Life happens...

Lawton International Festival 2009

Here is a video clip from the 2009 Lawton International Festival of the 77th Army Band Brass Quintet's performance of 'God of Our Fathers'.  Zach is of course playing tuba.  Must make a note to have him lower his stand if possible so others can see his face.

The Minimalist - Mark Bittman

I was strolling through youTube as usual; they have very interesting clips, and I stumbled accross 'The Minimalist.'  From what I can tell The Minimalist is a little show done by a New York Times journalist, Mark Bittman.  There is about two season of shows.  Not exactly sure of the number but they are inspirational to say the least.  Just as the title suggest it is cooking with the minimal.

I find this inspirational because I am trying to live more simply.  By that, taking less time to do things, living with less, etc.  As a busy mom I am always looking for ways to make my time in the kitchen less but at the same time still having healthy and tasteful food.  I do believe you can have healthy and tasty food in the same amount of time if not less than 'junk' food.  The Minimalist helps with that.  Take a look for yourself.  The recipes are easy enough to be modified and relatively quick.  Enjoy!

Kabul 24 Book Review

Kabul 24 is a true story about eight SNI missionaries with some parts about their fellow 16 Afghan employees.  It details about the capture of these 24 people in 2001 with more emphasis put on the eight missionaries.  This story talks about captivity, religion, politics, hope, faith, and more, of the missionaries and gives you an insight to the often overlooked majority of Afghans who do not believe as the few radicals do.

I like to read and seldom find a book that I just can’t put down until now. Kabul 24 is a book you will want to read from cover to cover in one sitting. The way it is written, you will feel as if you are right there with the people in their cells, seeing their plight from their perspective. When they feel something emotionally it is as if you feel it too. It paints such a picture that it is ingrained in your mind as if you were watching a movie and can see the people and the places they are being held. Kabul 24 made me see things about this ‘war’ we are facing with new eyes. I say new eyes because my husband has served in Iraq and have friends that serve and have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I would like to think I had a good idea about the politics and religion over there but after reading this book things became more clear about our overseas threat. I urge you to read this book if not to learn about the stories of the people involved but to gain a better understanding of what our people are fighting and risking their lives for over there. 

*I review books with the Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program. http://brb.thomasnelson.com/

Children's Light Bulb Moment

Drum roll please!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to announce that Hannah's beginning to talk.  To back track a little.  Joshua said only a few words till his light bulb turned on at 25 months.  From that point on his speech has just taken off and is now talking well above his age.  Hannah had been progressing like Joshua.  She could only say very few words but could sign many more then she could say until one morning the lights turned on and she got it.  So at 25 months as well, Hannah is progressing every day.  I love the look on her face when she 'discovers' something new.  The one thing my children have always done well whether they could talk or not, is their use of facial expressions.  They would excel at becoming mimes or acting.  Hannah has also decided that she wants to learn to use the potty, some days more than others.  We will see how things come out...no pun intended.

Besides Hannah's speech that has blossomed in the last month, little Josiah is progressing too.  He rolls over now and is still as curious as ever.  His skills at drooling are amazing.  Also I have never seen a baby smile and laugh as much as he does.  He melts everyone's hearts who meet him.  We just love waking up to his bubbling smile every day!

Joshua is just as equally cute as the rest and impresses us each day with the new words he learns how to read.  Even though he doesn't turn four till March he can read some basic stage 1 readers.  For example he can read, "Dog is hot, pool is not.  Dog is cool, in the pool."  That is just an idea for you but he will just point words and and say, "Mom look, that says honey."  He devours books and we try to encourage him with that.  We are going to start to have to check out more books from the library because he has gone through all of his.  He also impresses us with his memory.  He practically has The Lorax by Dr. Seuss memorized.  I don't know how he does it.  Joshua is also doing well with potty training.  He has gotten the number one down but still working on the other part which is either a hit or miss;)

Other then that the kids are being kids.  Getting into the usual antics.

Josiah loving his bath.  He kicks around, laughs and smiles:)

 

Hannah trying to annoy her brother as usual and Joshua reading a book.

 

Yes, we still get comments from people thinking these two are twins.  No they are not, they are 17 months apart.  Pretty soon Josiah will probably catch up and people will probably start thinking they are triplets.

Absent...

Okay.  I said I wouldn't go for long periods of time between postings...well, lots has happened.

First we were all sick for about a month.  That was terrible and would rather not have a repeat of that.

Than the next month we had a mess in our house.  I will try not to go into details, but rather just give you an overview because it still makes me upset thinking about it.  One evening my husband was looking for some cold weather military gear when he found some water beetles and something that looked like mold under one of his foot lockers in our master bedroom closet.  Well, we had people come out and look at it and they thought it was mold and there was a leak coming from somewhere.  We found out our shower pan in our master bathroom was cracked and leaking into our closet area.  I was not happy because we were still trying to get over our colds now our house smelled of terrible mildew and we now had to sleep on an air mattress in our living room till the following Monday before anybody could do anything.  We were told it would take a total of four days to fix. 

Well four days turned into four weeks.  In that time frame the contractors did terrible jobs, the housing office wasn't staying on top of things, and I had to go keep reminding them of what their jobs were.  Finally I had to bark up to the head office twice before things would get moving.  Because things were so bad they put us up in a hospitality suite; which is just another word for a house down the road till our place could get fixed.  It took four weeks for them the replace the pan in our shower, replace the drywall, the tile, baseboard, spray for bugs, clean up their mess and have our matting under our carpets replaced, than have our carpets steam cleaned.  With three kids, being misplaced out of our house was crazy.  The whole time it was stressful because they kept missing deadlines, feeding us bull, then telling us a contractor had been fired, another was in jail...etc.  I am not kidding this was the crud we had to go through.  I explained to them that if they were not contracted by the military and were elsewhere that they would lose business for the way they conducted themselves. 

Better yet when they said it was all done my husband was the first to take a shower and when I walked in there was water all over the floor...right then and there I was about to lose it.  Four weeks of waiting and now this.  Needless to say I had people over that day and they weren't going to leave till they got it fixed.  They then tried to tell me they would have to order a part and weren't sure how long that was going to take.  I looked at them and said, I don't care if you have to take a shower door off of someone's shower but this will be fixed, four weeks has been long enough.  Low and behold we found out the problem.  They put the shower door on backwards and they had to put some sealant and had to wait 36 more hours before we could use it.

So now I hope you can see we have been rather pre-occupied with other things.  We didn't have internet for the month we were out of our house which made things a little more difficult.  Just pray that we have no other problems to deal with.