I’ve never done a "day in retrospect" on my blog, so I thought it would be fun. I would love to read anyone else’s if they write one!

So here you go….the good, the bad, and the sleepy….

First, let me preface this by saying I sat up till midnight the night before….with good reason. I was waiting for the next day's medical appointments to dump into the Tricare Online system so I could make an appointment for my oldest son (“Tricare” otherwise known as “The Devil’s Healthcare system”, or to you civilians, as the military healthcare system)

6:30   Alarm goes off and I hit it several times before finally rolling out of bed 20 minutes later…I am NOT a morning person but have learned to just face the music (eventually).

7:00   Brewing coffee, and telling oldest son to get up already since the appointment is for him.

7:15  Telling oldest son to get up now or I will have to resort to using the ‘ice cubes of happiness’

7:16  Son is up since he apparently vividly recalls the ice cubes of happiness. I get an outfit together that requires no ironing and thank the Lord in heaven above for Mary Kay. I only have 2 dress code policies—I don’t go out in public in sweats or without my lipstick. J

8:20  Drive to clinic with above son for his (hopefully last) post injury follow-up

8:40  Sit and chat with Matt’s Dr, who we actually love and who has nothing to do with the devil (reference above)

9:00  Home again….move everyone along with chores/school/piano practice

9:10   Download a song for Wednesday’s music practice from CCLI. Go over song a couple of times to make sure I’ve got the chords right. 9 year old asks ‘why do you have to play the piano every day?” (I don’t) and not in a “ I wish you played more often” kind of tone. Stinker. I could go on about a prophet not receiving honor in his own country, but I won’t. Someday they’ll be sorry. 

9:15-11:30  Read Bible with the girls, go over math lessons, map out assignments for the week,  read aloud a chapter in each of our books we’re reading--
William Bradford, Pilgrim Boy (for history) and It’s a Jungle Out There (our ‘fun’ book). Start our Explorers History Pockets. Those are way fun and a nice wrap up for any subject.

11:45  Dad home for lunch. We break to eat and they take turns playing him in chess. Some days it’s cards, other days even poker. I figure it all falls under ‘higher order thinking skills’. J He doesn’t get to come home every day, but when he does, we stop everything to spend time with him.

1 p.m.   I leave for (yet another) medical appointment for my LAST (yeah!!) followup from my recent surgery. I am tired of all the medical stuff. Good news—I still have nerve damage but it is better than he thought it would be. This is encouraging. I call this friend (who I don’t get to see or talk to often enough) on my headset while driving there, and as always have a good conversation. Wistfully think I wish we lived near other again.  I get back at…

2:30   To find out the younger two did NOT behave while I was gone. (big no-no) They lose some privileges for the day. When I say “no friends” I later find the 9 year old crying on her bed, thinking it means she can’t go to gymnastics tonight. SIGH. Like I would restrict her from something that costs me that much money...I wish I could take a nap…

2:30-4:00   Finish grading school, picking up. The girls read. 11 yo is reading the second Anne of Green Gables book and the 9 yo Derwood, Inc. At some point I have the good sense to brew some more coffee, or as I like to think of it, ‘the nectar of the gods’. Oldest son goes to mow the neighbor’s yard.

4:00-5:00  Quick meal prep helped by the middle two children and get dinner on the table by 5:00 as we have some commitments tonight. Easy—spaghetti and French rolls! Yum.

5:30  Braid 9 year-old’s hair for gymnastics. 11 yo goes outside to jump on the trampoline. The big boys are on their beds reading books—the 16 yo is reading an Agatha Christie book (he has inherited my love for non-gory mysteries) and the 14 yo is reading A Tarantula in My Purse—what can I say? He loves science.

6:00  Leave house, drop 14 yo off for his first drum lesson (I see visions of a garage band in my future between him and my 16 yo electric-guitar-playing son), drop off 9 yo at gymnastics, stay and watch a minute and then run for a few minutes to a military spouses’ meeting that I forgot about until a few minutes ago.

6:15-7:00  Listen to a lecture on breast cancer awareness (my aunt is a 2-time survivor so it’s a topic near and dear to me) Did you know girls who were breastfed have a 25% lower rate of breast cancer? Interesting. Have to leave before it’s over, unfortunately.

