Our Life and Adventures: 2011

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
(Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule)

I Apologize...

I apologize for my absence from writing in this space, but believe me when I say I have truly missed sharing with everyone the happenings in our lives, as I had mentioned in a previous post, I had been actively,(more like frantically), looking for a new job, and I'm happy to announce that I've been working for a local home health care agency for the past three weeks. I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my job and the clients I work with, and I find it to be a very rewarding job, and the only down side to my job is that I have been coming home at the end of the day completely exhausted, so after I have my two cups of coffee I'm up and running once again...cleaning and cooking for my family, helping the kiddos with their homework, playing boardgames, or watching a holiday movie with my boys, and getting online to talk with my wonderful hubby, who happens to be stationed in Korea for the next year.

My afternoon hot cup of joe

Our first measurable snowfall for the season

This Moment

Another Journey

Today my husband is starting another journey in his military career, he's taking fights across the country and tomorrow he'll board an Air Force chartered flight to South Korea. Luckily, he'll be accompanied by a few of his buddies, and hopefully he'll be stationed with at least one of them, there's a handful of Army bases in South Korea and the soldiers don't find out which base they'll be stationed at until about a week after they've arrived in South Korea.

It's hard to believe how only about two and a half years ago he fought in Afghanistan for 12 months, then he was back home with us for 17 months, and now he's headed to South Korea for 12-14 months. Obviously, it's not easy for the family that remains behind, but we do what we can in order to support our loved ones. Our children seem to be handling this transition pretty well, of course there were tears as they hugged and saw their father off, but all in all they seem pretty calm, which makes this mama happy. Even our fur-babies keep walking around in the house searching for their "dad". For example, when we arrived home from the airport they were super excited to see us, as they always are, but they kept going to the back door as though they were waiting for him to walk in.

Today the weather isn't helping my emotions much...this gloomy and rainy weather is almost an exact image as to how I'm feeling inside. I very much dislike the fact that my husband is not able to be home with us to celebrate birthdays and holidays, and it doesn't help any with two major holidays just around the corner along with three birthdays and our anniversary, but the children and I are living back in our hometown, so it does make those difficult days a little bit easier to handle.

Birthdays

Since my husband will soon be in Korea for the next year, to be exact he's leaving this Monday, we decided that we should honor those birthdays coming up soon. Both my youngest son and mother-in-law have birthdays this month and Kennon's is in January. My husband and I surprised them with a basic birthday cake from the store.

Halloween 2011

Halloween this year was especially exciting for us because we were able to celebrate with our family. A few days prior to Halloween we took the boys to their very first haunted corn maze. The younger two boys screamed as thou they were going to die when the first character came up to scare us, and Ian was even about to start crying, and to think they had convinced me into letting them go, so I had to reassure them they were just actors. Then the next thing you know Ian is telling the next character, "Hey! My name is yo mama!"

We all had a great time trick or treating with my niece and nephew. My husband even dressed up as a Zombie Army Soldier. He and our youngest son had a plan for him to chase after Ian and Ian would then act as though he really thought a Zombie was real...screams and a fake cry all included. I'm sure you've guessed it...they were trying to make other kiddos scared, such turkey birds.

This Moment

{this moment} - A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule

This Old House

I've always been fond of older homes, and a lot of it has to do with my grandparents. You see, they have many times bought old Victorian period homes and they always fixed them up to where you felt like you were seeing the house as it was back in it's glory years. The home my family just moved into is 103 years old, and it has been in my Father's family for 40 years. Recently, my father came to visit and walked through every room and commented on what it looked like when his parents first bought the house, and when he came to my bedroom he said, "Wow, this looks exactly the same as it did after my dad remodeled this house." Thing is, my room is dark and when I say dark, I mean dark...all the woodwork in my room is painted dark brown and up on the walls is dark wood paneling, and the hardwood floors are stained a dark color as well. Why did people like the dark wood paneling on walls? I believe it makes a room too dark and it makes it feel smaller too. Oh well, I see a lot of painting in my near future, lol!

