Filed under: Deployment
I’ve been keeping busy working on two projects/surprises (one big, and one little) for Jeremy when he returns later this week from training. We will get to spend our 10th anniversary together – we are so excited! We will probably drop off the radar while he is home spending as much time as we can with him. We have some fun things planned, including a one-night/day stay in a cabin at the beach (it was all I could get on this short notice).
He got his assignment for the first half of the deployment, and some people think he’s an idiot, but he’s very pleased with what he got. Most people don’t want that particular assignment because it is a lot of work and “boring.” What I say to that is, “boring is good when you go to combat!” Nothing over there is safe, aside from God’s protection, so we are grateful for this “possibly-more-safe” assignment. We are praising the Lord for his mercy on Jeremy so far in this whole process. He is done with training now, just waiting for graduation to come home.
I have lots of pictures to post of things we have been doing, I’m hoping I get some time later today.
Thank you all for your prayers for Jeremy and our family. They mean so much to us, and we know that God hears them and has already answered many of them!
Our Easter season has been very enjoyable. We have been enjoying hearing the Easter story repeatedly as we open our resurrection eggs at least once a day. There are many versions of these, if you do an internet search, you will find many versions, but THIS is the one most like the one we have been doing. Each day, I try to add one more egg to the small wicker basket on the dining room table – and of course Elijah notices the new egg the minute he walks within viewing distance of the table, and he likes to open each egg and talk about each item in the egg. I have tried to get him to tell Merry about the eggs, and his version is pretty cute. Tomorrow they open the fun basket with all the goodies in it to eat and play with.
We went to a Maundy Thursday service at our church, and the choir did the first half of their program, finishing tomorrow morning during the service. I was asked to narrate as Mary Magdalene, along with three gentleman. Tomorrow we also have friends over for dinner after naps and we are potlucking it in a way – everyone is bringing a side dish (we have a ham and someone else is providing a turkey) AND a dessert. So far, I’ve heard that cheesecake, sunshine cake and a bunny (shaped) cake are coming.
Here are some pictures of the egg hunt at Jeremy’s work today. Mimi loved holding her little basket and was much slower moving, so I got a few more pics of her. . . Elijah was off – not terribly productively, but enjoying running! Notice him blowing bubbles (if you look closely, you can see one of the bubbles on the right side of the white V on his sweater vest! Such a big boy! It was beautiful and felt like a beautiful warm spring day!
Filed under: Uncategorized
I just checked my blog stats and noticed that yesterday I posted our 100th post! In less than a year, that’s pretty cool! Thank you to all of you who read and comment on the blog. We love keeping in touch this way – I have been able to keep in touch with so many more people this way, and have been blessed by the gift of your friendships and love shown to us by your encouragement. Here’s to you. . . thank you for loving our family enough to be a regular part of our lives!
Here are a few more videos for your torture 
I loved youtube, but Jeremy cannot access it due to military blocking at his training site (even though it is on a personal computer, on personal time, and on a personally paid-for internet service!) We assume it will be even tighter security when he goes to Iraq – IF he even will be able to access internet, so we are going to give this photobucket thing a try, since my friend Stephanie’s videos can be viewed by Jeremy on there.
I’ve posted four new videos, including one of Elijah and Merry’s puppet Lambchop (being used by Elijah in this video) singing various songs. Gave me a giggle!
Our video archives at Photobucket.com
They are in chronological order, most recent ones first.
I apologize ahead of time for this post. Daddy isn’t able to call tonight, and he HAS to hear about this tonight. . . we are hoping he checks this before bed tonight!
Potty candy does not need too much of an explanation, but here it is, as basic as it is: potty candy is an M&M presented to little boys and girls upon appropriate placement of their waste in the toilet. One candy for number one (no choice of color – just whatever happens to come out of the little container) at least two candies for doing number two with a choice of colors as a bonus (this is bigger than one would think – almost better than the candy itself!)
