Trevor's Last Day

Today was Trevor's last day as a military dentist. His "official" date of seperation is June 10th, but he has some leave (vacation) days saved up so he starts "terminal leave" on Monday :)

Anyway, in celebration of this event I wanted to post these pictures of some of the people Trevor worked with at DC2 (Dental Clinic 2). He had some good times with these guys and he'll miss them!



PS The guy that's holding Jason is Colonel Prince. He is one of Jason's FAVORITE people (and vice-versa). Colonel Prince always gets Jason laughing pretty hard. I guess Jason will need to find a new best buddy.

Rattlesnake Festival

Every year in Apache they hold a Rattlesnake Festival. It's really like a carnival with a whole bunch of vendors selling stuff (sunglasses, t-shirts, and of course: rattlesnake paraphernalia). It's a lot of fun. We figured we had better frequent the Rattlesnake Festival one last time before leaving Oklahoma.




We paid the $1 to see the snake pit this time :) This was a room where they had an enclosure with a BUNCH of snakes in it. They have a couple guys in there talking about rattlesnakes and holding them up for everyone to see. It was crazy, the snakes were striking at them and everything. There are a LOT more snakes in this pit, we just wanted to get Ashley in the picture.



The kids loved the rides. I tried to convince them they needed to go on the bigger rides with me and Trevor, but they didn't want to. Boo.




There are always a couple people working the festival that carry around rattlesnakes to show people--the rattlesnake's mouth is sewn shut at each corner. Anyway, they had a spot where you could get your picture taken with the snake. Hailey (surprisingly) and Ashley jumped at the chance, but Tyler wouldn't do it.


Erick came with us. Here's Erick eating some rattlesnake. Not all that good. We had some a couple of years ago when we went with some friends and it was mostly breading and bones. Not too much meat.


Good times. We'll miss the annual Rattlesnake Festival!

Bathtime

Jason LOVES the bath. I mean, he REALLY gets excited when I put him in the bath and I think it's so cute. I took a picture while he was somewhat still, but this is a rare moment in the bath. He's usually kicking and yelling to show us his excitement. It's pretty funny.

I blocked out the family jewels because I don't want to embarrass the poor kid (anymore than I already have) in the future--if he's to look through this blog.

Also, I wonder when kids start to recognize certain words? Anyone know the answer to this? When I ask him if he wants a bath, he gets this big grin on his face. I don't know if it's because he knows the word "bath" now, or if it's because I'm smiling at him when I ask.

Easter

Easter Sunday was pretty eventful. I woke up early to speak in the serviceman's branch. It was really neat. Our Relief Society presidency all spoke on the Savior and His life, crucifixion, resurrection, and applying the atonement in our lives. There was such a wonderful spirit there and it was really neat to be able to experience part of Easter with the soldiers that were there in training. Plus, it was a little weird to sit through a sacrament meeting with no kids...makes for an even sweeter experience to concentrate fully on the (other) speakers and to reflect on Christ during the sacrament.

After I came home, Trevor had the kids mostly ready for our church. So I did their hair and he took the kids to pick up one of our friends for church (more of that story to come...) I played Easter bunny, threw the turkey breast (yep, the wild one) into the crockpot, and then met everyone at church.

Here's a picture of Hailey and Ashley in their Easter dresses that Grandma Strupp bought for them while she was visiting:





After church the kids had their egg hunt. Here are a couple pictures of the kids looking for Easter eggs. I don't know how other people feel about Easter egg hunts, but I always had them as a child and I think I turned out OK...



Then we ate the turkey. It was OK, I still like store-bought farm turkeys, but whatever.

We had our friend, Erick, over for dinner. We've been doing a few things with him the past four or five weeks because he's been in training at Fort Sill. It's been so much fun hanging out with him and the kids ADORE him. I wished I would have taken pictures of him playing with the kids--they LOVE him and won't leave him alone! He seems to have fun though, or maybe he's just being nice. I'm pretty sure it's because he misses his own kids so much, I told him he could come borrow ours anytime. (Thanks Erick--and thanks Tera for letting us have so much fun with Erick! Looks like you better come visit soon, he won't be here much longer...)

I hope you all had a wonderful and fun Easter, too!

Brian Regan

So, my home page is set to the CNN website--because that's where Trevor set it. So I always read over the headlines and actually it's a good way to keep me informed since I'm not an avid news watcher. Point is, I saw a story about the comedian Brian Regan. I noticed his name because my friend Maggie mentioned him in a blog post once and how much she liked him. So I watched one of his videos and thought he was pretty funny...although I'm not a huge fan. Anyway, I read the story and I just found this pretty profound, he said:

"They say a formula for comedy is comedy equals tragedy plus time. A difficult or uncomfortable situation takes place, and then you laugh about it later down the road. Sometimes I wonder if I could be so mentally healthy to subtract the time part. Like what if there is a flat tire, and it's raining outside? Instead of laughing a month later, why not laugh while you are changing tires in the rain?"

