Beach Pictures

So a lot is going on right now...I haven't been feeling so well, our trip is approaching really fast and the logistics of moving are here.  I'm trying to figure out our new house, a 2nd vehicle, trying to figure out where I'm going to go to school next and how to pay for it...way more then I want to get into right now.  It makes my head spin :) So instead, here are our amazing beach pictures that my sister took when we were in FL for Christmas.

These were just a few of my favorites

Fun Weekend

Last weekend Brandon took a 4 day from work.  We are trying to do a bunch of fun stuff before Micah and I leave in a few weeks and trying to cross off everything we wanted to see before we left this part of the country.  So we decided to go to Carlsbad Caverns.

It is about a 2 hour drive..and there is absolutely NOTHING on the road!  Bathroom breaks are very far between..as in only 2 options along the entire way.  And make sure your gas tank is completely full because there are no gas stations.  We finally made it though..

I love these little pictures.  He's just so cute :) .  The line was forever long to get tickets, I guess the first weekend of spring break and on a Saturday is not the best day to go explore the caverns.  Oops.  As we went down the massive elevator, the worker told us to whisper down there because sound travels incredibly far and everyone will hear everything.

Well Micah soon realized that it echoed down there..and that it was pretty funny.  He decided that he was a bear in a cave, and ROARED through the entire caverns..it was really funny.

It probably didn't help that his sweater had bear ears on it :)  He was the cutest bear in a cave..

That was him mid roar.  Overall it was pretty cool...as cool as caverns can be :).  Now we can say we did it.  Our friend Robin went with us, which is how we got all these great pictures.  I'm not so good at remembering to take pictures.  On Monday we also went to the New Mexico Heritage Farm, but I will write about that on a different day because she hasn't posted those pics yet for me to steal.

42 Days!

I can't believe that we only have 42 days left in El Paso.  It is so crazy to me.  We are quickly running out of time to do everything that I want to do here before we leave.  This week we had a slow week, Micah and I have both been feeling sick.  He has an infection and who knows what is wrong with me.

He is such a cute sickie!  This picture was last Monday..where he lost his appetite all day and was in a weird funk.  The only thing that made life good was Daddy's hat.
My favorite thing right now is how many kisses and hugs Micah always wants to give us.  He loves giving kisses, and we happily take each and every one of them.  He is still being stubborn on walking, but everywhere we go, we always have him walk holding onto only one of our hands.  He also has perfected his mean glare.  It makes me want to laugh every time he does it, it looks so much like Brandon's angry look.  I haven't caught that one on camera yet, but here's my sweet boy that loves kisses...

On Friday, we got a cool package from Grandpa!  A book with a recording of Grandpa reading the book.  Micah loves to sit and look at the pages while listening to Grandpa's voice reading.

We won't talk about the fact that he doesn't like me reading books to him, but Grandpa reading a book on a recording is super awesome...
This weekend, Fort Bliss Officer wives club had an event called Bliss in Bloom.  It was pretty cool, it was a $2 admission (proceeds go to their college scholarship fund) and there were all kinds of booths of crafts, jewelry, home businesses...we took Micah and he about jumped out of his stroller when we walked past the Woodworkers Club of El Paso.  They had all kinds of wooden toys that they had made for sale.  Micah was in love.  It was pretty funny because he doesn't normally react so much to toys he sees.  They were incredibly cheap, they only charge the amount for the supplies, so we bought some.  As soon as we got home, Micah and Daddy were playing with them..and it's all Micah has cared about playing with all weekend.  He loves his new cars and trucks!

Oh random note..still no word on the results from the genetic testing.  But Micah's legs definitely go all kinds of ways that aren't normal.  We are always having to fix his legs into "normal" positions.  I feel that we are going to get positive results...
I'm getting more and more excited for Fort Bragg.  I was looking at their kid programs online and they have a lot more to offer for Micah's age.  As soon as we get there, Micah will be able to start going to Music class, Tumbling class and Swimming class.  I'm excited for him to experience them and to have more interaction with other kids.

49 Days!

49 days...that is all I have left in the desert.  It's kind of weird, I'm very excited to leave El Paso, yet I'm finding I'm also sad about it.  When we left Tuscaloosa, I knew that we would be back to visit because there is family there.  I knew we would see our friends again, because we could see them when we went back to visit family.  However, leaving El Paso, there is no reason for us to come back.  Even though El Paso is not my favorite place in the world....it has been good to us overall.
We arrived in June 2011...and got to stay in these awesome barracks they called a hotel...

It wasn't the best introduction to El Paso, but we made it work.  When we arrived here, we were barely pregnant..here we found an amazing doctor that took such good care of us and our amazing son was born.  No matter what I think of El Paso as a town, this will always be the town that gave us our son.

That's Micah giving us a kiss.  I love his little kisses..he loves to give kisses and hugs right now.
Something I will miss about El Paso is our church, Hillcrest Baptist.  It has truly been a church home for us.  It's the first church that Brandon and I both love.  We have made such good friends there and our sunday school teacher, the associate pastor, has always been there for us.  I'm nervous about finding another church that is as great as this one is, but I know we will find another church home in Bragg.

The last thing that I'm really sad about leaving right now is my friend Robin.  I don't always make friends the easiest, yet I have found such an amazing friend here.  She loves Micah so much and she loves our dogs..she fits into our family so well.  I hate making friends, and I am dreading that part.  Hopefully, Robin will be following us soon, that is her and her husband station of choice too.
I'm sure that over the next few weeks I will have a few posts about my mixed emotions of leaving..and the different areas of memories of El Paso.  But here is a video for a lil enjoyment...yesterday I had to take Robin to the ER because she's been real sick..so Brandon and Micah hung out at home all day together.  When I came home this is what they had to show me..

