Long time..no post!

So yes, it's been too long since I've updated! The kids & I came here to Brandon, MS to close on the house on Sept 16th. My parents and Darryl's mom came that day also to help bring a few things and watch the boys. The movers came on the 24th to bring all of our stuff, and it was so awesome to see it!! My parents and Darryl's mom also came on that day to help me out, and it was greatly appreciated! Darryl graduated from the FAA Academy on the 25th and we picked him up that night around 1030. It is so nice to have him home again. On the 27th we drove back to Slidell to see all the church people Darryl's missed for 2 months, and we drove home the same night. The 29th Darryl's sister, Julie came up to visit for a few days, and the 30th Darryl's brother, sister in law, and 2 boys came to visit. They stayed until Oct 3rd and the kids had a blast together! On the 6th my mom drove to Slidell to get me and the boys so we could go see Lisa, Andrew, & Aubrey. We stayed up there for 2 days and one night and had a great time. Darryl drove up after work on the 7th and went to church with us and got to meet Aubrey FINALLY!! We drove home late that night and were so worn out. This past Saturday, the 10th, we went to the State Fair. It was a ton of fun and the boys loved seeing the animals and playing the games. It was nice to get out and do something in our new city! Since then we've just been trying to get the boxes out of our garage, and get the house in order. Darryl's loving his job, which makes us all happy. He comes home with a huge smile on his face talking about what went on that day with the aircraft and so on. He really enjoys it.

The boys are loving their new home. They miss their grandparents tons, but yay for phone calls and 2.5 hour drives. Hopefully someone will visit us soon! ;) Caleb's doing really well with his reading, he asks so many questions these days and most of them make me laugh out loud. He is SUCH a chatterbox and sometimes it's hard to get a work in edgewise. I'm about to start potty training Ayden. He's not too excited about it anymore so we'll see how it goes! He's so funny, wanting to do everything Caleb does. And those boys are either the best of friends or at each other's necks during the day. Brothers. ;) The boys have said so many funny/cute things this month and I need to get in the habit of writing them down, especially when we're completely busy, because I don't remember them!!

I'm doing great here. I love the city we live in, and the surrounding cities. The shopping is amazing, I can't wait to see more of the stores. I can't wait to start baking a bunch of goodies either!! It's about pie time!! :) The chilly weather has arrived and Fall is definitely here, and I love it. We are still searching for a church home, so pray for us about that! It's so important, and we aren't taking it lightly.

Hope everyone is doing well and now that things are settling down here I'll be sure to post more often I promise!!

We have a house!!

Ok, so it's not ours yet officially, but still..very close! Everyone probably knows now that we WERE moving to the Baton Rouge area for Darryl's air traffic control job, and that it got changed to Jackson, MS a couple of weeks ago. (Long story short, he had the job there but wasn't going to be able to start working there until January or later because they overhired. Darryl asked if there was anything else available soon and lo & behold Jackson was, so we took it.) So anyway, we started frantically looking for houses online and narrowing them down. We found a great realtor in Jackson who has been such an amazing help. Anyway, Friday morning we headed over to Jackson which is about a 2.5 hour drive from here and looked at all the surrounding areas. We had never been there so all of the little cities around it were new to us. Anyway we looked for hours that day and couldn't find anything in our price range that we loved. Most of the time the issue we were having was that we just couldn't find a big enough living area or backyard. We were searching for 4 bedroom homes and just coming up short. So that night we decided to look at 3 bedrooms and found a few, wrote them down, hoping to find something in the morning. We stayed with an AWESOME friend of mine, Melinda and her family, and had a great time. (Even though my monsters spilled popcorn everywhere! LOL) So the next morning we head out and end up looking at 3 houses. The first one was just too tiny, so we go on to the 2nd one. On the outside it just looked like an ordinary home, but when we walked in we fell in love. Especially when we saw the backyard! It's nice and big for the boys to run around in and comes with a shed AND a wooden swingset!! Score! It's amazing and we loved the couple that lives there. They were so nice to us and the boys. We went to another house, but just had to go back to the 2nd because we wanted to take pictures, which in turn is a whole other story because my camera battery died the night before so we had to get a crappy disposable one and then the flash wasn't working. It was a total mess!! But nonetheless, we decided we loved it, went to the real estate agent's office and started working on our offer! It was so exciting, and the boys did so well sitting there for hours looking at all those houses and while we were working on all tha paperwork. Of course McDonalds and a portable DVD player helped with that. ;) Anyway, we didn't hear anything until almost 24 hours later, but we got the house! There was a counter offer involved, but it hardly changed anything and we are just so excited. We are actually living in the city of Brandon, MS, SO close to tons of shopping and I just love it! We close on my dad's birthday, August 31, and it will be an amazing feeling to purchase our first home! God is good to work all of these details out and we are so stoked!

Stateside!

So yeah. The kids & I have been Stateside for about 8 weeks now, and I have had like no time to update the blog! Lots has gone on, and lots of pictures have been taken! I'm going to try to update but it will take some time so bear with me. :) Everyone is doing well, and Darryl gets here in 9 days! We are very excited!

Approved...

So we decided to have me & the boys go back to the States early to get settled in, so we started paperwork on it a couple of weeks ago and the Army had to approve or disapprove it. Well anyway, we were just happy either way because whatever happened we knew would be God's decision. Well we found out today that the EROD (Early Return of Dependent's) was approved, so the boys and I will be flying back to Louisiana at the end of March! Darryl will follow after he's totally finished here in Graf in early June. Darryl's dad is flying in mid march for a visit, so he's just going to fly back with us and help me with the boys and our dog on the long flight back. I'm happy for that because I would not do it by myself with 2 kids & a dog! LOL Anyway, it's bittersweet to think about because I'll miss my friends here, but I cannot wait to see my friends and family back home!

Job offer!

We found out today that Darryl got a job offer from the Baton Rouge airport!! He'll be going through the interview process and everything else in the upcoming weeks. Just pray that everything works out! This is like an hour from our families, so it would be a great opportunity!! Praise God!