Moving Day!

Well the day has finally arrived!! We are loading ALL of our stuff into 2 trailers and heading back to the good ol' midwest! We had great help on our move out and couldn't have done it without all our friends and family there to break their back for us. Katelyn had 2 of her best friends come to play - all 3 girls kept each other busy and occupied. At the end of the day they were all exhausted!

Just to clarify - the Army WILL hire a moving company to come to your house, pack your goods and move them to the next location. However, the Army will also pay YOU to move yourself. They pay you as if you are self employed. So when you do a full move they will pay us 75% of what they would pay a moving company and then we'll get to put it on taxes the next year and recoup even more of that 25% they took initially. BUT, aside from the money, one of the main reasons we move ourselves other than we have the means to do it is......nothing gets broken and if it does, well then it was our fault. We have too many friends who have nightmare horror stories about their moves and we don't have to worry about that. I've never had to file a claim with transportation and from the sounds of the process - I'm one lucky girl!!

Lots and Lots and Lots of boxes!

Grammie did lots of traffic directing with 3 little girls and a car!

Katelyn and Esmee out for a drive!

The Whites and us! I sure miss them :(

7 Months at this point

{31 Weeks, 5 day}

The trailer is getting full!! And we still have SO much stuff left!

Even Katelyn helped load!

Helping Daddy figure out how to put the plugs back in the washer.

A little pooped! She almost fell asleep on Pops' lap.

ONE clean, empty house!!!!!

Ready to pull out - Missouri here we come!

We left Hinesville, GA at 11 AM (EST) and arrived at Jack's parents house in MO at 1:15 AM (CST) It was a LONG drive but so much better than stopping at a hotel somewhere and trying to get the suitcases out and what not! Katelyn was THE.BEST.TRAVELER.EVER!!! I could not have asked for a better 2 year old especially to have one that had to be stuck in a carseat for 15+ hours!!! She's a Johannes after all! :) This will be the first of many moves for her. She was pretty eager to help this move, but I can imagine that eagerness will fade fast the older she gets.

Hookin' Up

Jack hooked Katelyn's wagon onto her trike and boy was it a hit! She thought she was some cool stuff riding her bike around pulling her babies in the wagon. Now she wants it "hooked up" every time she rides her bike.

She doesn't quite understand that she has to turn wider so she would "Jack knife" it a lot and get frustrated.

And yes - this is GA in mid December and Katelyn is wearing capris with no socks.

Geez she's growing up!!

Katelyn's new ride

Katelyn enjoyed riding on the hand truck during the move. One way to keep her busy and out of my hair!!

Go Army!

Katelyn cheered hard for Army during the Army/Navy game but she didn't quite cheer hard enough. Guess there is always next year! That's what we always say!!

Christmas in GA

We celebrated Christmas amongst ourselves before we left GA so it was several weeks before Christmas, but Katelyn isn't quite big enough yet to fully understand everything yet so it worked in our favor. Santa came to GA and also to KS and MO. Who says Santa can't make multiple trips throughout the month of December and January?! haha

Picking out cookies to put out for Santa

Ready for Santa to fill our tree with presents
(it wouldn't take but a few to have that poor little guy loaded full!)

Just waking up the next morning

He ate ALL the cookies!!!!

She thought we needed to immediately refill the plate for Santa!

He brought a new basketball goal!

And a marble game as she calls it

New Berenstain Bear books!! (Mommy's Favorite!)

And a little people nativity scene

She loved hauling Baby Jesus around in the wagon pulled by the donkey.
Silly girl!

Coloring a beautiful masterpiece on her easel!

All these new toys just to be packed up a week later and hauled to Missouri. At least they kept her busy for a little while when we were packing!

Katelyn and Emmalyn

One of the last times Katelyn and Emmalyn got to horse around before we moved :(

Daddy's Change of Command

Wow! How do I start this off? This has been a LONG almost 2 years of long days and late nights for Jack and plenty of FRG business and drama to keep me beyond busy. We were so excited when this day finally came. We'd been counting down for quite some time (Jack probably longer than me). I was beyond ready to have my husband back and Katelyn to have her Daddy back! It also meant that we were that much closer to moving back to the midwest and SOOO much closer to family!!

