It's been a while...

I'm so sorry that I haven't updated in over a month. Things have been crazy yet again! First of all we had an amazing time with our families! It was so hard to come back here to Turkey after all of the fun we had. We had a crazy 30 hours of traveling and so serious jet lag. I wasn't able to sleep at all until the last flight which was only about an hour long flight. Steve was able to sleep in cat like increments so we were exhausted to say the least. We were so tired that when we got to Istanbul we had to collect our bags and check in, because we had to change airlines, that when we got our bags we forgot our carseat and booster seat. I remembered about 20 minutes before our flight started boarding. Steven thought about running over there to get it, but he was wearing brand new boots that probably would have really started hurting, we were in the doemstic terminal and it was in the international terminal, he would have to have gone to the check-in desks and asked to get it instead of just going to baggage claim, and he would have had to go through at least one security check point. I didn't want to risk him not making it back on time or us missing our flight. It wasn't really that big of a deal to just leave it there, we just bought Lilly a new booster seat and gave Ruby her carseat. We just feel dumb to have left it, but that's what exhaustion will do to you.
It took us a little over a week to get past the jet lag. The girls had it the worst and it made it bad for me. They would fall asleep and I would fall asleep with them. Poor Steven had to go back to work the next morning so he never had a chance to get any extra sleep in. I would have liked to just force myself to stay awake for a day and slept that night, but i was harder to keep the girls awake so they could sleep during the night too. But I'm happy to say that we are now just about back on a schedule!
I was waiting to go Christmas shopping for the girls so that I could go by myself and not have to worry about them seeing. Steven and I had talked about what we wanted to get them so we had a general idea what to look for. We decided to get books, movies, and coloring things. The girls had gotten so many new toys while we were in the states that we really did not want them to have any more. We also asked Sadie and Lilly to show us some of things at the BX that they wanted us o tell Santa about. One day last week I was at the BX with Sadie and Ruby and noticed that a lot of the kids books, not that they had a lot to begin with, were gone. I grabbed a gift bag and ever so discretely started putting some in the bag so that Sadie could not see. It worked pretty well so I was able to get a few more things for her and Lilly without her knowing. We are now done Christmas shopping and now I just need to wrap everything. I am sure that I'll be wrapping everything on Christmas Eve while Steven puts together the big toys, ha! Lately I have been falling asleep so early that I haven't been able to do anything, as soon as the girls are asleep I'm asleep too.
Steven is working today and then has a good few days off for Christmas. We are getting really excited for Christmas. The tree is up and decorated, the house is decorated, the stockings are up, and we've made more cookies than ever and have even more to make. The girls even got to see Santa this past Sunday. We got each of them their own photo with him instead of one photo with all of them in it. The past few days we've been eating cookies, drinking hot chocolate, and watching every Christmas movie we have. It has been nice to just rest and spend some time together. The only thing missing is our families in the states. It's going to be so nice when we live in the states to have family come for holidays.
Oh and the girls keep asking, "When are we going to Memaw/Yiayia's house? We've been here a really long time." They're ready to go back now, but Lilly is very happy to have her things and her house back, but she just wants to take the house back with her next time. We're all ready to back again!
♥K

We're Almost There!

Our house is buzzing with excitement! Our bags are packed the house is 95% cleaned. The only part that is left is things we need for the day. We just need to find something to help the day go by faster. So far we have checked in early, finished cleaning he bathrooms, have every room upstairs done, and the girls cleaned up their toys in the living room. I need to do one more load of dishes and laundry and and I am done! It's been way too long since I've been in the states, one month shy of 5 years. It's crazy that it has been that long and going back seems so surreal.

Steven keeps talking about taking the girls to Walmart. They haven't been to the States ever and they only know a military life. We're sure that they will be looking for uniforms and wondering why we don't need to show our ID's to purchase things. I am looking forward to seeing family and meeting my niece. The girls can't wait to see Sophie and everyone. Sadie has even said she won't be shy, she'll hug everyone, and be good. They are also looking forward to seeing all the pets everyone has.  We truly can't wait! We'll be there soon!

Why did we spend $430 on rugs in two weeks time?

 

 

That's why! 

I'll try to get a video of Ruby cruising around furniture. She really is into everything! We've had to take handles of of drawers in the kitchen because she's take all of the Ziploc bags out of the box and scatter them all over the house. When she is in our bedroom we have to shut the door because if you look away for a second she'll be down the hall in the big girls' bedroom, their bathroom, or the playroom.  It's nuts how far she has come so fast. She definitely keeps us on our toes. If she could speak in sentences she would probably tell you how excited she is to tear up everyone's houses when we come visit next month!

-K

Welcome to Turkey!

Since I recently - and finally - got my gate pass, we have been exploring some off base. We drove around a little and I took some photos. We've driven around the base and some off. There are some outdoor markets, like the ones in England except much cheaper, we've been to two so far and got lots of fruit so very little. At the Thursday market we were able to try some pomegranates that were so good. Now Sadie will talk your ear off when she is someplace new, asking question after question. This day was no different. She tried to pomegranate and stopped talking until her whole piece was gone. We got a kilo(about 2.2 lbs.) of them for 2 Lira ($1.42). They are so good. I know we'll miss the produce when we leave here. Here are some of the photos I took starting with one our house.

