2010 in Review

It has been quite a year to say the least. Our year consisted of lots of trips, lots of family activities, lots of new experiences, a new addition to our family, and lots of new friends.

We survived our first full year up in Minot. We LOVED our first winter (we do not LOVE the -50* days) the girls loved the snow...having snowball fights, sledding, building snowmen, making snow angels, and shoveling the driveway (yes, they do enjoy this when they think its playing..which is the first 2 minutes, after that it becomes work, and it is no longer fun for them). We love the summer here...the weather is perfect (minus the crazy winds some days). We walk almost every night as a family during the summer, and lots of nights during the winter still. I am glad we never let all the negativity of the people that hate it here get to us. We came with a positive attitude, and made our own opinion of Minot, and try to avoid the people that only have bad things to say about it. We love it here, and have found that it is a great place for families. We couldn't ask for a safer, more friendly place to raise our girls for a couple of years. We know we will actually be very sad when it is time to leave this base.

Our first trip of the year was our first of many family trips down to Omaha for Geoff's hearing aid process. It was his 2nd time going down there, but the girls and I decided to go along this time. On our way back we stopped in Minneapolis and met up with Scott, Kim, and Kayla and spent a few days around with them. The girls had soooooo much fun playing with their cousin! The hearing aid didn't work, so we sent it back, and went down again later on in the year. Our next time going to Omaha was during the summer. We decided to detour again, and on the way we drove to South Dakota and all the neat stuff around Mt Rushmore. We did some rock climbing, fed some animals, saw lots of buffalo, the Badlands, and drove around ALOT. After that we continued on to Omaha, where, yet again, the next hearing aid didn't work. We took a few trips to Bismarck for various reasons as well. We enjoy going to the pumpkin patch in Bismarck every fall. Also, Bismarck is where we picked up the newest member of our family: Holly. She is now 5 months old and just as beautiful as Kota. Our final trip of the year was in November when we headed to Cali for the duration of the holiday season! During this trip, we made our first trip as a family to Hawaii! I think Abby was the most excited out of all of us...getting to see where she was born! It was a great experience for all 4 of us, and I LOVE that we got to share it with Jordy this time.

We love how easy it is to travel with our girls. We seriously could not ask for better kids in so many aspects. They are at such a fun age, and its awesome that we are able to experience so much, as a family. Our tradition we started on trips this year, is picking up a magnet in each state we visit. There are a few we still need to get that we missed out on before the tradition started, but we will just pick them up next time 'round! They love collecting them. I am also going to be getting them a big US map so they can put stickers on all the states we have been to....eventually I hope we have to upgrade to a world map!

Geoff has had an interesting year with all the ups and downs of the possibility of being able to hear again in his right ear. So far, no hearing aids have worked in restoring his hearing. We are looking into a couple of different options, but most likely, we will be heading to San Antonio, TX for him to have the BAHA surgery sometime this spring. This will involve drilling a small hole into the side of his head and putting a stump on the outside that his anchored to his bone. Once it heals, he will go back 6 months later and receive a bone anchored hearing aid that uses bone conduction for him to hear through that ear. We are pretty sure this one will work as we have tested out the theory with other bone conductors on him, and he was able to hear! Other then that, Geoff has been busy with work, loving teaching Airman Leadership School. Right now, he is working on his officer package to apply to go to OTS where he will become an officer and go back to the world of Intell. This will involve a PCS for us, and we have NO idea where...as an intell officer, he can go to almost any base!