Our long awaited day finally arrived!! It was a chilly day but to make matters worse - it decided to start raining so we moved the ceremony into the motor pool building. It worked out fine but it was noisy and confined. Oh well - the ceremony still went on and CPT Young assumed responsibility of HHC 2-3 BSTB! That was all that mattered!

Katelyn before the ceremony! Even she is excited!

HHC in formation before the change of command (not the entire 250 man company though)

Change of Command Ceremony
(Jack is on the left and the Battalion Commander is on the right)

The tradition is to give the outgoing wife a bouquet of a dozen red opened roses and the incoming commanders wife a dozen of closed yellow roses.

Jack got Katelyn a rose of her own! After all, it is tough being the Commander's daughter haha

That night as we sat watching tv, Jack and I both looked at each other in disbelief. Did it really happen?!? Was the FRG no longer my responsibility? Was Jack no longer in Command?!! And the answer to all those questions - YES!!! This meant, no more late night phone calls about soldiers getting thrown in jail for any number of reasons and no more emails/calls from spouses regarding their soldier. How freeing this all felt! When Jack brought his cell phone into the bedroom that night, I had to remind him that he could leave it out in the kitchen. No one was going to call and wake us up in the middle of the night!

Jack - you did a great job in command and I was so proud to be your partner in crime throughout those past 2 years. There were some tough times but all in all it turned out well! I know many soldiers felt very lucky to have you as their commander and were sad to see you leave! You left a lasting impact on many young soldiers! I love you !

Hinesville Christmas Celebration

Hinesville (our small town) had a Christmas celebration in downtown and Santa and his sleigh came for a visit. I told Katelyn that she was going to see Santa again and she was STOKED!! She was also excited to see his reindeer. She sat in his sleigh first and saw his reindeer and then sat on his lap. The first thing she said when she hopped on his lap was - "I sat in your sleigh!!!!" It was so cute and I was so tickled this year that she was so happy to see and sit on Santa's lap. No tears whatsoever!! WooHoo!!

Next year will be very exciting with 2 on Santa's lap!

Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

We decided that decorating for Christmas was going to be too much because we would be moving before Christmas and I didn't want to put the tree up and decorate the house for 2 weeks. Katelyn is really into Christmas this year - Santa, the tree, and baby Jesus - so we decided we needed to do something as far as the tree was concerned. We were planning on celebrating Christmas a couple weeks early before we left GA BUT where were we going to put the presents that Santa brought?! Jack had the great idea we would go out behind our house in the woods and find a "Charlie Brown" tree so we at least had something. I thought it was a great idea!! And of course Katelyn was all on board for going to find a tree.

On the hunt for the "perfect" Christmas tree!

We FOUND it!!

This was as much decorating as the poor little guy got.
The little thing could hardly hold the 100 string of lights that we put on it so we decided against any ornaments! Katelyn was pretty proud of her tree!

My 2 favorite people with our little little tree!!
Merry Christmas y'all!!

Children's Message

Katelyn was really starting to get comfortable with our church in GA. She would go up to the Children's Message by herself and even ask to go to play in the nursery! Sounds good to me!! Of course, it would be time for us to move. Hopefully we can find another church as great as our church home we had in GA! I'll definitely miss it!!

BN Christmas Party

Our Battalion (2-3 BSTB) had a "Holiday" Party on December 1 at Holbrook Pond Recreation Center on post. It was catered by Shane's Rib Shack - deliciousness! Katelyn had fun running around, playing on the playground and jumping in the bounce house.

She was pretty excited to see Santa for the 2nd time and had been talking about him since I told her that afternoon we were going to see him at the "Party." However, when she actually saw him and realized he didn't look like the Santa she saw in the Mall she was a bit skeptical of him. Reluctantly, she sat on his lap but she was not very talkative. I guess I would be skeptical of a Santa with a Kevlar helmet on too!!

There was a silent auction to raise money for the FRG. The only people that got nominated were the BN Commander and the BN S3. Unfortunately no one knew prior to the party that this was going to be going on so most people didn't have much extra cash on them so the Battalion Commander only brought in $8 and the BN S3 only raised $1! Pretty sad but still funny none the less! Katelyn seemed pretty confused during this whole thing as to what was going on!

I'm not sure that there are many other places that you can have an outdoor Christmas party on December 1, but the weather was perfect!