Haircuts, Flip-Flops and Colds

Can you believe it – 2 posts in 2 days! Don’t get used to this – I won’t be this efficient on a normal basis. =) However, everyone other than myself for now (knock on wood,) is sick with a miserable cold, so the computer was left free with Luke in bed and Chris on the couch.

Luke has been working on it for quite some time now. He’s got a nasty runny nose and now it’s moved to his chest. He goes from being cranky to playful to tired to cranky – well you get the picture. Chris has a sore throat, stuffy head, exhaustion – the list goes on. It’s just a down right miserable cold. I’m convinced that during our stay here one of us will always be sick. So far that’s been the story since we’ve moved here at least. I don’t know if it’s adjusting to a new environment/climate or if it’s because we’ve been going non-stop for the last year or so and our bodies are just telling us we need to slow down. All I know, is that by the time we leave Georgia this summer, we’ll be immune to every virus that’s floating around here. =)

On to other news – Yesterday it was warm enough to wear flip-flops! This is outrageously exciting to me, so I thought I would share. Growing up and living in the Midwest all my life, flip-flops at the beginning of March just doesn’t happen. But in the south I guess it does! So I dug out my flip-flops and wore them with utter excitement. The weather has been amazing lately. I think it got up to 86 or so today. That’s the one thing I’m really enjoying here.

So I finally got my haircut…then had to get it cut again. Let me fill you in on the story:

So, before we headed out to Maryland, I wanted to get my hair cut since it was out of control. I decided to go with haircut #2 that I posted awhile back. I printed out a picture and made an appointment. I was nervous because I had no idea where to go and I don’t really know anyone here to find out who is a good beautician in the area. So I decided to just take the risk and made an appt. at a salon. I got there for my appt. and waited and waited and waited. At some point my gut told me that I should just leave and get it cut another time, but I told myself I was being silly and to stay. Finally 45 minutes later, I was sitting in the chair. I noticed the beautician was eyeing my hair funny as well as the picture. It was then I knew she didn’t know how to cut my hair like the picture. I still told myself not to panic; just to take the risk and everything would be fine. Well, let’s just say the cut I came out with looked nothing like the picture I took in. She asked if it was fine and I said it was – I wasn’t going to ask her to fix it since I knew it would only make matters worse if she did. So I quickly paid and got out as fast as I could. Chris was sweet about it and said it wasn’t the best hair cut, but also not the worst. I knew it was bad, but I thought I might be able to go home and style it in a somewhat presentable way. But when I looked in the mirror I pretty much knew it was a lost cause. So I dial mom Scott as fast as I can since I knew she had a good beautician, and we’d be there in a few days. She said she’d get me an appointment, so I knew there was hope. After I hung up the phone, I did attempt to style it, but it really wouldn’t do anything. It was uneven and cut horribly. So I lived with the horrible cut for a few days and Friday morning, I finally got the haircut I wanted. It wasn’t exactly like the picture because too much had been cut off the first time, but it was close enough. The second time around, I felt completely comfortable with the beautician and she did a fantastic job.

So here are the pictures!

Bad Haircut - back

Bad Haircut - side and back

Bad Haircut - front - I tried to hide what I really thought! =)

New Haircut - front

New Haircut - back

New Haircut - side

As you can see - it dosen't look exactly like the example I had picked out, but it looks much better the the first cut I came away with!!


Here are some more pictures to enjoy!








Luke playing with his new Easter Bunny Stuffed Animal from Gary and Phyllis (Thank you so much! He loves it!)



Luke standing on his own! This is actually hard to get on film. The minute I pull out the camera, he's off his feet crawling as fast as he can to nab the camera!



Luke LOVES his Cheerios! He's doing a great job at self-feeding himself these days.


Just a comparison - Luke at 7 weeks...


Luke at 39 weeks...


I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Back Home

Well, we got home safely from our quick trip to Maryland late last night – praise God for safe traveling mercies that everyone was blessed with. Most of the families have returned home and those who have not yet will be on their way in the next few days.

It was definitely a bittersweet weekend. Bitter because mourning and grieving the loss of a loved one is one of the hardest things you experience in life. Sweet because we all knew that Grandma Doris Scott was rejoicing with her Savior in heaven and that this farewell would not be permanent – we will all meet again.

