Spangler Family Communication Center

Hahaha! Well, I have to share with someone. Each night Ali is taking longer and longer to fall asleep. I mean we are talking hours. Like three hours. I think she is overly excited to see Mark. Today the neighbor knocked on the door and she screamed in a questioning voice... DADDY!? Well, it was cute but it wasn't daddy only Roberta. So each night she is awake longer and longer. There are no excuses demands or fussing she is just in her bed tossing and turning til she finally is sleeping at 11:30!? What in the world. Her eyes look so tired and tonight she almost fell asleep during the bedtime story but it keeps getting later and later. Poor baby. :) She is way too excited for her own good.

I'm excited because I got to talk to Mark twice today and one time was even like 30 minutes. Poor guy was so tired but I had so much to tell him. Now we get to play catch up from 2 weeks of info like password changes and friends having babies. All the good stuff you don't talk about in your allotted surprise ten minutes a day. I'm happy. I can't wait to see him. Apparently he is going to give me a big sloppy kiss. They are my favorite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is my favorite. What a guy. Sorry gals he's already taken.
Jess

I would just like to say that I do post some things on here from time to time. I am just not as long winded as my estrogen filled conterparts. But I try. Also I like to write praises about my wife on our myspace. and our url is you want to check it out some time is www.myspace.com/markandjesss it is pretty cool.
Anyway, I also wanted to say that I survived the field. It was, long, hot busy, and boring all at the same time. If you haven't ever experienced busy and boring at the same time, let me tell you, it is a little frustrating, but all in all I made it. I also got to do a little flying. Really I flew quite a but. In the last month I have flown almost 50 hours. If I keeps that up I will fly over 600 in this next year. And to put that is perspective, I am only required to fly 140 a year. So times are good so far.

Now that I have talked about the Army allow me to brag about my wife a little bit. Isn't she the best? I am pretty freakin' impressed. I have always had complete faith in her, but wow, the things she is doing are amazing. She definitely ahs it way harder than I do. As for the other moms I know you are doing a great job too. But I just don't love you the same way I love Jess. So once again so everyone knows, I love my wife and I am very proud of her.

And I am even going to call out the other brother's, I was the first to blog my love and admiration of my wife, let's see how long it takes for another husband to do the same, the clock is ticking gentlemen. I love you all, can't wait to see you and talk to you.
Later
Mark

I've lost at least five. I know it isn't much but I'm impressed with myself. Do we count the pounds we loose, put on and then loose again? Okay just kidding.

I'm telling you these next two years will be the most documented time of my childrens lives. If we have any more kids later (yeah yeah yeah) they will wonder why they dont have seven thousand pictures of them each month. Not to mention all the short little videos. But, it still doesn't make up for Mark being gone. I think he should make some videos for us!!!! Sounds like a good idea to me. Well, the kids and I are alone in the house now. I think we like it. I haven't stopped baking and cooking and having a ball. On wednesday we are having a little kid party or a play group where I watch all the kisd or whatever you want to call it. We are going to make crackers. It is like making sugar cookies so we can shape them how ever we want then bake them and eat them. It shall be a blast, I think. Tonight I made homemade pizza sauce for the first time. It tastes pretty good. We are having a make your own pizza night at my folks with my whole family (which is only like ten including Mark and the kids) so it isn't very big. I decided to venture out and make the sauce. I mean why make the dough and not the sauce. It was fun. I also made these really yummy fruit and nut bars. I sampled them at costco and they were so good but they were 20 bucks for a whole box. I read the ingredients as I do before I sample anything and there were only like five ingredients. I said to my self,"self you can make these" I did and they are like perfect. It cost me only 4 bucks to make like twenty. I am so excited I can just scream, but I won't cause my kids are asleep. The really excting thing about them is that there is no sugar in them. I am on a no sugar kick well no white or brown sugar only fruit sugars and natural unrefined sugars. So this is great!!!! I think cooking keeps me sane.

Micah is a teething mess right now. Makes me sad and it helps me to loose my patients with Ali. I would like those little teeth to pop in and be done. He has the biggest ridges I've ever felt really I have no idea why they haven't popped through. Maybe he is stretchy gums boy. How is that for a super hero Greg? Ali is doing well, she is a big help to me and she is learning to help mommy bake. It is great fun. Next week I think her and I will have to sew her an apron. I may need to ask Niki about some help making a mini apron. Call me. It shouldn't be hard in theory.

