Dining Room

 Here are the Dining Room pictures.  The walls look kind of white in the pictures, but they are actually a khaki/gray color.  I painted much of the downstairs this color, a nice neutral color.  The above picture is taken when standing at the front door and looking toward the left.

This one is taken standing at the front door looking straight ahead toward the living room.

 This is taken while standing in the doorway to to the kitchen.  The room on the left side of the picture is the playroom, which is just the 4th bedroom.  It is so nice to finally have an extra room for toys!

 It was Lane's spring break this last week.  We went swimming and Reese and Lane went skiing and snowboarding a lot.  We have also been going sledding.  We got Lane a snowboard last week and he is doing really awesome.

And of course Lane has been climbing trees in the backyard.  We had a really nice week, lots of sunny weather and some snow.  Beautiful!

Going Away

Before we left Coronado in January we had a couple get togethers with some of our wonderful friends.  It was fun to hang out with them and the kids always have a blast together.

Max, Daniel and Lane eating their charred marshmallows :)

 Daniel, Lane and Seth.  Lane and Daniel have been friends since preschool.  It was hard for me to separate these two.  I know that Lane will always make new friends, but you can't replace the ones you already had.  Daniel's mom Kelly has been such a dear friend of mine since I moved to Coronado too.  It was hard to leave them.

 Avi, Estelle and Cara.  These little girls (Audrey is missing from the picture) are all around the same age and had such fun together.  Our coffee dates were full of little girls running around.

 Kelly, me and Susan.  We had a fire out by our house a few nights before we left.  These girls are dear to my heart.  We keep talking about missing our coffee dates.  I have to laugh, over time we all switched to decaf for different reasons.  Our coffee dates may have been a little less "energized" but special none the less!

 We got together at the Roy's house quite a few times before we left too.  This was our last get together.  The Mendenhall's came too.  Tyler, Charlie, Lucy, Lane and Estelle.  These kids all hold a special place in my heart.  Lane was just 3 1/2 when we moved to Coronado and now he's 8!  I have loved watching these kids grow.  Charlie and Case were just a few months apart.  I have loved hanging out with Charlie and watching all the things he says and does, he is such a good hearted little guy.  And Estelle and Lucy our "twins" that are just 4 days apart.  They have been so cute together!

Leah bribed the kids with candy to get a good picture of them.  Man, I already miss all these friends!  One thing I have learned from moving around is that God has always blessed us with wonderful friends wherever we go.  And the awesome part is, although we move away from them, we have kept in contact with everyone.  It's so fun to have friends all over the world.  In fact I just got a cherry blossom Starbucks mug from my friend Katie who now lives in Japan.  This lifestyle is hard, but full of blessings!

Kitchen

I've had kind of a yucky last few days.  On Thursday of last week I got a call from the cardiologist in Anchorage to set up an appointment.  Turns out they wanted me to do the consultation and the defibrillator implantation the next day, to save me an extra trip over there.  To make a long story short, due to childcare and insurance reasons I can't do that.  So I am in the process of rescheduling everything.  The whole situation makes me depressed.  I am frustrated in many ways.  Having the actual appointment to get the defibrillator makes it very scary and real for me.  I realize that it could be worse, but either way, it is an adjustment, a lifestyle change.  So I just need a little time to adjust :)  So in an effort to feel "normal" I am posting pictures of our kitchen!  I really love this house.  I have had lots of fun decorating and pulling things together. 

 I really like the bar part of the counter.  The kids eat breakfast and snacks here.  Lane does his homework there etc.

 I am excited about the paint color we painted.  It is a True Value color called Samuel.  And of course my new refrigerator is something to be excited about too!

 The white door on the left goes out to the garage, the closet in the middle used to hold the washer and dryer but we moved those to the garage and we put the computer desk and all my craft stuff in there.

 I ripped down the Winnie the Pooh valance almost as soon as we moved in (I wonder why?).  I just made this valance last week.  Reese's brother Jordan was here when we moved in and watched me rip the old valance down.  He said he'd wondered how long it would take for me to do that.  He knows me all too well!