We headed out at about 3:30pm on Thursday. Chris was able to leave class a little early, so that was a blessing. It was a long drive and we were both exhausted, but with God’s help, we made it with no problems or issues. I had packed a little bag that had Trivial Pursuit questions, NFL challenge trivia questions, a crossword puzzle book, small flashlight, etc – so that helped us out a lot. Chris’s favorite was the NFL trivia questions, so in turn, I learned a lot I didn’t know about football. =) Luke did awesome – only fussing a few times during the trip and sleeping the rest. We had to stop more often to feed and change him and that kind of stuff, but he’s pretty easy going about long road trips. I know that won’t last long, but we’ll enjoy it while it does!

We got to Mom and Dad Scott's house at about 2:00am and spent some time winding down and visiting with family and letting Luke play and stretch his legs. Riley was loving the fenced in backyard as well! We did bring the cats in addition to all of us and Riley. We don’t really know anyone here, and with their age, I’m afraid to leave them without anyone to check on them. Tiger is 19 yrs old and Little One is 17 yrs old. Anyway, they were happy to be out of the car and roaming around our room. We finally got to bed sometime between 3:00-4:00am.

Friday morning we were finally able to see Grandpa Scott. We also were able to visit with family. It’s always good to see family that you haven’t seen for such a long time – but it’s always sad when it’s under these circumstances. The day was spent running errands, putting out food, putting up food, visiting with family, pulling food back out, putting it back up, visiting with family, and then attending the viewing. It was an emotionally hard day on everyone.

Saturday morning was the funeral. Everyone did a really great job at sharing their memories and the life of Doris May Scott. It was a God-filled service. We were all reminded of the importance of passing on the legacy that has so faithfully been passed on to us. As those before us have shown us the way, so we are to show the way to those who come behind us. Following the funeral, we all went to the graveside service. Dad Scott had brought dirt that had been from Prince Edward Island (where Grandma Scott grew up) and we all threw some on the grave. After the graveside, we went back to the church and had a meal and fellowship. I must pause here and say a HUGE thank you to Pam and Jennifer Thompson who tag-teamed watching Luke through the whole funeral and graveside service. Thank you so much!
Later that evening we went back home to visit and fellowship more with family.

It was a tough day, especially for Grandpa Scott. Please continue to keep him and the family in prayer as the next few weeks and months will be especially hard in dealing with this great loss.

Sunday morning, we packed up and headed out. We got on the road around noon. I continued quizzing Chris on the NFL =) as well as on his school work. He had a test to come home to today (Monday.) Although we would have liked to stay longer – especially to show our continued support, we unfortunately had to come back.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:


This is at the graveside - you can see the specks of Prince Edward Island dust in the air...


Grandpa Scott with his sons and their wives:
John and Marsha, Pete and Amy, Steve and Judy and Alan and Beth


Grandpa Scott with the grandchildren and their spouses that could attend:
Bottom Row - Randy, Grandpa Scott, Jordan
Middle Row - Mindy, Jamie, Steph, Jeff, Ryan and Katelynn
Front Row - Chris, Phillip, Dave and Jeremy


Grandpa Scott and Luke

Our little family

Luke hanging out on the dining room floor...

Grammy and Grandpa Scott

Bath Time!

Here are some pictures of Grandma Scott. I could have just kept putting more and more on, but I thought I better stop so I could post the blog:

Road Trip...

Just wanted to write a quick blog before we headed out to Maryland.

I’ve been staying as busy as a bee trying to get things ready and packed for our trip. I swear it takes 5 times as long to pack when you have to pack for a baby…and for 3 pets…We’ll only be in Maryland for 2 1/2 days and already I feel like we have enough suitcases to sustain us for a month. I even went through and tried to repack lighter, but I only took out like 3 items that I knew we wouldn’t need. I’ve almost completely got us packed – I have yet to gather up all of our toiletries, but all the needed laundry is done, all the baby things are packed and I pretty much just need to pack up the car and get the pet carriers ready. Chris is hoping to get home from class by late afternoon (pray they don’t keep them late today), so we’ll head out immediately after he gets changed. That should put us in Maryland between 1-2:00am. So please pray for us! We’re not as young as we used to be and late night drives are a bit harder then they were when we made them in college. There will be lots of coffee drinking and silly road games…I can see it now. =)

