Everything is making me mad today. Perhaps today should be over and I should try again tomorrow. Before I eat someone alive that is......

Sexual Assault is Ok in Our Schools

I wasn't going to post this but now I'm just mad and I've done everything I can do and I don't know what I wanted out of stirring the pot but damn it we're still suffering and the school got off easy. It's bullshit!

Ok back in October my son, 5 years old, was in the restroom at school with a friend we'll call D. Korbin and D were washing their hands and getting ready to head back to class......probably having a water fight or standing under the air dryer too. Another student we'll call M. came into the restroom,, walked up to Korbin and D and pulled down his pants M tried to get the boys to touch him. Korbin and D did the typical "eww gross get away" thing and that's when M grabbed my Korbin and tried to pull down his pants. Korbin's pants did not come down because he had on adjustable waist jeans. D was not so lucky. He had on sweats and his pants were yanked down by this other boy. Korbin took advantage of this time to run away and get help. This is sexual assault!

This is the story we were told when we picked up Korbin and D from school that day. October 10th to be exact. We weren't notified during the day that anything out of the ordinary had taken place that day. D's mom and I talked for a few minutes and thus began a friendship strongly centered around our children's experience.

Over the weekend Korbin's behavior changed. He became very defensive and angry and mean. In fact he picked up an end table over his head and was ready to throw it at his brother! Not typical Korbin behavior. I spoke with the counselor on Monday and asked her to talk with Korbin because I noticed his behavior had changed. She assured me she would. She never did.

A fews day later after speaking with D's mom we decided we needed to meet with the principal and find out what, if anything was being done. M was still in class with our kids. Still roaming the halls and still alone with other children. I approached the principal on Wednesday that week and asked if we could meet with her Thursday or Friday. She informed me she was quite busy and couldn't schedule an appointment with us and if we wanted to talk to her it had to be right then. Since D's mom and I wanted to be together as to not be bullied that didn't work for us.

Friday morning we decided to just drop in and meet with the principal right then. She didn't even offer us a seat. She basically just said what she needed to say to shut us up and get us out of the office. At this time the counselor still had not met with my son even though it was specifically requested by me that she do so 5 days earlier. A week had passed at this point.

The following week nothing happened and my son continued to become angrier and more defensive. On one occasion Korbin came home with a note saying he got in trouble for "growling" at other kids. I told the teacher I'd growl at other kids too if no one was going to make sure I felt safe at school.

That Friday D's mom and I both emailed the superintendent of the district to alert him of the situation. The boys had both stated M had tried to get them to touch him and possibly had tried to touch them as well. They were reluctant to talk about the incident.

Monday morning the superintendent assistant called and said he'd look into why the counselor hadn't met with the kids and basically just saying what he had to say to pacify me. Remarkable the counselor met with both boys the next day and did a class (at my request) on good touch/bad touch with the students and appropriate behavior. Then that was the end of it.

Well unfortunately my son continued to become more and more aggressive and get into trouble and be disruptive in the classroom. I took Korbin to the behavioral health child psychologist on post who said Korbin has ADHD and has put him on medication. He stated that he felt that the onset of the ADHD symptoms came on so strong because of the incident but that they would have shown up in time. I went ahead with the medication because of the anger and violence not because he's a wild little boy. We love that about him!

D's mom and I were fed up with the schools administration and in November we both removed our kids from school and opted to home school them.

Well here I am 10 months later stewing over the issue again. I raised attention to the incident with our rear detachment commander at a meeting last month because I felt that the incident was not handled right and that my son was still suffering from the incident and I wanted to know what was supposed to happen in a situation like that.

Today we had a meeting with the family advocacy representative, the rear detachment commander and Kirke's 1SG. They had met with the schools administration and basically felt they did their share to handle the situation. They claimed to be unaware that there was an attempt to force our kid to touch M and that M tried to touch them. They freakin lied through their teeth about when they met with the students.

Today is the day I drop it. The school did not take care of my son and keep him safe and upon realizing he was in the situation played it off as boys being boys. That is not okay!! I'm pissed off but I don't know what I want that would make me not be so pissed off. I want my sweet loving happy little boy back.

