We are staying in Alabama (for now)

So remember how my last post was all about how we are getting ready to move, and how I was thinking we'd be moving away from Alabama by the end of September?  Well, that's not happening. This little meme sums up the situation perfectly.   

Back when Brandon first decided to leave the Army we were told that it would take 6 months to a year to process his paperwork.  That would have us leaving anywhere between November of 2016 and May of 2017.  I was happy about this because it would give us plenty of time to save up money and for Brandon to look for a civilian job.  

Well two months ago we got word that the powers that be decided that Brandon's paperwork didn't need to go through the HRC (Human Resources Command) department.  That meant that all that had to happen was that his paperwork had to go through his Chain of Command and get four signatures.  We were told to expect it to take about 1 to 2 months for that to happen.  

That's when we went into panic mode and started trying to prep for the move.  Since we had hardly any savings and no jobs lined up we knew that we'd have to move into his parents house in Utah while we tried to ease into civilian life again. 

Over the past two months Brandon's paperwork has slowly crawled up the chain of command.  There was a brief delay when he had to sign the paperwork in the presence of a lawyer, and the only lawyer who does that job was on leave for a week.  And then the lawyer had some question that the Legal Department had to straighten out.  So that extended our stay by about three weeks. 

After that everything seemed to be smooth sailing and we expected the last signature from the General to happen any day.  But first Legal had to check everything over one last time.  

And Legal decided that the paperwork does have to go to HRC after all. 

Sending something to Human Resources Command is akin to burying it in soft peat for 3 months. This is the department that can't get orders put together in a timely manner for people who NEED to leave Fort Rucker to report to their next duty station after flight school.  I can't tell you how many friends I've had who are finishing flight school in just a few weeks but have to wait for their official orders before they can plan their move.  Half the trouble we had last year when Brandon was trying to get his orders to Fort Rucker were caused by HRC.

So when Brandon came back from PT (Physical Fitness Training) and told me that he'd just been informed that his paperwork had to go through HRC we knew that meant we'd be here at Fort Rucker for another 3 to 6 months.   And I was over joyed at the news.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've thought, "if only we weren't leaving so soon" during the past two months.  Here are just a few so the things that have made me want to stay.  I've been sad about taking the kids away from their school.  Charlotte and Lydia love their teachers and are doing wonderful in all day Kindergarten.  The school has the highest reading scores in the whole DODEA.  Derrick's Pre-K teachers are so great with him and he's so comfortable in the program.  He's making leaps and bounds in his progress and even started potty training at school!  I didn't want to pull him away from all of that yet.  To say nothing of how anxious I've been about our financial situation, and the plans for moving in with Brandon's parents. 

In short I'm very happy that Army inefficiently is working for us. 

I should, however, add a little caveat to this.  It's possible that HRC will somehow get their act together and go over Brandon's paperwork very quickly.  If that happens they will sent it back and all it needs is a signature from the General.  As soon as he signs it Brandon will have 10 days to out process.  After those 10 days he's no longer an active duty soldier. And that means we will have to move out of our house and away from Fort Rucker.  

So we still have to be ready for a whirlwind move on very little notice.  But in the meantime I'm very happy that we get to stay a little bit longer.

Okay so now that that update is out of the way, let's talk about all the little things that have been going on around here.  

Starting with the week after Labor Day. 

This week will probably go down in my memory as "That week we went to the doctor every day."    

It started off with taking Lydia to instacare on Labor Day.  I'd taken her to the Lyster Army clinic on Friday because I thought she had strep.  They gave her a penicillin shot which I hoped would get her back on her feet in no time.  But by Monday she was still really swollen so we went to Instacare to get some steroids and to avoid going to the ER like what had happened with Derrick during Memorial Day weekend. So anyway we got the prescription, but the only pharmacy that was open was out of the medicine until the next day.  GRRRR. 

So on Tuesday Lydia was still sick and couldn't go to school.  Brandon stayed home from work to take care of her because I had to take Derrick to Dothan to meet with the Child Psychologist.  We've had this Autism re-evaluation scheduled for a year.  For a while there I was worried that we would have moved before this appointment.  But we were still here.  I'm sure Derrick is still on the autism spectrum, but I'm also sure the Doctor could see all the improvement that Derrick has made in the last year.    