Today my husband and I went to a local Antique store to shop around for an old door knob set because our bedroom closet door was missing the door knobs. About halfway through the huge warehouse sized antique store, or should I say mall, we finally found one that would work and was in good shape, and it only cost us $10. Which was a good deal considering all the rusty ones we had come across that they were charging more than $20 for them. It's nothing great looking but it now serves it's purpose in our home.

This Moment

Seeing the World as My Nephew Does

For the past few weeks I had been caring for my nephew, Camden, and on Tuesday I took picture of things that he happened to notice, which seemed to be mostly insects, but that's ok with me because it just shows how observant he is, and it's a reminder of how we need to slow down our busy lives to appreciate/enjoy the little things around us...even the insects.

Cam talking to the cricket, but he was adamant that it was a spider.

Climbing Trees

We spent this delightfully warm October afternoon playing outside and climbing trees -it's a must do as these days will soon start to become cooler and rainy. Oh, how we love and cherish every minute in the warm Autumn sun...

This Moment

Back Online

Oh, how wonderful it is to finally be back online, for those who don't know, we just moved out-of-state back to our home state, Missouri. And it has truly been an adventure...as it always is whenever a family moves, patients have been tried, but fortunately there has been a lot of love and laughs to help us deal with the circumstances we've been dealt.

First of all, the drive from Colorado to Missouri is only supposed to take 13-14 hours, and it took us 16 hours, but this was mainly due to this being our St. Bernard's first long road trip. within the first few hours, Leo had gotten car sick in the back of our Durango, then we constantly had to stop to let him stretch his legs. He also did not enjoy being in the back alone, so he would try to get into the middle row seating with the younger boys, lol! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of this because I happened to leave my camera in Colorado with my husband.

When we arrived in Missouri at 10:30pm, it was very chilly and rainy -which makes for a great night sleep. We have family living in town who had decided to get the home, that we had been paying rent for over the summer, ready for us that night, but upon entering the home they could tell that it was or had been roach and rodent infested...GROSS! So, we decided to stay the night with my sister until I could get in touch with the owner in the morning, and did I mention the owner is one of my own family members?? Yeah, I wasn't a happy camper...and of course I was disappointed and so was the rest of my family. The shower didn't work in the only bathroom in the house and there wasn't a stopper for the bathtub, therefore you couldn't even take a bath. The kitchen faucet hardly even worked and what little water that did come out smelled funky. The floor in my bedroom closest was sinking, and the only heat source in the whole house wasn't working, well actually is still isn't working properly, but my mom and grandma gave me three awesome space heaters. Thankfully I am blessed with a great family, and my first weekend back in town we all worked our butts off cleaning up the house, and it is slowly but surely getting better everyday. A HUGE thank you to my Mom, Grandma, Sister, Mother-in-law, and Brother-in-law. If it weren't for them all this would have been that much more difficult to deal with.

I haven't had much luck finding a job, so your prayers would be much appreciated. It must be a blessing in disguise (me not finding a job yet) because my sister's son's daycare provider hasn't been able to work because her own son got e-coli while he was at Boyscout camp, so I've been watching Cam for the past two weeks. It's been a blast bonding with him. Instead of calling me Aunt Kristie he calls me Gramma Kissy, lol!

Here are pics of him playing outside

During our first week back we noticed all the walnuts on the ground from the walnut trees in our yard and my grandma's yard, so I asked my grandma how to harvest them since my husband and sons like them. She said, "You remove the green outter part then let them dry, but be careful your hands will get dirty." So, I removed the green from about 20 walnuts, then decided to go inside to get cleaned up....my hands were stained BLACK. Grandma said dirty not stained! It has taken about two weeks for the stain to wear off my hands, thank goodness I haven't had any job interviews, lol! Below is a pic of the average size of the walnuts we harvested.

