Just... You know....

Most days, I wake up and at some point in my morning, I think that I will actually get back to blogging. But days come and go... and no blog posts from Katie Beall.

Why? Maybe because I feel like I can barely keep my head above water these days. Aside from being consumed with two little ones, I am teaching (new term) and prepping to sell this house, our cars, send Piper to her new home (sad), spend time with friends here, while preparing my little crew for a totally new country and culture. We. Are. Overwhelmed.

This weekend we had Danny Beall's sweet best friend, "Uncle Bansk" here. What a blessing he is. We adore Bansk. He was in our wedding and through thick and thin, Uncle Bansk has loved and supported us and our marriage. We love him so much. It was a precious weekend for him and Dan to have together - even just doing yard and house work (with lots of beer involved!), they had a great time and our babies always love having him around. As do I.

Dan won 8 Air Force Officer of the Year and is up for the Bomber Wings' (all over the nation) Officer of the Year award. We have a formal dinner both tomorrow night and then Thursday night where we will find out if he wins the next award. Nonetheless, I am married to the 8 AF Officer of the Year - and I am so proud. He is an incredible airman and troop. I am proud of him.

Going to put my babies to bed. But I promise to come back soon. Bear with me - I am hanging on by a thread here so hang in there, readers!

Photos from Hawaii

Here are some of my favorite shots from the past month in our old home in Makakilo and from our 10 day stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. As you read in my previous post, we had such an incredible time. But by the end of the stay, we were READY to get back to the Mainland! Oahu surely is beautiful, huh? Some of my favorite shots were taken on an hour long mai tai cruise my girl friend, Melanie, and I took together.

No Rest for the Weary

We spent the night last night at our friends' home, The Smiths. So this morning, I decided to keep Noah here while everyone else is at work and Dan is about 500 yards down at our house helping with the move. So I have a few minutes of internet access on Melanie's laptop (thanks, Mel!).

To say that moving is exhausting is an understatement. We are BONE WEARY!! We counted this morning and in the past 4 days, Dan and I have had about a total of 9 hours of sleep. The movers started on Monday and by last night, they had the majority of our home packed and ready to be loaded into the trucks.

Yesterday, we sent Noah to my girlfriend, Lori's home. Her nanny is named Maggie and she's been SUCH a blessing to me in the last 16 months of Noah's life. Noah loves Maggie so much and at the last minute, she allowed me to send Noah over so she could watch him while she also watched Tori (almost 3) and Tessa (1). That is a full load! But Maggie was more than willing to do it for us so we could keep him out of the way of the movers. HOWEVER..... Noah didn't nap one time yesterday. Not once. Not even for 5 minutes. He's really being affected by the changes in his life and he certainly doesn't understand what's happening.

When Noah doesn't nap, he doesn't sleep at night. Bottom line! So, although Dan and I had had 2 hours of sleep the night before last, we somewhat expected that last night would be tough since we were in yet another new place. We didn't think it would be as bad as it was though.... Noah projetile vomited for the first time in his life at about 8. It ruined the clean sheets and Dan and I were covered in it. He'd never done that before and he seemed to feel a ton better right afterwards. I finally was able to calm him down enough to get him to drift off. He was in and out of sleep till about 11 (only about 2 hours) and then he woke up and we. were. up. till. 4:30 AM!!!!

I had to rock him, lay him down, put him in bed with us, I did everything. Finally at 3:30, I had to leave the room with him so Dan could get some sleep since he had to be up at 6:00 am to get ready to head back to the house to help the movers. We both drifted off at 4:30 (Noah and I) and now, he's finally back to sleep after SCREAMING like his dog had died for 20 minutes. I had to just put him in the pack n play and make him scream because he's so exhausted after only about 4 total hours of sleep in over 24 hours.