We picked up Lydia's medicine on the way back from Dothan.  I was hoping that the medicine would help Lydia start to feel better.  But it didn't work fast enough because she was still not feeling well on Wednesday.  I'd made plans to give my friend and her kids a ride to Lyster for some things since she doesn't have a car.  So Lydia came along with me and Veronica while we did that.  My friends' daughter needed to get her 4 year old shots and Lydia was under strict orders not to tell her anything about how much her shots had hurt. 

On our way out of Lyster we passed a solder who gave me a pat on the arm.  I looked over and realized it was Brandon heading into the clinic for his own doctor's appointment. Between his sleep issues and his separation physicals he has a lot of appointments at Lyster and I've given up keeping track of them all. It was fun to see him, and even more fun to give him a quick kiss in the entry way.  

I figured that surely Lydia would be feeling better by Thursday, but she woke up in the morning with a terrible hacking cough.  I figured the school wouldn't consider that as doing better so I kept her home again and made an appointment at Lyster.  Brandon took her to that and the doctor prescribed some cough medicine and recommended keeping her home on Friday as well.  

By this point I was feeling very grateful for our wonderful medical insurance and wondering if we really could make it in the civilian word.  So that was just one more thing that added to my relief when Brandon told me on Friday that we were staying at Fort Rucker for a few more months.  

I can't remember if anyone had a doctors appointment on Friday, but I'm willing to bet the Brandon did.  (Seriously, I think he spends more time at Lyster than he does at work.)

By the time Saturday rolled around I was feeling like we had to get out of the house.  Thanks to prepping for the move we've been spending all our Saturdays at home.  We didn't go anywhere during the entire month of August.  We figured that we were going to take 10 days to drive back to Utah so we didn't want to get sick of driving anywhere in the mean time.  But once we found out that we weren't leaving so soon we decided it was time for a mini day trip. 

Our first stop was in Enterprise for an emergency preparedness fair for Coffee County.  Brandon was hoping to get some info on how to get CERT Certified, but we probably would have gone to this anyway because we like this kind of stuff.    

They had firetrucks, police cars, SWAT vehicles and other cool stuff outside.  But the kids had the most fun looking at a search and rescue horse.  

 And then we went inside to see the booths in there.  The kids just wanted to stay at a table and color pictures for Firefighter, so they did that while Brandon went around and grapped all the info and free stuff.

 The kids each had a pretend safety hat and Veronica's kept slipping over her eyes.

 Here's Lydia showing off her drawing - and sporting her bag of free stuff, her free sucker, and her CPR necklace.  Emergency Prep fairs have the best swag.

 And Charlotte with her picture.

After we left the fair we drove south to a tiny town just over the Florida border called Ponce De Leon.  The town is home to Ponce De Leon Springs State Park.  We'd been planning to visit this spring on Labor Day, but Lydia had been sick. It turned out better that we waited because they were having some sort of special event at the park and everyone got in for free.  So we didn't have to pay the $4 entrance fee.  If we'd been there earlier we would have been able to have free hamburgers and hot dogs.  But we'd brought out own picnic stuff so we didn't need that anyway.

We had a quick picnic and then everyone changed into swimming suits and we went down to the springs.  I was expecting to just see a natural hole in the ground with water coming out of it.  But instead the area had a swimming pool built around it.

The day was hot and humid so we were all excited to get into the water.  But as soon as we put our feet in the water we changed out minds about that plan.  The waster was COLD.  It stays at 68 degrees all year long, but for how hot the day was the water felt like it was freezing.  Just putting our feet in took a lot of courage.

Everyone around us was diving in so Brandon got brave and got into the water.

 But I was content to stay on the side. Derrick kept splashing me with his feet and that was cold enough.

 Brandon coaxed Charlotte into the water.  I'm not sure how she felt about this.

