Fake Meteor Showers

We went camping this weekend. We had heard there was supposed to be a meteor shower. A storm blew through fast on Saturday so we went to town for dinner and when we got back the campsite was flooded. After we dried it all up and got settled in around the fire pit for some s'mores we saw something glowing in the sky. We got all excited and I'm certain we shouted out to the whole campground to come and see the meteor shower. Idiots. It was far to cloudy to see meteors AND "the meteor" was way too bright. Idiots. They were those stupid floating lantern things that people make in order to make people like us think there are real UFO's overhead. I'm sure glad everyone else at the campground seemed to know they weren't meteors.

Image Credit

~Till They All Come Home~

I don't have a title.

I haven't blogged in a long time. I do read all of the blog posts that show up in my blog reader though. So this is going to be a boring catch up post....or I'll just throw out a funny story and pretend you haven't missed a year of my life. Yeah, that's gonna work for me too!

I'm constantly making up random stories or jumping into someones story because they paused to breathe for way too long and I toss out some random statement finishing their sentence in some awkward way that might only make me laugh but I do it anyway.

The boys have picked up on this finally!!! and no longer believe every single thing I say. Even better than that is that they are now doing it as well! I'm so proud.

Whenever we go through a big change in our lives or things are stressful Tayton goes through phases of needing to know my every move or he goes into a panic! So I was in the bathroom a couple days ago and I overhear this conversation:

Tayton: (slightly panicked as he noticed I'm not in the living room) Where's Mom?

Korbin: She left.

Tayton: What do you mean she left?

Korbin: (in his evil little up to no good voice) I don't know, I was sitting here and she just ran right out the door.

Tayton: (in his very panicked, high pitch, I'm gonna freak out voice) What? Where did she go?

Korbin: I don't know, she just ran out the door. Maybe she went to Grandma and Grandpas.

Then I walked out of the bathroom.

Korbin: (totally nonchalant) Oh look mom's back.


UPDATE: The kids are old, Kirke's still in Afghanistan and we have a puppy. The End.

~Till They All Come Home~

We Built A Sign and Then We Built Some More

Recently Megan from BuildASign contacted me and offered me a chance to design and customize some products for my family. In the past we have made FREE Banners for our soldier from BuildASign. I love that they support the troops/families and give away these HUGE banners for us to welcome home our heroes with! I was going to post a picture but they are in my old computer, sorry. This banner we designed for this deployments homecoming next fall. We would have put it up for R&R but he got home the day before the sign came. Which by the way was way sooner than I had expected our items to arrive.

For Mackinley we choose to customize a simple name sign using fun shaped letters. Basically she could care less about it but once we move it will hang on her bedroom door and she'll love it! Customing the signs to make what we wanted was fairly easy. The only problem I had was finding letters in the same font to make her full name but I mixed and matched a couple types to come up with this sign.


For each of the boys we decided to go with a customized parking sign which we changed around to make signs for their bedroom doors.
These signs were so simple to customize and I had them done in a flash. The boys chose their colors and helped me decided on the text for their signs. They can't wait till I get off my butt and hang them up!

The boys were so excited and so was I! Thanks BuildASign!

~Till They All Come Home~

**We did receive free products from BuildASign.com in exchange for my honest opinions about the products. All opinions are my own.**

I am a bad blogger

Korbin, Tayton, Cadie and Cassidy

Cassidy, Korbin, Tayton and Cadie

This Wendys has a little kid seating area it was cute!

Tayton made Cadie a bracelet and was helping her put it on. She never took it back off while we were there. I love these two together, they are such great friends!

Mackinley and her Daddy Doll she got for Christmas.

Things have stayed busy around here. I'm glad the holidays are over and hopefully we'll find something resembling a routine and normal around here.

The kids are doing well. Tayton and Korbin actually LIKE going to school and don't complain. However Korbin informed his teacher that he would not be at school on March 19 because he plans on staying home and having way more fun because it's his birthday. She laughed.

Taytons teacher is amazingly sweet and so understanding of his needs. I recently read a book called Can I Tell You About Asperger Syndrome? by Jude Welton. It was an awesome breakdown of aspergers for friends and family and was so right on track with describing Taytons uniqueness. He's such a cool kid. He got to spend some time with his one and only best friend ever last week. It made me miss our whole group in Missouri even more especially being that we are mostly all already on another deployment.

Korbin is missing his wife a lot more now that Tayton got to see Cadie. We're going to have to work that out soon so he can see her again. It's been almost a year for them. It had been 14 months for Tayton and Cadie. We really all become family when we go through deployments and live together at one duty station for years without biological families around. We don't need a blood relation to make us family. Military families are amazing that way!!

