy any this year.  But I still remembered how daunting it felt to try to get three kids ready to start school. I wanted to help out other people who were trying to get school clothes together. So I decided to put together a clothing swap.  

I reserved a room at the community center and set up a facebook event.  My friends invited their friends and word spread.  On the day of the event I put all my extra clothes into the car and took them to the community center.  My friend Carrie came and helped me set up the room so that there was a table for each size of clothing.  About 7 other women came and brought their clothes and then we just went around and found what we needed for our families.  It was great!  People really did find clothes they needed.   As an added bonus I made like 5 new friends through the event. 

I even found a few things to take home.  One was this long pink dress for Lydia.  She was so excited to have one that matched Charlotte's.  

It went so well that I decided to host another swap in August.  (It will be the 10th if any of my local friends are reading this.)

On Thursday Brandon and I went to our Ward Missionary meeting.  We both have a lot of ideas to contribute about how to create a missionary spirit in this new ward.  

On Friday night I went to a painting night that my new friend Michelle had set up for a bunch of the LDS ladies on Fort Rucker.  There were probably 15 women there and it was so fun to get to know people who are now in my ward.  We had a lot of fun talking and painting.  (Side note, I keep thinking that I'm my sister Lindsey in this picture.)

I was so happy with how my silhouette of the US turned out.  I did it blue to match the blue colors in my dining room where all my other maps are.  And I put little hearts on all the places where I've lived.  

And then on Saturday I spent the morning helping out my friend Mary and her son paint numbers on the high school parking lot for his eagle project.  Mary has been a little bit of a surrogate mother to me here in Fort Rucker. She watched the kids for me when we moved in.  And she's been teaching a monthly emergency preparedness class.  She's done so much for me that I was happy to have a chance to do something to help her.  So I went to that.  

On Sunday I taught my first Sunday school lesson to my 12-13 year olds.  They are a talkative bunch which is way better than a quiet bunch.  And we all love comic book movies.  So I think we'll all get along just fine. 

So it was a busy week, but a good week because I was doing things. And I should mention that Brandon was so great to do his part and watch the kids while I was off having fun. 

Everyone else was busy with things too.  I took a lot of pictures of the cute little things that the kids were doing. 

Charlotte set up this cute little blanket store.  

Brandon made me this shelf for all my doTerra oils.  (And he made sure to leave lots of room because I want many more.)

Charlotte laid out all of her pictures on the floor.

One day it rained and all the kids put on their swimming suits and played in the rain.

I was watching them while doing dishes and Charlotte hopped up in the window to say hi.

And then Lydia did too.

I think the girls said this was a volcano.

Charlotte created this whole "house" on top of the guest bed in the toy room.  She even slept on it that night.

Derrick re-discovered his love of bubbles.  He likes to stand on the porch and watch the bubbles fly away.

Veronica is currently going through the hobo phase of childhood.  She loves wearing a pajama shirt and no pants all day long.

I took this picture because I love how well my mother's day flowers have grown this year.  I want real flowers every year from now on.

The Mourning Week 

The next week wasn't so fun - at least at first. The brake line on the jeep decided to break on Monday.  Brandon took a look at it, but decided that this was a job for the mechanic.  I was so glad that we have savings, a good mechanic, towing included in our insurance, and a second car because those things all made the situation a lot less stressful.  The jeep was in the shop for a few days and it felt like a minor annoyance rather than a huge disaster.

Another sad thing that happened on Monday was that we received a more accurate idea of when we will be leaving Fort Rucker - and it's sooner than we expected. Somehow we didn't realize that we've been saying, "we'll be here for 6 months to a year" since May.  We were completely oblivious to the fact that 3 months have gone by during that time.

Everything regarding our move is still up in the air, so I'll save the specifics for a future post.

I went through a period of mourning when I realized we'd actually be moving away from Fort Rucker.  It's no secret that I have LOVED everything about this post and I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to all the wonderful people and programs here.  Many tears were shed, and there are more to come.

But I pulled myself together and got on with the rest of the week.  And I channeled a lot of that sadness into the big blog post that I was working on for my travel blog.