 For a while I was wondering if we'd driven all that way just to sit on the side of a pool, but then I saw that the water from the springs ran off into a shallow stream.  I figured we'd probably be able to stand that water.  So we went over there and went down the stair case into the run off water.

 This was slightly warmer and a lot more shallow so the kids didn't mind getting in the water.

Here's Lydia.

 And Veronica.

 The area was really pretty.

 We decided to go for a walk down the stream.

All day long Charlotte had been asking to go for a hike in the woods.  I told her this was one of the most unique hikes we'd ever go on.

We didn't go very far down stream, but it was quite an adventure.  The bottom of the stream was smooth sand so it didn't hurt our feet at all to walk on it.  We'd pass submerged logs that were starting to get covered with sand.

 We came back to the start of the stream and Charlotte played in the water for a long time.

 Lydia wasn't feeling well (again) so I sat with her.  Brandon took the other three kids on a little hike on the trail that ran along side the water.

 After he came back we decided it was time to get going.  So we changed back into dry clothes and headed home.

The next day was Sunday and Charlotte and Veronica decided to wear their matching dresses.

 Charlotte made this snowman out of balls.

The next week was what I'd unofficially planned on being our last week here in Alabama.  So naturally I'd planned as much stuff as possible during this week.  

On Monday I had a volunteered to teach a class on Financial Emergency Preparedness.  At the beginning of the year my friends Mary and Melissa started a little emergency preparedness class called "Nacho Mamma's Emergency Preparedness Class."  They held monthly classes and talked about 72 hour kits, storing and using wheat, storing and using beans, gardening, and other topics.  My personal theme for this year was Preparedness so I loved the classes and learned a ton from them.  (Bean bread - it's a think and it's amazing.) We took a break with the classes over the summer, but I was hoping they'd get started again in the fall.  

I decided that I wanted to teach a class before I moved away so I volunteered to get things going with the class on preparing for financial emergencies.  

I talked about keeping cash in your 72 hour kits and your car, paying down debt and saving, making sure you have all your important documents in one place, and insurance.  The class went well. I might even turn it into a blog post, but I'm not making any promises because I'm already backlogged enough over on the travel blog. 

Monday was also important because it was the first day that Lydia had gone to school in over a week.  She wanted to stay home again, but she wasn't acting as sick as she had the previous week.  I couldn't see any reason to keep her home so we made sure she got on the school bus. (She wasn't so happy about that.)  In the afternoon Brandon picked her up early and took her to Lyster for a follow up appointment.  The doctor gave her the all clear and she has been happily going to school ever since.

On Tuesday our string of Doctor's appointments continued with the second half of Derrick's autism evaluation. A lady did lots of tests and observations with him and documented how he reacted to different things.  The biggest change was that he willingly left me in the waiting room and went back to her room.  Last year he'd cried and refused to cooperate when she'd taken him away.  This time he was just fine. I was involved in some other parts of the observation and the lady told me that Derrick was talking much more than she remembered from the year before.  He really has made a ton of progress.

I can't remember what day this picture was taken, but here are Derrick and Charlotte playing with play dough.  Derrick still doesn't spend a lot of time doing things like this, but he certainly participates more than he used to.

On Wednesday I went to Enterprise for a Quickbooks class that I'd signed up for almost at the last minute.  When I go back to work I want to work in an office setting and most jobs I'm looking at require knowledge of Quickbooks. So I've wanted to take a class on quickbooks forever, but I've always put it off.  Well I decided that I needed to take one this year.  And when Brandon decided to get out of the Army I knew I HAD to take one soon.  But the only place that I could find that offered them was the Troy University Extension in Dothan. And the class wouldn't happen until October.

Brandon and I have both been working with the Employment Readiness program here to get our resumes updated.  When I was meeting with the Resume Guru (AKA Mike Kozlowski) he suggested I get in contact with the Small Business Development Department with Troy University.  I did and discovered that they were having a Quickbooks class on Wednesday morning.  The cost was only $25, but I signed up late so it was $40 for me.  That was still a great deal.