We check into our luxury hotel (YAYAY!) this afternoon and cannot go another night with him being overtired. We will be there for the next 10 days and are thrilled for the break. So screaming it out was so necessary. Thankfully, the Smiths let me stay here this morning and we will then take Noah back to play with Tori and Tessa around lunch time. I am also going to lie down... my body aches and I have never seen my eyes be so bloodshot and purple underneath!

Piper made it to Pennsylvania well and is enjoying her stay with her Aunt Annie and Uncle Todd! She's apparantly getting along well with her cousin, Casey (a Jack Russell) and has had to endure quite a bit of humping from Casey! But Annie said that he got a dose of his own medicine last night when she decided to hump him back!! Mind you: they've both been fixed! Thanks Annie and Todd for all you are doing to help us out. We love you guys.

Maria was supposed to fly out on Monday. However, because she's a Persian, she was denied her flight because of the temps (I wrote about that previously). So she's flying out tomorrow night into Atlanta and my sweet mother is going to go get her. It will be good to have both the "girls" settled in their new temporary homes.

I am off to rest for a minute while Noah sleeps. Please pray for us though. We are having a great packing experience and have had a lot of help from our friends and "Hawaii family" with Noah and places to eat/sleep. But we have to have rest; especially Noah. We want to be healthy and happy and rested for our week + stay at the resort in Waikiki as well as for our trips to D.C., Florida and Alabama then ultimately, to Louisiana.

"Talk" to you all again soon!

Going Away Party

Our sweet friend, Melanie, planned a going away party for us at Gordon Biersch down in Waikiki. We had such a great time seeing our friends, eating good food and celebrating our friendships. There is no doubt that we are heartbroken to have to move away from our Hawaii family.

Noah went to Lori and Nino's house where sweet Maggie watched him and Tori (2.5) and Tessa (1) and put him to bed in a pack n play till we could pick him up on our way home. So, we all got to bed at about 1 again last night! AHH! Sleep when you're dead, right?! We had another great adult night out last night and it was wonderful.

Dan, Melanie and I went to a wine party on Friday night and got a sitter for Noah. We had a blast but drank one too many glasses of wine and stayed out way too late. Noah was up and at 'em early yesterday morning and Dan and I packed/organized ALL day. ALL DAY. We were zombies by last night! But we realize how little time we have left here so we decided we can sleep later. Thankfully we have great friends/neighbors who took turns taking Noah when he was up from his naps yesterday which allowed us to get so much done.

Today, we go to church, come home, put Noah down, pack, go to a bbque at our friends, Kendal and David's house across the street. (Sidenote: talk about a small world! I went to Troy University with David and was in ROTC with him. We commissioned together into the Air Force and he then transferred into the active duty Army. They bought the house across the street from us a year and a half ago and we ran into each other after all these years! Kendal and I are now very close friends - our boys play together almost daily. They are from Enterprise so it has been great to have "southern" friends here in Hawaii with us).

After that, we come back home to pack some more, then go to the Smith's for dinner, THEN TO TAKE PIPER TO THE AIRPORT TONIGHT!!! It is finally real: shipping the animals out and then the movers coming starting tomorrow makes this move too real.

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Our Fun Boy

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Ave Maria

My beautiful Persian cat, Maria, has been in my life for years and years now. She's the most beautiful cat: solid white with silver tips and the most piercing teal blue eyes you've ever seen. She's a Chinchilla Persian so it looks like she's always wearing eyeliner. She's registered as "Ave Maria" but we've always called her Maria (I didn't choose the name; her previous owner did).

Maria's moved with me from Texas to Alabama to South Carolina to Hawaii and has been such a trooper. She turned 9 just this month and has always been healthy - always. I adopted her many years ago from a breeder who used Maria as a showcat and then as a breeding machine. She was entirely too little of a Persian to have as many kittens as she produced in her early life. So I got her fixed and brought her home with me when I was stationed in Texas.

