The Rest of the Trip

Here are some pictures of hanging out with Brad's family - felt a little pressure to get this updated!  Chase was loving  it at his cousins and grandparents. Brayden has almost all the characters from the movie Cars. He didn't even want to break for meals. At his grandparents house they had lots of tractors and trucks. If you know Chase he loves his transportation!

  Kids these days and technology! Chase loves playing on daddy's iphone.

As I mentioned before it was beautiful weather the second week we were there. Lots of time playing outside!

 

One day we took the youngin's to the Exploration Place while the big kids were in school. They had a blast!

  

Doing the airplane simulator - they thought it was funny that they kept crashing.

We had a quick party to celebrate Lucas's 15th birthday! Wearing the sunglasses we got him.

Was attempting to get a pic of the Caywood boys but Addi wanted in. Never got a whole family picture like I wanted. There aren't too many pictures of us girls :)

We went to Brayden's last basketball game. He scored 2 points (which was half the team's total).

We also stopped by for a quick visit with great grandma.



We had a big family gathering the day before we left but didn't get any good pictures. If anyone did - please send them my way. It was fun seeing everyone and Chase enjoyed running around with his cousin, second cousin and second cousin once removed!

We did tons of other stuff I didn't get pictures of eating out (a lot!!!), shopping, shooting, movies and a date night. Chase really seemed to get that we were with family and it made us sad that we lived so far away. Looking forward to our beach trip next summer:)

The first weekend in Kansas

Here are a few pictures from the time spent with my family in Kansas. We spent 2 nights with Steven & Melissa in Manhattan. It was still really cold so we mainly hung out at their house. We did venture out for Buffalo Wild Wings in Aggieville.

We drove out to the spot where Brad proposed. Hard to believe its been over 8 years!

 Steven made a tunnel for Chase to play in. He is going to make a great dad, huh?! Grandpop also got in on the fun but didn't any pictures.

 Watching Cars. Everyone has to see the movie that Chase is obsessed with!

 We then headed to Auburn to celebrate my grandad's birthday.

The birthday boy with his bride.

With my cousins Jake and Kelly. Some people got Kelly and I confused. I was hoping they wouldn't be too confused since I was pregnant. That's how rumors get started!

 We then had a family gathering to celebrate the rest of the birthdays and the two babies on the way.

My mom having everyone play game!

Everyone went in on a new diaper bag for me. With kid no. 2 I needed a more practical one than the Kate Spade one I got with Chase.

Missing Kevin and Tiana!

Chase with his grandma's. Brad's parents came up to join all the parties that day.

I was so looking forward to this time and it just went so fast! Not too much longer till we live only several hours away!

Kansas

Sorry for another delay in posting. We just got back from a 2 week trip to Kansas. The original plan was to visit after we moved back to the states but I will be too pregnant then so we took advantage of Space-A travel and went back for free :) I thought I would have time to post a couple times but our computer doesn't have a SD card reader.

Chase took a nasty fall on the airplane. We rode on a KC-135 and he fell on the racks on the floor. Thankfully another mom had an ice pack and we were able to reduce the swelling. But the mark on his forehead throughout the photos are from this fall.

Let me tell you, you get what you pay for with these flights. It was so cold coming home yesterday. The water in my water bottle turned to ice. Not kidding. The heat was on but only about from shoulder height up. Neither of us could really feel our toes. But we made Chase a little fort and he was able to sleep a lot of the flight so that was nice.

We made it just in time to Kansas. The day after we got there it snowed 10 inches. That Thursday after we woke up to -11 degrees. Brrr! By the next Thursday though it was in the 70s. Gotta love Kansas weather!

We hung out with Brad's family most of the time. It had been almost 2 years since he's been to Kansas. But we did get to spend some time in Manhattan with my brother and sister in law and my parents flew in for my grandad's 80th birthday party. It is always so nice seeing family. It makes us very excited to be a little closer in a few months.

Ok, this post is short and sweet because we are still jet lagged and out of it. Hopefully I will blog about the rest of the trip in the next day or so.

It's a...

BOY!!

