One Day Closer!! :o)

Well, as most of you know, David will be home next week! We are hoping by Friday, but it could be as early as Tuesday (3rd) and as late as the following Sunday (8th). This was moved up 3 days from the previous window. We are soooooo excited for this to be over and done with! The fifteen month anniversary is February 6th, that's a long time!

David and his company are currently in Kuwait waiting for all the paperwork to go through so that they can head home. He is finally getting some down time over there now that they are in the last stretch - thank goodness!! I will update this blog with pictures when he gets home! :o)

This will be the first Birthday and Valentine's Day that he's been home for in 2 years - crazy! I'm a little worried about the transation from single mom to married mom, I hope I don't stress him out too bad when he comes home. :o)

Thanks for all the prayers and support that you have given to our family - all our prayers are about to be answered! :o) I've told Bellah daddy's coming home next week, but she doesn't understand yet. This week was dragging, but Bellah was sick today and now time is dragging!! Go figure! :o)

Love ya!!

JB & B

Our Very First Car Accident! Wa-hoo :o(

Well, I guess I should blog about this since not everyone knows. Bellah and I were in a car accident yesterday morning. (Jan 7th). We were rear ended at the stop sign in our neighborhood. It was 7:55am, I was on my way to take Bellah to school and head off to work and we were about to turn right out of our neighborhood, but there were cars coming to the left so we stopped. The lady behind us saw us inch forward, but assumed we had gone and looked down at her wallet and hit us square in the back of my Passat. :o(

Bellah freaked out a little because of the impact and wanted to get out of her seat, but the smoothie that was in my hand (I was about to take a drink!) was all over me and the seats and I didn't want Bellah to get dirty. She calmed down after a little bit and entertained herself while I called the insurance company and got this lady's insurance information.

This is my very first accident (as well as Bellah's too) and it was not a fun experience! The first thing that went through my head was "Are you kidding me?!? Do I really have to deal with this? Did this just happen? Maybe it was my imagination!" And then I looked down and my cup that was once half full was now empty-literally! :o( It took me a minute to realize that someone actually hit me from the back and that my drink was everywhere.

The first thing I tried to do was find some napkins and clean up what I could. Go figure that I only had two in the car!!! I actually used one of Bellah's shirts in her backpack to clean some of it up!!

So, there's the damage. Not bad considering it was a Ford Expedition that hit us. I love my VW - it's totally a tank!! You can see some scratches on the bumper, the dent in the top of the bumper and the truck a little buckled.

This is one of the major areas that was damaged - nice little opening, huh? Maybe no one will notice. :o)

Here are some views of my trunk. It didn't buckle as much as it felt like it could have, so tha car is still drivable - unless it rains! :o(

The lady was very nice and said that she thought I had gone and looked down at her wallet and then hit me. If there weren't two cars coming from the left, I would have gone, but when there are cars coming - I think it better to stop! I didn't know what to do so I called my insurance company, USAA, to figure out what I needed to do and they were very helpful. I got all the info I needed from the other driver and USAA got all the info they needed from me. I love USAA!!

I've already filed the claim with the other insurance company and so far they have been very nice and cooperative. Hopefully I'll get the car into a shop by the weekend and be in a rental as well until my car is fixed!

Bellah and I went to the doctor's today to get checked out and we both are fine. I've got some serious stiffness in my neck and shoulder and lower back, but the doctor said that might go away in a week and keep and eye on it. If it doesn't, I'll go back in and we'll try to schedule some therapy or something. Bellah seems to be doing fine and hasn't acted like she has any paid or discomfort from the wreck.

Anyways, so Bellah and I had a wonderful Wednesday! :o( It would be much easier if David was here because he does all that phone call stuff. I HATE making phone calls! It's one of those things I will procrastinate until the very last second, if possible. It's a bad habit. Oh, well. I will keep you posted of any developments, but hopefully we won't have any.

David comes home in less than 30 days and we are anxiously trying to keep ourselves busy so that the time flies!! The military has pushed back his "window" to come home to the middle of February, but I'm hoping it'll be earlier - these guys keep getting screwed with this Unit they are with. America may "support" the soldiers, but the Military sure doesn't! The political world of the Military is a very frustrating beast. Thankfully, David won't be fighting it much longer!

Love ya!

JB & B

David's Visit

Well as promised, here are some pix from David's visit. At the beginning of December 2008, David's dad had a very serious heart attack. There was a Red Cross message sent to David and because of the seriousness of his father's condition, David's Company gave him 10 days leave to come back to Atlanta to spend some time with his family. David's dad had quadruple bypass surgery and has been recovering better than expected.

Bellah and I were able to travel out to Atlanta and be with David for the full 10 days. :o) It wax such a welcome break from this separation - it was a great Christmas present! It's just a shame it had to come at such a stressful time for his family.

Bellah and her cousins (Leah, Carlie and Nathalie - Suzie's kids) had a blast at Papa's house. They played ring-around-the-rosies a thousand times! That's one of Bellah's favorite things to do!

All Fall Down!! (Bellah, Leah and Carlie (laying down))

Natalie (standing), Bellah (to the right of Natalie), Leah (sitting) and Carlie (to the left of Leah - on her back)








Bellah had tons of fun playing with her other cousins Gage, Ethan and Sadie too! (Joyce's kids)




We went to an outlet mall near Atlanta and one of Bellah's favorite toys is the carousel. She could ride it aaaaalllll day!






Gage and Ethan were monkey boys - they wanted to climb on the carousel - Bellah thought they were soooo funny!