So on Wednesday morning I went to the class.  I was a little worried because most of the people there had small businesses.  I was just there to learn all I could about the software.  I was worried that I wouldn't get that much out of the class. I was so wrong.  I learned a ton. And I loved that everyone had real world experience that they could bring to the table.  This class wasn't about Quickbooks in theory.  It was about how to use Quickbooks today.  Not only that we talked a little about income taxes, and FICA taxes, and Sales Tax. We talked about the difference in contractors and employees, we talked about the pros and cons of setting up your clients with credit.  It was like a small business crash course.  I learned more in that 4 hour class than I learned in some of my college classes.  In short, it was great, I loved it, I definitely want to work with Quickbooks in the future.  (I also never want to depend on income from a small business.)

For the past few days Brandon and I had been noticing that our internet was painfully slow.  We like to watch Parks and Recreation on Netflix every night and lately it hadn't been playing right.  So Brandon finally called our provider and they discovered that the router wasn't working.  So Brandon ordered a new router and then discovered that our internet was completely turned off.  He could have called back to get it back on, but we decided to see if we could survive without the internet.

This turned out better than we expected.  For one, I needed a serious detox.  I kind of thought that I'd suddenly turn into a more attentive mom without my phone to distract me.  But instead I just discovered my love of books again.  I read all of Rilla of Ingleside (It's an Anne of Green Gables sequel) in two days.  That book takes place during the First World War so today I went to the library to get a history book on that.  I also read two short books on management that I "borrowed" from my dad last year.

Another good thing about not having the internet is that Derrick needed a detox too. I usually let him watch Youtube videos of trains on my phone.  He likes them, and I like that he would leave me alone for a while.  They didn't seem to be causing any trouble and it was a good way to keep him occupied. I thought he'd been pretty grumpy without his "train woovies."  Instead he was super happy.  He'd contently play with his wooden trains and never even asked for my phone (because he never saw me holding it.)  And he suddenly was talking a lot more.  I think he's had at least three new phrases in the past few days.  And I've been hearing a lot more words come out of his mouth.  Yesterday he said, "Follow me" to the other kids when we were walking to the park.

So the verdict is that when we do get our new router I don't think I'm going to be spending any time on the internet during the day.  I don't want it distracting me and I definitely don't want Derrick to know that his movies are back.  We'll see how this goes.

Thursday was a slower day comparatively.  Veronica and I went to institute.  She loves playing in the nursery at Wings Chapel and I like learning about the scriptures.

After school got out I took Lydia to the Commissary.  Since we thought we were moving we'd been eating up all our food storage and only going to the store for fresh food.  Now that we knew we were staying it was time to restock our shelves.  We had a lot of fun filling up our cart with lots of food. At the end of our trip Lydia pretended the long receipt was her hair.

Friday was the only free day I had all week.  I spent the morning cooking and my friend Becca came over and we had fun gabbing.

On Saturday I went to the church and helped sew bag for a service project.  My job was to sew the lining to the outside and make sure the straps were on there too. I finished 9 bags in three hours. (Pinning takes a long time.)

Brandon and the kids met me at the church and we were able to see a new member of the church get baptized..  As soon as that was over we changed into play clothes and got in the car to go for a drive.

Our plan was to go for a drive in the area Northwest of Enterprise and to find somewhere we could build a fire and roast marshmallows and make smores.  We ended up finding a place in the Conecuh National Forest which is to the southwest.  But the drive was on some of the pretties back county roads in Alabama so it wasn't a waste.

On reason our drive was so long was because we wanted to let the kids sleep.  Veronica pretty much only naps in the car so we take that when we can get it.

Charlotte wanted to take my picture.

When we finally arrived at the Blue Lake area the kids helped Brandon make a fire.

Derrick had been asking for a fire all day.

We had hot dogs and then made smores.

Then we went down to look at the Blue Lake.

I love this picture of Derrick and Brandon sharing rocks.

Then they would both throw them in.

Here's me looking all content in the outdoors.

Veronica throwing sand.

Lydia making a sand angel.

Charlotte made this stick dirty. 

And then clean.

More sand angels.  I totally forgot to mention that I am so happy we don't have to move back to Utah and deal with the snow.  Fall and Winter are AMAZING in the south and so I am perfectly happy to spent them here.

