Between homes...again

See this big moving truck? 

Yeah, we filled up about half of it.  Which might not sound too bad for some of you out there.  But once upon a time, Stretch and I only needed a half-day pack-out and another half-day to load the truck.  Those days are long gone!

For the past 2 moves, we've needed 2 days to pack us out (that's the pros doing the packing, not us!) and another day for them to load the truck like a giant game of Tetris.    I was informed by Stretch that "we're packing too much, Troop!"

Our girls have been on vacation during this process.  (Does that make us their PCS fairies?).  We took our girls to Stretch's parents in another state before the packers arrived.  There were no little hands digging into boxes as they were being packed and pulling things out.  Plus, they get to have lots of fun with one of their cousins and their grand-parents.  From the sounds of it, they are having a great time, with every day being a field trip day!  As you can see, Devil Pup approves!

Perspective

I found this over at The Lemon Stand.  In part, she wrote:

"Revolutionary War Dead  ............ 25,000

War of 1812 Dead  .................... 20,000

Indian Wars Dead  ...................... 1,500

Mexican-American War Dead  ........ 13,283

Civil War Dead  ....................... 625,000

Spanish-American War Dead  .......... 2,446

Philipine-American War Dead  ........ 4,196

WWI Dead  ............................ 116,516

WWII Dead  ........................... 405,399

Korean War Dead  ..................... 53,686

Vietnam War Dead  ................... 58,209

Beirut deployment Dead  ................. 266

Gulf War Dead  ............................ 382

Iraq War Dead  .......................... 4,404

Afghanistan War Dead  ................. 1,087

------------------------------------------

                                                  1,331,374

According to the Department of Defense there are approximately 3 million Military Service Members both Active Duty and Reserve serving today. According to the Census Bureau web site there are approximately 310 million people living in the United States. Which, if you calculate the percentages, approximately 1% of the population protects the rest of us on a daily basis."

Remember

Don't mess with me...

I had a lovely chat with the girls' assistant principal this morning.  (It would have been with the principal but she's out until next week.)  I explained to her how rude and condescending their registrar had been with me yesterday about obtaining records for my kids to hand-carry to their next school (4th for the soon-to-be 5th grader and 2nd for the one going into 1st grade).  I went on to tell her that the registrar had initially informed me that they didn't give out copies of records.  Then she backtracked and said that if they did, they'd have to charge for them.  I told her I'd be happy to pay for the copies.  Then she said that it was too "time-consuming," she'd be gone for 2 weeks after school let out, and that it would be mid-July before she could get to it. 

Um.  No. 

I checked the policy and they are required to provide me with copies of anything in my kids' records that I ask for within 30 days of my request.  Oh, and I don't really care how inconvenient it might be for her to do her job.

Dude, this is getting old really fast

See that lovely, large box of books on top of my washing machine?  It's not being staged or stored for a moment or anything like that.  It's being utilized.  You see, my 12 year-old washing machine decided that it just wouldn't drain without a little, um, encouragement.  The lid has to be "popped" down and then a heavy weight put on top to get the thing to do it's job through all the cycles.  We found our tool box too light for the job.  My sister and her handy-man husband found it hilarious that our wee box of books was heavier than the toolbox.  At any rate, short of me sitting on the thing to get the laundry done, I have to finesse it, a la Fonzie, then shove the box into just the right spot. 

My husband's not even gone right now, Gremlins! 

Can you smell the stress?!

It's that time again.  In 3 weeks, the kids will be out of school.  In 6 weeks, all of our "stuff" will be either in a truck or in the back of our vehicles.  And I still don't know, specifically, where we're moving.  Oh, I know the general area.  But I don't have an address. 

I have a potential address.  The housing office has assigned a house to us and I should count us lucky for that.  But my luck is holding pretty steady with housing.  It will be the 3rd condemned house I've been invited to use as my residence.  (By condemned, I mean that these places are/were scheduled to be either completely razed to the ground or to be gutted for renovations.) 

So I'm just not completely sure we will take them up on the offer.  While there would be so many positives to living on base, I'm not sure we can take the living conditions.  The place is TINY.  I've lived in some pretty small places, so I don't say this lightly.  The next tiniest place we've lived would be the doll house/apartment we lived in while in Korea.  I only lasted 2 months in that place before abandoning my husband.  This newest offering is less than half the space we have now, maybe closer to a third.