7:00  Race back to pick up 9 yo and watch her last 15 minutes of gymnastics class. She lands her front hand spring on her feet for the first time ever. Go, girl! Hubby picks up 14 yo from his drum lesson.

7:30   Back home. I change into sweats, hallelujah! J Help youngest clean up kitchen and dust the living area. I am giving a piano lesson tomorrow and can’t have a dusty piano! Start the Shower Patrol and try to get everyone to wind down.

8:30  Watch a DVR’ed episode of Andy Griffith with my younger two and eat popcorn. Oldest son is holed up in his room working on schoolwork, 14 yo is in back room ‘practicing’ drums. Yikes. I putter around, do some school/music organizing, read emails, and think at some point I will update my blog and make it look prettier. But not right now, I’m too tired.

9:ish  Girls in beds reading ‘one more chapter’. Dh is woodworking outside. I am typing this and the thought strikes me “WHY am I not in bed?” It’s a vicious cycle. The big boys decide now is a good time to lift weights. I wonder how on earth they still have energy left.

Now it is 10 p.m. and my day is at an end! It’s been busy, but good. I try to never forget how happy I am to be home with my kids for these few years. I prefer days where I’m not out of the house so much, I do have to say. I also usually like to walk daily, but it didn’t happen today. And I don't usually drink that much coffee! What can I say? It's Monday.

Now...Please let me know if you do a 'day in the life'!

The feel of autumn is definitely in the air here...

...bringing loads of bunnies and deer into our yard along with it. (nature study, anyone?)

Can you think of a better way to study than this?

I love free stuff! While looking for a map of Columbus' route, I stumbled across this site called Mr. Nussbaum...TONS on here--have fun exploring!

This is how hot it feels....  It's supposed to be 110 degrees today here.

When we got orders to Northern California, I had visions of green, rain, things like ferns and moss.....I thought it would be a similar climate to Oregon or Washington. However, little did I know that 'gold country' wasn't just referring to pioneer days and the Gold Rush. The hills really ARE gold, from about June through the end of the year. Why? NO rain. Nix. Nada. None. It starts raining again in November-ish and things will green up then. It's an interesting climate (note where our yard ends and the field starts!)

One thing I love about the military lifestyle is all the variety we've gotten to experience. Also, if you truly hate the climate you're currently in, you can hold out knowing it's likely not forever! We have been through every extreme of weather and that's no lie, from  -35 (yes, that's a minus) degrees in North Dakota while shoveling through walls of snow to a 'supertyphoon' (Cat 5 hurricane) in Guam....

Hmm...maybe if I just sit and remember this, I'll cool off:

Ahhhhh.......that's better.

Since my knee injury, life has slowed down a bit for me. (why do I always have to get literally knocked on my hiney to slow down??) In fact, I meet with an orthopedic surgeon on Wednesday to discuss our next move, since it's been swollen for over a month now with no improvement.   I also am having a minor surgery the first week in July to remove a recurring benign tumor in my hand. No piano playing for a few weeks. Poor me. But I digress...

In the interest of not laying around and feeling sorry for myself too much (and because I am bored bored BORED of looking at homeschooling catalogs and am not ready to order anything yet anyway), my girls and I have pulled out boxes of fabric to play with. We are wearing more skirts than anything else these days--nothing cooler than a light skirt and cute tee to match! We made this in literally an hour the other morning, from the 'simple skirt' pattern you can find here (I can't wait to try the others!).  Tell me this isn't the cutest little model...

Trust me, if you can sew a straight line, you can easily make this skirt. The only complaint from my 8-year-old is that it's too 'straight' for playing. We'll try the A-line next. (Kim, we finally finished using the fabric you sent us a couple of years ago!)