We are so thrilled for Chase to have a little brother! As of right now the baby is breech so we humbly ask for prayers that he will flip (just once) before birth. Took a ton of measurements and everything looks good. She did say the placenta is low. For those that don't know I had some bleeding a couple weeks back that put me in the ER. The bleeding/spotting has stopped so not sure what a low placenta really means but I'm sure I will find out more at my next OB appt.

It is just amazing to see his tiny body parts. He is truly being formed perfectly by our Lord.

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 139:13-14 ESV

London Getaway

Some good friends of ours offered to take Chase overnight so we could have a night away. We finally found a weekend we were all free so Brad and I took off to London for the night. After getting our burrito fix at Chipotle (yes we went to Chipotle and not some nice sit down restaurant!) we saw Dreamboats and Petticoats. It wouldn't be our first choice of show but the price was a lot cheaper and it was fun and upbeat. The dancing and singing are always good in my mind.

Just a picture to prove we saw what London was like at night!!

The Eagle squadron statue in front of our hotel. 

3 of the 4 squadrons at the base we are going to came from England.

Eating Sushi! I was excited to try it but I only like the rolls with just avacado or with cooked meat. That's all I really should be eating now anyway so I guess that works. Brad hasn't fully convinced me to be a sushi eater!

 Could potentially be our last trip down to London. It is definitely bittersweet that we are leaving in a few months.

Train Tracks

Hopefully just a week till we find out what we are having. We are both pretty convinced we are having a girl but I thought that last time too. We are enjoying our little boy for sure. Chase got several train sets for Christmas and mommy and daddy have fun making different layouts. We even have contests to see who has the least number of track pieces left over.

Daddy's creation

Mommy's creation

Southampton

On Boxing Day (Dec. 26th) we headed down to Southampton with our friends the Ashmores. They still had a Christmas market going on and we had never been south.

On the second day there I was decided it was best for me to rest so Ieva and I went for tea while the guys went to check out HMS Victory. Brad described at a Pirates of the Carribbean type boat.

When they got back we went to check out the little Christmas market and I was very excited to order my crepe.

 They even made a heart for me :)

Buying some sausages.

 I wanted a hotel with a pool so Chase could go swimming. He loved it!

It was also Daniels first time in the pool.

There were a ton of shops around our hotel. We were very excited to hit Ikea before we left and take advantage of the 99p breakfast.

We also stopped by Salisbury and Stonehenge on the way back but I forgot to copy those pictures from their camera. I forgot the camera card for our camera for our trip. It is always so much fun to travel with friends and getting to know them better.

To Blog or not to Blog

I'm back!!! I decided a while back to go ahead and buy more storage but its been kinda nice for me to have a blog break. Not much goes on in January and my desire to put our lives online for all to see was fading. But with us being so far from family and friends we still think its a good idea. I really like updating a blog a lot more than sending out pictures and clogging up your email. And if you don't want to see our pictures you don't have to check!
I was thinking of making a blog book for the different years so I could delete some posts. One of my good friends did 2008 for us and it is such a treasure. But it is so much work! I didn't feel like the program was very user friendly. I am not scrapbooking much these days and I have no journal so I actually have kinda enjoyed going back every now and then to read something from the past or to compare pregnancy pictures and see how fat I am this time around :)
So maybe I will finally post about our trip to the south when the storage gets updated. They said it could take up to 24 hours.
See you soon!

Storage Space

I was working on my post for our trip to the south of England and I ran out of photo storage space!! I need a couple days to figure out what to do. Don't know if I should buy more storage space or delete some posts. Anyone else run into this? Maybe I blog too much?

Hope everyone is getting settled back into a normal schedule. We were sad to see daddy go back to working long days.

17 Weeks

Figured it was about time to post about #2. I've tried once before to get a belly shot but they are just terrible. The shadows don't really help. Definitely popped out a little sooner with this one. Wearing maternity clothes a lot quicker this time around as well.

Chase pointing out mommy's baby.

 I had a little bit of spotting on our trip early last week so they got me into the doctors just to make sure everything was okay. Well the tech couldn't find the heartbeat right away which freaked me out so I got another sonogram. The midwife found the baby and heart beat right away so that was a big releif and I got to see my baby again. I almost asked if there were any butt shots to see if its a boy or girl. I will find out at my next appt in 5 weeks.

We are also very excited that this baby will have a cousin close in age! My brother and his wife are due about a month after us!