Just Jackie

Linkin's FIRST haircut

FYI- I dont have the energy to try and figure out why there's big gaps and spaces between my pictures so just a forwarning that they are there! :)

Wow, his FIRST haircut and VERY MUCH needed too. It was sure fun though and he's just so grown up now.

I love this look on his face. Ha haha~ You can barely see it but it's telling. And cute! He he!! 

Look at that guy!!! EEEEK!!

Jay tries real hard to talk to him and calm him down the whole time but Link wasn't having it! He was ticked!!

He does get his little head held in some awkward and uncomfortable positions. I pushed a little hard once or twice. He might have had a little mark or two. Whoops!

There's my happy boy. It's all over now buddy!! He was horrified!!

Here's a video of the Linkster after this whole terrifying ordeal. He's been doing this little side kick thing lately and this day we named it "sumo" and egged him on the whole time so he was being a little kooky and doing the "sumo" over and over again. The video can get a little lame and boring and then the pace kind of picks up again at the end. If you're bored, then what the heck it can't hurt!!! It makes me laugh!

The never-ending project!

How can it be Christmas when it looks like this?????

For those that couldn't quite understand the monstrosity of a yard that I have to rake, there's Craig, the little ant at the top of our yard with his rake. Beginning the forbidden and impossible task of raking. I've heard it all... "get a blower!", "just get a blower and blow them!" "you guys should get a blower", "maybe you should just buy a blower!" And that's "it all". So next time someone says that I'm going to get them over here with a blower to physically demonstrate how a blower is going to help any in the matter. ha ha haa! Just kidding, but I don't see it working. Not to mention that the trees still have a healthy amount of leaves on them.

I guess Craig was excited!

The Beginning... I am a slave driver. Look at that smile though. He loves it.

Diesel DUH! Look at the color under there. Craig's still smiling. This is good.

Still smiling.... and I'm still watching. And not helping.

Well he's not even 1/15th done...

Now to the back of the house. Another acre. Just kidding, it's fairly small.

Diesel seems to jump into every single picture doesn't he? This is the back of our humble home. It's fantastic. We just love it!   ....p.s.... ignore the garbage pile over there.

Our deck...our leafless deck that is! It only lasted an hour or so...

Diesel. Our other patio. Lovely. That ax in the corner is for... well if I tell you, I'd have to kill you too. I'm kidding FBI.

This is my bestest boy. A bonus pictures if you will. He likes to climb on things and sit. Not too far from the ground but fancy to him nonetheless.

These are my kitchen jars I'm proud of. That's all. Another "bonus" picture for me I guess. :)

GOODNESS GRACIOUS I LOVE HIM!!!!!!!

   

Linkin ADORES his Dad! He runs to him when he gets home and puts him arms into the air to be picked up. So cute!

Wow, I couldn't look scarier.

A prize goes to the first person to correctly identify each one of my chins!

Them again.

And FINALLY... My beautiful flowers from my sweet husband! He had them sent to me last week. I love the Holly leaves and the pine and of course the daisies are my favorite. They are gorgeous. I loved them!!!

So This post was 100% pictures and lots of them. Large too. I just feel like that's how they are going to be for a while because I have so many pictures, so little time so yeah. That's how we roll for a while. :) Thanks for reading. Love to all!

I'm BAAAAAAAaaaaack!!

WOW!!!!! I can't even begin to tell you how much I have to say right now. That's kind of why two weeks turned into two months of not writing. Can you believe it? I have had so much pressure to update my blog that I'm finally skipping my favorite thing (taking a nap) to blog. There's still so much to be done around this house right now but I will forego those things and try to spill some life to ya'll.

Here I sit in the dirty south. Man I don't even remember how to write. What to say? Any ideas? I have a piece of paper with things that I want to journal a memory of, but I just don't want to get into that today so in the next couple weeks, I'll be going back in time and sharing some silly stories with you for my keepsake purposes. Anyhow for now... I will tell you our move story.

