Cody sent us a picture!

This is him and his commander and no we have no idea what the piece of paper is he is holding...but it is so good to see he looks healthy anyway :)
Sidenote: apparently they had to retake the picture because the commander had no idea of the expression cody was wearing, he did it for a laugh.....

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Yikes! It is almost the end of the year! We had a very quiet Thanksgiving day, the kids got here around 1:30 and we tried to take some pictures before everyone (madi) got dirty but didnt have a whole lot of luck. Madi refused to cooperate when it came to a family photo and didnt even mind when they traded her in for a willing substitute, she did however relent to having pictures by herself :)
After her nap we had dinner, then watched a movie and then made our Christmas candy calendars. All in all it was a great evening and we have tons of left overs for the next week or so. We did miss our family who wasnt with us and they were included in our prayers. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

(p.s. Madi didnt have her nap with the dogs on the dog bed, I just caught her laying there with them, in case you were thinking that was a picture of her nap...)

Good news or Bad news????

Yesterday morning Cody called again, 3 times in 3 days...I was a little nervous and warned him not to give me more bad news. He said it wasn't bad news it was interesting news. He found out yesterday that he had orders for Spokane Washington, reporting on March 30th! Of course he has to re-up to get this BOP, and he did, for an additional year. So the great part of this news, Cody will be in Washington state-just a mere 4+ hours away, the only down side of this is that now he can quite possibly be deployed yet again...(sigh)
Still don't know how Christmas is going to pan out but we will just have to be patient and hopeful.

well, that was short lived....

I just found out in an email from Cody that he will not be home in time for Christmas after all. Now he will not be leaving Afghanistan until December 12th. Apparently with the in-processing and required time to be on base after deployment he will not make it home until sometime in January. Dissapointed doesn't even come close to describing how I feel right now.

Two in one day! (don't get too used to it)

Since Madi spent the night last night Lindsay came over to hang out for a while when she picked her up. After Madi and Lindsay had their nap we played for a while and ate and basically killed time waiting for the weather to do something other than rain. We finally got a break sometime after 3:00 and bundled up to go outside and ride. Madi loves to ride now, she is no longer afraid of horses' heads. She really likes Buffy and luckily Buffy seems to like her too. We all took turns riding and you can see by the background we were definitely on borrowed time where the weather was concerned!

Sunday afternoon...

The best part of the day so far was that Cody called and said it looks like he may be heading back to the states on either Nov 30, or Dec 5th, which means he will be home for Christmas! I am so very happy and excited, I was realllllly wanting Cody to be home for the holidays. The last time he was home for Christmas was '05, I'd say it's about time. Anyway all the people who live with me can breathe a sigh of relief as I will surely be easier to live with now :)
As promised I had a few pictures on my camera of the dogs and Madi (shocker I know) so I am going to share them even though they have nothing to do with my news!

Madi's 2nd Bday party!

Today was Madi's birthday party and it was really super fun for her. I think she was a little bit overwhelmed initially but really got into opening her presents, the books were a big hit!, and also really enjoyed her cupcake! All of her favorite boy friends were there and to even things out a little Aunt Cathi brought Patience and Jordyn. She had almost all of her grandparents there, just missing one grandpa. The house looked really cute, the food was good, somehow everyone found a place to park and it didn't even rain. A huge success all the way around! Madi is a lucky little girl, good luck trying to think of ANYTHING to get her for Christmas! I'm pretty sure she has just about everything a 2 year old could want....

Happy Birthday Madi!

Today Madi is two years old! Hard to believe, time is just flying by. Here she is at dinner last night showing us how old she is by holding up her two fingers. She also sings "happy birthday to me" and says "I'm the birthday girl" she pretty much has this stuff figured out!

Halloween 08 & 09

Last year Madi was a snail for Halloween, a very cute snail. This year Madi was a little logger for Halloween, a very cute little logger with a wicked mean glare!

Carving pumpkins 08 & 09

I guess I did this backwards...again, here are pictures of the same event just one year apart..

Stoney Ridge Farms 08 & 09

Stoney Ridge farms is a great place to get pumpkins and apples, they have hay rides and a petting zoo and it is a lot of fun. I copied these pictures from Lindsay's camera and thought it would be fun to put last years pictures up along with this years pictures to see how much she has changed in just one year.