Monday, October 31, 2016

Things

When I buy phones, I buy cheap ones. Something always happens and I need a new one sooner than expected.

So imagine my surprise when my phone was lasting SO long, I was constantly having to dump pictures and apps off of it to make room for more. It had lasted nearly 2 years - and seriously had the best camera I'd ever had on a phone. For $69. It made the constant struggle for storage somewhat tolerable. But then it stopped working quite right. Then it stopped working pretty much all together for a day (while waiting for a new nephew, no less!!), so I over-nighted a new one, and then Erik just looked at my old one and it turned back on. So I used it for awhile longer.

Then, to make a long story short, I accidentally activated my new one. No big deal, but I'd have to be careful because I didn't yet have a screen protector or case for it.

3 hours later the screen was cracked to smitherines. But it still works! So whatevs, I'm sure it'll be drowned in a cup of coffee soon enough.

ANNNNYYYYWWWAAYYYYYYYYY, here are some pictures from my most recent phone dump.

We found a playtime on pots on Friday mornings. Nash is wayyy into it!

Teething is hard work. He has seven total now!

This sweet Georgia boy loves Georgia peaches!

It wasn't Monday...

It's good to be king.

Maybe I should have called this a post about Nashlie.

Oh look! Here are the other kids!
Tropical Storm Hermine Tornado Warning at 3AM. Piper has since dumped the binky!!

Checking the weather map.

There we are!


This sweetie rode his first carousel!

Hot Mess Express!

Dr. Pipes!

3 year old checkup!

P LOVES picking flowers on our walk after dropping G at school.



This guy can suck right out of the pouch.
It's the best thing that ever happened to me, and he's obviously a genius.




Last picture before turning one!

Grant had a crappy day at school and I made him write this.

Why nothing got done around here for awhile.

No caption necessary.



First temporary tattoo!!

Ice cream treat!

Blackberries and pickles for lunch. Could be worse I guess...



Cute hair, bad attitude.

Sweet baby loves to swing!

Broth day!

Sunday, October 30, 2016

A Hurricane of Friends

And so then, two days after Hurricane Matthew, another hurricane blew into town.

Several months ago we agreed to watch the children of our dearest friends while they went on a work-related trip. They have three kids, we have three kids. Their names are almost identical, as are their ages. We played HARD outside and ate CONSTANTLY. It was chaos, but it wasn't as bad as I had planned for it to be!

Luckily, because of the storm, Erik had a few extra days off to help tame the circus!!





Night time adventures!!


Does anyone else's kid find a stick at EVERY PARK you go to??

He's his father's child.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Hurricane Matthew

I'm not sure if you heard, but a few weeks ago we had a little visitor named Hurricane Matthew.

After much deliberation (and consultation with my Cajun neighbors) we decided that we'd stay.

Here's what happened.

I went to the grocery store to stock up and came home with not one, not two, not even three, but FIVE bags of chips. That's more chips than I've bought in the last six months combined.

On Friday as we were eating an early (hot!) dinner, we got a tornado warning. The kids sprang into action after having done this like 4 times before today. ;)

Erik and Nash experienced their first CAT 2 hurricane together. :)



The strong winds rolled in on Saturday night. We made sure to have the big kids asleep before the show started, and the slept right through it. Nash, on the other hand... Which I was honestly a-okay with. I was convinced his window would come crashing in.


We were so fortunate in that we never lost power. Many parts of post did, and there are several homes that are not even livable anymore. We really, really lucked out with just a little lost sleep and some time spent in our tornado shelter (AKA: downstairs bathroom).

But here's the nitty gritty:


Erik has told me on more than one occasion that we are only about 3 days away from anarchy. I kind of thought that was ridiculous. Okay, I full on thought that was ridiculous. UNTIL Matthew.

The local paper had pictures of people in a line wrapped around the store waiting to get in to Walmart. But there was no power in the store so they were only letting  a few people in at a time. NO POWER at WalMart. So what were they buying? Water? Batteries? Flash lights? All the things they should have bought before the hurricane, I'm guessing, because God knows they weren't buying anything cold, fresh or frozen.

Two days after the storm I ventured out to stock up for some house guests (more on that later) and this is what we found. No cold food. Because WalMart, the purveyor or generators, does not have a generator. And the other grocery stores in town were flooded. 

