Thoughts and Events of the Day

We had a lovely day together as a family. T's office has let him off for the last few weeks before his deployment. It has been bitter sweet. The first week after the big news was so emotional and oddly uplifting. I could literally feel the angels by my side. I had this deep appreciation for my husband and everything out of my mouth was sweet and kind. Things that would normally irritate me melted away. More than once I thought to myself that every couple should experience this kind of blow so that they can feel the love, and appreciate each other as they ought to all the time. Things have normalized more now, but there is a growing anxiety as they days are numbered.

When this post was started there was still a week left. Now we are at the day before departure and T's parents came yesterday. There were already some tears on the walk home from school this morning as I told T to take care of himself because he was needed here at home. When he asked what I needed him for I replied "math problems and sweet lovin'."

Today is Middle Boy's birthday and he did not want to go to school. I wrestled with the idea of letting kids stay at home today to be with Dad, but thought again when I realized that he needs to pack and get ready to go, and who really wants a memory of dad suctioning air out of full ziploc bags to take to Iraq with him for 6 months. We are taking Middle Boy out to lunch instead. He wants a lemon cake (which I should be baking right now). He will also receive the priesthood tonight in our home. That will be nice to have more priesthood holders in the home while T is away.

Well- I am off to spend some more quality time doing things like filling small travel-sized shampoo bottles with head and shoulders, wrapping presents, and seeing if I can get T to hang tricky stuff on the walls.

Blumbies and sheep

One of my favorite memories of Little Boy was when he was just a baby. His vocabulary was developing nicely but as with all children he had some funny things going on there. Rabbits were 'habeets' and horses were 'blumbies'. It took us a while to figure out why the word blumbie. It sounded nothing like horse. I should mention that LB has always been and continues to be a big animal lover. He loved to death a number of plastic horses making them gallop around on hard surfaces until one or more of the legs would snap off. I had made it a personal quest to purchase a horse with the most durable legs. Because being the perfectionist that I am, I hated having all those legless creatures around the house. One day we put together the sound he made when he played with the horses. "blum blum blum." The sound of the hooves of coarse! Hence the name blumbie- one who blums! Sorta like the horses from the movie 'Man From Snowy River" the Brumbies. (Not sure on that spelling).

So Little Girl has come up with a word that started from hearing the sound canned whipped cream makes when you dispense it on your pancakes. When she has finished eating up all the fluffy white stuff (not touching the pancake), she says most demandingly "SHEEP!" We (being the true nutritionalist parents that we are) give her more whipped cream from a can and it makes the shhheep sound. Makes perfect sense to me. Today however I discovered she uses the same word for toothpaste and baby lotion. Apparently it goes along with anything that quirts out of something. Aren't babies the most fascinating things?

The Other Shoe

Well I had to mention it didn't I? I was recently worried that T would get deployed and now the day has come. He told us about a week ago that he got word that he will be deploying on Oct 11th. Just after middle boy's 12th birthday. We will surely miss him and I wonder how I will manage to do (by myself) all the things he does for me around here. Not to mention the sad fact that I will miss his company. But I have been aware of a feeling of calm that I can't understand ever since he told me. I know I am being comforted by the Holy Spirit. Troy has felt that same Spirit of calm. I know we will be watched over. I know we will be given opportunities to grow. I know everything will be alright... If your feeling sad about our news, please watch 'Bulbous Bouffant" in my last post. It has done miracles in our family this week! Laughter is the best medicine!!!

Bulbous Bouffant

Nie Nie

Somehow I stumbled onto a news story (Today just interviewed them this past week) about a family I grew up with in Provo and I am now obsessed with reading about them online. Unfortunately I am sort of a blog idiot and don't know how to post a link, but I am sure you can search under the Nie Nie dialogs to find her blog and her story. She and her husband Christian (she calls him Mr Neilson which I find so funny! Like the monkey in Pippi Longstockings), were in a nearly fatal plane crash and are fighting for their lives. They have 4 kids. I didn't know her personally, but her blog is absolutely fantastic. What a great spirit she has. I knew her older siblings. Matt (my 5th grade crush), Page and Steve. There were 9 or 10 kids in the Clark family. I recently saw Matt at our 20 year high school reunion. I also bumped into Page at church while we were there. She is so nice and has like 8 kids herself.

Anyways I have been reading up on Nie Nie's past blogs and her sister and brother's blogs as well. Such good writing! I am getting nothing done around the house and my eyes are red from crying over this tragedy. It has also done something else for me though, it has made me want to enjoy my kids more, eat better, take better care of my body, and just be grateful everyday for everything God has blessed me with. I have been so richly blessed that I feel like the other shoe will drop soon.

