Spring Catch Up!

A lot has happened in the past few months, and all exciting!! We said good bye to our family in the Midwest and headed East for a month long class in Rhode Island!

We were so lucky to even have visitors during our short stay out East!! Both my mom and sister came out to visit!!

And to top it off our great friends who were also our neighbors in Spain are stationed in Newport!! We were able to spend a month with the Boyd family!!

The East coast isn't complete without lobster!

Spring

WOW!!! Spring has come and almost left and I'm so behind on the blog!!

In March I took a spontaious trip for a long weekend to our amazing friends Andros's!!! We were stationed with them in Spain and love them dearly! Another friend Kimberly who was in Spain with us was flying through on her way back to Spain after travels and joined us for our reunion!

My in laws had the kiddos, so I was childless!! We had a great time catching up and seeing all the sights!

Carolyn and I

Carolyn's husband Brad who's super fun

For Easter we headed down to Omaha and visited my cousin Lindsey and her family along with my aunt and uncles. My parents of course came over from Iowa and made it another long weekend vacation as it was the kiddos spring break!

My grandparents have a farm (now run by my uncle since their deceased) on the farm were over 400 baby chicks!! A Easter to remember!

Claire enjoying some MN UV

And Brooke is still doing good...!

Love Me Some Madison!

This last week the kiddos were off Friday-Tuesday for inservice and conference days. We decided to take advantage of the extra long weekend and visit our old stomping grounds and our amazing friends! 

We lived in Madison for one quick year 2012-2013 while Andy did grad school. For such a quick year we fell in love with the city and made life long friends.

It was a weeeeee bit cold, but that didn't stop us from checking out Winterfest 2015 around the capital. This consisted of several races, ice sculpting compatitions, and snow building contest. The capital always has a great vibe going on!

We taught Drew and Rowe how to play shuffle board!!

Rowe and Drew are the same age and Jane and Claire are the same age!! Both sets of personalities couldn't be a better match!!

We made a stop at the Union! The Unionis probably my second favorite spot next to the capital! The outside (when it's nice) is full of colorful chairs on the lake with live music playing usually! We tried to catch people kite boarding on the lake and missed it! 

It was a great weekend full of laughter!

Whirlwind Past Few Months

So much to catch up on!!  After finding out we will be moving to Japan this summer and with Andy deploying we decided that the kiddos and I would move back to the Midwest to spend time with family.  After spending three years in Spain and now potentially four years in Japan we wanted to squeeze in as much family time as possible.  I always tell people Andy and I wish we had parents we didn't like and it would make moving overseas so much easier!

While Andy was away on a field exercise till the end of Oct of course that's when our orders came though! This made it a bit more time crunching as I needed Andy home to apply for no fee passports.  Even with power of attorney, I needed Andy physically with us to do this step since Drew and Claire were getting these passports as well. So all of the other steps that needed to be completed were held up on this first step.  Which meant I had to wait patiently not scheduling one thing till Andy and I could both be present in the PSD office together! By the time Andy came back from his exercise we had four weeks to get a stack of paper work completed (and that required correspondence between Japan and our PSD).  That then put us at two weeks before the first truck arrived and took our first shipment, which was everything we wanted to store for the next few years! Luckily with all of the waiting I had time to organize!

Andy's dad was was an amazing father-in-law (as always) as offered to fly down and drive a car back to Minnesota for us. He wanted to do this so  Andy and I could spend time together in the car before he took off for deployment.  Andy's dad, Al arrived and witnessed what it was like to pack out, see your life in boxes all over your lawn, praying it all fits into the moving truck, & signing the paper work with hope.. it all makes it to Japan!

The next day with two cars packed to the max and two excited kiddos (Brooke our dog too) we were ready to hit the road to Minnesota!  We had great weather the entire way and made it in three days. We took our time with many stops and time to swim at hotels in the evening!

We enjoyed Christmas here in Minnesota and then met my parents in Minneapolis for a weekend.  We dropped Andy off at the airport and said our goodbyes as he left for his deployment at the end of the month.

The kiddos started school here in Minnesota and I couldn't be happier with the school they're at.  A few days before school started I received an envelope from Drew's new school. I opened it up and his new teacher had all of the kids in Drew's new class write him a letter welcoming him!!  It was in a binder with a class photo on the outside!!  It was such an amazing welcome!

Claire's kindergarten teacher is full of life and energy!!  I truly feel like I won the lottery with both of their teachers.

Brooks and Claire tuckered out after our first day in the car.

Headed North!!  Brooke is SUCH a good dog in the car and lays right between both kiddos (minus the fact she has to take medicine so she doesn't get car sick...!)

Brooke isn't too sure about seeing flurries and what type of climate we're taking her to!

And we made it to Andy's parents house!  They have 40+ acres for the kiddos and I to explore while Andy is away!

Making the holes getting ready to ice fish!!

I've turned soft after not living in the Midwest for a bit, I went straight for the rabbit gloves!

Claire caught a fish!!!

Thinking about kissing it??!!

Getting ready for Santa and decorating cookies!

Uncle Aric reading, "The Night Before Christmas".

Andy and Brooke both dreaming of sugar plums dancing in their head....

The kiddos both slept till almost 7a.m. and were thrilled to see that Santa found them in MN!

Andy also really enjoyed the kiddos gifts!  Drew and Claire both received this huge indestructible ball!!  It was a lot of fun.... then we managed to pop the indestructible ball:(

We had a wonderful Christmas!

Fall In The Neighborhood

The Friday before Halloween we have what's called Freight Night here on base. It's pretty cute with games, hay ride, haunted house, an outdoor movie, live music, and people dressed up giving out candy!

Drew and friends in the neighborhood went as game characters in Minecraft..Claire was suppose to be Elsa from Frozen and last minute changed into a different dress as a princess and did her own hair and make up!!

Incase you were wondering.. You were right.. Drew wore that head for about thirty minutes and I carried it the rest of the night!

More kiddos from our street!

Claire and Drew both had fall parties in their classroom! Claire's class played this cute game where you wrap each other up as mummies!

Claire loved it!

Halloween night we all went down to our neighbors! The dads took the kiddos around the hood and the moms sat in the  drive and handed out candy! We had a great time!!

Getting ready to trick or treat!

Andy and Brooke are such good sports and let me dress them up too!

End of night candy swap!

The first weekend in November Ocean Springs holds an awesome art/craft show. We went with our fun neighbors on a double date to it and had a great time! 

We truly couldn't ask for a better neighborhood-

Weekend Fun

Last weekend Geigers were here for a weekend visit and the weekend before that I had Cade and Lucy here for the weekend! It's do much fun having kiddos the same age!

Lucy and Claire LOVE to play hair salon!! Give them a spray bottle and their set!

They were actually quite the helpers.. I started to vacuume and they begged to do it! How could I turn this down! 

While I had Cade and Lucy we had our overseas screening doctors appointment! It's a lengthy apt with physicals making sure everyone is in good health. I thought this was funny how the girls liked sitting!

When Allison and Jeremy were here we surprised the girls with a princess show at our convention center! We didn't tell the girls where we were going and had their dress up dresses packed in the trunk!

Waiting for the show to start with gummies! While we had the girls here Andy and Jeremy took Drew and Cade rock climbing! What a fun past couple of weeks!