Mark is still on the field. We have a chain count down and wrip off a chain a day to chount down his apearance in Phoenix. We are super excited. Ali had a sad time a lot of today cause she misses daddy and can't call him. He has contacted us for like ten minutes each day which has been precious to us. We never know if or when he will call. So far he has only called once when Ali was up and that was today of all days. God knew Ali would miss him the most today so talking to him helped I think. She went right to bed without a fuss tonight after talking to him. (She despises going to bed, but I love it so I don't care that she hates it :))

The kids and I are trying to coordinate a camping trip for next week in the middle of the week. I am hoping it will work out. It may be a little caotic but it may help the anticipation of daddy coming home. We'd probably come back the day Mark comes in. He doesn't come in til like 9pm. I'm not sure if I'm going to bring the kids to the airport or just put them to bed, get a siter and tell them daddy will be home when they wake up. ????? Oh the delema.

I think I've blogged way too much so goodnight.
Jessica

Oh My Gosh! Who are those kids?! I can't believe how big they are and how pathetically long it has been since we've seen you guys! Please give them each a big slobbery kiss from us.

Here's a pic of Addie dressed up for the neighbor's superhero birthday party. She is Super Bunny Baby (so we made it up, so what?). And Greg is giving me a mini-lecture about something (I can't remember what). Do the brothers recognize this face?

As for an update on us-- at work, Greg got approval to hire a full-time guy, which should help out in having to work weekends and stuff. That also puts him on the road to training this guy to be his replacement eventually, so that is great news to us! This is the first step in promoting and it happened a lot faster than we were expecting. It will be a week or two before the guy (Carlos) starts.

Addie's reflux is STILL not under control, which is really exasperating. I feel like it is wearing me down and I'm ready to accept now that my 8 month old won't sleep through the night and will be clingy and aggitated all day. I don't have much fight left in me. Today I left her in her playpen long enough to take a shower and when I returned, she had been SCREAMING the whole time and had thrown up all over the place (was she screaming because she threw up, or did she throw up because she was screaming?). The GI doctor seems to be committed to getting it resolved though, so thank goodness he has some fight left in him. :)

On the positive side, we had a big potluck after church last night and had a blast. Our previous pastor and his family were there and it was great to see them (not to mention great to hear him preach again!). Addie got all wound up because of all the people and the talking- it was funny- she is just like momma. As we were putting her to bed she may just have said her first word (but we're not sure). She has been saying da da da da da all the time, but this time she looked right at Greg, said da da clear as day, and then went on making other sounds. Who knows? We'll see if she does it again.

That's the scoop around here. Miss you guys!

Niki

Well, Mark is truely away from us for the first time. He is out in the field where he is unreachable. As far as I know I won't be hearing from him for about two weeks. This will be the new thing. Field for two weeks home for two weeks etc. I hope that we adjust well. Things are definitly really hard. This morning we had a problem with our pay that MARK needed to fix but guess what... he isn't here. So I am having to learn way to much about things in order to stay on top. The military has strange ways of doing things and I hate it when they short me money. They seem to do that a lot. We still haven't sold the condo. Now it is going to be very interesting if someone puts an offer on our condo while Mark is away. Guess who has to maek the decision. Oh yeah the phsyco chic with the two babies. Good idea. Haha. Anyways, I promise things are not so so bad. We will see how these next few weeks go, but really I just have to make it through today. I've been working out and this helps my life tremendously. I have some fun goals to reach by the beginning of next year and so far I am on track to meet them. I suppose I will be looking a lot more healthy come Christmas too. At least I hope. It is hard to get the the gym that is for sure. Thankfully I live right next door to two fabulous people who love to come to my house and hang out while my kids are asleep so I can go work out. So far I've lost about five pounds and a whole clothing size. It is so exciting to take control of myself again. Mark won't be able to recognize me at Christmas. I went to visit him last weekend. It was so much fun. Pretty unreal. The kids stayed in Phx. We had so much fun just being together. I haven't gone shopping without kids in about....... FOREVER so that was fun too. It was so freeing. It was so great to spend all kinds of time with him. It was only three days but that is a lot when you rarely even get to talk to a person let alone see them. Well, Mark is doing well. He misses the kids a ton. He can't wait to see all of you at Christmas. He is a pretty studly attack pilot. I mean really. He is really good. I am so proud of him. I hope he just keeps getting better and better. I think he must feel good when he sees himself improve so much at something. But let's face it. Him being good at what he does can save his life. I love that man uniform or no. He's still my hunk a hunk of burnin love. I still don't know how I'll make it without him for so long but I do know I've made it this far and so has he.

