Ok...it has been forever it seems like since I have paid attention to our site. This has been a hard couple of months with lots of ups and downs. In this picture Jesse looks just a little silly but there are many reasons for that. One Jesse actually got to come home on leave. We did not know it until the last minute and he was afraid it would still be taken away cause you really can't count on the army to make plans that stick; therefore, he did not want to tell anyone. As hard as it was to keep it a secret I managed. It helped that I told Bennett cause then if nothing else he could endure the torture of not telling anyone either. Anyway he came home on the Saturday before his family had a big birthday party for Sandy, Katie Booth and Pa Robert on Sunday. So I hid him until Sunday and surprised his family. It was awesome. We had planned to shock my parents at work on monday but one of the other guys let the cat out of the bag so we simi-shocked them at church. It was still great. He has gotten a return date of around Dec 14. So please keep him in your prayers as he gets through the next 5 weeks. 2nd reason for his silliness is that we were at the 1st st. louis cardinals playoff game vs. the astros. We were 6 rows from the field and in a great place. Lastly, he is just so excited to be home and enjoying the night. God is Good!!!!

I also want to thank everyone that has prayed for us (and still is), sent us words of encouragement, and any other gesture of love no matter how big or small! Everyone has been so wonderful. I have never been good at asking for help and it takes alot for me to even admit I need any help but many many of you have jumped in and been there for me whenever I have needed it. I am so independent (almost to a fault) that it has made functioning easy but many other aspects of my life hard. Through out the last 10 almost 11 years of my life God has taught me to turn my worries over to Him and to try not to be such a control freak. My first big lesson in this was the first 4 months of Sandy's life. At this point I had to realize that God had given me a wonderful and beautiful baby that had to have some pretty serious surgery. I remember feeling so out of control and wondering why did I bother trying so hard to be good, respectful, and blah blah blah when I had to endure such grief. Then I realized that one it did no good to worry over it and two God had blessed me with 5 months and I had no choice over the rest. I finally could live with whatever the outcome was and be satified and joyful to have what I have. Thankfully we just celebrated 7 years with that beautiful crazy girl. And then at this time last year I was learning to be a single mom who could not make major decisions cause hopefully one day that single part would be gone. I was not sure how I was going to make it through all of this and then again God smacked me in the face again with my control freak nature. I turned off the news (b/c if you don't know they either lie or don't tell the whole story), I threw myself into my many projects that I have all around me and pretended he was at Grocer's Pride cutting meat. However, as I look back right now as we near the end I also remember the many many nights that I lifted him up to my Lord and Savior and took comfort in the fact that God was in complete control and was very thankful that I was not. Hopefully once Jes gets home I can get him to relay the many amazing stories he has to the few people who take time out to come here. Have a blessed and joyful day and remember to stop being a control freak and worrying about the things you have no control over!!!!