The Condensed Version

I’ve started a few mother load updates, but cannot seem to get them finished. Too much happened too quickly, so here is an email that I sent to friend that felt left out of loop. Sadly, pretty much everyone was left out the loop because there was just no time. So, here is a condensed version of our last few weeks.

We are living a little over an hour north of Wichita. Justin got a full-time military job doing pre-mob training - right before troops deploy they go to their mob station for a short amount of time & right before that, they go through pre-mob training, which includes everything from learning the culture of where they are going, how to spot IEDs & what to do if your gunner truck rolls over, etc. Justin is 1 of, I think, about 10 guys that do the training in this region. He *loves* it! His hours are crazy. When they have troops on the ground, he is gone all day and pretty much night too. When they are between troops, he's home a lot. Right now, they are between troops so I get to see him quite a bit & they get lots of days off. The next group coming is supposed to be pretty big and he won't even be doing his training here, and it's supposed to last like 45 days...right through Kara's birth. So, I'm over 2 hours from our family and about to have my 4th child without my husband. Sounds fun, huh? He says he'll make it for the birth, but anything else is a crap shoot.

We've been here about a week & a half. Schools were on Spring Break last week, so the kids just started. They love it. It is a nice town. It has about 50k people and is a mini-Wichita. We really like it so far!

We found out on a Thursday that he got the job & had to report to on Monday morning. We rented our house in Wichita & found a duplex just a few blocks from where Justin works and were moved completely within 2 weeks. Justin had troops on the ground and didn't get back for any part of the move whatsoever. It was very, very stressful & I'm glad to have it behind me! The duplex is nice and nice sized. We signed a 6-month lease so that we would have time to learn the area & find a house that we really like. The pay for this job is great, so we have a little more to work with this time and we want to take our time. God has just opened one door after another & we couldn't deny it! It's been crazy but not a really hard transition for any of us. The moving & the 1st week were very hard for me, but now it's all fitting together & I'm doing a lot better!

And yes, I'm feeling very pregnant. This pregnancy has been soooooo easy & even during the moving stuff, I would have to remind myself not to do things because I was so pregnant. Other than the emotions, it didn't really seem to effect me much. Just think about being 32 and 33 weeks pregnant with 3 other kids, no help from your husband or family or friends & packing & coordinating the entire move of your household to another city within 2 weeks, including utilities, schools, etc. and preparing to have tenants in your home! Thankfully, we did have lots of amazing help for the actual move! Now though, I think God was saving the big pregnancy part for after the move. I'm 35 weeks and I feel huge & she feels big finally & I'm becoming more & more aware that I have a very short amount of time to get everything put together for her arrival! I've reached the huge part now, but she hasn't dropped at all! She is still very high and I feel like she's going to be late, but we'll see. :)

There we go. Now, maybe I can move on to more fun stuff that I think about posting here and there and don’t do because this part was left undone.