There was nothing but canned soup.

We are most decidedly only a few days from anarchy.



Thursday, October 27, 2016

Delicate Snowflakes

Grant plays two to three seasons of soccer a year, either on post or through the local Y. He loves it, and fortunately his growth has begun to level off so we have been able to reuse the same cleats and shin guards for several seasons thus making each season a relatively small investment. 

I admit that sometimes I get SO sick of living at soccer fields (alone, because Erik usually works until about 6:30 these days), but I just remind myself that this is why I stay home. And Grant is truly a good player and I'd like to cultivate that. Because despite my Oklahoma upbringing, no child of mine will be playing football.

ANYWAY... I shared all that to provide a frame of reference: we have played on a lot of soccer teams. And the team we're on now is hands down the least cohesive team I've ever encountered. This is a team whose players bicker and push during practices. That argues over whose hand should be on top in the team huddle. It. Is. Ridiculous. The team just can't seem to gel.

So imagine my surprise when it was suggested that ON TOP OF THE MEDALS given by the organization at the end of the season, the "Team Mom" wanted all of us to pony up for trophies. To be awarded at the "team party." Say what? These kids can't even get along! Why the heck do they need TWO awards AND a party???!!! Is this a thing we're doing now? Because we're on like our 5th or 6th season of soccer and we haven't encountered this before.

This, by the way, is on top of the $5 fee to put your kids name on his shirt (which we didn't do because I'm weird about monogramming my kids things), and team pics and then a suggested $10 donation to the team gift for the coach. 12 kids at $5-$10 each. For some kind of plaque with the team pic and an inscription. You guys. I'm pretty sure the team mom just has a friend in the trophy shop. A Starbucks GC would totally be sufficient. But I digress.

Is everyone this excessive, and I'm just behind? I know I'm cheap, and I own that, but this isn't about money. Its about not teaching my kid that he deserves two freaking trophies simply for fulfilling his obligation to a team he signed up for. They are a team of good players but THEY DONT EVEN KEEP SCORE. So it's not even as though they're ... Oh, say... Award winning.

By and large, I'm all about making every day things special for kids- I make Benton lunches for God's sake!!- but two freaking trophies is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. And does anyone think this coach really wants a plaque from a hell-raising team that she coached for nine weeks? Is this Pinterests influence? Why must everything be SO EXCESSIVE??!! I signed up for a $30 season of soccer with gear we already had. I'm more than $75 deep at this point. If folks could just stop spending my money for me, that would be greaaaat.

I lovingly move The Elf every Christmas season, and we celebrate good grades (or even just Fridays) with ice cream, but it is my opinion that playing a team sport is it's own reward - SO many lessons are learned through team play- we needn't pad the experience with personalized outfits (by the way, no one actually puts their kids names on uniforms anymore - it was all nicknames.), parties, extra trophies and goodie bags after every game. Am I just being cheap/cranky/pragmatic? Lay it on me.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

For Our Next PCS

When prepping for a PCS, you have no choice but to be organized. I wish I had a picture of the calendars and notepads and general awesomeness that were involved in our last two moves (with children), because once you have kids, you have too much stuff to just wing it. ESPECIALLY OCONUS (because at some point, you don't have a car anymore), but even moving across the state is hard to prep for.

I was trolling Facebook the other day and came across this idea on an Army spouse page on preparing a PCS binder for your kids. So, disclaimer! This is NOT my idea, (I think we all know I'm not that creative or I'd blog about something more than my boring-ass every day life...), but I just thought this was amazing and wanted to share to help friends with upcoming PCS moves. :)

So, here we go.

You need a binder
You need a 3-hole punch
You need a printer
You need 2 zip-up pencil pouches
You'll need a moment to yourself to actually do something not directly move related, so start early!!