She has loved every minute of living in Hawaii these 3 years because she has so many windows for her to lounge in the sunshine for hours on end. At 7 a.m., she's ready for her breakfast and at 5 p.m. on the nose, it is her dinner time. She often lingers around after dinner in the hopes that I will give her a little taste of milk. Maria loves to play at the most random times - usually it is in the wee hours of the morning when she jumps on my head, purrs loudly and starts meowing at the top of her lungs to get me to play with her. She loves to drink water whenever and wherever she can find it. She loves dripping water in the sink, Piper's water bowl, her own water bowl and especially any toilets that are left open.

Noah chases her from one end of this house to another and squeals in delight in the off chance that he might catch her. He says "e-ow, e-ow" and "itty, itty" over and over to her. He adores her as much as I do but she's a total "mama's girl." Never has she been a lap cat on your terms. But she loves me (and now Dan) so much that she will slip onto our laps from time to time.

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I just returned from taking our overly anxious dog, Piper, and Maria to the vet for their health certification that they must recieve in order to fly. Piper goes on Continental on Sunday to arrive into Pittsburgh on Monday and Maria goes on Northwest Monday to arrive into Alabama on Tuesday. We will be separated from them for about 6-8 weeks and are very sad. But they cannot travel all over the country with us so we are very blessed to have family members willing to take care of them while we are apart and getting settled in Louisiana.

Piper got a clean bill of health and I just expected Maria would do the same. She has always weighed 5 lbs on the nose but today, she weighed about 4.7 lbs - meaning she's lost 6 ounces in less than a month... not good. But I didn't think anything of it till the vet started feeling around on her midsection and pulled out a huge mass of skin and said "What's this?" My reply was that it was just a matte - she's constantly shedding her 2 inch long coat. But the doctor made me come feel it. Well, it was her right kidney which is currently about 3-4 times bigger than the normal sized kidney she should have. Her left kidney is about the same size.

Going back to the stress levels I am already experiencing, that was more than I could bear. I held back the tears long enough to find out that Maria has renal disease and her kidneys are on the downward spiral. The doctor asked about how much water she was drinking and I told her the same thing I just wrote about - where there is water, there is Maria drinking it. She said she's doing that because her kidneys are enlarged and are putting out the water she intakes too quickly for her body to absorb any. So she's dehydrated constantly.

The vet immediately pumped her with an antibiotic and an i.v. bag of fluids. She said she would allow Maria to travel but that this will need to be her last flight. I have to take her back to the vet before she boards her flight Monday for more fluids to be pumped into her and that my mom should immediately take her to the vet for further testing on her renal system because she's at some stage right now of renal failure.

Once they took Maria out to get the i.v. and it was just me and Piper in the room, I broke down. Yes, this is just a cat. But she's MY cat and she's been MY companion for many years now - through some of the hardest years of my life when I was stationed alone in Texas while Dan was stationed in South Carolina for 3 years. And to find this all out after I paid $500 a month ago for Piper and Maria's annuals and for many antibiotics for Piper, then another $150 for more antibiotics for Piper's ears, then another $200 today for this appointment, and a total of $650 for both Maria and Piper's flights out on Sunday and Monday, I wanted to scream.

I am so sad about my little cat quite possibly near the end of her life and what lies ahead for her if her kidneys are already too damaged. And I am mad that this is something we are finding out right before we move and my life is turned upside down already. This might just be the nail in the coffin for me and the amount of stress that I can handle. I need prayer because I cannot take much more emotional and physical draining than I am already experiencing.

Moving Purgatory

Sheer exhaustion caused by the Air Force moving process has begun to set in. I go to bed entirely too late thinking of all we have to do and all we have going on and I wake up entirely too early thinking of all we have to do and all we have going on. We are officially down into the last 4 weeks of living in Hawaii and all of the sudden, our lives have become so insane.

