We're BAAAAAAAACK :-)

WOOHOO! It only took me about 9 months to figure out how to get back into our blog! Having a baby really does make you brain-dead!

Soooo... to catch everyone up on where we are....

Emma turned 8 months old on December 26th :-O I can't believe my baby is almost 3/4 of a year old! Where has the time gone?! She is growing up so quickly, but we only seem to love her more the older she gets! Just when it doesn't seem possible to love someone any more, then you do! She is a hoot too. Constantly making us laugh. She has personality AND looks... what a combo! Right now she likes to clap her hands to the music that her toys make (mommy taught her that) and she gives kisses (mommy taught her that too!) She still is not crawling, although she usually can manage to get somewhere if she wants to badly enough. We think she may skip the whole crawling thing though and just start walking. She has been standing (holding her own body weight) since she was about 2 months old, with just the aid of our fingers. Then a couple of months after that she started pulling herself to a stand-up position by herself, and now she constantly wants to be standing up and wants to hold on to our fingers and have us walk around the room behind her! She's going to be cruising the house before we know it!

In addition to Classic, I am now a small business owner (very small!) as well! My mom and I have started our own company called "Amazing Grace Designs" (Emma's middle name is Grace). Right now it's basically an internet company. Our web address is http://www.amazing-grace-designs.com/. We are selling embroidered specialty and children's items as well as handbags, hairbows, etc. We are still in the process of determining our final product list, so the website doesn't have all of our products yet. It has been a very time consuming (not to mention expensive!) process getting the business and the website up and running, but hopefully it will be worth it when all is said and done. Please pass the web address on to anyone that you think might be interested. Also, if you are looking for something specific to be embroidered or monogrammed, please email us and ask (you can email us from the website). There is a good chance we can find what you're looking for. Also, if you have any suggestions on website changes, products we should offer, etc. please let us know! We want lots of feedback!

Here's something that most of you don't know yet. Chad found out this past weekend that he is definitely going to Arizona for 6 weeks for additional flight training. To make a long story short, the Apache he was trained to fly at Ft. Rucker is a more advanced version, which his unit in Columbia was supposed to be getting early this year (all they have now are the old versions.) Well, they found out that they're not not getting them until the end of the year at the earliest (gee, the army not knowing what they're doing/talking about.... what a shocker!) It's already been since like July since Chad (and several others) have flown, so now they have to go to Arizona to learn how to fly the old Apache model, which his unit has. OK, so that wasn't completely a short version, but shorter than if Chad explained it! So, it looks like he will be leaving on Feb. 18th and coming back home on March 29th. Honestly, 6 weeks is not that bad for Chad and I (sadly, we're used to it by now), but now that Emma is here it is going to be a lot harder on all of us. We've decided that Emma and I will try to go to Arizona for a long weekend in the middle of the 6 weeks so that we can see daddy!

I fully intend on trying to post on a more general basis now than I used to, but we'll see how that goes.... keep checking back to see if i'm able to stick to that one!