Scientopia

There is a great little museum nearby that we visited tonight. The boys all had a great time exploring their exhibits!
The best part was the event tonight was specifically for military kids and it was free! I'm so grateful for this opportunity we had.

In California

We've been in California since the week before Christmas and are really enjoying our time here!

There have been so many things to distract us from the usual deployment glum.

My parents have helped find quite a few special things to do with the boys and it's been a lot of fun. We've had quite a few boughts of illness but I'm optimistic that we're better now for a while.

It's still rough on days that we particularly miss Daddy but overall we're all faring pretty well.

Crawling and Teething

It's been a week and we're adjusting, slowly but surely. Nathaniel has been changing already! The other night he popped through his first tooth and then the following night he started doing this...

It is what will eventually become crawling! He has very little interest in it. For the most part he's content sitting up and playing with the toys he can reach. It probably doesn't help that his big brothers love to corral his toys for him so he doesn't have to.

After the big brothers had gone to get ready for bed, though, he decided to venture out on his own to try and capture one of their water bottles. After a lot of effort he finally succeeded! I think he might be crawling before I know it.

We picked up a new toy for him that's for bigger babies than his other ones. He has LOVED it so far! He could spend most of the day playing with this thing.
The other two boys are up to things as well. I'll have to post pictures of those things later on. Being the only adult in the house with 3 kiddos and a long trip to pack for leaves very little time for things like blogging. :)

It's That Time Again...

Phil just headed out on deployment again. The boys and I are adjusting well, all things considered.

We decided to go out to California for the holidays and stay for a while. We're looking forward to the company and diversion. For now we're busy holding down the fort and getting ready. One day at a time!

School Pictures

I was trying to get a couple school-like pictures of the boys the other day. I accomplished my mission and also got these:

 Of course Joshua had to join in on the fun...

 Nathaniel doesn't make that many faces yet, but I had the share this one of him. The boys rolls have rolls!

These days.

Life these days has been good. The boys have grown so much over the summer and now we can enjoy the outdoors a bit more now that the temperatures are more comfortable.

The new soccer season just started up and both of our older boys have been enjoying that.

Joshua is doing well at keeping up with the other kids his age. I love that he's becoming more independent these days.

Jeremiah is finally out of soccer tots this year and onto a regular team which he's enjoying a lot. It's so fun to watch them all run around the field. He played goalie this last weekend and did a great job at it!

Little Nathaniel has been enjoying soccer as well somewhat. My guess is he mostly enjoys getting his Mom and Dad all to himself for a little bit.

Joshua has recently started martial arts nearby. He's doing very well so far!

This last weekend was also the Khaki Ball for Phil and I. It's been a year since Phil made Chief. It seems like a lifetime ago! It was the first time leaving Nathaniel with friends and he did much better than expected. It was so nice to get a night off and be a regular grown up for a little while.
Overall things are going really well! We're staring down the barrel of another deployment coming up so we're trying to focus on enjoying the time we have left together. With that in mind, each day really does feel like a gift.

The New Normal

Recently I noticed the light in our dining room window was particularly nice and took this picture of my 3 boys and me.

I really liked it and made it my facebook profile picture. I have a feeling that over the years it will become even more of a favorite as I look back on that one moment captured on digital "film." The other night I was looking over the images on our memory card and flipped through the series of pictures I took trying to gt that one image and had to call Phillipp into the room to show him the last one I took before putting down the camera.

It may be a better representation of life these days. We both got a good laugh out of it.