My Husband's a Soldier?

When we lived in St. Louis, Stuart marched with a unit in the Veteran's Day parade. As he marched past us I pointed him out to the kids and we cheered. Henry stood there and looked at me with his sweet little face--he was just astonished. He then said to me in the most perplexed voice, "My dad's a soldier?" Henry had spent his entire young life watching his dad go to work, and come home, dressed in his uniform, but up until that moment he had never seen his dad act like a soldier. (Or at least what a four year old thought a soldier did.)

That is kind of how I am feeling right about now. Stuart is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, and I am only beginning to understand what this means for our family. I have spent so many years telling everyone how crazy it is that he has never deployed. It feels bizarre to think that this is something I can no longer share with people in amazement. I have joined the ranks of millions of other military and civilian spouses who stay home and support their loved ones.

Having said all that we are all excited about this new adventure.  Stuart is excited to go and serve his country.  I am glad that we are at a place that we all feel confident that this is where we should be right now.
Our family is surrounded by people who love us and who have all been where we are now.  This is a great comfort to both Stuart and myself as he leaves.   

For the next six months or so we will use this blog to keep Stuart updated on our day to day life.  I will now ask for patience with me, because my proofreader will no longer be reading over my shoulder.  So you see, I am looking for the silver lining in losing my best friend for the rest of the year.

Air Head

So, Henry just held a flashlight to his ear and asked us if we could see light.
We said yes. "Coooool" was his reply. He then tried it on his dad. No comment on what we saw.

Thoughts from Elisa

Since I rarely update this thing and I am pretty sure no reads it, ever. I am now going to use it for purely selfish reasons. My kids say the funniest stuff, all the time. I am sure I am going to forget everything. So now when they say or do something I want to remember, I am going to jot it down here. Things such as, Henry begging us to sleep on our floor last night so he could watch the movie we were watching because, and I quote, "Please, this is my favorite part of Gone with the Wind." So there you have it. If anyone is still reading.

P.S. Henry's favorite part of GWTW is when Scarlett and Melanie kill the Yankee.

Thoughts from Ernie

Don't ya hate it when you get an itch so bad you have to use your teeth?

Everything I need to know I learned in . . .

So this week it has been made clear to me that I did not learn everything I need to know in Kindergarten. Everything I need to know I learned from School House Rock. No matter what I am doing with the kids in school there is a School House Rock song. I know this because whatever concept we are learning someone starts singing. An example:

Elisa: Okay Ernie, I need you to draw a line between the complete subject and the complete predicate.

Ernie: (singing)Mister Morton is the subject of the
sentence, and what the predicate says,
he does.

I have also been making Henry watch Multiplication Rock a couple of times a week. It is way better than the CD I bought with his math that skip counts to the tune of The Ants Come Marching In.

Maybe next year when I file my intent to home school, when it asks what curriculum I am using I will just write in School House Rock!

I Dreamed a Dream

It is only 6:20 in the morning and I am already irritated at Stuart. I am also tired and cranky. I am not tired because of the hard work out I did at the gym. I had to skip that, I was too tired when I woke up. I was exhausted and cranky when I woke up because I spent the night on an international flight to England. Why were we going to England? I have no idea. All I know is that my children were on their worst behavior and Stuart was tired so he slept the whole way leaving me to deal with the lot of them. So I woke up tired with having to put up with this all night. This is not the first time I have woken up mad at Stuart for something I dreamed about. He spent the morning reminding me that it wasn't really him. I must have some deep seeded issues. And the kicker is, we didn't even make it to England. We got off the plane in France. No wonder I am cranky.

Holy Crow! Is this an update?

Now, nobody get too excited. I am not sure how long this update thing will last. I read one of my friends blog updates and she had not updated in nine months. She mused that she could have had a baby since her last blog update. That is the bar I have now set for myself. As long as I could not have had a baby between updates, I am doing good.

So what have we been up to in the ooh, seven months? Same thing as always. Sad huh? We did the same things every other family did. Got a Wii for Christmas, (If Henry was allowed he would spend every waking minute of the day with that box. Sometimes when I know that I need to leave for a few hours, I will deprive him of games for a few days, then while I am gone he is guaranteed not to move.) In January Disney came out with a great offer for military families, so we decided to take the kids. A week later we loaded the car and woke the kids up at midnight and went for a week. We did not tell the kids beforehand. That turned out, in hindsight to be a stroke of genius. Since the kids did not know we were going, I did not have to spend a week scolding them about their behavior. There were not empty threats like, "Clean this room or we will not go!" or "If you want to go to Disney you will unload this dishwasher in the next five minutes." It made for a great trip.

What other fun stuff we have done? Stuart surprised me with a weekend away for our anniversary. The first time in 18 years he has ever done anything like that. He took me to Virginia Beach. He figures he is good for another 18 years. Truth is I like to tease him about his lack of holiday gift giving, but I know everyday that I got the best gift in tricking him into marrying me so I have no complaints. We have also gone to a couple of National Baseball games. Kitty and I took the kids on opening day. I love opening day. The world just feels better when it is baseball season.

It is a good thing that I love baseball as much as I do because that is about all our schedule has on it right now. Both the boys are playing, but because of their age difference they are in different divisions. That means we sometimes have to be at two different fields at the same time. And Molly now has swim team practice four nights a week so some days I need to have three people to three different places at the same time. It makes for some interesting evenings

All in all things are good here.