Holiday Mail for Heroes

Everyone deserves something during the holidays. We have people fighting for our country over seas that will not be home for the holidays. Please if you have the time make them a card or buy one (or 15 :D) and send them out to those overseas. The Red Cross has a program you should be able to click on the link above or click Here for more information. The girls and I went down to our housing office and made a few cards. We will more tehn likely be back there this week to do it again :D The girls had a blast doing this and knowing it was going to touch the hearts of soilders.

Rachel making her card

Charle making her card
The girls and thier 3 cards each in front of the office xmas tree

Trick or Treat!

Do these really need a blog on it :P We had a blast trick or treating in our neighborhood and the girls got SOOOO much candy! Of course Mommy has to try the candy daily to make sure its still good LOL! We had a lot of fun :D

Charle's 3!!

Both of the girls always get 2 birthday parties. One that is just the 4 of us and then one with her friends or whoever she wants at the party. The one with the 4 of us is just cake and singing and is held on her actual birthday. I normally make the cake but this year it was bought...Charle picked a monster cake LOL. She thought turning 3 was very serious business and had actually fallen asleep before Daddy got home from work for her cake but she did wake up! So we didnt have to wait for the next day. She of course loved her cake. It's hard to believe that my baby is already 3 years old! She is still a little peanut and weighs in at about 23 lbs I think. When we get her into the doctor for her weight check Ill update and let you know what she actually weighs in at. She is still wearing between 18 month and 2T clothes depending on the brand. She loves cars, dinosuars and GI Joe. We got her Spike the Dinosaur and it is deffintly worth the price! She LOVES the toy and plays with it constintly! She actually gets mad when we turn it off!

Charle's 3rd birthday party

We celebrated Charle's birthday with the cousin's Katie and Alyssa we went to Jungle Playland! It is a lot of fun there the girls have a blast. As you can see they had a lot of fun together! They had pizza and played on all the toys.

Here she is watching to see if more of those balls are going to fall on her head she thought it was so cool!

They don't allow inside food or drinks so we went to a close by park for the cake! She really liked her presents!

A family of pirates!

This year we are going to be pirates! Arrrrgh! I love getting to dress up with the girls! It is so much fun! As you can see We have Captain Charle, First Mate Rachel and their deckhand Mommy! There will be more pictures to come after we go trick or treating! We are so excited!! I have to say I think I have two of the prettiest pirates in the world!

Captain Charle

First Mate Rachel

Just an update

We are getting out of the navy and so our life is going to be changing drastically in the next few months with more to come I'm sure. Biggest change is we are getting ready to move back to Anacortes and I will be getting a job :)

Rachel is doing great in school and loves her teacher. She is making a lot of new friends and was able to keep a few from the last few years as well! She is learning to read some basic words and is able to write a lot more. I am very proud of her and have no doubt that by the end of the year she will be reading books all by herself! She is not to happy about moving away from her friends and going from 2 to 3 days a week school to 5 days but she will deal with it. She is happy that she is going to be near her cousins though!

Charle is learning at home and so far knows the letters A and B by sight :) which I am very proud of! She is turning 3 at the end of the month :( time really flies. We tried to get her into the developmental preschool but they say she is to advanced for it! Which is great news of course but at the same time I think preschool would have really helped her a lot. When we move I'm going to look into the local preschools and see what I can do. I will be working for the first time in her life and that is going to take a bit of a toll on her I'm sure but being non military we are going to need 2 incomes. She is ALMOST potty trained...she was fully when we were visiting Granny and Grandpa but when we came home things changed. She is doing better I just have to remind her A LOT.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Zing! Zang! Zoom!

Last night the girls got to go to the opening night of the circus! This year is I think better then any other year because the girls were able to really get into it! And everything is still very magical to both of them :D We got there early enough where we could go down onto the floor and watch things up really close. Charle just loved the clowns and Rachel loved "the pretty lady on the ropes." We had a lot of fun :)We got back to our seat to wait for the show to start and as you can see were very excited to be at the circus! Once again they both got their own seats sure that ended up being a waste of money but thats okay! (Both girls fell asleep at the end of ths show haha)
Charle LOVED the elephants expecially when they stood up and put their front legs on eachothers backs she just thought that was the coolest thing she has ever seen! As you cann see from her face above she was very excited by them :) My favorite part by far was just watching the girls :) Mainly Charle she got into it a lot more then Rachel did. It was such a great time and I hope that we can go again next year!

Kindergarten

My "baby" is now in Kindergarten. Here she is on her very first day of school! Which was yesterday the 10th :) She was so excited to go!Its a new bus driver this year not our favorite Ms. Anne but thats okay :) SHe also ridea anew bus this year seems like there has been a lot of changes this year for her! Here she is getting on the bus!Charle girl is VERY upset that she didnt get to go to 'chool on the bus. So Im going to be doing some homeschooling with her. She did get to eat her lunch out of a lunch bag though! ANd that of course was really cool and fun!

