McCanna Family Update

So much has happened since August!

We had a nice holiday season. We went to Texas and spent it with my sister Rachel and her family. The rest of the family flew out as well.

we had an awesome time! It was so good to have the family together again!

New Years was spent just like how it has been the last 3 years! Sam had to work so I put Lilly to bed and usually crashed at about 10pm. Not very exciting lol

I leave Illinois for good in about 2 weeks!

I cant believe that I have been for for over 2 and a half years! That is just so crazy to me!
I remember when we first moved here I HATED it. I thought it was hell on earth. Thankfully I met my friend Kenzie and things started to look up from there!

The hardest part about leaving this base is going to be losing the friends I've made.

When we were at our last base I had met a friend named Ariel and when we said goodbye to each other it was so hard. A lot of tears were shed. They were moving to Arizona. When I said goodbye to my friend Brittany there THANKFULLY it wasn't as hard BC i knew we would be back visiting.

The friends I have made here though will be heart breaking to leave. We were friends though my pregnancy through my delivery and becoming a mom and learning the ropes and always there for advice! It will be unbelievably hard to say goodbye!

Sam got our hard orders to England mid december! So we are good to go on that!

Ive told sam a million times I CANT BELIEVE WERE MOVING TO ENGLAND!!!

My friend Jolonda is already there and her pictures of the town and markets are AMAZING. It makes me antsy to hurry up and move in.

Housing is my only concern.

They have 3 neighborhoods there.

Lords Walk
Liberty Village
and Ely Housing (not sure of actual name)

Lords Walk is TERRIFYING. It looks like it should be condemned on the outside.

 

from what I've heard  A LOT of people refuse these houses when the are offered to them.

Liberty Village is MUCH nicer but nearly impossible to get.


how nice is that!

Ely housing is great too! Very normal nice housing!
I cant find a picture of it ha

So we have been looking off base since I highly doubt we will get Liberty Village.

So I leave Feburary 3rd to move to Ohio while Sam goes to Biloxi for his schooling.
We are going to miss him SO much! We will most likely take a week long vacation to see him in late march/ early april!
We are sure going to miss him BUT I am going to treasure this time with my mom and sister!

When we leave for England most likely May1st who knows when we will be back.

It will cost us $6,000 to fly home and we dont have that kind of money!
I think the only way we will be flying home is if there is a SpaceA flight.

We are SO excited for this adventure! I still cant believe it is happening to us!

In the months to come we just have Sams TDY and moving to England and

POSSIBLY POSSIBLY starting an in home daycare in England!

I have a lot more to look into with that though!

But here is to starting our New Year off right and happy!

Mermaid Lillian Turns One!

 My baby girl is one!

I cant believe this. 

So bittersweet. I'm sad my little squishy cuddle bug is gone and now I have a sassy one year old! 

Lets review a year of her cuteness shall we?

Her First birthday pictures!

 My little stinker is so cute!

As most of you know we did A Little Mermaid Themed birthday party! 

I will let the pictures do the talking! 

all of her friends!

mommys friends lol

we were cheap and didnt want to buy helium so we taped the balloons to the ceiling! 

I made this banner for her. It had 13 shells and each one contained a picture from each month thats posted above! 

blurry but I LOVE the ribbon that I strung them together with!

 I was in love! The only thing i was disappointed about was she got the flavor wrong =[ 

Favor box. Can you spy the dingle hoppers lol

"sea water" this was actually blue hawaiian punch!

Since there was no chocolate we had to get cupcakes for the people who arent vanilla lovers

 but look how pretty her cake looks on the table!

These were pb and J with little sour squiggles in them for legs and the Ursula in the background was gummy octopus! 

 Her smash cake! I got it at the Comm for 5.99!

 I had to stick her hand in it

She ate EVERY last bite. 

haha 

She really enjoyed herself! 

Happy Birthday to my baby girl!

Thank you everyone for coming!