Mackinley is doing well. Cruising the furinute, blowing kisses and waving bye bye, copying sounds and faces. She's amazing. She's having surgery on Thursday to repair her blocked tear duct which has become a very gross little situation. She wakes up with her eye matted shut and constantly has goo oozing out. Its bad enough that people notice all the time and that bothers me.

Kirke is doing well, just getting through one day at a time. That's about all we can do.

~Till They All Come Home~

It's been a while.

This will be a long post. You've been warned.

I haven't blogged since the beginning of September. Life got a bit crazy. On Sept. 24 our moving truck was delivered and we packed it up and sent it off to Michigan on the 29th. We bought a camper (huge mistake) hoping to save money while we were still in NY but out of our rental house and needing temporary housing. October 1 we packed up and moved our camper and the three kids, two dogs and two cats on post to their campground. Found out the water didn't work in the camper so we were having to go to friends houses to shower. Pain.In.The.Butt!! Then we found out it was only 18 bucks more a week to move into one of the bigger, better, running water having campers that are set up at the campground. Live and learn to research better before making rash decisions during very stressful times. We lived in the camper from the 1st until the 23rd. On the 23rd we moved into a cabin on post because Kirke's parents were coming to stay with us until Kirke left for Afghanistan.

On the 28th Kirke was on his way to Afghanistan and we were on our way to Michigan. I drove our van with the three kids, two dogs, two cats and boat load of luggage and random things. Kirkes parents drove his truck towing behind the pop up camper. 12 hours later we arrived in our new home and began the unpacking process the next day.

I've been in Michigan for a week and a half now and my house is unpacked and we're settling in fairly well. The kids are doing good. Mackinley is crawling now and she's standing up. She's having some separation anxiety but she'll get over it in time. She was really attached to Daddy. The boys are now in a Charter school and doing okay. I have been having some issues with Korbin and I plan to talk to the principal about moving him back into first grade. He's struggling with the work and always has struggled so I'd rather he take a bonus year and master the skills he needs to be successful in future grades than to always be struggling.

On Friday I asked how his day went and just as she had the previous two days his teacher went on to tell me the negatives. I was walking out of the building and I said to the kids "whoa wait hold on we're going back to your class". I walked in and said to the teacher "does Korbin do anything good?" Because all I was getting was negative feedback and I know my kids are tough but not all bad. She looked shocked and took a minute to come up with his positive traits because all she could focus on was him not being able to keep up and refusing to do his work.

Kirke is settling in as well and is sad to be gone again so soon but he's tough and mission minded and will get through this just as we will.

Ok now that you're thoroughly bored I'll end this. I"m still waiting to get internet hooked up at my house and for now I'm working with just AT&T internet and its too slow to load pictures but I will post some soon.

~Till They All Come Home~

Hammocks Are Not Safe

This is our hammock.

Today I was on the phone and decided to sit in the hammock while I talked to Wendy in Norway.

I unzipped the net and slid my upper body inside the bug net and planted my big old tail into the hammock.

As I slid into the hammock something went terribly wrong. The bottom didn't open up to embrace my giant tail and I fell back against the netting. The netting is not meant to support more than the weight of a few bugs. I weigh more than a few gazillion bugs.

The hammock flipped.

At this point I was dangling above the ground (still on the phone mind you) in a tangle of mosquito netting. It was like a giant cocoon was trying to swallow me. Cars were passing on the highway and they could clearly see me trapped. I kicked and flailed and tried to figure out what was happening.

Then I heard the rip.

Slowly the net gave way and I was thrown from the comfort of my cocoon to the hard ground below.

I was still tangled and had to crawl out. I was not a beautiful butterfly. I know people were watching me from the road and I know they were laughing. I would have been. I probably would have stopped to take pictures too. Wendy got to listen to the madness but luckily Kirke and the kids were unaware of my dilemma.

~Till They All Come Home~

Korbin's Full Of It!

I'm making taco's for dinner and Korbin is just starving to death! I asked him to take the lettuce out of the fridge for me.

I heard him muttering "why do I always have to do the disgusting things"! The kid hates lettuce!

I reply, "it's just leaves there's nothing gross about it".

He then says to me, "I'll just hold it by the very corner, this is very disturbing to me!"

I then say "I'll give you $5 bucks if you'll taste the lettuce."

Korbins looks at me seriously interested and replies, "make it ten!"

Deals off!

~Till They All Come Home~

Korbin's Intuition

We're in the car and just passed a group of basic training soldiers carrying their weapons.

Korbin asked Kirke if they were M16's. Then he asked "when you were in practice for the Army did you have an M16 that shot nerf darts?"

Its an interesting theory really. Can't the troops just play laser tag instead of killing one another? There's enough natural disasters killing people that we really should start thinking like a 6 year old!

