Everything happens for a reason... I have always somewhat hated that phrase; it just seems like the catch all comfort phrase, able to fit in any situation for any reason. I have heard it many times and am just as guilty as saying it. It got my wheels spinning and thinking one night. Does everything happen for a reason? Can you really trace everything that happens to the thing that happened right before that and so on and so on? Well had I never known how to drive a stick shift I would have never met Jer. True story, we were both deployed to Kosovo at the time, almost ten years ago. He was in another unit and we had not a clue who the other one was (even though we had both been at Ft Jackson, Ft Hood, and Germany at the same exact times) Jeremy had a job working in the TOC which is some abbreviations that I don't remember now, but basically the hospital headquarters. I was in an ambulance platoon on the opposite side of the hospital. At our 1st formation our platoon was to supply a driver for the Sergeant Major, usually this honor is given to a top notch soldier because they are always around higher ranking people so naturally I was not in the running. I was a bit of a wild child and the army had not settled me down much. So they picked this gung ho solider whose boots were always shined and uniform always pressed (and who Jeremy would have had no fun working with at all) Little did our platoon sergeant know that the sergeant majors truck was a stick shift and she was clueless on how to drive it. At our next formation they asked who there could drive a stick shift and would you believe that I was the only one! And so with a bit of hesitation I was selected and when I wasn't driving the Sergeant Major to and from chow I was hanging out in the TOC where I met and got to know the one and only Jeremy. Thinking back now to all those hours my dad and mom spent teaching me how to drive a stick at the lake, little did they know that one thing would lead me to meet my husband. But that's just one of many things that lead me to him, not to mention all the things that lead him to me. I mean the list is endless of all the things that needed to happen in order for the outcome or "reason" to be for us to meet and fall in love, get married, have four dogs, and best of all make Olive. Jeremy and I had a conversation one night about all the possibilities of life, one of which, the theory of parallel universes. How every endless possibility to everything is already mapped out in a parallel universe. So any decision I ever make is being played out in some other universe. There could be a version of me that is sitting and typing this but drinking coffee instead of water and listening to Olive sleep only her name is Layla instead. Or on a grander scale a version of me who never joined the army and stayed in Lincoln. It makes my head hurt and seems all above my level of consciousness. I guess now I can see why the phrase everything happens for a reason can be of comfort, to leave it to a man in the sky who has a plan for it all, but I am just not one of those folks...A point..I had one when I started typing, but lost it along the way... Ahh yes, so our buyers lost their financing. It was too good to be true, selling the house in one day, being done with the cleaning, showing, and having folks walk through our house trying to see their own lives in our house. Buying a house was so much easier when we didn't have one to sell 1st! But alas, we still have time and an awesome realtor. We are still under contract with the house we are planning on buying, it is just not fun to be at the mercy of packing up the four dogs and the baby anytime someone wants to come take a look...

...Speaking of that baby she is getting bigger and bigger by the day which, although breaks my heart, is a good thing. A growing baby is a healthy baby!!! She is smiling more these days. Somehow her changing table has turned into the playing table. It takes a good 20 minutes to change her because as soon as you lay her down she is all smiles and sticking her tongue out, which is her way of saying "please play with me" So we change her and play with her and I'm starting to think that she cries like she needs to be changed just to get up on that table cause there have been a couple times I lay her down and her diaper is clean and there she is sticking her tongue out at me, little stinker!!

...She is still sleeping well and giving us lots of rest which we are gladly taking because I'm sure that once she starts teething we will be in for some sleepless nights. We took her to her 1st party. It was Camren's 1st birthday so all morning I was telling her how excited we were for out 1st party at Uncle Kevin and Aunt Johna's. So we put on our party dress and headed out. She was really good and hardly fussed, I think it had a lot to do with he fact she was surrounded by boys!!! The middle Koelzer boy, Braylen who is about 2 came right up to her and was stroking her cheeks saying "Hi baby" in his crazy low voice and then popped a kiss right on her lips! So not only did she go to her 1st party, but got her 1st kiss from a boy!!! I wonder at what point in life you really stop celebrating all the 1st? I am gonna try and make an effort to celebrate the next time I or me and Jeremy have a 1st of something. I guess the older you get the rarer those 1st moments are. Just another reason we should all just stop getting older. But time is contagious and everyone is getting old!!!

(We were hanging out outside in her stroller and just at this time a gust of wind hit her and her eyes got all big like "what the heck is going on mom!!")

Well that is my weekly update to the Fam, love you all!! Talk to you next week!!