Winging Pictures

As the Winging Ceremony has come to an end and the day is coming to a close I want to share with you some of the pictures that don't even come close to showing how proud we are of Lane. He has accomplished a great feat and I am proud to say that I am a Marine Corps Pilots wife! {That felt great!!!}

We decorated the driveway when Daddy said he might fly over the house. He didn't see us and we didn't see him...

Too hot to wait outside looking for Daddy, so we got out the pool.

Kick Kick Kick!

The banner, all done, ready to hang!

Pop and Eden on "Daddy ride"

Lane's winging class picture

Class picture sans the hats

The banner, hung, looking good! 

We took Eden and Mack to Celebration Nation to play one morning.

She loved calling him Pop!

Eden got a present from Grandma and Grandpa.

Her very own flight suit and she even got a patch with her name embroidered on it!

The family at the blessing of the wings ceremony. Jeanine, Daron, Grandpa, Grandma, Mack, Angela, David, Mimi, Pop, and Eden.

Pinning his wings on the tapestry in the chapel during the ceremony.

Our friend Mr. Matt was one of the "helpers" at the static display of the planes, so he helped Eden out in the plane.

Mimi was flying "Daddy ride" {as Eden called it}

Lane getting his soft wings patch.

Daddy's first set of wings!

Grandpa flying "Daddy ride"

Presenting Daddy's wings to him.

Probably my FAVORITE picture from the whole day!

The winging class from both squadrons.

The newly winged Marines.

Angela gave me roses, one military spouse to another, thanking me for the sacrifices that have been made by our family. She always knows how to bring a tear to my eye! Love her!

18 Months!

Ok, I know, this is late...way late. Eden is now closer to being 19 months than to her 18 month mark, but we just had her well baby appointment last week. If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now {and if I have said it, I'll say it again!} - I LOVE Eden's doctor! She's great.

That being said, Eden had a great check up. She weighed in at 24 pounds 1.5 ounces, and they gave me her height in centimeters so I unfortunately don't remember it. I do know, however, that on her height tracker in her room I marked her on May 7 and then I marked her again last week and there's a difference of about 2-3 inches! My oh my how we've come so far from being weighed every month when she was in the 1st and 3rd percentile to now when she's in the 50th percentile.

The doctor asked how many words Eden is saying that we can understand and I told her that there was no way for me to even try to begin to count them. She knows body parts (head, hair, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hands, arms, tummy, fingers, legs, knees, foot, toes) in addition to people's names (Mommy, Daddy, Eden, Parker, Mimi, Pop, Nelson, Noah, Becca, Grandma, Grandpa, McKenzie, Cael, Baby, Abby, Laney, Nugget, Ginger) and then you can't forget her random words that she seems to learn EVERY DAY! Sit, "yook" (look), chair, seat, shoe, show/Gabba, flower, cloud, mail, keys, bye bye, night night, "ya no" (I love you), hold, up, please, thank you, water, milk, cheerios, snack, eat, dog, duck, paci, car, walk...I feel like I could go on and on! Something else she's starting to do is put 2 words together to make small sentences more regularly. Now do you see why I told the doctor I wasn't even able to begin to try to count her words.

Eden also got to get 3 shots! I don't like when she gets shots because she's in pain and there's nothing I can do to make the pain go away and I actually have to hold her down to allow these people to inflict the pain on her. This time, I did laugh...out loud. When the corpsman gave her her first shot, she looked at me and said "owie" (there's another word to count!) When he realized what she said - before she started crying - he noted that "owie" was what he heard too and then I laughed! What mom does that?! Well, This mom does! I also picked her up and comforted her and we talked about her cool bandaids that she (and I) got for being big girls (I got my flu shot) and she got TWO stickers - oh yeah, she knows that word too! She was a big girl and she even took her bandaids off all by herself when she was ready for them to be gone.

All that to say Eden had a healthy well baby visit last week with the doctor.

Winging Banner

Another tradition within the winging community is a winging banner. I decided to make Lane's banner and document the process. It wasn't easy to track down instructions and I have friends who will be making banners in the coming months, so I thought it was a good way to show the work that went into it and the "how to" make the banner.
What you need for the banner:
Canvas for the actual banner - the size of the banner that I made is 54in x 36 in
Felt for the letters
Felt for the border {I used yellow} - about 1/2 a yard should do
Gold pleather for the wings - 1/4 yard should be ok {they end up being about 3ft tip to tip and about 12in high}
File to enlarge for the wings. {if you need this, email me (mrs.daigle@gmail.com) with "wings of gold file" as the subject and I will send you the file I have *they are the wings for the Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Air Force wings are different*}
Brand new sharpie
Black paint pen

Letters traced onto the white felt. "CONGRATULATIONS" is in size 300 font, the rest of the wording is done in size 200 font. All lettering is done in the same font, which should be one without many curves - a very clean line font - because it is then easier to cut out.

To trace the letters, I taped the letters to the window and dotted them with a sharpie onto the felt.

Trace the wings onto tissue paper with a sharpie. No need to get exact thickness of the lines, just a simple trace with a single thin line.

Once the tissue paper is traced, I cut around the wings and taped the tissue paper to gold pleather in order to trace them again...yes, trace them again! This time use a NEW black sharpie so that the ink bleeds through the paper onto the pleather.