We really like our house. The only thing missing is a barn star above the front door.

This is the Alley right outside the gate. There are a bunch of stores and restaurants.

Some Turkish houses.

This is in front of the Turkish Commissary.

There are so many different types of flowers here and they are all beautiful.

-K

November Can't Come Fast Enough!

We finally have dates on getting back to the states. We should be there November 6th through December 6th! We are all SO excited. We can't wait to see our families again it just has been too long. The girls have been planning all the gifts that they want to bring everyone. Steven and I are planning to mail out a big box to my parents and his about a week before we leave so that we don't have to carry so much on the plane. I felt so bad for poor Steven when we moved here. I had all of the kiddos with me and he had to pretty much drag 5 large suitcases and 2 car seats around until we checked them for our flight. This time we are hoping to only check 1 suitcase and each of us, including Lilly and Sadie, carry a backpack with a set of clothes and things for the plane. Hopefully we get everything figured out soon.
Now that I have a gate pass and we have one for the car, we have been trying to get off base and explore a little of the area. Last weekend we had a power outage on base so we thought we would go to the Sunday market in Incirlik Village. It was mostly produce and some household things. We got some more bananas because Ruby is a banana monster! She seriously at 4 bananas by herself one day. As we were walking around a little Turkish boy started following Steven around. It made us really uncomfortable especially since the girls were with us. We are very protective of them so we figured we would leave since it was that big of a market and we wanted to get the girls away from them. As we were walking more boys joined in. Once we go to the car we put the girls in as fast as we could and Steven got the strollers in. Steven went to go get in the car and they wouldn't let him shut the door. They wanted money and kept saying they helped us, but they really didn't. Steven was getting really upset and the one boy say 1 lira (Lira is Turkish money, $1 is about 1.41TL). Steven asked if I had one so I pulled one out of my wallet and it got fumbled out of the car and into the street. He went for the money and walked away. We shut and locked the door and we aren't going back to that market again.
Steven wanted to explore so he followed a Ford Expedition because they were American and wanted to see where it went. Bad idea. They went a lot faster than us and we ended up on a highway not knowing how were going to get home. All the signs were in Turkish so I was panicking a little bit. We were finally able to turn around and retrace our path and made it home. Sadie and Ruby slept the whole time and I think Lilly was a little nervous too because we kept asking "Can we go home now?"
We made it back to base and ended up buying two more rugs for the house. Which brings our total up to 5 rugs, $430 in one month. Our whole house is tile and Ruby is now crawling, scooting, and pulling up/cruising around furniture. The rugs definitely were a necessity. The poor thing has fallen and hit her head enough. It's been interesting baby  proofing this house. Ruby became completely mobile in less than a week, so we have not had enough time to think ahead. She really is a menace. She loves to play in the girls play area in the living room and especially loves to play with their blocks. Every time she goes back there she pulls the basket of blocks off the shelf even if the girls had just cleaned them up and put them away. Lilly is beyond frustrated with that. Ruby also likes to open the drawers in the kitchen and makes it really hard for me to clean.
Lilly is doing great at school and we are even going on a shopping trip with her teacher this weekend. We live in the city of Adana and she is going to take us into Old Adana to show us where to park and the stores there. We are really intimidated about being off base because of the language barrier. We have been trying to get learn a few words and I have downloaded some applications about the Turkish language. We hope to find some great things for our house and gifts to bring home. I can't even tell you how excited we are to bring things home for everyone. Everything is so colorful here compared to England.
This month seems to be flying by. We have so many things we are doing plus trying to everything squared away to go home. The only downside to the next couple of months flying by is that when we get home Ruby and Sadie will being having birthdays. I don't think I am ready for them to be 3 and 1. I am already having a hard time with Lilly being 4 and in school. Steven loves to point out that when we move Ruby will be the same age Sadie was when we left England. He can't wait for them to get bigger and I am dreading it. But we will be happy to celebrate their birthdays a little early with family. Next month is going to be great!
♥K

What were up to now....

Playground after school.

Lilly has been enjoying school a lot more. She has been excited to go and enjoying her day. Her only issue now is that she doesn't want Sadie to do anything fun while she is at school. She doesn't understand is that she gets to do fun things at school and Sadie has fun things of her own to do like play group, story time, and running errands with me. She never wants to miss anything ever. We are dealing with it day by day. Some days are definitely better than others and most of them are fueled by tiredness. Unfortunately the past few school days have been very busy for us. We have been running around from the time we drop Lilly off to when we pick her up and sometimes even after we pick her up. Hopefully once all the errands stop we will have a day or two a week that we can be at home while Lilly is in school and get some stuff done around the house and the girls can get a good nap in.  We have been able to let Lilly ride her bike to school, we chain it up, and then she rides it home.
After school we have been stopping at playgrounds before we come home. Sadie and I will pick out some snacks and fill up our water bottles and we have a snack with Lilly and Ruby, and then run around the playground. Today we didn't make it to the playground because it was 109 when we picked Lilly up. Sadie turns so red and gets so sweaty being outside and today was a bad one. Her hands were so sweaty she couldn't hold my hand because hers kept sliding out of mine. Some days when we get home I put all 3 of them in the bath tub to cool off. We have a pretty good routine going and they have been really good when it's time to go to bed. Things can get a little rough when Steven is working and I am trying to make dinner, but we manage. I was also able to find dryer erase/magnet chore charts for the girls and one of their "chores" is to behave so they have been really trying to get their stars.

