The Year in Review

I'm just another army wife with a new baby. Blogging is just another activity to keep my mind occupied and my hands busy so that I survive motherhood, wife-dome, and the inevitable long separations as dictated my the Army. God bless our Soldiers, and watch over them as they fight for freedom.

In the year (one year exactly April 6th) that my husband has been gone, I've learned a lot. I've done a lot. I was let go from my job, I gave birth, I sold a car, (I traded it for a piano), I started collecting yarn, I taught myself how to knit, I started a quilt, I'm changing a million diapers a day, and the list goes on. I started a new diet to help with the extra baby weight, and I'm proud to announce that I'm loosing weight. It makes me happy. I'm going to look good when he gets back.

I learned how to navigate single parenthood, without eliminating my husbands role in our family. It's a delicate balance. One day I get so mad at him because he wants to talk to a baby who can't talk back, and then next day, I'm so happy that he wants to talk to her for a minute so I can zone for a moment and enjoy her cooing.



I planted a garden. And it's starting to come up. I'm excited to see all the peppers and onions grow over then next couple of months, and hopefully (once I'm off this diet!) I'll be able to enjoy homemade salsa.



Now if I could just master the arts of wifery. You know, cleaning, laundry, putting the laundry away, dished (gross. Absolutely my second least favorite thing in the world!), cleaning the bathroom (the first and largest least favorite thing in the world!).

The baby has started using the sign's that I've been trying to teach her this week. She can say "want up" and "want." I know, not exactly the best thing to teach the baby, but it's saved me a lot of hassle and guess work. She's even figuring our how to point while singing "want." She thinks that she can walk. She's too young I tell myself, and her, frequently. But she's just like me, she doesn't care what I choose to try to dictate, what do I know- I'm just the mother. 



Oh the irony that parenthood is in my life. I guess I should apologize to my mother. Mom: I love you. You're awesome. I'm grateful that you didn't kill me as a teenager, but somedays I think that you probably should have (it would have saved both of us a great deal of stress and trouble). Nevertheless, I'll try to follow your example and not cause bodily harm to my own child, even when she drives me so crazy I wont hold back the screaming. Maybe I'll move out of your house by then. Maybe not. It's not up to me. The Army has full control of my life. You know that, but all the same, thanks for sharing your space with me. Have I told you how awesome you are yet? Because you are. But I do blame you for my quirks, and this crazy yarn hobby that I've adopted. It's because I'm following your example ;)

Knitting

I'm writing a short entry to see if it pops up on my feed at Ravelry.com. I've taken to knitting... and have only finished very small project, but I've got all these Ideas and all this yarn at my disposal! I'm so excited to see what I can create! Thats all. We'll see how it goes!

Arizona

Baby conked out after traveling all day~ I didn't even have to rock her to sleep!

I layed her down so that I could pee and I came back out and she was asleep! Oh if only every time she went to sleep could be this easy!

So, in my spare time, I decided to take some pictures. I figured that since I was going to be changing my hair color, I should preserve the memory...


not too bad... we'll see what happens after we're done!

This week in our world was a good one. Sariah is getting on a somewhat regular sleeping schedule, but that doesn't mean she is sleeping at night. In fact, she doesn't really sleep at night. She takes one nap. BUT~ I'm not going to try to convince her that she's got her days and nights wrong. In fact, I'm hoping that she continues to stay up at night, at least for the next couple of weeks. We'll be heading to Germany soon, and so I'm just gonna keep her up and once we're there, she'll be in the right and we will both sleep through the night!

We took a mini vacation this week down to Austin. We walked all over the UT campus, and let me tell you, it is uphill both ways no matter which way you go. We walked from Campus over to the Capitol, and toured the building and underground annex's. We stayed with some of our friends, and they were kind enough to introduce us to the game Killer Bunnies. If you've never heard of Killer Bunnies, you are not alone. But after playing it once, let me tell you how bad I want to invest in this game! I found it on Amazon for a reasonable price, and the booster packs look pretty sweet. Just saying. I think the family might like this game, or at least my family will.

On our way back to Dallas, we stopped in Ft. Hood (hello armpit of TX) to get Sariah's and my military passports. Here are some pictures of Sariah as we were trying to get her 2x2 photo. They made me laugh.




I had a civilian passport. The picture was pretty decent too, better than the previous one (I was ten and had one eyebrow...) I thought that they would just take my forms and civilian passport, and since it was the state department who had to put it together, they would just use the picture that they had on file... it was only two months ago that we took that picture. I was wrong. Had I known they were going to take my picture, I would not have put my hair in pig tails. I would have put on a little more eyeliner and made sure the zit on my chin was properly covered. But it was not meant to be. So, I have pigtails and a pimple.. Think they're going to believe that I am old enough to travel halfway across the world?! Well, I'll do it anyways.

