Tyler's 3rd Birthday

No Plates, No Household Goods and 2 Hospital Stays

They took over the office chair on more than one occasion -Grandpa did not mind :)

I had really thought I would blog before now. Really.

I mean everything seemed to be going well for an overseas move...

Bathed & chilling in AL with Dad & Grandma

.....that should have aroused suspicion LOL The flight was great and visiting family in Mobile for a couple weeks was fantastic. We almost melted in the heat (yes I appreciate the irony of leaving the Middle East only to arrive in a place with a 100 plus heat index) but other than that it was great. We got to relax, work out, eat, visit, travel....Even the dogs seemed to like their kennel stay.

Then the messages started...

X5?? Ummm opps seems we cannot ship it to New Orleans like we said....you'll have to find your way to St. Louis and pick it up there.....

License plates? What temporary plates? I guess they don't send vehicles with temporary plates from Israel (they do from Germany) but we still supposedly still had 30 days to register....Till we got to Ft Leavenworth and tried to get through the gate...Yup that resulted in a Military Police escort to the MP station to try to sort it out....went through the same thing the next day (both times with kids & dogs in the truck) because someone didn't like the solution from the day before. So now we have to park it and get a rental car till its sorted out with KS Vehicle Registration who, it turns out, have their own problems with overseas vehicles :-P

Household goods from Israel?? Hmmmm seems someone in Israel sat on 4 families shipments for about a month and one of them was, you guessed it, OURS!! You might get it sometime late August....Seriously, how does this happen to a family TWO PCS moves in a row??!?? Two shipments received, 2 more to go......

Arghh!! BUT we got a place on post that we like! It's old housing but we have lots of space, a playground and community pool in our backyard, and lots of mature trees to help shade from this heat. Its also close to everything which is a big plus too.

Hospitals have a way of putting it all in perspective:

The put-it-all-in-perspective moment came in the first week here when we noticed that Alexandra had a big lump on her neck right below her ear. (So all this is overlapping what I wrote above pretty much) I swear to god it just popped up in an afternoon! Needless to say we were off to the ER and came back with antibiotics later that night. Within a couple of days we could tell it was not getting better so we went to the base Hospital and they immediately referred us to the ER at Mercy Children's Hospital in Kansas City. We were admitted (I stayed with her) and she was on IV antibiotics for 4 days before they released us with more to take at home...She was a real trooper through all of it and they nurses and Dr's loved her; she always had a smile and wave for them when they came - even if it was to poke and prod her LOL Ty was happy to have some Daddy time but definitely wanted Mom & lil sis home after a couple days.

We then went for a follow up visit at the hospital a couple days later and were re-admitted. It had gotten smaller but was not gone. They did an ultrasound and thought there was an infected pocket and wanted to surgically drain it. So we were there another couple nights. Turns out they did not get as much out as they'd hoped but what they did was sent off for testing. They are still thinking a staph infection in her lymph node compounded by it abscessing and infecting some of the surrounding tissue. That's the best guess at the moment because they have had no luck developing cultures - most likely because of all the antibiotics she has been on. If the current med's don't completely take care of it then there is one other possibility; another bacteria that would require different med's. The culture/test should be ready this week. No idea where or how she picked this up - Dr's said it could have been anywhere at any time. Fortunately she has not been sick outside of the lump; no fevers or anything like that...she just lost her appetite (& if you know Alex that is a HUGE warning sign LOL) when the first round of med's weren't working. She is, thankfully, still a happy, walking, babbling, playing 14 month old who can drive her sister crazy sometimes :-D

So that in a nutshell has been our move over the last couple of weeks. I will try to blog a bit more often, but no promises LOL We still have quite a bit of settling in to do - more appointments, 2 more HHG shipments, getting Ty enrolled in activities, catching up on work, etc. But I will try to at least get some pictures up.....OH!! We also lost our camera somewhere along the way so I don't have many pictures yet!! But I will get some up of our time in AL soon.