Rachel really enjoyed her first day of school and she says shes one of the only kids that didnt get ANY frowny faces. (you get frowny faces for not being good) this of course makes me soooo proud of her. She is in class with her besteset friend Hailey and she has made a few new ones too she just doesnt remeber any of their names :)

The Kangaroo Petting Zoo!!!!

One of the really cool attractions here in Arlington is the Outback Petting Zoo! This place is just amazing has a bunch of super cool animals! And you get to go and pet and feed almost all of them! Click here for more information on it:) One of the fun little things if you dance the dance from Madagascar you get to feed these little guys. They are called "leaping" lemurs. Rachel and her cousin Katie danced the best so here's Rachel feeding one of them.
Here Rachel and CHarle are feeding a Wallabee...you can buy these from them! The girls plan to ask Santa for one....sadly Santa doesnt have these at the North Pole though! They sure do like feeding them and petting and hugging them it is so cool . I'll admit I love doing it too they are so soft! I think if we owned a house Santa might just have one in the North Pole someday ;)Spending the day with the cousins is the best part I think! Here they are petting a wallabee.They also got to feed Alpacas....you do it by putting food in your mouth and they take it out of your mouth! This was a favorite :)

Granny and Grandpa's!

In August we went to go visit Granny and Grandpa Hawkins in New York! The girls each got to sit in their very own seat on the plane which of course is just the coolest thing in the whole world! Even better then that we rode JetBlue which gives you your very own TV to watch! So they got to pick anything to watch and it didnt have to be the same thing!

They also got to pick fresh corn from Grandps'a garden! This was I think their favorite thing to do besides go to the lake LOL. My girls are both corn lovers! One night Charle ate 2 whole ears of corn and Rachel ate 3!! They even got to attempt to shuck the corn with Grandpa. Which was fun for them too :P
I think the coolest thing is Granny and Grandpa live in a barn! This is the back view but from looking at it from teh front you wouldnt know anyone lives there! It is really cool and just a beautiful place to play and live!
Another fun thing was going to the lake. Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Hawkins have a cottage on Kueka Lake. So we went down there almost everyday to swim, have a picnic and even eat down there. Both the girls were so brave! They would go out and swim with just wings on! They loved it and just had so much fun! They can't wait to go back to the lake again next summer! Its all they talk about still!

Anacortes Arts and Crafts Festival

On Saturday the girls got to enjoy the annual Arts and Crafts festival in Anacortes. As a child I had so much fun wondering around and playing in the kids section. Painting fish was always a lot of fun! I love watching the girls do a lot of the same things I did as a child!

In a couple of days we are making the trip to see Granny and Grandpa in NY!! We are so excited we will be back in the end of August when I will update with pictures :D

Beach day

This summer has been great weather we were able to take the girls down to Wenberg State Park in Stanwood, WA. It's a little bit of a drive but it is deffinitly worth it! The kids are able to play in the water and in the lake. Of course they just have a blast! We played in the water for awhile then played on the beache then played in the water some more :D Rachel got burried in the sand and then Charle decided she wanted to be burried too! But she didnt want to lay down so she just got her legs burried LOL. And she patted herself down in the sand even more. She is so funny sometimes!

crabbing fun!

We went up to Anacortes on July 11th to go out and go crabbing. We all had a blast the girls are like me and LOVE being out on the water. It was just a blast even though it was a pretty windy day. We didn't catch any that we could take home because there are regulations (the crabs HAVE to be males and HAVE to be at least 6 1/4 inches long. Also there are only certain days you can go crabbing (Wednesday through Saturday) so there's a lot of rules on it but its still fun.
Charle was really scared of the crabs at first but as i was about to through this female back in she decided she wanted to touch it so she was able to. She thought it was the coolest thing in the world!

Rachel was a little freaked out too and this is as close to them as she would get. But she had so much fun and when it was time to go home she was upset she wanted to crab some more! The one closest is a male but wasn't big enough the one closer to Rachel was a female and possibly big enough.

Surgery

On July 1st Rachel went in for surgery. She had her tonsils and adenoids taken out and ear tubes put in her ears. She was so brave I am so proud of her!
This last week has been difficult while trying to take care of her and dealing with a 2 year old who wants to play outside. On the 4th of July we had to take her into the ER because she was throwing up blood. What happened was her scab fell off, which is very common. She ended up needing an IV because she was getting dehydrated. We got home at about 5 AM and slept for 2 hours before I started searching for whose house Charle was at. I love all of our neighbors the are amazing and were such a big help cleaning up our 4th of July BBQ and taking care of Charle. Eating has been difficult for Rach but she is eating normally again and is doing just great!

remind me to NEVER cut my kids hair again :P

Charle was in desperate need of a haircut. So I took her outside with scissors and decided to do it myself. Well that really didn't end up so good. As you can see from the pictures below. So that is something I will NEVER do again LOL. The front isn't to bad but.....the back well its horrible! I really messed up and I felt really bad. Luckily she's only 2 and will not remember the hack job I did on her hair...oh wait I'm writing a blog on it whops maybe she will LOL. We were gunna wait a few weeks for it to grow out more but since I have some wonderful neighborsone took pity on her and fixed it. It's a lot shorter then I planned on making it but at least its all even and looks very very cute!