Saying our goodbyes!

Our time in Panama City has come to an end. We spent our last week in town saying goodbye to the wonderful friends we've made over the last 3 years at Tyndall AFB.

We first said goodbye to our home on May 1st. That was very tough for me to see a family moving all of THEIR stuff into MY house. I cried as we drove off. I didn't bother to take any photos.

On Sunday the 2nd, had I known this would be the last day I'd see Candace healthy, I would have made an effort to take take more photos of the kids together. She and her crew got sick the week we stayed out at the base so our plans to hang out didn't happen. We were both totally bummed but are grateful for the extra 10 months we got together back at Tyndall. Here's to hoping of being stationed together again in the future.

We're at Pump It Up at a friend's birthday party.

Jonathan taking Ava, Camryn and Kylie down the big slide.

Kylie with her friend Caroline (center) and a friend from gymnastics (left). Kylie has asked me on numerous occasions of she would make new friends in Vegas. She "gets" what is happening at this point in her life.

On Tuesday the 4th, we had a pot luck dinner with friends from church. Our pastor, Tom, and his lovely wife Sylvia opened up their home to almost a dozen families and countless kids. She has a great perspective on kids and messes and I'm sure I'll get to that point in life eventually. She has been our Sunday School teacher these past few months and thinks Jonathan likes to "argue" with her. :) Not everyone in the following pictures are in our Sunday School class, however they have had some kind of impact on our lives...on the lives of the girls really.

Kylie and Mr. Keith. He and his wife Laura taught Kylie's Sunday School class last year.

Juliet and Miss Samantha. She and her husband Jeff babysat the girls for us.

Jonathan and Grady. He works out at the base so they have that jet stuff in common. I'm sure that is what they were discussing because what else can make them smile that much?

Miss Laura (taught Kylie's SS class last year and taught Ava this year), Ava, Miss Krissy and myself.

Juliet and Miss Krissy (or "Cookie" as she calls her).

Jeff, Scott and Jeremy listening intently to Jonathan telling a story...about flying I'm sure.

Juliet with Miss Anne. Anne is not only a good friend of ours (she's married to Scott in the pic above, have a sweet daughter Maya and is about 4 months along with her second baby) but she also taught Juliet's SS class every other week.

Shelly and me. She's not a big fan of kids, but she does like mine. :) She's your typical southern girl to the core!

Linda and me. She's about a month out from delivering her first son, and I'm not happy at all that I'm going to miss meeting him. Had she and David only gotten busy sooner! :)

Us with Joey and Krissy. I've blogged about them before so you can click here to read about them. We'll miss them terribly and are so blessed and grateful for the love they had for us and especially our girls. They are like family to us.

Krissy doing all she can to not let go of Ava.

I hated saying goodbye to our church family. This is the first church we've really gotten plugged into and it will be hard for any other church to measure up in the future. We pray God had another church family lined up for us in Vegas!

On Wednesday the 5th, I took the girls on their last field trip with our home school group to Chick Fil A. We took a tour of the kitchen (which was shockingly tiny!), met the CFA cow and of course ate lunch. This was our last time seeing the Skagg's girls. When our 6 girls get together, there is never any fighting, just girlie giggles and good times.

Waiting patiently to go tour the kitchen.

Leah and Kylie working on a puzzle.

Ava and Keri.

Kylie and the cow. Ava and Juliet wanted nothing to do with him.

But here is Ava mooing...

And Juliet copying her and mooing too.

After that we went and said goodbye to the Schantz's. It was here that I noticed Ava realizing what we were doing. She said "I don't want to go to Vegas" before we left Addie's house.

My girls and Addison.

That same evening (yes, we were super busy saying bye to everyone!) I had one last get together with my MOPS table. We had a big group this year so in all, there were 9 of us at my table. This was my funnest year yet and I will miss these great ladies. They even got me a gift card to Starbucks thanking me for being a great table leader. :)
Not everyone got to go to dinner this night, but here we are at Bonefish Grill. We got together a total of 4 times to go out to eat and every time we went here. Yum!

Adrienne, Hollind, Laurie, Magan, Jen and me.

And finally, here we are saing goodbye to the gulf of Mexico at our favorite beach spot, Mexico Beach.


See, our new underwater camera!