We have our packing date which will take 5 days before it is all packed and shipped the 5,000 miles to Louisiana, we have our tickets off island for the end of the month but they will only take us as far as Dallas (thus, we have to buy tickets to D.C. then to Alabama), we still have to make arrangements to get both pets off island in 2 weeks (thankfully Maria's going to my mom and dad for 2 months and Piper is going to my sweet sister-in-law, Annie and Dan's brother, Todd for a while in Pennsylvania and then to Dan's parent's home in Virginia... wow, lots to coordinate), we got a date to ship our Camry off island and that will take 30 days to get to Dallas (150 miles from where we are moving), we are starting to advertise our Pathfinder, I am having to organize ALL of my make-up, toiletries and things that the movers won't pack so I can pack them myself and avoid throwing hundreds of dollars worth of good stuff away, we are taking inventory of our valuables along with photos in the event one of our shipments gets stolen (like it did when we left South Carolina for Hawaii... not cool), am I frustrating you yet? If not, just email me and I can go on and on with other things we have facing us!

Moving from and to Hawaii is for the birds; no one looks forward to the process. It is so far from the Mainland and there is so much to do - it is considered an "overseas assignment" for us. On top of all we have going on, we are going to Maui in a week so we have my friend Stacie housesitting (gotta organize for that trip), we have many dinners with friends planned so we can see everyone before we leave, going away lunches and dinners, and, brace yourself...Dun, dun, dun: NOAH BEALL HANGING ON MY LEG AT ALL HOURS OF THE DAY!

If you will reference my previous post "Trying Not To..." you will see that my stress levels have only increased. I just want to shut down, go to bed and wake up in our new home in Louisiana with everything unpacked and organized. Pray for us!!

Just Us

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Get ready for a huge flooding of photo updates as we gear up to leave our beloved Hawaii. Now that orders are here, things are rapidly getting in order for our move in less than a month. And oh my... there is SO much to do.

So don't get annoyed with all of the photos and updates of our fun adventures before we move because once we have our home packed up, there will be about a month or more of zero photos and updates from me! I will miss writing but won't have a computer and will be "homeless" and traveling the U.S. visiting friends and family before we hit Louisiana to find a home!

Here is a short clip of Noah and me "jumping" in the bouncy castle this weekend. He could NOT keep his balance and was falling all over the place - but he laughed so hard! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXW6OnQKgk

On another note: is anyone having a hard time viewing the blog? I got an email from a friend who reads it regularly and she said that a few times, her computer froze and she had to restart it. Let me know if that is happening with anyone else (just leave a comment) or if it is working fine. I hope it isn't freezing everyone's computers!!

1 Month Left

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We still have no orders but now that Dan's major exercise is over, we are down to the business of MOVING. We literally are down to 4 weeks... with no pack-up date at all. However, we did get a date to ship our Camry off island to LA yet we still have to sell the SUV (boo - but that means new car when we get to LA: yay!). We also were able to book a luxury suite (chargeable to the Air Force!) at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for our last 2 weeks on island. That will be awesome to look forward to since we ship our animals back to the Mainland mid-June and then ship our car and pack up our earthly belongings in a matter of 3 days.

We also are going to Maui the first week of June and cannot wait! We are staying in an incredible resort there for 3 nights/4 days, are going to spend major amounts of time on the beach and go to the Maui Aquarium. In addition to our luxury resort experiences in Maui and Oahu, we are going to be spending a lot of time on the beaches for Dan to surf, as well as spend a ton of time with our dear friends - all of which we will miss way too much. Thus is life...

Noah is at the perfect age for us to really enjoy him and being in Hawaii for one more month. He loves to go to the beach, play and really enjoys being outside here. And for how hard he plays, he sleeps just as hard! I have been worried because he's been sleeping upwards of 15-16 hours a day total; but I think it is because he's got a huge molar (his last of the 1 year molars) popping through and he's been growing so much. This growth spurt has taken him well into 2-3 year clothing and almost size 7 shoes (that is HUGE for 15 months). So, 2 naps a day + 12-13 hours straight at night: BRING IT ON!

