Everything's Changing...

Here we are in October and I have not updated our blog in months!  I am sorry dear friends; I think I got overwhelmed with so many great things happening this summer.  It is now fall: our younger sisters are happily married, both with amazing husbands and incredible, beautiful wedding days to take with them into the bright and shining future.   

As for Matthew and me?  June 3, 2010, we found out we are expecting our first baby, due February 6, 2011, Super Bowl Sunday of course, (what a perfect baby alreadyJ)!  Furthermore, we just found out on September 28 that we are going to have a BOY!  I am still trying to get my head around this because I was positive it was a girl. Oops!  We are beyond  thrilled with the news that we are going to have a son as our firstborn, and I can’t wait to start picking out little football jerseys and decorating the nursery (don’t worry, I don’t think I am going to go with a sports theme).  This will be made a lot easier due to the fact that we now actually have a nursery.  Just four weeks ago, we were offered one of the brand new houses on base!  This is a huge answer to prayer as the old house had a mold problem (and it was old) that was making my allergies go crazy on top of having super bad morning (all day) sickness.  We found out on Friday and by Monday night we were all moved in! Matthew was Super Man!!  He basically moved the whole house by himself while I was asleep on our new carpet sick as a dog with a horrible cold that had me going through, no joke, four boxes of Kleenex a day. YUCK!   We love our new house!   Life is great.  I have now been sickness free for over three weeks and can enjoy getting ready for our little boy. Matthew’s work schedule has slowed down a bit, the dogs are happy and healthy, and I am hoping that now things are “normal” I will be able to keep up with blogging too! Until then, ta ta for now.

Below are some pictures for your enjoyment

Bake Sale

Last week the spouses of the 490th MS had a bake sale! It was so much fun. Some of us got together Tuesday night to bake and talk, and talk and bake. We had a great assortment of items, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, fudge toffee bars, cupcakes, one of the ladies even made cinnamon rolls from scratch the morning of! They were amazing; I can't wait to get the recipe. We made about $100.00 profit. We even had competition the day of with a breakfast burrito sale downstairs. The money we made goes toward welcome gifts for new families, baby gifts... It is the first bake sale I have ever organized and I am very happy with how it turned out. Last but not least I got to meet more of the guys in Matthew’s squadron, which is great because now I know who he is talking about when he tells me about his day. I can’t wait for our next one!

PS I totally forgot about my camera so I didn’t get any pictures, bummer!

Catching Up With The Ditsons

As I sit here on the couch watching tennis and wondering what I should write on our blog to keep everyone updated, the main thing that comes to my mind is how blessed I am to have a wonderful husband, home, financial stability and the amazing support of our family and friends. To those friends and family who are not here with us in Montana, please know that we miss you so much and we are so thankful to have you in our lives.

Matthew and I got back last week from a fantastic trip to my grandparents house in Sandpoint, ID. Matthew was so sweet to drive back and forth on the weekends to Idaho as he still had class during the week. We had so much fun spending time on Lake Pend Oreille playing on the jet skis, skipping rocks, and swimming. The best part was being able to spend time with my own immediate family as well as uncles, aunts, cousins, and close friends of the family. I was also lucky enough to spend my 22nd birthday in Idaho and all the ladies in the house went out to a nice lunch and shopping! We were able to celebrate my birthday a little early having angel food cake (my favorite) and ice cream on the weekend so Matthew could take part. Another highlight of the trip was attending the Festival at Sandpoint. I was fortunate to be able to go to two different concerts this year at the festival. The first with my parents and my Aunt Molly, we saw Firefall and Pocco. The second was a double date with my parents to see Boz Skaggs.

We are feeling settled here in our house on Malmstrom AFB and we have been busy making it feel like home. We have painted the walls, put up pictures, built a patio in back, put up the fence…twice, pulled out bushes, planted flowers, and we just finally bought a lawn mower (it has been brought to our attention that we should have gotten snow shovels instead). We are finally able to get into a routine as much as Matthew’s schedule will allow. Looking to the future we are excited for football and soccer seasons, as well as our upcoming trip the beginning of September. We will be traveling to Colorado to pick up our snowboards and attend the Air Force Academy Parents Weekend football game on Saturday. Sunday we head to Nebraska for the Ditson family reunion and back in Montana on Monday. It’s a lot of travel but well worth it.


Picture of our new house and the Festival at Sandpoint

July 4th 2009 - Montana

Saturday morning we went to the Great Falls Independence Day parade and what we thought was going to be a short little local parade turned out to be a two hour local parade complete with an F-15 fly over. We also had two helicopters fly over. They made several passes each one decreasing in altitude and increasing in speed. The last few passes they were so low and going so fast that the birds on top of the roof barely had time to get out of the way. It was so fun! The parade included floats from local churches, political candidates, the boy and girl scouts of America, Coke and Pepsi giving out free soda, bag pipes, local BMX racers, tow trucks, lots of old cars, and of course the farmers of Great Falls showing off their tractors and oh yes their lawn mowers. It was more than we expected and we should have taken that as a clue that Great Falls takes their 4th of July very seriously.