So now I'm frantically trying to consider all options while simultaneously trying to work up lists of all the items we'll need to put into storage if we take this place.  I'm also trying to figure out how to dump at least half of my kids junk stuff without them noticing too much.  Added to all this, my husband is insisting on having a yard sale, despite his scheduled trips between now and the truck pulling out of our driveway.  I hate yard sales.
 
Gotta love PCS season!

Surprise!

Yesterday afternoon, the girls came downstairs with a surprise.  Big Sis had styled and dressed Devil Pup for a performance.  They can be so goofy and cute sometimes.  I try to remember this when they are being royal stinkers! 

Speaking of being stinkers, Stretch and I had quite a surprise last night when we went upstairs to go to bed.  We found that both girls had commandeered our bed!  They had also placed sticky notes above their heads on our headboard.  The one above Big Sis read:
"Dear Mom,
Since you are smaller than daddy try please to sleep with us.  We had a tingly feeling --
[Big Sis]
(over)
PS. My head needs to be ellivated
Please allow me 2 pillows"

The one above Devil Pup read:
"Dad, you can sleep in our bed remove my fluffy pillow tho
-- [Big Sis] and [Devil Pup]"

Stretch was a little put out (not really, well, maybe a little) that they'd kicked him out of his own bed and tried to put him in one of their twin beds.  I couldn't stop laughing and almost woke them up.  Stretch ended up making up the guest bed and that's where we spent the night.

oh, yeah, she IS tall...

Every so often, I get a reminder of just how tall members of my family are. 

This week, Devil Pup turned 6, one of the last to do so in her Kindergarten class, I might add.  She had her well-child check-up where we learned she was over 90th percentile for height.  That really wasn't news as that's about where she's always been, except for that brief time as a baby when she was off the charts. 

No, the reminder came when I took her to school.  We waited in the office as her teacher sent 2 of her classmates to escort her back to the classroom.  Now, I know the little boy that was sent is probably the smallest kid in the class, just a cute little peanut.  But I swear she must have sent the 2 tiniest kids in class. 

As Devil Pup joined her friends, I noticed that she towered over them, by almost a full head! 

Then after dinner last night, both she and her sister started foraging through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator as if they were starving.  I repeat, this was after they'd eaten dinner.  Immediately after.  I'm just glad they aren't boys.  I don't think we'd be able to afford that.

The Devil Pup is 6 today!

It's so hard to believe that it's been 6 years since our "baby" Devil Pup came into the world at a whopping 8 lbs. 14 oz. and with a head full of hair.  That was a big surprise.  But it wouldn't be the first time we noticed how different she was from her sister.  

As a baby, she was so easy-going and laid-back, even when her sister got her all "dressed up" with stacking rings: 

Now, we can't get her to stop talking or moving, unless she is drawing or coloring.  And even then, she's usually talking.  But some things don't change.  Our Devil Pup, for all her impishness, is a sweetheart who always wants to make others feel better.  She is still the go-to kid for cuddles.  And she still loves a good adventure.

I can't wait to see what she'll conquer next!

DP today after school.  I wish I could say she was meditating, but she was just being goofy.  It was the first non-blurry shot I got of her.

Conversations with the Devil Pup

I have the funniest conversations with Devil Pup while we are alone in the car. Awhile back, we had the following exchange:

me: I love you, DP!
*silence*
me: I said I love you!
DP: I heard you.
me: Well, what do you usually say when someone tells you that they love you?
after a pause, DP: Thank you.


And then, today, after a failed attempt at getting a milkshake (the first place we went to was out of chocolate):

me: DP, talk to me so I know you're awake! (Usually, she's Chatty Cathy and this is not an issue and I didn't want her falling asleep.)
DP: My throat is sore!
me: Why is your throat sore?
DP: Because I didn't have any milkshakes!

PCS? What PCS?

This summer will be my 10th move and 7th PCS in 12 years of marriage. So, you would think that I would have this whole moving business down to a science, or at least an art. Not so much. For one thing, my middle name might as well be Procrastination. And for another, life just manages to keep getting in the way.

3 weeks ago, my husband's parents came for a visit. Then the girls had Spring Break. Then my mother flew in for a visit. Just a week ago, I spent all day (literally) on a field trip with my 4th grader. We arrived at the school at 0530 and didn't get home until around midnight. The field trip involved a 4-hour bus ride...each way! Which wouldn't have been so bad. except the next day I drove 3 hours to see my sister and her family who were in the state to visit the Mouse for the first time. It was another 3-hour drive to get back home on Sunday night, after a full day with the cousins.

Yesterday, I suddenly realized that April was already half gone. I only have 2 more months to get ready for this move.

