Fort Hood, Texas

In August of 2015 while we were at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri we learned we would soon be moving to Fort Hood, Texas. While we were somewhat surprised since it was #12 on our list, we quickly became very excited at all of the wonderful things that would come with a move to our favorite home state of Texas. Hindsight really is 20/20 in that we put Fort Lewis, Washington #1 on our list, and now I wouldn't trade this wonderful Texas weather for anything Fort Lewis had to offer. From the day we found out we would be moving to Texas, Matthew asked us daily "I'm ready to move to Texas, can we get in the van now?" Needless to say, we all grew pretty excited over the next few months in eager anticipation of moving back to the promise land, and so close to family and friends. November 1, 2015 we packed up our home in Missouri and headed to Texas. Due to housing situations we lived with my parents and in a hotel for several weeks, and officially moved on post at Fort Hood December 14, 2015! The next several weeks and months really flew by between the holidays, unpacking, and trying to find our way around town. We are loving Fort Hood and being in Texas, I can hardly believe it has almost been four months already! Central Texas is the perfect place to live and convenient to so many places; we have loved exploring Austin, San Antonio, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Waco, and Temple so far. Not to mention we are only 2 hours away from all of my family in BCS, and 5 hours away from Shane's parents in Odessa. Such a welcomed change from living (13-20 hours away) in Georgia, Kansas, and Missouri for the past 4.5 years! The Lord has truly taken care of us. He blessed Shane with a wonderful staff job in the Army, where he is a facility manager at Fort Hood. Shane not only loves his job, but his co-workers are also a very small group of hard working and reliable people, who he enjoys. Praise God for knowing exactly where and when to move us back to Texas, His timing is perfect, and we are smitten!

Four Year Anniversary

Every year I sit down to write our anniversary post and I can't believe all of the things we've done throughout the past year. Shane and I have been married four years today. A mere four years, a long four years, but four years that have flown by. Never did I dream I'd be waking up on our anniversary at 5am because of a huge and uncomfortable baby belly, or that Shane would be busy with night classes for his masters and we would celebrate by ordering pizza for dinner at 4:45pm. However, neither one of us would change our marriage, choices, directions or situation for anything in the world.  Though it's not the typical marriage I always dreamed of, God had so much more in store for us than I could have ever dreamed about. Throughout the past year we completed our first deployment (only by Gods amazing grace and love!), found out we were expecting another precious baby boy Myles, moved to Missouri, vacationed in Mexico together, Shane started Captains Career Course and a Masters degree, he started making amazing wood projects, and I managed to (mostly) keep up with our little men while making new friends, cleaning, cooking, and doing endless loads of laundry.

It's truly amazing what God can do in our lives, and where He will take us when we trust and obey Him. We are thankful for the crazy marriage, life and family that only God could have given us the energy, determination and strength to survive! Heres to many more years of unending adventure, surprises, pizza date nights, holding hands, and doing life together! 

Captain Darville

I am so excited to say that Shane was recently promoted to Captain in the U.S. Army! He has worked so hard to make it to this point, excelled at many challenging jobs, graduated many difficult Army courses, PCSed to three different duty stations, and survived a deployment all in the past four years.

Congratulations Captain Darville! We cannot wait to see what adventures the Lord has in store for the rest of your Army career!

Michael - One year old!

Sweet boy I cannot believe you are one year old already. I think a deployment, move and many travels made this year fly even faster than average.  We celebrated your first birthday (in Texas) with a lot of friends and family who dearly love you and a great John Deere tractor party.  I think you begged everyone who held you for snacks and food, and pretty much ate your entire party, true Michael fashion. 