Mommy has had a very busy year. My first priority is being a mommy to our beautiful girls. I am soooo BLESSED that I am able to stay at home with them. We stay busy with MOPS, playgroups, walks to the park, and lots of biking in the summer (to the pool, parks, or just rides with friends). I really enjoy biking during the summer, and try to bike as much as possible. I think there was a period where I went 2 weeks without driving anywhere, just biking to what I needed to do on base. I am hoping to increase my distances this summer, along with training Kota to go farther than 5 miles biking with me. (She made it to 5 miles over the summer, I was so proud of her!) I had a great year with my business as well. I hope to increase my client base even more this year. I love that my job allows me to stay home, and make my own hours. Sometimes I feel like taking on more, so I will have 5-6 sessions one week, others I feel like I need some time with the family and take a week or two off. I have made many new good friends here in Minot, and had to say goodbye to a few of them already :( This is by far the hardest part of being in the military for most wives. We spend so much time with some of these girls, that they become part of your family. But being a military wife teaches you to make friends fast, and give them your all, even though you know that one of you will be leaving the other at some point. You learn to not let the fact that someone will leave stand in the way of letting new friends into your life. It sucks, but how sad would it be if we thought "well there is no point in making friends at this base...they all leave at some point". Anyways, I am working on a blog post that goes into detail about life of the military family...soon to come :)

Abby....my beautiful big girl Abby. Abbys stats: 43lbs, 43 inches tall. She is around 10% for height, and 15% for weight, and her height to weight ratio is about 50% (which means she is perfectly proportionate for her body). She is now in size 5/6 or 6 clothing. She has grown so much this past year...and I love it, and hate it at the same time. Abby is now well into learning to read, doing math, and loves science, just like her mama. She started school in August, and loved every minute of it. We hated that we had to pull her out because of our trip. We hate that we felt forced into either canceling our trip we planned, and saved for all year, or pulling her out. It was not any easy decision, and sometimes we regret it, but at the same time, I am happy that I get a few more months with my baby girl now. We have not made the final decision on next year as far as 1st grade goes. We are on the fence right now between sending her to the other school on base, or home schooling. There are benefits to both for her and our family, and right now, we have plenty of time to figure it out. In the mean time, we do lots of teaching at home. We are not officially homeschooling her this year, as it is not needed, but we are working on her reading skills, math, and creativity at home. Abby took swim lessons over the summer, and that improved her swimming skills greatly! She can almost do it all. She just has to practice swimming farther underwater, holding her breath, so she doesn't freak out. She also plays ice hockey now! She started in October, and then missed half the first season, but is back out on the ice 2x a week now. She loves it, and we love that its a team sport that really challenges her.

Jordyn...my sweet Jordy. Jordyn's stats: 24lbs, 32 inches tall. She is our little peanut at less than 1% for height and weight, and like her sister 50% height to weight ratio. She really has not grown much at all since her 1st birthday. They are not concerned with her size however, because she is still growing, and still (barely) on the charts. Jordyn finally was able to start speech therapy a few months ago, which is helping her quite a bit. She is learning the correct way to make sounds she otherwise didn't know how to make when it came to vocabulary. Right now we are in the process of getting her into see a developmental specialist, most likely down at WHMC at Lackland as well. Jordyn has a lot of trouble focusing...her mind, and her energy in that tiny little body of hers. We want to be able to understand why she does what she does, and how to deal with her behavior. She still is not potty trained, and really not showing much interest in it. I try with her every couple of weeks, but still no luck. My next attempt, which started this morning, is using the ipad for reward. Anyone that knows Jordy, knows that this might be what works LOL. I will post later how it goes in the next couple of days. Other then that, Jordyn stays busy being a little sister, and she does it well. There isn't much she can do as far as sports and activities here yet, but this fall, she will be playing hockey as well! Most sports around base and down, you have to be 5 years old, but hockey is only 4, so that will be her first sport she plays :).

All 3 doggies are doing well. Roxy adapted to North Dakota living, much better then expected. She will go outside...even when its really cold and snowing (as quick as possible) She loves snuggles with her Abby, and sleeps with her most nights. Kota is...well, being a husky. She loves the snow, and everything about it. She would stay outside all day if we let her. She loves jumping fences, not to run away, but to go see what is going on with all the other doggies. She loved running and bike rides all summer long. She actually worked her way upto 5 miles, running beside me on my bike. We also would like to train her to pull a sled this winter. Holly is still very puppy like. She still has accidents almost everyday in the house. Part of this is due the fact we had to leave her for over a month, and sort of had to start over when we got home, and it was a new house to her again. Her and Kota just play all day long. They love wrestling around all over, and chasing each other. The two of them have definately formed a "pack" in the house.

