Christians Crossover Ceremony

In June before Christian left to go to Utah to visit Family, and then move on to Washington, we had a crossover ceremony for him from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. One of the leaders did the ceremony for us and it was really awesome. I think it was a really neat experience for Christian and it helped to get him excited for Boy Scouts. Now that we're here in Washington the Scouts program is huge and there are quit a few scouts his age, in Florida he was the only 11 year old scout. He is really enjoying the scouting program! Here are some pics from his ceremony. I do apologize for the lateness of this but with the moving and our computer having issues I just couldn't get to the pics, so I say, better late then never ;0)

Ponce De Leon

A few weeks before we moved from Florida Kaylie, Camren and I went to this really cool (literally) natural spring called Ponce De Leon, Pete had to work :0(. We went with our friends the Burts & my Sister-in-law Marilee! It was so awesome, there was a cave under the water, the only problem was it was FREEEEZZZZZING!! I screamed when I jumped in the first time because I knew the water was going to take my breath away. The temperature is always 68 degrees and when you're used to the warm beach water that is pretty dang cold. The water was so clear that you could see the fish swimming everywhere.

Hot Chocolate?

I have to admit I stole this from a friend. But I Love the meaning behind it, and I especially need this constant reminder that life is what you make of it! Thanks Shontell!!

A group of graduates, well established n their careers were talking at a reunion and decided to go and visit their old university professor - who is now retired.During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. The professor had decided to offer his guests some hot chocolate, so he went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate. He brought back an assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite....and instructed them to help themselves to the hot chocolate. When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand the professor said 'Notice that all the nice looking expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems....stress. The cup that you're drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive, and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was HOT CHOCOLATE, not the cup...but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other's cups. Now, consider this: Life is the hot chocolate. Your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy hot chocolate God has provided us. God makes the hot chocolate...man chooses the cup. The happiest people don't have the best of everything...They just make the best of everything that they have.'Live simply.Love generously.Care deeply.Speak kindly.Enjoy your HOT CHOCOLATE!

Almost all settled!

OK, so I was waiting to put a new post up so that I could put some pics but, our computer desk didn't quite make the move so we need to buy a new one. Therefore we haven't gotten our desk top out because we have nowhere to put it and I don't know where the software for my camera is at to download it to the laptop so for now there won't be any pics. OK we did find a house, it is in Puyallup, WA. I think we were kind of led here, after we saw the house and the neighbors were so friendly it just felt right so we applied for it and they called us the next day and said we could move in the day after that. We applied on Wednesday they called us and said we had it on Thursday and we unloaded the truck on Friday. So fortunately for us we only had to live in the hotel for a few days. Now we are just waiting on the money the Airforce owes us for moving ourselves so we can get a new desk. The kids have gotten started in school and seem to be really enjoying it. They were over crowded and had to open a new 3rd and K class so Kaylie started her new class yesterday and Camren will start his new class on Monday and will also be going from being AM Kindergarten to PM. Oh well I guess I just won't ever get to the gym, I am definitely not taking him with me. We aren't quit sure what's going to happen with Cristian, because he was in advanced math in Florida and their schools are just more advanced then here, he has done all the math books they have scheduled for this year in 6th grade. He went last week and tested for the gifted program (I'm really not bragging, but I am proud of him and his abilities) and should know something in the next week or so. If they offer to have him in their program he can do what they call the pullout program where once a week he goes to a different school and does the gifted program (whatever that is) or he can do the self contained program which would mean he would go to a different school all together all the time and do their program all the time, the problem we see with this is that he won't be going to school with any of the kids from the neighborhood and will be less likely to make friends which was the problem we had in Florida, because he went to the Preparatory school and nobody really in our neighborhood did he didn't have any friends close by. They have also offered for him to skip to the 7th grade but after talking to his teacher we really don't feel he is socially ready to do that so they may let him go to the first period seventh grade math and then go back to his school for the rest of the day. He has a wonderful teacher who has not let this slip by at all, she personally went out and bought a 6/7 Algebra book and has been having Christian do that while the other kids are doing the other math. Anyway I guess only time will tell. OK so one of our neighbors is a member of the church and they told us that we had a really big ward with over 530 active members. They said that the seating went all the way into the gym so we were thinking maybe a few rows, Uh No our first week we were about 30 minutes late and when we got there it was filled up to the back of the gym, now it is a smaller building but still! And they were still passing the sacrament. There are so many kids they have 2 primaries, A & B. The Relief Society meets in the Chapel so the kids can use their room and apparently the Relief Society room wasn't big enough anyway. It's pretty overwhelming, so many people have introduced themselves and I can't remember half of them. I guess I will learn eventually. It's a huge change coming from FWB where the primary had about 30 kids if we were lucky and the whole Sunday school fit in the Relief Society room. We are looking forward to making new friends being able to explore this new country here and also being closer to family so hopefully we can go home for visits more often. Well when we get our desk and then get our computer all set up I'll post some pics of our new home and maybe some of the area. You can see Mt. Rainier pretty much from our front porch, I think were about 40 miles from it. Until next time!!