Find/Create:

*A map of your route (laminate?)
*Coloring pages for where you're moving to (http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/places/us-states-coloring-pages/), and perhaps for any major stops along the way.
*Number and letter activity sheets (if you don't have a laminator, I hear the plastic sheet protectors can be written on with dry erase markers, but I've never tried this because my kids are like 12 years too young for markers of any sort in my car)
*Mazes
*I-Spy or Hidden Picture pages
*Scavenger Hunt or Car Bingo games
*Drawing prompt pages ("I saw a truck I liked," "I think Texas will be like....," "I can't wait to visit Grandma, and..."
*Photos of the place you just left and where you're going (maybe all the places you're stopping on your road trip, too!)
*Pictures of child's favorite things at current duty station and then some fun things at the new one (IE: a great park, Chuck E. Cheese, zoo, etc. This way the child can remember what he/she loved, and look forward to trying it in other places.
*Photo sleeve of family members or friends they'll see along the way/who live at the new duty station
*A zip up pencil pouch for utensils
*Another zip up pouch for brochures, air tickets, cool rocks (oh, that's just Piper??) and other things kids "gather" along the way
*Calendar with the weeks/months you'll be traveling and when you're doing what (or even just a checklist on the way to x)

One of the ladies who posted the idea said her daughter used it several months after the PCS and that it helped her kind of connect where she came from to where she is and I just loved that idea. For months after we left PA, G would ask questions about his classmates and our house, etc. I can only imagine that gets tougher as kids get older.

Another suggestion is to not put everything in the binder at once. Maybe if you're road-tripping you could do it by state (more work for mom, I know...) but I personally have found that a steady stream of new entertainment trumps a big bag of new things to do all at once.

Apparently Pinterest has a similar offering called a travel binder or travel notebook, which I'll definitely be trying on our next road trip, and certainly there's a wealth of other binder-ready activities out there, but I just loved this military specific idea. I hope it earns me some extra quiet over our next move!

Monday, October 3, 2016

Things I Wish I Had Learned Before Striking Out on My Own

I thought of naming this post "Things I Wish My Parents Would Have Taught Me", but maybe they did and I just didn't pick it up.

Anyway, without further ado:

When you double a recipe, you don't need to double the cooking time (luckily for me, I learned that one after only one take)

When you're sick, don't just put the Vicks Vapo-Rub on your chest, put it on the tip of your nose and the bottoms of your feet. Putting socks on afterwards helps even more. (Shout out to my friend Maria for teaching me that a couple of years ago!)

How to study. I'm still not sure I know.

How to mow. (Learned that one the hard way when Erik went to Iraq)

Taco Bell past 8PM isn't a good idea. Ever.

Always wash your quinoa, even if the package says it's pre-washed (learned that one the hard way too)

Ironing and shoveling snow. There must be specific methods. I do not know them.






Sunday, October 2, 2016

Stagnant

Sometimes I feel like something is missing. It's usually when the house is quiet and I'm left with my own thoughts.

I'd equate it to that feeling right after you have a baby, that nervous pit feeling that you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess that's my own little version of the baby blues.

Could that be what this is, too? I'm calling it stagnancy, but maybe it's more of the blues. Is stagnancy a word?

The blues that I don't quite fit in here, no matter how I try to bend.

The blues that the fact is, I'm not that good at bending.

The blues that my babies keep growing no matter how hard I try.

The blues that my husband, through NO fault of his own, is growing up ahead of me. Education does that for a person, I think. And so does having stayed home with children for the last five years. We're doing really great, blogland, in case you think this is some sort of cry for help. He is embracing religion in a way that I'm not ready for, and he reads at night when I'm topping off the baby or too damn tired to focus on words on pages. It's not a big thing, but I'm aware of it and it's just something from this season of life that I want to remember for later. I just don't feel like I'm in a place of self-improvement right now, and he is.

The blues that this just really isn't the life I imagined when I was growing up and that maybe, just maybe, I'm not super thrilled about it all the time.

It occurred to me though that now that Nash is bigger and easier I don't have any more excuses to hide behind.

If I'm done having babies, now is the time to be the mom I want to be and the PERSON I want to be.

I can move on toward the person I ultimately want to be. Unencumbered by the hassles of having an infant. Yes, I have what seems like 100 very young children, but I don't want to be left holding a bundle of un-experienced plans when they leave home. Both for them and for myself.

Now is the time to finally come up with a cleaning schedule and be a little more organized and clean out that damn closet in the hall that barely shuts. You neighborhood girls know the one - the weird triangular one in the upstairs hallway. WHAT THE HECK?!

Now is the time to figure out who the hell I am in this phase of life.

But seriously, parents of mine, if you're reading this: I am NOT going back to work yet, so please stop asking. Dad.