We picked the tile!! Its hard to tell in the picture but it looks very nice! We cant wait to lay it all out... The kitchen is not going to be very fun because of the angles in it. Ken has been laying it all out on graph paper to help us decide the angles! That's a lot of work! Because of Chris giving us the black appliances this tile works even better.

I'm ready to get outside and get the yard looking better too now! It looks like a disaster. Grass doesn't grow here I'm finding out so we want to get rid of as much of it as we can so we grow things that work in this climate better. We have a lot of researching to get done on that subject.

Avery is crawling! Sort of... She sort of scoots and moves her legs along with it and its as close to crawling as shes going to get for awhile! I'm sure in the next few days she will be all over the place! We need to get a couple of baby gates to keep her out of danger now... Its so cute to watch her try though. Trais is the best big brother ever. He absolutely loves her to death! He is always sitting on the ground and letting her crawl all over him and getting her new toys when she gets bored with the ones she already has. He is so thoughtful of her!

Trais is still very excited about soccer and the Easter Bunny even brought him his 1st real soccer ball! He was very excited about that and has been practicing his dribbling for 2 days now.

The Easter bunny brought both kids very cool stuff in their baskets. They made out like bandits as usual. Trais did a flashlight Easter Egg hunt through the city of Round Rock! Donny let him use his headlight too so he had an advantage in the game! Their were tons of kids. I couldnt believe how many people turned out for it! Avery will get to do her 1st egg hunt next year!

We are still working on our trip up to WA for this summer and we hope to be able to work it all out, but its going to be tricky since Donny had to use a lot of his vacation time up for when he was in the hospital! So, were working on it and will hopefully be able to give out some dates to ya'll here soon!

Love ya all!

Trais started soccer!!! Yay! He loved it too. He went right into the game and looked like he was a natural! That of course made us happy. He cant wait to go next week either and said that he wishes they had practice every day! His team color is neon green, and we thought that was bright until we saw some of the other team colors... They had a team that looked like a Christmas Tree and a team full of boys that wore hot pink shirts with purple shorts and hot pink socks! I signed him up for Summer soccer also (which I may regret, when I have to sit outside on those evenings that it's 95!) but he loves it so I will encourage it!

After his game this week, Trais and Avery Layne and I went over to a very small Farmers Market and walked around. We didnt get much except some snacks and hot cocoa for Trais, but we had a good time! After the Farmers Market we went to Sheplars (Country Western Apparel Store) and got Trais his Cowboy Boots and Cowboy hat! All he needs now is his belt buckle and he says he needs a lasso! He dressed up this morning and hasnt taken the hat off yet! I may have to pry it off his head at night when he goes to sleep. hahaha! He looks very cute.

Hey! My parents and Grandparents came and went! We had a great visit with them!!! I am glad they were able to make it down here. We went to the Rodeo Austin and got to see Josh Turner. Trais LOVED the rodeo and said that he would like to get into working with horses a little! While I totally encourage that... I don't even really know where to start. 1st step though is to get him the boots! We are on the lookout for that!

Well last week gave me the biggest scare of my entire life! We almost lost Donny!!! I wont go into full detail but, he has a blood disorder that ended him up very close to dangerous and in the hospital for 4 days. He had a very fast recovery as well thankfully! We will be following up with the hemotoligist weekly for a few weeks and then monthly for awhile to keep on top of it and make sure this never happens again. I was so scared of loosing him! April and Ken came down on an emergency flight when they heard what was going on as well. After he recovered we ended up having a great visit with them. We even went back to the Rodeo again and got to see Craig Morgan which was awesome! Thank you to everyone though who was here for us when we were so scared with Donny!

Trais and Avery are of course doing great as always. Trais is in his swimming lessons and Avery is rolling all around the house. She should crawl here very soon. Oh and Trais finally lost one of his front teeth. The other one is very loose as well.

Jen and Trysten are here and we are having a great visit! We were both a little apprehensive about it since the last time we even saw Jen it was not on the best of terms, but it has been great! The boys picked up right where they left off. They play and then fight and then play and then fight some more. We went to a cavern down in New Braunsfals (sp?)! That was very cool. I sort of expected Trais to be scared at first but he did great! He thought it was very cool.

Well I have to go so I will sign off now, but I will upload pics in a bit!

Love you all!!!

Don, Jus, Trais and Avery Layne!

We have less then 6 days until my parents will be here! We can't wait and Donny was even able to get a day off which was a lot of work since it is spring break and everyone wants a day off! So we should have a good couple of days to do somethings while they are here. Hopefully the weather is good. You never know how it will be... We have been in the 80's for a week now...
Crazy I know! I love it though. Tank tops and flip flop are my absolute favorite and luckily for me I get to wear them all the time!

I don't' know if I have mentioned before, but Trais is doing well in his swimming lessons! It is a one on one class so he is getting the full attention which is nice. We will have to get him enrolled again to keep him moving forward. His teacher thinks that he will be able to pass the mini test that the YMCA requires you to pass if you want to swim more then an arms length away from me... So that's good news and once he is able to float around some on his own he should get even more comfortable. I really wish that I would have pushed the lessons on him more when he was younger and didn't have as many fears. Oh well, he is making up for it now!