Anyway, I thought this to be so totally true. If we were to take life a little more lightly, how much happier and healthier would we all be? Just a thought. If you'd like to read the whole interview, he seems like a pretty cool guy. You can find it here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/04/14/brian.regan.comedy.tour/index.html

I don't know how to hyperlink :)

Turkey for Easter Dinner

Trevor loves a good Turkey hunt. Here's his latest kill:




The last wild turkey we ate was kind of gross. Anyone know a good way to cook wild turkey? I think it will be our Easter dinner...

P.S. I posted a lot today, so keep reading previous posts :)

Tyler's Birthday Party

Here are some pictures from Tyler's birthday party:


As I mentioned in the previous post, we took full advantage of Grandma and her horse while she was here :) During his party, Grandma took all the kids on a horse ride. They loved it! I took pictures of each kid on the horse, but there are too many pictures--so I'll just post Tyler's horse picture.


We did the horse rides at the park, and wow--the kids really came out of the woodwork. We must have had 30 extra kids begging for a ride! We gave as many rides as possible, before we had to go do the pinata and Grandma had to take the horse back to the stable. Thanks Grandma for taking all those kids for a ride!!

Horseback Riding

Grandma Strupp came to visit last week and we had so much fun! She brought her horse (and dalmatians) with her because she was on her way home from a dog show which included a "road trial" (she shows dalmatians--a road trial is where the dalmatians follow alongside the horse and take commands? As far as I understand it...) So we took full advantage of the horse while Grandma was here. These are some pictures we took of Hailey and Ashley riding the horse with Grandma.

HAILEY


ASHLEY

Jason and Hannah

You should know this is what I'll do if I babysit your children. But they just looked so cute!




Grandma came to visit. We had SOO much fun with Grandma. Plenty more pictures of that to come...
Jason totally has eyes for Hannah.



Jason's had this hat since he was born (thanks Lisa Gladwell!) We've had some more cold days and I figured I better break out the hat. I knew Grandma would especially appreciate it because she has dalmatians that she shows in dog shows.

?

I'm pretty sure she gets her fashion sense from me.

Life Changes

I have wanted to blog about this for awhile, because so many changes have been happening over the past couple months. I didn't want to post prematurely if anything fell through--but it looks like things are falling into place. :)

So, first and foremost: We're moving to Montana! I'm really excited about this. It really looks BEAUTIFUL. I haven't been there yet, but I'm sure me and Trevor will take a trip to househunt (or maybe rent-hunt?)soon. I'm a little leary to say the exact city, seeing as how our blog is public and all...I guess I'm a little paranoid that way. It looks gorgeous and has all the things we really wanted in a city (exept the wonderful friends we've met here). If you're really curious, you can email and ask me what city :) Here's a picture I found on a website:



Pretty, huh? Trevor found a practice that he really likes. He put in an offer and it is now under contract. WOOHOO! I'm excited to be starting this new chapter of our lives.




Second: We sold our house. This is a little bittersweet. I have grown quite attached and didn't think it would be hard to leave something like a house behind. I'm not too sentimental when it comes to things like this, but I really love our house! It worked out well though. We hadn't even really put it up for sale--here's the story:

I had talked to a realtor last October about when she thought I should put the house on the market (with the economy and the market, etc) because I didn't know how long it would take to sell. Plus, we had a couple projects left like the exterior painting (pictures in previous posts) and the landscaping (not done yet) so I kind of wanted a timeline to know how much time we had to get it ready.

After talking to the realtor we didn't think much about selling the house because for a few months we toyed with the idea of staying here another year. Well, Trevor decided to look at some practices, and when he got back we thought we'd better get the house ready to sell because he found a practice he really liked. A couple days later, the realtor I had talked to in October called and asked if we were planning on putting our house up because she had a couple that really wanted to see it--they had been looking for awhile and hadn't been able to find what they wanted. I guess with the things they told her that they wanted in a house, she thought of our house and decided to call us :)

I told the realtor the couple could come see it if they wanted but that we didn't know exactly when we were going to list it. They came to see the house, and loved it and wanted to put in an offer. YAY!! So we listed the house (I guess we needed to list so an offer could be put in). And the house was under contract a couple days later.

Grandpa Comes to Visit!

Whenever any grandparent comes, the kids get SOO excited! And who wouldn't when they all have special treats to spoil the grandchildren (as pictured--you can see the toys and treats in this picture a little) and of course the non-stop playing and attention! My (Kim's) dad came to see us for a few days, and we had a lot of fun playing with the kids, visiting, and going to some fun places...of course, I didn't bring my camera along to any of these fun places...but here is a picture of Grandpa and Jason. As you can see, Jason was excited too :)

We sure had a fun time with grandpa, next we get to look forward to grandma coming! (Trevor's mom) More spoiling and fun!