The times, they are a-changin’

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day holiday (all 3 or 4 of you who read this…). We had a relatively relaxed weekend. Brian grilled some rib-eyes for our dinner on Saturday, then we headed downtown for a spot to watch the fireworks. I still am not used to needing to wear a jacket to watch fireworks…. it was quite windy and cool out. The fireworks were OK; nothing spectacular, but the finale was definitely the best part. We were several blocks from the park where the fireworks were being shot off and it was pretty loud to me from there; I can only imagine how loud it sounded to the folks actually in the park!

Our neighborhood is changing quickly this summer. The kids’ best friends moved away at the beginning of June and last weekend their house and the one next to it got new occupants. One family is another homeschooling family with 6 kids ranging from 13 down to 1. The other is actually one of Brian’s students. My kids have hit it off with the newcomers. There were several times last week when I had 9 kids in my house (8 if you don’t count Emily, since technically she really wasn’t hanging out with the others). Talk about chaos! But it was a good kind of chaos.

Big news in our family is that Brian has decided to retire from the Air Force. He has submitted his “application to apply” for retirement and is waiting to hear back. It is entirely possible we could be moving before the end of the year. Don’t ask where, because we don’t know yet. We are entirely open to God’s leading on this. We’ll have to see what kind of jobs are out there for him. Ideally, we will find something in a fairly homeschool-friendly state that isn’t too far away from family. Brian is exploring all options. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time! All prayers are greatly appreciated.

Alive and well

Much has happened since the last post. I spend most of my time on FaceBook and haven’t taken the time to write anything here. But since today is my birthday, I decided I can spare the time. Thanks to all my FaceBook buddies who have sent me wishes over there. I feel very loved.

We had a great time in Malibu. It made me miss my church of Christ roots a lot. I know we are here for just a season and I am gaining much from being here, but all the same… I am looking forward to getting back to my roots a bit.

Emily finished up her junior year of high school with a cumulative GPA of 3.74. Not too shabby, considering she didn’t take any weighted classes. She plans on finishing her senior year through independent study with University of Nebraska Lincoln’s online program. We are waiting on the transcript evaluation from them so we can get her enrolled and decide on her last few classes. We found her a used Honda Civic to drive just before the end of school, so I got a reprieve from my 2 round trips to her school daily… that was nice. She is looking for a summer job to help keep gas in it.

Noah has passed me up in height now. At 13 1/2, he is almost 2 inches taller than me and about 2 inches shorter than his dad. I think he really is going to pass him up, too. He is still taking guitar lessons and learning a lot there.

Halle had a piano recital after we got back from Malibu. She did a great job and if she was nervous, certainly didn’t show it. She is on hiatus from lessons right now (her teacher is in and out a lot in the summer), but is continuing to practice.

Joel is still taking drum lessons and is doing great. I love listening to him when he and his teacher “jam” together. Mynor (his teacher) will pull out his guitar and play and have Joel accompany him. I’ve recorded a few of their sessions on my iPhone.

Next week, the 3 younger kids are taking golf lessons at the base golf course. It’s just a couple of hours in the morning, and they each get a set of clubs out of the deal. I figure so many people play golf, it’s a good chance to learn the sport.

No big plans for the summer until August. We are taking the RV down to San Diego with Brian to attend the AANA conference down there, then head to Lake Forest at the tail end of that conference to attend the Celebrate Recovery Summit at Saddleback Church. We’ll get home from that just in time to celebrate our 23rd anniversary on the 16th.

I won’t make any more promises about how often I’ll be back. No sense disappointing myself or anyone else.

Morning in Malibu

Howdy from beautiful Malibu, CA! We drove in yesterday in our RV and set up camp at Malibu Beach RV Park, just 2 short miles from the campus of Pepperdine University. We’re looking forward to attending the Pepperdine Bible Lectures for the second time, the first being 3 years ago when we attended with several friends from Eastside Church of Christ in Antioch, CA. This year, the trip was solo, but we’re looking forward to seeing our Eastside friends again (Hi, Rick!), our good friend Jim from Omaha, and hopefully a few others, including some we’ve only known online. Tomorrow we are lucky to get to celebrate Jim’s birthday with him by taking him out to eat.

