My hubby....the "techno nerd"

I call Kris a "techno nerd" in a completely loving way. Just so you all know. ;)

My dear husband is currently camped out in front of the Apple Store in Omaha with about 30 some other people (as of about 10am) waiting for the ever-so-exciting new iphone. I honestly don't totally get the excitement. My phone works great. I love my phone. It's pink. I'm pretty sure it will last for a long time. I don't really want a new phone.

Kris and several of his "techno nerd" friends, also have a great phone right now....BUT, as I've been told, it's NOT the iphone! The iphone does sound like a pretty cool phone, I must admit. Cool enough to stand in line for a million hours for? I'm not sure. :)

Kris has been enjoying getting to know his next door line neighbors and in about 5 1/2 hours he should have his little paws on a brand new shiny iphone. He's been talking to his friend Pat on the radio. Embrasing his nerd-ness, as I like to call it. If you live in Omaha, maybe you heard it.

Good luck Kris. Come home to us soon! We miss you! LOL!!!!!!

My baby girl turned 4!

How does that happen? I try to rejoice and be thankful for what wonderful, unique children my little ones are becoming, but a little part of me wants to cry every time we hit another year older at each birthday. No matter how many times I tell them to stop growing, it never seems to stop them. :(

My sweet little Mia is now 4. We had a fun day celebrating as a family. She was pretty convinced she was going to have a ballerina party. We did our best and got as much pink/princessy type stuff from Walmart as we could. We had a family party and ate ice cream cake. Yum!

Kris and I have this crazy thing we started for birthdays. We always decorate the hallway in some crazy way, so when the birthday kid wakes up, there is something special to greet them in the morning. This year we covered the hall with confetti and made a trail of pirate coins that led to Mia's present. She got her very own roller coaster from Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa from Chicago, so that was definitely a hit. She's been riding it a lot and of course has figured out how to go down it backwards and sitting sideways. Of course Mia CAN'T just use it the normal way. :)

I honestly can't remember her coming home from the hospital and weighing less than 5 pounds. I DO remember those nights sitting with her in the NICU and praying that she would be OK and wishing that I could take her out of her plastic "box" and hold her. Now she is such a funny, strong, entertaining little girl and it's hard to believe she was so fragile at one time.

Happy Birthday Mia!!! Thanks for making us smile every day! We love you!

I wanted to share some more pictures from World Refugee Day. I have a few more posts I would like to share about the day, but here are some of my favorites. :)

10 great years

Today is our 10 year anniversary! Crazy! It feels like there is NO WAY that it could possibly have been that long and it also feels like SO much has happened in 10 years. I was harrassing Kris that is took him THIS long to finally get a job. :) He reminded me that he hasn't actually started work yet. ;)



We spent the day unpacking (shocking, aye?) and we went for dinner tonight with the four kids. Not terrible romantic, but that's how it goes when you've only been in your new town for a week and you don't know any babysitters. I'm happy we can at least take all four little yahoo's out to a pretty nice restaurant and still enjoy our meal. Not bad.



10 years, 4 kids, and 3 cities later (plus a lot of school/training mixed in between).... here we are and we're still happy and so thankful to be together. Happy anniversary Kris! I love you!!!

World Refugee Day In Omaha

Saturday morning we (Katryna, Sofia, Mia and I) made the trek back to Omaha to celebrate World Refugee Day with the Nart family and to accept the Friend of a Refugee award from Lutheran Refugee services. What a fun day!

Mia and I had already been given traditional Karin outfits from our Burmese friends, but I was able to purchase a dress for Katryna and Sofia there and they looked SO cute in them, especially when they were running around with their Karin friends. It was so wonderful to see the family our church sponsored and also to see how many Karin people have already relocated to Omaha. There were over 100 there! WOW!

The day was filled with booths, dancing, fashion shows, great food, and face painting. The Karin also did a traditional bamboo dance that was incredible and I will post some pictures in a seperate post so you can see them. I will also post about the award later.

I was especially happy to see Grandma Nart this day. She isn't always around anymore, because she lives in the apartments with her son most of the time. I just love her! You can see in her eyes that she has been through SO much and she is such a strong woman with such a gentle heart! I wish so much I could sit down and speak with her, but I probably won't be able to until we meet in heaven. I don't think she'll be learning english anytime soon. ;)

More to come....

