Andrews Family

Wildlife Refuge

2009-06-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

After a year and a half of living here in the state of Oklahoma, we finally took the kids up to the Wildlife Refuge, north of Lawton. We walked around the museum, checked out the Holy City, and drove to the top of Mt. Scott. It was a hot day, but what a beautiful view!!

2009-06-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

We finally made it to the splash park. We had a beautiful day. The kids had fun getting soaked in and running through the water. I am very impressed with the parks they are putting on post. And luckily I had my camera with me. Unfortunately Alyssa took all the pics, so she isnt in any of them!!

2009-05-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

More Memorial Day pics!!

Memorial Day

2009-05-26T03:52:00.000-07:00

We decided to take the kids to the new splash park on post yesterday, check it out have a good time, and on the way there it started to rain. The splash park was closed, but luckily the raind slowed down enough for us to play on the playground next to it. They had a lot of new equipment I have never seen at a park before. Unfortunately I didnt have my camera, thankful that Alyssa took pictures with her phone!! We had a good time playing, until the rain started to pick back up.. So we went home. I thought we had seen all the rain we were going to see for a while, I guess not. It poured on us here in Geronimo!! Hope everyone had a good Holiday!

2009-05-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Riley and Logan had their last soccer game of the season. Their team won 1-0. What a great season ending. We started off with a little drizzle the first half, and then the rain and the wind picked up for the second half. We were soaked by the time the game was over. I was glad the boys finally experienced playing soccer in the rain. I have fond memories of soccer games in the rain from when I was a child. Good Times, Good Times!! Riley did a great job as goalie, he played for 3 quarters of the game before coach let him play forward. Logan is an awesome mid fielder because he has the energy and he can run!! I think he will be a runner like his dad! After their game the team celebrated at Cici's Pizza!!

2009-05-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Mark Wins Drill Sergeant Of The Cycle Award!! Another cycle of Basic Training Soldiers is over. At the graduation ceremony on May 14th, Mark was awarded Drill Sergeant of the Cycle. We are very proud of Mark, we know he works hard and is very deserving of this award!!

2009-05-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Alyssa danced at Arts For All in Lawton on Saturday May 9th. We were lucky it didnt rain. She danced 4 dances. 2 ballet, 1 modern and 1 tap. The stage was a lot smaller than the one they danced on for their recital. The girls had to be careful not to run in to the the speakers on the stage, or fall off for that matter. My only complaint was the big tent pole that ran right down in front of the center of the stage. I did manage to get some pics though.

2009-05-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Alyssa's Dance Recital! Alyssa danced for Story and Barton School of Dance this year. She took 5 classes. She has been a busy dancer. For the Recital Alyssa was in 7 dances + the finale. She danced 2 ballet pieces, 1 point (her first year doing this), 1 tap, 1 modern, 1 character, and 1 jazz. I was only able to take a couple pics back stage before the performance, but I do plan on getting a pic of her in a few of her costumes.. and we are supposed to be getting a video.. hopefully I can put one of the dances on the blog when I do. I am very proud of all her hard work. She is a graceful and beautiful dancer.

2009-05-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Grandma Marilyn came out to visit and boy did we keep her busy.. Besides our normal crazy schedule of kids activities, a little shopping, watching tv, and making cards...We had a Pampered Chef Party, Went to a Ward Activity, Women's Conference, Logan's Birthday Party, Logan's Baptism, a School Fieldtrip with Logan's Class to the Sam Noble Museum, a School Fieldtrip with Madelyn's class to the Braum's Dairy, (We got free Ice Cream, YUMMY!!!) Alyssa's Dance Recital, Riley and Logan's Spring Concert at school, a Mother Daughter YW activity and then the two of us helped prepare and serve lunch at a Missionary Zone meeting, I hope she wasn't bored while she was here!! And she managed to sneak away with only getting her picture taken once. We sure had fun having her here!!

2009-05-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

Logan was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, on April 26, 2009. His Grandma Marilyn, Aunt Jenni, Aunt Marcianne, Uncle Andy, and cousins Marc, David, Alena, Kerra, Gabriel and Joshua came to help the family celebrate.