We had a good trip down yesterday. We left the base around 4:30-4:45am, after filling the tank at the base gas station. One more stop to top off the tank again and clean the windows, and we arrived here before noon. It’s so nice to not drive/ride all day long! I must confess though, Malibu Canyon Road is a little unnerving for me in a 35-ft. motorhome. It is very twisty and curvy, with some steep parts. I definitely prefer straight and level roads!

The weather looks to be gorgeous this week, with highs in the mid-upper 70s and lows in the upper 50s. We slept with the windows open last night and didn’t get cold at all. Our RV site has a great view of the ocean, which is just across the street. Brian and the kids spent 20-30 minutes at the beach yesterday afternoon. We have the better part of today to ourselves until the Lectureship starts this evening. Not sure what we’ll do with our time. Brian and the kids may go back down to the beach. I brought a few books with me to pass the free time.

Looking forward to getting up to the University tonight, especially for the opening song session. It’s been a LONG time since we’ve heard some good a cappella singing and I am pumped!

Easter weekend recap

Hope everyone is recovered from their weekend. I sure hope I am, because I didn’t do a lick of housework or laundry. So I know what I’m doing this morning… I have some excuse, though. I had some mighty full days this weekend. Brian was out of town and I had a lot of stuff on my plate. Saturday morning, I had Easter choir rehearsal at 10:30. It was nearly 1 by the time I left the church building from that. I had to make a stop to hunt up something to use for the kids’ Easter baskets on my way home. So that left me getting home a bit after 2.

Then Halle and I went to see the Hannah Montana movie together. She redeemed her Christmas stocking coupon for “1 movie with the parent of your choice” so we could have a mommy/daughter date. Call me a sucker, but I liked the movie. I wouldn’t even mind having the soundtrack (especially if it includes Rascal Flatts singing “Bless the Broken Road”). Just don’t ask me to dance the “Hoedown Throwdown.” Nothing good would come of it.

Hung out with the kids the rest of the evening and hit the hay around 10ish since I needed to be up early for Easter. Unfortunately, it took me a while to fall asleep and then I kept waking up every hour or so through the night … for some reason I tend to do that when I know I need to get up early. Wound up getting up around 5:30 to play Easter Bunny for the kids and get ready for church. Left at 6:30 so I could grab a couple boxes of donuts to take with me. Since the choir/worship team was going to be at church from 7-12:30, we all brought something to share/snack on between services. We had 3 services beginning at 8am. The second service was packed, and it made it even warmer than usual in the auditorium. But the singing was great… I could have sung all day if it wasn’t for the standing up part!

Got home a little after 1 and grabbed the kids for lunch. We went to Outback (saw another family from church there, too). Then after we got home from there, I took a nap because I was plumb tired out. It sure felt good. Just kinda chilled the rest of the evening. So today I pay the piper: laundry, some housework, and probably grocery-shopping to round it out.

Happy April

I started to title this post ’Appy April, but then I thought folks might think I had an appendectomy… thus the boring title above.

Things are still moving at a breakneck pace around here, although yesterday was refreshingly laid-back. We actually had NO outside commitments. Didn’t do a whole lot of anything, which was a nice change from the usual way things go. Joel stayed outside for a good part of the day and wound up with a sunburned neck (thankfully he was wearing long sleeves). 

Brian and Noah are leaving for Denver in the morning. Brian has a quick trip there to brief a General about something, and we had an airline voucher that was due to expire soon… so he took the opportunity to treat Noah to a father/son trip. They should have a lot of free time tomorrow to do some stuff together. They’ll be back Tuesday night.

Spring break starts Wednesday afternoon for Emily. She doesn’t go back to school until the 20th. There is a chance she will have play rehearsals during break… unless too many people will be out of town. This year’s musical is “Grease,” and she is playing the “Teen Angel” role (rewritten for the movie… Frankie Avalon’s part). The really fun part of this is (and I am being totally tongue-in-cheek here) is that the dates for her play coincide with Halle’s piano recital and a Christian music festival at which we are supposed to be helping man a CR booth.  It is going to be wicked crazy here that weekend in May, let me tell you!

