School is Cool!

So far so good. For the most part. I think that the first year will probably be the toughest. I fear I'm not teaching them enough. We've not quite found our happy place yet. Some stuff I've chosen for them is too hard, other stuff too easy. I'm hoping it will balance out soon. Either way, we're in this for the long haul, so we'll make it work.





Sadie hanging out enjoying a smoothie compliments of our Vitamix. LOVE IT!! Her eyes are a bit watery and she's not up to par right now. She's busy growing and cutting her top two teeth. She's already cut the bottom two. Hopefully she's finished before our trip to NC next month.



Daisy May takes it easy:


Here are Stephen and Sebastian attempting to "be sick" so they could get out of school this morning. Silly boys. Don't they know you can still homeschool from your sick bed?

Sterling is FIVE!

OK, so he's been five for almost a month now, but we won't dwell on that fact.

We were in the process of moving, so in order to keep things simple, we opted for a family day at Chuck E. Cheese. It was nice being able to go during the day when most kids were at school. We had a great time and he's really enjoying being five. He started preschool this year at the local center that offers two days a week for free. He's having a ball.

Some interesting facts about Sterling are:

His favorite food is quiche. Though we don't eat it anymore. :( for him.

He cab ride a two wheeler without training wheels.

His first session of gymnastics showed us that he way beyond his age level.

He runs really fast.

He can never get enough attention. Never.

He is very, very, smart.

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

I remember that day like it was yesterday.

I was standing in the bathroom getting ready to go. I was returning a comforter to Macy's. I was drying my hair. Stephen was watching PBS and Sebastian was in the exersaucer. The phone rang. It was my mom telling me a news helicopter or something just crashed in two one of the twin towers. I ran to the TV and changed the channel. All I could see was smoke. And then it happened again. At that point I knew it was intentional. I panicked. I called a friend of mine that was going to go with me to Macy's. "Are you OK?" "Have you talked to Brett?" "Is he OK?" You see, we lived about 20 minutes outside of NYC at this time. Brandon saw the towers everyday on his way into work. My friends husband worked in the Flat Iron building down the street.

This attack was very close to home. So close that the view Brandon enjoyed on his way to work each morning was completely destroyed.

I told Sarah I would be over as quickly as I could. I was going over to be some sort of comfort or support for her. Little did I know that she would be the one showing me comfort on this awful day.

I ended up slamming Sebastian's hand in the car door. Some would blame my haste or my nerves, but no, I was trying to keep him turned away from the rose bushes that he was trying to grab. In my attempt to turn him away from the bushes, I turned him too close to the van door as I slammed it shut. I don't think I'll ever forget the noise it made as it bounced off of his fat little six month old hand. His gut wrenching cry still rings in my ear as I think about that day.

The bleeding started instantly. I ran frantically to the door and could barely talk because of the adrenalin and emotion I was feeling and experiencing. I don't know for sure, but I think Sarah may have been just short of slapping me before I finally calmed down. The reason I was there never escaped my mind. It just added to the mix of emotions. I was supposed to be helping HER. I was supposed to be comforting HER while she struggled with not knowing if she was going to see her husband again. But here I stood in her dining room holding my crying baby shaking and crying with him. She is the one who told me to go to the hospital. Don't worry about Stephen she said. Just go. You need to go. We'll be fine she said.

So I went. Crying and driving frantically.

The silence was the first thing I noticed. The eerie silence not normally heard in an Emergency Room. Distraction. Unprecedented distraction from the staff is what I felt. Never before, and most likely never again, will I ever have the experience of being rushed through an emergency room visit again. They didn't even process us. There is no record of our visit that day. We aren't even a memory in the eyes of those that saw us that day. I didn't know it at the time of arrival, but I soon found out that they were preparing for and awaiting the arrival of the masses that they thought would be arriving at any moment. They never came. Not the people in the Towers anyway. I'm sure they treated people that night and into the next day, but it wasn't what they hoped for. They weren't the survivors they hoped for. The monsters has been too victorious for that.

Other than two lacerations, Sebastian's hand was fine. I drove back to Sarah's house a bit more subdued. With my emotions a little more in check, I was able to, hopefully, be some sort of comfort to her at this time. I don't know. We've never talked about it.

When the second plane hit I called Brandon and asked him to please come home. That I was scared. That I needed him. He wasn't able and told me that I needed to calm down. That everything was going to be alright. He knew it wasn't, but he also knew he needed to be level headed. He did come home early that afternoon. His warehouse closed early that day.

The world quite literally stopped spinning in our part of the country. For days. The world was quiet. Scared. Angry.

But something was happening. We were different. People were more cautious. But more concerned as well. It brought us closer. It banded us together. There were so many lives lost that day that it didn't take six degrees of separation to connect us all to the Tragedy. The monsters may have taken from us that day, but they also gave us something in return. A feeling of unity. Unity that had, up until that day, been lost for a lot of us.

It is my hope and my prayer that those lives lost that day will never have been lost in vain. May we always remember. May we never forget.

One nation, under God.
With liberty, and justice for all.

Playing catch up

I've started several posts in my head over the last few months and never seem to get around to typing them out and posting them. Even now I'm not really into this post but I feel like I've got to start posting or I'll never do it. Facebook has really taken me away from blogging. I make no promises, but I am going to try and improve.

We've made some major life changing decisions over the last few months. All of them for the better of course. At least in our eyes anyway. Being that it is our life that this blog is about, then I suppose that's all that matters.

We rented our house. We moved back into base housing on September 1st. We moved into the newer housing this time. We're really enjoying this house. It's much larger than what we're accustomed to. It's going to be hard to leave it in a year when we actually PCS. We thought we were going to PCS. That's the main reason we went ahead with the renting of our home. We ended up not moving, but decided to just go ahead and rent anyway. At least now we'll have some landlord experience under our belt before we leave the state and our home. As much as I hate renting, I missed George our maintenance man here in base housing. I'm very glad to have him at my disposal again. He's very handy and I love being able to say, "This is broken. Please fix it."

We're homeschooling the kids this year. It's a decision I've been fighting for a long time. It's time to stop fighting it and embrace it. And I have. We've even joined a homeschooling group. Our first meeting it tomorrow. The kids are happy about our choice and for that I am glad. We're not using a set curriculum. I've picked and pulled and combined to make up my own. I think it will be easier to tailor it to our needs this way. I don't expect everyday will be sunshine and roses, but I do expect more of those days than rain and weed days. Perhaps I'll start a blog about just our hs experiences. We'll see. We'll see. Don't hold your breath.

Upon the recommendation of a good friend, I checked out and read a book called The China Study It truly resonated with me when I read it. It came on the shirttail of finding out a dear friend of ours was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Perhaps that's why it hit me so hard and was so easy to transition into our new lifestyle. I've needed to lose weight for years now. Ever since my pregnancy with Sebastian almost 10 years ago. I've not been able to go without. Every attempt to change my eating habits failed miserably. This has been easy. It was been worth it. It has been empowering. For this, I am grateful. Brandon and the kids have been and still are on board as well. Stephen complains the most and doesn't agree with it at all. I expect that out of him. I told him he can eat as he pleases when he is on his own. Until then, he's stuck eating what we provide for him. Feel free to send us any recipes you may have that follow our new lifestyle. We welcome and and all new ideas.

I promise to come back soon and post some pictures of our new house, Sterling's birthday, and of course, Sweet Sadie Lady. Until then, au revoir.

Redecorating

Since we're in the throes of moving and I can't get motivated to decorate the house, I thought I'd 'decorate' the blog. Love me some fall. Love love love it.