February's Happenings

February has been a very busy month. Last week I listed several of the events that I would write more about, and here I go.

Yesterday, the girls went to their first birthday party as a threesome. The location of the party was a house with a lot of acreage to run and play. From what I heard, Sofia just wanted to run and run. Jaynee spent most of her time and energy trying to get Sofia to participate in the birthday activities. Sorry, I wasn't there because I needed to spend some time working on homework. Because of Jaynee's effort to keep Sofia corralled, no pictures were taken.

CJ's Visit
CJ is a friend of Jaynee. They have been close friends since my first deployment. Shortly after we all returned home from that deployment we all (their family and the two of us) went and spent a week in Orlando, FL. Take a guess what we did for a week. I have the wonderful privilege of dragging Jaynee and anyone else who was with us at the theme parks home each night. I then was awoken early and dragged to the parks each morning well before they opened just so we could be some of the first people there each day. Needless to say, our families go way back (nearly 5 years). CJ and her family are currently living out west and will move overseas later this summer. She happened to come across a ticket and flew out here to visit us. The visit was great for Jaynee who needed a personal boost. Having a close friend confirm that she is being a good mother and wife really has helped her out. Not to mention that Jaynee renewed her interest in cross stitching. While CJ was here we ate out a lot, played a lot of games, and allowed CJ to get sick. The girls loved to play with CJ, and I think they actually missed her after she left (for about 30 minutes because we took them to a place to help them forget about all the fun they had with CJ).





EdVenture

In Columbia, SC, there is a neat little kids museum that helps to teach kids about a wide variety of things. In the main lobby there is a 40 foot tall kid that has spaces in the back to explore the inside of his body. There was also many other exhibits and for those in the area, the web link is http://www.edventure.org/Default.aspx

Below are a couple of photos that we took of the girls while at EdVenture.







Emma's First Haircut

Not much to report here. Jaynee gave Emma a trim to help even out her hair on the back side. There were places that Jaynee cut nearly 2 inches and other spots where she barely took anything off. She did all right for her first cut. Notice how I was not involved with the haircut except to take pictures. I have given wonderful haircuts in the past. It is really simple, remove any guard on the clippers and start from the front and go to the back of the head keeping the clippers as close to the head as possible. The end result is a beautifully shaved head that is perfectly even. Maybe for Sofia's haircut I can help. :)

Blasted Olympics

Don't get me wrong, I love the Olympics. However, over the last year the TV has not been turned on as much as it has over the last week. Not only that, we normally go to bed around 10 each night, but due to the late night schedule of the Olympics we have been getting to be after midnight. GO USA!!!!

Anywho! I better write a little more about what has been going on. To begin with, Sofia will be having surgery next week, YAAAHH!!! This should clear up all the ear infections that she has been having. It should also help with her balance and ability to learn. We are looking forward to this that we asked Jaynee's mom to help with all the doctor appointments that will take place in the next 2 weeks. In that period of time we will have 4 appointments. There may be some follow up appointments for Sofia after her surgery.

Weather this week has been great, no snow, little rain, and mild temperatures. Today the high is forecasted to be 68. Lots of open rooms available for anyone who wants to make a trip down here.

I have been tasked by Jaynee to add some photos. Last week I also said I would write a little more about some of the other events that have recently taken place. So, I will just include some family photos now, and then in the next section I will write about some of the other events that happened in the month of February.

It doesn't snow in Georgia!! Does it?

OK, first things first. Friday, Augusta Georgia received anywhere from 4 to 7 inches of snow. Snow is not part of the brochure that was handed out to me when I decided to come here to work. Ice storms, yes every 3rd year; tornado warnings, several per year but nothing but some really cool rain storms; hurricane warnings, like anything is going to hit here. Snow was not a factor, but yet it came and down it fell. It reminded me of living in Utah, and for Jaynee it reminded her of living in Idaho.

We did not take the girls out to play in the snow because it started to fall late in the afternoon and by the time it was deep enough to play in the girls were on their way to bed. The next day was a PJ day so we didn't go out until early evening, and by then nearly all the snow had melted. I hope you enjoy some of these pictures.







