Introducing Jack!

Congratulations to Parker and Easton for their school awards! Parker received the highest award their school gives; a self manager award. They only give it out three different times during the year, this being the second. She gets to wear a button to school every day proclaiming to all of her accomplishment. It also allows her to have special privileges. (It's a little over the top for my taste but Parker is very into it)


Easton was awarded the citizen of the month award for his first grade class...

and he got to give "Paws" a high five!

Now for our other news. We have been planning this for a while but didn't want to spill the beans until it was official. Please welcome the newest member of the Button family!

Meet Jack, our new puppy. We drove four hours away on Saturday to Norco where there is a gentle giants dog rescue. We saw a couple of dogs there but Jack was our favorite. He hadn't been vet checked yet so I had to drive back the next day to pick him up and bring him home. He is a brindle colored Great Dane who loves to be loved.

Looking at him in comparison to our kids you get an idea of how big he is. Already he is above the average height of a Great Dane and he still has 15 months of growing to do. Leave it to me to pick the biggest dog they had.

The kids are LOVING having him around. He's been a little hesitant with a new home and family to get used to but he's doing great!

We found a giant dog bed online and he claimed that pretty quick. I just hope it's still big enough when he's full grown!

Right now his rear end is up higher then his head which means he's in the middle of a growth spurt. It's crazy, his back is higher then our kitchen table. He can walk up to it and perfectly rest his chin on the top, yikes.

He wouldn't hold still for a picture standing up so we just had Easton lay down next to him for a comparison. All my life I have wanted a dog and now I finally have one. I have the best husband in the world to let me get a dog. Thank you baby!!! This was the best birthday present ever!!!!

Meet the Kids!

Hello everyone,

So my mom is crazy unorganized and can't find things all the time. (Don't tell her I said that though) She couldn't find the cord to the camera to download our pictures for like, ever. She's like, way stressed out, so when she finally found it I thought it would help her out by doing the family post for her. (Plus, her posts are pretty boring (don't tell her I said that either!))

So hello, I'm Parker. A little bit about my favorite subject, Me. I LOVE attention. I'm really good at reading and spelling. I get all A's on my spelling tests. I'm not bragging, I'm just telling you the truth. My favorite color is probably pink but I change it up a lot. I love to ride my bike!

Let me tell you about my brothers and sister. Easton was born next. His birthday is coming up on the 4th and he's going to be 7. He says that's old, but I'm still older then him. Easton loves to draw and I guess he's pretty good at it too. We ride bikes together with our friends that live by us. We usually play "war" boys against girls. The boys always say they won but they didn't, the girls almost always win! He just lost one of his top front teeth. Maybe I can take a picture and post it because he looks funny with it gone. We all laughed when mom yanked it out.

This is Creed, he was born after Easton. He's 5 1/2 and in kindergarten. We all walk to school together and Creed is always complaining that he's tired. I know that he's not though because they already fixed his heart and he doesn't have holes in it any more. Creed is really goofy and always makes us laugh, especially at bed time and at dinner time.

The other day Creed was complaining to mom that girls got to do things that boys don't (because I got to go inside my friends house to play with dolls and the boys couldn't) and that it's wrong! "Martha Lutha King" said that we could all do the same things! (We all learned about Martin Luther King Jr. in school last week) Mom thought he was pretty funny that time but I don't know why because Creed wasn't even trying to be funny then.

Makay is my little sister. EVERYBODY says that she has beautiful eyes. Makay loves to play dress up and take her stuffed animals on walks, take care of her babys, things like that. She got a bike that has training wheels on it for Christmas so she can ride outside with us now. She does pretty well but when we go on family bike rides, SHE TAKES FOREVER!!

This is our baby, Beckham. We all love him and usually he's really fun to play with. He's funny too. If we tell him to show us him bum bum, he turns around and sticks his bum out! We laugh forever when he does that. He likes to take rides on our backs like we are horses and follow us around at the park. It's okay, he's a pretty good little brother to have. Plus, all of our friends love him and are always asking if he can come along.

Now that you know a little about us I'll tell you about some of the things we have been doing lately. Last Sunday we got board so Easton started pulling us around the kitchen on his blanket. He wouldn't give me one because he said I was too big, whatever!, but he gave them to everyone else. Easton makes a pretty good sled dog.

Mom ordered some shoes online and they finally came. Like I said, Makay loves to dress up. She likes mom shoes but she can only really stand in them, every time she tried to walk she fell over.

She didn't really care that she couldn't walk though. She stood in them for a really long time.

Beckham still plays with his food a lot. We had oranges for snack and he had to separate all the sections and then lined them up before he ate any of them. My mom said, " like Mother like son," but I don't know why.