We’ve seemed to have mastered putting number one in the toilet during the daytime, however, number two always needed a diaper. One day this week he accidentally went NUMBER TWO outside (after he realized that number one could be put on a tree or in the grass if we were away from a toilet.) Then he had two incidents in one day of going number two outside. None in a diaper. I counted this as progress, thankful for anything at this point, and thankful the neighbors weren’t home when he dropped his drawers and left his little surprise on the back lawn. Anyone who has potty-trained a child knows how irrationally desperate we can get during this process! Then, this afternoon he jumped up from what he was doing, announced his need to go number two and raced to the bathroom. He made it in time and went for the first time, of his own initiative number one and two in the toilet! Yeah! Needless to say, he had a good time picking out the colors of his potty candy, and watching mommy do the “potty dance.” So. . . Elijah asked me when we sat down to dinner if I was going to take a picture for Dada of what he had put in the toilet. Thankfully, for your sake, he had already flushed it.
Another milestone was reached today, as Elijah got within 6 inches of a dog, by his own request “Mommy, you hold me, I pet doggie.” He didn’t actually pet our neighbor’s dog, but got very close, smiled and talked to the dog. Very sweet! Our neighbor (a Mommy of boys herself) asked Elijah if he wanted to get on the trampoline with her. . .and he agreed, much to my surprise! He has not enjoyed a trampoline yet in his life, and has been so timid on them. As you can see from the pictures, he has gotten over that timidity!
I love the wind in Merry’s hair on this last picture. She’s a big girl, the first picture of her is when she is standing on big-kid playground equipment looking through the bars at me.
Jeremy, we miss you and love you so much! We can’t wait to see you in a few weeks, and to show you the surprise we have been working on for you! OOOOOOOOOO “I give you hug.” (Quote by Elijah Spurgeon Caskey)
Also, I don’t know if you can get on photobucket, but here is a video from Stephanie of the day we were over at their house.
http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i181/Stephi232/Videos/?action=view¤t=21weeks002.flv
Filed under: Merry
Today Merry is 14 and a half months old. . . I took some pictures of her and thought I’d post a few cute facts about her too.
Check out the teeth! If I counted right, she has 10 (4 molars!)
She likes to play with any toy zebra and can’t seem to get enough of dinosaurs. Her favorite books are Pat the Bunny Books, Corduroy books, and most recently, Is Your Mama a Llama? Merry can hold her own on the playground. She climbs the stairs, walks the wobbly rope bridge thingy, goes through tunnels and slides down any slide on her tummy, feet first. Many moms on the playground get nervous when she gets up at the top of the slide all confident and goes down herself. . . “she’s so little!” They’ll say that their daughter or son was never that brave at that age, but did they have an Elijah to keep up with? That’s what I always think.
She can name many body parts, sometimes accurately, sometimes not, but usually gets in the general vicinity. She has a skill for dancing (bopping, as we like to call it) and claps to music, no matter what kind.
She also loves anything with animals or dogs in it. She said “book” for the first time today, and said “thank you” to the cashier at the store. She gives the cutes neck hugs, she was chasing little Josiah around today with her arms outstretched. When she would get to him, she would hug him, leaning her head on him and give him big loud kisses. Jeremy said that she must be missing hugs and kisses from her daddy so she’s going after boys to get them now! He doesn’t have to be concerned, Elijah will keep them away from her, and she is happy hugging and kissing him and mama too!
She likes to eat crackers, cheesecake, lots of different vegetables, sushi, most any fish, shrimp, noodles, potty candy (I’ll explain in some future blog – don’t ask!) and pretty much any kind of fruit. If Elijah’s eating it, she, of course wants some too, whatever it may be. Speaking of nutrition, I think I can say that she is officially weaned! She has truly graduated into the big-girl world!
Merry seems to be a bit more reserved than Mommy, Daddy, or Elijah, but is still independent and friendly. She will sometimes on her own say “hi” to people and walk up to them without being prompted, especially other children. She squeals with glee when she sees Elijah after waking up from a nap, or being in another room away from him for a while. She has the cutest contagious giggle and wide smile that can draw one out of anyone who sees it. I am so pleased that she is living up to her name. We have prayed that her name eventually would be a description of her heart. She has a beautiful spirit and I pray that she grows to have a heart that loves and serves Jesus before too long. That is better than any other “milestone” she may reach in her lifetime.
Big boy Elijah sat through the entire church service today! I was so pleased with his behavior! Merry went into the nursery with NO crying at all! What grown-up children they are becoming!