2009-05-10T04:45:00.000-07:00

Logan's Birthday Party!! We had Logan's birthday party at a park in Lawton. It was very windy, but we were lucky it didnt rain. Family and friends came out to help us celebrate. It was a relaxing party just hanging out, playing, and having fun.

2009-05-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Pics of family and friends at the birthday party.

2009-05-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Logan!! My baby turned 8, April 20th.. I cant believe it. We are waiting to celebrate his birthday on Sat. the 26th. Sad dad had duty tonight, but Logan's aunt Jennilee and his cousins Gabriel and Joshua flew in today to visit.

2009-05-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter!! We had a very quiet Easter this year... We went to church, and then had a nice family dinner just the 6 of us. The Easter Bunnies true Identity has been revealed, so... The kids had fun hiding and finding their own eggs.. We had lots of rain Easter weekend.. so the ground was wet.. which puts a cramp in my picture taking... and the kids came in wet and muddy after hunting for eggs. We missed spending Easter with our family back home!!

2009-03-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

I got this from my sisters blog.... I may even be nice and let more than 5 people win!!!

Something FREE
The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!My choice. For YOU!
I saw this on Wendy's blog and decided it would be fun to do this too!
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done before the end of the year. Hopefully sooner than later.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be sewn ( Yeah right, sewn by me??), painted, written, scrapbooky, or be something totally random that I come up with on a whim.
I may even bake you something and mail it to you. ( Except, will it still be good when you get it?? ) Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.
Let's spread some love!
So, the first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they are doing it too win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!(I know...that could either be cool or scary) Who knows! :)Be sure to post pictures of what you won when you recieve it! :)You better hurry!

2009-03-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

Spring Break March 16-20!! We had a fun week. Most of the kids regular activities were cancelled, but I signed Maddy, Riley and Logan up for spring break splash at the Y. The kids had fun getting in the water and learning new things. They loved getting tipped out of the raft. We went to the park a couple times with friends. We saw Hotel for dogs at the cheapy theatre in Lawton. It was better than I thought it would be. The kids loved it. Our neighbor set up a basketball hoop down on the road. The boys had fun playing basketball.. I even went down and played "pig" with them once. I am not so good at it. The weather was great most of the week. We even got a little sun burned. We had fun playing and relaxing.

2009-03-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Fun at the park with friends.

2009-03-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

A little wet from the pool...

2009-03-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Riley and Dallin playing basketball.

2009-03-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

The girls had fun playing barbies on the front porch...

2009-03-13T09:47:00.001-07:00

Riley had his birthday party!! It was a bowling party at the bowling alley on post. The boys had a great time bowling and goofing around... doing what boys do best!!

2009-03-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Logan loves his frosting!!

2009-03-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

The boys soccer season started off with a great first game! Although the wind was blowing like crazy and it was freezing. The team won 3-1. This is the first win for this team, as most of the players are the same as in the fall, and they have the same coaches. The second game started off great, decent weather, some wind though, but they lost 1-3. The boys are having a good time. Riley plays goalie for part of the game.. They both are great defenders. They both do good at mid as well, because they can run, and can keep on going. They love to play soccer. It looks like we should have a fun season. I just hope it gets warmer.

2009-02-27T20:34:00.000-08:00

Story about these pictures below is in the month of Feb, click on I was at Madelyns gymnastics to read. I published it after I posted the pics, but I guess it posted in order of when I typed the draft.

2009-02-27T20:18:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

Riley turned 9, February 24th. He is having his party on March 7, though. He got to open his present from mom and dad. Also thank you to grandmas and grandpas sending birthday cards.

2009-02-27T13:41:00.000-08:00

Riley had his blue and gold banquet on Saturday. He received his wolf badge and a few other awards. They had a dad and son cake auction to earn money for day camp this summer. Logan will be 8 when camp is here so he also got to make a cake to earn money so he can go to camp. We had fun, but unfortunately did not win any cake. Mark was unable to get a non blurry picture of Riley getting his badge, but I got one of each of the boys with their cakes.