Micah was laughing so hard as they were going around and around the house.

A Day In the Life

So on Wednesday, I decided to try and keep track of everything that Micah and I did that day so that I could write about it and remember what a typical day was like when he was 1 years old.
I woke up around 7am, and began working on schoolwork and cleaning the house.  Micah finally decided to wake up at 9:45am, because he thinks that he's a teenager.  I got him up and dressed.

Then we went and got breakfast ready.  When you sleep in until 9:45, you are pretty hungry when you wake up and don't understand why breakfast isn't ready.

He helps me in the kitchen while I make breakfast.  The we sat down to eat a yummy breakfast- Orange juice to drink, yogurt and apple cinnamon oatmeal.  We change out between oatmeal and bananas, depending on how long it's been since I went to the grocery store.

Yah, I know the blue yogurt is kind of scary.  I normally get him some kid greek yogurt, but the grocery store didn't have any that had good expiration dates so we decided to try some Go-Gerts...not again.
After breakfast, we play for a little while and then at 11am Micah decided he was hungry again.  This is how he lets me know...

I forgot to take pictures of lunch, but it was a hummus sandwich and some water. Daddy came home for lunch time too, so that was fun! I was supposed to go to the gym around that time, but Micah is fighting a cold and was wanting to nap, so I decided to skip.

  So after he ate, he laid down around 11:45am and slept until about 2pm.  We got up and had a little bit of a snack time.

And most shocking of all...he watched tv for almost 5 minutes!!! He never shows any interest in tv at all.

Oh while he had been napping, I had done some more homework.  Got a 90 on my Geology quiz, yay me! (I hate Geology..)  Here he is eating his small snack...

When he was done eating his snack, my friend Robin came over and we got ready to go to the grocery store.  We went over to the commissary and Micah helped pick out some yummy food...

We then went home and Daddy was home.  It was about 5:30pm then, so Micah ate some dinner and then got ready for bed.  He was in bed by 6:45pm.  Robin stayed over and ate with Brandon and I and then went home and Brandon and I went off to bed.  And Micah slept until about 7:30am the next day! I love my good sleeper....he really didn't want to get up then, but my friend Robin had messaged me and she wasn't feeling good, so Brandon came home so he could take me to Robin's house so I could use her car and driver her to the ER.  Her husband is deployed right now, so Micah and I hung out with her all day to make sure she was ok :)

He was a little bit worried about her at the ER.
So that's our day...for being a stay at home mom with no car..our days are suprisingly different each day.  And well the come theme for our days is eating...he is a bottomless pit!

First Steps!

Well yesterday was a pretty exciting day! In the afternoon, Micah and I decided to take a walk down to the mailbox, and he walked all the way to the mailbox holding onto only 1 of my hands.  It is even more impressive when you realize that it isn't at the end of our driveway, the mailboxes are on a different street than ours.  It took us about 20 mins of his little steps to make it there.  Then, Brandon came home from work and Micah and I went outside to play on his slide while Brandon got the grill started up for dinner.  Then Brandon sat down on the patio with Micah and Micah took his very first step alone!!!!!!!!!! He did it three times..only 1 step each time and then falling into Brandon's arms.  But it's progress!!! Unfortunately, I didn't catch any video of it :(  But it was very exciting!  Now Micah has 54 more days to get even better at it before we go to Florida.  Brandon was worried that we might go to Florida and Micah still wouldn't be walking and he'd miss the first steps.  He was so excited that he got to witness the first steps, that he was actually home with us.
So only 54 more days until Micah and I leave El Paso forever!  (no desire to ever visit here).  It's hard to go through the house and get rid of things that we don't need anymore when Micah requires to much time and attention now and I am also going to school fulltime online.
I don't really have any pictures for this post, because well Micah is still sleeping today.  He thinks he's a teenager and often sleeps past 9am. But I did find this video on my phone that other day that Micah somehow videotaped all by himself...so here is Micah's point of view in life :)

New Year

I know it's not January 1st, it's not actually the start of a new year.  However. this is Micah's birthday month and we are starting a new year of his life.  The first year was crazy, fun and wonderful.  But my blogging has definitely fallen away and I am going to try working on that now.  I recently went back and read my old blogs, and I love it.  I loved reading what I was thinking and worrying about while pregnant.  So a little bit of recap...as of right now we are still at Fort Bliss, Texas aka Mexican suburbs. The wind storms have been crazy lately and this is what I wake up to a daily basis.

Not only on the window sills but on the ground as well.  However, that will soon be changing!!!!!!!!  We are moving to Fort Bragg, NC!...not my dream post, but at least there's green stuff like trees and grass! And it's closer/easier to travel to family.  We are pretty excited about it.  Micah and I will be going to Florida in April to hang out with my family while Brandon deals with all the fun of movers and packing and actually moving.  We will meet him in Alabama so we can stay at his brothers with the dogs while he goes on to find our house and then move it all in.  It will pretty much mean 2 and half months of Micah and I traveling/living like nomads.  But I'd rather that than to live in a long term hotel with him! That was not fun last time when I was pregnant.

This is my big boy!  He's getting so close to walking! Not much longer at all!

On other news...my friend and I have been going to the gym 3 times a week together.  Micah and I walk the track while she's in Zumba class.  Micah loves it, he waves at all the people as we walk past and normally by the end of the hour, he falls asleep.  I'm hoping to do a 5k when I'm in Florida, kind of scared to 100% commit since last time I did that, I ended up having my gallbladder and appendix out..but here's to hoping! And my brave moment of the day....here's a pic of me in my workout clothes :)

Don't you love our new bedroom set?