A meat and cheese tray and moving in

Thursday we didn't really have much to do because our stuff wasn't coming on the moving truck until Friday morning. So we spent the day checking out the backyard and the sand box (which the girls were THRILLED had been left behind) and we went to the water park in the afternoon for awhile.

Our next door neighbor brought us a meat and cheese tray Thursday morning, which seemed to last forever. We ate for 2 days straight from that wonderful tray and there was still some left for Kris when he arrived Friday night. Thanks new neighbors! :)

Friday morning, the truck was there bright and early and we fortunately had some very friendly movers (college aged guys and their boss) who seemed to actually enjoy the little people who were constantly following them around and trying to "help". Mia had several rides on the wheely thing they use to move the boxes out of the truck. They also enjoyed dancing on the flattened cardboard boxes in the front lawn. Good times.

It's 5 am...

and we're on the road to Hastings.

After a great night of hanging out with friends, we were on the road early in the morning to make the trek to Hastings. If you can picture the car filled with Roberta, 4 kids, 3 dogs and 2 suitcases....it was quite a sight! ;)

We had to be there so early because the lovely people from Nebraska Furniture Mart where delivering some of our new furniture between 7 and 9 am. They got there about 7:20 am, so I'm glad I was there.

Besides the fact that they brought the wrong color couches (black, when we ordered brown) and 2 of the things need to be sent back because they were scratched...it was a successful morning. It was wierd to be in a house that was unfamiliar, with new furniture that was also unfamiliar. Definitely felt like we were staying in someone else's house!

The kids had a ball running around in our empty house before the furniture came and our realtor had left juice boxes, bubbles, and a tray of cookies for us on the counter. Good lady! :)

Saying good-bye

I'm going to be doing some mini-posts about the past several days so I can share pictures (I can only post 5 pics per post)and clue you all in to how we're doing. It has been an emotionally exhausting week, but we're doing pretty good here in Hastings and every day it feels a little bit more like home.

So anyways, here goes....

Last Tuesday night, my wonderful friends in Omaha had a going away party and it was such a great night. I wish I could have expressed more how much it meant to me, but I get so darn choked up when it's time to say goodbye. :(

We met at my friend Amy's house and everyone brought the YUMMY-EST food and blessed me with very kind words and some wonderful things to remember them all by. We had a great time talking and spending the evening sharing stories and enjoying each other's company. You guys are the best! :)

It has been especially hard to know that I can't just drop by and see any of my friends or get together with everyone at Mom's group on Wednesday. I will be thinking of you guys tomorrow morning when I know you are having tons of fun without me. :(

OK, enough feeling sorry for myself. THANK YOU dear friends for such a great night. It meant the world to me and I love you all!!!!

Home Green Home

I finally have a computer and I only have a short time to post, BUT we are in Hastings and doing pretty good so far. The crazy thing we learned today was that Hastings, NE has been named by Yahoo! as the Greenest City in the United States. We noticed Yahoo! was all over Hastings the past two days and when Kris was checking his email, he saw on Yahoo's front page that Hastings won the Greenest City Challenge.

If you go to Yahoo's front page, you will see all about it. Apparently we were on Good Morning America too. :)

We went to the Yahoo! BBQ tonight and saw Mia's picture on yet another Koolaid days poster. She is the practically the Poster Child for Koolaid days. We introduced ourselves to the Koolaid days event planners and told them that we had just moved here and Mia was the one on all the fliers. It came out that I'm a photographer and they are interested in me doing event photography for this years festival. I'm excited. I've always wanted to do photos for newspapers. Pretty cool.

Ok, I'll post more about our adventures soon! We REALLY miss Omaha still, but I'm sure it will feel more like home here soon.

Opera Singing Mobile Phone Salesman

A lady from Bethany Christian Services posted about this amazing man that was on the TV show Britain's Got Talent. He was a very quiet phone salesman with this hidden talent. I love the skeptical look on the judges faces before he begins singing and then seeing the tears in their eyes at the end. The guy made Simon smile....so you know he's something special! :)

I love seeing people's hidden talents, and WOW does this man have talent!

