Waterscape

A I mentioned in my previous post, my in laws are in town. On Thursday we surprised the kids with a trip to Waterscape. It is a condo-water park type place that is right on the beach on Okaloosa Island. I highly recommend it. This is our second year going with the in laws and the kids had a blast.

Last year, Cory's sister and her kids came down too. However, our kids were not used to swimming at that point and spent most of their time shivering on the side of the pool since they were too afraid to get in. This year, they all had one bout of swimming lessons under their belt and did much better. They still wouldn't get int the lazy river, but they did enjoy the one heated pool and the kids splash pad. The first day we were there it rained and was overcast, so it cooled down everything. So, the water was pretty chilly in all the pools except for the one heated one. We spent most of our time in there. On Saturday, the sun came out and it was a beautifully warm day, the water just hadn't caught up to 'warm' quite yet. But, we spent a lot of time outside in the beautiful weather and catching up with Cory's parents, so it was a good weekend over all!

Vivi's attempt at a funny face

The view from our balcony. We were on the first floor.

Vivi is stylin'.

Clay using his squirt gun

Carter modeling his new shark swim trunks that Nana and Pop bought him.

Part of the kids splash pad

A Day at the Zoo

We visited the Gulf Breeze Zoo today with my in laws. They are in town for Spring Break, and we hadn't ever been before. It gets two thumbs up from me!

Carter feeds the parakeets. The zoo had Popsicle sticks with birdseed on them for $1. Good idea!

Vivi loves birds. It was one of her first words. She is amazed that they are all just flying around!

"Mom, are you getting this? There's one right here!!"

The Tiger

Clay is irritating his sister

Clay loved feeding the giraffes.

Carter was a little more nervous

Viv was a bit worried too.

My little Turkey

Everyone does a Cartwheel

The boys have been in gymnastics for a few weeks and everyone is proud of their cartwheels! Especially Vivian.

Vivian's Winter

In Pictures.

Let's See the Babies THEN play games

Clay's appointment went well on Thursday. We finally got to Pensacola about 10 minutes later than planned. I had to drop off Carter and Vivi at a friend's house and go from there. But because of that I had to go to Pensacola a different way, miscalculated my time and by the time we got there we were late. On top of that, the information desk sent us to the EXACT OPPOSITE end of the hospital, only for us to have to come back because they had sent us to the wrong place. I hate being late, I was sweating bullets by the time we showed up at the lab.
Luckily, they were running behind and were nice enough that they didn't mind me being late.
They hooked Clay's arms up to two electrodes that stimulated his sweat glands (top picture) and left them on for 5 minutes. Then, they put little collection device (bottom picture) on his arm, taped rubber gloves over them (to make them 'airtight' and induce more sweating) for 30 minutes.

By the time we went down to the cafeteria and grabbed some lunch, we were done. Clay sweated (sweat, swatted?) like a champion. But before we left the hospital, he wanted to go to the 2nd floor and see the newborn babies.

I love that the hospital there has a newborn viewing area. I remember when I was sick and in the hospital a lot as a child that my parents used to pull me in the red wagon to look at the newborn nursery everyday. The nurseries are really becoming outdated with couplet care being the new norm (Which I am definitely a fan of). But I still love looking at those babies and I need a baby fix every now and then. So I'm glad it's there.
Clay said, "They look like pretend babies, but they're real!"

I'm so glad he likes them as much as I do.

We grabbed a quick game of Foosball and headed back to pick up Carter and Viv.

I believe the test results will be back this coming week. Also, the pancreatic insufficiency test should be available this week too.

Limbo

Ahh, nothing like a little Air Force limbo to spice up our lives.
We were supposed to be here at Eglin for a good 3 years. We were so excited to be somewhere long enough for the paint on the walls to dry.
But since Cory is changing aircrafts we were scheduled for another move this summer.
That only makes 5 moves in 7 years!
But of course it's never as easy as happily awaiting the matchups and then the assignment, is it?
About a month ago Cory got deployment notification to Ramstein AB in Germany.
We were stoked! Germany!? We have been dying to get to Europe but haven't had the chance.
How I look back now and wish we would have tried to get the Korea with the Germany follow on.
I know, I know, I was dying to get stateside after Korea....but hindsight is always 20/20.

Cory has talked to the guy at Ramstein who's in the job now and it sounds like a fantastic deployment. He's there with his wife and seven children. We figured out how to skirt around the visa requirements and car situation. So now, we only have 998 questions to ask.

However, when the boss found out that Cory got a deployment notification, he sent in a reclama. (A request to keep him from deploying) Regardless how badly we want to make it to Germany, a reclama really is the best thing since Cory needs to get in the air. (He has been in a flying billet and hasn't flown in over 14 months.) The boss says Cory really needs to PCS instead of deploying.

Of course everyone is getting their assignments....and we're just waiting. Will we deploy? Will we PCS? If we PCS, where are we going? What is Cory going to fly? Training? Can we do in en route? What happens if we deploy? What does that do to our PCS date?


Hopefully we'll find out soon....

Good News

Clay's GI appointment went well on Wednesday. Maybe they read my blog and decided I was serious. Who knows. I don't care why it happened, but it did, they listened to me.
The doctor sat and listened to my speech for about 40 minutes. He looked at the pictures I had taken and answered all of my questions.
Dr. Davis ordered a few more tests and is going to send us up to UAB (University of Alabama Birmingham) for a more 'academic view' of things.
Until then we'll test for Pancreatic Insufficiency, and Cystic Fibrosis. Also, a whopping dose of Flagyl to knock out any bad bacteria left in his gut.