Speaking of Emily and school… she is not going back next year. There have been a lot of changes in the last 3 years she has been there and most of them aren’t ones we are too happy with. So she is going to finish up and complete her senior year here at home, probably with UN-L (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and their online high school. She doesn’t have too many credits left, since she had 8 classes a day the last 2 years.  And it will be loads cheaper than the $8K we were spending on this school for a year. Hopefully she will be able to get a part-time job as well to save up some $$ for college and stuff. The other cool thing about UN-L’s program is that it’s self-paced, so she can finish up as quickly as she wants… knock out the easier subjects (like English) and take as much time as she needs with others (like chemistry, if she decides to take it).

Anyhoo, the rest of April will be challenging as well. Just as spring break is ending, Brian will leave for another TDY and be gone another 9-10 days. Then he’ll have one full week at home before we take the RV down to Malibu for the Pepperdine Lectures. Should be fun…. will get to see folks we haven’t seen in a long time!

Heading to bed in a few minutes, after the dryer is done. Had to wash jeans for Noah to take to Denver with him and they are still going. 

March musings

I should be showering, but I was feeling guilty I hadn’t written a post in a while, so thought I should update before I head upstairs for the night. Ordinarily, I would shower in the morning, but some brainiac at the local power company (PG&E, of Erin Brockovich fame) decided to schedule a power outage for the entire base tomorrow morning from 7am to noon. Since I don’t really want to shower at 6am tomorrow for 9am church, I need to get that done tonight, so I can dry and straighten my hair. Maybe I should sleep sitting up to avoid messing my hair up too much….

Here we are in the middle of March; Brian’s birthday is Monday. For the next 3 months, we get to be the same age, and then I get to be older than him again. We’ll do our usual birthday dinner out. He just has to decide where we’re going.

Emily is doing well. After a follow-up visit with a family practice doc, he seemed to think that she had correctly self-diagnosed her problem last month, although there is no way for us to be sure now. Em thought her symptoms were very suggestive of TSS (toxic shock syndrome), and while the docs all said that was on their list of things to consider while she was in the hospital, for some reason it was never really explored. So for now at least, she’ll go for the less convenient feminine product to avoid a repeat of last month’s adventure. As she so succinctly put it when the doctor apologized for suggesting the inconvenient way, “It’s more convenient than spending the weekend in the hospital.”

Found out a few days ago that the housing office on base is planning on moving the field grade officers (that’s Brian) into larger and newer housing in the fall. I am more than a little excited over that. I am not certain of the size of the quarters we could get; I have heard anywhere from 2000-2400 sq. ft. That would be almost 700-1000 sq. ft. more than we have now, so I am really excited about the prospect. We will still have 4 bedrooms, so the boys will still have to share, but at least the girls’ rooms should be bigger than the 9.5 ft square rooms they have now.

OK, better get cracking or I’ll be up too late getting my hair dried and straightened.

Didn’t mean to leave you hangin’

Sorry I haven’t posted another update. Things get a little hectic around here and I don’t get much time to sit down and write.

Emily came home on Tuesday. The doctors could never say for certain what caused the high fever and sepsis, nor could they say it won’t happen again. The infectious disease doc thought it was a wicked kidney infection; the urologist didn’t seem to think so; and the other docs admitted they were stumped. That was refreshing. I would much rather hear someone say they weren’t sure than to say, “The only thing I can come up with is…” which is kinda how the ID doc sounded. Anyhow, she’s taking a few more days’ worth of oral antibiotics and going back in in a couple of weeks to have labs repeated and get checked out again.

She did go to school yesterday and was getting tired by the time it was over. She also said that she got winded climbing the stairs, which is unusual for her. I guess even though she mostly feels recovered, it will take a while before her body catches up with her mind. Now, to keep an eye on things in case it recurs…

Waiting for answers

Emily (17) was admitted to the hospital last night… a few posts ago, I mentioned a kidney infection she had just before Christmas. On our way to school yesterday, she said she thought she was getting another one; she was having pretty similar symptoms. I told her we’d probably get her seen after school then. Neither of us realized just how bad it was until she called me to get her from school (she went in late and only lasted a couple of hours before she called and told me she was practically passing out). We had already decided we’d take her to the ER (no dr. appointments available), so her dad met us there and I left her in his capable hands.

