Getting the hang of things

Well almost anyway. I finally feel like the three of us have an almost routine. Things in life seem to change on a day to day basis so quickly that we try to keep up and stay in the flow of things.

Olivia and I are finally getting back into helping out with the Young Women (aka: church youth group). We help out with the 12 and 13 year old girls. Last night for the activity we did what was known as a heart attack. Basically, you cut out all sorts of heart shapes, write nice things on them, and then go tape them on a person's door and leave a treat for them to find. The girls loved doing this. We were going to make our own cookies, but that didn't work out so well. So there may have been a last minute call to Steven to run to the store and pick up cookies there. We then placed them on our own plates for the delivery. Our recipients were more than happy about it from what I hear.  For one of the spots, we had to drive. All of the girls wanted to come in our car because of Olivia. They LOVE her. Well as it turns out, she was less than thrilled about being in her carseat, and no one could really calm her down or talk over her. So our car was a bit of a buzz kill for a bit.

Steven loves to laugh at the things we do and names that we give them. Every once in a while, I'll tell him a story about girls camp and the silly things that we would do. He always gives me such a strange look and then teases about it for a while after. For instance, we would decorate our port-a-potties. Each camp was in charge of one to make sure it was stocked and clean. It just so happened that at girls camp, we would also decorate them. Everyone did it- and it was cool. I mean, no one wanted to clean those nasty smelling things, but as long as we had to; they were going to look cool. Anyhow, he feels the same about heart attacking someone.

Now for a little down memory lane....

The first pictures were taken in Ireland. Sometimes we just ran into road blocks. For instance here, we were being blocked by a man herding his cattle down the road on his bicycle. And like the majority of roads in the country, it was only two lanes to start with. It was very entertaining at first and then after 20 minutes, it wasn't. 

These pictures were from London. One of the things that Steven loved to do was go to the gym. While he did work out very hard, it was also his social place. He made a lot of friends there. Typically he is not a group exercise kind of guy. He did make an exception for a couple of the classes. This one below was a class called Park Fitness. The class was run by a former Royal Marine named Jon. He tailored the class for each person, just to make sure you left really sore. Anyway the class would run from the gym to the park and then do various exercises. I tried it a few times and liked it, but generally found myself exhausted after the warm up.  

Jon was also very talented at making sure that every inch of you was either covered in dirt or had a grass stain on it. Given the amount of birds in the park during the day, I'm sure it wasn't all dirt. Oh well.

 We actually were able to get to know this group pretty well and had them over for dinner a couple of times after the workouts in the evenings.

Steven doing bench push ups in the park

Jon and his girlfriend Flo

Steven making sure his back was just as dirty as his front

see- you get filthy dirty in this class

Xander Simon

Another baby is here! My sister Elisha welcomed her first child this morning. His name is Xander Simon. He came at a great weight of 8 1/2 pounds.

Xander Simon

Both baby and mom are doing well.

Did I mention only 16 days until TBS graduation? I'm pretty excited for that!

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mother's Day to the amazing women in our lives. We are grateful for such wonderful examples that we have been given and are grateful to our moms for all that they have done and do for us. 

Today was my first Mother's Day as a mommy. I loved it!

Steven made me breakfast- oatmeal and english muffins. It was delicious. Next he did a lot to take care of Olivia. I even scored a morning nap.

We did a low key lunch of leftovers and sandwiches. However dinner was amazing. The little chef came out in him- brown sugar salmon, wild rice and asparagus.

We took these pictures after church.

In other news, only 17 days until Steven graduates from TBS! 

Bella Grace

It was a great week! We are so excited that Isabella Grace is here. My sister Brooklynn had her 4th child yesterday. Bella was born at 7lbs and 15 oz and all natural! I'm thinking she looks like her sister Lucy. 

Bella

Proud big sisters Katie and Lucy, her dad Parker with Bella, and proud big brother Jackson!

Olivia wishing Bella a Happy Birthday!

 Steven made it back from The War. I knew it rained a lot, but didn't think it rained enough to make this happen. Hind sight is 20/20- they all agreed they should not have gone down this road in the end. 

Olivia was more than happy to snuggle with her daddy as soon as he came home. I was pretty darn happy to see him too!

When Olivia met George

Over the weekend, we stopped by a friend's house to check in on her two cats while she was away. The cats names are George and Pablo. Below is George.

I was busy filling up their food and water bowls and when I turned around, this is what I found. George was watching her with a lot of curiosity. I started thinking of those two siamese cats in the movie Lady and the Tramp. I wondered if they would be nice to her or if they would be horrible like the cats from the movie. Pablo ran away at the first sign of her squeaking. George on the other hand just kept watching. For the record, they are really sweet cats. It will be fun to see how they are with our friend when she has her little boy in August.

