Okay, so I just posted a big long blog with lots of details in it, and pushed "post" and it had an error...  ERRRRRRRR!  I hate it when that happens!  So, this will now be a quick update. 

The girls had their speach re-evaluated and they are up to the level they should be at.  Corrected for pre-maturity, their age is 17 months 3 weeks.  They are actually 18 months, 3 weeks.  After the test yesterday, we found that they are finally up to their corrected age level!  I'm sooo happy!  They have tons of new words in the past 2-3 weeks!  When they were tested in January, they were at a 7-9 month old level, so this is a huge jump for them.

They have also mastered the art of going up and down stairs!!!  YAY for them!  It's cute 'cause they usually do it backwards and slide down, but at least they are doing it just fine!

Anyways, here are some new pictures!  Enjoy them!  I am off to watch Sweeny Todd with Jake.

Mood:  don't ask

Okay, this is just a quick update.  I had my appointment earlier today.  Everything mostly looks good.  He did a full physical & all the other stuff that you have to have done when you move.  Basically I'm completely healthy, except for the headaches still!!  I had one last night that was so bad I almost went to the ER.  We discussed it possibly (more likly probably) being from allergies - the pollen is forming little yellow puddles around here everywhere and yet again our car is no longer brown, but yellow!  So he not only bumped up my vaso-diolator (spelling?  It's the medicine that diolates my blood vessels so the blood will pump through the veins/arteries in my brain {and technically everywhere else in my body, but focuses on the brain}), but also bumped up my allergy meds.  I'm taking them as needed and boy do I need them today!!  Yesterday would have been nice too!  According to all the MRIs and CT scans and what not, the problem was that my blood vessels in the noggin aren't big enough to allow sufficient blood though, so it's getting backed up and creating pressure in the brain, causing the migrains.  The little blue pill that I now take 2-3 of twice a day is helping with that.  The allergy meds is keeping my nose and throat clear of build up, which aparently gives "allergy headaches"...  When I get a headache, it's not like a normal one, its massive.  Last night I could barely see and even simple English was beyond me!  I couldn't even remember the word Coke (obviously Coca-Cola - just for clarification incase law enforcement reads this!!) and that's something that I can't live with out!!  lol 

So, other than the headaches, I perfectly healthy he said.  My blood work came back great, even my iron levels are up!  I asked him about the amount of Coke that I drink, and while he did say that as a dr. he was required to tell me to tone it down a little, or at least mix in some water, he can see no negative impacts on my body!  I asked about the mood swings, and he did say that he could give me something for that, but it could also be cause by the lack of blood flow to the brain (or the forced blood flow), so if the mood swings are still bad after we get the migranes under control, we'll talk about it - or I will with another doc.  I think it's just because I have 3 small children who drive me up the wall!  lol  But that's my non-medical opinion!

Anyway, Blake and I are going to go play Dominos while we wait for Jake to get home with a movie.  I trusted him to pick up 2 good ones, so we'll see what he brings home!  I'll blog more later!

Rae

Mood:  smelly

Soooo guess what?  The twins are sick again!!  YAY us!  They started throwing up everything on Wednesday on the way to get passports!  So we smelled HORRIBLE when we went in to get apply, but the lady was gone for the day.  So we went over to the post office in Jacksonville to get MY passport.  Remember, we decided to get the kids the free passports on base and me the one we have to pay for out in town.  We only came to that decision after lots of research and phone calls to BOTH the passport office on base and the one in town.  So, we turn in my birth certificate and passport application no problem out there. 

Well, on Thursday, we went to go turn in the kids' stuff on base.   APARENTLY I now have to have a military passport as well.  Here's the deal: a civilian passport only allows you to stay in another country for so many days.  A military passport (which is only available to military families, NOT to members of the armed forces.... explain that one to me please!) allows you to stay for extended periods of time.  So, now that my birth certificate is already on it's way to Washington DC, I have to get it back! lol  So, they are going to intercept it or something so they can just do both at once...  What ever works for them I guess.  I have to go get new passport photos taken again today & go back to the passport office to turn them in.  Fun Fun!  All with 3 kids and no car 'cause Jake decided it was essential to take that with him today! 

Okay, back to the kids:

Blake is doing fine.  He had his 4 year check up yesterday and got FIVE shots!  Yes, I said 5!  OMG!  Who ever thought to give a 4 year old 5 shots at once should be shot!!!  He did fine for the finger prick (but was not happy at all!) and fine with the first 3 shots.  But shot number 4, he was done, and screaming on shot 5 to leave him alone!  lol  But he did pretty good and got stickers out of it!  :)  Oh, he's 43 1/4 inches tall & 41 1/4 pounds, just over tall for his age, and right at normal weight.  Stupid WIC last week tried to tell me that him and Sarah were over weight but Samantha was way under!  Dumb people! 