2009-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

Ok, so i am sitting at Madelyn's gymnastics yesterday.. and i get a phone call. I had left Alyssa and the two boys at home, and gave them a job to clean up the back yard and weed the front. Mark was on his way home from work when i left. When he got home, Riley had taken off to who knows where, so he tasked Logan with the back yard and Alyssa with the front. He then went in the house to take a shower. A few minutes later Logan comes running into the house screaming there is a fire!! Mark is thinking at a neighbors??, down the street?? He opens up the windowto look and our backyard is on fire!! He luckily was able to get it out with the hose and some stomping, and some buckets of water. Logan had gotten a hold of the lighter we used to light the bbq last week, so riley could do his outdoor cooking to earn his wolf badge. He says he was lighting a piece of grass on the patio and it spread to the rest of the grass. It was very windy yesterday. I am very grateful Logan did not get caught in the middle of the fire. He is unscathed. Unfortunately our trampoline has a hole in it. We are also lucky it didnt spread to the neighbors or to a house.

2009-02-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

Riley had his second Pinewood Derby. His car didnt do so hot, but he had fun making it. They also had a family race, so Logan and Maddy got to make a car also. Maddy didnt want to be in the picture.

2009-02-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

We have been busy, busy, go, go, go!! I love to keep the kids active in activities. Alyssa has been keeping busy dancing, getting ready for a recital in May. She dances Mon, Tues, and Sat. Madelyn is doing gymnastics on Tues and Thurs. Both boys are doing basketball. Their Geronimo team is done, but they are still going with Fort Sill and yesterday soccer started. I wish the girls wanted to play soccer, but then that would be more places to run to. I love to watch them practice and play games. I wish I had a better action camera.

2009-02-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

Meet the newest member of our family!! This is Sawyer. Over Christmas break Riley and Logan and some friends found some kittens up at there school abandoned. They decided they would bring two home. I told them no way are we keeping them, we already have 2 cats. We fixed up a box outside for them to sleep in and gave them a little food. I was planning on emailing members of our ward to see if anyone wanted any kittens. The next day when we went to the boys basketball practice we brought the kittens with us. A friend of Riley's parents decided they wanted to take one home with them.. Wow that was easy!! Except even after a day it was sad to see them take him. I am a sucker for kittens, can you tell!! Anyway, the kids were begging me to keep the other one. I told the kids I would talk to their dad. He of course said it was my decision. And what do you think it was?? We kept him. It took us a week to decide on his name. He is so sweet and cuddly, but sometimes he is a crazy wild kitten!! We are having fun with him. Well us humans. Star and Stripes are not so happy about a new cat in the house.

2009-02-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

Ok, I am a little slow at getting things posted on my blog. Hopefully as time passes I will get better. We had some fun weather last week. The kids missed 2 days of school. It was very cold and icy Monday Jan26 and then Tuesday Jan 27 morning we got snow, or was it ice? Do you call it frozen snow? I could here it coming down in the morning, and when the kids woke up they were excited saying it snowed it snowed!! I told them no, it was ice, but they wanted to go out and play in it anyway. They got out the sleds and were sledding down our driveway, which isnt very long, but they would shoot out all the way across the street on the ice. It countinued to come down throughout the day. We got about 4-5 inches, I didnt actually go out and measure it. School was cancelled on Wednesday Jan 28 as well. Alyssa went with some friends to go sledding at a pond down the street and got sunburned!! She forgot that even though it is cold you can still get burned, not to mention the reflection from the snow. We had two nice relaxing days, as all their other activities were cancelled as well. I didnt get around to getting pictures til Thursday after some of it had melted. But it was the most white we have seen in a long time. Our back patio turned into a giant thick sheet of us and because it is shaded for a lot of the day is still icy. We couldnt even get the back screen door open for a few days. The kids were sad they had to go back to school on Thursday.