Derrick had fun spotting fish in the water.

It started raining so we headed back to the car.  The kids got silly on the ride home.

More pants on heads.

Veronica wanted me to take a picture of her foot.

On the way home we went through some pretty torrential rain.  We were considering pulling over right when we passed a small truck that had slid off the road.  So we pulled over and Brandon jumped out to help until the emergency responders arrived.  What a good guy.

We made it safely home and went to bed.

On Sunday Brandon and Charlotte made cinnamon rolls.  Charlotte proudly rolled out the dough.

The girls were looking at their art books so I made sure to take a picture of those since I forgot to last time.  They love looking at their work.

Derrick with his train.  He loves to make "circle track."

Veronica has rediscovered her love for this Teddy bear.  She's been carrying it around everywhere and playing with it a lot.  This is good because that girl had some really weird toys - like a stack of puzzle pieces.  It's nice to see her actually playing with something.

She insisted on wearing TWO red dresses to church on Sunday.

Charlotte and Lydia took a bunch of pictures of their stuffed animals.  Here's one of Hundley who isn't quite as loved as she used to be, but still gets played with.

And of course one of Antler.  When they took this I heard them say, "Lindsey is going to love this!"

Well that's the end of the pictures, which is good because I'm at the library.  I've been here for four hours because we still don't have internet and I'm starting to get hungry.  

I'm glad I came here though because I really wanted to get all caught up on this blog so I can start getting caught up on the travel blog.  That really got pushed the the back burner this past few weeks. 

Veronica's birthday is this weekend so I'll have a lot to write about that as well.  It's funny because I fully expected to be moving during her birthday.  Plan A seriously involved putting birthday candles into doughnuts and celebrating at a campsite.  I wasn't even going to buy her a present until we got to Utah.  Now I'm scrambling to figure out what we are really doing for her birthday.  It's coming together and it's going to be awesome.  

Actually the same thing could be said about my plans for the rest of our time here: It's coming together and it's going to be awesome.  I'm so glad we get to stay here a little bit longer!

Downsizing

I've decided that preparing for this move is a little bit like a pregnancy.  We have a rough "due date" but we really have no idea when we'll actually be moving out of our house.  For the past several weeks I've been thinking of September 15 as when we might be moving.  But now it's looking like we might be here a little bit longer - perhaps until the end of September.  

We really don't know at all though because this all depends on how fast Brandon's Chain of Command signs off on his paperwork.  It could be a week it could be two months.  It could end up needing to go a whole different direction and take 6 months.  What really happens is anyone's guess.  It kind of makes me wish for a pregnancy where you know the baby isn't going to decide to wait an extra 6 months.

There are a few other semi-similarities to pregnancy going on right now.  During pregnancy a mother will go through a "nesting" phase where she starts getting the home ready for the baby. She'll spent her time setting up furniture, buying new clothes and accessories, and cleaning.

Well, with this move we seem to be going through a de-nesting phase.  We are slowly getting rid of a lot of our stuff.  I want to make sure we get rid of all the superfluous stuff now before it gets packed, shipped across the country, stored for several months, and then shipped somewhere else. Even things that have survived our two other interstate moves aren't making the cut this time.   

It's actually been really liberating.  And it's all signaling that things are about the change a lot in the very near future. So let's take a look at many of the changes that have been going on in my home during the past few weeks. 

 This first picture is from Charlotte and Lydia's first day of school.  I took Derrick and Veronica to Enterprise to run an errand and we ended up at one of the parks there.  Derrick remembered other visits to that park and so he asked to "go see ducks and fish" So we went on a walk down to the little lake so he could see the geese and the fish.  It was really cute to see him jabber on about everything. 

Veronica LOVES our neighbor's Labrador dog, Lexi.  Every morning they bring the dog to the bus stop and every morning Veronica insists on holding Lexi's leash and walking back to our house with her.  Usually our neighbor holds onto the leash too, but I took the picture right after she dropped it on accident.  Every time I say, "okay it's time to get the bus" Veronica yells, "Go see LEXI!"