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{This Moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Oh, the Rain...

Yesterday afternoon it started to rain heavily, well actually more like a torrential downpour. Here is what the sky looked like right before the storm hit...

Last night a total of four and a half inches of rain fell, and the last time this much rain had fallen in a 24hr. period here in Colorado Springs was back in 2008, when 4.29 inches fell. Prior to that, the last time local rainfall had broke the four inch mark was in Aug of 1921. Granted that isn't a lot of rain compared to other places in the country, but it is particularly a lot for Colorado Springs. And it actually became cold enough for us to turn on the heat in the house. Even Leo wanted to snuggle up to keep warm, lol!

Television

As this summer has begun to come to an end, I had a realization of how little we did as a family outside of the home and how our lives seem to revolve around the television schedule as well as computer and video games. It made me disappointed in our parenting, I feel like we've been raising our boys to be couch potatoes -which isn't what I want for them. I want our boys to be active, adventurous, creative, productive, and kind-souled.

These pictures represent what our boys are like now and what they'll more than like be like when their adults...couch potatoes

I believe it's important we try to instill good habits in our children so they will be more willing to live a healthy lifestyle as adults. Granted, I'm a little late where the tv, computer and video games are concerned, but as they say -better late than never. My other reasons for wanting to limit and/or possibly remove tv from our home...

1) It would improve our family relationships by allowing us to have more quality family time.

2) We would all be more active

3) We would have more free time to do the things we love

4) It has been proven that too much tv slows down brain activity.

5) There is a lot of content on tv that I don't approve of the boys watching...low to non existent morals and values.

6) I also believe many of the shows, even those geared towards children and teens, put way

too much emphasis on vanity and material possessions. -Yes, everyone wants to look their

best and want the latest and greatest products, but I want our boys to focus on a person's

inner beauty instead of one's outward appearance and to realize and know that you can live

a happy and wonderful life without having the "best" material possessions. It just seems like

some of those who are "trying to keep up with the Jones' " are not living as happy of a life as

they could be if they were to stop being materialistic.

I don't mean to offend anyone and what is good for one family isn't always the best for another. With that said, I do believe this would be best for my family.

9/11...Ten Years Later

Photo of a piece of the World Trade Center towers here at Ft. Carson, CO.

It's hard to believe ten years ago today our reality was badly shaken. All of us, who were old enough, remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we saw or heard the tragic news. My husband and I were both at home, he was watching the news and I was getting ready for work, and I happened to walk into the living room to see the second plane hit the south tower. Right then and there was when we all knew for certain that this was no accident. Our beloved country was under attack. Many families and friends lost loved ones, departments lost fellow co-workers including brave EMT's, Fire Fighters, and Police. And due to the reprocussions of those actions that day, we as a country also lost many brave Men and Women in the Military.

On that very same day and the days to follow humanity rose above and beyond. We witnessed man helping fellow man...EMT's, Fire Fighters, Police, as well as Search and Rescue Dogs, came from other cities, counties, and states to lend a helping hand - it was humanity at it's best. As a country the tragedy united us as one and sparked patriotism in everyone. It also heightened interest in many to join the Military, as my husband said, he wanted to do his part.

Like many others, my heart still aches over the loss of our fellow Americans, none of them deserved to die the way they did nor was it fair for their families and friends to suffer the excruciating pain of their loss.

As this day comes around every year we will always remember the victims who innocently lost their lives. Their families, friends, co-workers, survivors, civilian and Military heroes will forever be in our hearts. We will be reminded of all they gave and how blessed we are to live in this beautiful country of ours the United States of America.

{This Moment}

{This moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule at www.soulemama.com

Colorado Balloon Classic 2011

This was the first year the boys and I actually went to Memorial Park to watch the hot air balloons ascend...normally we would just watch them from our back yard, but we were really glad we went because it was delightful to see them up close for a change.