2009-01-29T17:08:00.000-08:00

Ok, I am going to do a little venting here. I signed the boys up for basketball with their school here in Geronimo OK. I knew it wasnt going to be anything big because they were going to be playing only other kids from their school. First practice I find out that their games are at the half times of the highschool boys and girls basketball games. No biggy, their games might be quite as long, but they should play for what, about 20 minutes? Wrong, we go to the first game.. and wait almost an hour for the girls game to start. Half time rolls around and Logan goes out to play. His game is 6 minutes long, and there are subs, so he plays for 3 minutes. Then we watch the rest of the girls game and have to wait for the boys game to start. Watch the first half of the boys game, and Riley goes out to play. He is on the bench for the first 3 minutes and his coach subs him in. A player on the other team is hurt at this time and they take time to get him off the court. ( Not complaining about the kids being hurt here. ) They dont stop the clock. So Riley plays for less than 3 minutes. I sat in the gym for over 2 1/2 hours to watch my boys play basketball for that. I did not stay for the second half of they boys game.

Luckily I was telling this story to a friend at church and she is coaching the Fort Sill basketball team and her team needs players. So she calls Youth Sports to see if there is any way to get the boys signed up, even though they have missed the deadline. And yeah, They get to play!! They are still going to play asmuch as they can with their Geronimo team because they want to. But I would enjoy watching them play more!

Family Letter 2008

2009-01-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

Well, In the excitement of Christmas and the rush of getting our Christmas cards out this year, I realized after I had dropped them in the mailbox, I forgot to include a family letter. Since we are moving so much and far from friends and family I thought it was important to keep people informed of our life. Plus I have had several siblings and friends ask me to start a blog.
2008 has been a busy year. We survived Mark's first year as a Drill Sergeant. One more year to go!!
Mark has been keeping very long and busy hours, leaving the house between 3:30- 4:00 in the morning and sometimes not coming home til as late as 11:00 at night. In August he was promoted to E-7, Sergeant First Class. In December he won Z-94's soldier of the week. He was able to take 12 days off at Christmas to spend with his family. He bought Guitar Hero, which was a hit with the kids.
Doralyn has kept busy making cards and running the kids to all their activities. She also is serving 3 callings at church. Choir pianist, Primary pianist, and Activity Day girls leader. She recently gave up drinking soda (4 months now) and eating candy ( 5 weeks now). We will see how long that lasts. She also likes to read when she can find the time.
Alyssa (15) is a Freshman in Highschool. She started dancing again this fall, taking 5 classes a week. She had a small part (she played a shepherdess) in our church christmas program. In her spare time she reads, plays games on the computer, and listens to her ipod. She has a new baby brother, Kaden Hunter Craig, born in October.
Madelyn (10) is in the fifth grade. She started taking gymnastics in April. In her spare time she likes to read and play with her toys and friends.
Riley (8) is in the third grade. He was baptized in March a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He played baseball in the spring and soccer in the fall. In his spare time he likes to build legos and play with his friends.
Logan (7) is in the second grade. He also played baseball and soccer this year. In his spare time he likes to play pokemon and play with his friends. He loves to read.
All four kids started taking piano lessons this year.
We have enjoyed visits from family this year and visiting family. In February Doralyn took the kids to San Antonio TX to visit her sister Jennilee and her family. It was a fun weekend, wish we could have stayed longer. In March Doralyn's mother, sister Marcianne and her family, sister Jennilee and her son Gabriel came out for Riley's baptism. In May Doralyn's mom and sister Marcianne and her daughter Alena came for a quick visit. In May Alyssa flew to Washington to see her dad. She had a great time with her dad and family. In June Alyssa's friend Whitney flew down and the girls went on a church youth trip to Nauvoo IL. They had a good time visiting all the church historical sights and were able to see the Nauvoo temple. In July Doralyn took the four kids to Greenville SC to spend the month with her sister Danielle and her family. They had a blast hanging out, swimming and playing with cousins. In October the family made a weekend trip to El Paso TX to visit Jennilee and her family and see the new baby, Joshua. Doralyn's mom was there visiting also. On our last day we went up to White Sands NM. We had fun sledding in the sand.
There are so many things we are thankful for this year. Mostly the love from family and friends. We think of you often, and wish we could visit more.
We hope you all had a Merry Christmas. Have a great New Year.