The Only Way I Can Catch Up...

Anyone with a child knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep an "up-to-date" scrapbook. Anyone with a husband with a talent for photography knows they will have HUNDREDS of pictures that they want to keep around. My solution? I've become a digital scrapbooker. I swore I never would, but I don't have the time or the energy to drag all my supplies out and settle on a theme and then crop and stamp and glue to my heart's content. I haven't tried any but the Stampin' Up! program (My Digital Studio) but I love it and it's finally given me a sense of accomplishment. I don't even have to worry about printing my own pages out. I just upload them and send them on their merry way. A few days later they arrive on my porch and I slap them in a book and consider myself accomplished! Some of these pictures are older, but I hope you enjoy the peek into our lives!

There's no place like home, there's no place like home...

Fort Riley, Kansas it is! We will be heading there this fall after Cory finishes school in Oklahoma. I don't look forward to moving, I hate leaving friends, but there is always an adventure in going someplace new. So we'll follow Charles Muntz' example and say "Adventure is Out There!"

Photo Catch-Up

 Happy 31st Birthday in December to Cory. He denies it and says he still feels 21 years old.

 Enjoying some of Daddy's birthday cake. Yummy!

 Rollerskating for daddy's company Christmas party. Jeffrey wasn't a fan of not being able to stand upright without falling over, he was quite often seen crawling from place to place.

 In the Christmas Nativity at our friends, The Rogers, house. I was amazed they got him to stand still at all!

 Christmas lights at the zoo. It was so much fun!

 Feeding crackers to the giraffes, man it was crazy. Their long purple tongues came out of no where to wrap around a cracker!

 

 I love our zoo!! It's awesome!

 Riding the carousel is Jeffrey's favorite part of the zoo.

 Waiting to see Santa, thank heavens for popcorn. It was the only thing that kept that little boy occupied during the wait.

 Making a gingerbread house. Jeffrey kept asking for "some one of those", meaning frosting.

 Throwing reindeer food (birdseed) on the roof for the reindeer. It was such a cute idea!

 Opening our present on Christmas Eve...pajamas.

 Presents from Santa!

 Jeffrey really cleaned up this year. He had lots of things to open.

Jeffrey LOVED this "be-cycling" truck he got from my gram. He even had to take a nap with it later on Christmas day.

Jane Clayson Johnson

I really liked her book I am a Mother. While I want so badly to be a certified TCRG with Irish dance, the most important thing I can ever do in life is be Jeffrey's Mommy.

This Week

Jeffrey has the ability to turn the cleanest room into a disaster in the time it takes Mommy to take a nap. 

Jeffrey and Daddy giving chest bumps.

I spent several afternoons testing soldiers from each company on the weapons in their arms room. This added to my daily work made for some long days. I will put in a few hours at the office on Saturday to make up for it. 

Tricia wanted some juice to help her stay hydrated after she was tired of drinking water. I took Jeffrey with me to Walmart, enticing him with the opportunity to see the fish. He attracted a lot of attention in the store when he put on his outside voice and pointed every interesting object out to me. He had a grand time pushing the cart.

Old Time Radio

Jack Webb or SGT Friday

These are the ramblings of a sick woman. I've taken lots of naps and drunk lots of water (with just a little bit of lemon juice, it goes down easier) and listened to lots of podcasts on the iPod. My favorite? The replays of old time radio classics from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Within that, I LOVE to listen to Jack Webb as Sgt. Friday on Dragnet, I just love his voice. He's kind of hunky too (which I didn't know until I looked him up just now). Occasionally I will hear someone's voice that I can recognize from another genre, TV or Movies and it's kind of cool to hear. (Col. Potter from MASH was a regular on Dragnet). We listened to War of the Worlds by Orson Welles and it was so funny! Cory said he couldn't believe that anyone EVER thought it was real, but I could see how if that was your main source of news and you tuned in just at the right time how it might be confusing.

Anyway, it's gotten me thinking, most of them come with the original commercials that played with the program on the radio. Some just make me laugh, like Wildroot Cream Oil Hair Tonic it's "great for training children's hair". Some of the cigarette brands were preferred by doctors during that age "It's WISE to smoke Fatima cigarettes". Occasionally there will be a reference to "The War" which always catches my attention. It makes me think of my Gram who I miss so much. She lived through those times and may have even been listening to those same radio programs (maybe not, I know they were poor and lived on a farm). Looking back, she has been one of the most influential people in my life and she will always be. Thankfully I have a lifetime of memories with my Gram to reflect back on. After Cory and I married she was very sympathetic to our situation. She was a war bride too. Which brings me to today's topic. The War.

