The Kirkmans: Another adventure begins

The last couple weeks have just flown by, and the big deployment day arrived. Yesterday, Travis left for Kuwait. It was pretty uneventful. My camera decided that morning that it was going to break, so Austin took all the pictures with her new camera she bought with the rest of her birthday money. We went with Travis to drop his bags off. He has two large 70lb duffel bags, and two bags that weigh about 45 lb each. I told him it was hazardous to his health to carry that much weight all at once. I tried to get him to take stuff out, and let me mail it to him, but he said he could handle it. When we got there, he was told he would have to put one of his 45 lb bags into one of his 70 lb bags. It took another solider standing and jumping up and down on his bag, and Travis wrestling to shut it, to finally get it closed, dripping with sweat. I feel bad for everything in that bag, hopefully nothing was ruined. Anyway we got to hang out with Travis for another hour or so, and then he walked us to our car, we said our goodbyes, and I watched out the rear view mirror as he walked away, my heart breaking. I pulled it together, and took the kids home for lunch, then we went to a free event at the ice skating rink. Joseph and Samuel loved ice skating, the girls enjoyed for a little while, but didn't want to do it anymore, because their feet hurt, and Caleb put skates on, but didn't actually go on the ice, and I wasn't going to skate, so Caleb and I watched everyone skate for a while. They also had a dunk tank, and both Joseph and Samuel dunked the girl in the tank, they thought it was awesome. After the ice skating, we went to another free event at the space foundation. It wasn't nearly as fun, since the only thing they could touch was a bouncy house for little kids, so we didn't stay there very long. But between those two events, I wore the kids out enough that it was time to go home for dinner.
The last few weeks were full of preparations for the deployment. We've done lots of cleaning and organizing, and here are some things that I remember happening.
We had some friends over, and they pulled everything out of our shed in the backyard, and made a huge mess of the backyard. It was our night to water the grass, and we needed to clean everything up, so I tried to get the kids to help me clean up the yard, but they wouldn't help, so I did it all by myself. When Travis finally got home (he was helping somebody move in) I told him about how unhelpful the children were. He gathered them all up, and talked to them about how much harder it is for me to pick things up and clean up after them while being this pregnant (nice way of saying I'm huge). He got out some weights and told each of the kids they would have to carry around 1/4 of their body weight, while doing a chore or job to understand what it's like for me. After warning them not to drop the weights on their toes, he had them do there jobs. Samuel had one 5 lb weight and one 8 lb weight. After carrying them for a minute, yelled "this is too hard" and threw the 5 lb weight right on his big toe. Poor guy, his toe is still completely black, and I'm just waiting for the toe nail to fall off. The kids have tried to be more helpful though, and Samuel's toe hasn't slowed him down one bit.
Betsy has been going to a chiropractor every week since her accident, there were several vertebrae out of place in her neck and upper back. I decided to start getting adjusted too, for my neck, and my hips (feel out of alignment with pregnancy). I think she enjoys our weekly visits to the chiropractor. A friend has been watching the other kids for me, since after the first visit, I realized it was not a "kid friendly" atmosphere.
Joseph got a pair of glasses, they are for when he needs to see things 8 ft. away or more clearly, so mostly for school. But, after two days, lost them on our morning walk (he had them in his pocket). So now, he has to earn enough money to buy new ones before school starts. I warned him before hand that I would buy the first pair, but if he lost or broke them, he would need to earn the money for new ones.
Betsy and Samuel finished up there swimming lessons. One day while walking home, the sirens went off for a severe lightening warning, and started raining. We started walking as fast as we could, and the rain was just pouring down, and drenching us in seconds. We kept walking as fast as we could. The girls and Samuel remembered they had towels from swimming lessons, and held them over there heads. Caleb who was asleep, slept through the whole thing in his stroller. He was a little confused as to why he was all wet, when he woke up after we got home.
We went to IT'Z for some family fun before Travis leaves, and had a great time. Travis even won the jackpot on one of the games, earning over 1600 tickets, it took forever for all those tickets to come out of the machine. All the kids were super excited for Travis, and of course, he was really excited too.
While cleaning out the garage, Travis decided to fill up our pool in the garage with our water storage, since it was time to rotate it anyway.(we can't use our pool outside, due to water restrictions on post) So the kids had a blast playing in the swimming pool in the garage. He also put up a swing in the garage, so the kids have been spending lots of time out there.
Caleb jumped into the crash pad and hurt his arm (elbow), he cradled his arm, and would not let anyone touch it, and wouldn't move it. After it not improving after a couple of hours, I remembered a similar thing happening to my nephew Dillan, while he was at my parents house. I called up my mom, and she told me to look up "nursemaid's elbow" and that to fix it was really simple. So I looked it up, and it said it was a dislocation of the elbow and very common in toddlers and preschoolers. I read that to fix it you hold there arm bent at the side, and then turn hold their hand and turn it to face upwards, and that should pop the bone back in place. So, I did that for Caleb, and he cried when I did it, but I felt the bone pop back in place, and within a few minutes he was happy and playing like nothing had ever happened. Then a few days later, Austin pulled on his arm kinda hard to stop him from doing something and he cried and cradled his arm again, so I quickly did the procedure, felt the bone go back in place again, and after another minute or two he was just fine again. So we're all being careful not to pull on his right arm. I'm very grateful that I was able to learn from my nephew's experience, and be able to fix Caleb myself. It would have been very traumatic for him to go to the hospital.
Travis and I had a date, where we went to the hospital, to take a tour of where I will give birth. It made me sad to think about him not being there, but I'm glad we were able to take the tour together. Then we went and cleaned his office together for a couple of hours. Austin that it was really lame, that our last date together involved cleaning Travis' office, and going to the hospital. I just told her, that it didn't matter what we did, just that we had some time together without the kids. But, I'm definitely going to plan a more romantic date for when he gets back.
I gave Caleb and Samuel haircuts, and Travis helped me by getting out the vacuum, and sucking the hair right off their heads, as I cut it. The boys thought that was pretty fun.
The night before he left, Travis gave all the kids their back to school blessings, and Caleb and I blessings. I felt very comforted and peaceful, and know that heavenly father will help us while Travis is gone.

This picture is from the storm several weeks ago, where we were stuck underneath a pavilion during a terrible storm, and Joseph pulled a poncho out of his pocket, and as many of us as could fit, would go under it.

Here is a picture of Caleb and Travis waiting for all the tickets to come out of the game where Travis won the jackpot

Here is the game Travis won the jackpot from

Caleb trying on Betsy's hair clip

The pool in the garage

We've been trying to get Caleb to start sleeping in the girl's room, in preparation for Grandma's coming to visit. He didn't like the trundle bed I made for him, so Travis blew up the big air mattress and put it in their room, this is Caleb getting ready to sleep on it. I still had to lay down with him to get him to fall asleep, but then he slept all night.