We spend Christmas in Washington with our Button grandparents. We could only stay a few days and we had to drive FOREVER (17 hours one way!), but we had a lot of fun. We hadn't been there in so long so we had a ton of fun with our cousins and uncles and aunts. We had SO much fun in fact that mom and dad forgot to take pictures! I keep telling them they should just buy me one and then they wouldn't have to worry about it. They never listen to me though. (don't tell them I said that! but it's true!)

Uncle Nick has a real guitar and we all got to take turns with it. Grandma is really good at piano and we got to play with that a little too.

This was the other picture they took. Grandma sewed a lot and made all the grand kids some really cool things for Christmas. This was Eastons crayon caddy. We all got one with cool fabric (mine is purple and pink with sparkles and buttons on it). We also got our very own pillow cases and books!

Before we left for Christmas we got our chairs in the mail. We have a cool fire place at our house and you turn it on like you turn on the light, it's awesome! My mom turned it into our reading area so we got chairs and a rug to go in front of the fire place. Makay likes it the most, whenever we can't find her we just go to the fireplace and she is on the floor in front of it with her toes stuck in the heat vents (she hates wearing socks so her feet are always cold).

This was one night of our Christmas break when Dad was giving Easton rides by pulling him on the floor who was giving Beckham rides by letting him sit on his back. It was pretty funny, Becks kept saying, "yeehaw."

We had a Christmas party for the people that work with my dad. Grandma Kim was in town and she helped my mom get things ready. They made the house look really nice. All the adults stayed in the kitchen and living room and talked and stuff and the kids got to play in the garage. It was poring rain so we turned our garage into the play room and we put our toy house in there and we had huge moving boxes, it was awesome!

These are all the adults from the party. The guy on the left, Mr. Hays, made like 50 deserts and we got to try ALL of them. The fudge was our favorite so we told the little kids to go in and sneak some into the garage for us. (don't tell my parents)

Two days before that party we had Makays 4th birthday party. Grandma and mom made a cool cake with fondant, (it's like edible play dough! (we snuck some of that too)) and we had a lot of fun.

One of Makies presents was a monkey from Grandma Button. It's big and it makes monkey noises and claps it's hands and stuff. It's really cool and Makay LOVES it! She even takes it with her when we go to the store and stuff, it's really funny. See, here in the picture, she did her hair and her monkeys hair to match!

Well, that's about all we have been doing. Feel free to tell my mom how much you liked my post. Maybe she will see that people like mine more then hers and she'll let me do it all the time! Bye.

I know everyone was worried that something had happened to us, but we are alive, no worries. Things have been somewhat crazy for us lately as far as normal everyday life, routines, our personal belongings. We are finally getting back on track though. Hence, the blog update.

Let me fill you in on some things for anyone who doesn't know what's been going on. We packed up our house in Pittsburgh and left for San Diego at the end of July. We left all of our stuff in our house so the Air Force could come, pick it up and move it to Cali for us. We stayed with my parents in San Diego for nine weeks. (Bless them for their patience!) Ryan left for Officer Training Camp in Alabama at the end of August and was gone for five weeks. While he was away the kids and I stayed with my parents and the kids (Parker, Easton and Creed) started school across the street at Sandberg Elementry School.

Ryan finished his training and came back to San Diego on a Friday at the end of September. His parents flew in the next day for Parkers baptism which was on Sunday. It was an amazing baptism by the way. Shanna Riches gave an awesome talk about the Holy Ghost and the spirit was really strong. The Buttons were able to stay for a few days to play with the grand kids and enjoy San Diego. They left on Wednesday evening. Ryan, me and the two youngest kids drove up to Vandenberg AFB the next day to see if we could find some housing. We drove back to San Diego on Saturday, packed up all of our stuff at my parents house and moved to the bases Temporary Housing Facility (TLF) on Monday. WHEW!

We lived in temporary housing for six weeks. The kids settled right into the school that's here on base and all we had to do was wait for them to finish building the house that we were to move into. It was a long wait, I got pretty sick of not having any of our things but I can't complain too much (we had housekeepers come by every day).

Finally, a week before Thanksgiving we were able to move into our new home. Things are still crazy and unorganized but at least we are in a permanent place. So without any more gabbing, here are some pictures of the house!

The Air Force takes care of our front yard for us. The sprinklers are on a timer and they come by once a week and cut the grass. We are in charge of our back yard but I've heard it's pretty serious. They can ticket you if your grass is too long. Yikes.

The other day I heard male voices right outside my front door so I went to see what was going on. Two men where standing in the garden bent over, weeding. Seriously!?!