The meeting we had today basically showed me that no one but me thinks this is a big deal. They made me feel as if I'm just being an over protective pain in the ass parent. I don't know what I expected but I didn't expect to have the situation minimized once again.

I'm not impressed. I feel like they are saying it's acceptable behavior. If this had happened to a little girl it would have been handled differently. If the other students parent wasn't an officer it would have been handled differently. If Korbin and D's daddy's had been here instead of in Iraq it would have been handled differently.

I miss my lovable sweet little guy. We love homeschooling but it's expensive. It's really been to our benefit that we've pulled them out of public school but damn it's just not right that THIS is the reason why! It's bullshit and I'm mad as hell but I've done all that I can do. I'm just grateful that my children aren't in school with kids who are allowed to bully them and hurt them anymore.

I'm not proof-reading this because it'll just make me mad all over again so forgive my typo's. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

I just figured out what I want out of this. I want people to stop saying things like this happen and it's gonna be okay. I want people to say "You are right, this is not acceptable behavior and I'm sorry that this happened to your son. We will do everything we can to keep it from happening again!" I'm sick of people in authority positions just blowing it off like it's no big effin deal. It's a big damn deal and it's NOT okay!

~Till They All Come Home~

Gone Again

We're off for more of this:

~Till They All Come Home~

I need 9 more

I need 9 more followers to get to 50 and that would be so exciting for me so if anyone is lurking around please click the little follow button. You can follow anonymously but what fun is that?

Help me get to 50. Or even better 100. Maybe if I ever get to 100 I'll do a ginormous give away? That'd be fun right?

~Till They All Come Home~

He Said What?

I have a tendency to start saying some little phrase and then I wear it out. Apparently that has happened again. At the grocery store Tayton picked up a cornish hen and was cracking up laughing and said "Hey Mom, this is just enough meat to make ya mad!"


I say that when restaurants give my tiny cups of diet Pepsi or I get stuck with 12 ounce cans instead of bottles.




This weekend we went camping and canoeing (spell check says it's not a word but it is for me!) with friends. Korbin was riding in their canoe. They had my friend and her hubby, Korbin and their 3 year old daughter on board and they tipped over. They took a few minutes to regroup and continued down the river.





Later that day Korbin said to me "When that canoe tipped over I was going to jump right in and save Cassidy! But then I forgot!"




Hope he never forgets to save anyone else! Silly kid!


Here's a few pictures from our weekend!

This was our campsite. You can see our tent and our friends tent and the river right there! It was beautiful. We'll be on the same site next weekend and hopefully this girl's family and maybe this girl too, will join us!

We weren't cool enough to have a canoe yet when these pictures were taken but we did have a look out scout!

And towing capabilities!

Here's Korbin and the Suds after he deserted us and our cheap inflatable for a real canoe!

These four made for quite a load on the first day of the trip! Good times for all! I can't wait to post more with us in OUR canoe now that we've moved up from the rubber raft!

~Till They All Come Home~

We're Off

We're off to practice camping this weekend. We've camped before but this is the first time in Missouri so we want to make sure we know all of what we need before heading to Arkansas for a week long camping trip in August. We found the nicest little campground and it's 15 miles from home. Our tent site will be right on the river and we can fish right from there! I'm so excited. Now I'm off to finish the packing and get away from it all for the weekend!

~Till They All Come Home~

Front Page News: She's Not Bitchy Anymore

Our soldier's home and now that we're on the front page of the paper we can't deny we missed each other!



Here's the picture without all the other chaos around it!

Kirke came home and said "how did we manage to get on the front page of the newspaper?"

My response was "well I was mean to the guy last week when the first group of soldiers came home so he remembered me this week!"

So here's the true story.

Me and my very good friends were sitting waiting on the first half of the battalion to come home on the 28th of June. The newspaper guy came and started his spiel about how he's looking for people to photograph and have names to go with the pictures for the pictures and blah blah blah. I cut him off short and said "umm we're the group who won't be getting our soldiers back today so you might want to find someone else if you want happy pictures."

I wasn't really that bitchy was I?

