God is Good
June 27, 2006 8:23 AM

All of the prayers have been answered. I spoke with a pilot yesterday who is willing to fly us to Illinois and back. He owns a smaller aircraft, so we better pack light. We will take what we have to for Juliana and for the rest of us I guess we will be doing laundry a lot.

Juliana is certainly testing her mommy these days. We have lost one of her hearing aides. She had to take it off at Toys R Us to try on a Dora hat. Usually she drops it into my bag in the cart, but I guess she was too excited about the hat. So that left us with one hearing aide, but that one had gone missing for a couple of days too! Three year old attitudes are bad enough, but a three year old who can not hear is even worse.

There really is not a whole lot going on in our day to day lives right now. The girls have been playing outside a lot (when it is not raining). Juliana is still in speech therapy two times per week. Since Kendra’s sports have all ended we get to spend a little more time at home. By the time we get home from Illinois we will only have a couple of weeks before swimming lessons start and then school starts right after swimming is over.

I will update again after we get to Illinois. I am sure there will be plenty of funny Juliana stories to tell.

—Tami

What I Learned This Weekend
June 19, 2006 7:04 AM

Always check the oven for shoes before turning it on!

Juliana has found a new place to put shoes. Nothing is safe from the out of control three year old around this house. Not to worry, I did not turn it on. She showed me that she put them in there. Overall we had a fairly uneventful weekend. Kendra had 2 T-ball games on Saturday and on Sunday we just did some errands. The girls have adjusted well to daddy being gone. We have fallen into a routine and we just keep pushing on day after day. Kendra is in her last week of summer camp. She has done basketball and gymnastics and now karate. She is my little athlete. If it is an activity that she is moving in, she is up for it (unless it is too girly like cheerleading). I am hoping Juliana will enjoy dance and music. There aren’t a whole lot of sports that I am willing to let her play. She certainly has rhythm (more than I do anyway).

There has been some talk on the guestbook about a flight to Illinois. The girls, Jeanne and I are going to be traveling to IL on the 29th of this month to visit family. We are unable to fly because we are not allowed to take oxygen onboard commercial flights and because we travel with a LOT of supplies and equipment. If anybody has access to private airplanes and pilots who would be willing to help please contact me at teeejo -at- yahoo.com. At this point we are planning to drive, but the drive is 18-20 hours. We try to do long drives like this straight through because it is more work to unload all of her equipment and get it set up in a hotel room and then load it back in the car the next morning.

While we are in IL several friends of mine from high school are planning a benefit for Juliana. I am really excited to get to see these people again. Some of them I have not seen in years. I will post the flyer in the News section so anyone in the local area who is interested can get more info. I will also post the air date of the next documentary as soon as I know. Knowing the footage that they got this time it is sure to be as good as the first one.

—Tami

Just the Ladies ...
June 06, 2006 2:58 PM

I know everyone is eagerly awaiting lots of updates now that we have this new beautiful site. Well Daddy has made his way off for his six month deployment and now it is just us girls at home. Kendra had a tough time with it this morning when she woke up. Thom had to be at the base at 6 this morning and we did not want to wake the girls up that early. So we left them sleeping with Jeanne watching them and I took Thom to the base. Juliana still doesn’t understand what is going on. She just thinks that Daddy is at work and will be home this evening. Just in the past couple of weeks she has began asking for him when he is not home so this makes all of this even harder on me now. We have a webcam here at home and another with him so that we can all see each other often.

On to stories now of the out of control 3 year old. She has newly discovered the alarm button in the elevator at speech therapy. It is very difficult to get off of the elevator and pretend like I did not hear the alarm sounding. She also loves to chase Kendra around the backyard with her plastic baseball bat. She does this new thing now when she laughs too. She shakes her whole body up and down when she laughs. She is quite a comedian!

Only 2 months until school starts, but who is counting? I just can not believe that my babies are starting Kindergarten and Preschool. They have both grown up so fast and each day they are doing so many new and exciting things. Juliana is becoming so independent. She is trying to dress herself now. But I better have the shoes laid out that she wants, or it is complete DRAMA in our house.

—Tami