Before we moved I scored two (new) old windows from Reese's dads shop.  I backed the panes with the left over fabric from the valance and made it into a menu board.  Just write on it with dry erase markers and it comes right off.  Stay tuned for more pictures of the house!

Just Sharing Some Pictures

From Christmas!  Better late than never.  This is mostly for myself just to have pictures on here to remember Christmas 2012.  We went to Washington and had fun with cousins and friends.  

 Estelle's viking hat that daddy got her.

 Cousins!

 My 4 bestest friends in Washington and my kids.  I think this is the first picture we've gotten with all of them!  I just love all these kiddos.  They range in age from 8 1/2 to about 4 months.

The annual fondue party with my friends from high school.  This year it was hosted by Brianne.  Good times.

 Lesha, Matt and I drove down to Seattle to meet Michele and family.   The boys went to the Seahawks game and us girls and Hazel did a little shopping.  It was a great kid free night for me!

 Sledding on New Years Day.  Estelle and Abby had such fun together!

We Are Here

 We are finally in Kodiak and settled.  We got here about 2 1/2 weeks ago. The last two months have been crazy.  We went to Washington for Christmas and three days later the movers came to pack our stuff up and they left with it on January 9th.  We stayed in Coronado for 10 days and then headed up to Washington (again) on January 18th.  We drove up (I will share some pictures later), Reese got on the ferry with the cars to head up to Kodiak and a week after he left, the kids and I flew up to Kodiak.  So needless to say, it is nice to be in our own home, with our own stuff and own beds.  I am loving our house, already feels like home!  Here are a few pictures I've gotten since we've been here.

 There are bison here!  So cool, they live in the wild about 45 minutes from here.

 Estelle is her usual dramatic self.  One day she insisted on wearing her bathing suit.  This was her at some point that day.  Bathing suit, fairy wings, Belle high heels... playing with her jewelry and "makeup."  Oh my.

And Lane is enjoying exploring.  The back yard has been fun for him to play in and he's met the neighbor boy and has been playing football with him after school most days.  The adjustment was the hardest on him with starting a new school.  He is into his 3rd week now and I think it's going much better.  His school seems great.  He is in a 2/3 combo classroom which I think is great since he is old for his grade.  

I really haven't even known where to start with the blogging.  It started out that I just didn't have much time for blogging with the move etc.  Then as time went on, I think I kind just didn't want to think about having to type out what is going on with me.  But I have taken some time and gathered my thoughts.  We know now that my heart condition is the same thing my mom had.  It is a hereditary heart condition.  It's not brought on by lifestyle choices like diet, alcoholism, or drug use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol etc, like many heart diseases are.  I am doing well physically.  I feel pretty normal most the time and thankfully I haven't had any arrhythmia's or heart racing episodes.  But two days before we left Coronado to move up here I had a meeting with one of my cardiologists.  That day he told me that based on the knowledge that they have about this disease I have, that I should have a ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) implanted.  This ICD would control any arrhythmia's that I might have.  I was shocked by him telling me this since I had never had an arrhythmia, I knew that I would probably need one in the future, but now?!  But they don't know when these arrhythmia's will start and they want to have it in place before they do.  These arrhythmia's can be deadly like my moms was.  I sat in the doctors office holding a defibrillator in my hand, I was speechless. 

Over the last month, I have been overwhelmed.  I have been angry.  I have been in denial.  For a good couple of weeks I tried not to think about it, I busied myself.  After all, I have a lot to busy myself right now.  We got the entire house painted and unpacked every last thing.  I needed to make a doctor appointment here so I can get a referral to a cardiologist and get the process going for all this, but I didn't want to.  What I wanted was to enjoy my new home, get settled in, have fun decorating.  But today I finally went to the doctor.  Nothing new to report, I am just in the process of getting a referral to a cardiologist in Anchorage.  But I am on the right path.

Through this process God has been working on me to be aware of His presence, lean on Him for peace and trust in the hope I have in Him.  I ran across these words today that I had written in my journal.

