2011

It's the first few minutes of a new year, welcome 2011! It's so strange that 4 years ago this time, I was getting ready to graduate highschool, and this coming May Jared will be graduating. So much has changed this year, it has been pretty crazy. I could not be more grateful for the way everything has turned out. Mat and I have a beautiful home in Belgium, and we made the move without going crazy. We made it through the dogs having puppies and KayLeigh being born at the same time. I still have trouble believing I am a mom sometimes, and giving birth in Belgium was quite the experience. I am so thankful that KayLeigh is happy and healthy and she is thriving. This summer Mat and I are looking forward to having his daughter,Breanna spend a few months with us! She will get to see a lot of her little sister and we have a lot of plans for her to experience Europe. My new year resolution is to go back to school, and I am working with admissin counslers right now to start asap. I"m looking forward to completing a degree. I hope everyone had a wonderful 2010 and that the new year finds everyone healthy and happy! I love you all! Happy new years from Belgium!!

Family Pictures 2010

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in a while, we just got back from the states a few days ago, we didn't have much access to the internet, and we were way too busy to write a blog! We went and visited Mat's family in Ohio, and had an excellent time! We decided to try out Space-A (space available) travel through the Airforce, and we had a pretty good first experience with it. We left from Ramstein, Germany on the 15th of November and the flight was about 10 hours, the only one that was available was into Dover, Delaware, so thats what we got on. The way Space-A travel works is that cargo planes or planes taking troops to Afghanastan and Irag go through Germany and will pick up more people if they have room. So the plane goes from Afghanistan to Germany, then Germany to the states somewhere on the east coast usually, and we hopped on to go to the east coast. The plane we rode on to the states was quite different than any I've been on before. We rode on a C-5 cargo plane! The thing is sooooo HUGE!! It is the plane they use to transport tanks! Above the cargo space there is space for passengers, and we rode up there. There are quite a few seats and only 18 passengers so we got to stretch out quite a bit, it was pretty nice. The seats in the plane face backwards though, so when you take off and land it feels really weird. The worst part is there are no windows on a C-5, so it felt kind of claustraphobic in there...but I cant really complain because it is free travel for military members, so we didnt have to pay anything. KayLeigh did very well on both flights. She slept pretty much the whole way, and when she wasnt sleeping she was eating, she barely cried at all! Her ears didnt seem to bother her, so that was a relief, and she adjusted to the time change of 6 hours really quickly. Once we got into Delaware we were planning on staying at a hotel since Ohio is an 8 hour drive, but Mats mom and sister suprised us and brought us all the way back to Ohio that night. We were so ready to sleep after that drive! We spent the first few days there shopping and stopping in to see everyone in his family. The next saturday Mat went and picked Breanna up from Louisiana, and she spent the week of Thanksgiving with us. This trip was Breannas first chance to meet KayLeigh, and she is such a wonderful big sister!! She is absolutley in love with Kay, and is great with her. We had a birthday party for Breanna while she was there with mat's whole family and she got tons of presents, cake and love. We took our family pictures, and they will hopefully become a yearly tradition. I took Kay to get her ears pierced while we were in Ohio, and she did really well, cried for about 2 minutes and then completley forgot about it, she has little pink butterfly earrings, Breanna thought they were too cute. After Breanna went home we continued to shop and spend time with Mats family. I was treated to a night without the baby and Husband and went out for a girls night at a bar, my first time to drink at a bar in the states since I turned 21 while pregnant in Belgium! I had a good time, but lets just say I wont be drinking for a while! Mat stayed home with Kay and found out just how good our baby is, she slept for him the whole night darnit!! lol. The plane ride back was easy enough, we didnt think we were going to get on it but by some luck our names got called and we boarded on the 6th from Baltimore. Space-A travel doesnt guarantee you a seat, you can sign up online in advance, but if the plane crew decides they dont want anymore people, or they too many people sign up before you, you just dont get a seat. This time we got a commercial plane, and got to watch movies the way home, when we werent sleeping. Again Kay slept pretty much the whole way, and she stunk up the airplane bathroom with a poopy diaper, I feel really sorry for whoever went in there after us lol. We got off the plane and were greeted with snow in Germany, stopped at the PX to buy Kay a bouncer (thanks papa Rusty) and headed home that day. The roads were pretty bad, we had horrible weather to welcome us home, fog, and rain, and wind. But we made it home safely, it was pretty late though so we watited until the next day (yesterday) to go pick up the dogs. They were staying with our friends who dont live too far from us. They were so happy to see us!! The dogs even seemed to miss Kay, and gave her some kisses too! while we were in Ohio Kayleigh perfected rolling over, which she did for the first time a few nights before we left from Belgium to Ohio, and MAts sister got her to laugh for the first time, its such a cute laugh! We all had a great time, and we are looking forward to our next trip to the states this summer!! But for now it feels good to be home, I love being in the US, but its nice to be in our house with all our stuff, living out of suitcases was getting pretty old by the time we left. IT was a good couple of weeks and I certainly needed to get out of Belgium for a while! Our next trip will be in May, Kay and I will be coming to Colorado for a while. Love you all very much!! hope you enjoy the pictures!