I get a lot of sympathy when Cory's deployed. I'm not saying it's well deserved, holding your breath every time the doorbell rings 'just in case' can't be easy for anyone. It's not easy to look back on a year of our lives and realize he wasn't at home then. But I have so many resources and so many places to turn for help. I got extra pay that made life a little more comfortable and I was able to hear from Cory almost every single day. We could instant message and video chat so that I knew he was doing well. It wasn't like that for my Gram. My Grandpa was injured in France and she got the most vague telegram from the war department telling her that he was wounded. I can't imagine the days and weeks of agony until she got word that he was OK. It took him months to get home on a hospital ship and he had to have one of the nurses write his letters home since he was wounded in his shoulder. I live in an area where there are military families, but the majority of our neighbors aren't in the service. Back then, everyone was facing the same thing. Everyone was holding their breath, just in case.

The Great Gildersleeve

The newest podcast that I've been listening to is The Great Gildersleeve which was apparently a spin-off from the Fibber McGee and Molly show. It's pretty good as far as old time radio shows go. He's got the most hilarious laugh and he's raising his niece and nephew, Marjorie and Leroy. The neighborhood druggist has the BEST voice ever! Kind of what you imagine a fly or a basset hound must talk like. Before or after almost every episode there's some reference to rationing (Parkay margarine was only 2 ration points), to the war effort, or how to support families back home (since their fathers were in the service and mom had gone to help in the factories). I can't imagine what it would be like to be involved in a world war just after the great depression. There was hardly enough for everyone and then the focus was to send it all overseas to help our "boys in uniform". How united must the country have been? I wonder how life was then and I look back wishing I could see it. Just to see the amazing things people were capable of. Not that there aren't amazing things happening now but I wish I could have seen it.

I'm an old romantic, watching so much PBS growing up made me imagine myself through the ages of time (Jeffrey would have been so cute in a tiny man suit with short pants and long socks and his hair combed over). The main thing I think we're lacking in society? Well among other things, it's getting dressed to leave the house. I LOVE it on I Love Lucy when they change to "go down to the store" instead of schlepping down in their housecoats and slippers. I say that sitting here in a pair of sweats, but I HAVE been sick all week. So apparently being sick makes me sentimental and want to curl up with my down comforter and iPod. But I guess my point was that they don't make shows like that anymore.

Classic Southern Rock Concert

Jeffrey is getting to be quick with puzzles. He put the pieces to the clock back together without a single mistake.

Jeffrey is also a Sponge Bob fan. I have a season of the show on my iPod. It helps to keep him occupied while we are out and about sometimes. He only has to see an episode once before he can start quoting lines.

I won tickets in a photography contest to a concert. We took our friends the Lameroux with us. We were by 20 years the youngest people in the crowd.

Since Christmas

Jeffrey has rekindled his love for trains.

The Christmas tree is back in the basement and the living room is back to normal. 

Tricia has put the craft room back into order as well. 

I made dinner for Jeffrey and me. 

Nice boat Jeffrey. 

I am back in school after the holiday break. 

I had to go to the Special Events Center for a meeting. This is the same building that Tricia and Jeffrey picked me up at when I arrived home from Afghanistan. Before the meeting started I sat on a bench outside and thought over the many things that have happened since that day.

In Germany I used to take a walk in the forest just outside of work when I needed a break. This track is the best I can do at FT Carson. 

I put on a PT test every other week for the weak cupcakes who think they are ready for school. 

I used to love to spin the salad spinner when I was a kid too.  Somehow it reminds me of Grandma MacNeil.

Award Winning Photographer

I'm going to toot the horn first, but Cory is now an award winning photographer. He recently won a contest about the frost in the area.
We will be enjoying a local concert with some friends next weekend as the prize. Now Cory knows what I have been telling him for years, his photography is very impressive.

I'm still head of the Cory MacNeil fan club and I would love it if he could give this little guy (the bike rider) $50 in one dollar bills! (What little kid doesn't want that?) You can vote 24 times per day.

Fresh Ink Photo Contest

Fresh Ink is a local online newspaper that I have started reading. I saw an advertisement for a photo contest with a $250 first prize. The theme is children and bikes. Jeffrey is not old enough to ride yet, so I asked Grant, my home teacher's son, to do some modeling for me. You can see all of the entries for the contest at this link.

Christmas and New Year

On Christmas day we had to talk Jeffrey into going down stairs to his presents under the tree. He understand the concept now of waiting for Santa Claus, wrapping gifts, and a special day for opening them, but I suppose it was hard to believe that the day of celebration had finally arrived. We all took turns opening gifts and watching each other. We were dressed as is our custom in new pajamas received and slept in the night prior.

During the next week I only had to work half days for three days until another four day week end came up for the New Year.

The Bennett School of Irish Dance performed at FT Collin's First Night, a community celebration of the New Year with activities and performances for adults and children. We made the two and a half hour journey and arrived just in time to enjoy a few events with Jeffrey before Tricia had to change into her dress and perform. Jeffrey was too restless to stay and watch or to go to any other activities for children. I took him back to the hotel and picked Tricia up when the performing evening was over.