5k & welcoming home grandparents

Saturday, we did our first family 5k. It was a food drive 5k to support the nationwide day to serve. The entrance fee was canned goods. I don't know what the total count was, but there were a lot of very full large boxes on our way out. It was really early, but I'm so happy our neighbors came too. We bundled up warm in the morning because the temperatures have dropped to fall levels. I've heard the local food banks were low and/or out of food completely. It was great to be able to support them on getting their levels back up.

 My Grandpa and Grandma Pugmire came back from the mission in Jamaica. It's been a while since we have seen them. They were working on the PEF (http://pef.lds.org) down there helping people to get jobs. I know they loved it, but I'm so happy to see them again, even if it is just for a couple of days.  Olivia was able to meet them too. I know she wont remember it, but I'm still excited for it.

Photo shoots and baby showers

These past weeks have been a lot of fun and a little chaotic. Last week I had the chance to take pictures of little Freddy and to do my first maternity shoot with Kim. It was a lot of work and Olivia did not make it effortless. At the end of the day though, they were both so excited about their pictures. Working with little ones is a lot harder when they are not your own.

 

Little Freddy is so cute. I had a lot of fun mentally captioning his photos. 

The baby shower for Andrea was a lot of fun too. Kim and I put together a brunch to celebrate little Brooklyn coming soon. 

It's been so much fun to see all of these little ones arrive during the last year. I wish we could stay near all of them so our kids could grow up together. Thankfully, the Marine Corps is a small world so we will hopefully see them sooner than later. 

We are headed to Oki

That's right. We are headed to Okinawa, Japan. If you have to Google map it, don't feel bad. I did it too. Basically, it's here where the "A" is.

Steven is going to be a Comm Officer for the Combat Assault Battalion. Here's a link to trusty old wikipedia about the Battalion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Assault_Battalion. 

Because it's happening, I am pretty excited about it. That isn't to say that there are not other emotions that come with the finalization of this duty station. A year ago, I thought we would already be in, or about to move to San Diego. So instead of looking forward to the best Mexican food north of the border, I'm looking forward to the best teriyaki ever. (Did I mention I practically lived off of it for lunches one summer before we were married?)

So aside from the geography shock of it all, a lot of our family and closer friends are on the west coast. And a lot of them are having or just had babies. I thought Olivia would be able to grow up with these kids and be best friends. I know she, and we, will make friends just fine. It's just kind of a let down feeling at first. I was secretly hoping that Katie would not get her first choice of Hawaii so Aly would be close to play with as well. But that didn't work out either. 

There is hope though. Because we are going to have a great time. We are going to live in a tropical island. We are going to make new friends and have amazing experiences. We will be living on a beach or at least extremely close by. Thankfully, there are military flights that go back and forth between Seattle and Okinawa (from what I can tell anyway). The other cool thing is that we already know people on the island. From the sounds of it, not many of them will be super close, but the island really isn't that big. So everyone is not more than an hour away. 

Right now, I'm feeling grateful. Grateful that Steven has a job that he is super pumped about, grateful that we have such a cool experience ahead of us, and grateful that we have support from our family and friends. We are ready to start this next chapter with a positive outlook. I told Steven that when were getting married, that I wanted to travel. I thought two years abroad was an amazing once in a life time experience. Little did I know what I was asking for. He always goes up and above to over achieve and to perform. Love that guy! By the time we are done with this next duty station, we will have spent 5 of our 6 years of marriage outside the United States. 

Boots to fill (mostly just pictures)

Today should be a great day. It's beautiful outside, it's been productive and it's not even 10am. We should also be finding out our duty station today. We only know our geo location is overseas. I'm kinda freaking out on the inside and attempting to play it cool on the outside. Steven has been teasing me all morning via text when class isn't in session.

As I'm sitting here, Olivia is taking a really long time to fall asleep for her morning nap that she desperately needs. It's one of those situations where she's crying like her feelings are really really hurt, but you know it's the tired talking. I pop in every once in a few minutes to put her pacifier back in. It only lasts so long but she's finally letting the sleep take over.

We have been having some fun with photos and friends. My friend upstairs, Katie, showed us a new coffee shop yesterday. Their hot chocolate and muffins are really yummy. I'm pretty sure it will be the new mommy hang out spot for a while now. 

So for the latest news around here.....

This is one of Olivia's new favorite toys. The laundry basket. That's right. All the money on the toys that we spent and she want's to stand up in the laundry basket. I suppose it's a different sort of independence that attracts her. She can stand up on her own in it. 

 This is her happy face in the mornings. I'm not quite the same morning person she can be sometimes. But I love it when she is like this. It's how I know everyday can always be a good day.

We recently discovered Prince William Park. It's about 15 minutes up the freeway. Turns out they have (very tiny) waterfalls there. So we got up early (the 9am type of early) and hiked out there. Ok, it was more of a nature walk really; but there WAS a steep hill at the end of it.

 See the waterfalls in the back? I know it's a little hard to see, but I promise they are there.

 This girl is a bit of a night owl. She's been sleeping in until 7:30 or even 8:30 in the mornings. She really isn't ready until 10pm to go to bed. We try really hard to get her into bed around 7pm, and she will go down. But only for a nap. These are some of her new cute pj's. I just pulled out a lot of her 6 month clothes. What's crazy is she still fits into some of the newborn outfits too. Clothing companies really need to get this sizing sorted out.

She's figured out the straw on her sippy cup! If you watch the straw you can see the water go up and down. It took her the better part of a half an hour to sip out half an ounce. But still, I'm a proud mamma. I can't remember if I posted about it before, but she has gone cold turkey off of her bottles. She is not the least bit interested in them, no matter what is in there. *Sigh* I really was hoping to switch from nursing to bottles in the near future. I don't think that's going to work though. 

I thought she just looked like so much fun in her Sunday dress. Steven says she looks like a cute marshmallow.

This is her friend Aly. Aly and Olivia really like playing together. Aly is a month younger that Olivia. Sometimes, Olivia gets a little too handsy with Aly but Aly is so relaxed she just kind of takes it and laughs it off. Katie and I don't try to match the girls, it just always ends up that they wear the same color scheme. Great minds think alike I guess.

Olivia enjoys touching everything. She also likes to step/stand on everything. So I stuck her in Steven's boots. She let out a bit of a giggle and thought it was funny. 

Covering her eyes while trying to go to sleep is one of her new things that she does. We used to put our hand on her cheek while holding in her pacifier when she was a newborn. Maybe this comes from that. Now when I lay her down in her crib, I usually put my hand on the side of her face or stroke next to her eyes. I suppose that could be a factor too. Either way, we laugh when she does this. It's just too stinking cute. 

 Aly and Olivia again. She was sharing her favorite laundry basket.

She is starting to be able to get up to all fours. She doesn't move a muscle once she's up, otherwise she does a face plant. But she seems to like the idea of getting up. Check out her drool. This girl is always covered and she rips her bibs off. So they are not much of any help.

Remember the laundry basket? Well, she does start to tip it if we don't hold it. The other day, we slowly let it down to the ground and then we were playing peek a boo. By the time we were done, we realized she had her first fort. 

This little girl loves phones. Actually, she likes anything she can grab and put her mouth on. But she likes it when we take pictures on my phone. I love this little girl! We couldn't be more thankful that she is in our family. 

We had some fun doing photos down by the pool yesterday. She is so funny.