Happy Birthday Andy!

Monday the 21st is Andy's birthday. He's been a blessing to us from the day he was born!
He is currently stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He's been really busy lately so he has hasn't been able to come home, but it's nice having him close enough to make an occasional trip back here and hopefully it won't be too long before he gets another break.
Happy Birthday Andy! We love you!

Surprise!

We had such a great surprise this weekend!
Thursday night, Heather got a text message from Andy saying "I'll be there around 2am".
What? He hadn't mentioned coming home. After a few more texts, we found out he had Friday off, so had decided to come home for Easter weekend. No complaints from us!

Since coming back from Afghanistan, Andy got a new dress uniform. The army is changing from the old green uniform, to navy blue. He took it along to wear to church on Sunday, so of course I took the opportunity to take some pictures.



Here's the new look. You may wonder about the pants tucked in. That's something that shows he is a member of the 101st aviation. They wear jump boots and tuck their pants.

Here's a close up of the jacket. Looking good!

It was nice to have him around for the weekend. We ate our dinner early, as he had to be back at Fort Campbell by 10 pm and he had a 9 hour drive to get there.
He made his parents happy this weekend!

Andy's leave

Well, our time with Andy has come to an end. We so enjoyed having him around for these few weeks. He's on his way back to Kentucky now, where he will be based at Fort Campbell.
It's nice that he will be close enough to make the occasional trip home. It takes about 9 hours.
I thought I would share a few pictures of our time with him.

This is a typical Andy picture. He is always goofing off and teasing us. You see the expression on his face due to the fact that I am taking his picture...

When Andy is home, we have a lot of family gatherings. This is from a party celebrating my Dad's 81st birthday.

I have to throw in this cute picture of Alaina!

Bob's sisters were over to visit Andy, but had to have their picture taken with Alaina. This is his sister Diane.




And Alaina spent a lot of time here. She and Andy had a good time getting to know each other and I'm thinking that Andy will miss her most of all!

Grandpa's back!

My Dad was in Florida for about 3 weeks and wasn't home when Andy first got home.
When he got back took Andy out for lunch and a game of bowling. He and his wife Ann are avid bowlers and are pretty good, especially Ann.
We stopped at the bowling alley so he could see Alaina too.

He hadn't seen her in awhile and was surprised by how she had grown.

Ann had to say hi to her too.

Ann - Andy - Dad

They had fun bowling, and Ann beat them all.
I know Andy enjoyed spending time with them again!

Christmas with Andy

Most of you are aware that our son Andy is in Afghanistan. We are able to Skype with him about once a week so when we did this on December 23rd we had him open the gifts we sent, so we could see him.
Since there isn't much we could send him gift wise, we gave him money in the form of paying toward his jeep. Then we got a bunch of crazy things that would make him laugh, and some food items and sent them in this huge stocking.
Here's some screen shots I took as he was opening things. Excuse the blurriness - our Skype from Afghanistan is never very clear!

Here he is with the big stocking!

In typical Andy fashion, he started goofing off and put the stocking on his head.

More goofing off...

And a little more...

And one more...

Heather sent this little "Shoulder buddy". He attaches to your shirt with a magnet and sits on your shoulder. Andy got a good laugh from him.

This is an actual screenshot, which shows us in the corner, watching Andy unwrap gifts.


Andy has been on the night shift since he got to Afghanistan. He says he usually gets breakfast at the D-fac on his way home from work and then sleeps. However - on holidays when they make a big meal, there are only donuts available to eat.
So:

This is the picture he sent on Christmas morning. The message with it was "thank you for the breakfast!"

And here's one last picture. I got this one from the army facebook group. Andy is the third on the right. They are enjoying their Christmas dinner.

It's always good to talk to him and see him this way - but it will be even better to see him in person! We don't know for sure when that will happen but probably in a few months!