..she can be Obnoxious! (and will start taking a photo of anything that moves)

Apparently, sand + high humidity + being dropped a multitude of times is not conducive to the long life of your digital camera. (so I was told after the fact) Ours did not survive our Florida vacation. Since it gave us several years of good service before croaking, the scrapbooker in me wasn't too upset to move up to way more megapixels and a larger memory card. My amazing hubby found me a great little camera on Ebay, and since it arrived yesterday, we've been having too much fun with it. I'm still trying to figure out all the little doodads er.. settings on it. I will be studying the manual for weeks to come! One cool thing on it is that it has a little flippy screen so that you can actually see what it's going to look like, should you decide to photograph yourself. Like, who would ever do that?? (and who would invent such a thing?)

And fun was had by all.....

What makes a 38-year-old-mother-of-4 decide to take up running? (or perhaps one should call it 'plodding') Call it hope springs eternal. I hit a point on the downhill side of 35, when I realized that my 'power walks' weren't keeping up with the amount of food I was eating, apparently. (don't tell me the obvious thing here--quit eating so much!!!) Either that, or my metabolism changed, or some such happening. All I know is that, as of the last couple of weeks, I can actually run 3 miles at once without  stopping to walk. This is huge for me!!  I am doing a 5K on Wednesday with my hubby. We'll see if I survive how I do. No intentions of winning anything here, just hoping to get through it!

I am a very auditory person by nature, which also = I talk a lot.   It also means that many of my memories have to do with sound. Things people have said, music, sounds of nature.

Sitting here this morning, I thought it would be fun to just listen and record the sounds of our daily life.

Someone is playing the piano, same song over and over (recital in one week!)

The washer hums along, cleaning another set of baseball uniforms(ALWAYS)

Oldest son is in the shower, second son is pounding on the door yelling "Hurry up!! Don't use all the hot water!!"

In his room, he has left on his stereo, which is tuned to the alternative Christian station.

Youngest daughter clicks past this room in her 'clippy clop' heels, humming "You're Worthy of My Praise" to herself.

Birds are chattering and singing to each other near our feeder in the back yard.

The dog's collar is jangling as he rolls around on the rug.

I hear a sigh of contentment---oh, that's me! ;)

Take a moment to sit and soak in the sounds of your life!

I'm still here. Apparently never EVER post that life is just kinda same ol', same ol'. I just got back from flying out to KC for my grandfather's funeral last week. The service was lovely, we know where Grandpa is now. It was a bit of a mini family reunion and I'll post photos later. I loved seeing everyone and was reminded again what a blessed family we are to have each other.

Came home to find out we move to a different base house NEXT WEEK. So kicking into gear some major picking up and sorting. Plus toting oldest son to baseball, trying to school the others. Just glad hubby is here and not deployed during all of this! My posting/emailing will likely be hit or miss for a couple of weeks!

Ever feel the urge to blog, but have nothing exciting, witty or touching to share? That would be me lately. Life right now is a jumbled mass of baseball practices and games, orthodontist appointments, church music rehearsals, piano lessons, oh yes and homeschooling. Not the sort of things sitcoms are made of. So rather than bore you with any of that, I'll direct you once again to one of the most hysterical blogs EVER. I go read TC's blog when I need a smile. Try it and you will be smiling too. Guaranteed! I hereby dub her the Erma Bombeck of the homeschooling world.

We have Steve's mom, Oma, here visiting for a couple of weeks. It's been a good break for the kids. Even though it was 'just us' for dinner on Thanksgiving, we cooked up a storm. Spent some time with friends.....and I realized I didn't take a single photo! Yikes--where is my brain. So here's one of Steve instead, deployed in the Middle East. He and some others took a turn serving lunch for the airmen on Thanksgiving. He makes me laugh! I love the camouflage baker's hat.

Also, I know I mentioned this before, but our friend John Gebhardt was on Fox News' "Fox and Friends" this early a.m. on 'Everyday Heroes'. Very cool, John and Mindy! I know he is somewhat of a reluctant hero, but we need to keep stories like these out there. We see so much bad news.

I would also add to the above beautitude, that for me anyway, it is much easier to give than receive. For whatever reason (pride, most likely), I have a difficult time asking for or admitting I need help. It literally has to be forced on me.