"Hope is acting on the conviction that despite what we see with the natural eye, God is working in the spiritual realm to accomplish his perfect will in our lives.  His hope does not disappoint."

I have realized that I need to take time everyday to reflect, to decompress, to listen for what God is saying to me.  After Case died I found myself setting aside time everyday to grieve.  It sounds weird, but I found that I needed to sit down and make myself think about Case, read my bible, write down my thoughts.  I think if I hadn't done that, maybe I wouldn't have really processed everything, really grieved.  You can distract yourself and keep busy in order to not face things head on, but that is not healthy for me.  And I am finding that to be true now too.  I can be in denial and put off what I really need to do, or I can face this head on.  

Tis the Season

 We got a real Christmas tree this year.  I love it!  Our pre-lit tree that we bought at Michaels about 4 years ago almost started on fire two days after we put it up.  As soon as I plugged it in the morning I heard a buzzing noise, then smelled melting plastic.  I quickly unplugged it and next thing I knew there was smoke.  Thankfully I was there or the thing could have burned that house down!  Just a little word of warning.  Don't trust a pre-lit artificial tree.  Now here is a little taste of our decorations at our house :)

 This ornament was purchased on our first trip to Alaska about 6 1/2 years ago.

I made some gingerbread houses again this year.  This is becoming a fun tradition!!

Kodiak!

Reese and I just got back from a trip to Kodiak, Alaska.  We are packing up and moving there in January!  Going from San Diego to Kodiak will be a shocker, but I think it will be a welcome change.  We are looking forward to a change of pace.  It's a lot more relaxed up there.  I think it is literally a one stop light town.  Reese's job is going to be a lot more mellow too, which will make a huge difference for our family.  Reese's mom flew down to watch our kids, so it was just us for a few days.  It wasn't really a relaxing trip because much of it was spent flying and house hunting.  But it was fun nonetheless.

I think this was Fort Abercrombie recreation area.  This is near to our future home!!!

My first Kodiak bear sighting.  We went for a drive on the last day.  There were people gathering on a bridge taking pictures so we stopped.  There was this mama bear laying on the side of the river.  Her  cubs were laying just up and to the left of her in the picture.  It made me a little nervous once I saw the cubs.  This wasn't the first time I've been in the company of a bear.  Click here for my last encounter

I am so glad we got some pictures though.  Those Kodiak bears are HUGE!

A beautiful view on our drive.

 And here is our new home!  This was taken back in the spring by the realtor.  When we were there, there was snow on the ground.  It is 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms on a 1/2 acre lot.  About 1/2 of the lot is wooded which will make for a lot of fun for Lane! It is probably about 1/4 mile from Lane's new school, which is a small, quaint elementary school.  The house is on top of a hill in a small cul-de-sac of about 6 houses.  I am so excited to have more room and a yard!  I am hoping to build a greenhouse in the back yard.  Apparently you can have some luck growing veggies in Alaska with a greenhouse.  So the inspection is tomorrow, pray that it will go well.  Also the appraisal needs to come in around what we offered for it or the sellers may have a problem.  So pray that that goes well too.  We need to get this house ready to move into the end of January!

 So on our way back we had a 7 hour layover in Anchorage.  So we took a cab and headed out into the 8 degree weather to downtown Anchorage.  We went out to dinner and to a few bars to hang out.  GASP!  Yes I hung out at a few bars... would that be considered bar hopping.  Oh my.  It was good people watching for sure.  So this last place we hung out at has this huge block of Tillamook cheese on the counter.  People would come up and hack away at it.  You can't really tell but I am holding the cheese slicer up in my hand, ready to cut away a slice.  It was really weird and random and quite the conversation starter.  Reese and I had fun just the two of us.  It made us really excited to get up there.  I think it will be a good change for our family and be quite the new adventure.  Like I've said for years,  "Bloom Where You Are Planted."  Whether I am in Washington, California, or Alaska.  I hope that I will do my best to be the best I can be wherever I am.  And I pray that I can show God's love to others in the process.  This military life is a hard life, but I have been reminded time and again that God has chosen to plant me in these different places for a reason.  I just need to TRUST and allow Him to work.