Our lovely front door and mat that still has the tag on it. I love the bench. they have a thrift store here on base that I found it at.

As you can see, I only have half of our curtains up. I wanted to make sure they would look the way I wanted before I bought all of them. Now I just have to get them finished before any company comes over!

The kids decorated the Christmas tree all by themselves. I handed them the ornaments and they put them where ever they wanted. That is why half the ornaments are on the bottom branches. I love it.

The main living area is all connected so this is from the front window looking to the back yard. I'm not sure if I like the set up yet but so far it's working okay. At least it's easy to keep an eye on the kids.

We divided the carpeted area into living room (off limits to kids) and family room areas. This is the family room area. (Does it look like Parker and Easton are doing River Dance or what?)

This is the view you would have if you opened the door and walked in. We finally found a bench with cubby holes for the kids shoes, I love it! The computer area is right next to that and then what we are calling the library area.

Our backyard is a good size with a cute little patio. We put our old kitchen table out there so the kids can do homework outside on nice days, messy craft projects etc. The grass hadn't grown hardly at all when we got here so they asked us to stay off of it until it came in more. I've been watering it and it doesn't look much different. Did I mention they can ticket us if we let our grass die too?

You can look down and see the whole streets back yards in either direction. Not the most privacy but. . .

we were lucky to get the running trail behind our house. We have all these trees and wild area for the kids to play in and right after that is a trail that goes a couple of miles to the fitness center. The kids love it back there and in fact, now have three different club houses built.

This is our dining room and kitchen area. It's awesome, the fake wood floor they put down doesn't scratch. I'm so thankful!

This is the view from the kitchen to the dining area. As you can see they put the fire place on the other side of the table. Odd place if you ask me but we turned it into a cozy reading area.

We have a bar now, I love it. The kids can do homework while I'm cooking dinner (theoretically) and the best part about it. . . we found red bar stools! Heck yes!!

Okay so this is the kitchen. I know, it's a crazy mess. I'm still trying to figure out where I want all the food to go so it's kind of been a disaster. But, we have a dishwasher now so who cares what the kitchen looks like! Between the dishwasher and having a garbage disposal, I'm in heaven! (Oddly enough we have lived in places for the past five years that have not had either. I never would have thought that a garbage disposal could be such a plus about a house.)

We have a pantry and then a little walk way to the garage door and opposite the laundry room.

Since the laundry room is no longer in the scary, spider infested basement, I no longer have an excuse not to do it. Is that a plus or minus?

Connected to the laundry room is another little storage room that we are using as a second pantry/food storage room. If you have been watching Glen Beck at all you are probably gathering food storage as well. If not, START!

Okay, lets take a visit to the other side of the house where the bedrooms are.

First bedroom is the master. As you can see, our room has not taken priority in unpacking. Don't worry, we aren't becoming hoarders, I just haven't had time to find a place for anything.

Same with our bathroom so I figured this was the safest view for everyone to see. Haha. That's our shower curtain if you can't tell what you're looking at.

Check it! We have a walk in closet. After the houses that we have been in (especially our Pittsburgh house) these seemingly little things make me slap happy. Check out my shoes on the floor, they are zebra print and my new favorite pair of shoes.

Ryans side of the walk in. I'm so nice, I even shared the shoe rack. And can I just say that my husband looks hot in his uniforms! Woohoo!

Another thing that makes me smile just thinking about, a linen closet. Oh happy day. Beckham likes it too but for other purposes. If you can't find him, he's in there doing his business. I think I'm going to have to get some air fresheners.

Once again, we aren't secret hoarders. This is, or will be someday, my craft room. Right now it's, "anything we can't find a place for or need out of the way put it in here" room.

Boys room. Easton and Creed sleep on the bunk beds and Beckham is supposed to sleep on the toddler bed but lately he's been sneaking up to the top bunk with Easton during the night. It's made my heart jump a couple of times, walking in there and not seeing him in his bed.

Creed wanted to be in all the pictures, can you tell? He "organized" the toys in their toy bins and very proud of it.

Kids bathroom. It's so nice not having to share with them any more. They all mysteriously have to go to the bathroom every time you shower, what's with that?

And finally, at the end of the hall is the girls room.

So there you have it. Nothing extraordinary but we love it. My mom is coming up this week and I'm hoping to get her help in hanging some things on the walls. Then it will feel more like home I think.

I would like to give a special thanks to my parents who made those two months of living with them wonderful, (for me at least) and for everyone who has helped and supported us in getting this job. We feel so blessed to have a job right now and know that the Lord has definitely provided for our family.