It took a while to get seen, but once they took her back to the exam rooms, they realized how sick she was. She was dehydrated, had a high fever, low blood pressure, and high heart rate. She spent last night on a regular floor, but today they moved her to the ICU so they could monitor her more closely. Her BP has improved, but her fever comes and goes, her heart rate is still fast and her lab values on her bloodwork are all out of whack. The docs are very puzzled and still trying to figure out the cause. Their preliminary diagnosis was a kidney infection with mild sepsis, but the lab values have them looking for an additional condition.

Brian spent most of the day there (and is there now); he left a little after 9pm because she was falling asleep and really needed to sleep…. didn’t get much last night and none today. She called him 30-40 minutes later and asked if he was going to come back up. She was having trouble sleeping. He may be staying the night there.

So now we wait. And pray. Hopefully they will find an answer tomorrow and can get her fixed up and home soon.

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

It  took a while for the rainy season to really kick in around here, but it seems to have arrived with a vengeance. If I had some rope to cordon off the backyard, I’m sure I could start a mud-wrasslin’ tournament back there. Might be a good way to earn a little extra spending money.  Any entrants? ( I have to make jokes, otherwise I would let the mud and mess really depress the heck out of me.)

I’ve been busy catching up with laundry and stuff after our Palm Springs visit. The trip home was interesting. For some reason, the GPS sent us home by a different route and we wound up on some 2-lane backroads, going through some mountains and with snow blustering all around us. So weird! But we actually made it home in less time than the trip down, probably because we really only stopped once instead of 2 or 3 times. Don’t think we’ll do a trip of that length in one day again, though. It is very tiring on the driver!  Our next planned trip is to Malibu in May for the Pepperdine Lectureships. I am really looking forward to it for many reasons…. beautiful scenery and weather, seeing old and new friends, and a chance to dine at Tra di Noi again (you knew there had to be a food reason somewhere in there!).

Rory took a trip to the vet last Friday for “that” operation. I felt a little bad doing it to her for Valentine’s Day, but she seems to have forgiven me. I picked her up on Saturday morning and she was quite happy to see me. She has  about a 4- or 5- inch incision on her tummy, all sewn up with stainless steel sutures. Have to take her back in another week or so to have those removed. I am quite relieved to no longer have to worry about supersize doggie diapers every 6 months or so now. She hasn’t let sore stomach muscles keep her from climbing up on our bed, though. She still wants to cuddle with me there. 

Guess that’s really all the news worth telling for now. Felt bad that I hadn’t updated since we got back from our trip. Hopefully I can get back to posting with a little more frequency.

A day in Palm Springs

As planned, we took a ride on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway yesterday. The temperature at the top (31 degrees) was more than 20 degrees cooler than the bottom…. there were snow flurries and about 3 inches of snow on the ground. The boys went outside and had a snowball fight. The girls had more sense than that!!

Once we finished up at the tramway, we headed into Palm Springs proper to hunt up a place for lunch. Tried a little spot called “Grill-A-Burger” with pretty decent food, then browsed the shops on the way back to the car. Before heading back this way, we drove past Elvis Presley’s Palm Springs home…. Brian had seen the address on the back of a postcard, so we plugged it into the GPS. It was less than 5 minutes from downtown. Not terribly exciting, but we can say we’ve seen it.

Made a grocery run for a few things on the way back to the RV for the evening. Brian’s meeting began last night at 7. The kids and I hung out here watching TV and reading books, getting showered up, etc.

Woke up this morning to the sound of RAIN falling on the roof. Thankfully it slowed to a near stop by the time I needed to take Brian to the hotel for his conference at 6:30. The kids and I will be heading out soon to check out the children’s museum. Brian is scheduled to be done with his conference at 1:30 today; we’ll pick him up for lunch then. Hopefully the weather will hold so that we can grill dinner tonight.