But anyhow, to
Greetings to all our loved friends and family! In case you missed our un-mailed letter and address change notices from last year(s) we are now living in coastal North Carolina and waiting with baited breath to hear our next duty station. We should here in the next 2 weeks, or 2 months, or about 2 weeks before we have to report to the new station. We anticipate moving to Florida, Texas, California, Japan, or some other heretoforth not known location that will take me a full year to accept living there. Briefly we thought we might be getting out of the military since staying in requires certain physical fitness and weight requirements that is completely not compatible with our baking habits, but the insurance is pretty good and the forced adaptability skills are not to be missed. Plus there is that motto about seeing the world and all that was promised.
This year Larry did get to see the world, or at least Europe/Spain for 8 months. I guess if you have to deploy, Europe is the way to go. It certainly would be my first choice. I did rope my parents into watching the kids so I could visit him while he was there. For those of you familiar with the military ways- yes, this was rather unusual for a deployment. But if you get sponsored by the command you can not only visit but you can fly Space-A. Space-A is short for Space-Available which roughly translated means you can get onto a military transport plane going in the direction you want to go for free or dirt cheap, but you have to show up and hope there is an open seat and it's based on a ranking system of who needs to go and how only wants to go and how long ago you signed up to go.. in a logarithm some programmer came up with.
I learned a few things: sign up early, pack light but bring a winter coat even if you travel from 90 degrees to 90 degrees because at 10000 feet or however night they fly, it gets dang cold in an unheated plane. I also learned if you wanted to pack an air mattress and sleeping bag, you can completely lay down to sleep in such planes. Really trippy, but c-c-c-c-cold.
But Spain was totally cool and I'd add it to my list of "places I wish the military would send us" but the nature of military life is that the very second I add it to my top 3 locations, I will.not.get.that.place. So, it's unspoken. Plus I'm not sure the grandparents would totally forgive us for taking their grandkids that far away even if we flew space-a back yearly to visit.
The kids are just fantastic.
Sonia ( age 12 , grade uncertain since we homeschool and grades are just arbitrary designations anyway) loves homeschooling because it means that instead of my harassing her to wake up for school at 6:30 she can sleep in until 8:30, or 12:30 if her mother gives up on the battle that day. She still loves animals, especially strays more than her siblings and has taken to feeding every stray cat in a 5 mile radius. If you could possibly adopt a cat, please come see me. I will ship them, if I can catch them. She also enjoys reading, cake decorating, sleeping in and standing up straight since it makes her appear taller than her mother. She played volleyball this year as a compromise since it involved no running and was an indoor-air-conditioned sport and comfort is key.
Joey ( age 12 about to enter engineering as a profession) has make it a life goal this month to devise a trap to trap said strays to aid and abet his mother in dropping said creatures off at the pound. Since we have yet to successfully manage this, our front porch/stoop looks like a cardboard box disaster complete with sticks, rubber bands and cat food and fabric bits. He did successfully catch one, however it would turn out that packing tape is not strong enough to contain the fury of a captured stray cat, so while that success was short lived, the tape does contain enough hair and DNA evidence of holding a cat to give him hope of catching them. Other than that, his hobbies include minecrafting, golf, growing 6 inches this year and sprouting a pair of feet bigger than his father's feet and he joined boy scouts this year. From our limited experience with the boy scouts thus far it appears that a new hobby will include playing with fire and a pocket knife as soon as he earns the pocket knife 'tote-n-chip' or whatever the official permission is that scouts gives you to carry a knife - think of it as the concealed carry permit for the pre-driving crowd.
Kayla (age 10 and at last count I think is somewhere between the 5th and 6th grade) is still playing the role of the agreeable middle child except for the days that she isn't agreeable. She still is our resident life coach to her younger brother and the example to the rest of us of how extroverts live. She is our fashion conscious, fad following child who keeps me up on all my texting acronyms. IDK where she learned them all, but it would appear that she is the child that knows the trends. At a homeschool Christmas party today she was the one of my 4 kids who not only went up to do the dance but knew the moves to it. If anyone wants to tell me that homeschool kids are necessarily sheltered and odd, let me introduce them to this kid. She cha-cha slides and sings one-direction (who apparently goes by 1D?) with the best of her public school counterparts. But seriously we don't even have cable, I think this kid learns this stuff by osmosis.
JonMichael (age 8, at last count he's somewhere between 3-4th grade) remains our youngest child. Much of his antics secure that position because after him, I'm pretty sure we are just broken parents who are just surviving. He announced this year that he wants to be called "Jonathan" however, I'm pretty sure his real name is "Tigger" since it would most certainly appear that his top is made out of rubber and his bottom is made out of springs. We bought a trampoline this year, largely because I thought he needed something to expel all this energy that didn't involved absolutely destroying the house and so far we have experienced 0 broken bones, so I call this a win. Unfortunately is rains a great deal here and trampolines are entirely an outdoor toy. He remains our sports orientated kid and loves anything that involves a ball. This year we added golf to his sports played mostly because they were short one kid for the team Joey was on. He and Kayla consider the entire world the audience for their 2 person comedy act. They get this from their father, I think- he's the funny one here.
Larry continues to work with Marines and has picked up minecraft to play with the kids,or at least he said it was to play with the kids. They have some communal island and build and grow things. I tell them they should try programming so they can be the ones making the next big thing like minecraft. No one is really interested.
Gina has no interest in Minecraft and has over 1000 unread emails in her inbox. She occasionally thinks of going back to work but in the meantime has been driving kids to co-op class, sports, and will be teaching the 6-9th graders science this winter. We continue to homeschool since we have managed to cover more material in less time and have more flexibility in our learning. Also the flexibility in vacations, sleep schedules and pretty much everything else is pretty awesome, too. And not being in the parent pick-up and drop-off lines every day: priceless. But who knows and we are fickle people and next year might bring public or private or charter school, depending on location.
Overall this year has been filled with ups and downs and character flaws and character growth. We've been able to look back over our friends and family lists and photos and reminisce about lovely memories and hopeful dreams for the future. No matter where our lives have crossed and where they will cross again, the one hope we have is that we will meet again in eternity. Until then, we blog, we laugh, we eat and hope to see you all again.
Much love
XOXOX
G, L and kids.
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