Well that was a majority of our year summed up in one long blog post. We are excited to see what this year will bring. We have more trips planned, more birthday parties to look forward to, and new experiences to come.

My New Years Resolutions.

The most obvious one, and the one most people chose, continue to lose weight, and get back into shape. I have about 25-30 more lbs until I am at my goal body weight/size.

Not only continue to cook healthy meals at home, but when we go out, to chose healthier options more often (not every single time, just more often....we will never give up pizza or mexican food!)

Continue to go on walks as a family at least4x per week, and when we don't go on family walks, I want to continue to walk Kota (and now Holly) even through the harsh winter.

Enroll Kota and Holly into some sort of training school so they are more controlled around visitors and out on walks.

Participate in the "52 week photo challenge" of posting a new photo each week based on different themes (this is just a fun photography challenge for myself to try new things).

Do more homeschooling activities with the girls...projects, crafts, cooking, etc

Get our house more organized (I know I am sort of a freak when it comes to organizing, but it makes me very happy)

Find more ways to save our family money and being green (think less disposable, more reusable items)

Declutter by getting rid of stuff we no longer need or use.

Update:Christmas, Getting settled, New Years

Alright, long post!

First of all, we had a great Christmas, spending it with tons of family back home in California. I will not be posting photos on here from the trip, as it takes forever to upload photos to blogger, because they are individual. If you would like to see photos, I uploaded a bunch onto facebook, so check them out there!

We got to spend our first ever Thanksgiving with family, and we got to do it 2x. We spent the afternoon with Geoff's side of the family, and the evening with Stacy's! We hope it doesn't take another 8 years to be able to spend Thanksgiving with our family.

Our trip consisted of A LOT of busyness! The 4 of us decided over the summer, that we would attempt to go to Hawaii while we were in Cali. We wanted to try to take a space a military hop flight. This is the only way we flew when we were stationed in hawaii, and it saved A TON of money. It is very stressful and frusturating at times, trying to get to where you want...but in the end it worked out. We ended up not getting to Hawaii til about 5 days after we planned, which led to us not being able to stay quite as long, but we spent almost 3 days there, and did a ton of stuff. We stayed in TLF on base and got a rental car. We went to lots of beaches, watched some sunsets, did a drive around the island, walked Waikiki, hiked Diamond head crater, and ate at some of our favorite "Hawaii" resteraunts that we missed!. The girls even got to do a Hula lesson! They had a BLAST, and we are hoping to go back again in a couple of years when the girls are a little older, and Jordyn can really appreciate it more like Abby did.

We also did a lot of fun Christmas stuff such as ride The Polar Express Train in Sacramento. This was amazing! We went with Stacy's parents, and Katy and her family. Most of us wore jammmies, and the kids all had a blast being the center of attention because of how cute they 4 of them where all matching. We also spent a night taking the kids to go look at Christmas lights, which is always inspiring for our family :)

We had our4th Annual Happy Birthday Jesus Party, the week before Christmas at Stacy's moms house. This year only family came, but we all had alot of fun, and helped the kids and ourselves remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas. We love that our girls already know this and get so excited about the party each year. We did Crafts, ate yummy food and cake (made by Grandma...it was yummy!), read the Christmas story, and opened goody bag presents.

We spent Christmas Eve at Grandma Bettys house, with most of the family there (missing a few, but still good times). We ate some yummy food and opened presents and spent time together.

Christmas Day was spent at Stacy's moms house with..for the first time ever...all 4 sisters, significant others, and kids! Geoff finally got to meet his brother in-law (Jeff) and the girls got to meet their uncle for the first time. It was hectic, but awesome that we were all together.

