Deutschland

Over 2 years since the last post and many happenings in our lives!

J was born 10/24/15 and is about to celebrate being TWO! How do I have a two year old? Last year while Brad was on his short tour, Jordan and I were blessed to be close to family in NC. We lived on a horse farm right next to some dear, sweet friends of ours nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. I worked part time as an English/Math/Science tutor to 3rd-5th grade kiddos and got to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway every day to/from J's most wonderful sitter.

It was difficult being separated as a family of course, but we could not have been in a more ideal spot. We grew family relationships, J grew into a toddler, and we lost some family along the way as well. During the summer of 2016 we lost Brad's Aunt Millie and my maternal Grandmother. Neither easy. Still not easy to this day. I joined a wonderful group of women through Alliance for Bible study and fellowship each week and was blessed by their friendship and support throughout the year.

Brad worked hard and played hard over in Korea! He served as the Readiness and Emergency Management Flight Commander overseeing all CBRN and Emergency Management related readiness for the Southern half of South Korea. He had an amazingly close flight with some superb Airmen, and while he was there he earned Flight Commander of the year for the 8 Fighter Wing nicknamed the "Wolfpack". Fitting, right? It wasn't all work for him though as he also enjoyed Korean BBQ, traveling, and nightly karaoke (I kid on the  nightly, but it was a favorite hobby he picked up!).

While he was there, Brad took the chance to fly home for J's 1st birthday and surprise the family. That was a lot of fun! Later that year, thanks to our families watching J for 21 days (Can't believe this momma left him for that long!), I had the opportunity to fly to Korea and spend some time with Brad. We toured Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and I loved the Korean culture. Brad also planned a 10-day trip to Thailand that was our "second honeymoon" and it was wonderful!

Now, after all of that, we are now in Germany! Wow. We live in Germany. It is still wild for me to wrap my head around the fact that I am living in Europe. I love it.. and the first week we were here I told Brad I didn't want to leave. Still don't. I desperately wish we could pick up and go spend the day with Nana & Papa or Lolly & Pops like we did last year, but aside from being apart from those we love... this side of the pond isn't half bad. Brad works on the staff for US Air Forces in Europe and has been on the road a lot for meetings with the Ministries of Defense for nations including Poland, Norway, Slovakia, and Germany. We look forward to traveling with him to these locations once we are more settled; but even so, we've had many travel/festival opportunities already and continue to start planning the next each time we get back home.

In the next week or so I plan to post about various trips we've done and things we've experienced. I'm making it a goal to keep this up, mostly for family, but I hope you follow along with us while we're here!

Wedding Season

May has come and gone and officially kicked off wedding season in our world. We are so glad to be closer to home and able to attend some, yet we can't make them all. A couple of weekends ago, Brad and I were able to take a long Memorial Day weekend to help celebrate with some friends.

Before leaving we celebrated our FOURTH year of marriage! Has it really been that long? It feels like just yesterday we were picking out colors, flowers and making our guest list. We decided to treat ourselves to a nice steak dinner at Fleming's instead of buying gifts. It was my first time there and we really enjoyed it! A night to ourselves to enjoy each other's company, reflect on the past and dream about our future together... especially now with a baby boy on the way!

Our wedding weekend took us to North Carolina, but it didn't start there! We made our first pitstop in Blacksburg, VA to have lunch with Brad's cousin. It was quite a beautiful day and Oscar loved all the attention he got as we sat on the outdoor patio for lunch. Brad and I had some extra time and used it to walk around the campus of Virginia Tech. If I'd have lived in VA growing up, I would surely have attended college here... the campus is just absolutely gorgeous and I've always loved it. The Hokie stone really makes it.

After Blacksburg, we drove a little further to Bedford to have dinner at Bella Italia with who I would say have come to be our closest long distance friends. We go about three years back I suppose, when the boys were in their 101 training together here in Dayton. Brad and I were stationed in AZ at the time and the Cashen's were and still are in NM at Holloman. We visit each other any and every chance we get and it feels like we haven't ever skipped a beat. We have visited with each other in Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, and now Virginia. When we first met we were both newlyweds... just enjoying the beginnings of Air Force life. Now Chris & Christi have two amazing children, Nate and Elaina, and Brad and I have our little boy on joining us in November! I don't think I could say enough about how much we cherish their friendship.

After Bedford, we made our late night trek back west to North Carolina to stay in Boone for the night with B's parents. We truly have impeccable timing, because some other best friends of ours who live in Boone had their baby BOY (!!!) the night of our anniversary and he wasn't quite a day old yet. We of course stopped by the hospital to see Kayla and Nathan and meet baby Cole. I'm sure he and ours will make the best of friends back in Boone. I absolutely can't wait!!