Now on to better and wonderful things. What can be more wonderful than beautiful white snow? How about a little girl who wants to go potty? That sounds much better to me. Jaynee has been working Sofia for only a couple of days, and she wants to potty several times each day. At first she did a lot of sitting, now she is nearly perfect when wanting to go to the bathroom, as well as 1 time conducting real business. It has been fun watching her go through the routine, toilet, toilet paper, flush, pull up pants, wash hands, dry hands, then run to the M&M jar for her treat. Sorry no pictures yet, but maybe soon.


Over the last couple of weeks the following happened: Jaynee's friend CJ came for a visit, the family had some pictures taken, the family went to a kids science museum for an evening, Emma got her first haircut (more like a trim to even up her hair), and lots and lots of Dr. appointments. The write-up about all of these other events will come later. Need to leave something for each of you to visit our post later.

Happy Birthday

Well, another year has come and gone, and Jaynee is one more year older. Or as I like to remind her for the next several weeks, she is 5 years older than me. (I know I will get it for saying that). Anywho, it is amazing that she looks just as good as the day we first met. I was such a loving husband, that I did not plan any activity, no special gift, and I didn't even make breakfast for her. In fact I let her get up first and get the girls out of bed. I need to do a better job next year, and maybe even next week if I want to climb out of the hole I have just created.

The girls are doing great. Sofia now has an appointment for surgery to have tubes placed in her ears. The surgery will be on 1 March. Also, we think we had our last home visit for Sofia this week. It really depends how long it will take for use to appear in court before we know for sure. Luckily, we had original court documents from Oklahoma and we were able to provide them to our case worker. This should speed up the process of finalization by about 2-3 weeks.

Looking at recent pictures taken of the girls, one of them is at a restaurant where Emma is reading the menu just like a newspaper. She did not want to put it down even when the food arrived. When we tried to snap a photo of her, she would look away or move so the photo is not the sharpest.



Also this week, we had pancakes for dinner. I love to have peanut butter on mine. Sofia saw me spreading it on my pancakes and wanted a taste. So I got a spoon out and gave her a bit. She loved it so much that between her and Emma they helped me finish yet another jar of some of the best tasting stuff in the world.




I wanted to meet the girls for lunch one day at the new park recently built on post. There are a lot of things to play on and the entire play yard is built on a large sponge that feels like a really really soft track. The girls loved every minute there, and it looks like we will try to do this about once a week just so the girls get out and run for a little while. Jaynee mentioned that we bought a slide so here are some pictures of the girls playing on them as well.

January Thaw

I guess that you can't really call this a thaw since we don't have snow here in Augusta, but it has been below freezing and a threat of snow for several weeks and this weekend we hit 70. It was so nice on Friday and Lee had the day off so we took the girls to the park. They had so much fun being outside and running and playing. We played at the park for a while then we walked on the mile trail. Sofi ran 3/4ths of it and Emma gave up about half way.







Since they had so much fun on the slide and we don't have a park close by we found a little slide on sale and went and got them one. Emma climbs up and stands at the top being the queen of her castle and Sofi just wants to get up and slide down as fast as she can. They also like to climb underneath and hide. They have so much fun with it.

Trip to Savannah

I also went to see some friends in Savannah which is 2 and a half hours away. This was a first trip by myself with the girls. They were actually really good. It was a long day. All my friends were meeting at Olive Garden for lunch and we got there early because I didn't know how many stops we would have to make so we stopped at the mall and I let the girls run and play at the little play area they have. The girls had a blast. The didn't want to get in the car again, but we went to the restaurant and they had fun showing off to everyone at lunch. Then the best part, they slept most of the way home.

Crazy January

This month has been very busy but has also been fun. Lee went to the Commanding General's reception the first part of the month. He got all dressed in his dress blues and I thought he looked pretty good. I was planning on going with him, but our babysitter fell through and it was during church so I took the girls to church by myself. It was definitely a challenge, but I survived, I was very tired when I got home.

Great Grandma Andersen sent the girls dresses and they looked so cute, but they aren't very good about letting me take their picture. Sofi decided who was wearing which dress.

The girls have the cutest personalities and keep me laughing all the time. They are getting along really good and playing with each other a lot more. I love watching them.