There’s not too much else going on. Don’t forget that this Sunday (11th) is the dreaded Daylight Savings Time. Yuck! Spring Forward…goodbye extra hour of sleep, goodbye routine we’ve set with Luke…now everything will be off an hour. Yay. I am so excited. I can’t wait. I’m not normally a sarcastic person, but those statements were meant to be sarcastic. =) I don’t deliver sarcasm as well as Chris does. Anyway, back to Daylight Savings – I heard that it’s coming 3 weeks early this year or something like that, so our computers won’t change over automatically or something like that. I’m not to worried, it’s not to hard to go in and change the time, but shouldn’t that be a sign that it’s way to early to do this to us! =)

Luke is doing well. He’s 9 months old today. He’s got a constant runny nose right now. We once again thought it was from teething, but no, it’s just a cold. I think Luke will be toothless until he’s like 1 and then overnight he’ll get his teeth and be the biggest grouch ever. Not that I could blame him. I remember when my wisdom teeth came in and that was pretty painful! I have (gasp!) started giving him a tiny bit of cow's milk. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to. I should wait until he’s 1, but he seemed ready for it and it’s the only other fluid other then water that he’ll even consider drinking. He actually really likes it. I only give him 2 oz or so a day, just to keep an eye on if it will upset his stomach at all, but he seems to be taking it well. I was worried with the lactose issues we had at the beginning that maybe he wouldn’t be able to drink milk, but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all now. Let’s see, oh, and he’s started liking bath time again. This makes it much easier for us – he went through this streak where he would scream at the top of his lungs the entire bath time. It was short lived, however, and now he’s back to splashing around and playing with his bath toys. He’s doing much better with his naps this past week. He’s actually taken a couple 2 hour naps! I was so shocked! I actually got something done around the house!! He’s still not sleeping through the night. He’s still up 3-4 times a night, but I’ve given up on him sleeping through the night anytime soon.

Well, I’ve stalled on doing work for long enough. I really need to get back to it while Luke is in a good enough mood to play with his toys by himself so I can continue getting things ready.

I’ll post again next week. Thank you again for all of your prayers and thoughts for the family. We all really appreciate it.

Here a couple pictures – more next week!

Luke found out if he babbled and hollered into this play bucket it would make his voice louder and echo – he was completely intrigued by this! It was pretty cute to watch. You could see him processing it all in his mind.

In Memory

In Memory of a God-fearing, loving, caring, compassionate wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend – Doris Scott.

We are saddened by our loss, but rejoice in the heavenly homecoming we know she had, and know that we will once again be reunited.

We are in the process of getting things together to head down to Maryland on Thursday evening. As long as Chris is able to get out of class on Friday, we should be good to go. The viewing will be Friday night and the funeral will be Saturday morning. We hope to stay until Sunday after church and then we’ll head back to Georgia.

Please continue to be in prayer for the Scott family. Please also continue to be in prayer for traveling mercies for all that will be traveling to Maryland this weekend.

Thank you all for your support, thought and prayers. We really really appreciate it!

Boy Howdy!

This may be a short blog since Luke has been pretty cranky since he woke up from his nap. However, I just put his “Thursday” toys down, so he has to look through all of them to see what he has to play with for the day – so that should keep him occupied for at least a few minutes. Chris and I decided that we should separate his toys into baskets for each day of the week – that way each day he has fresh toys to play with. It seems to be working out pretty good. Of course, as I type that he’s screaming in the background. Hold on; let me go see if I can appease him. He’s going through that separation anxiety phase, so he can’t stand to be away from me…even for a second…even if I’m like 1 foot away. Ok, I put him back in his crib. He was rubbing his eyes and carrying on and since he didn’t take a very long morning nap, I figured he’d better go down again.

We’ve stayed pretty busy this week. Every day and/or night this week we’ve had something going on or something to do. I would go into more details, but I’m sure it would bore everyone to tears. =) Tonight we’re getting our taxes done. We usually go to the free Army tax service, but this year we thought we would try out H&R Block. We’re hoping for a decent refund, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