Avery Layne should be crawling here very soon! She is starting to scoot herself backwards a bit and she is rocking a little too. She is still under weight a bit, but growing healthy and full of energy so I have no worries! She is a skinny little stick though so her necked little body is funny looking! She is so cute! haha

Not much else to report! The truck is working out great. We are very happy with the purchase and the fact that we now have 2 reliable (knock on wood) vehicles!!

Well I should get back to scrubbing the house! yuck! I am in no mood for house cleaning, but it must be done right? Anyone wants to come help your more then welcome! hahaha

Have a good night!

Still Alive

Hey,

We are still alive and kicking, just bad about keeping up with this for some reason!!! Oh well once a month is something to look forward to right?

So the most recent news as of yesterday is that we are finally truck owners again! No more borrowing a truck from friends (that can wear out it's welcome very quickly, even though we have had some awesome friends to help us out here and there!) We bought a 2002 Ford F-150 crew cab (4 door with tons of leg room in the back seat) FX4 (off road package with 4x4). Of course it's not new but its a nice truck. We had to seach high and low for a nice one. Donny went to a ton of websites and we met with a few private parties and of course visited a lot of dealerships... That got exhausting! We ended up buying it from a private party in Austin. Really nice guy that seemed to take good care of it! All in all we now have 2 reliable (knock on wood) vehicles and are set there for a few years. Our camry is sort of a mom car, but its really comfortable and gets great gas mileage so we have no complaints at all!

The house is still a work in progress as I am sure it is bound to be for a few years to come... Right about time to sell right? lol I did some accent wall painting and I am really happy with the results. I went BLUE! If you know me somehow this wont shock you! I LOVE blue and black. Don didn't like it all that great when I first started, but he is coming around and is starting to like it more and more. We got some decorative curtains up that are really nice looking! All in all it is starting to feel more and more like a home and not a used furniture store! We still have not done out tile in the kitchen or bathrooms, but that will come in time. We have however picked out the tile that we want to go with! We replaced all of our white appliances with black (thanks to an awesome friend of ours that gave us all of his minus the fridge!) We love the way the black looks and were able to sell all of the white for just about what we paid for it 6 month prior! When Ken and April were here back in January, Ken help Don mount the LCD onto the wall and string our surround sound into the walls and it looks and sound great! I think thats all the news with the house for now!

Spring Break is in a week and a half and we all can't wait. My parents are coming down for the week from WA. Trais will be out of school so we will get to have some good visiting time with them. My Grandpa Al and Grandma Sharon are going to come down for a couple days from Ft. Worth too visit too! (This gave me a good excuse to buy a really nice futon to keep in our bedroom until we are in need of another bed! Who knew that one guest room would not be enough?) We LOVE to have company down here to stay with us so we can't wait. My parents haven't been here since Avery Layne was first born so they are in for it! She is MUCH louder now... hahaha! Hopefully while they are all here we will be able to get in some good visiting! My Dads B-day is during that week that they are here too, and he asked for some good Texas BBQ for his bday! We have been asking everyone thats local what they like best and will get to try them out when they get here! We here the best you can get is in a town called Lockhart which is about 45 mins south east from us so we will be going for a bit of a road trip! It should be worth it though from what everyone says!!!

We are all doing great! Trais has been still cruising right along with his school work and is making some good friends. He has been working really hard on his talking during class and it is coming along!

Avery Layne is sitting up now! She laughs (especially at Trais) a lot and is becoming a much happier baby! I am sure that she will be crawling here in the next few weeks.

Donny and I are of course doing great!!! I know I say it all the time, but I can't help it... He is my best friend in the whole world and can't imagine spending my life with anyone else. He makes me so happy all the time that it's almost disturbing! hahah just kidding! We both seem to rely on eachother for everything and I am perfectly ok with that!!!

I am watching a 3 month old baby 2 days a week now! It's only about 5 hours a day, so it's not much, but it is fun! She is a really easy baby and just goes with the flow. Avery and her could spend hours just staring at eachother. She is a super cute little thing and her parents are both really cool. The dad works full time and mom is going to school to be a rocket scientist... crazy huh? We seem to be getting along great though and it's working out for both of us.

Well. I better get going. I will sign off with a promise that I will write again soon, but you know how it goes and I hate to make an empty promise!

Love ya all!