We recently avoided Troy being deployed (twice in a month actually). One of those times it would have been to a seemingly dangerous place and he would have left in the next 7-10 days. I can't tell you how somber I was for the next 48 hours. The other thought I kept pushing out of my brain was that because the winds switched and someone fought to keep Troy just where he's is at right now, someone else now has to go (or stay there) in his place. Is that fair? Selfishly I want him here more than I want things to be fair for everyone, but it does make me feel a bit guilty. This situation we have in Iraq is so sad and just needs to be over. We have made so many sacrifices as a country for this cause and it just seems to be mis-managed right and left. I don't know what the answer is, but I know life is precious. I need to take a walk and breath deeply and get myself together before the kids come home. I am grateful our family is in tact for now, that we are taken care of. I will be praying for this family. Bless their souls!

brownies

So I was standing there minding my own business, blowing kisses at Big Girl, hoping she would not cry while waiting for the school bell to ring. (She's been in melt-down mode lately. I tell her there is a switch she can turn on or off on her back that turns off her tears. People must wonder what in the world we are doing when we are reaching onto our backs and flipping that switch off so there will be no more crying while sitting cross-legged with the morning sun in your eyes in that wait line). But I digress.... I'm doing my thing- signing 'I love you', flipping my switch and blowing kisses, when the ladies next to me notice that Baby Girl has beautiful curly hair that needs admiring. I thank them and the one lady who was more quiet says "You know there's a good chance it will turn out straight. My daughter's hair was curly until she turned 3 and now look how straight it is." She points out her daughter to me. I say as politely as I can. "Well just look at that cute little girl doing the I love you sign and scratching her back over there- she's my daughter and clearly she still has curly hair." Next we discover that we both have freshman attending the same high school. She asks if my son takes the bus in the morning and I say no and explain early morning seminary to her. She seemed impressed that I was able to get a teenager to wake up for a scripture class. But she found a way to bother me when she asked about the carpooling situation there. I told her that for now the parents are driving, but that soon a senior will be getting his license and will be driving them. She was not shy as she told me what a mistake I was making by letting that happen. "I don't care how responsible the teenager is, they are not experienced enough to be driving people at that age." she said. She also told me that she didn't let her teen drive until she was 18yrs old. Then I found out another tid bit of information and it all seemed to make perfect sense to me. This was her first year putting her youngest in public school- up until now she had been homeschooling. Nothing against those who do it well, but some of those homeschool parents are pretty odd ducks with straight haired non driving kids.

Troy's birthday- gone wrong

Well Troy turned 39 this week. I can't believe how old we are getting! We had planned to take labor day weekend and go visit some friends in Pennsylvania. However on Friday afternoon I started feeling poorly. It turned into the stomach flu which lasted all weekend long and I still don't have a good appetite yet. So instead of nicely wrapped presents and a card signed by the kids and I, with Troy's favorite meal and a home-made carrot cake. We had target-bag wrapped presents, (*one coupon for a present I didn't get a chance to buy drawn up by Evan), no card and Troy cooked his own meal and bought a 6.00 awful carrot cake from the grocery store. Plus he got to empty my throw-up bowl and wash linens. Nice! Good thing he's not as spoiled as I am and he didn't even resent it a bit. Or if he did he didn't show it. What a wonderful man. Who knows when we will make it to our friend's home now. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

On another subject I am so proud of the way my kids study habits have been starting off a new year- wanting to do well. They have this online way to check your kids progress and I know it's only the first week, but they are acing everything. I was a bit nervous because I put them in all honors classes to make sure they get the better teachers and put with the smarter kids who won't be as likely to be trouble makers, etc. Too bad that they don't give out "my kid's an honor roll student" bumper stickers on the first week. I always resent those people just a bit. Braggers! Yet here I am bragging now. But that's different, it's on my blog where hopefully people reading have an interest, not like on your car where people have no choice but to see you are bragging. I would probably also feel differently if I had straight A students (which unfortunately I don't- except this week!). I would want my kids to know how proud I was by defacing the van with a bumper sticker... nah, probably not-we'd just celebrate privately at home with the opening of new cell phones for the kids. I saw a bumper sticker at church that said "I love my kid even if he's not on the honor roll" and it made me laugh out loud.

Well, sorry to my friends who have those stickers on your cars. It's just the bitterness in me lashing out at you : )

KT

My Poor Blog

So I have been terribly neglectful in posting entries on the blog lately. Moving is hard work and I've let it slide so long that it seems there is nothing to say. When in actuality life has been rolling along at a swift pace. Perhaps to catch up, I will make a list of happenings instead of going into details. Perhaps that will help me to get back onto the blogging horse.