Which is why I am so blessed today. I have two friends that kindly forced help on me yesterday that I desperately needed. I've been sick all week--nothing major, just one of those nasty viruses that knocks you flat with congestion, fever, and that feeling that your very bones hurt. Yesterday was the worst day of the whole illness. My children wanted to go to homeschool bowling, but I knew there was no way I could sit in the loud bowling alley for 2 hours. Enter two awesome military spouse homeschool moms--THAT is a killer combination! -- my friends Mia and Angie. I asked if they could just run the kids back and forth to bowl. What they did was much more. They compared notes, fed them lunch and dinner, kept them playing and entertained at their houses, and even brought ME food. I didn't see the kids until after 8 last night!

It is very humbling to be in need of help, even moreso to take it. I recently played piano for a chapel service I don't normally attend, and was introduced to a new song for me, "The Servant Song":

Will you let me be your servant?

Let me be as Christ to you

Pray that I may have the grace to

Let you be my servant, too.

That would sum it up in a nutshell. Thank you, sweet ladies for blessing my socks off!

Of course! Kind of has a way of doing that. It's cold and windy today but the boys collected leaves for their first biology unit. Even my oldest drew and labeled them which is not his 'thing', but he can now tell me the difference between lobate, toothed, compound etc leaves. That's all I can ask! My little ones have started a roly-poly farm. (and do you know you can google Roly Polys--or 'polie's? polys looks better--- and find out all manner of things about them?) By they way, they aren't insects...they're arthropods. Just in case you wanted to know.  

 It's funny the topics you can turn into a 'unit of study'! And the best topics seem to be the ones the kids discover themselves. We now have a roly-poly 'zoo' in the bug cage, they've printed out pictures of roly polies to add to their science notebooks....

Add to that a bout with stomach flu, the dog nearly escaping and me cleaning the bathroom within a square inch of its life(why--I don't know. I suppose because it makes me feel like I'm doing something productive!), choosing fabric to sew dresses and skirts, watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for the umpteenth time, and you have a good picture of our first week without Steve. It seems so much longer but I know that will get better too. It has to!

It's amazing how, in the course of one morning, you can go from this:

(little one spinning around and watching the wild turkeys cross the back lawn)

to this(same little one crying under her covers that "spelling is too hard")

Some other real life happenings, just in the interest of 'keepin' it real'. The office/craftroom 'under construction':

And lastly, piled up deployment gear giving us all a reminder of the coming months:

Life is never dull!

After 2 and half months of waiting (long story I won't bore you with!) we finally have a new set of keys in our piano. At least, the tops of the keys are new. Wish I would've thought to take a photo of the old ones--they were dingy, the edges were chipped and hurt our fingers when we tried to play. It was long overdue for some work.

The piano originally belonged to my grandparents. However, they 'lent' it to my family for some years, and it's the piano I grew up playing. When I married and left home, it returned to my grandparents' home.

Grandma Brown passed away in 1997--in some ways I still can't believe it even when I type that. What a light and gift she was to all of us who loved her. (I think everyone who met her loved her!) Several months after her death, my Aunt Posy asked if I'd like the piano. Of course!

One of the biggest gifts my family has given me is a love of music. My grandparents sang, played instruments, performed in choirs, musicals,local theatre and in church. My parents were very musical as well. Humming and whistling are beautiful sounds to me. My own father tends to hum like his father did before him. I love that sound!

So in December of 1997, I packed my newly pg (with #4) self along with baby Grace and my mother in law, Friede, who graciously agreed to help me drive a van pulling a UHaul across West Texas to go pick up Grandma's piano.

I don't remember much about that trip--maybe that's a good thing! I do know I still feel so privileged to have my grandmother's piano. It's more than an instrument to me. It's a precious family heirloom and I hope it always stays in the family. It's been overseas and back(twice), been moved around several times by government movers, and has still survived. It could likely tell stories if it could talk. Family mementos and belongings mean so much to me, with our transient lifestyle. Though I know they are temporal, they give us a concrete link to our roots, remind us of who we are and where we've come from. The piano is one material thing that I've had in my life as long as I remember. 

I hurt my arm involving a freak accident with my towel rack (don't ask!) so the words part of this will be brief:--can't type so well.