The kids are doing great. Micah is such a good baby. He's also such a mans man. I mean he is such a little man. I don't know how to explain it. He is just 150% guy. Wow. But dispite his downfalls I am his mother and love him so much. Okay hahaha just kidding. I can hear Niki laughing and Greg groaning and thinking to himself, "I've gotta keep her away from my wife." Anyhow, he is so cute, Ali is so sharp. She misses nothing. I have to stay one step ahead or she is all over the place. She needs some strong discipline but with that she has the freedom to be herself and she loves it. She has such good quotes. The other day I did something that she thought was well done and didn't miss a beat with her response of, "Nice one Mommy!!!!!" What the heck!!! She is my little parrot. I don't have the first clue of where she picks up some of this stuff. I mean she isn't in school yet. She sings "Me and Daddy sittin in a tree KISSYNG." Even the Stayer kids aren't sure where she got it but she heard it somewhere and it only takes her to hear something once. She would love to pull a fast one on anyone who will let her get away with it. But, what two year old wouldn't I'll give her credit where credit is deserved she just might get a spanking with the credit :) I love being a mom. The best parts are when I wake up in the middle of the night to Ali deciding that now is the right time to go to Chuckie Cheese's. It is so great when she runs across the room and burries her head in my lead and growls just like my dad did when he gave us hugs. It makes me laugh so hard when Micah is so ticklish I can't even wipe the poop off his butt without him turning red with laughter. And I love it when Ali plugs her nose to ask me a question and when I can make Micah crack up with only my facial expressions. Being a mom is the best thing in the world. But we miss Daddy.

Mark and Jess said goodbye to a dear friend this week. It was very dificult. We had known her for almost ten years. Lately we hadn't realy seen her much and she was feeling neglected. So we had to say goodbye. We did find her a good new home though where she would feel loved and cared for again.

I'm not talking about Molley, I'm talking about my mustang. I sold it this week to some friends from church who have a 16 year old daughter and a 14 year old son. They haven't picked it up yet, but they are really excited about it. I don't think the kids know yet, so it wil be a cool surprise.

Later
Mark

Not to be left out, we thought we'd post an update from California too!

Greg had his yearly performance evaluation at work yesterday- it went really well. His boss gave him some very high praise- a very high score and told Greg that he is one of the top three guys for the whole LA region. He told Greg he'd like to see him teach a 4 hour seminar at one of the upcoming area meetings on this program the company uses for sales tracking. Evidently he thinks Greg can really use it well! They also talked a good bit about a promotional path in Greg's future. He told Greg that since the Hyatt Valencia loves Greg so much, it would be good to get another guy into Greg's property and start learning the ropes (in other words, he would like to see Greg train himself a replacement so he can promote out). And if that wasn't enough- he even got a raise! WAHOO!

Niki has been really busy with Addie. We are still trying to get her acid reflux to behave by switching her from one medication to another. The way the medications work, you can't just stop the first, you have to give them both to her, then slowly wean her off of the first one. In the meantime, she got an ear infection last week, followed by pink eye this week. These infections interfere with our ability to see how she reacts to medication #2, so we are waiting for her to kick the infections before we can do more drug experimenting. (I hope that all made sense). You guys know how fun sick kids are- so pray for Niki's sanity. :) She has spent most of her time the last couple days trying to sanitize every surface that little-miss-infectious has touched or rubbed on (the adults of the house DO NOT want pink eye).

Addie is developing along in spite of all the sick stuff. She talks (babbles) a lot, likes to stand holding on to things (though is still unstable and wobbly), and will finally tolerate being on her stomach- so maybe eventually she WILL crawl!

That is the happenings around here. We are also waiting impatiently for Christmas to come (not soon enough!) so we can see you guys. Love you!

As it stands right now, the Army is telling me that I am getting December 20, thru January 2. for my Chrstmas break. It may change a little as it gets closer but that is what we have for good planning dates. I hope that helps so people can start making travel arrangements. Hope all is well with everyone. I love you guys.

Mark