Have I mentioned all of this traveling was done in one day?

Saturday we dropped little man Oscar off with my parents and made our way to Hendersonville to help celebrate with Cory and Amanda! They put all us wedding party people up in such a nice house and bungalow with a peaceful little creek running through it. We LOVED it. (Thank you Shufords!!) There we spent our next two days catching up with my high school/B's college friends. I'm so happy we were asked to be part of this wonderful day for C & A and it couldn't have been more perfect for them. Amazing weather, great venue, and of course a beautiful couple. We didn't want to leave!
(On a side note, it was pretty exciting to know we stayed just a couple of miles from Camp Kanuga that weekend. Mtn. View people, ya feel me?!)

 

Now we're back home, back into the swing of things and fond of the memories from such a wonderful weekend with friends and family. Oh, and we're 18 weeks along now! We get to see little man next week at our checkup. :) yay!

Bows or Bowties?!

So tomorrow marks 13 weeks our baby has been growing!

Brad and I went to have another ultrasound this past Friday on base. It was so much fun to see our little bit wiggling around so much! I can't get over the fact that I have a tiny human growing inside of me.. forming bones and tissue and organs. I loved seeing the tiny spine and fingers and feet and legs and face and hearing the heartbeat. I loved it all. It was amazing. God is amazing.

The lady who helped us has been doing ultrasounds for 20+ years, and told us toward the end of our ultrasound that she could tell us with 99% certainty what the gender of our little one was. She added in that she has only been wrong 4 out of 1500 times. Pretty good odds right? Needless to say, we asked her to write it down and seal it in an envelope for us.

After leaving the hospital, we decided we did not want to wait long at all and wanted to get all of our friends together to reveal the gender of our babe. I had to go back to work, so Brad set out to Babies R Us to pick out some outfits. He picked out one for a girl and one for a boy, took them to the register with the envelope and credit card and asked her to ring up whichever one it was and gift wrap it. He left everything with her and came back 10 minutes later to a mystery gift!

Brad did a great job setting up decorations for our party, even though he told me we weren't going to decorate. I picked out a cake to have, and we had everyone over today for burgers, brats and baby reveal!

 We took votes, everyone wore pink or blue and one of our good friends got some games together for everyone to play! Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us! Here's the video of our reveal below!!

We're having a baby BOY! Holy cow! I thought for sure I was right that we were having a girl, and even Brad had a feeling it might be a girl... BUT we are absolutely thrilled and can't wait to meet our sweet little man!!

(Special thanks to Chris who was so confident in his boy prediction that he got THE largest balloon to proclaim it!)

Bowties it is! :)

And if for some reason we get a different result at a later ultrasound, we'll have another party! ;)

Sunday News

Ohio has brought us many new friends and adventures. We're so grateful for our move here and to take on a different pace of life. Brad's back into the swing of school and I am semi taking some time off from teaching.

It is with our greatest joy on this beautiful Easter Sunday to share what we have now been celebrating for weeks in our home.

We're PREGNANT!! [WAHOOO!!!]

 

God has been answering our prayers all along, and we're so glad to see evidence of that now. It's been hard to see as He was preparing our hearts and our marriage to bring a little one into the world.. actually quite frustrating at times. We always knew He was being faithful and hearing us as we prayed, plead, nagged, etc. for a child... we just didn't know when it might actually become a reality.

We're so thankful and excited to start this new chapter of our lives and bring a baby into our home this November. Oscar is very excited to be a big brother too! (Or so it seems as he tilts his head when we tell him!) Thank you to all of our friends and family who have been praying for when this time would come for us since we got married in 2011.

The Lord's timing is perfect and good.

Time Keeps on Slippin'

T-3 days until we roll out from AZ.

Words can't describe how much our first assignment has meant to us. When we first got word that we were going to Arizona, I was not exactly enthusiastic. Luke was 5 out of 6 on our list of bases we wanted to go to. It was on the list, however, and I'm so glad we came.

Brad has done great things at Luke and I'm so proud of his hard work with the squadron and how his leadership has developed. I've spent two fantastic years at Mountain View teaching first grade. I am so blessed to have worked with an amazing group of ladies each year, as well as my two groups of kiddos. It is hard to think that I won't be there with them again this next school year, but those kiddos coming up are going to have a fantastic first grade year!

We have absolutely loved life out west. One of our favorite parts has been traveling to a lot of beautiful places, which many of you I know have seen from all of our pictures online! Aside from the travel, we are so thankful for the friendships we have and will cherish. We will miss all of you something terrible... and that is an understatement. [Hopefully I can hold it together the rest of our time here, unlike I did at TK's. ha]

The memories we've made here have been priceless, and we are so excited to continue that on in O-H-I-O!

We love you ALL.