When the movers came to drop our stuff off at the new house in Great Falls I casually asked where the best place to see fireworks on the 4th of July was. The said “go to the Kmart parking lot that is the best place to go unless you go to the stock car races.” Well Matthew and I debated, we thought the stock car races would be tons of fun it we didn’t want to spend the money to go when we had another option that was free.

We went over to Brian and Dana’s for a BBQ and talked the night away until we realized that it was almost 10:00 and time for the fireworks to begin …or so we thought. We all jumped in the car and headed to Kmart. On the way we saw fireworks going off everywhere! It turns out that the fireworks actually start at 8:00pm most of the time. As we got closer to Kmart some of the big fireworks were getting closer. It turns out they were setting them off IN the Kmart parking lot! Matthew and I are of course from Colorado where privately setting off fireworks that leave the ground is illegal. Not so in Great Falls. There were fireworks going off everywhere! I am talking 360 degrees of fireworks and lots going off right next to the truck! We all stood it the bed of the truck and watched in awe. We were up high and could easily turn and see in every direction. Not only were there the fireworks going off in the parking lot, but professional ones going on right behind us that seemed to never end, and even more going on in parking lots all over the city and across the river! I have never seen anything like I saw last night. It is definitely the best/most dangerous fireworks display I have ever been to. We left the Kmart parking lot at about 11:15pm because the people around us seemed to be drinking too much and it was actually getting a little scary with some firework miss fires… We found a beautiful spot next to the 10th Street Bridge where we could watch the skyline of fireworks across the city. We stayed until 12:00 then headed home. The fireworks were will going off as we went to bed. It was a great 4th of July that I will never forget.

May/June 2009

As you can probably tell from my lack of posts it has been a crazy couple of months! Hard to believe that Matthew and I are finally in Great Falls, Montana and all of our crazy travels are behind us for at least a few weeks. We are again living on base and we have a nice three bedroom, two bathroom house on Locust Street. Our friends Brian and Dana that came at the same time from Vandenberg are just down the street and around the corner from us and we are thrilled that they are living so close. Our biggest project now is once again building our own fence in the backyard. I am so thankful Matthew thought to bring the one we had from California. I hope we can get that done soon because the dogs are getting restless. I will put some pictures up of the house as soon as I take them :). Quickly I want to recap the weddings I was at before I post about Alaska.

Danae & Scott’s wedding was beautiful! I felt so lucky to be part of their special day and as far as I could tell everything went just about perfect. I broke my new bridesmaid sandal before the wedding even started in true Kathryn fashion but we managed to fix it in time for pictures with super glue the wedding coordinator had in her emergency kit. I had a wonderful time reconnecting with old friends at the reception and dancing the night away with Laura on the dance floor.

My lifelong friend Lydia also got married to her love Ben while I was in CO. I was lucky enough to spend time with Lydia before the wedding helping with last minute details and attending her bachelorette party. We had way too much fun. The day of their wedding six tornados made an appearance in CO and one (unknown to us at the time) was right down the street from the wedding. Needless to say it was a little cold and wet leading up to the ceremony, but the rain held off just long enough for them to get married and run inside for the reception.

Congratulations to both my dear friends and their new husbands.

One Step Closer!

Hi All!
Yesterday Matthew graduated from his Space 100 class. He received academic achievement, which was only given to the top 10% of students. Matthew graduated with an overall score of just over a 99%! I am so proud! Last night we celebrated by going to Red Robin with some of our friends who were also in Matthew’s graduating class. Can you believe that two of them had never been to Red Robin before! We are so excited that we are one step closer to leaving for Montana! Matthew starts his classes for the missile career field today.

As much as we love CA we are ready to get the show on the road. This last week I have gone through a number of different emotions concerning our move. At first, although I tried to have a positive attitude, I was really disappointed that we weren’t going home to CO. I was sure that was where we were supposed to go! However, I have been able to think and pray this week and I remembered something that Matthew and I talked about when we first got married. We said that the Air Force was a great opportunity to see things and places that we might otherwise not be able to see. We decided that we wanted to go to as many different places as possible. Every new place we move is a new adventure, and a chance to meet people that could be lifelong friends. I also remembered that we have been praying about this move for months and I know others have been praying as well. I know that the Lord has a plan for us and that if he put us in Montana that is where we are supposed to be! I am now so excited to go to Montana! Matthew and I are already planning some fun trips to Canada, and go white water rafting! It is also exciting that home is only a one day drive, and we are only a six hour drive to my grandparent’s house in Idaho!

Thank you all for your continued prayers for our family. I would like to share with you another prayer request that have been on my heart this week. One of the chaplains here at Vandenberg, Chaplain Baker, received orders last week for a one year, unaccompanied tour to Korea. His family will be moving closer to Mrs. Baker’s family while he is gone. They were not expecting this assignment for at least another year and it looks like he will be leaving in May. I know your prayers are greatly appreciated.

Below are just a couple pictures from yesterday’s ceremony. Enjoy! :)