1-The house is lovely. We are so grateful for it! Things are fitting nicely. We were worried about having enough storage, but thanks to my purging before and organization skills after, everything is working out. We just can't buy any more Christmas decorations... No place to put them.
2-Big Boy has shown tremendous courage and tried out for the high school soccer team. They are a superior team and have had some state championships lately. The coach is our neighbor-yes I made him snickerdoodles. The bar was raised pretty high when we saw that they expect the players to do 75 sit-ups and 75 push-ups in 90 seconds (each). Sheesh! He has wisely made the choice (after two days of torture), to join up with the cross country kids. He has found how much he enjoys running, has made some nice friends before school even starts, and we are very proud of him. Maybe he'll go for soccer next year.
3-Middle Boy went to Middle School orientation today and made 3 friends (he even got numbers). He isn't a very happy camper until he's made some good friends and it was nice to see a smile on his face as he exited the building today acting like a goof-ball.
4-Little Boy was forced into swim lessons this year in hopes of perfecting some of his strokes and his teacher had him move on to butterfly and breast stroke. Look out Michael Phelps!!
5-Big Girl is VERY ready for school to start. And I think my ears can use a break.
7-Little Girl is picking up a larger vocabulary saying things like "hey-who do it!?" and "ha ha" in a mocking way. (She's 18 months) Her verbal skills must not be far behind her big sisters.
8-T is frustrated at work. The army doesn't do things like University of Iowa, and he is wishing he were back there. The commute can be bad for him sometimes as well. Sigh!
9-Kelly is busy with primary (again). I seem to always get called there. I am 2nd counselor now. It isn't overwhelming this time at all. Although I may speak prematurely since I have to write the primary program this next week. School starting will help me with that task for sure.
10-that is all for now!

News from Olney

That's our new city- Olney. We've been pronouncing it like the word Only. But yesterday from the pulpit in sacrament meeting it was pronounced "All-knee" So since we are good LDS people and it was said this way from the pulpit we must correct our ways. We are finally all moved in although there are still some issues with things that need to go on the walls (anchors being needed to hang the tricky stuff, and my indecision on the rest). The piano came yesterday (we didn't trust the army to move it). It felt good to have it delivered in one piece. He even gave a tutorial on how to fix a spot that was damaged by the dog flinging her hard bone at it just before the move. He kept going on about how well the thing was built. He has been moving pianos for over 10 years and has never seen a black upright yamaha that was so well put together. That comment made Troy tremble with joy. That man likes good quality.

One interesting opener to the neighborhood was a man in a tank came over to say hello with his active 6 year old girl who he mentioned several times loved play-dates. After chatting for a while and getting all the details on us, the light dimming, he left. We looked down to see that his large lab left a very large poop on our driveway (which he didn't see apparently because he left it there), but he did make sure to get our phone number so that his daughter could come over to be watched by me. Oh I mean have a 'play date'

Nice!

So as not to end on a negative note, I will say that overall the neighbors are great, the house is nice and we like the ward. We are two weeks away from school starting so that will be our next big hurtle! We have been blessed!!!

Goodbye Hawkeye

For those of you who are not aware, Iowa is the hawkeye state. Iowa City is especially steeped in the black and gold spirit since it's the home of the U of I Hawkeyes. I recall as students when we lived here 10 years ago being shocked by the amount of hawkeyes you see everywhere. Everyone seems to be a fan. I mean everyone! What a sense of community that brings. And on game days the streets are completely void of traffic during game time. If you walk your dog around the block and there's a touch down or some other exciting play, cheers can be heard from inside all the homes at one time. If you should choose to go anywhere near the Kinnick stadium on a game day- good luck getting back. Iowans are true to their team. I will miss the feeling of going about my non-hawkeye business on a game day. There's just a lot of excitement in the air and me- likey!

There is just something about the people here that is enchanting. They are unassuming, relaxed, easy-going, chatty folks. Many of them are obese, although more and more I see them in good shape as well. I will state for the record that I felt overweight in Korea, but here I feel skinny a lot of the time. That's another reason to like Iowa in my book. The flooding here and how folks have reacted and helped one another out is a real testimony of their good hearted nature. No looting, no letting this thing lick them, they are getting back to work and helping each other out.

Troy and I have been blessed to have been here 2 times. Troy had someone at church today come up to him and say "so when will we be seeing you here the next time?" If it weren't for the horrible weather we'd be back as soon as the army would let us out. But this was one of the worst winters on record, and the spring storms have made 500 year history- so we'll just be saying our good byes now. You can't beat the people though. They will be missed. Good bye Hawkeyes!