The kids have been my 'hands' this week. Anna even made cookies

and then we had fun with a new food mill we got at the thrift store.

Warning: the following entry is completely girly-girl, so skip it if that's not your cup of tea (or you're one of my brothers!)

It all started with this:

Actually, it started before this (and yes that IS all my hair!)......In growing my hair back out and being in an 'awkward phase' for awhile, it's been hard to manage my hair. Plastic clips tend to break, headbands are ok, but I think ponytails and barrettes are better saved for younger girls.

Until I found the beauty of.....bobby pins! Of all things! All that mass above is held up with bobby pins. Would never have known what a wonder those things are until my hair lady did me up for an AF function. She showed me the trick to holding it up--crossing the pins. It truly does hold! And now I can do it myself.

The pins easily hidden with other hair:

So we've been playing around with pinning our hair up. Last night we did pin curls on Anna and they turned out beautifully this a.m. AND don't hurt to sleep on!

And here's a pretty 'do' I found for Grace. Basically a flip ponytail, then divided into three braids and pinned under. A fancy barrette would be nice on the top. It turned out beautifully

Here are some links to learning to do feminine hairstyles and other topics 

In Timely Fashion and The Sparrow's Nest

Have fun, ladies!

If you actually take time to look at my blog once in awhile, please let me know what you think of the new background, font, graphics etc. I think there will still be a couple of changes. Thank you SO MUCH Renee, for all of your very patient help with this. I am so completely dumb about things like blog templates. Believe me, she walked me through this quite literally. I am so grateful! I feel like this 'look' is more me, reflects my taste better than a generic template. I like clean lines, a classic look, and music (piano and singing) is a very big part of my life, so I had to throw in something musical as well!

My biggest question would be, do you find this font ok for reading blog entries? Please let me know!

18 years ago, two young and crazy kids tied the knot. Yep, that would be us! It's hard to believe that after 18 years, 4 kids, 2 babies lost, more houses than I can count, 6 states and 1 overseas assignment, and we are still sane (?), love each other and enjoy each other's company!I am amazed at how the Lord has 'grown us up' together. I realize today how blessed I am and just wanted to say happy anniversary to us!!

After all the hours my girls and I have spent patiently watering, planting, and pulling weeds these past weeks, I went out this morning to walk around and check my flowers as I usually do, and saw......no roses. OR buds. On any of the 14 rosebushes. Only little stems which had the flowers neatly nipped off of them and tiny deer hoofprints in my garden. I was so upset! Nearly cried and walked around muttering about the 'blasted deer'. I've already been researching what I can use to repel deer to keep our pretty garden safe from future damage. 

The upsettedness over this seems silly considering the heavy things we've been dealing with the past few days (the sudden death of a little one in our base community, the memorial service), but in a way it all relates (to my mind anyway).

We spend so much time tending our own 'gardens', patiently watching and hoping for signs of growth in our young ones. We pray and wait. Many times we're blessed to see tender shoots and flowers coming forth. Other times our hopes and dreams are nipped off painfully and unexpectedly, through circumstances, bad choices, illness and even death. Thankfully, unlike with my garden, in real life, we have a true Master Gardener tending us. He knows exactly when we need fertilizer, and even moreso, when it's time for pruning. If it were up to me, my garden would never get cut back. It's too painful.  How thankful it makes me to know His pruning is never without a purpose.

John 15:1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. " and

5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing"

How I need this reminder. So often I act as though it were all up to me and what I can accomplish instead of remembering that everything and everyone I love in my life is being tended by the Gardener Himself.

I got the coolest gift from my family for mother's day--a hammock! Though I suspect ulterior motives, since I've had to kick three different people out of MY hammock today so I could use it. Let me just say, a hammock is a really neat place to do school from. (from which to do school?) The girls laid a blanket on the ground next to it, and I read from the hammock, graded papers, had them fetch me iced tea and my slippers... haha! Of COURSE I didn't have them do that last part! That would be wrong!

A friend sent me this link today and it certainly gave me food for thought. Not only have I known families like this, I think it is a tempation for any long-time, opinionated homeschooler to fall into this trap. Lord, keep me humble and save me from myself!