We left to head home 2 days after Christmas, had to drive thru some rough weather, but we made it home just in time for a welcome home to Minot small scale blizzard. We missed home and it feels great to be back in our own house.

We spent New Years Eve at a friends house with lots of friends and kids running around like monkeys. We ended up having to leave at around 9:30 from all of us being exhausted from being up at night with Abby (thats next). We were glad to be able to hang out for at least a little while.

Now onto Abby. Most of you know about Abby's sleep issues. Most of her life she has sleep walked and has night terrors. Basically she wakes up 5-7 nights a week...either sleep walking (calm, sweet, affectionate) or night terrors (screaming, inconsolable, very upset). Well while we were on vacation, she was having trouble sleeping..falling asleep, staying asleep...not a whole lot of sleep walking or night terrors, just trouble sleeping in general. We chalked it upto she just needed her own bed back. Christmas Eve was horrible..she was up until about 1am throwing fits because she couldn't sleep (she coudln't handle the excitement of Christmas, nor did she understand that its normal to feel anxious and have trouble sleeping on Christmas eve...most adults still feel that way!). Well we got home and it only worsened. She is up all night screaming, crying, and throwing fits. She has only sleep walked once or twice in the last week. The rest of the time, once she falls asleep (anywhere from immediately, to a few hours to finally fall asleep) within the hour it begins. She wakes up crying, and then wont go back to sleep. She comes out of her room, goes into the bathroom, comes out to the living room or our room, and just throws a huge fit, like an out of control toddler! (Yes, she is 6 years old, this is out of control) We have hardly gotten any sleep since we have been home because of this. She is up at least every 2 hours, and stays up for anywhere from a few minutes, to over an hour...just screaming and throwing a fit. We are at our wits end on what is wrong with her. We have given her meds to help her sleep, tylenol, allergy meds, stuff to help her poop...nothing is working. We dont know if its an actual medical issue, or just her acting out and a behavior issue....so she is actually going to the Dr. later today to see if there is anything that we can do. I will post on that later!

We hope you all had a Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Years.

I will try to post some more updates soon!

Update on School Situation

Okay so many of you know that there has been some issues we have been having with Abby's school. We are getting a lot of calls and texts asking what is going on, and well, it is a pretty long story so I am just going to explain it on here so you all can know.

First off, we just want to say that Abby is doing great in school, just as expected. We registered her over the summer to start school in August at Dakota Elementary School located here on Minot AFB. Dakota is not a military school, but it is on base. The staff is for the most part, all civilian. We loved that her school is only a quarter mile from our house and we could walk her to and from school when the weather was nice. The day she was registered we asked the front office about Abby missing school for the possibility of our upcoming vacation to come home for a month for the Holidays. At this point it was not for sure we were coming home, and the outcome was going to be based on what her school said. They said, yes that is fine, just be sure to get her homework. A couple of days before school started, we met with Abby's teacher, and at that time we also asked her about being gone for a month. Again, she said, no problem, let me know a few days before and I will get you all her work so she can keep up. So after we had now talked to a few people and were told it was okay, we decided that we should for sure take the opportunity to take a month long vacation, as we have never done it before. We figured this probably was our last chance before both of the kids are in school and they could fall behind. Everyone who knows Abby knows how smart she is and the possibility of her falling behind is pretty much impossible.