Today we went to the Coronado’s house and toasted brown rice, ground it in their mill (electric) and made my mom’s rice pancakes (this is a picture of the recipe written in my mom’s handwriting – very special!) for lunch. They were as good as I remember them and Josiah (1.5 years old) ate more than 3 pancakes himself! Mimi and Elijah were too tired and excited to eat much (and distracted by the yummy cantalope Stephanie cut up for us). Before lunch, Richard spent some time on the laptop with Elijah and Josiah looking up pictures of animals on google. Elijah would name an animal and Richard would look it up and tell him all the food items we get from that animal, or what it tasted like (don’t ask me how Richard knows that a horse tastes like a cow. . . but that’s what he says!) He also showed him pictures of major great men of the faith and tried to get Elijah to repeat them.
Elijah has had a pretty intense fear of dogs since he was about 9 months old, due to a few rowdy interactions with different ones, and Stephanie and Richard have a little cute hot dog “Cali.” Elijah is also terrified of her, even though she is one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met. . . so I decided to do something a little different (we’ve tried pretty much everything to work through this fear.) We stopped at the grocery store on the way to their house and I let him pick out a little bag of treats for Cali. He enjoyed this, but would not give one to her himself. He gave a few to me to give to her and seemed to enjoy watching her eat them . . . from about 6 feet away. We’ll see if we make any progress over time.
Bible study is going very well here; we have been very blessed with God’s provision of His Words in the Bible, and the blessing of the Holy Spirit as our Teacher (I’m so thankful that HE is the Teacher, not me!) As always, God has been speaking to us in very specific and relevant ways during our study, and at only lesson two, I praise God for His great work that has already been done in this short time.
Elijah decided yesterday to read Mimi and Mama a book while he and Merry were in the bathtub. He got out Dr. Seuss’s “One Fish, Two Fish” and began “reading” it from memory. When he got to the second page, he got to the last phrase, pointed to the last picture and said, “what’s that, mama?” and when I answered, he piped up with great enthusiasm, “Da’s right! Good job, mama!” turned the page, and continued reciting. I won’t be needing to homeschool Merry at the rate we’re going around here. . .
Merry climbed up on the loveseat in front of our big picture window (where she likes to watch the squirrels play – her latest word, by the way) ALL BY HERSELF. She rode on her little push-rocket up to the couch, then used it as a step to get up on the loveseat. I was sitting right nearby, and watched as she got up, looked out the window, talked a little bit, then let herself down safely on her tummy, feet-first onto the floor when she was done. She’s getting so grown-up. She also goes down slides at the big-kid playground by herself now and knows where she can get a cookie when we walk into the commissary! Some of the words she says are: mama, dada, bye-bye, hi, Elijah, squirrel, all-done, uh-oh, duck, dog, woof, quack, some sound for a dinosaur (her favorite animal, I think!)
We worked in the yard a little bit this afternoon, clipping a few of my hydrangea shoots and potting some sweet basil seedlings. Also, pulling lots of clover out of my flower bed. It was beautiful here today, I am thankful for the spring-like weather. I pray it lasts for while.
Today is the first day I really feel like a true military spouse. Training must have kicked into high gear. . . no phone call from Jeremy today, or email, or video chat. Nothing. Silence. . . except in the house of course! Merry seemed to ask “dada?” at one point, and followed the question with a string of “dadadadadadada” then waved and said “bye-bye” when I explained to her that Dada was gone to work for a long time. She’s very accepting. Elijah seems to be adjusting better than at first. He tells people that Daddy went on the airplane for work. They are both sleeping better (which means mommy sleeps better too, of course!) I’m learning to like the middle of the bed.
Tonight one of Jeremy’s co-workers stopped over with his wife to let us know when they would be mowing our lawn. They came in and were very sweet, asking how we were coping and visiting with us for a while. It was nice to have the company. Tomorrow is a busy day for us – MOPS in the morning and bible study for me in the evening. I probably will not get an opportunity to post anything tomorrow.
Taps is playing (which means it is 10PM) I need to hit the hay. Jeremy, if/when you read this, know you are very loved. I bought Elijah fruit snacks at the grocery store today. He picked out two different kinds and shared them with Merry. I told him that you told me to make sure he was stocked up on them. He seemed pleased by this. I know he’s relieved that you still have a say-so on certain things while you are gone.
Here is a video I took this morning . . . Jeremy told Elijah that he would be the man of the house while he was gone and to take care of Mommy and Mimi. Elijah is doing such a good job. See him singing to Mimi, telling her he’ll come and get her after she naps, and holding the door for Mommy to go out. This video by special request from Jeremy. . .
