Joe's Farewell

Today was a hard and emotional day for our family. Joe left this evening for his year long tour in Iraq. I am a little relieved that this deployment is finally underway... the sooner he leaves the sooner he returns. He will be home in December for the birth of our baby, so that made saying goodbye a little easier. I'm not sure the next goodbye will be as easy, knowing he will have another 8 months to endure.

I will keep you all posted as to how Joe, and the girls and I are doing. Prayers and warm wishes are greatly appreciated.

We love you Joe and are so proud, please come home safely.

Our trip to Redding!

For those of you who don't know, Joe will be deploying to Iraq for one year. He leaves at the end of this month. Luckily he will be able to come home for 3 weeks in December for the birth of our baby (another girl for those of you who don't already know). We both know it will be a challenging and difficult year for us, and we appreciate all the love and support we will receive.

So due to the upcoming deployment, Joe wanted one last trip to our hometown of Redding. We had a great time visiting with family and catching up with old friends. It's so great how you can move away from one place and still feel right at home when you go back to visit!

We also got to meet Samantha, Joe's cousin Lisa's little baby. She was born in January and she is such a cutie!

At the Beach!

One day when we first moved here, trying to get home we took a wrong turn, and discovered this really neat park right on the Puget Sound. It's a beautiful little area. So one night when Joe was working the girls and I had a picnic at the park. There is a fun playground, but the girls were more interested in walking down to the beach. Now they are begging to go back!

There was a ton of these jellyfish along the beach. I've never seen colored ones before, but thought they were pretty cool.

Lately our life here in Washington has been pretty good. We found out we are getting on-post housing on August 7th! Looking very forward to having more space and a nice yard for the girls to play.

The pregnancy has been getting better for me. I'm finally getting my energy and appetite back. The baby is doing great as well! We get to find out if this little one will be a boy or girl on August 4th! Can't wait!

Our life in Washington!

These are some pictures of a few things we have gotten to do since we moved to Washington. The first few pictures are of our trip to City Square in Seattle, and Pikes Market. The girls loved the carnival rides, and the fish toss at Pikes.

We also took them to the Zoo in Tacoma. We didn't get to see a lot of the animals, but there was this great playground. I think the girls had the best time playing on that instead.

So far we are enjoying Washington. Right now we are in an apartment. We are on the waiting list for on-post housing and hope to move on at the end of the Summer. Ft. Lewis is huge, especially compared to Ft. Leavenworth. It's definitely take some time to adjust.

We have our first ultrasound on the 17th. It's a test for birth defects, but we will also be able to see how many babies are in there as well!

Announcing the news!!

We decided to wait until we got to California to announce our big news to my Family. Here's the short clip of it. My poor little neice Kamryn didn't take the news too well!! :)

Our Exciting News!!

One week before we left Kansas we discovered we were going to parents again! I thought this would be a cute way to tell all of our family and friends, and get the girls involved from the start. We are sooo excited for the new addition coming to our family... estimated time of arrival December 27!!