I walked by one day to see Veronica doing this.  She's decided that it's her job to vacuum everything.

Brandon was there helping of course, but Veronica was very much in control. (As she always is)

And then I turned around and discovered that Charlotte was moving laundry for me.  My kids are growing up and getting more helpful.  THANK GOODNESS.

Charlotte loves to build things.  Here is a pirate ship.

One night I checked on the girls and discovered they'd erected a tent on their bed.

I also found Derrick and Veronica asleep by their door.

Derrick loves Veronica so much.  I often find his pillow and blanket on the floor next to her bed.  I just know he wakes up in the middle of the night and moves over to be near her.

Charlotte put together this cute outfit.

I spent a lot of the week finishing up a blog post that I've been working on for a month.  I had a goal to finish the post before our next vacation.  I got it done on Thursday evening which was just in time because we were going camping on Friday.

The Beach Vacation

Brandon had to wait until 1:00 to sign out for the weekend.  He took care of getting the car top carrier on top of the Honda before he went to work.  Then I took care of packing the rest of the car.  Over all packing was really easy because this was only going to be an over night trip.  I pretty much just had to throw some food and some clothes in the car and we were ready to go.

Our destination was St Joseph State Park on a little peninsula in Florida three hours south of Fort Rucker.  I found out about this place from one of the Missionaries assigned to our ward.  His first area was in this part of Florida and he told me that St Joseph State Park was the prettiest beach in Florida.

The drive down to St Joe seemed to go by a lot faster than our drive to Gulf Shores two weeks ago.  There wasn't nearly so much traffic this time and so that really helped.  

We arrived in Port St Joe and we could see our final destination for the day out on the horizon.  

After circling around to the south to get onto the peninsula we soon arrived at the State Park.  I checked in with the office and we went to our campsite.  We got the tent set up pretty quickly.

It was WAY too hot to worry about dinner so we just ate crackers and then hurried to change into our swimming suits.  Then we drove a short distance to one of the day use areas.  We crossed over the sand dunes on a boardwalk and were greeted by a vision of paradise.

I was on awe of how beautiful this place was.  I decided that we needed to add a line to that "Ask the Missionaries- they will help you talk.  It would be, "Need advise about where to go on a great vacation?  Ask the missionaries - they will help you."

The board walk turned into a staircase that circled around itself and then let us out onto the beach.

It seems like everything I looked at could have been a vacation advertisement.

The beach was virtually deserted which was pretty cool for a Friday evening.

Brandon set up our beach umbrella and then we all hit the water.

Derrick and Veronica immediately went back to their sitting in the water game.

Check out my adventurous little girl.

I love this one of Lydia riding a wave onto shore.  Brandon would hold the boogie board and wait for a wave.  When the wave came he would let go and Charlotte or Lydia would ride the wave.

Here is Charlotte searching for sea life.

Brandon and I trying to take a selfie together but the sun was too bright for a good picture.

Charlotte getting ready to play in the water.

Me attempting to be a model.

Watching the sunset with Lydia.

My turn on the boogie board.

Derrick surprised me by wanting to play in the water.  He would wade out into waist deep water and play in the waves along with the rest of us.  Lately he's learned how to put his head under water at our neighborhood pool so he didn't mind when big waves hit him in the face.  He'd just laugh and keep playing.

Brandon and Charlotte went out far into the water and ended up getting stung by a bunch of microscopic things.  Brandon came back onto the shore and spent a while itching his legs.  I think he'd run into a bunch of jellyfish larva (sea lice).  We all got a few more bites throughout the rest of our stay, but that was the worst run in we had with the sea lice.

Brandon didn't feel like going in the water again, and the sun was almost set, so we started packing up to go back to the car.

The kids found something strange on the sand.  I'd seen a picture of one of these before and I knew they weren't harmful.  I couldn't remember the exact name so I called them Beach Buttons.  They are really called Blue Buttons and are a type of Jelly Fish.  But they don't sting.

We also found many holes that Lydia hypothesized were crab holes.

We went back to our campsite and roasted hot dogs for dinner.

