The Happenings in Kansas

Congrats to Geoff and Emily! Their baby girl was born last night at 10:14 in New Haven, CT. She is named Audrey Lyn Streeter and was 21 3/4 inches long and 8 lbs 8 oz. I am so anxious to meet her!!!

Here is the latest from Fort Riley, Kansas...

After about 2 weeks of hopping hotel rooms, we were unable to get another reservation in the temporary housing on post. A friend of ours, Carma Lee offered to have us stay at her house for those nights, which was extremely generous. She has a 4-bedroom house and actually had a room free for us to use. After those two nights she offered to have us just stay here and we took her up on the offer. Again- extremely generous. So, we're no longer vagabonds necessarily, but rather squatters :-) It has worked out well. Carma Lee's husband has been deployed for almost 8 months now. She has 3 kids- 8, 6 and 4 years old. The kids get along really well, which is nice. Of course the longer we're here, the more they treat each other as siblings (don't get along quite as well) but for the most part it has been really nice.

Status of housing: We have been offered a house back on Wofford (where we lived before). The only downside is that it won't be available until June 24th. The whole reason we took ourselves off the 4-bedroom list and got on the 3-bedroom list was because we were told we could get a house by April. It would probably have been June or July for a 4-bedroom. Nice... And they won't put us back on the 4-bedroom list without sticking us back at the bottom of the list. It's frustrating, but what do you do? One nice thing about the house we're getting- they have up a fence and are willing to sell it to us for a fraction of what they paid for it. So that will offer some privacy and safety (the house is on the corner of 2 busy streets). At least we know we will have a place eventually. We will be gone for a month, so it won't be too bad a wait. Plus, Carma Lee is going on vacation in June and said we can house-sit here until we get our house, so that's nice.

We are really looking forward to going on leave. We will take off from here on May 10th and head to Mom and Dad's. Then we meet up with the Tolmans in Ohio on Monday the 12th for some super-fun swimming (Wolf Lodge) and birthday parties and maybe zoo and childrens museum. We're just anxious to see them again. They are definitely awesome friends and it's nice to have the chance to get together. We haven't thought any farther than that except for the family reunion in Utah the first week of June. Can't wait to meet the newest niece and nephew!

A couple little things about the girls-

Ellie has gone the last couple nights without a pull-up or diaper and has been completely dry by morning. This is big news for us! We figured out she could handle it when we heard her get up one night to go to the bathroom by herself. Hooray for no more diapers for Ellie! She is almost 4 years old, after all...

Katie has amazed us lately in her ability to sing. We were driving around town and she started singing "Twinkle, Twinkle" and knew every single word. Same with "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "Skip to my Lou" and "London Bridges". I really didn't know she knew the words by herself. She even got the tunes completely right. Impressive.

Sarah has 3 new teeth. That makes 5 total now. And there's one more on its way any day now. She has done really well with all those teeth coming in at once. She is walking great, even running at times.