We Finally made it!!

We have finally arrived at our destination in Washington! We got here at 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, thank you all to our lovely moving truck. I told Peter we are definitely not moving ourselves from here when the time comes.
We stayed in TLF the first night and then we were homeless from about 11 to 4. We are currently in an extended stay hotel until Friday morning and will be homeless again for another day unless we find a house to rent before then. We found a house yesterday that we love, but until we get our Delocation allowance it will be a little difficult to rent a place, Peter went this morning to find out about all that stuff. The neighbors were so nice and the kids played with the neighbor kids there for about three hours while we all stood around talking. It was kind of strange. We had looked at one house and had seen a few on the internet that were in the same neighborhood so we decided to go take a look at them. Well we were sitting in the driveway looking at the houses on the internet, Peter had called the realtors and they weren't going to be able to show us the house until today, when someone knocked on the window. It was the neighbor from across the street and she was wondering if we were the new renters? We told her no we were just looking and she invited us in to look at her house because it was the same floor plan (it's actually a little different but that's ok) Then it went from there. There is even an LDS family 2 houses up from where we were looking so that's pretty cool and she said they have about 500 ACTIVE members which is a huge change from Fort Walton Beach! Anyway we hope to be able to move in by this weekend but will have to see with all the finance stuff. We hope everyone else is doing well, we really miss our friends back in Fort Walton but are trying to be optimistic that we will make new friends here too!! Until next time : )

Holy Moley!!

OK, so we FINALLY made it to Utah, we are only a day and a half later then we expected. Our moving truck is not doing so great. It took us from 9:30 this morning until 6:30 pm to go 230 miles. We did stop for about an hour and a half to have lunch with a friend. But the truck had only been doing about 20 miles an hour up hills so we called Penske and they told us to take it to a mechanic in Beaver Utah, we had stopped in Richfield Utah for lunch. We got about 16 miles and the truck wouldn't shift gears and started acting like it was in neutral so we pulled over and waited about two hours for someone to come look at it, by then it had rested and went (But not very fast) the mechanic said it could be a clogged fuel filter and maybe there is something wrong with the transmission but this truck only has 38000 miles on it. Anyway we finally made it to Milford where my parents live only to find out that they have a major sewage leak and we can't use the toilet until Pete fixes it tomorrow so we came to the hotel to get a room for the night and his card was declined, come to find out we are at his limit and still have the rest of the way to Washington to go, however far that is? So nothing about this move from the time we got our orders has gone right, were we supposed to stay in Florida, I would like to think not! I was going to hurt someone if we did! I want to be faithful and hope everything will go OK in the long run but right now I'm starting to waiver! So if any of you reading this would like to pray for us that would be greatly appreciated! We will keep you posted on the rest of the move the best we can and let everyone know when and if we get there!

On the Move!!

OK, so it's been a really long time since I posted but life was a little stressful and I had no idea where our lives were going so I didn't want to post until I knew for sure. Anyway, we were FINALLY able to leave Florida and we are now on our way to McChord AFB in Washington state near Tacoma. We're really excited about our move and hope that we will be able to make the transition as easily as possible since leaving was anything but that. We are in Albuquerque, NM right now and will be heading to Utah tomorrow morning. We're going to spend a few days there and then will be going on to Washington. We hope to be there on the 29th or 30th. We don't have a home yet so we don't have an address but as soon as we get that info we'll let everyone know. Well I'm going to get some rest the past few days have been really long and tomorrow is a 10-13 hour day. I'll try to post again soon!!