So this week he came up to us and I just laughed and he said "Are you ready for pictures this week?" So we couldn't very well say "no"!

OH and the best part is that he got a promotion by the newspaper guy. I guess he misunderstood me because they printed Staff Sergeant instead of Sergeant. I'd appreciate seeing that in the paycheck please!

~Till They All Come Home~

And Then There Were Four

Our little family is complete again. It's been a long gazillion months apart! We got the call that our soldiers would be home Monday night. Our welcome home ceremony was to take place upon the arrival of the buses between 2300 and 2400 Monday night.

My soldier called to say their plane had landed in St Louis at 7:30. We all went into action like little ants getting things around. Us wives had dresses to put on and hair and make-up to do. The kids continued playing until we were through and got them dressed up and ready to go. We arrived at the location of the ceremony and were too excited to even make fun of other peoples choice of attire. Well kinda.....

I'm pretty sure that not letting myself get excited until that point was a little crazy. I was about to jump out of my skin waiting on the buses to arrive! Then we watched as the soldiers were unloaded from the buses and filed in, searching for the familiar faces of our own soldiers.

More to come including pictures but I just wanted to let everyone know our soldier is home safe and we're soaking in every little bit of it!

~Till They All Come Home~

Independence Sometimes Sucks

Today we went to the Fourth of July celebration on post as usual. It was not as much fun as last year. Last year was much better so I don't have any great pictures or videos to share. But I highly suggest reading THIS post cause it's funny and has great pictures and it's all pretty much the same except we're all a year older.

We talked about what Independence Day is and the boys understand why we celebrate the Fourth of July. This year I'm a little bit bitter though. I thought I'd have my soldier back and that this would be the best Fourth of July ever. Instead things got jacked up and someone effed up and they are stuck for the time being. The boys were sad when they realized Daddy wasn't home for the Fourth like I had previously told them. It sucks when you let yourself get excited so much that you also let the kids get excited and then have to crush them!

Independence is great when you're talking about our country. Independence rocks when you're talking about a teenager graduating and moving on to college and facing the real world. Independence is especially great when kids can pour their own drinks, fix themselves a snack and even buckle their own seat belt.

For the most part Independence is a positive thing.

For us right now it sucks. I'm so sick to death of doing everything independently. I'm sick of having so much Independence that I sometimes have to think twice about what it was like to have someone here to help carry the load. Independence especially sucks when I have to go to bed independently on a night when I sure would love some company. And it really sucks when you have to independently tell your 6 and 7 year old that you don't know when Daddy will be home even though we've spent two Fourth of July's without him now. And when I have to sit here and listen to the 7 year old sing about how much he misses his dad so much, independently.

So today Independence sucks for our family. We really want to be dependent on the Daddy again!

Hurry home love!

~Till They All Come Home~

How Many

How many more nights do I have to sleep alone? How much does our family have to suffer so that people in some other country can continue to live life as they did before the war? How many more years do my kids and I have to live without a man of the house? A daddy? A husband and best friend?

I'm tired of this life. I want to live the civilian life where we don't have to think twice about our spouse being shipped off to fight for freedom in some other country. Where we can walk outside and not see neighbors hugging goodbye for what may be the day or week or months and even years. I want to take life for granted just for a day, or two.

A few more days can literally turn into a lifetime to the soldier and families awaiting the end of their current tour. One more roadside bomb, suicide bomber or RPG could be the last for those of us still waiting for our soldiers return in just a few weeks or even days.

Half of our battalion is now home. I'd love to say home safe but the occurrence of abuse, assault, accidental and intentional deaths resulting from DUI's and domestic dispute sky rockets when soldiers return from any deployment let alone a 15 month deployment. Suicides become a sad but current trend as well. Even though they're returning home they bring a bit of the war home with them.

I want my soldier returned to me promptly in the same condition in which I surrendered him to this deployment so many months ago. Is that too much to ask? Probably so. Right now I'd settle for a hug and kiss and a smile to reassure me that he's still the soldier I love so much. The one who asked me to marry him 10 years ago tomorrow! (Our wedding anniversary is in December)

Come home soon baby we miss you!

~Till They All Come Home~