Sight Seeing...

Today was a fun day! We got up early, got the girls ready, and then took off for Hase to see the Great Buddha. After being in Japan all these months, we still hadn't gone to go see it. After trying to figure out which train we needed to be on (kind of difficult when you don't read the language or speak it), we finally got there. Grace was all excited about riding on the trains. She had a really good time during the whole trip. Hailee on the other hand... was not quite the happy camper. She has reached that stage where she knows she can walk really well and she doesn't want to be held or pushed in the stroller. Only problem is, she doesn't walk fast so unless we want to travel at a snail's pace, one of us either has to carry her or put her in the stroller. And she let everyone know that she DID NOT like that. Her favorite part of the trip was when we actually got to the place and she got to walk around. The Buddha place was really cool. Of course we didn't go there for any kind of worship purposes like a lot of the people that were there. We were there for the historical and tourist side of it. The Buddha statue was built over 7 1/2

centuries ago. We even walked inside it.

I think we're going to make plans to go to Tokyo and stay in a nice hotel there for the weekend of my birthday in a couple weeks. Should be lots of fun :) I know my little star traveler Gracie will love it. She just loves to be out and about seeing new things. Hopefully Hailee will enjoy that trip more than she did this one.

I am so blessed...

My daughters are so wonderful. They just make every day so much sweeter. Their kisses and hugs... their smiles... each time they say "mommy"... just reminds me how blessed I am to have them in my life. My heart aches for the women I know of that are struggling with infertility.... my prayer is that all of them will be able to have a baby by whatever means God sees fit so that they can all know the joy and love that I feel when I hold my kids.

On a totally different note... I'm sitting here, the house is clean, the girls are in bed, I've taken a shower and it's my "me time". The TV is on and I wasn't paying attention to it but now I'm watching Rock of Love.... all I can say is ew. Channel changed... now.
I really need to get a move on this Red Cross volunteer nursing thing I'm doing. I've gone through the orientation and the paperwork and the credentialing stuff, now I just need to go interview, do one more training session, and turn in my shot records to the hospital. I really want to do this. Plus, since the hospital here on base is not hiring for now, I need something to do to keep my skills up. I've also heard that *when* this hospital does hire civilian nurses, they usually hire their volunteers. So it's a good way to get my foot in the door. We'll just see what happens and where God leads me in this...

Speaking of the future and work possibilities, I'll have to remember to write a post about what DH and I talked about the other day as far as when we want to try for our next baby. We're looking at 2 different times (one in the somewhat near future, the other not so much) and we'll just have to see how things work out. I'll write a whole post about it soon...

Looong lonely nights...

My dear husband had to start working nights about 2 weeks ago. His section switches from day shift to night shift every 3 months, so it was time to switch again. He now works from 6pm-6am until sometime in April. What does this mean for me? Loooong nights alone. And for that matter, most of the day alone with the kids too. As soon as he gets home, he goes to sleep. He then sleeps until around 2:30pm and has to leave for work by 4pm. So I have to spend the entire day alone with the girls trying to come up with things to do and keep them busy while also keeping them quiet so daddy can sleep. Not an easy task since my 2 year old almost always insists on being ridiculously loud. Then the evenings are filled with serving the girls dinner, baths, cuddling and reading with them (my favorite part), and then bedtime at 8. After that, I'm left to my own devices. I usually try to straighten up the apartment and do some cleaning or some laundry. But I work fast and that is all usually done in 30 minutes to an hour. So here I sit, on this particular night, writing in my blog and watching The Ugly Truth. On his days off he is still on this backwards sleep schedule and sleeps half the day. Not blaming him... it's just his job. But I'm ready for these few months to be over so he can be back on the day shift. We love spending time together and the night shift really screws that up. I do love all the time I get to spend with the girls since I'm a stay at home mom for now, but I wish that he could spend more time with us too. OH well.... what can I do?
On another note, pay day is tomorrow and we should also be getting our tax return back sometime in the next couple of days. Woohoo!! 2010 has been dubbed our "Recovery Year" as far as our finances go. In the past couple of years we have been tight on money with me finishing school and such. Plus we didn't always make the smartest money choices. But we have learned a lot of lessons and we have really good goals set for this year. We're using our tax return to pay off our small debts (the remainder of a small loan, and our 2 small credit cards). After that, the only debt we will have to our name will be our truck that is back home safe in Texas. Then the plan is to start saving a large portion of our paycheck each month and paying a lot more on the truck than the normal amount. I won't bore anyone with more finance talk, but I'm just excited about us finally doing better with our money.
Alright, time to use some of this time to clean the shower. Exciting huh? Goodnight :)

Lets try this again...

Ok so I'm not always the best blogger... or at least that's how it has been in the last couple of months. BUT, I'm going to try again to keep up with this. I enjoy writing things out so I'm going to try to stick to this...
Things have been great lately. Hubby and I celebrated 3 years of marriage a couple weeks ago. And now my birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. The girls are doing really well. Grace is 2 1/2 now and always coming up with something new. She can be so sweet most of the time, but other times, she can have quite the little attitude! Hailee is 16 months and is really starting to learn words. She wants to do everything Grace does. Hailee is still such a cuddly baby... I love it! She always wants to snuggle and give kisses and hugs. Grace likes to do all of that too, but she's so busy all the time that it's usually just a kiss and off she goes!
Oh and I finally made an appointment to get my IUD out. Thank goodness! For the first 8 months or so, I really liked it. But after awhile it started giving me TERRIBLE cramps. They come and go but I usually go through some terrible cramping several times a month due to this thing. It's also given me more acne than I've had in years. We've done a lot of research (ok, I've done a lot of research and just shared my info with him) about different birth control and we have both agreed to give NFP a good try. Even my husband is excited about trying it! I've also come to believe that life begins at conception (not everyone's point of view, I know, but it's my belief) and I have read different things about Mirena just not allowing implantation, and not always preventing conception... I really just don't like that concept. So my appointment is on February 18th, and after that, we will be doing NFP. I really hope we can master it and do it right. We do want another baby in the somewhat near future (I'll save that for another post...) but not quite yet.
It's late here. My sleep schedule is all screwed up and I need to get it back on track so off to bed I go. Goodnight :)