News

I want to start off by thanking everyone who wrote or texted me on my 29th b-day a couple of days ago. It was good to hear from so many people. I can't believe I'm almost to my 30's, times passes so fast.Things have slowed down here a bit. I finished my academy in September but still had the rest of my clearance process to go through. It consisted of 5 phases with evaluations after each phase and continued work with my training officer. He's a really squared away medic who really took the time to show me how the system worked and prepare me for the final test which took almost ten hours of both written and scenario testing. It was intense and I don't envy anyone who has to go through it. I work independently now with a regular partner who I have a lot in common with. He is my age, married, has a little girl who is 16 months and certified as a medic the same year that I did. We're having a great time. I also don't have to study my entire 4 days off. We work Friday for 24 hours out in the county right on the water front of Lake Travis. Its pretty slow out there but we pay for it the rest of the rotation. We work 12hrs on Saturday night downtown out of the trauma hospital. We're first out to University of Texas campus and 2nd out to 6th Street. Its never a slow night there. Then on Sunday night we work 12hrs at Medic 2 in South Austin. Its a decent neighborhood, very residential but generates a moderate number of calls due to the variety of ages of people that live there. Thats my rotation and then I have four days off. If I want five or six days off I only have to take 12-24hrs of vacation on saturday and sunday. I've never been happier working for another agency and the benefits of working for the city are better than I could've imagined.Trais is about half way through the first grade. He is doing really well in school and we've been working with him on his reading, writting and math, though he doesn't need much help. He's very bright and his teacher is happy with his progress other than being a bit of a talker. He has adjusted better to the move than we had imagined. He still talks of his Grandma and Grandpa Gibson, my parents, Kaylee, Trystan, Aaron, Anna, and Auntie Jen and wants to see all of them soon. He has lots of friends here and is having a good time. He says he doesn't miss the cold.Avery is almost 6 months old already. She is sitting up, smiling and laughing, playing with her toys and has began to discover her voice. From my standpoint, I can't tell you how indescribable it is to hold your baby in your arms and watch her grow. I wish I would have known Trais at this age. She is growing so fast. They're both growing so fast. All I can do is love them hard and enjoy every second of it because I know in a blink they'll be grown up and all we'll have are memories and pictures. Justine and I had our anniversary in Ft. Worth on Dec. 31st. We had a nice dinner and went out afterwards for the count down. I love her more than anything in the world and we've grown together so much as a couple. We depend on each other so much in everything we do, I don't know how I ever lived without her. In the begining of our relationship there was some uncertainty and maybe even akwardness amongst some of our closest friends in regards to how our relationship began and some of the decisions that were made. I hope the way our relationship has evolved has put some of those concerns to rest. Justine is the best mom and wife I know, she truely is my best friend. We have joined the Y here in Round Rock and are making an attempt to work out on all of my days off as well as enrolling Trais in Swim Lessons. We're also planning a trip up to Gig Harbor to see all of our friends and family. We'll be there in either late July or early August. Its going to depend on when I can take the time off. Application for vacation for this period of time begins in March so I should know by April 1st at the very latest, hopefully mid March. I'll keep everyone posted.So with this new found free time as things have began to settle here I'm vowing to be more active in keeping up with friends both via myspace and phone. I feel like I haven't kept up with my communication with friends back home and that is something I want to devote time to now that I don't have a probation hanging over my head and all of the things that go along with that. Plan on hearing from me more on here and by way of the phone.Also, now that I'm off atleast four days a week and Justine is not working but rather at home with Trais and Avery we would love to have some out of state visitors. My parents have been here three times, and Justine's parents have been here once. Justine's parents are planning on comming the third week of March and Trais' Auntie Jen and Cousin Trystan are comming two weeks following that. My parents and Aunt Diane and Uncle Craig will be here sometime in May. We love to have visitors and have a 4th bedroom with a queen size bed and guest bath to accomidate. There seems to be this stigma of Texas that seems to be amongst almost everyone I've talked to... something about dust and tumbleweeds. Well, honestly we do have both of those things but we have a ton more other stuff. Everyone seems to be affraid there is nothing to do here but hang out at our house and this couldn't be further from the truth. We have two six flags parks within driving distance as well as Sea World, and the Schlitterbahn waterpark which is world famous and frequently on the travel channel. The Alamo which is the where the first missions in texas are located (4 still stand) and is also the battle ground of the texas/mexican war, The San Antonio Zoo and River Walk are about an hours drive from our house. Most people don't realize that Austin is the live music capital of the world and there is no shortage of night life with live music. We also have the Alamo Draft House which is basically a beer garden and restaurant within a movie theater. There are a million restaraunts to choose from and more shopping than you can imagine, the premier being an excellent outlet mall about three miles from our house. We also have Lake Travis and Lake Georgetown only miles from home that provides swimming, fishing, parks and places to camp and bbq. I think that the reason the economy is not in such diar straights here and also the reason for such an abundance of shopping, restaraunts and things to do is due to the good weather and the cost of living and housing here. People not strapped to a several thousand dollar a month mortgage are free to spend money on more consumer type items. It seems to be good to not be house poor. Anyway, that aside, if you're looking to have a vacation to somewhere warm, come see us. All you need to do is get yourself here. Trais' Auntie Jen bought their tickets on Priceline who apparently changes prices at 8am and 6pm and these are the times to get the best deals. She got their tickets for $168 each round trip plus taxes and fees. We have a place for you to stay and cars to get all of us around. Bring some spending money. We'll show you a great time and it'll be good to catch up and hang out. The weather here is still hovering around 60-70, a cold front here or there aside. The weather should only get better in the coming months. So thats all I have for now. I hope to be in touch with everyone in the near future and like I say, if you wanna come down let me know!