the fitzpatrick family

Well to say we have been busy and things have been crazy would be an understatement. Jim had a successful assessment for the Special Operations Aviation and that put us into fast motion to cancel everything we had in place to move to Fort Riley. We will now be moving to Fort Lewis, WA near Tacoma. This was our first choice and we are very excited about the move. We have already found a place to rent. My sister in law was kind enough to drive down and look over it for us and she gave us a thumbs up. So we will be leaving Fort Carson the end of this month and moving up north and hopefully be there until retirement. The new house is a good size and on more than half an acre with a hot tub, big toy, and separate garden area. It is also on a culdsac and all the homes around it are on large lots as well in one of the "rural" towns around Fort Lewis. In preparation for leaving this home we spent one weekend installing new sod in our backyard. They put the original sod in last November and it didn't ever root so instead of going back and forth with housing we just decided to do it ourselves and it turned out very nice and rooted well. Last weekend we went to the zoo and had a great time with some friends. We are spending the rest of our time here packing and getting ready for the upcoming move. Here are some pictures of the new sod, a fox that likes to visit and a couple pictures from our trip to the zoo.

Since the last update we have been busy doing every day things. Ryan attempted to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels and without success. He was actually doing it but he didn't know he was so he said we would try another day. We have done lots of crafts--Ryan loves painting, drawing, and playing with "claydough" (homemade playdough). I did finally get some pictures up in the gallery, but I still have a lot more pictures to share. We all caught a cold in the last month during various times, but right now only James is sick and hopefully once he is better that will be the end of it. The weather here has been crazy--normal Colorado weather, one day it will be 75 and the next it will be 25 and snowing. I am counting down the days (32 more days) until we find out where we are moving to. About 10 days after we find out we will be getting packed up and moved so things could get hectic here shortly. James will be finished with school in 39 days. So it will be a busy month of wondering and waiting to see what happens next. The Easter Bunny visited us yesterday with lots of candy and a couple inches of snow! Here are some pictures of us riding bikes, painting, coloring eggs and checking out what we got in our baskets.

I can't believe we are already in the month of March. Seems like this year is just flying by. I still have yet to get pictures up in a gallery, but I will be working on that this week. James is on spring break next week so he is looking forward to that. I am going to be thinking of stuff we can do so the boys don't drive me crazy being here in the house for a whole week. This last weekend we went to an event called reefstock up in Denver. It was like a saltwater convention of sorts. We had a great time and came home with five new corals for our tank. We are excited to have it up and running again after 5 months of not having one. Jim has been selected to assess for special forces aviation and will be doing that in May, which is why we are still up in the air on where we are going to be moving next. After assessment we will know where we will be moving and we are hoping to be out of Colorado by the end of May. So anyone that wants to take a vacation down here better be planning on it before June! There is so much to see and do here we are going to be sad to leave, but ready for the next adventure the Army sends our way. Here are some pictures of our corals and our fish that we just got.

I am trying to get the site up and running after a small internal glitch and a big lack of time to get it done earlier on my part.  We are still in Fort Carson, Colorado enjoying the time we have here.  We know that we will be moving soon, but when and where are still up in the air.  So we are doing our best to be patient and see what the future holds.  It has been 3 1/2 months since Jim’s been home from Iraq and we all love being together again.   We had a great vacation to California after he came home and then we took a surprise trip up to Spokane for the holidays.  Things are getting back to normal for Jim at work and working on his car in the off hours (more on his page about this).  James is in the third grade and doing well.  Ryan is back in gymnastics and having a good time–it is not a challenge for him though so we will look into different classes if we are staying here too much longer.  I am busy working on websites and taking care of the usual things.  I will be adding pictures to a gallery soon so be sure and check those out when I get done.

Our trip after Jim's return home...

We were able to take an amazing vacation after he returned. It was our first family vacation and we all had such a great time. We first went to the Grand Canyon, which was a first for all of us. We had flown over it many times, but it was amazing to be standing there. It was beautiful. Then we continued on to California where we spent three days at the Disneyland hotel and two days going to Disneyland and California Adventure Park. We then turned south and went to visit Grandpa in San Diego and go to Legoland and SeaWorld while we were there. You would think that would be enough for one trip but on the way home we stopped off at a meteor crater in Arizona. It was incredible! We got home after all of this traveling and sight seeing and decided that we still had plenty of time to drive to Spokane to see the family for the holidays. So after a mere 30 hours here in Colorado we packed up and headed north to Spokane to surprise our families for Christmas. We were about to head back to Colorado after only being there for 30 hours in the past 30 days when Ryan's eye became infected. He was scratched on the eye during one of our last visits with family and it started swelling that night. After two trips to the ER he was admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics and to be monitored closely so the infection wouldn't spread to his brain or start affecting his vision. So three days later we were released, but had to stay in town for at least one more day to still monitor the eye. Needless to say Jim had to get an extension of his leave for those extra days. We finally made it home about 6 days later than planned, but we were just thankful the infection didn't spread and Ryan was ok. Here are some pictures of Ryan during the whole ordeal (days 2, 3, and 4--we didn't get a picture the first day):