Her face was the color of her shirt when we got home.

The charts have been great. They really try to earn their stars. If they get 28 stars they can get a book, for 56 stars it's a movie(buy one or go to the movies), and 112 they can get a toy. In a couple of weeks after they get used to the chores I will most likely change the number of stars and rewards.
At school today they had a dentist come in to check all the kids teeth. We already saw the dentist a few weeks ago and he said Lilly has a cavity in one of her molars. The dentist today said he/she(don't know who came to the school)saw nothing and that Lilly has "great oral hygiene". Now I am mad, I don't know who is right, they didn't take x-rays so we'll have to wait. Her Turkish appointment is on Friday so I guess we'll see then. I'll let you know when I know. I just know I am going to be really pissed off if she doesn't have a cavity. Not that I want her to have one, but I don't want her to go all the way to another dentist just to find out the base dentist was wrong.

She woke up wondering where we were.

Ruby is doing good. We are still waiting for her new reflux medicine. She takes Zantac twice a day but she still screams in pain and her face turns bright red. The pediatrician said that her throat was pretty red and that is a sure sign that her medicine is not cutting it anymore. Hopefully the medicine gets her this week and she starts to feel better. If better news, she now has 4 teeth and 1 more that should cut soon. She is still not crawling but she can move herself around pretty well. She rolls, scoots, or does what Steven calls a "gorilla walk". She says bunch of words now, but doesn't like to say them on queue. She has been sleeping in her room for a few weeks now and has been sleeping through the night pretty much every night. I usually have to wake her in the morning. And she has inherited sleep talking from her daddy. She has successfully woken me up in the mornings because I can hear saying actual words. I go in there and she is still sleeping. Lucky me!

She found a dog and played with it instead of running around.

WE NOW HAVE ALL OF OUR PASSPORTS!!!!! Steven is going down this week to start the whole process. We don't have dates or whether we will fly on the rotator or commercially. We are hoping to be in US for the whole month of November. The first 2 weeks in Pennsylvania and the last 2 in Texas. We are all dying to just get on a plane and go already. Sadie nearly asks every day. We'll be there soon though!!!! You'll know when we know because we'll be shouting it from the roof tops! It's going to be a long time coming though!
-K

Lilly's First Day of Pre-K

Lilly started her first day of pre-K yesterday. She had a pretty rough day. She was so excited to go. In true Lilly fashion she didn't she couldn't go to sleep the night before because she was afraid that she was going to miss something. We let Sadie stay up a little later because she had taken a nap and we wanted to let Lilly fall asleep without Sadie bothering her. She has also been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and tries to get into bed with me; sometimes I will wake up when she does and I'll hug her and tell her to get back into her bed, other times I sleep straight through it and she manages to go back to sleep in our bed. That is exactly what she managed to do the night before so when my alarm went off in the morning she sat straight up and asked, "Is it time to go to school?" She jumped out of bed, ran to her room and turned on the light. All of which woke Sadie up and she can be such a monster when you wake her up.  And Lilly has a very sensitive gag reflux. Steven brushed her teeth and accidentally made her throw up. He barely touched the tooth brush to her teeth and she threw up again. I finally managed to get her teeth brushed. On her way out the door I told her to remember to "Be nice" and Ruby repeated it perfectly. She yelled "Be nice" and giggled.

Daddy walked her to school by himself, because I had  yet another monster migraine. I was a little sad but I got to pick her up from school and and it wasn't her first time going to school. After school we met Daddy at the BX and had ice cream cones while she told us about her day. She wasn't her normal happy self when I got her from school so we tried to find out what was wrong. She told us she never wanted to go to school again. She kept saying she wanted to bring the class hamster home and she didn't. I also think that they don't do things like we do at home. All of the girls are pretty specific in how things need to be done or where things go. They even tried to help Steven when he switched to day shift how they get ready for bed. She kept telling me they made her do this and that and I am assuming that things didn't flow the way she is used to or how it is comfortable for her. All in all we think she had a good day. She had both good and bad things to say, she  just needs to get used to the new environment.

She did like her lunch. The school provides the lunch and snacks. They eat lunch in their classroom and it is self serve. They get to put the food on their own plates and they have to at least try a little bit of everything. Lilly has no problem with at least trying things and 9 times out of 10, she usually likes it. They had turkey, stuffing, carrots, tangerines, potatoes, rolls, and milk. She said it was all really good. Hopefully she gets used to her new schedule sooner rather than later because she was so excited to start school again. I am sure she will like it more and more as the days go on.