April is half gone! Oh, snap! I have a birthday party to plan and only have a couple of weeks to
do it! My youngest will be 6 the first week in May and has been talking about her party for months.

My only saving grace is that, somehow, everything always manages to get done. Maybe I'm just one of those people who needs a looming deadline to get myself in gear. This past week, I finally managed to take some pictures and start listing items online for sale. Even though I purge with every move, this move finds us with large items to unload. Furniture that is no longer needed, large toys that my kids have outgrown, and more all need to be purged before the movers arrive. And then there's all the organizing that needs to be done and the items we need to separate out that we'll pack ourselves or move ourselves. There are services and utilities that will need to be cancelled or shut off. Medical and dental records to be collected. School records to be copied. And a thousand and one other things to be done.

I think I need a nap....

*This is cross-posted on SpouseBuzz.

In which Stretch dislikes my choice in pens...

Stretch asked for a pen as he was getting ready to write a note to a pal. I handed him one and he started to write. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at the pen.

Stretch: "I'm not using a purple pen to write M!!!"
me: "What's wrong with purple?"
Stretch: "It's not that kind of Marine Corps yet."

And then we watched an episode of "The Pacific."

Tired

It's been a busy few days. Friday was an all-day field trip with my oldest daughter's 4th grade class (actually, ALL the 4th grade classes). We boarded 3 charter buses a little after 5:30 a.m. and hit the road by 6 a.m. We arrived at the historic city we were touring about 4 hours later! Then it was a long day of touring and walking, including climbing a lighthouse, before re-boarding the buses for the long ride home. We arrived home around midnight.

Thank goodness my mom was here visiting and could get my youngest to and from school and watch her for me!

Saturday morning found us packing quickly to get back on the road to meet my sister and her family 3 hours away. They had come down to visit the Mouse and we were going to get to visit for just the one night.

The next morning, Sunday, we made a last minute decision to enter the park with my sister's family for half a day before driving home. Mom had 3 tickets that would expire that day so only one child's ticket needed to be purchased. It was a nice time with the cousins, but it was warm and tiring, too! By the time, I finally pulled the plug, got my group out of the park and back to my car, it was around 5 p.m.! I still had to get gas and feed the troops before heading home. We managed to get home around 8 p.m. despite the torrential rains of the last hour of the drive.

Monday, the girls went back to school and Mom and I headed to our scheduled massages. How's that for good planning? As wonderful as the massage was(and it really was!), by the end of mine, my masseuse suggested that I soak in a hot bath with Epsom salts later that night as I was still "really tight." *sigh*

Oh, the things kids say...

After getting off the phone with my sister (who has 5 kids), I was explaining to Big Sis that they would be wearing the same color t-shirts as a family each day they were at Disney. I also said something about that being just another reason for us to only have 2 kids (somewhat easier to keep track of them). Big Sis informed me that she wanted 8 kids, but she wanted to adopt them. When I asked why, she said she didn't want something the size of a baby coming out her butt. I informed her that you don't "poop" babies. Instead, they come out of your "she-she." Big Sis was horrified by this: "But that's a really small hole!"

Then, this nugget from L'il Sis (aka Devil Pup) when she was throwing a tantrum, not wanting to do her homework: "Grown-ups have an easy life because they get to do whatever they want and children have a hard life!" Oh, really? Maybe I'm not making her life hard enough?

Monday, Monday

Good grief! Today when above and beyond as Mondays go:

• Drove to the dealership to sit for an hour so the new back to my driver's seat could be installed (see previous post). At least it was covered by the warranty.
• Have my first mammogram done. I'd been having some discomfort so the PA I saw last Friday wanted one done just as a precaution and because I'm of an age to get a baseline one done anyway. Yay. The most awkward moment had to be when the technician told me to remove the robe. Um. I can't just keep it on with the front open? Apparently not. The first two views (horizontal) she took weren't too bad although she wasn't kidding when she said, "Beginning compression." But I was not prepared for the vertical views that she then took. To her credit, she did warn me that they'd be more uncomfortable because muscle would also be, um, compressed.
  
• The 5 year old came home with a note saying that she'd received speech screening and needed further speech evaluation due to: "numerous articulation errors and poor speech intelligibility, very verbal." That last bit was followed by a smiley face. Never mind that my husband and I had raised these very issues with her teachers last fall during a parent-teacher conference. Oh, and yes, I know just how verbal she is since I often ask my husband to check if my ears are bleeding.
• The 9 year old continued to complain about her breathing (she'd been doing so all weekend). This prompted a call to the pediatricians' office. They got us in later this afternoon.
  
