See ya in a year :(

as most of you know, robby left today for his 12 month 'vacation' to the sand box! it's been a long time coming, but i don't think it makes it any easier. we had a great last weekend together and had a lot of fun. we had to take him in very very early this morning. jaydn did amazing well and didn't shed a tear, which i think really helped robby and i to do better. although, as robby was leaving she told him,"daddy, you will always be in my heart". i haven't stopped crying today, just about anything will get me going. i'll feel sorry for myself today and then pick myself up tomorrow and move on. jaydn and i have to make the most of having daddy gone and living our life. everyone always says that the second deployment is easier, and while that may be true, the departure was much harder this time. robby and i have an amazing relationship and i love him more than anything in the world. letting go was very difficult. however, we can now start the countdown to having him home again and starting a new journey. thank you to everyone who loves and supports us...you will help us to get through this difficult time and we are truly blessed to have you in our lives. we have some amazing friends and family,both here and in idaho!!! i will keep everyone posted and post pictures as i get them!

family time

we went out to the lake last night so that we could just relax and take some pictures. we love going out there and having family time.jaydn and i are going to miss that..guess we'll have to do it on our own..yikes!

jaydn took this picture of robby and i. she does pretty well when she tries. i think we will be buying her a kids digital for her b-day!
got to love self portraits. robby always gives me a hard time but i think it's fun!

about 3 years ago, we took a shot just like this one. robby loves the picture and wanted to re-do it. jaydn is a lot bigger but still a precious shot.

more family shots

here's a few more pictures of us from this weekend. we had a great weekend and it was so nice to just spend time together!

me and the love of my life!
we have a fascination with ladybugs and this one just happened to be on a rose. it was so pretty!

her and daddy had been going through the water and well, she doesn't like to get splashed in the face. unforanetly, she got it right in the face and was very upset about this. she's a trooper though and got over it pretty quickly.

i think it must have been cold!

just being silly and having fun

1st day of pre-school, year 2

well jaydn finally started her second year of pre-school. she was very excited to be able to go back and see her teachers. her teacher had left a message on my answering machine over the weekend and jaydn told me that she got teary eyed listening to it...so sweet. she has only gone 2 days so far, since daddy left this week. it's back to the grind of things tomorrow and i can't wait. she loves school.

she really wanted to ride her bike to school so we bought a lock for her bike. it was a rough go, especially up the hill, but she hung in there. she was very proud of herself and we get there much quicker when we ride instead of walk.

more 35mm pictures...they still make them

here's a few pictures of us this weekend. i apologize for not being able to turn these, i took them with my 35mm and for some reason, i just can't rotate them! these turned out great. we had a great weekend with robby and mom and sharen. it was a perfect weekend before robby left for the dreaded sand box...i'll post about that later too!

robby and sharen

robby and mom

me and robby!

our family! i'm pretty blessed to have such a wonderful family

robby and jaydn

she was having so much fun at the splash park. although, she doesn't really like to be splashed in the face.

the girls!

35mm

it's been awhile since i posted anything, so i'll try and catch you up. i haven't used our 35mm in a little while so i decided to get it out. i got some amazing shots of jaydn and have had lots of fun with it.

SPLASH

This pictures says it all. She loves the water if she can wear a life jacket, doesn't have to jump in, and doesn't have to get her face wet..otherwise she dislikes it a lot. So when the first thing they had to do was get their face wet, she was a little upset. She refused to go under so i had to dunk her, which of course really made her mad. Once she got over that, the instructor asked them to jump in. Most kids would love this, but apparently Jaydn has trust issues and doesn't think that mommy is going to catch her. So she threw a fit, this was before daddy got there, and refused. I finally got her to do it but only if i hold her hands. We are taking baby steps to get her to trust us and be ok. I was so proud of her on Wednesday when she went under with no issues. Still doesn't like to jump off the side but i'm hoping we will get there by the end of next week.

this picture says it all. this was at the end of the lesson and she wasn't very happy.

mommy was having fun and the water was warm

GO, GO, GO!!!!

Camping

Jaydn has been 'bugging' us to go camping for a very long time. And for two people that love that outdoors, we have yet to do this. Kansas camping is not at all like Idaho camping, way to hot here. So we finally decided that we would set the tent up and give it a shot. I checked what the weather was suppose to do for that Friday at the begining of the week and it was suppose to be good. We had an event to go to that evening so before we left, i checked the weather again,granted we already had the tent up so it was going to happen. The weather said we were suppose to have scattered thunderstorms. We went to our event and came back around 10 and the weather then said a LARGE thunderstorm was coming but not until around 4 am.

Wouldn't it be our luck that as soon as we went to bed, the lightening started. Luckily jaydn was exhausted and feel asleep pretty quickly. Robby started snoring about the time that Jaydn started twitching, but poor mom was wide awake with no chance of going to sleep. For those that have never experienced a midwestern thunderstorm, HOLY COW! The storm was very large and even scared me. Jaydn surprised me and slept through about an hour of it....until a huge bolt of lightening struck somewhere very close.

At this point I put her next to me. We asked if she could hold on until the rain calmed down and she said that she would try. We waited about 15 minutes and I noticed that she was shaking and about 5 minutes after that, she had gotten sick from her nerves. I took Jaydn in and she slept in bed with me, although the storm had past by the time we had gotten into bed. Robby said he would come in and he did, 9 am the next morning! Maybe we will be able to try again before Robby leaves.

Jaydn and mommy after coming back into the house!

Jaydn and billy before bed

Jaydn before bed..we even roasted a marshmellow...but she didn't eat it

Jaydn and daddy getting the tent ready

Jaydn hammering in the tent stakes.

She loved helping!

And some day I will figure out how to put these darn pictures in order!