The move

Moving...procrastination...stress...cranky kids...sleepy/cranky mom...carefree dad.
I think that about sums it up.
Life was crazy. So crazy, I ended up turning to avoidance. You know, telling yourself, "if I pretend it's not happening, then maybe it's not happening." I don't think this mentality actually ended up helping anything, but you can't say I didn't try.
On the 18th we sent the boys off to daycare and spent our time at home packing up what we wanted to keep for ourselves for up to a year (possibly, but hopefully not that long) and cleaning/preparing for the movers who arrived on Thursday.
Thursday the movers came and went. We said farewell to our belongings and, prayed that it would be sooner rather than later before we see it all again. It's kinda funny how much we think we "need" our stuff. When Gunnar and Ryker came home from "school" Gunnar broke our hearts. Gunnar kept saying over and over, "my house is gone" or "my bed is gone." We explained it all went on a big truck, so periodically we hear him say "my house on a big truck." Poor kid, it was pretty hard on him.
On Friday my dad and I (so thankful for my dad coming over to help) pulled a small Uhaul trailer over to Priest River, Idaho and put our stuff in the garage so it is easily accessible to us over the next year. I stayed the night with Laura and the boys then got on a plane early Saturday afternoon with Ryker to fly back to Seattle to help with all the cleaning of our house for inspection the following Monday.

Sunday was crazy. We went to church then our kids went to the Schroeder house and spent the day with Kaytee. We then got busy at home after a little dinner to say goodbye to some of our great friends. I was completely overwhelmed and anything that could have gone wrong did. The dog ran through our screen in the door, which consequently broke, which consequently meant we would end up paying for it. Lowes and Home Depot had no replacement parts, but thankfully superglue worked for the inspection. Kyle also decided to help me clean the fridge by putting a drawer in the dishwasher to clean it...bad idea. It melted. I was able to get it back in the fridge and the not so nice inspection lady didn't notice. I know this sounds a little dishonest but we had a lady from the housing office (not a regular inspector) end up doing our inspection and she was trying to charge us for everything.  We ended up having to pay over $800 for new carpet and a mini-blind that had a little scuff mark on it, smaller than a dime size. Oh well, we try not to think about it. However we would have never been able to get all the cleaning and garbage throwing away done without the great assistance of some amazing people: Iona, Josh, Liz and of course my dad. What three awesome friends we have and one great dad. And, we can't forget the world's best babysitter Kaytee. Our boys adore her and there is no way we could have gotten everything done without her helping with the boys!
After doing some final running around on Monday, we got out of Fort Lewis around 1pm and headed to Eugene, OR to spend Christmas with Kyle's mom. While we forgot to pick up Kyle's discharge prescriptions we got everything else done. It felt good, a huge weight off our shoulders.
I should also mention that from Thursday night through Sunday night we all slept on the floor of our empty apartment. With our three dogs, it was just way to expensive to find a place to stay that would accommodate us....let's just say we should have coughed up the money. 
I will post later our Christmas adventures and time with my parents.
For those who don't know our plan, we decided to not rush finding a house, since we aren't sure where God wants us. So in the meantime while we pray, we will be going to to Priest Lake to a mobile home Kyle's dad has. While it isn't the most luxurious of places, it a free roof over our head and will give us time to regroup and figure life out a bit more without the stress of needing to hurry. We have all the time in the world now!
Some pictures of our little moving helpers:

Santa Pictures

It's that time of year again...Santa has come to town.
We are blessed to have a special connection with Mr. Claus. He is our former pastor who retired this past September. Even with the kids knowing him...Ryker still was not a fan. Oh well, Kyle and I found Ryker's ridiculous screaming quite humorous. My mom would say it's pay backs, because apparently I wasn't much of a fan of Santa pictures either. Gunnar has never cried with Santa before, while he was a little unsure, I think it was more all the people standing around, watching, and staring that made him more nervous than the man in the red suit.
So here they are...

 Check out Santa's website... http://www.northwestsanta.com/ I especially enjoy the section on "Where is Christ is Christmas?"

Thankful

November is a special month in which we are really reminded to think about all the things we are thankful for. This year I am especially thankful for family. The army allowing us to move from Germany to Fort Lewis to be closer to our family a little over a year ago served it's purpose well. Being closer to family has given us the support and often times assistance we need to get through it all.
This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family. It was an interesting time, but the food was delicious. On the day of Thanksgiving when we sat down to eat Gunnar started screaming and yelling that his ear hurt. I thought he was just tired and not wanting to eat so I put him in bed for his nap. He woke up and seemed ok. He said his ear hurt but he definitely wasn't screaming about it, he wanted to play. Then came dinner. Same story. He started screaming bloody murder. This time he would not allow anyone to touch him but me an there was no calming him down. He cried for at least 30 minutes. I called our on call doctor to get approval for taking him to the ER and we were off, he never cries like this.
Turned out one ear was really hurting. For my lack of doctor terminology I will explain it for the rest of us. He had the normal ear infection and then he had some bacteria growing in ear which was the main cause of the excruciating pain. So we were sent off to get ear drop and antibiotics. Once those got in him, he was dandy.
We got back to the house, got Gunnar in bed, then Kyle said he wanted to go black Friday shopping. We attempted and really didn't have a plan so it didn't work out to well. He did decide he wanted to sit outside of GameStop from 12am to 5am for a limited edition Nintendo 3DS...what a nerd. I went home to sleep during that time and ended spending most my night with an unhappy Ryker. Ryker loves his sleep so I knew something was up.
In the morning he was a BIG unhappy camper, so off to urgent care I went with him. He had an ear infection as well. The poor kid just had one a couple weeks ago.
That afternoon Laura and Caleb showed up to spend the next few days with us hanging out. Really that's just what we did. That night we left the boys with the Grandma, Nana, and Poppa and took Caleb to a hockey game. the Saturday we spent our time just hanging out and playing at the house with the five little boys, Ezra, Owen, Gunnar, Zane, and Ryker.

 Sunday was a very special day. For Christmas my parents (we won't be with them for Christmas this ear) got everyone tickets to ride the Polar Express so we drove down to Hood River, OR. The boys had a blast and loved seeing and riding on the train. We were all exhausted by the end, but had a great time. It was the perfect gift. After the train ride we drove back home to Fort Lewis.