Sarah & Samantha are starting to feel better.  Wednesday was the worst when I had to wash the car seats 3 times and do 5 loads of sheets, Thursday was only one load of sheets.  Hopefully today there's none!!!  Cross your fingers for me please?  I think it's just the stomach virus that's going around, but it's sooooo not fun!  I do not do well with vomit!  Yuk!  So the girls have been only drinking only PediLite and have finally today had some Cheerios.  Wow, 2 kids not eating is bad!!!  They have practically finished a whole box of Cheerios this morning, but it's the only thing they will keep down.

So here's a picture of Sarah this morning.  I'm not quite sure what the look on her face is!  lol

And Samantha, clutching her bowl of Cheerios!  lol

Notice that they are both wearing sandles?  Samantha's are on the wrong feet.  Anyways, I got them a while back, they are wearing size 6 in shoes, so that's naturally what I grabbed in the sandles too, right?  WRONG!!!  They are size 6, but there's no way they fit like a 6!  They are bigger than the size 7 & 8s that I have in their closet waiting for them to grow into!  I seriously thing the manufacturer messed up and put a 6 on the 9s...

Moving on:  Clutch has found a new sleeping spot.  I knew it was only a matter of time since I've seen both Moncia & Karen's cats doing it, but here's my baby cat, who I'm going to kill!!!!!

Yes, that's ON TOP of my cabnets!  Obviously, as soon as I snapped the picture, I sprayed the crap out of the cat with a water bottle and he quickly learned it was a "no-no"!!  The boys are doing well after their neutering.  I thought Turbo was infected there for a little while, but he seems to be doing fine now.  5 more weeks and they will be sterile!!!  It'll be nice when they stop trying to spray!!

I made the kids a kind of sand box.  Last year, to go to the beach with, I bought a blow up kiddy pool for the girls.  It's been in storage since the end of last summer.  I brought it back out on Tuesday with the thought of making it a regular pool on the screened in back porch again, but decided that cleaning them up after playing in the water, and filling and refilling it all the time sucked, so I decided to make it a sand box.  When we went to Wal Mart to get sand, I found that Crayola makes colored sand: red, purple, blue, & green...  Since Blue is Blake's current favorite color, purple is what we usually associate with Samantha, and red is close to pink which would be Sarah, I went with the green!  lol  Since the girls have been sick, they haven't gotten to play in it, but I don't think we saw Blake for the first 5 hours after I put the sand in the box!  lol  Here's some pics of that:

The deal was the sand was supposed to stay in the box, but you know how 4 year olds are!  lol

I have a doctor's appointment today, so I'll let everyone know how that goes.  It's a full physical, I'll leave out most of the details lol, and another re-check for my headaches.  The doc last week doubled my blue pill and told me to take the Midrin as needed and not to even bother with Tylenol first.  Last night I was pretty sure I was dying as I was coming home from work, and almost went straight through the light that I normally turn at to go home...  If you go straight, there's the Naval ER on your right about 100 feet up the road.  I came home, double dosed my self, and in about 1/2 hour I was feeling REALLY good!  lol 

Anyway, have a great day everyone.  It's BEAUTIFUL here, so as long as my headache stays away and as long as the twins stay happy, there's a good chance we'll go for a bike ride later.

Oh ya, we got the Wal Mart pictures back yesterday.  A lot of you guys will be getting pictures in the mail soon, as they are going out after my doctor appointment today.  Normally I'd scan them into my computer before I did that so I could show everyone, but Jake's being a butt and is taking his time fixing our printer/scanner so I can't!!!  As soon as that's done, or I go to the library to scan, I'll post them.  They did turn out pretty cute.  We're having family pictures made on Sunday.

Rae

Mood:  caffeinated

So, we got rid of our fish tanks, a table, and some kids toys last night!  I've got someone else coming this week to pick up the hamsters, all 3 are going to the same home!  I can't believe how fast the move is coming up!  I keep looking at the calendar thinking we have plenty of time and NOPE, no we don't!!

Jake has duty today, so it's just me with all the kids.  That means I have to wait until tomorrow to get them their passports (we BOTH have to be there to get them because of all the kidnappers!!), but I'm going to take in the paper work for mine today.  We decided to get me a regular passport and the kids a free passport on base.  The only difference is some countries are not accepting the adult free passport, but they have no problem accepting the child "military" passport!  So, to be safe becuase you know we're going to travel, I'm getting just a regular $100 passport!  Dang, I better get to use it a lot!  lol 