We had to drag Ava out into the water. She's perfectly content hanging out on shore (as is her sister in the background) but she eventually got comfortable being on her own.



We enjoyed our time in PC, are grateful for the friends we made and look forward to our new adventure!

We are Family

Since the squadron Jonathan is in is officially closed as of today, we are now part of the other F15 squadron here at Tyndall. We had a joint coffee with these great ladies earlier this week at Pure Art to paint F15s. The ladies who own the place walked us through every step and I made one for the girl's play room with their names on it.

Kristen and I were the only braves ones to think outside the box and do a jet that was not either gray or blue. Well, we were making them for our girls so it made more sense to go against the crowd. Most everyone else made one for their front door with their family's name on it.

It took a couple of hours to finish our projects and here are a few of us with our schnazzy Eagles.

Quardruple Date

This weekend we went to dinner with our friends the Flottmanns, Schantzs and Echols and had a terrific meal at Cafe 30A in Seagrove Beach. Deployments and moves are looming, so we wanted to go out together before the military splits us up from friends yet again. This was by far the best meal I've ever had in a restaurant, EVER! The food was amazing, (and it should have been since it was pricey) and I told everyone about it at church the next day. It was worth every bite and us girls of course chatted about girl stuff and the guys chatted about, what else, their jets!

Candace and Magan obviously looking at another camera.

Jennie and I

Jonathan and me (and our waitress)
The whole gang.

Field Trips

I met Rachel and her 3 sweet, beautiful daughters back in September on my first field trip with my home school group to the Jr. Museum. Her husband is also military, and of course having 3 girls gave us a lot in common right away. When I noticed her girls sporting Disney Princess garb and accessories, I knew our girls would get along great. We've done a few things together and this past Monday, we went on a field trip to a local grocery store, then to a pizza place where the kids all got to make their own pizzas. I love watching the 6 girls play together. They are all so sweet and get along well and there is always a lot of giggling and hugging.

1st of many goodies passed out to the kids.

In the produce dept. getting samples of pineapple. They were tasty, even Juliet's piece that fell on the floor!

Monkeying around in front of the store.

Ava, Leah and Kylie.

Oohh, what's going on in there?

Kylie and Leah shared a pizza.

A little pizza trivia...the most expensive topping out there is cheese!

Ava and Keri making their pizza.

Time for the oven!

Us mommies partnered with our babies. Clearly Juliet and A'lyn like their piles of cheese in the middle.

We had a fun filled day of popcorn, pineapple, pizza, lemonade, brownies and cookies. After we ate, we went back to the store and picked up some fruit!

The next evening we met at the fairgrounds in town and went to the, drum roll please, balloon zoo. All proceeds went to wounded vets, it was a short drive from our home, and the girls enjoyed it (again, I think they liked being there with their friends).

There were, I think, 145,000 balloons and it took 9 people a week to make all the exhibits. Cheesy, but pretty cool.

Juliet, Ava, Keri, A'lyn, Leah and Kylie in front of the "Stars & Striped"/"Old Glory" (we had just learned about the flag that morning in school).

I don't know if I'll attend another balloon zoo in my lifetime. It was impressive, and about what I should have expected from the town we live in.

Friends

Here are a few pictures of some of our favorite friends!

The O'Brien family is in town for a week and we got to meet new baby Caitlin. The girls LOVE babies and as you can tell, I get the best smiles out of them when they get to hold one.

We venture to base a lot to hang out with Candace and her crew. 7 kids makes for nothing but FUN! Normally Candace will cook up gourmet meals when we eat there, but this night it was Sam's Club pepperoni pizza...and it was pretty good for only $6. I'll be picking some up for our family.

Friday nights when our husband are at "roll call", we like to have our own version of "girl call".

We went to Emily's 2nd birthday party today and the kids got to frost their own cupcakes. As you can see here, Liam doesn't mess around and he wasn't going to let one piece of cupcake go to waste.

Here are Kylie and Jackson braving the heights.

The girls like to order things according to how " we came out of mommy's tummy" (like going down the slide or brushing their teeth). They'll be sad to see themselves out of order here as they sing Happy Birthday to Emily.

The older kids helped Emily open her presents, probably more than was necessary, but Kelly being as sweet as she is would never tell the girls to back off so her princess can have her special moment.