• We arrived 10 minutes early for the appointment because I'm well-trained by the military health care system. However, we weren't taken back to the exam room until almost 30 minutes after our appointment time where we waited another 30 minutes or more. The nurse practitioner we saw didn't hear anything untoward in her lungs but wanted a chest x-ray to be sure. He also prescribed an anti-reflux medication to try for the next couple of weeks to see if that's the problem. We're to go back in 2 weeks.
• The girls, especially the 5 year old have been bouncing off the walls and driving me insane for the past 1-1/2 hours spent at the pediatricians'.
  
• Leave the doctors' office. Look up the radiology place on my super-phone and call them to see about getting the chest x-ray. We can walk in anytime before 5:45 Monday thru Friday. It is already 5:15. Deciding we'll never make it and will have to wait until tomorrow, we stop at the pharmacy on the way home.
  
• Drop off the prescription for the anti-reflux stuff only to find he didn't put an amount on the scrip. Argh! And the office we JUST left is already closed. Somehow, while we waited, the pharmacist managed to get a message to the pediatricians' office and someone actually called back. Still, it took almost an hour to get the medication. Oh, and the girls continue to be squirrelly.
• Stretch won't be home until late tonight as he will be performing CACO duties again. It will be the first time he's had to this for someone deployed to Afghanistan. My heart goes out to his wife and parents who will be notified later tonight. Which really makes the rest of my day pale in comparison.
  

You know, I'm done with Monday. Let's move on to Tuesday.

Devil Pup Diaries

After dinner one night last week, we went for a walk around our neighborhood. L'il Sis insisted on taking her school backpack with her despite our warnings that she'd have to carry it the whole way. It still had her school folder, her math workbook and her lunchbox in it! And she ran almost half of the time while we walked about 1-1/2 miles.

Then a day later, as the girls and I were returning from an errand, I hear her say "uh-oh," from the backseat. Moments later, her sister dimed her out with, "You broke Mom's chair!" That's right: My 5 year-old broke the back of my driver's seat. The entire piece has to be replaced. That's what I learned the first time I went and sat at the dealership. I'll be going again this week for the actual work to be done. Because I have nothing else to do with a move looming over my head in 3 months.

I may need to change her moniker on here from L'il Sis to DP (Devil Pup).

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a great Valentine's weekend with good friends in for a visit. But in some respects, it might have been a rough Valentine's for Stretch.

On Friday, Big Sis (9) came home from school with a little pink gorilla with "I Love You" on its tummy from the boy who keeps trying to hold her hand.

Then today, a little boy from L'il Sis' (5) class who lives in our neighborhood came by with a hand-made card with a flower taped to the front that read, "Will you be my Valentine?"

It's not easy being the father of girls.

Oh, the modesty!

Tonight's conversation with the 9 year old, regarding the boy who keeps trying to hold her hand:

Me: So, why does Jimmy like you? Because you're smart?
Big Sis: No.
Me: Or funny?
Big Sis: No. It's pretty much my looks.

Who did I tick off?!

Was it St. Barbara? Or maybe Molly Pitcher? I'm wondering this as I'm mentally preparing myself for a move this summer (and no, I don't know WHERE we're going yet, just that we ARE going). I've heard that there are military families that get to stay in one place for 3 years. I've even heard of so-called "homesteaders" who get to stay in one place for years on end. But I think that might just be an urban legend. My family certainly doesn't fit into either of those categories.

Since moving shortly after my husband's first deployment to Iraq in the summer of 2003, this is the breakdown of how long we've lived at any given place:

18 months, 23 months, 17 months (with my husband deployed for 12), and soon 2 years.

Granted, I tend to think it's time to move after 3 or 4 years in any one place. But I haven't had the chance to develop those itchy feet in 7 years. Also, I'm a bit handicapped as military spouses go: I'm an introvert. Shocking, I know. It takes me a good 12 to 18 months to really feel comfortable in a place, make friends (not just acquaintances), find doctors, dentists, and hairdressers.

Just last week, I finally found a great hairdresser whose prices are more than reasonable. Then it hit me. We're moving in 6 months.

*sigh*

This is cross-posted on SpouseBuzz.

*Update: The PTBs (Powers That Be) are toying with me. We just found out where we're going. From all accounts, it will be a great duty station. The kicker? It will only be for a year.

Gus: Comm Check

Hey, Gus, Stretch is wondering if you're still out there.