Oh, and of course, since Jake has duty today, I had to get sick!  I woke up about 2 am with my ear killing me!!!  About 3 I finally remembered that the girls have the ear infection medicine that you drop in your ear and it's got some numbing meds in there.  So I made my way down to the kitchen (where we keep the frequently used meds) and grabbed it!  I laid down on the couch and used 6 drops, instead of their 3...  I expected it to work right away I guess, but ohhhh no!  It still took about an hour to kick in.  So, around 4:15 or so I FINALLY got to go lay back down upstairs and go back to sleep.  Then the alarm went off at 6 for Jake to get up, and the girls started screaming for us at about 6:10, when Jake was in the shower.  Just my luck!  All I wanted to do was sleep some, so I changed them, grabbed a pillow and a blankie and cuddled up on their floor!  They were happy that I was in there, and Sarah played quitely while 'Mantha hung all over me!  It worked out well though 'cause I got an extra hour until Blake came upstairs (he'd aparently been watching cartoons downstairs) and decided he wanted to play too!!  Butthead!  So we came down stairs for a late breakfast.  My ear still hurts and I hear a constant ringing in it.  The good news is I already have a dr. appt. for this Friday, so if it keeps up, I'll just talk with him then.  The bad news it's all me for the next 24-48 hours!!!  :)  YAY!  lol

Alright, I'm going to go lay on the couch and pretend that I'm actually getting some sleep.  Maybe they kids'll let me get some...  Ah, who am I kidding?  lol  I guess nap time is for all of us today huh?  :)

Mood:  caffeinated

Okay, so this is going to be our general blog.  I've been playing around with this to see how things work out. Aparently I can have multiple blogs, so I'll do a special blog for big events (holidays, the move, birthdays, ect.) and then I'll keep a general blog, here, just for normal updates!  I'll let you know when new ones are posted, and to where!

First, I'm going to take a break from my normal blogging to tell you about a few movies Jake and I have watched.  Most of you know we're HUGE movie fans, Blockbuster definitly knows us by name and no longer needs to see our IDs (thank goodness for the movie pass)!  Anyway, we watched August Rush last night and it was amazing!  It's a movie about a little boy who's been in an adoption home all his life, never wanting to be adopted.  His mom and dad never knew he existed (part of the story line) and the entire family has a musical connection to one another.  He's looking for his parents and he thinks the way to find them is through playing his music and they will hear it!  It's really a great movie, and something for the whole family!  Blake like the parts that he saw (but he was too busy watching Power Ranger, circa 1995!!), and even Jake thought it was good!  We definitly recommend it to anyone! 

Also, on the same note, if you haven't picked up Enchanted with Patrick Dempsy yet either, now would be a good time!  It's a very cute and comical Disney come to life movie!  Giselle plays a princess (or almost princess) who falls through a whole into the middle of New York City (talk about a HUGE change!!).  She's so nieve about the way things work in the "real" world, but it makes you want to fall in love all over again!  Anyways, another really cute family friendly movie that we definitly enjoyed!

Okay, moving on.  The family is good!  Three of us are super excited about the move to Japan - the other 2 don't know what's happening at all, except that I got rid of their broken or about to be broken toys that they still wanted to play with!  Blake can't wait to go learn Karate and see Disney in Tokoyo!  I'm ready for the stress of moving a home to be over with, but I'm actually one of those that loves to move around, so I am doing good!  I'm pretty organized for this move (which is a first in our moving adventures) so hopefully it goes smoothly!  We've got at least 2 moving binders with everything we need in it, and so far most of the house has been weeded though.  We're actually not taking too much over there with us, leaving behind the couch, futon, TV, 2 tables, and a few other things.  We've found that the housing there is WAY smaller unless we want to move into the apartments, but they don't allow pets and I don't think I could live on the 9th floor again!!!  I'd rather downsize than move up 8-12 floors (the towers are about 12 stories high!!!), can you imagine getting groceries, kids, and myself up there on a daily basis?  Plus, there's not really places to play for the kids in the towers. 

Also, this past weekend I got my bike!  I know I'd been talking about it for some time now, but I finally did it!!!  We've gone on several bike rides since Friday too.  My legs feel awsome and I'm even starting to feel the work out a little in my abs.  We've got the trailer for the girls, and Blake can ride his own bike, although it's MUCH slower when he rides with us!  But that's okay.  It's a mountain bike, which made Jake a little iffy, but now if I decide that I want to go off-road - which may happen yet - then I can!  Here's some pictures:

Yep, that's Blake in the trailer!  He was being lazy after our 1/2 hour ride, but he still wanted to be outside, so we put the girls down, and I took him on a ride in the trailer!  Nice, and not much different than pulling 2 20 pound girls!  lol  Now we just need to get a new seat for the bike.....   A padded one!  lol

Okay, I'm off to go spend a few hours cleaning and playing with the kids, then naps, and I'll probably be back on here to customize the site a little more.  We are definitly keeping the angelfire site, and I'll probably end up paying the $30 for 3 years to get it ad-free!  Enjoy the day!

Rae