We began packing up for the move on the 29th of Oct... We spent the whole week. NONSTOP. Sometimes not eating meals packing and loading and packing and loading. Well we had our walk through at our base house at Holloman scheduled for 4:00pm on Friday and our plans were to take off right after that. Well the lady came and we still had all kinds of stuff left to be done. Keep in mind that Craig and I had done everything all by ourselves. We didn't have any help. EXCEPT... Jeff and Sara Johnson. Jeff helped with a few really heavy things that I couldn't manage, and Sara was a lifesaver in helping us clean on friday. But we still weren't ready to go when the housing management lady came. So she agreed to stay late and come back at 5 pm. So we cleaned and worked hard and cleaned and 5 came a lot sooner than I'd hoped. She came again and we still weren't ready. SO CLOSE. So close, but she wouldn't wait any longer. SOOOO... we ended up having to stay in the house until monday morning when they would have someone available to come again. So all that hard work and nonstop cleaning and packing and loading was in vain essentially. We have the worst luck. WE were WASTED tired. I'm talking like sooo tired you wouldn't even believe it. Craig had stayed up until 6 in the morning the previous night and I until 4am. It was a nightmare. WE tried so hard to be ready to go but we just have a lot more stuff than we think! So Friday night sweet Sara made us dinner and we went over there and ate and played a game or two. It was fun and we were kind of relieved we didn't have to go anywhere and hardly do anything the rest of the weekend. Saturday, we finished loading up the trailer and did the last minute stuff that we hadn't yet, and then Saturday night we took Jeff and Sara to Texas Roadhouse in Las Cruces. Oh my gosh it was glorious!! We hadn't been there forever and it was so nice just to slow down, relax and have fun. It was great! Sunday, we spent the day cleaning and getting ready to go some more and then Monday we began the drive to MISSSISSSSSSISSSSSSIPPPPI! I think I might have spelled that wrong. Duh. That was lame. See I don't know how to write anymore. I feel so monotone and boring right now. All in good time eh? The drive started out so super duper lame and boring and ugly and ghetto...but as soon as we got closer to Dallas it started to get beautiful and nice and entertaining. It was pretty much gorgeous big tall trees lining the freeway and green grass along the side the rest of the way from there. Driving through Lousiana was actually really surprising because I hadn't imagined it to be that pretty but it was really gorgeous. I was happy to explore some random areas of the country. I'm skipping back to Texas...we stayed the night in Fort Worth. We got to the hotel at like midnight and the lady offered us a jacuzzi king suite for the normal room price. We snuck Diesel in. Whoops. They actually allow pets but I didn't dare to mention it in case they said they don't all of a sudden or something and then we'd have to spend the night looking for a hotel that did. So yeah, call me Satan but that's what came about. Anyways... our hotel room was splendidly awesome!!! I have never loved a hotel room more. It had this HUGE HUGE HUGE jacuzzi tub. It could have fit my whole family - Mom Dad, Josh, Justin, Jamie, Jake and me. Oh and maybe a few spouses. (I think I'm exaggerating a little).  Linkin and I jumped right in and played around for a while while Craig dinked around with our luggage. It was fun! WE slept well that night as did Linkin and back on the road were we Tuesday morning. It only took the rest of Tuesday to arrive there in COLUMBUS, MS because we are basically awesome at driving. We stayed the first night in a pet friendly TLF (Temporary living facility) on base. Can we say NASTY? Those places are just absolutely disgusting. Let me just complain for a few minutes. They are moldy around the bath tub. The beds are hideously uncomfortable and I just wanted to curl up and cry. That was the first night and then we moved to another not pet friendly TLF which was equally nasty and uncomfortable but was a little better in the kitchen and stuff. But we had to take Diesel to a kennel. He actually was very well taken care of and it was a really good Kennel experience. We went and visited him almost everyday. We had fun! The housing office on base wasn't as great here as we hoped and the house they offered us on base was a little too small for our things and was all uncarpeted which I was hoping wasn't the case as well. So we started the search for a place off base. We looked and looked and looked and looked. We finally found a house in a beautiful neighborhood that was the perfect distance from base and we went and walked through it and it was a total nightmare too. By this time, I couldn't handle another night in those awful TLF beds. I finally took Linkin while Craig was at work one day and found this house all tucked way back in this woodsy neighborhood. I got out and peeked through every window and totally fell in love with this house. Now I'm sitting in it. We ended up moving in like the day we walked through it to see if we liked it. haha ahahaah! They were leaving on vacation and we wanted a house ASAP so it kind of worked out the best it could for both of us. So here we are. All I have now is outside pictures. I absolutely love it here. I love the trees, the house, the town, the weather (right now- I know it won't last), and everything! It's been so fun to be here and I'm trying to make the most of it. These are some pictures of sweet Linkin sleeping in various places on our trip. It's always so heart warming to see my child sleeping in a place other than his crib because it's hard to get them to do. But it wasn't. For the most part.       

                                                                    

and finally here's our house...

This is the entrance to our neighborhood. Look at that beautiful orange tree. It's dead now!

Some more tree pictures!                        

Here's the house.   Pretty bland and boring on the outside. A hint of ugly. But it's fantastic for us!

         

Linkin in the yard! He LOVES loves LOVES to play out there. He runs down the hill super fast. I hate it. Because I am too out of shape to be carrying him up that hill a hundred times!! But he is unstoppable!

This is the front yard. I think I was standing on the top of the driveway. It kind of looks like a painting. It did for a few weeks looking out the window. Until more leaves fell. Try to imagine how much raking we have in store for us. Some has been done. 1/1000 of it!!

This is off our side porch and our main door...which is actually not the front door, it's at the side of the house where we park. The front door is crazy. I have trouble even opening it. One day, some random guy came to the front door to bug the Directv guys that were here and it took me a good two minutes to get the door open. ha ha hha! I'm blonde!

This is kind of a side profile of our backyard. There's our little (but quite nice and spacious) shed. I climbed on the roof one day and it was sure fun! We can store all kinds of garbage in there!

I guess I left out quite a few pictures. Like the pics of our patio and deck and of course the inside so stay tuned for that...upcoming! I love and miss you all. Hope I can get better at writing so you have a clue what's going on in my life. And I hope I don't bore you to death. Life is great and God is good! That's all for now! :)