The girls go to a little Spanish class a few times a week during school hours.  They can count to ten in Spanish and are learning other things.  One day Lydia wrote this out for me and proudly announced that she could spell red in Spanish.  What's even more impressive / slightly funny is that she can't spell red in English.

One thing I wanted to make sure I did before we moved was to finish my scrapbooks.  Years earlier I finished everything up to about 2009.  With a few things done up to 2013.  But I still had a huge box full of loose papers. I didn't want to move with all those loose papers again. I wanted everything either in binders, or thrown away.

So every night during the Olympics I pulled out my giant box full of memorabilia, and worked on getting all the papers organized into my scrapbooks.  I spent about 10 nights getting ALL the stuff from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and so far in 2016 put into binders. I discovered that I still had stuff from 2007, 2008 and 2009 that I hadn't ever put in binders.  So I had go back and do those years.  I threw away a ton of unimportant stuff and so the stuff I did keep represents the very best things that I want to remember.

Then I got all the binders in one place and spent several nights just making sure everything was where I wanted it to be.  It was a big project.  This disorganized looking mess was actually the most organised everything had been in years because for once I didn't have a ton of papers in a pile in a box.

My sister Lindsey loves hearing about Antler's adventures so I made sure to send her this picture of when Charlotte wanted to take Antler to school.

I've wanted to clean our carpets forever, but I kept coming up with reasons to put it off.  But I decided that no matter what I would do it when Derrick started school.  So I borrowed my friend's carpet cleaner and spent a week cleaning the carpets.  I did about two rooms a day.  The kids thought it was great when I cleaned the living room carpet.  They loved having the couches in the kitchen.

I cleaned the carpet after they went to bed, but they had fun running around on the empty floor before bedtime.

And of course they had fun jumping off the couches.

Last year Derrick got really attached to a little stuffed cat that he called Baby.  It was super cute, but I never got a picture of it.  He found Baby again a few days ago and so I tried to get a picture of him cuddling Baby, but he didn't seem to want any photographic evidence of his affection.

Remember how I gave Charlotte a ballerina costume for her birthday/Halloween.? Well, that costume has been missing for months.  (I'm beginning to think I gave it away because it was too small.) And she has been so sad about it.  Well I found her a new one and she immediately put it on and danced around the room.  She says she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.  Her plan is to be a therapist in the day time and a ballerina at night.

I decided that I didn't want to keep my aging collection of wedding decorations anymore.  But I wanted to give them one last hurrah before I got rid of them.  So I did the centerpieces for the First Relief Society Activity for our brand new ward.  I was trying to represent how women in different seasons of their lives can all come together in Relief Society.  I wasn't super happy with the end result, but other people liked them.

Brandon went to Louisiana to help clean out houses.  His group was assigned to two houses that needed all the junk removed and all the floors and part of the walls ripped up.  They left Friday evening, and then camped overnight outside an LDS Stake Center.  They worked all day on Saturday, and camped in the same place that night. On Sunday they had a short sacrament meeting, did a little bit more work, and then came home.  He came home with an added sense of disdain for junk.  That's come in handy as we have gone through all our stuff.  

While he was gone I set about going through more of our stuff.  I decided that we should have a big painting party and use up the bottles of finger paint we've had for over three years.  The kids thought that was fun.

I cleaned out our storage shelves in the toy room.  Charlotte and Lydia had fun posing in different positions on them. 

Here's Charlotte, no wait, that's Lydia.

Here's another funny pose. I'm hoping to sell these shelves, but so far we haven't had any takers.  This unit is really hard to move if we do take it with us Brandon is going to cut it apart and make two separate book cases/shelves.

On Saturday night we skpyed with my parents in Brazil.  Lydia drew this picture of my dad.

Charlotte and Lydia noticed a lot of dead grass on the hill behind our house.  So they started cleaning it up into garbage bags.

That turned into bringing it home and making a giant nest for themselves.  Oh well, at least they were outside.

