Drama with the MP's

So I accidently posted the pictures before I could write anything...still not very good with the whole blog stuff. Anywho we have had an exciting past couple of weeks. Last weekend Ryan's sister and her new husband were having an open house in Austin and so Ryan's parents came into town to attend, which is great for us cause we lived close enough that they got to stay with us! So lots of grandparents time for Caroline and Jack! They love their Grandma Kay and Grandpa Mike as Caroline calls them. We thoroulghy enjoyed the visit and can't wait to see them again!
This past Sunday after much anticipation, I (Charlotte) was called as the new young womens president in our ward!! This does seem a bit crazy for me considering I have never served in a presidency calling in the church before and I just feel so unqualified. But I am learning alot already and am very excited to work with the girls. I know that this will be a great opportunity for me to grow not only physically but spiritually as well. It won't be easy but I'm sure it will be rewarding. I guess it is practice for when Caroline is a teenager, really. We do have a great group of girls. They are so nice and I am so looking forward to serving them and hope that I can help them and inspire them to love the gospel and build their testimonies and learn from them as well. Ryan also got a new calling this past Sunday as 2nd counsler to the elders quorum president! Ryan has served in the elders quorum presidency before but I'm sure this time will be a new challenge all in of itself. Our ward is very "needy" for lack of a better word, because it is almost all military and the majority of the elders are deployed. There arn't enough men to do home teacher but a ton of women who are alone who desperatly need home teachers.....needless to say elders quorum is probable one of the more challenging calligs in our ward, but he is happy to serve was well!
So this past week Ryan was in the feild. I had mixed emotions about this cause it was the first time I would be alone here in Killeen...for those of you who arn't familiar with the area...it's kinda sketchy....but I was also excited cause then I would have a car during the day! I had lots to keep me busy too between having our first presidency meeting and wensday activity. We also had a releif society visiting teaching conference thursday night I was super excited about. Of course nothing goes as planned. The first part of the week I was so stressed with having to plan the activity on wensday. Then after it was over...which it went well to say the least....I was like ok now I can relax...WRONG...thursday a main water line outside our house breaks and there is water running in the street. The Killeen city water people knock at my door and tell me this pipe broke and that they turned my water off and I'm just like uhhh when will it be turned back on and they responded with its the homeowners responsibility to fix...of course we are not the homeowners. So I call the rental agency whom we rent through and lets just say they arn't the fastest about getting things done. So I was skeptical as to how long we would be without water. Well thank goodness I had brushed my teeth already and gone to the bathroom but I was yet to have taken a shower. So time is going by before I know it it has been several hours and no one has showed up to fix the problem. I never realized how much I really use water through out the day. I couldn't hardly clean anything...which was nice really....but I couldn't even wash off my fruit. Anyway so that afternoon a plumber finially shows up and tells me the pipe was never installed correctly...of course. Anyhow it takes him a few hours to fix it and before I knew it it was time to feed Caroline and Jack and get going to the RS activity...so sorry to all the women of the RS that I was stinky cause I never got to take a shower. But the activity was so much fun and I am glad I went stinky or not!
Anyhow, so the drama is not over yet. Firday I agree to go jogging with a few sisters from our ward at 8 am for some crazy reason. This jogging includes pushing Caroline and Jack in a jogging stroller as well...but that isn't the crazy part. So we do out little jog around a track on post down the street from one of the sisters' home and it wasn't so bad. But as we are returning to her house we see a kid running around in nothing but a diaper and I joked oh there's a kid in nothin' but a diaper my sister said I would be seeing alot of that on post...then we realize there is no mom anywhere. The kid was a baby really maybe 20 months at the most. So we meet up with it (we didn't know the sex at the time) and she is pointing and saying mama mama, but seems to be in no distress. So we are thinking that her mom is one of the women behind us heading to the track but no so we are like well she must not be far behind so we walk the child back to where it looked like she came from..no sign of any parent anywhere or even that a child had escaped from any of the houses so we don't know what to do we could either knock on every door and ask if someone lost a child or call the MP's, so we finially just called the police. It takes them like 30 minutes to show up of course. Right as they got there they got a call saying that the mother had called looking for her child. This is total almost an hour after we found the child....she didn't know where her child was for at least almost an hour. I would have been freaking out if it had been my child. So of course with anything in the army you have to do a ton of paper work and sign your life away. So the women drives up to my friends house to get her naked kid and I had this envision that she was gonna be really mad and like yell at us for calling the police, but she didn't thank goodness, but the other girls I was with thought she would be emotional and thanking us...she didn't do this either...she only seemed mildly irritated that she had to deal with the police. If it were me I would be an emotional wreck and would be thanking the people who found my kid..but anyway. So after it was all over we got to thinking did we see that car on the street that we were combing through looking for a sign of where the child lived and we were like mmm I don't think so. So we decide to go back and see which house the car was parked at and when we walked by orginially that car was not in front of that house cause we even debated if that house was the childs house, cause it looked like a little kid lived there. That would be crazy if a women would leave their child home alone and even leave a way for the child to easily get out or someone else could get in while she were gone. The whole situation but baffled me. It was also weird that the child was like in no distress about being alone and going with strangers??? Anyway after I got home surprise surprise Ryan was home and couldn't believe that where I had been was jogging...but then I told him the rest of the story and he was like I leave for one week and all this happens. So it was a crazy week. I hope this week is less eventful!