Update on Andy

Most of you know my son Andy is in the army, currently deployed to Afghanistan. Some of you have asked how he is doing, so I thought I would give you a view of our communication with him.
He works a lot! He's on duty for at least 12 hours a day, with only occasional days off. Between that and the problem of the time difference, it's not easy to talk to him. We can't call him and it costs him a lot to call us, so we depend on Skype.
Skype is wonderful, if you have good internet. Unfortunately, Andy's is really bad, so we usually don't use the video feature, and sometimes we just have to do the online chat instead of talking.
However - it's so nice to occasionally see his face, and hear his voice. And we know how blessed we are compared to parents in the past, who just had to wait for the occasional letter!

Here's a screen shot I took last week, when we were actually using the video.

Andy can't tell us anything that is happening over there, or take any pictures of his base. He did send this shot of the mountains outside his base.
Thanks for your continued prayers for him!

Family updates

You may remember almost a month when I told you here that Heather had been in an accident and probably totaled her car?
Yes, her car was totaled and those of you that have been through this know that it takes a while before everything is taken care of.
We have State Farm insurance and we were really happy with how they handled it. We felt they gave a fair settlement for her car. However - once you get the check, it still takes a while to find a good used car.
After looking around for a few weeks we had success! Here is her new (to her) car:

It's a Chevy Cavalier. We're hoping it runs as well as her Saturn did!

I have an update on Andy too. He left last Sunday and is now at his base in Afghanistan. We were able to talk to him Sunday afternoon. At this point he doesn't have internet yet and because of the long hours and expense of calling we won't hear much. Once his internet is set up, we will be able to use Skype to keep in contact. He's working nights right now - big hours and not much in the way of days off. That's not all bad though. Time goes quick that way and there really isn't much to do there. He says it's pretty cold as they are in the mountains, but not quite as bad as Michigan!
Thanks for your continued prayers for him!

Hello, Goodbye...

We were thrilled to have Andy come home this past weekend. He came home to bring a lot of his things here, because he is scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan in a short time. Instead of storing everything in Kentucky, he wanted to leave it here. We always love having him come home, and since he won't be back for awhile we saw lots of family this weekend as well.

Here's my sister Terri giving Andy a hug - he appears to be enjoying it, don't you think?
~~~

We had an Open House so family could visit with him. Here's some of the goodies we ate!
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Our family room was filled!

Laura is thrilled to see my camera out again. :)
~~~

Andy has a great sense of humor and when he is home we never know what he might be up to.

So - when he came in the house with this giant icicle we knew he was up to no good!

Yes - he is attacking poor Heather!
~~~

Sunday we were blessed during the church service when Andy, and Bob and I went up front and people came and prayed for him and us.
Having people pray for you like this is really emotional, and I tend to be a crier anyway, so this really did me in. It was hard, but such a blessing to have so many people who care and are praying.
~~~

Sunday night we had Laura and Aaron come for supper and a birthday party.