This morning started off with a different turn of events. I knew there was a possibility that this could happen, but I always thought it would be when Luke was 2 or 3 (before anyone even begins to think in the wrong direction – we are not pregnant again...still need more time before we start thinking in that direction again) I don’t know if it’s been the continual lack of sleep on my part, and I’ve always been a light sleeper – even more so now that Luke has arrived, so I can’t believe I wasn’t more aware this morning. Of course I feel like a horrible mother, and I feel incredibly guilty, but there is nothing I can do to turn back time. “What happened” you ask? “Get to the point Mindy,” you say? While Luke was sick, I was letting him sleep in bed with us. Now that he’s feeling better, I started putting him in bed only if he needed to eat, and then putting him back in his crib after he was done. I just didn’t want him to get into the habit of sleeping with us. Of course it’s been a rough few nights because he really wants to be in bed with us and not in the crib next to us. This morning he woke up around 6am or so as usual for a feeding, so I pick him up and put him into bed with me to feed him. Well, this morning, I must have fallen back into a deeper sleep then usual. The next think I remember is hearing a THUMP, and knowing instantly that Luke had fallen off the bed. I am on my feet in milliseconds calling for him, quickly scanning the bed to affirm my fear while I frantically make my way around the bed to see where he had fallen. Sure enough he had crawled to the foot of the bed and landed on a small pile of towels. Of course I’m horrified that he’s fallen off the bed and it was my fault. I scoop him up checking him out for injury, but he doesn’t even cry or act phased at all. He acts like it was the most natural thing to fall off the bed. Chris hears the thump downstairs and comes up to see what had happened. Luckily our bedroom is carpeted and he did land in the small pile of towels, but still – I feel horrible. So it may be time to reexamine the way I do his feedings during the night and morning. I thank God he didn’t get hurt, but this was a wake up call to be more aware and to be more careful. So needless to say, it was a pretty interesting morning! Luke is fine – so no worries. We won’t have to take a trip back to the lovely ER yet this week at any rate. One of us could still get food poisoning or I could fall down the stairs for the 3rd time since we’ve moved in here and break a leg or something like that could still happen I guess…=)

Let’s see – I haven’t done Luke facts for quite sometime, so here are a few:

Luke is 8 ¾ months now (He’ll be 9 months in 8 days!) He is cruising around on our furniture amazingly well. He can stand up with a little boost off of the couch or a toy on the floor and even stand on his own for a few seconds! He loves to raise his arms in the air and let out a big loud happy scream. He still doesn’t have any teeth, but we’ve added Cheerio’s to his food list nonetheless. He still babbles up a storm, has the cutest giggle and smiles all the time. He hates diaper changes and lately doesn’t like bath time either. I don’t know if he associates it with bedtime or what. He has yet to sleep through the night…maybe by the time he’s 1…I can hope right? =) He can pick up tiny little things now and he’s learning how to self-feed (which is pretty funny to watch – he’ll grab a piece of Cheerio or Rice Puff and try to put it in his mouth, only to have missed his mouth which makes him stare curiously at his hand and the now soggy Cheerio stuck to it.) He knows his name and will turn to you if you call out to him. I think he knows other words too, but he doesn’t choose to respond all the time…like the word NO. He has started attempting to climb (yeah, we’re in big trouble once he figures that out) up his playpen fence. He’ll stick his little toes in the little holes and try to pull himself up. If there’s a basket or bucket in his play area, he’ll step up on it and pull himself up on whatever is close. His favorite cartoon is Higgley Town Hero’s. We try to limit his TV watching. We let him watch it a little in the morning, but then try to be good about not having it on again until evening. Of course as I type that, the TV is on in the background. =)

Chris’s school has been going good. Of course he’s not a big fan of going to school, but he’s dealing. His schedule is different from day to day. Sometimes he’ll be gone all day – other times he’ll be at home by 3pm with a long lunch at that. We still don’t know anything about where we’ll be going next or what date we’ll actually leave here – all we know is that we’ll be moving sometime in June – we don’t know to where, but we know we’ll be moving. =)

Well, I think that’s about all the news I have to blog about for today. I’m off to try to accomplish a big to-do list. Maybe I’m the only one with this problem, but Monday I’ll start off with a decent sized list, and what doesn’t get done Monday, gets moved to Tuesday, and so on so forth. Well, by the end of the week, my list is longer then my height! =)

Here are some pictures to enjoy! Hope all is going well for everyone and have a wonderful weekend!




Saying goodbye to Mom mom and Grandpa Scott


Luke is a big fan of chewing on any strings attached to your clothing...


Play time...while sitting in a box!


He climbed in here all by himself...


Daddy, why do your hands make such a loud noise?


This is how I like to wear my socks!


Yummy!


Until Next Week!