A night in Hilton, NY

I love Hilton NY.

Go Army, Beat Navy!

I love the Army Navy Game. Go Army!

Now, I am not a football fan. If anything I am a football widow. It is on in my house from Thursday through Monday. If there are no games on then ESPN is on & I am listening to men talk about football. Then there is Fantasy Football…don’t get me started.

I LOVE the Army Navy game mostly because of the commercials. The commercials during the Army Navy game are more exciting for me than the ones during the Super Bowl. These commercials make me love our Army ( & Navy…) even more. I am sure that I am not the only Army wife sitting & looking on with tears in my eyes during this game.

God bless our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Sailors, & Coasties.

GO ARMY, Beat Navy!

Tabula Rasa?

So today I was listening to the lower 80s on the FM dial & came across what I had thought was NPR. It was NOT NPR. This was a religious themed talk show.

The gentleman talking was at the end of this two week topic (topic unknown to me) however he was talking about the *fact* that we are born with sin.

Now…I was brought up Catholic & I graduated from a Franciscan University. I’ve been baptized, twice, had my First Communion & I was confirmed. I took no less than 9 credit hours of college level Theology classes. I was remarried by an Army Chaplain. Brandon & Ella have both been dedicated. With all of this said, I AM a believer. I am NOT a church going regular & due to years of Catholicism I DO feel loads of guilt about it. The reason, above & beyond Sunday morning sloth, is that I am SO unsure of exactly WHAT I believe that I cannot commit to one religion.

One thing that I am DAMN sure of is that I do now want to BE whatever religion THIS man was professing to be. The conversation that I caught, & to be fair it MAY have been out of context, was about the *fact* that we are all born sinners & that we all need to be forgiven. I am a HUGE believer in asking for forgiveness. Knowing when we have done something wrong or committed a sin is what helps so many people to learn from their mistakes. What got right up under my skin is that this man claimed that babies, children, & people without the mental capacity to ask for forgiveness since they cannot understand sin are not exempt from damnation. He claims that God’s grace should fall on these poor souls if they were to die before they could ask for & comprehend forgiveness & penance. Oh boy!

Does this mean if I never teach my children about God, if we never read the Bible, if I never teach them to pray or ask for forgiveness that THEY will suffer because I have failed them? My children will go to hell upon death because I failed at my job? This is not a religion that I can believe in.

Every Sunday comes & goes & I feel sad that I have not taken my children to church. They both would LOVE it. (They have been to church before….just not since we moved here.) They LOVE V.B.S.. I know what I can & cannot handle in a church. I just can find my fit.

I am a terrible blogger...

I cannot call myself a blogger... I don't blog I only write occasionally when I feel like I have something to say! I seldom have something to say worth writing about. I can talk until the cows come home face to face but I find it difficult to find something worthwhile to make me sit down & type.

I'll be "seeing you" when I get more interesting.

Our Anniversary

Our Anniversary

On September 12^th Jamison & I celebrated our 12^th anniversary. Here is a little play by play of our day…

• Woke up
• Ate Breakfast
• Watched our Wedding Video (on VHS) Here are some notes/observations:
• Damn we were young!
• We’ve outlasted at least 5 couples that attended our wedding. Sad, sure, but we still gave a little high five to celebrate our longevity. (A double high five should have taken place since I recently read something that said there is an 85% divorce rate for the Army Infantry Soldiers.)
• HOW did our mothers allow us to get married at 21 & 23 respectively? We looked SO young. Amazing. Now we will continue to tell our kids that they may not marry until they are 30. No kids until 35!
• Soccer Game #1
• Soccer Game #2
• Lunch
• Mother-In-Law comes to watch the kids…
• Head to St. Louis to go to the fancy-shmancy mall. (I know we are wild!) WITHOUT KIDS.
• Casino (I lost $40, Jamison won $0.02)
• Dinner – what a mess – at a restaurant near home since all of the places we wanted to go were packed with Cardinals Fans.
• Home at…wait for it…9:30.
• We are no longer young; we are far older than our 33 & 35, respectively, ages.

12 years & counting…

I might be crazy...

I might be crazy… Eleven weeks ago when my children got out of school I was a bit overwhelmed with wonder on how I would fill their days while trying to keep them both busy. In the past 11 weeks we have been: bowling, to the movies, to the drive-in, taken a three week trip to NY, been to the zoo, seen several little shows put on by the library, taken swim lesson, spent countless hours at the pool & even more hours at the playground.

This week I will send both kids to school. Brandon will be entering the 5^th grade and Ella will begin full time Kindergarten. For the first time in 10 years and 3 months I will be a stay at home Mom with no children at home. Most people would think that I would be overjoyed. I always thought that I would go back to work at this point in my life. Unfortunately there are no teaching jobs to be found. As of Friday morning at 8:30 I will be unemployed & BOTH of my children will be gone all day. What am I going to do with my day? I think I will volunteer for the Red Cross, volunteer at the school, and head to the gym. And then…

“And then?” All summer long that is all that I heard. We could be at the playground, or pool, or the movie & my kids always wanted to know what fun thing my planned next. The heartbreaker is that most of the time there WAS, in fact, something that I planned next but I got so angry that they seemed ungrateful for the thing we were doing NOW that it ruined the time for me.

Today, with the help my neighbors, I threw a back to school picnic at our Community Center. It was a great time & there were a lot of kids & new neighbors. The consensus between the adults was that tomorrow could not come soon enough.

Now, as our summer comes to an end my feelings are bittersweet. I am so excited to move on to the next chapter of our lives. This is the chapter that two kids are in school for the majority of the weekday and a Mom & Dad have time on their hands. I am going to miss them.

Back to the grind!

I’m home! Whoo Hoo!

Okay, that is about all of the excitement about that that I can muster. Now, while I LOVE to be in my own home & sleeping in my own bed there is a price to pay for these luxuries.

I came home to a house lived in by one pretend bachelor who was visited by 1 Army friend, 2 college friends, & 1 brother in law. AND a home that had hosted Jamison’s 2009 Fantasy Football draft. What this means is that the house was not quite what I expected. I was expecting the frat house from Animal House when I returned. In hubby’s defense it was pick up however it was NOT clean. He tried, bless him, however it was not good.

Laundry. Check. Grocery shopping. Check. Appointment to get the gray out of my hair. Check. (Note: Little cleaning has yet to be done!) Cleaning the house…soon. It is just too daunting. Tomorrow is another day.