George and Olivia

I know.... what an outfit right?!

Last night we headed out to dinner with some of the other 3rd Platoon wives. Rachael, who is Steven's Captain's wife, invited us over to answer any questions about the impending moves most everyone is about to make. Their previous duty station was in Japan, so she knew a lot of the in and outs of those who were going there. We may not be going to Japan, but the company and food was great. We had bison soft tacos. I would recommend them if you have a chance to try! Olivia pretty much slept the whole time and offered a few squeaks to the conversation. 

On our way out to dinner. 

Because she is so stinking cute!

And for a walk down memory lane....

March 2012 we went to Tenerife with the Moriarty's and loved it! We went to the farm one day where they will take you out to the countryside on horses. Well, while we waited for the horses to get ready for the ride, we made friends with some of the "free range" animals they had there.

This goat thought we made great play mates. I tried to get away from him at one point so he couldn't head butt me anymore. I just forgot to take into consideration that he can climb too.

Trying to get away from the goat

Steven was great and pulled the goat away from me. However, that clearly meant that Steven wanted to play with the goat. He would head butt Steven, and then Steven would push him back. This continued until the owner finally came and put him away in the pen. 

Steven playing with the goat

Finally riding the horses.

I don't know if you can see the saddles on the horses. They are not your typical American saddles you see in the Western movies. They are English saddles. What's the difference you ask? The difference is the American saddle, you can't really fall out of. Not true for the English saddles. You fall to the side when you trot. Our awesome tour guide had to redo my stirrups several times to help me be more steady. In the end, we went slow because I kept falling :)

Riding the camels

More of Olivia and our life

My sister has assured me that people are less interested in the journal part and really just want to see the photos. So here's my attempt at documenting the almost month (already!!) that she has been with us. We get pretty mixed reviews of who she looks like. I think she looks a lot like me. Others say she is the spitting image of Steven. Although I've come to realize that it generally depends on which of us you know more.

The day she was born

Snuggled up in her bed. I love this photo

On her way to finding out Daddy's MOS assignment

At the Amish Market. This guy is seriously an awesome dad!
He makes front packs look cool.

Bath time. Rare shot where she isn't crying!

Hanging out with Mom

at 2 1/2 weeks old

Overall, she is doing really well. She does all of her baby things with flying colors. She's not a huge fan of baths just yet and she loves to be cuddled... all of the time. As in never put down if she can help it. Although she has been sleeping for up to 4 straight hours at a time. That is usually followed up with another 2.5 or 3 hour stretch of sleep. So nights haven't been so bad without Steven here.

Our friend Sam is coming over later to play with her. That way I can tackle that mountain of clean laundry taking over my couch! Is it weird that I'm very excited about my impending opportunity to tackle laundry? 

One of the things that I didn't expect to run into- a lot of "not really for kids" events. I'm not ready to leave her with a babysitter and because of nursing I can't leave for really more than an hour and a half anyway. We still have a few weeks before we try to introduce bottles. So while I love spending every moment with her, it's a strange feeling to feel limited in engagements. After saying that, I may or may not have used her as a reason as to why I can't attend something. 

Steven is away for the week. He left for the "war" on Friday and will come back sometime between next Thursday and Saturday morning. The original plan was Thursday sometime, then Friday. Usually, it's more of a midnight the evening of a day, always add a couple of hours and that's where Saturday morning comes in. "The War" is basically the culminating event of his training here at TBS. They split the company in half (270+ people) and they are given free play to defeat the other team. I don't know too much about it other than there are several engagements and then one team gets chosen to defend the urban operations assignment (which I don't know much about either). My fingers are crossed and I'm saying a prayer that they do well. From what I understand, unless you royally mess up, this exercise can't really negatively affect your standings. But it can help your leadership grade (not that his is suffering- but who can't use a little extra credit right?!). So fingers are very crossed they do well.

 I can't remember if I posted it in the last one, but Steven is going to be a communications officer. Which means living wise, we are here in Quantico until the end of the year most likely. We don't know where after that, but we are still crossing our fingers to be West Coast bound.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Olivia Marie

I'd like to say that I plan to catch up on the last year, but I'm not really sure how that will work out. So we will just start with now.

Steven is currently in The Basic School here in Quantico, VA. He is almost finished, only 5 more (long) weeks to go. After this, he will go to another 6 month school here in Quantico to be a Communications Officer (think friendly communications, not sneaky squirrel stuff where they listen to your phone calls).  After that, we still don't know. But our fingers are crossed to be west coast bound somewhere in California. Hello beach and sunshine!

We are so excited to welcome the newest member of our family, Olivia Marie. She was born here in Stafford, VA on April 11th at 5:58pm. We're in love all over again. She was 7lbs 10oz.

She loves taking pictures like her dad likes taking pictures

I love it when they are so tiny!