On Sunday the kids and I had to go to church without Brandon.  We weren't the only family there without their dad though. Actually the vast majority of the men and young men in our ward were gone.  It's a good thing our Bishop didn't go to Louisiana or else there might have been a bit of a problem over who was actually presiding in Sacrament Meeting.

Several months ago I wanted to figure out the exact date that Veronica would be the same age that Charlotte and Lydia were when she was born.  So I counted the back on the calendar and figured out that would happen on August 28th.  But on August 28th I rechecked my counting and realized that we'd actually hit that milestone on August 18th.  Oh well.  We took this picture anyway to commemorate the end of the baby years. THANK GOODNESS!

My friend Melissa's family moved to Hawaii in June.  Her daughter misses Charlotte and Lydia so she sent them a letter with some things that she drew for them. They thought that was so fun so Lydia wrote back with her own drawings.

Here's Charlotte being silly with Antler's old house.

And here is Antler's new house.  Antler's bed is in the basket.  Her TV is the blue blocks and her couch is the yellow blocks.  Her food and water dish is an old contact case.  And her play area  is on a washcloth.

I finally got my scrapbooks all together and completely organized last week!  There are 13 binders here that hold things from the 31 years of my life.  One binder has a large amount of my school work - mostly the papers and essays I wrote in high school and college. Another binder has all the letters Brandon and I wrote back and forth when he was in Basic Training. The rest of the binders have pictures, awards, vacation memorabilia, stuff from the kids, etc.  I am so glad this is done!

My next project was to put together some little books for the kids.  They all made soooooooooo much art work last year that it was hard to know how to save it.  The last thing I wanted to do was save it all and have to move with stacks and stacks of papers.  But I also couldn't bring myself to get rid of all of it either.  I wanted an easy, organized way for us to be able to look back at the things they had created.

What I ended up doing was going through all the papers and sorting them into a pile for each kid.  Then I saved about 30 papers that represented each kids' best work or something I knew they were very proud of.  I threw away A TON more paper than I kept.

After that I put the papers that I saved into a binder for each kid.  Each paper is in a sheet protector.  It's really easy for the kids to flip through the binders and look at their work.  And they all LOVE to do it.  I made Lydia's first and she was so proud of everything that she saw.  Charlotte waited eagerly for me to finish her's and she was so excited to see everything.  And even Derrick was happy to look through his book.

I totally forgot to take a picture of the kids' art books so I'll have to make sure to include that in my next post.

There are two other Pre-k kids that use our bus stop. Each of them has a little sister about Veronica's age.  It's so cute to see the three little sisters all waiting for their older siblings and they all give each other such big hugs when they are reunited.

We've been hiding inside for the past several months because its either too hot, too humid, or too rainy to go anywhere in the evening. But one day a rain storm went past before dinner and so we went on a walk after dinner.  It was actually pretty nice outside.  Charlotte looked so cute running around and dancing in the grass that I just had to take this picture.

Last week the school had an open house night where we could have a chance to visit the school and learn about the kids' daily routine.  I was planning on all of us going, but Charlotte and Lydia told me that it was going to be boring and they just wanted to stay home.  So I went by myself.  It was fun to see the work they have been doing.  Here is a picture Lydia did.

And here is Charlotte's.

I stopped by the Pre-K pod to talk to Derrick's teachers  He is going great and is so attentive. His teacher remarked about how much Derrick has improved in the last year.  This time last year he'd hardly let any of them touch him and now he is so comfortable in the class and is willing to try so many new things.  I think my biggest regret with this move is that we will have to take Derrick away from this program.  I'm hoping the program at the elementary school where we are moving will be just as good.

I've had a lot of success selling stuff on the various Facebook groups for Fort Rucker, but I had some smaller things that I knew would take forever to sell on Facebook so I decided that we should try our luck with a yard sale. I also decided it would be a good time to try to sell some of the larger things. So on Saturday we had a yard sale.  