Then Brandon got to do something that he's been looking forward to doing for a long time - lay in the hammock.  He was in there by himself for maybe 30 seconds before the kids took over.

At one point all four kids were laying with him.

We got the kids into pajamas and put them to bed.  Then Brandon and I swung in the hammock and looked at the stars for a while.  A little later - when we were sure the kids were sound asleep - we went for a walk to the beach that was right by our campground.  The stars were so bright that we could see the milky way.  It was amazing to look at all those stars go all the way down to the horizon. I've never seen that before.

When we came back to the tent we decided to take the rain fly off the top.  One reason was because it was so dang hot we figured the air would circulate better without the top.  And the other reason was so we could have a chance at seeing the Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower which was supposed to peak that evening (July 29)

The night ended up being pretty hot.  Brandon couldn't sleep and so he moved outside to the hammock where he still couldn't sleep.  Derrick moved onto the air mattress with me.  Lydia said that she woke up in the middle of the night and was all alone so she snuggled with Veronica.  She also said that she saw her very first shooting star.  She was happy about that, and I was happy we left the rain fly off.

Derrick and Veronica woke up around 5:30.  Lydia was up soon after then.  We woke Charlotte up and then we all went out to walk on the beach via the access point near our campground.

It was so close that we'd been able to hear the waves from our tent.

Lydia's hypothesis about the crab holes was confirmed when we saw hundreds of little tracks leading into the holes.

Soon we spotted many crabs and it was fun to watch them dart into their little holes.  They walked sideways and would enter their holes sideways too.

Derrick thought the crabs were so funny.  He'd laugh when he saw one running.  He kept pointing up ahead and would say, "this way, see more crabs."

The beach was so pretty that morning.  We walked along the shore for a long time.

Here's proof that I was there.

We found this star fish washed up with all the shells. Derrick and Veronica love star fish so they were really excited to see this.

Sun rise over the sand dune.

Derrick and Veronica holding hands.

The beach was so pretty. (And eerily similar to the default desktop background for one of the versions of Windows)  I liked that the beach was so small.  We didn't have to go on a trek of death through miles of sand to get to the water's edge.

Eventually we made it back to our campsite.  Brandon made egg mcmuffins for breakfast while I rolled up all the sleeping bags in the tent.

We decided that the best thing to do would be to take down the tent while it was still relatively cool and shady at our campsite.  So Brandon and I did that while the kids goofed off.  Here are Derrick and Veronica in the hammock.  They would sit in it and then purposely make themselves fall out.  They'd laugh super hard and then ask to get back in.

I found sunglasses that I'd been meaning to give to the girls since our first beach trip this summer.  I finally remembered to let them have them.  They were so excited.

Lydia made a pile out of all the shells she'd collected.

Charlotte and Lydia took a turn in the hammock. They had Lydia's camera and used that to take lots of silly pictures.  

Like this one. 

And this one.

And this one

And another

Brandon and I got the tent down and the girls preformed the time honored tradition of rolling on the tent to get the air out.

After the gear was all packed up we went to the bathhouse and changed into our swimming suits.  And then it was back to the beach by the campground.

Brandon wanted to take this picture of me.  He likes my beach dress.

I only sat on the shore for a second before I got in the nice warm water - where I was promptly pinched by a crab! It pinched me right on my middle toe. I screamed with surprise. It didn't hurt so much as it scared me. I felt a little violated by the ocean after that.  I wanted to sit on the beach, but I didn't want to make the kids scared of the water so I stayed in the water. It certainly motivated me to work on my floating skills.  I wasn't putting my feet down on the bottom for anything!

Later I did sit on the beach.  Charlotte and Lydia and I had fun finding the little muscles that wash ashore and then burrow down into the sand. It's fun to hold them and feel them burrow down into next to your skin.

I tell you, I am going to miss the beach so much.

The sun went behind a cloud and the kids got a little cold.  We solved that by burying them in the warm sand.  I joked that this is how we should get them to hold still when we take family pictures.

Here they all are relaxing.

Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica all worked together on this sand castle.

There was a storm rolling in a few miles away and the winds were reaching us.  Our umbrella blew away, but Brandon caught it before it got too far.  We decided this was a good chance to go back to our campsite for lunch.