Everything is fine for a couple of months and she is loving school and her teacher. I get the form sent home about the bus. The bus here is pretty much mandatory. It is provided by the base, from a contracted company the base pays for. This is due to the weather here in Minot, and the purpose is to minimize the kids exposure to severe weather. So I fill out the form with our address and where she will need to be picked up. The bus is required to pick up any kids along the route, within 3 houses of home. The schedule is released a few days later, and we notice we are not on it. Our street is not even on the route. We start making some phone calls to the guy in charge of the contract for the bus, the bus company, the school principal, and the superintendent of the school district. At this point we find out Abby has been at the wrong school. We have 2 elementary schools on base. The other is North Plains Elementary and it is about 1 mile away. We were told we go to Dakota due to our address. When we have our first encounter with her principal, she basically didn't give a care. She said we were at the wrong school and her staff probably told us this at registration and we chose to ignore it. When she was registered we had to fill out forms and such with our address. We were never told we were at the wrong school. If we were told that, we would have simply gone to North Plains and registered her there, but it really made sense to us that our address put her at Dakota because it was half the distance. During research we found out that our address in fact used to be in Dakota zone. Our address used to be a 4-plex house, and it was farther down the road. So when we looked it up, it said our address was still there, and not where we are now. The bus company and everyone seemed very understanding, but there was nothing they could do (except the principal...that woman did absolutly nothing to even attempt to help us figure things out). Needless to say, we came out with our own solution: There is a bus stop for Dakota on the street right behind us (the houses back up to eachother so its really not all that far) so I walk Abby through the backyard, and then we walk to the side walk. Its about 2-3 houses worth, it takes us less than 1 minute from door to sidewalk.

The issue was resolved, on our own, and we were okay with it. That is until the first day of the bus runs, which was on Monday. The bus is to arrive at 8:31. We get to the bus stop at 8:25, just in case since its the 2nd stop we knew it shouldn't be running behind already. We are waiting and waiting. Finally at 8:38 the bus starts coming from the opposite direction and then turns down a road before it gets to our stop, never even stopping at all. I knew it was our bus by the # on it. I grab Abby and run back inside to get Jordyn ready because now I have to drive Abby to school. I inform Geoff of what happened so he could figure out what went on. (Stacy does not do phone calls like this because Stacy is not good at them and can not compose herself when she is flustered. Geoff takes care of all phone calls with this nature). After everything that had already happened, we were pretty upset that this happened. We found out that our bus driver was given the wrong map for pick ups and completely went the wrong way. The supervisor apologized to Geoff many times and promised Abby would be on the bus and dropped off at the correct drop off point, as well as pick her up Tuesday morning in the correct spot. Again, we let it go, its done, nothing we can do. The bus dropped her off Monday and picked her up Tuesday morning and since then everything with the bus has been fine.

Now, back to the whole vacation thing. Geoff went in on Monday to talk to the principal about how they need to communicate with the staff better and get it together, because this whole wrong school situation should have never happened. We suggested that starting next year, anytime someone enrolls there child they need to look at their house on a map, and sign something that they acknowledge they are not in the right zone and the bus will not be picking up their child. This would eliminate any sort of confusion before school ever starts. The principal pretty much said yeah whatever. For some reason, Geoff had mentioned about us leaving and the principal asked for how long and when he told her a month, she said "no, that is too much for her to miss". At this point he explained to her we were told its okay as long as she got her school work and kept up. She said "no, my staff would never say that, we have rules about missing too many days". He explained how we planned this vacation BECAUSE we were told it was okay. She flat out just kept saying no, no, no. Geoff felt very bullied and pushed around by her, and her not willing to even listen to our situation. He then called the superintendent of the school district and a few other people. Nobody knew of any rule of "10 days" or anything like that, and they all said, it should be fine, we will call the principal and see what is going on.