My sweet baby you are adorable, the cutest blonde hair blue eyed little boy around. To say you love your daddy would be an under statement, you adore him, like eyes light up, biggest smile, hands out for him to hold you, every time he walks into any room kind of love. However, mommy still suffices if daddy isn't around, I know you love me too, daddy is just first preference as of right now. Hungry is another great description of you right now (probably forevermore too), you can never get enough to eat, in fact most of the time we just stop feeding you after you've consumed a grown man-sized meal. You'd prefer meat, cheese, soups or any real meal that we put effort into. However, with that said you weighed a whopping 17lbs 10oz on your first birthday (below 0 percentile), which is beyond tiny. You were also 29in tall at your first birthday, which is the 29th percentile for your age. Christmas Day you also finally decided to pop through two more teeth, which led you to a grand total of (barely) 4 teeth on your first birthday. Besides tiny, hungry and adorable I'd also describe you as sensitive. You get your feelings hurt a lot, older brother is never gentle enough, and life in general is just a little scary and dramatic (especially if anyone besides mom and dad try to comfort you). You can also make some pretty pitiful faces, which daddy says comes from me.  We love you just the way you are though and wouldn't change your sweet, loving sensitive personality.  Speaking of older brother, you also adore Matthew, he can make you smile, laugh, chase you, play with you, even offers you extra food when he's not supposed to; you follow him around wherever you can. Walking is not really on your agenda yet, but you're a super crawler (and pull up on everything) so it doesn't bother you one bit. Michael Parker we adore you and can't imagine our crazy family without your loving sensitive tiny active little self. Your huge cheesy smile can brighten everyone's day! Happy first birthday! 

New Year and new goals!

This post really isn't about the new year, or any huge New Years resolution. I hate the fact that I've let this blog go, and I'm not keeping up with all our families latest happenings - so I'm going to try a new approach. Really, for us as a family more than anything, to look back on and have documentation of pictures and stories. Things we've done as a family, cute stories or facts about the boys, etc. Anyways, here's my start! These will hopefully be short and sweet since long blogpost with tons of pictures just weren't working with my time "off." 

Christmas 2014. We spent it in Texas with family. We were in the middle of a big move. The boys loved seeing and playing with grandparents! Shane and I were overwhelmed with hotels, new houses, old houses, packing, traveling, and cranky little confused boys. I was 15 weeks pregnant with our third sweet baby, and still nauseas and sick at times. We bought our first vehical together, a very practical Honda Odyssey minivan. When we were at my parents we relaxed, ate, enjoyed the farm, watched tv, and some of the men spent time building a huge treehouse out in the woods. Matthew particularly loved talking about (his version of) the Christmas story, which included baby Jesus, pokey the dokey, sheep that went baaa, and a big star! When we were visiting Shane's family in Odessa there was a severe ice storm, which kept us inside unable to leave the house most of the time. The boys were very sick and pathetic, but when we were able to drive we finally found out they hand bronchitis, and upper respiratory infections. We still enjoyed quality time with family, a lot of great food, and fires.

Third Anniversary

Today we are celebrating our third wedding anniversary, albeit on different continents. Each year I try to do a brief summary of the year highlighting new, fun and interesting things that have happened. Although this year I'm not even sure where to start!  The third year in our marriage has brought so many new and challenging things into our lives, it has definitely been the hardest, but also the best year yet.  Here is a little summary: We made our third move into a new house in Kansas, welcomed our second little boy into the world, enjoyed several cross country family trips to Texas, St. Louis, and Colorado, learned (and are still learning) to parent a toddler, faced six (+) months of separation and our first deployment, Shane has become an excellent XO for a new company, Whitney has learned to balance life with two babies, and together we have shared many tears, late nights, Skype calls, cooking adventures, laughs, and date nights. I'd like to say our love is "God Strong" and extends all the way to Africa and back! God has been so gracious in providing strength, understanding, safety, and patience for each of us as we conquered this past year together.  We know God has great things in store for the future of our marriage, and we are thankful for the abundant blessings He has provided during these past three (jam packed!) years.

Deployment Month Four

This was another busy month while Shane was away. We spent the majority of it in Texas with my family. From visits to the fire station with Uncle Joe, to plenty of play time with cousins at Aunt Kristin's house, and even more time on the farm with Grammy and Pawpaw, we even snuck in a quick visit with Poppa while he was in Houston. I am so thankful we were able to be in Texas for some great weather, and to celebrate my birthday and Mother's Day with my family. Though we would never choose for him to be gone this long, it has provided us with a great opportunity to visit family, when we otherwise wouldn't. I feel like I may have gotten the hang of "moming" two sweet boys under 2, while my wonderful husband is deployed. After all, I did conquer that dreaded 13 hour drive (in one day!) from Texas to Kansas alone with those two aforementioned sweet boys of mine, though hard, it made me feel just a little bit accomplished!