The Avery Family

A couple of my friends don’t have a facebook account so I wanted to post the pictures of our most recent Military Ball. We had a great time!! We are so blessed to have some great friends at this post.

Military Ball

Every since Allen came home we have been discussing the fact that we both would like another dog. As many of you know Allen and I are dog lovers and Sarah is as well. We figured Chloe was old enough and needed a playmate. I have been looking craigslist and petfinder for over a month. We found a bunch of maybe dogs but that all changed when I saw Lucy. We were at Great Wolf Lodge and everyone was asleep so decided to catch up on petfinder. There were a couple of new dogs but then I across Lucy’s picture and story and something about it just made me want her more. I sent Ms. Elise and email that night and by noon the next day I had heard back from her and we set up a time to meet sweet Lucy. She was beng fostered at Tails R Waggin in Olathe, KS. Ms. Elise keeps a couple of their fosters there. Her organizaton is called C and E Aussie Rescue. Anyway we meet up with Lucy and feel in love with her. She is such a sweet little lady. She is one year old and believed to be Pug and Terrier mixed. She is a beautiful brindle, and full of energy. She is also already spayed and house trained too!! Today we took her to the dog park on post and her and Chloe were running around having a great time.

Chloe is getting use to her but they still have some things to work out. After all Chloe has been an only doggie for over a year. We look forward to watching them both grow to love eachother and be battle buddies.

If you have any idea as to what she is mixed with let us know….. you can tell she has pug by her face and the beautiful underbite. I can’t figure out what else she is mixed with or where she got the brindle color.

Decorating the Tree

Today we decorated our beautiful Christmas tree. I was trying to find a tree farm as I love the concept of those however the only local one decided late in the Summer to sell their farm. So where did we end up? Good ol’ Home Depot. They actually had a large selection and the prices were wonderful. We got a beautiful Douglas Fur (my favorite). It was so nice to have Allen home so he was able to put it up and help with the decorations. Him and Sarah had a great time decorating the tree and singing goofy Christmas songs. I am so blessed this year to have my wonderful husband home. Click on the picture above to see more pictures!!

Allen has been home for three weeks today. It has been so great to have him home as you can imagine. The couple of days before daddy came home Sarah and I made a paper chain link and each morning Sarah would cut one off. I was so amazed that she understood the concept of the chain links. When the day finally arrived we were thrilled.
While waiting the long two hours for them to come out Sarah got to run around with some friends and burn some much needed energy. When daddy finally came out Sarah was screaming and I was crying and it was perfect. After pushing through the crowd we finally reached daddy. Sarah was very quiet but daddy knew that wasn’t his princess (LOL) so he picked her up and started to talk to her and after about twenty minutes of him carrying her and her not responding she finally started to chat his ear off.
We have got back into the swing of things and enjoyed our first visitor (Allen’s brother Caleb). Things are going great and it is amazing to have our little family back together again!
Thank you all for all your prayers during this year long deployment. I don’t think I could have done so without your prayers and support.

As many of you know I recently signed up for a photography class. It meets every Thursday and we have a field trip on Saturday. This Saturday was our first field trip. We got to play around with AV and TV mode. I learned I enjoy the AV mode most as the F-Stop is easier to control then the shutter speed. I found out while adjusting my shutter speed that my pictures were to dark and hard to make out. I am very new at this so hopefully you will see my pictures go from decent to professional quailty (one can dream). My long term goal is to have my photos turn out like my professor Scott Bean. He takes amazing pictures but you don’t need me to tell you that check them out for yourself on his website. He is such an amazing teacher.

We meet up at Tuttle Creek Lake which I had no idea it existed. There were still many wildflowers in bloom including the beautiful goldenrods, bonsets, and lots of sunflowers. I was able to capture what I think were some decent shots. Below are a couple of my favorites. I enjoyed shotting the grasshopper and he was very patient with me. I hope you enjoy!!

Grasshopper (He was very patient with me)

Sunflower (Kansas State Flower)

Bonset (Kansas Wildflower)

Almost a year after being on the waiting list we were able to get Sarah into preschool this year. She goes to one of the Child Development Centers on post here at Fort Riley. We were lucky enough to get her into Warrent East and have Ms. Sharron as her teacher. We have heard so may good things about Ms. Sharron so we are really excited. The preschool program is three days a week eight until eleven.

When they first come into the class they are to wash their hands and then practice name writing. I was proud of her for trying her name even though I know she struggles with it. At the end of each week they are able to borrow a book from the classroom library. This week we took home Time for Bed. She is so excited for her daddy to get home so she can show him her school. I am so proud of my little princess and I know her daddy is too. She really seemed to enjoy her first week at school. I sure pray she keeps this love for school.

We made sure to eat a nice healthy breakfast before our first day of school

Here she is all ready for her first day of preschool

Washing her hands before School starts

She did a good job writing her name

Still writing with her left hand

Waiting for her teacher

Sarah and Ms. Sharron

A special present from Daddy for being such a good girl at preschool

Lately Sarah and I have been very bored. This is mostly due to the horrible heat wave we are going through. I must say I knew it would be hot in Kansas but I did not expect such high temps for such a long period of time.

This summer has kept us very busy. Sarah has been attending a summer camp on post. She is also signed up for tumbling and ballet however I don’t always get to take her as I forget sometimes and other times well you know how it goes.

Sarah has really grown leaps and bounds over the past couple of months. She talks so much and I love to hear what she is going to say. She makes me smile daily but also gives me trouble daily. She isn’t a trouble maker but she is defiently a strong willed child. I have finally figured out that the easiest way to get her to clean up her toys is to race her. Of course she thinks she always wins just like her daddy.

Speaking of Daddy he is doing well and we look forward to him coming home soon. Sarah is really starting to get the itches like the rest of us around here. She asks me on a daily basis when is daddy coming home. She also says when daddy gets home he is going to say, “Where is my little bear?” because she has grown so much.

Sarah has been doing a good job of keeping me on the straight path. We look forward to the day when we are all back together. Below are a couple of shots I took of Sarah today. Since it is still soooooo hot outside I decided to let her finger paint. I am still trying to decide if that was a good idea or not. I guess all that matters is she had fun and it kept her busy for twenty mins. Yes my friends TWENTY mins.

My daughter is an artist. Today she wanted to paint again (no surprise here). I came in to see what she was painting thinking I would see blobs of paint everywhere but much to my surprise I saw a painting of a flower. Amazing that at three-years-old my painting princess was able to create something so beautiful.

Bidding starts tomorrow at noon! Blessings

Lately everytime we see a man in an army uniform Sarah will look at me and say, “Mama daddy is at work?”. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t mention her daddy. My favorite is everytime we got out to eat she will save something and say,”Mama this is daddys!”. Little does daddy know he has a lot of yummy old food to eat when he comes home. We miss Daddy without a doubt and can’t wait to be his arms ago. Until then we will continue to save some of our food.

About a week ago Sarah made some sugar cookies for her daddy and I took one and placed it in the freezer. I emailed Allen and I told him when he got the package to give us a call so him and sarah could eat the cookies she made for him. So when he called me I couldn’t wait to see her face. She was laughing and enjoying the cookies with her daddy. It was so special to see that smile on both of their faces. I tried to get some good pictures and hopefully you can see Allen in the laptop screen. We also got Allen’s package in the mail that same day so he got to see Sarah opened. It was packed full of Beanie Babies and she loves them all. Her favorite is the dog, butterfly and blue bear.

We are so blessed that times allow us to do things like this. I couldn’t imagine being in a military spouse during the war’s my grandad fought. Those are some true american heroes!