Show Us Your Privates

I'm pretty sure I don't have any lurkers but just in case I thought I'd join the fun and call you out to say hello! But I think that to have lurkers you'd have to have readers and I'm not sure I have more than the three of you who comment regularly. But hey let's have a go at this and see if anyone new comes out. I do have 54 followers so maybe a few of you could say hello. Perhaps I might get more than 5 comments on post? Check out my older posts cause this one is lame.

Our quote of the day here today was:

Today Korbin said "Tayton acts as if the whole world Avolves around him". Yep that's a new word and I love it!

~Till They All Come Home~

Meet The Neighbors! Let's Fight!

We've had a few of our neighbors move away recently which means new ones moving in. In the two and a half years we've lived in this house we haven't had any neighbors with kids my boys age.

Until now! Today I met the neighbors that moved in across the street. I was outside playing in the snow with the naughty little blond boys when it happened. The neighbors across the street were playing outside too. They were shoveling snow into a giant heap just like we were. There was a man, a boy and little girl.

The man says "are you making a snow fort too?" I say "yep and then we're gonna attack yours!" Cause I'm brave like that and assume everyone appreciates my bold sense of humor. Luckily he laughed.

Eventually we went over and introduce ourselves. They have a 10 year old son, an 8 year old girl and a 3 year old girl. PERFECT! Except we move in a few weeks!

The icing on the cake was when I asked what school they go to and they said they home school! Go figure!

The boys decided we needed a flag for our fort. Tayton took a towel and wrote "Best" and we planted it on top of our fort facing across the street toward their fort.

Then we decided that a great science lesson would be to build a catapult to launch snow balls at our targets. We built it and then decided to go out and test the thing. It was pathetic. But while we were out there the neighbors came out and planted a flag on top of their fort.

It read: "Bigger and Better Fort"

I guess not everyone knows our last name is Best and we're not just conceited!

~Till They All Come Home~

The Girls are Screaming Out for Help!

With all this new technology, inventions and the accomplishments that have been made over the past hundred or so years, we still have a MAJOR problem.

How is it that they can make underwear that makes you look two sizes smaller, shoes that tone your butt when you walk, pants that have built in butt lifters but my bra's are still attacking me by the middle of the day?

Is it so hard to spend a little time figuring out a way to make that darn piece of shrapnel stay inside the material made to hold it in place? I'm tried of standing in a crowded room and trying to conceal the fact that I'm being stabbed by my undergarments. There are probably permanent scars on the sides of "the girls" from these darn torture devices.

For the love of God and the sake and my "girls" please someone poke some darn holes in the metal wire and sew it in or figure out another way to save me from an accidental breast reduction!!

~Till They All Come Home~

Did I Mention I Turned 30?

I have been spending entirely too much time being a dork and playing Farmville on Facebook and playing over there catching up with old friends I never thought I'd wonder about and ones I wonder about frequently.

So I apologize for forgetting to mention that I had a birthday last week! I turned 30 and had myself a great party with great friends and good food and lots to drink. It was great. Here are a few pictures.

This is my fake I'm sad to turn to 30 face. Actually it's sort of refreshing to join the rest of my friends in the over 30 club!!

This is a more real me.......

Notice the very big, very sharp knife in my hand and the closest bystander:

This is the cake my very good, very talented friend Breanna made for me.

And golly gee I only have pictures of the guys playing Rockband and none of our girl band....weird.

We missed you Suds family!!

~Till They All Come Home~

Lamberts Throwed Rolls and Hog Jowls

We've been going ninety to nothing the past couple weeks! I've been dying to eat at Lamberts Cafe for a while now. Dana told me they throw rolls and that's all I needed to know. Any resturant that throws food is great in my opinion!

We finally went two weeks ago. We went with Ambers family and our good friend James. We got there and put our name on the waiting list at 4:45. Only an hour and forty minute wait! Wow! We waited because dang it I want someone to throw food!

We got our table and Amber's in-laws were with us. Well they're about as country as you can get coming from Indiana. We ordered our food, caught some food from the air and got more brought around in giant pots and slopped onto our plates. Oh wait, I didn't eat on a plate! It was a giant fryin pan!

Ambers Father in Law ordered Jowls. I had no idea what jowls were. Then next thing I know Korbin and Cadie were each eating themselves some hog jowls. Korbin told me it was good! Amber's hubby told Cadie to ask her grandpa what they were. He replied "the jaw of the hog (cheek)", as if that's perfectly normal.

Korbin's response to that bit of knowlege: "I'm full of eating this now." And he put it on the table.

~Till They All Come Home~

Get the Leg Out

I think th eboy needs new pants. He just thinks he's funny!

Oh yeah and he's standing on the table and I'm okay with that....that's how we roll!

~Till They All Come Home~

Poor Poor Scrappy

I've had Scrappy longer than I've had Kirke! True story. One in which I tend to remind Kirke of more often than necessary I'm sure! He's 11 years old now. He's still laid back and tolerant of all the kids antics and I have no idea how he manages! Especially on days like this:

Maybe he was just cold?