We did okay considering it was Labor Day weekend and so half of Fort Rucker was off enjoying a 4 day weekend. Many of the small things did sell.  However, I was shocked that no one even even seemed interested in the furniture. That's usually what I'm out hunting for when I'm out looking for yard sales.  It ended up being a valuable educational experience for me. Usually I'm afraid to make low offers on large furniture because I don't want to offend the people selling it. But being on the selling side taught be that the people just want to get rid of their stuff at that point.  Seriously if someone had offered me even $10 for any of our large stuff I probably would have taken them up on it.

Instead its all back in our garage waiting to sell on Facebook or get picked up by the thrift store.

One of the things we got rid of was our giant TV.  This TV was obsolete when we got it for free 10 years ago.  Every time we've moved we vowed that this was the last time we'd move with that heavy TV, but we've always hung on to it.  We've really liked that the kids could touch the monitor without messing it up.  But it was time to get rid of it.  We put a "FREE TV" sign on the tv for the yard sale, but no one wanted it.  Later when I went to take some small things to the thrift store I found out why.  There were four medium TV's and one large TV sitting by the donation shed.  There was an even larger one inside the shed.  Clearly the era of heavy TV's is over.

So we put the TV on the curb and the trash guys picked it up and smashed it in the truck today.  It was kind of a sad end to something that has served us so well for so long. But it was time.

Not only did we get rid of the TV, but we also decided the entertainment center was past it's prime.  It's still in great shape, but I'm not sure it would survive another interstate move.  So I'm trying to sell it. (Seriously, make me an offer. At this point I'll give it to you for $5.)  And we also decided to get rid of the couch. I'm still a little sad about this one.  I spent a lot of time nursing on that couch.  But like many of the other things we are getting rid of - it just too heavy and old to justify hanging onto.  The futon won out because it can pull double duty as a guest bed.

I thought we'd all be a little traumatized by the drastic change to our living room.  But we adjusted really well.  A computer has taken over for the TV and everyone is just fine with that.  In fact, it's kind of liberating to have so many things gone.  I have to keep reminding myself that we can't get rid of EVERYTHING.  That we do actually want to have some furniture when we get to wherever we are going.

Charlotte decided that we needed to spend some of our yard sale money at the dollar store.  And she was so helpful with everything that I decided she was right.  So Brandon took her and Lydia to the dollar store.  They each picked out some costume jewelry.  Charlotte came home and dressed up real fancy.

Lydia also got to pick out an extra toy (she'd cleaned their room all by herself) and she picked out this coloring paper.  She spent a lot of time carefully coloring the whole design.  I think I need to get her one of those adult coloring books.

On Sunday she wore her Wedding Dress Halloween costume with all her jewelry.  She was so happy with her outfit that I let her wear it to church.

Here are all the girls with their white shoes on the way to church.

And for some reason Veronica decided to start sucking her thumb so we had to get a picture of that.

Monday was Labor Day and we had plans to go to a spring, or maybe Providence Canyon, but we never got very far with those plans because Lydia was diagnosed with strep throat on Friday.  She got the penicillin shot and I thought we were in the clear, but she still wasn't feeling that great on Monday.  And Veronica and Derrick woke up at 5:20 and were way to cranky to take anywhere.  You may remember that we celebrated Memorial Day with Derrick having strep throat.  He ended up in the ER when his throat and mouth started swelling too much.  So when Lydia's throat seemed extra swollen I decided it would be a good idea to go to Instacare during business hours. The doctor acted like I was over reacting, but he did prescribe a steroid for her throat which was what I wanted.  And we avoided a trip to the hospital in Dothan.

The other most eventful part of labor day was when we cleaned a lot of the walls.  I'm actually pretty proud of my stain removing skills.  Check out my cleaning board on pinterest for some of my tricks.  I've learned  how to get ink off walls with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls.  (warning the paint comes off too) and crayon comes off with WD40 like it's nothing.  The only thing I haven't got off yet is dry erase marker and purple ink.  So housing provided touch up paint and told us to cover everything with a thin layer of spackle before we apply the paint.  I went around the house removing stains while Brandon came behind me putting spackle on the ones we couldn't get off.   You can see all the white spots on the wall in this picture.

Well that's us lately.  At some point in the near future we should (hopefully) get word about when this move is going to be happening.  No matter when it happens we will be ready.