Here are some sweet photos from the past few days.

Trying not to....

... pull my hair out.

I don't think unless you have been in the military and have suffered the lack of organization that occurs when one is required to move that you can possibly understand the amount of C-R-A-P that goes into a military relocation. This is something that we military families face every 3-4 years and while it is extremely exciting - and the life we have chosen - it can be extremely frustrating. When it is from an "overseas" location such as Hawaii, the details get even more tedious.

One thing we know to be certain is that we are moving from Hawaii in June and that we are moving to Louisiana. However, we don't have orders yet and orders are those crucial documents that authorizes all the pieces to a military move to fall into place. Without orders, you have no authority to book out processing appointments, flights, lodging, or even an appointment to have movers come to your house to pack up all of your earthly belongings.

If I went into the list of what we have to do between now and when we arrive to Louisiana, I can promise it would stress you out. But here I am on a Wednesday morning, unable to do anything since we don't have orders and so I blog about how frustrated I am.

Here's a small list of what we have facing us: we have to sell our Pathfinder because the AF only pays to ship one car so we chose to ship the Camry. That means that we will have to deal with all the mess that goes into selling a car (parking it on a lot, bill of sale, test drives) and then when we sell it and have shipped the Camry before we move, we will be minus any transportation. We have to decide what we want to go into the suitcases that we will live out of for the next 3 months before our stuff arrives to Louisiana. We have to book flights and make arrangements for our animals on both ends of the ocean. We have to get flights off the island booked for me, Dan and Noah as well as then buy more tickets so we can go to Virginia to visit Dan's family after seeing mine in Alabama. We have to stay indefinitely in hotels here in Hawaii once our stuff gets packed and shipped and then stay with family then stay in more hotels once in Louisiana because we have to buy a house AND a car when we move there. On top of the logistics of moving, Dan is in the middle of a huge exercise with work that affords him zero out-processing time so we are in limbo even longer till he's done with that at the end of the month.

I wake up every day and stare into my freezer wondering what in the WORLD am I going to do with all of our food that we can't ship, or our cleaning supplies, or lotions, make up, toiletries... that's a lot of money down the drain when you can't pack up all the liquids that you have stocked up on in the last few years!

And moving is quite emotional. I have several dear friends here on Island that I will struggle saying goodbye to in June. I am not good at goodbyes at all... especially when you know you will likely never return to the place you have called home for 3 years. We love our church, too, so that will be especially painful to say goodbye to the friends we have there.

I struggle with not stressing out too much about things and I think I am getting much better than I used to be. I know that inevitably, this will all work out. But the minute details that go into moving - and moving with a very active 15 month old - is so daunting to me. I am having to wake up every day and make a choice to not worry. So please pray that I can continue to remain calm and just get everything done that needs attention.

And doesn't it seem sometimes that when you have so much on your plate, everyone begins asking more of you!? Please pray that our friends and family will also be sensitive to the amount of stress we are undergoing in these next few months. It is a big responsibility making sure you say goodbye to all your friends and spend enough time with each of them while also trying to schedule visits with both sides of the family and accommodating everyones busy schedules so we can make sure we see everyone when it is good for THEM as well. Not to mention the amount of expenses that are facing us in this move! Plane tickets to visit families and friends and shipping animals halfway across the world are NOT CHEAP!!! AHHH!

I didn't mean to stress anyone of you readers out at all today. But this is what is going on with our family right now and as each day comes and goes, we are one day closer to the moving process that we are not ready for. There is a family across the street moving the exact same time we are (end of June) and they have already had their belongings packed and shipped as well as their cars. They are living out of their suitcases and in hotels as tourists till they move. I just told Dan last night that I am going to the grocery store each week and acting like we are never leaving this place!!

Prayers and encouragement sent our way are much appreciated by this frazzled mom.