There's this place called Noah's Ark near Joyce's house - it's an animal shelter for rescued animals - but the typical animals. They had Emus and Ostriches and Tigers and Deer and Lions and all kinds of exotic animals. It was a really cold day, but Bellah love it!

That's Aunt Joyce and Cousin Ethan.

There's David!! The cage around the animals said not to touch them, that the animals can bite, kick, spit and other stuff. The llama seemed pretty tame - they had some llamas running free around the park - it was crazy!!!













Aunt Joyce had a coupon for Chuck-E-Cheeses so we all went there for dinner one night. Obviously - we had a lot of fun!! :o)











Daddy and Bellah had lots of fun! :o)







Bellah wasn't too fond of the game when the horse started to move a little - it kinda freaked her out. :o)




We had Bellah on this horsie, but it was lame because it was weight activated and she was too light to make the game register that she was on it. So mommy had to help. :o)


Mommy got on the horse with Bellah, but as soon as it started to move - well, she didn't like that too much. (See previous picture for details!)

We spent a little time over and Aunt Suzie's house and Bellah discovered Leah's Barbie computer and was captivated!

Bellah's eating a plastic egg that David, Carlie and I were throwing back and forth. :o)

Uncle Nate got a kick out of Bellah on the computer - her typing skills were phenomenal! :o)










So, now David is back in Iraq and we only have a few weeks left in this deployment. It was a welcome break to have David back in the states, but Bellah and I were happy to get back to our routines! Bellah enjoyed daddy, but had a lot of separation anxiety issues and took a long time to warm up to David. Hopefully when he's back home and Bellah's in her environment, she'll adjust better.

Merry Christmas everyone! We'll see you soon.

Love ya!

DB, JB & BB

Family Pictures

Holy Guacamole! It's been a while since I last wrote and soooo much has happened!! But, first things first: about two or three weeks ago, Bellah and I had some family pictures (minus daddy :o( ) taken by a lady in our church. We got them while we were in Atlanta visiting with daddy (details in a post to follow) and they were soooooo great, we wanted to share them with everyone!





These pictures were taken by Kam at a park that is just down the street from our house. It's litterally less than two miles from our house and we never knew it was there! It used to be an old farm that was donated to the city for a park. (Hence the donkeys in pictures below.)












Bill and Carlene just happened to be in town when I scheduled the pictures so they joined us for our session.







We got some great pictures! Kam (www.kamlingphotography.com) is very talented!! I saw pictures on her web site after I heard that she was a photographer and I was very impressed! Thankfully she's as good as her pictures and all our pictures look so professional without the price!!!!













This black and white picture of Bellah is one of the first pictures on her site - we are so honored!!








As I said, the park has donkeys and Papa Boyd brought some apples to feed the donkeys with. They were very nice and you could tell that people feed them often because they came right up to the fence! :o)



I can't believe we got this picture because we were all right next to Bellah making sure she didn't curl her fingers too much and get a chunk taken out! Kam is very good!


This is what it looked like around Bellah feeding the donkeys - she loved it though and we all had a great time watching her. :o)

Mimi and Papa Boyd and Bellah checking out the donkeys. There were two of them in this corral area - it was really cool - very Texas-y!! :o)

There was also a park area and Bellah and Mimi had LOTS of fun playing on that. Bellah wasn't in the mood to smile that day (go figure) so the slide pictures were really the only ones where she would smile! :o)

I've got some pictures from our trip to Atlanta that I'll post in the next week. David's dad had a heart attack two weeks ago (he's doing very well now) and the military let David come back for 10 days to spend time with him (Merry Christmas to us!), so off to Atlanta Bellah and I went. Stay tuned for more details! :o)

Love,

DB, JB, & BB

Well, it's been a while since I last posted - sorry about that! Things have been getting a little crazy in our house trying to prepare for the primary program, reupholstering chairs and breaking my laptop. :o( Here are some of the latest pictures of Bellah.

Bellah loves to put band aid on old owies and this is no different. Notice the careful precision as she places the "band-aid" on the problem area.

The dedication as she carefully maneuvers the... ummm.. noodle (yes, that's her dinner!) to cover the scar.

Almost there, just once more..... noodle....

TADAAAAA!! The spaghetti noddle band aid is complete! The scar will heal! Hallelujah!!! The operation was a success!!!!

So, I've grown tired of the old dinning room chairs that we have and the countless "accidents" Bellah has had on them. :o( I figured it's probably cheaper to reupholster them myself so I did a little research to figure out how hard it would be to do. (This was the first one - it's Bellah's chair.)

Thankfully, reupholstering isn't too hard or expensive. I decided to go with a nice dark blue to hide stains - then a thought from my childhood manifested itself - PLASTIC! My mother's a GENIUS! As a kid those chairs were kind of annoying, but as a mother who has to clean up after messy kids - it's PERFECT!!

So, not too bad! I am going to finish the last two tonight - I'm so excited!!! :o) And, Bellah has already broken them in! They work GREAT!!! Hopefully they'll last for a while! As you can see, Bellah thinks they are pretty cool. She kept trying to help me get the staples out and wanted to play with the nasty foam. :o( Yuck! Luckily I threw them out before she could get into too much trouble!

Life is going well - we only have 2 1/2 months left and we are SOOOO EXCITED! Luckily, we have a lot of activities going on in the next two months to keep us busy and hopefully help the time to fly! We'll keep you posted on the "after" party!

Love you!!!!

JB, DB & BB