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Leah is 10 weeks old.

Dan has 30 weeks left in his fellowship. OOOOHHHH - almost in the 20's! PROGRESS!

He was just with us for four days. It just feels right when he's home. We are thankful that he has a job, and will be even more thankful when his job and his family can be in the same city. :)

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Leah is 9 weeks old. She weighs 10 pounds now! Many of her teeny baby clothes are too small !

Dan has 31 weeks left in his pediatric neurosurgery fellowship. He's coming home to spend Thanksgiving with us, so he only has a 3 day work-week this week! No one deserves a few days off more than he does!

This week's photo is Dan with Daniel. Dan's at work in the Misawa Air Base hospital's ER. We stopped in to visit him occasionally, and we definitely weren't the only people with kids hanging around. Some of the moms on our base realized that Dan was great with kids so they took their children to the ER to see him rather than going to the pediatrics clinic. These were the beginnings of where he finds himself today. We're so proud of him!

I think he secretly likes pediatrics for other reasons too. If he is a kid doc, he needs to know about stuff kids like, right? He has a free pass to play all of the new video games and watch all of the kid movies from now 'til he retires.

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32 weeks left in Dan's fellowship. November is halfway over!

Leah is 8 weeks old!

perspective

Dan's a veteran. We lived on a military base for four years. As Captain Fulkerson he was an emergency room physician. You can see him pictured above in his emergency gear. Yeah, as a civilian it was wayyy reassuring that all of the active duty folks were issued gas masks...I kind of wondered where mine and the kids' were, just in case...

You can imagine how *easy* it was to treat patients dressed that way.

Anyway, those years were a fantastic education for me about what it really means to sacrifice. Of course ours were small sacrifices in the grand scheme of things - I in no way mean to say that our experience even begins to approach that of the men and women who lose their lives or their health during their time of service. These are definately lower-case sacrifices I'm referring to.

Being in the military (or being married to someone who is) means being told where to live. It means you don't know for sure when you're moving until you have orders, and those orders can most certainly be changed. Multiple times. (Oh how our families celebrated when orders were cut sending Dan to a base near Las Vegas, Nevada...only to be changed to a remote base in northern Japan a few weeks later.)

It means your children will change schools every few grades.

It means being told you have to wait for your belongings to arrive --- on the government's watch. ( We all heard stories of entire crates worth of household goods disappearing, never to be seen again.)

It means limited choices - in clothing, toiletries, shoes, movies, books, you get the gist. (We were active duty just before it became possible to order anything and everything online!)

It means being assigned to your doctors and dentists and often waiting a looong time for appointments. It means specialists are only available a few times a year (so you'd better pray that your child's facial injury happens when the plastic surgeon happens to be in town).

It means holidays alone and learning to make new traditions.

It means that your friends will come and go at a dizzying rate.

It means knowing that your friends may never see their spouse alive again, and trying to figure out how to be encouraging to them as they sweat out those deployment months.

It means that lots of households morph into single-parent families for six months to a year at a time-- over and over again-- during their years of service.

It means the US government is in charge of every element of your life. If you can recall going to the BMV or the post office then you can appreciate having similar experiences with all of your family's healthcare and housing needs.

Stop and ponder that for a moment...

Yeah.

Dan has been a civilian for several years now. I am so proud that he served our country. If he hadn't I would never have had the same appreciation for our great nation. We have many friends whose families are still living an active duty military life and we are so thankful for all that they do. Their sacrifices, great and small, keep us free.

Thank you, Veterans! Dad, Grandpa Krou, Engen, and especially our Dan....we love you and are so proud of all of you!

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Dan has 33 weeks left in his fellowship.

Leah is 7 weeks old.

She's sprouting some peach-fuzz on top of her head. I'm encouraged that maybe she won't be as bald as I was as a baby! Crossing my fingers....

Team Fulkerson is a few days late with our countdown this week. I hope you're all having a great one! Today is Veteran's Day. We are so thankful to our country's brave Veterans. If that is you (or your spouse!), thank you! You keep us safe and you keep us free. Those are incredible gifts that are easy to take for granted. More on that soon...

costumes

I'm a real humbug about halloween. It's one of those 'holidays' that I consider not at all worth the hype and effort. Buying or making costumes for all of the kids...talk about pressure! Remembering to buy pounds of candy that I then have to successfully hide until trick-or-treat day doesn't add to my serenity, either. All of this effort and expense to do what? 'Celebrate' morbidity and evil.

Ugh.

I know, I know. What a stick in the mud! I'm a huge scrooge about it... until it's actually time to trick-or-treat. When I see how excited the kids are it helps me remember how much I looked forward to the yearly ritual when I was little. For those two hours I actually think it's fun! This year Dan was home to hand out candy while Aunt Jodi, Emma and I walked up and down the street with the younger children. I was so thankful to have help!

Don't get me started, though, about the joys of monitoring the candy consumption of four children for weeks afterward. It makes me glad Leah doesn't have any teeth - yet.

Dumb holiday.

Leah's baptism

Leah's baptism was this past Sunday at Christ Lutheran Church here in Zionsville, IN.

It was so moving for me to see our tiny daughter in this dress. I can remember going to the fabric shop many years ago with my mom and grandma to choose the fabric, lace and ribbons. My grandmother made the dress for my little sister Lori's baptism in 1982. Emma wore it to her baptism in 1998.

Our cousin Diana Nixon is Leah's godmother. I was the nanny for two of her children when we all lived in South Bend, IN in the early 1990's. She has been a fantastic mentor for me as I've navigated through learning how to mother. I'm so thankful that she and her family live in Bloomington, IN so we're able to see each other a few times a year. I know Diana will pray both for me and for Leah in the years to come. What more can a parent ask for than to know that another mama is praying for them? Priceless.

I love what our pastor said after the baptism - Leah became a new princess in the kingdom of God. Now she is Jesus' baby sister. That's what I call a blessed day!

Thanks be to God.

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Dan has 34 weeks left. Putting him on the plane every other Sunday really stinks, but picking him up from the airport every other Friday is so FANTASTIC! Worth every penny (I'm sure Continental Airlines loves us...)!

Leah is 6 weeks old!

Have a great week, everyone!