Adventures in Target

Mia, Bazzy and I made a trip to Target (LOVE Target!) to get a few things and had quite the interesting thing happen. I was glad my sense of humor was in tact, because I may have cried otherwise.

So here's the scene. We're walking down the aisle where the plastic ziploc bags (which I needed) and the air freshener bottles and other cleaning supplies are. I pick out my box of ziploc baggies and Mia sees a can of Oust that is on the floor and she decides she needs to pick it up and put it back on the shelf. What a great kid, right?

The aerosol cans are in neat little rows behind a plastic barrier of some sort and they go WAY back on the shelf. There are probably 5 different kinds on this shelf and many, MANY cans. SO Mia tries to get it back in, but the cans are stuck and won't push back. SO, I decide to help her because we are in a hurry and I push one of the rows of cans back and try to push the can we found on the floor in the front.

As I get the the can finally in it's spot I hear a snap and the plastic barrier in front of ALL the cans pops off and suddenly about 100 cans (no joke, there were a TON) come sliding off the shelves onto me and Mia's feet and then ALL over the floor! As it's happening, and I'm trying desperately to stop the Oust/Lysol avalanche...a nice young mom with four kids in tow sees this happening from across the way, and sees the panicked look on my face. I just kept saying "oh my GOSH!!!" as they kept coming and coming. She and all her kiddos come rushing over and try to help, but all we could do was stare and then laugh. The Target people on the other hand, were not laughing. I told them "I SWEAR I didn't do anything. They just started falling" and the lady and her kids vouched for me and said "we saw the whole thing, they just started coming off the shelves." It was total chaos. The entire aisle was covered with Oust cans.

Oh my gosh! Never a dull moment! ;)

What a Great Week

I don't have much time to write about our amazing week in Florida, but I wanted to share a few beach pictures. We watched the sun set on the beach with Uncle Dan and Aunt Judi two nights in a row and it was amazing. I LOVE the ocean. I wish I lived NEXT to the ocean. Funny how God feels differently right now. Nebraska is definitely a bit of drive to get to the ocean!

I'll post more soon. We had a ton of fun with all of our family, chasing lizards and frogs in Uncle Dan's yard, swimming for MANY hours in the pool, looking for shark teeth at the beach in Venice, and going to Disney to visit "Don-a Duck" (as Bazzy loves to call him!)

We got home last night and in 5 days we begin our big move to Hastings. Crazy!

We're off to the Ocean...

Sebastian, Mia, and I are on our way to Florida for the week! I'll update as soon as we're home, unless I can somehow figure out how to share pictures from Florida. I'm so excited to spend time with so many family members and soak up some sun at the beach! Mia can't wait to play with her cousins and swim, swim, SWIM. Bazzy will probably eat more sand...just like last year. :)

When we return, it's less than a week until our big move! WOW!

We won Best Congregation!

Our church won a "Friend of A Refugee" award! I'm very excited about this because our church went above and beyond with their donations, prayers, and help for the family from Burma that we sponsored. We needed a lot of stuff to get a family of ten settled in to their new life in Omaha, but we actually had more than enough donations and were even able to share some clothes with other Burmese refugees that didn't have sponsors. Westwood is amazing with their giving spirit! :)

Lutheran Refugee Resettlement will be given our "Best Congregation" award on Saturday, June 23 on World Refugee Day. This day is celebrated all over the world and it's a great way to celebrate the new lives these wonderful people have been given.

Go to http://www.worldrefugeeday.us
to learn more.

I am supposed to be getting a flier about the celebration here in Omaha. I will post more when I know! Way to go Westwood! The Nart's have been SO blessed by all you have done!

Pizza chefs

We made "the best pizza in the WHOLE world" tonight. At least that's what Katryna said. Kris wanted to make pizza's with the gang tonight, so they took off for the grocery store and picked out everything we needed. The kids made a pepperoni, black olive, and cheese (of course!) pizza. Kris and I made a BBQ chicken/mushroom pizza, and we also made a very yummy fruit pizza. The kids had a blast and our kitchen is finally clean and back to "normal" an hour after dinner.