The next day, we were waiting to hear back from everyone and I guess in the meantime people finally found the rule/state law about attendence. Basically the laws were made for the highschoolers, but the whole district follows them and can use them any way they want. We were told "10 day rule of thumb". Um last I heard a rule of thumb is a guideline, not the law. After many hours of research we found that there is nowhere that states they can only miss 10 days, but they are to attend school unless medically unable to. That leaves it very open for each school to say whatever they want reguarding how much school a child is allowed to miss, before the authorities are called and charges are pressed against the parents. Basically we were threatened by the principal saying that if Abby missed 10 days, she was going to call the Authorities (the authorties assumed to be the police and CPS, based on our understanding). We attempted to talk to the other school on base, and at first that principal was very understanding and totally okay with her missing because we are on a military base and he knows we all need to be flexible when it comes to the military. We were ready to switch her over at this point. Apparently right after we left, the superintendent of the school district, called every single school principal to inform them of the "rules". The next time I talked to the North Plains principal, he was a completely different person, and took back every single thing he said. Now, we totally understand that rules need to be followed, but by this point, we have completely had it with people changing rules and telling us different things every hour. They all basically pointed fingers and said we were bad parents for allowing her to miss that much school. They said "Who is this really hurting?" referring to Abby. We said "well, not Abby, she hasn't really learned anything new that she hasn't learned at home, and she will being having many new experiences with our family on our trip". The just snubbed the comment. They feel classroom time is more important than the act of actually learning anything. Abby has plenty of social interaction outside of school, so we are not concerned with that. We know many families that homeschool...Abby does AWANA. We do MOPS. We do sports. We do playgroups.

So after all this, this is what we feel:

*We have no problem with public schools, however we do believe there needs to be more communication within the staff to make sure everyone is on the same page, which right now, they are not.

*We feel that principal at Dakota, is a heartless woman who does not care about the needs of children. She flat out told us that they treat every child the same, and no exceptions will be made for anyone. (We have many friends here on base we have spoken with that this woman made exceptions for vacations when in Kindergarten, so they would keep there child enrolled and not lose state money)

*If there were set rules on the amount of days they could miss, somewhere that it is written...we would apologize to the principal, and superintendent for causing trouble. But, it does not exist. We caught them not knowing there own policy, and we challenged them because they do not know what everyone is doing, and basically they are mad about this, and have gone into defense mode.

*We strongly agree that yes, children need to be in school, but vacation and missing school should be determined by the child's teacher, and if they believe they are able to not fall behind, it should be allowed.

*These schools are on a military base. The children that attend, are military dependents. Not everyone is allowed to take leave on the exact school dates that children are given off. They are in school up until dec 22nd. There is no way most people would be able to make it home for Christmas if they plan on spending it with family. We really believe that when military children are involved with schools, that the school needs to be more flexible to the needs of the military family and maybe show a little bit more support. Our family is sacrificing a normal life, living in our home town, and spending quality time with our families, to serve our country. You would think the least the school system could do, is make it a little easier for us to go home for the Holidays and be with family, that we only see once a year.

*It was NEVER our intent to cause such an uproar. We simply were trying to do what were told was okay, and then trying to find answers. We are very upset that the act of us taking our children to spend time with family for the HOLYdays has caused such anger, threats, and chaos in the school district. The whole thing got out of hand very quickly, all because the district did not know or even have a specific policy, and were caught off guard. We do however, have a hard time believing that we are the only family to ever go on vacation at Christmas with school aged children....

Basically our decision was prayed about and discussed with many family and friends who are involved in our lives, and know and care about our family. We have decided to remove Abby from the school this year. Since it is not required for children to attend school in the state of ND until age 7, they can not stop us from doing this. She will not be allowed to go back in until next year for 1st grade, and she will go to North Plains, where at least the principal is a little more reasonable and willing to talk with parents and resolve issues. I have unofficially home schooled Abby since age 2, which I will continue to do. There is also still discussion if we will just completely remove both of our children and not use the public school system for the duration of our stay in North Dakota. This means WE will be home schooling (it is a 2 parent job, and Geoff will be very involved). We do not feel we should allow the school system to threaten us and bully us into not going on a vacation we were told was okay, and then threaten to take our children.

We do want to thank all of our family and friends that have been praying for us, and supporting us through this whole ordeal. This was not an easy decision for us, and we do not like that we were basically forced into it, but it is what is happening, and we will take it as it comes. Also thank you to everyone who cared enough to read this whole blog entry LOL.

Halloween...umm preview???