Oliver enjoyed the tissue paper from the gifts.
~~~

We packed lots of fun into those few days.

Monday afternoon Andy headed back to Kentucky, leaving a few tearful people here. He'll be going to Afghanistan soon, but we can't share the date.
Those good byes are always hard on all of us, but we know we can trust God to take care of him, whether he is here, in Kentucky, or in Afghanistan.
Thanks for your prayers!

Family times

We so enjoyed having Andy home for a few weeks over Christmas. He will be deploying to Afghanistan in February so we won't have a stretch of time with him for a while. He may be home to leave his Jeep here along with his belongings while he's gone, but if that happens it will be a very short time.
So - we tried to take in all the family time we could.
Here are a few pictures from our house during these 2 weeks.

Oliver loved crawling under the tree.

The night we opened our gifts, Oliver was in his glory. There was wrapping to play with and bags and boxes to craw into!

It's fun to watch Andy playing with Oliver. Andy hides around the corner and Oliver tried to sneak up on him. Soon there is a cat zooming around the house and Andy laughing his head off!

There was a lot of this going on too. We got the new Donkey Kong for our Wii and Bob and Andy had lots of fun trying to defeat it!


I try to get a picture of all the kids in front of the tree every year. This year Laura protested, saying she looked horrible because she had been sick, but they agreed, after I threw out the fact that I couldn't get one next year because of Andy being gone.
Anyway - I was blessed to have them all with me. That's the best gift for any Mom!

Our week with Andy

We had a wonderful week of vacation while Andy was home. We didn't do anything special, just enjoyed our time together. I have a few pictures to give you an idea of how we spent our time.

Our cat Oliver, wasn't real sure about this guy who was invading his territory but after a day he found that Andy was fun to play with. Andy pulled out a flashlight with this green light on it every evening and Oliver went crazy chasing it. Here he was flattening himself out, trying to sneak up on the light.

We spent a lot of time with family. Here is Andy with Bob's mom...


and with my Dad. The grandparents were glad to see him again!

We were able to see almost every family member on both sides which was a lot to see! This is Arianna, who rode her bike over to our house on Friday so she could say goodbye to Andy.

Andy was able to meet his cousins fiance for the first time. Ovidiu is from Romania, and will be marrying Bob's niece Alecia in November. Since Andy won't be here for the wedding, it was nice that they were able to meet now.

We spent a day in Grand Haven, visiting Lake Michigan, walking the pier and since it was a beautiful day - we stopped for ice cream! Here Andy was demonstrating how to climb a wall.

He's not really into me taking his picture, but I managed to get a few.


We went to a wedding Saturday afternoon before Andy left, so I got a picture of my two guys together, while they were dressed up.

This picture is a good representation of our week; fun, a little goofy and lots of laughter!
Andy is now in Kentucky, doing paper work that is required when you change bases. It will be about a week doing that before he gets into a regular routine.
We're hoping we get to see him again at Christmas!

Welcome Home Andy!

Andy is home! Why is this picture so blurred? I took it when he came in the back door and was already harassing me by bouncing around so I couldn't get a good picture.
I will be taking a blogging break this week, as we all have the week off from work so we can have fun together. Andy plans to leave on Saturday to drive to Kentucky, where he will join the 101st aviation division.
See you next week!

I'm so excited!

I gave an update on Andy a few weeks ago and told you that he would be going to Fort Carson, Colorado sometime in March. He has been waiting for the official orders to arrive to know how this would be handled, as the whole base is moving and it's quite an undertaking. He was supposed to have leave to visit us in June.
He called us on Friday night to let us know that they will be shipped out between March 15 and March 18, and will be coming home for their leave at that time. This means that in about 5 weeks we get to see him in person!
The picture above was taken in May, shortly before he left for Korea and we haven't seen him since then. This Mom can't wait to have him home again!

How's Andy doing?

I've gotten e-mails and comments from a few of you lately wondering how my son Andy is doing, so I thought it was time for an update.

For those of you who don't know him, Andy is our youngest and is in the army. He has been stationed in South Korea since last May. He has always loved planes and helicopters and is happy to be working on the Apache helicopter. I've added a few pictures so you can see what he's doing over there.

Here he is making snow angels on the flight line. Here is the result of he and his friends work! They have been waiting for some snow and when they finally got a little bit, they had to make use of it.

I thought I should include this picture, so you could see that there is some work going on, not just play!


He e-mailed us this picture, telling us that some friends talked him into getting a tattoo. He left out the fact that it was a fake tattoo!
So - you can see that he is having a good time with friends, is enjoying his work and still has his good sense of humor. He is good about updating his blog, which I love! It's a good way to see what he is doing.
There are some changes coming up for him. He was initially sent to Korea with plans to stay for a year. Now the plan is that his entire group will be shipping out to Colorado, probably in March. They will be doing mountain training there, preparing to be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan next January. Of course, nothing is set in stone until the paperwork comes through.
Thanks to those of you that check in on him and ask about him. We appreciate it!