• Jan. 1, 2009
2008 In Review Part One
Well I guess we can tell I am an avid blogger from my overflowing posts in 2008 can't we? I nearly passed out when I decided to update my blog and got here and noticed it's only been a bit over a year since I've done anything with this blog! A whole year! I can't let that happen again. Anyway I'll try to recap ALL that has happened to us as a family for a year in our lives in two posts.
We started the year 2008 with high hopes and expectations. The end of January our woodstove was delivered and installed that our middle ds had gifted us with for chirstmas. What a gift it was too and we love it. It's the kind of gift that keeps on giving and giving, plus we stay in shape from cutting all that wood!
The sad point of that day was that I accidentally ran over our middle dd's dog she had had for years and killed her. It was so horrible and I felt awful. It was like a member of the family had been killed. The very next week our youngest dd's pet goat got sick. We rushed Tinkerbell to the vet and he gave her some medicine, but she was already in shock and it didn't look good. The vet sent her home with us and we no more than pulled out onto the highway drove about two or three miles and she died.
Our dd was so heartbroken as we all were. She had waited for Tinkerbell for over a year because she was insistant of having a white goat. Not any other color, not a white with spots or a caramel color or anything resembling white, but ONLY white. Well pure white goats are hard to find, but we finally did and Tinkerbell came home with us. She was our dd's shadow and followed her everywhere. Our dd would bring her into the house many times to visit! She'd always say, "Mom I brought someone for you to see!"
We miss Tinkerbell something awful. A good thing for this month was our oldest dgs turned twelve!
February was without incident. We celebrated a dgdd's fifth b-day on the fifth and then Valentine's Day and moved on to March.
March came and went without a disaster. We celebrated my oldest ds's b-day and his youngest dd's b-day which is two days apart and later that month we had Easter at our house. It was pretty chilly and all the dgk's had to wear their coats that day, but they hunted eggs and then hunted them some more.
April came and for a change we had no b-days to celebrate. We did get a new dog and named her Boss. Our youngest ds suddenly one day or so it seemed told us he was going that day to take his asvab for the military. He had thought about this the previous November, but had decided not to pursue this route at the time back then. So with our blessing off he went for the test that evening. He PASSED! He joined the National Guard.
May came and he went to his first drill and later to his second. When he went for his physical and to be inducted into the armed forces I drove down to the MEPS center that day in OKC. I got there early just in case so I wouldn't miss his swearing in. It turned out to be a very long day as he ended up being one of the last ones done. He would have gotten done earlier but they lost his papers, partly because he was put into a new unit. A unit that didn't technically exist yet at the time, so there was a problem until they finally figured it out. Finally at a little after 4 pm he was sworn in. Family is not allowed in the actual ceremony to take pictures because of privacy issues, but they staged a reenactment for each person who's family wanted to take pictures. Boy did I!
June came our ds left for basic training in Ft Benning home for the infantry. He is so proud that he went to Ft Benning. He told us afterward the moment he experienced shark attack he wondered what he had gotten himself into! This is where the new trainees have been through processing and arrive at their dorm. The drill sergeants meet the bus and order everyone OFF. We witnessed a shark attach the the best way to describe a drill sergeant meeting the bus is to say they come on board...no...no that's not it eaxactly. They........EXPLODE onto the bus! That is the word. It's all part of the process of remaking these young men into soldiers though and they do umm help the young men off the bus, but don't let your head cover become crooked or you get to experience a drill sergeant in your face barking at you like a bull dog.
June also was a disaster month for us. I accidentaly ran over Boss and killed her when she ran right across in front of the truck as I was pulling out of the drive one day. I just wanted to cry. I felt like the dog killer or something. I vowed to not get another dog to replace her either. It was just too hard. How could we go years and years and never have an animal get run over and then suddenly two within months of each other?
Later that month we had another disaster or two. There was hail damage to the house in town that our oldest ds lives in with his family and I woke up one morning early and walked into the living room and stepped on a wet patch of carpet. I thought at first someone forgot to let out the dogs and one of them peed on the floor, but another step and I found myself slogging through water. We ripped back carpet only to find water seeping through a crack in our cement slab. Yikes! We turned off the water and tried to break out the cement with a sledge hammer. Ha! Fat chance of that. We had to go rent a cement saw. Once we got an area chipped out with the saw though my dh and middle ds were able to get through with the sledge hammer. We decided to break out the slab instead of going under the slab to fix the leak because going under it was going to end up being very expensive. Thousands and thousands of dollars instead of hundreds. It didn't take us long to figure out which way to go.
We found the leak alright, but not where they started it was over a ways from where the water came up. The water just found the weakest area to escape. We ended up with about a five foot hole in the middle of the living room floor. Our youngest dd thought it a grand place to play with toy cars though. I on the other hand got very tired of having a hole in the middle of the floor and a Big mess in the house. The adjuster finally came and we got the insurance part squared away fairly. We decided we were not putting carpet back down. We were going with tile. Well I am going to tell you that was the easy part. Picking tile out is a pain in the you know where. It took forever. Then when we finally did pick out just what we wanted the dealer wasn't sure he could get enough in. He finally did though. By now we were into July and July was not looking to be an exciting month other than for trouble.
So Tomorrow stay tuned for part two of 2008 in review and find out what happened during the second half of last year for us. Can you imagine homeschooling through all this? We did. We even had some really exciting things happen that we got to experience, but alas I have few pictures. Now wonder why I was so preoccupied I didn't think very often to grab the camera? Hmmmmm.