Too Long

********** I STARTED THIS BACK IN MAY AFTER VACATION************
I JUST NOW POSTED IT

oh goodness it has been too long.

I'm going to try to cover everything since early March. 

Early March we went home and surprised my sister Rachel for the gender ultrasound.

She is having a Boy and a Girl! 

Karter and Khloe love them so much already!

Then we came home again in April for Cassys Wedding. 

How we really interact.

Cassy looked so beautiful on her wedding day. She was beaming all day!

I was Maid Of Honor and I was SO nervous about my speech. 

I got up there and nailed it though. 

I told a funny story about how Cassy and I had been caught dancing when we were 14 or 15 to Kelly Clarkson Since you've been gone. The neighbors and all their party guest were at the window watching us make a fool.

WELL Cassy surprised me and interrupted my speech and said "Hit it DJ" he jammed Since you've been gone and she handed me a spatula and we went to town. 

It looked rehearsed but I had NO IDEA she was doing it. 

I tried to nab a picture off of the photographers site  but you cant.

After all was said and done. 

I was EXHAUSTED. seriously exhausted. I hadnt been that tired since Lilly was a newborn probably. 

Baggy eye bags... the works

But we spent the next few days with family and had a really awesome time. 

Then we flew back home where we would be leaving in one week for vacation again! 

my babies

On May 6th we left for FLORIDA!! We went with my sister Wren and her husband Jordan.

We drove down there it was a 12 hour drive and she did AMAZING.

We  had a blast!

Her very first time ever touching sand!

 lunch on the beach!

Moving to England?! Going Microwave Free?!

I cannot BELIEVE were moving to England! It is still so surreal to me. Sams report no later than date is July 15th. Since he is in weather he has to do a two month training course at Keesler. Which if we just met and you didn't know was our last base! 

I think while he is there Lilly and I are going to move in with my mom and collect BAH. That will be a nice chunk of change in our pocket so we can deal with expenses for England. 

I am also really looking forward to having that extra time with our families. 

The base we are going to is called Mildenhall. It is in Suffock. 

 We will be right around The Fens.  From what we have heard the weather is rainy and dreary. perfect coffee drinking weather. ALL YEAR LONG! 

Our neighbors here at Scott came here from England. They were telling us lots of cool things! Her husband said that about an away or so away from us there are 20 castles to explore! 

So of course I Google'd and found some AWESOME pictures! 

We are so stinking excited. We're still deciding if we want to live on base or live in a little country side home.

There is so much to be done though before we move. We have to get passports and visas. The whole family has to get a medical clearance. 

Your pets also have to be medically cleared. Sam and I looked into it for moving Kodi to England and realized we will be spending about $2,000 to bring Kodi with us. So we have decided to leave him here with my mom in the states! We are going to miss him SO much. If we are able to save a good amount of money while we are gone we may still ship him. He will love being at my moms though. Huge fenced in back yard and a big house to play in!

So if you would like to send some prayers this way that this all goes accordingly, it would be really appreciated! 

Speaking of asking for prayers Sam and I have realized something. 

About a month ago I was talking to a very good friend of mine. We were talking about how God works in our lives and how he shows himself to us. We got talking into a lot about God and Revelations. I personally have never read revelations so I started. 

There is a verse  Revelations 3:16

"But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!"

We started to realize WE are lukewarm! We go to church sometimes and live our lives as good people. We talk to God and pray to him. We trust in him and rely on him.

But that's not enough. We are living with Jesus but we aren't living FOR Jesus.  We decided to change that and be more proactive. Make church a #1 priority.   When we went the Sunday after getting back from vacation the message was about being lukewarm! How is that?!

It always seems like service has the message we need to hear that day! 

Sam and I have decided to re-commit ourselves. I have questioned getting baptized too. Its something I still have to think and pray about though. 

Sam and I go to O Fallon Assembly Of God. 