~Till They All Come Home~

HEY!!!

Who stopped following me? I was so excited to have 50 followers and now back down to 49. I must suck. I'll work on that and lure you back!!

~Till They All Come Home~

Don't Put Your Hand in Little Holes!

Last night Korbin came down stairs upset. He had gotten his hand stuck in a waffle block. The darn kid wouldn't let me take his picture. Why would a 6 year old stick his hand through a block that is too small? I thought we'd outgrown these types of situations. Seriously kid! If your hand doesn't fit going into a hole then it's probably not gonna come out so well either!!



And since the little punk wouldn't let me take his picture you can all laugh at this old video of the same sort of problem!

UPDATE: Korbin has agreed to a public service announcement/reinactment about yesterdays events for other children to keep them safe from the dangers of waffle blocks. (plus people didn't know what waffle blocks are)

~Till They All Come Home~

My Kids Spend Too Much Time With Adults

I'm not sure if I'd be happier having the boys come home from pubic school repeating the things they hear there or if it's better that they are picking up on things they hear around the house and out in public.

Here's a few things I've overheard recently:

~~

When pulling into a parking spot at Target some parking lot idiot (PLI) did something that I can't remember at this point. And then SOMEONE (James) in our car said "way to go numb nuts". As soon as Korbin opened the car door he loudly said "way to go numb nuts" within earshot of the previously mentioned PLI then laughed and kept repeating "numb nuts" until we were able to stop laughing and explain that he's not allowed to use that word. Ever.

~~

Tayton has been getting instant headaches recently every time he starts to cry about something. Today he hit his ear on something and was crying while we were at a party. I was in the bathroom with him getting him a little wet towel to dab off the blood and he said "I think that my hurts when I cry because it's taking so much longer for my brain to process it than most people. You know cause of my sensory integration disorder!" (silly kid hears and absorbs every single thing you say)

~~

We were chatting with some friends about our plans for our kids if something happens to us. We all have to have wills drawn up before deployments (well in AK we did anyhow) and my brother and his wife are the lucky winners of two naughty little blond boys if Kirke and I meet an early demise. Korbin overheard us talking and said "Mom if you and Dad both die at the same time I'm gonna have to go live with someone lonely, Grandma Vettel!" This is my grandma who is 77. I replied "I think she's a little too old to take care of you hunny." Korbin was quick to respond "that's okay, I can just take care of her!" They LOVE their Great Grandma Vettel. It's impossible not to!

~~

Tayton just told me that he'd like to someday get another type of animal that lives in a cages. "Probably like a reptile" he said. "They're my second favorite". So I of course asked "what's your first favorite?" He said "OH, mammals!" He likes to keep his options open.

~~

And last but not least while we were listening to the radio the other day Korbin started singing "I make them good girls go bad!" (By Cobra Starship) over and over. I'm pretty sure this might be true. Because a little while later he saw his wife walking out of the store (we were on a convoy to a haunted trail and their family ran inside for a quick stop) and when he saw Megan he shouted "hey baby" out the window to her. Her response was to run and hug him of course......

~~

Korbin said after one of the recent haunted house visits "I wasn't really scared I was just pretending to be so they would think they were doing a good job!"

~~

Silly Kids.

~Till They All Come Home~

How Do You Forget Something Like That?

Today I got up got around, showered and went to some second hand stores with Brandy in search of some size medium/large maternity pants for the birth mom. While we were shopping for her the birth mom, aka Jane, called. She was at her doctors appointment and called me to let me (get this!!!) hear the baby's heartbeat!! It was 152! Hoping for a girl here!! Think pink! Although blue would fit in around here just here just fine! It was so great to get to feel like we're a small part of this pregnancy! All was good in the world.

It's 11:22 and we just left our friends house to come home for the night. It's a Friday night so we did our usual game night.

And it wasn't until just a few minutes ago when I took off my boots that I realized I only shaved one leg. That's right! I walked around all day with one shaved leg and one hairy beast of a leg. Fan-freakin-tastic!

Thankfully it's not summer so I wore long pants!

~Till They All Come Home~

No More Mama Drama

We heard from the birth mom today and she is doing fine since moving out of my moms house. We're going to get her a cell phone on our plan and we'll be able to maintain better contact. Tomorrow she has her 16 week appointment and will be calling me from the doctors appointment so we can hear the heartbeat! I'm so excited!!

Everything is still moving forward. And she's still very on board. The one statement she said that reassured me most was "I am not going to bring another child into this lifestyle". After I asked her about her feelings about the adoption and any second thoughts. She's very certain that she's doing the right thing for this baby.

Oh and big news!! She's also going to schedule her ultrasound in November during the time I am home visiting.

I feel better!

In addition our family is all well. No more sickness here! Woohoo!

~Till They All Come Home~