So we went back there and had hoagie sandwiches.

We wanted to take a break from the beach for a little while so we went for a walk that connected our campground to another one a little to the north.

We passed a pretty lake.

When we got to the other campground we went out onto the beach that was near there.  We didn't have any of our beach stuff with us, but that almost made this beach more fun.  For the first time ever we all went out into the water and played in the waves at the same time.  (Well all of us except Veronica who refused to go very far in the water.  She sat on the shore and watched us while the waves came up around her.)  It was so fun to stand in the water, waiting for a wave with Brandon, Charlotte, Lydia, and Derrick all around me. When a wave came we'd all jump up and feel the wave move us through the water. We did that over and over and over again.

We could have stayed at that beach for a long time, but we had to get back to our car and move it out of our campsite by 1:00.  So we reluctantly left the beach and hurried back along the boardwalk to our campsite.  We all got in the car and then drove back to the day use area we'd been at the evening before.

Brandon set up the beach umbrella, and then decided to take a nap under it.  His sleepless night had caught up with him.

Derrick and I went back out into the water and had fun jumping through waves together.  Charlotte and Lydia played with their boogie boards.  Veronica sat on the shore and watched some people play Frisbee in the water.  She would cheer for them each time they caught the Frisbee.

I was surprised by how not-crowded the beach was.  This was the middle of the day on SATURDAY, and yet there was hardly anyone there.

I love how comfortable the girls are in the water.  You can see Lydia upside down in the water behind Charlotte.

I can't remember exactly what happened, but Charlotte got sand all over her face and she wanted me to take a picture.

Veronica started getting really sleepy and she wanted me to bury her in the sand again.  She called it her pillow and her blanket. Lydia and Derrick each got buried too.  Brandon woke back up and swam in the water for a little bit.

I was trying to figure out if we should go or not when Charlotte ran back from the water saying she'd been pinched by a crab.  Whether it was true or not - that effectively ended our time at the beach.  Veronica was basically asleep in the sand, Derrick was heading that way too, and Charlotte was crying.  So we went back to the car and got everyone changed into regular clothes.  I put some lavender on Charlotte's pinch mark and that made it feel better.

We stopped off at the bathroom so the adults could change and then we started heading home.

Originally we'd planned to stay at the beach until dark, but this worked out better anyway.  We grabbed dinner at Burger King drive through, and made it home before dark.  We were able to get laundry started, put things away, and give the kids baths before it was too late.

Overall I wish we'd been able to stay there longer, but I was very happy with our 24 hours in paradise.

A happy surprise greeted me when we came back.  Just before we left on Friday, I'd shared my post of 100 things to do within 100 miles of Fort Rucker on one of the Fort Rucker Wives pages.  I've done this with other posts and got about 500 page views from doing that.  I expected the same thing.  Instead I got over 5,000 page views.  Over the rest of the weekend the post got over 10,000 page views.  In 6 days it became my second highest viewed post EVER.  I think I'm a legitimate blogger now.  I also think that people are really starved for things to do around here.

The school week 

This week has been our school week.  On Monday I took Charlotte and Lydia with me to buy school supplies.  Today we all went to the Sneak-a-Peek event at the Primary School.  We got to meet the girls' Kindergarten Teachers and see their room.  They have different teachers, but they are in the same large classroom (it's called a pod).  It was fun to find their desks and their cubbies.

We also went to Derrick's classroom. He's has the same teacher and  room as last year, but he's more of an official Pre-K student this year. He was so excited to see his room again.  He sat right down at his little table and said, "bye" to me.  He wanted his teacher to get out the fish that he likes to work with.  He was pretty mad when we all had to leave and he had to come with us.

Charlotte and Lydia have their first day of Kindergarten tomorrow.  It feels really surreal that it's happening already. I don't know if that's because August 4th is super early to start school, or if it's because I can't believe they are that old.

Derrick will start school in two weeks.  He is going to be so mad when he can't get on the bus tomorrow.

Well that pretty much sums up the past few weeks.  I wonder how much will change in the next ones?