Top left set of wings is the orginal file that was used to start tracing from. The bottom right (cut off) is the tissue paper wings that I traced over again with the sharpie. The center wings is what you end up with after using the sharpie to trace the tissue paper and remove the tissue paper.

Last set of tracing! You now go over the sharpie wings with  pain pen directly on the pleather. This sharpens up the lines and makes it look better. The lines now pop and the next step is to cut out the wings with about .25 inches between the cut edge and the black line.

Cut your yellow felt in the length (54 inches) and the width (36 inches) of the banner 5 inches thick. I cut mine 6 inches with anticipation of hemming the felt, but decided against the hem, so then had to cut the extra inch off. The felt is not a fabric that will fray and I attached it to the banner with glue, so I didn't see the need to hem it. You will need 2 of each the 54in and the 36in borders.

The top set of border fabrics are the 36in and the bottom set is the 54in.

Lay out your canvas in preparation to cut it to the 54x36 size. {Make sure you have all the help you can get!}

Use the straight edges if you can to ensure that you get true 90 degree angles for the corners. {Notice I had to change locations because of all the help I was getting!}

Fold the border pieces in half, one at a time, and iron them so they're easier to place on the edges of the canvas.

Glue the border pieces onto the canvas with the fold that you ironed into the felt at the edge of the canvas. You will have half of the felt on the front and half on the back of the banner. {I used mod podge for fabric, but you can use hot glue, iron on adhesive, other fabric adhesive, or you can actually sew it all together - just follow the instructions for whatever you use!} After you glue the border on the canvas lay out all of your letters and wings before gluing them down to ensure that they're centered and level {and that you have all the letters/numbers that you need - I was missing 2 numbers! Oops}

I finally cut out the 3 and the 0 and got them hot glued onto the banner.

Lane helped me cut through all FIVE layers of fabric to put the eyelets on the top 2 corners of the  banner. I got these at a fabric store and we just followed the instructions on the back of the eyelets package to attach them.

The finished banner picture will have to wait! Lane has one flight left {scheduled for tomorrow} and he won't let me hang it until he's officially done. I know why, but now that its done, all I want to do is hang it for all to see! I do promise to post a final banner picture {lots of them probably!} soon. I'm not promising when I'm going to post it because I have a to do list a mile long for tomorrow and then family rolls in each day until the winging ceremony on Friday! {Can you believe it? Friday?!?! That's only 3 days away!!!!!!}

Winging Week

This is the start of Lane's Winging Week. I am so excited that it is FINALLY here! I feel like it has been a long time coming. I couldn't be more excited for him to complete this program. He's had lots of long hours and add in a newborn turned toddler, it was a bumpy road. In order to celebrate the beginning of the week, enjoy some pictures of Lane's winging gift from me. It is a common gift to be given to a completed student aviator.

The frame. 

The engraved "plaque" at the bottom of the frame:
LANE A. DAIGLE
1ST LT USMC
WINGED ON 23 SEP 2011
NAS CORPUS CHRISTI, TX

C-130

VT2 Doerbirds, T34

VT31 Wise Owls, T44

C-130 with the Wings of Gold

Not Enough To Do?

Then come on over here! Eden didn't think I had enough to do, so she decided to get sick in her crib last night. I absolutely hate when she's sick, let alone, when she gets sick and we don't know it! When I went into her room this morning to get her up for church I knew she got sick the minute I opened the door! The smell overwhelmed me. Of course Lane had to go to work today and I had to deal with clean up and everything by myself.

It took me by surprise because she was totally fine yesterday except for a slight runny nose after her nap. But watch this video and tell me if you think she was sick before bed! NO WAY! She was in a spunky mood! Nugget didn't actually bite her, for the record. Eden was telling him no bite because she sat on him and bounced on him and he turned to get her off and he bumped her lip with his snout giving her an "owie." Either way, after sending him to his bed to lay down, she picked up on the fact that he was in trouble and was telling him so! She stood in front of him pointing her finger at him and saying "NO BITE!" over and over again, in addition to telling him "bed!"

All that to say, she was fine last night, except for in the middle of the night. Meaning I have extra laundry to tackle, and blankets laying all over the living room floors in case she gets sick again {I really don't want to clean carpets!}, and I have to clean the house before Tuesday! Oh, and Lane is SUPER busy because he had the last 2 days off {for no reason, and no, I'm not complaining because we got good family time accomplished} so I'm on my own with the sickie and the house...

Baby News

I feel like so many new things have happened with baby recently. While we were at Fripp I started feeling baby flutters! I love laying in bed and feeling him/her flutter around before I fall asleep. Within the past few days I've been able to feel the flutters a little more often. If I'm sitting still {I actually do get a chance every now and then} I'm occasionally able to feel him/her.

This morning when I woke up I put my hand on my tummy. I noticed that there was a hard bump about the size of my palm just under my belly button. This is exciting to me because though I've been showing {to people who know I'm pregnant} for a few weeks now, I've been telling Lane that I just feel fat because my belly wasn't hard like a pregnant belly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sad that it was soft, I was just looking forward to the hard belly that you get when you're truly "showing."

Everything is starting to feel real now that I feel the flutters and my tummy is getting harder! For so long pregnancy is almost phantom-like because you know you're pregnant, you've seen the positive tests, you've seen the ultrasounds with the heartbeat, but you don't feel or look pregnant. How exciting it is to begin this new phase of pregnancy - when you start to feel and look pregnant!