We met up with some friends just outside of Ft. Hood, and I'm glad that we decided to make that stop instead of rushing home. Chad had the opportunity to talk to a Sergeant First Class out of uniform about anything and everything he could think of over a six hour discussion. I know his wife, and she gave me the goods on how to get around some things and some advice that Steph has shared with me before, but I didn't understand until the paperwork issues I ran into yesterday regarding our travel. Thank goodness for military wives who have been there and done that. Steph, I will probably be harrassing you more than normal over the next couple months.


Chad's travel dates got pushed up and he will be leaving next Wednesday for Geissen, and will be there for about a week or two before being stationed at Hohenfeldt of Grafenwoehr. Dont worry, I can't pronounce it either. Once he is in Geissen, he'll start setting up our housing and travel itenerary. I'm very glad that we got all the information that we did from Ft. Hood, I'm not so happy with the lack of support that Ft. Leonard Wood gave us. Lazy military people. Now I know better and It's not gonna happen again. I'm wising up to you tactic's military!



Amanda, Chad, & Sariah

Babies Galore

This week has been another blessing in our world. Nicole had her baby and gave us another nephew to spoil and coo at. I find it amazing how different the three Nunes babies look. Granted, the other halves of their gene pools couldn't be farther apart in distance than our little bunch. Sariah is Haoli and Hawaiian, Jayden is Popolo and Hawaiian, and Kalika is Tongan and Hawaiian. Pretty interesting mix in our world! Kalika joined our family this Tuesday, weighing in at a whopping 7lbs 8 oz. So far, he is the biggest cousin. Jayden, although having two months on Kalika and one month on Sariah, has smaller hands and feet than the two of them. Sariah held the record for feet until this week, when Kalika made his appearance a full set of toes longer than hers. Each time there is a new baby, it beats out the previous one in weight and shoe size. I sure hope that this isn't a trend, I don't know if I can have that many kids with such large feet!

We're excited to be spending some good quality time with our families before Chad takes off to Germany next week. I'm just waiting for one more piece of legal paperwork for Sariah, and for Chad to go and set up our housing, before we follow him and reunite as our smaller family unit.


Jayden and Kalika

Sariah and Kalika

hey everyone its chad. this is my first time on here. Life is going good and amazing . I leave for Germany on the 24 of Sept. I go to Geissen germany for the us army stay a couple of weeks and get in-processed then get shipped to grafenwoehr or someplace else. I m way stoked about it then amanda gets to come over and stay with me.

Sariah's Blessing

For years, my family has had a Labor Day BBQ with the same family. Their kids and our kids are pretty much all the same age, so everyone always had a friend to play with. The kids are growing up, and it's harder and harder to get together, but I got a wild hair in my hat on saturday, and i wanted to BBQ. So I emailed my mom's friend Kathi. Unfortunately, they had already made plans for Monday, and I was left without a large number of people to entertain. Well... It's Chad to the Rescue! He called his mom, and invited them over to the BBQ (he didn't know the other family couldn't come yet). And then he invited Uncle Lenny and family. And then he told his wife that he had extended extra invitations. At least I now had people to plan for! Love it!

Sunday came around and we met with our Bishop about blessing baby, and getting Chad's and Bishop's schedule to match up. Well, we had the perfect date, Sept. 20th marked on the calendar, until my mom said that we couldn't do that because she would be out of town on her sisters trip. So, we called up Chad's mom and asked her when a good day would be for all of the family to get together for Sariah's blessing, and she said that we should just do it at the BBQ. So, we made some quick calls to our family friends, and invited more to the BBQ and blessing so that they could stand in the circle. Seth and Ed (Chad's brothers from other mothers) came out, and so did the Olsen, Barker, and Bangerter families. (manda's Party tally just doubled!)

Monday morning was spent in frantic preparation. My Dad and Chad went out to make sure that the yards were suitable and the pool was blue. Aleah and I spent the morning making yummy deserts and mom made a couple of salads to complement the hamburgers, hotdogs, and bratwurst that the men folk would be grilling after the blessing. We cleaned and vacuumed the house, found extra chairs for the extra butts, and gave Sariah a bath for good measure (it was really a party for her after all!) We even kept her mostly naked just to make sure that any spit up didn't soak into her clothes and make her smelly before the big event. Four o'clock rolled around and all of our friends and family made their appearances.


Daddy blessed Sariah and gave her a beautiful name :) Sariah Poamaika'i Ahonui Nunes is a real person now (because according to the ladies at the store she was fake before ((I got asked twice if she was real or a doll that I was carrying around.. paaahleeease!))



There was so much food to commemorate her blessing and celebrate Labor Day. Lots of people swam in the blue pool, Eliana (belongs to uncle Lenny) and Rebecca Olsen made friends ("who can run around the fastest" was the favorite game, next to "share my chicken").


Everybody left after a couple of hours, and Chad and I decided that since Princess Sariah decided to sleep, we should do the same. And so we did.