Blogging on a Friday Night

Why you ask? Because Rob is out at a Dining In, which is actually a short name for many officers getting dressed up in their Blues, leaving their spouses behind, eating a large dinner, consuming copious amounts of alcohol and then doing ridiculous things such as body surfing across tables and who know what else and it is all a sanctioned and ceremonial event. Attendance is mandatory.

Was my husband looking forward to this event? No. He had to stress over his uniform for many hours until I pushed him out the door (his pins look straight don't they? He has to use a ruler and measure to the cm to make sure they're in the proper place). And frankly, he doesn't enjoy being around drunk people. Being loud and obnoxious and working a room, just aren't his thing. If we get to go to an event together, I work the room and that has always gone well. Tonight, he's on his own. I expect him home sometime after midnight where I'll get the full report.

In the meantime, I get some much appreciated alone time. I've endured a couple of ridiculous predicaments this week, one of which was today, when I totally bit it in a parking lot while holding Avery. The baby fared the best of the three of us. I stopped my fall with my one free hand and Avery. Poor guy got a nice bump on the concrete and I have some lovely skinned knees and hands like I haven't had since I was a kid, but the every enlarging belly didn't take a hit.

The other ridiculous thing that happened was at IHOP on "Kid's Eat Free" Night which is about the only way we can go out to eat. Anyway, for some insane reason, I've started drinking regular old coffee which I have never had the inclination to do. A Starbucks fluffed up something is usually my limit. I asked for decaf and they bring you the whole pitcher or whatever you call that thing, carafe, I don't know. Having gluttonous tendencies that night, I drank the whole thing. I am a trusting individual, and never did it occur to me that someone at IHOP could make a mistake and bring me regular caffienated coffee. At 4:30am that night when I was still bug eyed and wide awake having not slept a wink the entire night, it dawned on me, that I had had a little caffiene. Apparently, I had so much that after the 2 1/2 hours of sleep I did get that night, I was able to get up feeling fine and went the whole day without a nap until 11pm that night! Yikes! I can only hope baby is okay. He/she seemed to stay up the whole night with me kicking and wiggling. Maybe babies in utero just do that anyway.

You Want Me to Do What?

That was my first response when Rob told me that we would be packing up ourselves for this next move. We leave in less than 30 days and I'm ready to go, but asking a military spouse to pack her own boxes when she's always had it done for her, is a bit of a stretch. I mean, the packers are one of the reasons you stay sane through these moves. It's bad enough to have UN-pack all your boxes every two years or so, much less pack them!

Once I calmed down, I realize that there will be some definite benefit to doing a lot of the packing ourselves. The military will pay us 95% what they would pay a moving company. They save five percent and we can't file a claim on anything we break. We make a lot of money in return for our efforts.

Right now it's not bothering me. I do about 3 or 4 boxes a day, which so far, are mostly books. That is one area I have trouble downsizing. Every move, I get grossed out about having stuff. It's great, because we are always getting rid of things and it seems to make life simpler. I also find myself not buying things because I think, "I don't want that to take up space in my house."

Having to pack things up myself, I'm sure I'll be even more careful about what gets put in those boxes and moved.

Quote of the Day

Alayna: upon seeing that Avery had somehow gotten a hold of her prized Polly Pockets Convertible.

"Mom, please get that away from him. My nerves are not doing so well today."

Catepillar Infestation

They're everywhere! We find them covering our front door, on our clothes, in our clothes, and even, ...in our bed! I really hope they're the kind that turn into butterflies so that there will be some reward for what I consider a trial.

Just yesterday we were at an Army picnic with the students from Rob's school. It was at a park and everyone was on blankets and camp chairs. There were trees around and so every few minutes a catepillar would drop down on someone. Being squeamish no matter how friendly the bug, I found this to be very frustrating. When I felt a hundred tiny legs crawling up my leg as I ate my lunch, I closed my eyes and begged Rob to remove it. Another husband sitting nearby looked at me like I was crazy and said, "That catepillar is not going to hurt you." However, having dreams about catepillars climbing on you, is mentally painful. Perhaps this was more a result of the dead catepillar we found in our sheets this morning.

By the end of the picnic, we were all calmly removing them from each other as though it was completely normal to have them crawling all over us.

The kids had the best time. Perhaps God made catepillars so enticing to children to help with population control. The whole picnic, about 30 kids never left the sand volleyball court because there were so many catepillars to play with. They built sand castles to house them and collected enough of them to fill a whole sand village. What the catepillars thought of all this, I am not sure. On the one hand, they didn't seem to mind being held and petted and talked to, but several of them met an untimely demise from all the handling. Avery in particular played in that sand for two hours before even thinking about finding us. When he did finally come over, he had a fist full of catepillars, mostly of the dead squished variety, clutched in his chubby hand.

They continue to provide entertainment at our home. Everytime the kids go outside, all three of them have a catepillar pet within five minutes of being out there. They never seem to tire of letting them crawl all over their hands and arms. I can hardly watch! Does anyone know how long catepillar season lasts? A few butterflys would be a really welcome change!

Unique Question of the Day

This from Alton: "Mom, why do I think Chinese girls are so cute?"

Profile of Alton

Alton loves astronomy. Here he is with his birthday telescope. We haven't gotten to look at stars yet because it's been raining so much!

Alton is 9 now. It seems hard to believe. He's a very creative kid who loves to create. His current (and long time) aspiration is to be a comic strip writer. He's had his own comic strip titled, "Dingo" for about two years now. He writes new ones faithfully.

He's not really into sports although he has been tolerating soccer this year. He loves to play defense. We think this is because it's a pretty laid back position judging from the good time he seems to be having with the other two defensive players when the ball is at the other end of the field. We're also "forcing" him to be in a track meet in a couple of weeks.

Alton has quite the sense of humor. Yes, some of his jokes and comic strips just aren't funny, but he seems to be getting more and more laughs out of us. This does not include the prank he pulled on me this week where he said he heard a rumor there was a roly-poly crawling on my neck and he needed to check. I was in the kitchen fixing breakfast and only half paying attention to his roly-poly "check" until I felt something actually crawling on my neck. Amazingly, the roly-poly survived my reaction.

His favorite school subject is drama. No, I am not his teacher for that. He gets that at homeschool co-op. We think he likes it because he can be just as silly as he wants. I was a service parent today and observed him in class. Had I been in range, I would've gotten onto him for being so silly, but his teacher seemed to think he was just as funny as he thought he was.

He has me wondering just who he's going to be when he grows up. He certainly won't be dull.

Big Problem, Simple Solution

So my camera has been driving me crazy. It's been over exposing outdoor pictures for awhile. When it started overexposing indoor pictures, I started shopping. That proved frustrating, all those different choices, and so today in consternation, I grabbed the thing and looked to see if there was a reset button. I wasn't expecting much as I had played with all the exposure settings myself already. Low and behold, I hit reset and the camera is a good as new! All this to say, that there will be more pictures and blogs, more frequently, on the way.

Tonight however, I used the bulk of my freetime to turn out a long time in the works article on vaccinations for my natural blog. I would love any comments you have, even critical as that will help me to refine and better the post.

More soon!