The Ohrvalls | The Life and Times of

It was just another normal Saturday morning.  We love to take it easy on Saturday mornings, no school work to do, no plans until later in the morning.  Isabella was busy planning what costume --read princess dress-- she was going to wear to the trunk-or-treat event that we were going to later that morning. As 9:30 rolled around we headed out so that I would be able to get the decorations up and ready to go before all the trick-or-treaters arrived.  I had planned a game themed 'trunk' in the back of our van.  I had a tic-tac-toe game, a spider target game and a pumpkin bean bag toss game for the kids to interact with while making their rounds. The only problem with my plan was that I did not account for the amount of wind that would be blowing while we were outside.  As you can see in the photos the wind caused all the games to blow around so much that we were not able to play them.  The wind also caused what would have been a chilly day to be a...

I want to tell you all a little story about a day that I had recently, yesterday in fact! I'll start where my day always seems to start: Six am on the dot with a mouth breathing Isabella standing right beside my bed.  Anyone else have one of those type of children?  The ones that wake at the same absurd hour of the early morning? Both of my children have inherited that lovely trait from their father, not from me! Anywho, I could sense that she was there; standing beside me, staring at me, willing me to wake up.  You know, that ability to feel someone's presence before you actually see them?  Yep, that is how I wake up most mornings since Matthew left on his deployment. And so the day started!  Conner was already awake as well, I could hear him 'talking' to himself in his bedroom.  So in we went to get Conner up and changed to bring downstairs with us.  Only problem, Conner woke up on the wrong side of the bed on this particular morning.  So ...

Hello everyone! I know, I know, it has been a REALLY long time since I last posted anything here.  We have since been in Great Lakes, IL for a little over 2 years now and I feel like we have made ourselves a comfortable home and extended group of friends that are like family in the area.  But of course, like true Navy fashion, and God's design for life, nothing goes according to plan. I thought here in Great Lakes there would be little to no chance of Matthew ever getting deployed. God had a different plan.  Long story short, he is now deployed overseas and has been for almost 3 months.  He will be back sometime around May 2019 (that's about 10 months total). I've been having a lot of thoughts about how my days and plan are escaping me and I have trouble remembering what I've did yesterday let alone last week.  And so, I've decided to try and take back up on the blogging.  Hopefully it will be therapeutic for me and as well as help me when I want to ...