My crazy week!

So last weekend we went to Waco...this is considered one of the more exciting places to go for people who live here in Killen. I was skeptical though because of the whole Waco bombing incident and apparently the water was really bad...like so bad you could even taste it from a soda at a resturant. I think the water in Killen is bad so obviously I would be taking all precations not to drink the water in Waco. But luckily we made it through without having to. We had lots of fun there and it is a great, beautiful town. We went to the dr. pepper museum, because Ryan loves dr. Pepper. And in several places in the museum they mention it is not made with prune juice...Grandma Durr...but either way I still think it's nasty. Though Ryan's straight from the tap dr. pepper didn't taste that bad. After that we went to what Caroline called the cowboy/cowgirl store...which was actually the tractor supply store...where Ryan wanted to buy jean....don't ask. But I did find a pair of cute modest shorts there. Caroline was disapointed there were no pink cowgirl boots there, though. Afterwards we went to a beautiful park along a river...which I can't remember the name of either. But it was fun for Caroline! And for dinner we went to Caroline's favorite resturant...Cracker Barrel!! Though on the way she spilt water all over herself so we had to buy her something to wear in cracker barrel and came up with this lovely Texas longhorn dress as you can see in the pictures below. Everywhere you go here you can buy Texas longhorn parapheniala. They also had Texas long horn rocking chairs. She loves the dress and calls it her Texas dress. She was so excited about the whole thing it was too cute!


Caroline in her Texas Longhorn dress, sitting in a Texas Longhorn rocking chair at Cracker Barrel.


Jack, Daddy, and Caroline outside teh dr. pepper museum.

Me and Jack in front of an old truck outside the dr. pepper museum.

Caroline not cooperating, Ryan and Jack outside the Dr. Pepper museum.

Jack having fun in the swing at the park!

Attempting to blog...

Since we have left the great state of Utah...and I never realized how great it was until now...I thought I should start a blog for all of our friends and family to follow. I'm not sure how good at this I am gonna be, cause I'm not one with the words or grammer. But I will at least post cute pictures of the little ones! So we have just recently moved to Texas. Also a great state! We are really liking it here. It is super hot...we tend to always move to hot places for the summer. It is so hot the sun melted the glue holding our rearview mirror to the windsheild. But, we are loving it either way and enjoying the army. It is a completely different culture and I am learning alot. We love our ward the most, though! Our kids are having fun too. Caroline has made lots of friends. There are several little girls her age in the ward and our neighbor has two girls around her age as well. Jack is just loving life. He is the sweetest thing ever. Very cheerful and expressive. He is a big boy too weighing in at the 6 month check up at 19 lbs 1 oz. and 26 1/2 inchs. Caroline was also tagging along for her 3 year check up and the nurse asks her "Who drinks from a bottle?" Caroline is giving her a confused look...because Jack does not take a bottle. Then she preceeds to say, "Does your brother drink from a bottle?" and then Caroline answers, "No, he just drinks from mommies nipples." This was semi-embarassing, but funny and the nurses thought it was funny as well. We also had a friend over the other day and she asked Caroline where milk comes from and Caroline answers, "Nipples!" Technically this is true but of course she was expecting her to say a cow. Caroline is saying funny stuff all the time and we love her even when she is trying out patients. So here are a few pictures of the fun we have been having down in Texas!