We LOVE this church! When we first started going it was in March I believe. My best friend here Brittany is a member of the church. She offered an invitation and we accepted it and enjoyed the service so much! We really like the Pastor there. He is really personable. Always remembers our name and when he delivers his sermon it really speaks to us.

In the title you may have seen "Microwave free?!"

I read a post on a friends facebook about a science fair project it said the following: 

"!!!!! ATTENTION !!!!
Here is a Science fair project presented by a girl in a secondary school in Sussex . In it she took filtered water and divided it into two parts. The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the second part she heated to boiling in a microwave. Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave. She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave. As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference, after the experiment which was repeated by her class mates a number of times and had the same result.

It has been known for some years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about, it's how it corrupts the DNA in the food so the body can not recognize it.

Microwaves don't work different ways on different substances. Whatever you put into the microwave suffers the same destructive process. Microwaves agitate the molecules to move faster and faster. This movement causes friction which denatures the original make-up of the substance. It results in destroyed vitamins, minerals, proteins and generates the new stuff called radiolytic compounds, things that are not found in nature.

So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food or it eliminates it fast. Think of all the Mothers heating up milk in these 'Safe' appliances. What about the nurse in Canada that warmed up blood for a transfusion patient and accidentally killed him when the blood went in dead. But the makers say it's safe. But proof is in the pictures of living plants dying!!!"

then this picture followed

 it got me to thinking. Sam and I use the microwave for EVERYTHING. We use it several times a day. Lilly has a waffle almost every single morning for breakfast and i heat it up for 30 seconds in the microwave. gross!

So I took it out of our kitchen and stuck it in the garage. It is a hassle to reheat everything in the oven or stove top BUT i feel better about our decision already! We are going to try to make this a life style change. It grosses me out thinking about how much we use it!

I will hopefully remember to update this again soon and include pictures! 

Ill make another post about Lillys party!

-Estreya

All Things New

We have a lot of new things going on!

Where do I even start?!

Lilly had an awesome first valentines day!

her onesie I got her for Vday

giggling at something

cheesing

Lillys NEW favorite thing to do is fake cry. Her Lita sent her an AWESOME care package for valentines. She got new white tennis shoes! a new outfit and a gift card to Toys R Us in which "she" bought new toys for the bath tub. 

She got a bubble maker, foam letters, and squirt toys. She also got an O ball which she LOVES.

she has the pink one

playing with her letters for pictures for Aunt Wren

Lilly also had her 6 month birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy cow.

where has the time gone with my precious baby? she is getting beyond smart. It amazes me to see her mile stones and developemnt. 

the lighting is weird but look at that big girl! 

New things from month 5-6:

Eating solids 3x a day

Holding her own bottle

She can pick up puffs and feed her self

^^ haha drunken puff state

She is starting to crawl

Her very first toothy has cut!

I am happy to say she is not actually crawling yet thankfully. I like her slow and immobile =]

She has been doing surprisingly good about her teeth cutting. She hasnt been too whiney or losing a lot of sleep. 

After a long 5 months lillys newborn photos were finally ordered. They were as cute as ever. I went out and bought a frame for it and hung it up!

gosh im so in love with this little monkey.

We had her 6 month doctor visit and she was 17lbs 13 oz and 28 inches tall! 

She is int he 99th percentile for height!

 She had to get 4 shots the poor thing!

She didnt get sick from her 6 month vaccinations like she did from her 4 month. 

Now some random photos!

Her and her kitty keesler, which we will be getting rid of soon sadly.

flip flopping around

trying to steal the cam

love that look

Litas girl

beautiful eyes

goof

playing naked with her dog

spoiled butt

her right eye decided to go crazy lol

daddy dangling her bink

My maid of honor dress for my best friends wedding in april. 

bible study is going amazing!  We are actually having a dinner tonight for all the families.

Her looking adorbs for church.

It just a brief update on stuff and a lot of photos!