I know its been awhile since I posted.  I just don’t feel like I have much to say lately.  Let’s see…

My night bible study is over.  It was such a good study.  Beth Moore’s Breaking Free.  But it was also very hard emotionally.  Those hard emotions, though, were shared by many and I’ve come out of it feeling much closer to the ladies in the study.  I love that God is bigger than my anger.

My day bible study on base is also over until the end of the month.

I’m working on redecorating the kids bedrooms & their bathroom while Jim is gone.  I can post my plans & pics, if anyone is interested.  I’ll definitely post when they are all done.

Ben started sitting a couple weeks ago.  He’s also *finally* broken his first two teeth through.

Jim is gone for the month.  Missing his birthday at home yet again.  He’s in California near Death Valley.  Says its hot and ugly.  One of my top bases I hope to NEVER get stationed at (it took over the spot of Hawaii LOL)

Elizabeth is going over to the hourly day care for two mornings next week.  And I’m counting the seconds down!!  Yes, yes, I know that sounds terrible.  But, truly, she talks from the moment she wakes up until she’s asleep.  And then IN her sleep as well.  I need S-I-L-E-N-C-E!!  I’m one who used to crave noise.  It helped me stay focused on my task.  Now I crave every second of silence I can get.

Elizabeth starts back at AWANA in a couple weeks.  She loves it and can’t hardly wait for it to start back.  She had my iron her vest already.   I’m thinking I may start doing my grocery shopping those nights with just one (non-talking!!!) child.  At least once Jim deploys.  Until then, I think I’m going to snag those nights for myself.

I haven’t been sewing much but I plan to spend the weekend on my machine.  When we go home in September, I’m planning to hit some fabric stores.  I have yet to find a good one here.  I found one that has a HUGE variety but it makes me nuts to go in there.  There is little organization to it.  The flat bolts of fabric are stacked on top of each other (rather than standing on end like books @ the library), so in order to see what is under the top one, you have to pull the stack out and look through it.  Like I have that time with two kids in tow!!  HA.  I’m hoping to go to Hobby Lobby and Jo-Anns, at least.  I have a list of projects.

I don’t have much to say, really, but I wanted to post tonight. So let’s see…

Elizabeth has been in VBS this week. She has loved it. Our church is really into getting the teenagers to serve in the church, so they are leading all the classes. In the 3yo class they have two male teenagers. Quiet ones at that. I love that they would take on the 3yo class but these two also seem like an odd choice. Tomorrow they are doing songs & skits for the parents. I was reading the sheet about it and E wanted me to read it to her. So I did. She then says to me “Parent, let’s wait and talk about this tomorrow. Its too much for me right now. Just too much.” Okay, then. Where in the heck did that come from?

Jim is off tomorrow. Yea!!

They put a playground in our front yard. Not directly in front of our house but a couple houses down. Its nice to have one close. The other closest ones were 10 minute walk and a 20 minute walk. On the other hand, it can be a little annoying as well because she sees it and wants to be down there all the time. We go down every evening after dinner and I try to get her down there a few mornings as well. There’s another mama who is down there most evenings. She has a little girl a little older than E and a little girl who’s a little younger than Ben. I really like her. She’s a cloth-diapering mama too! She’s really nice and we seem to have similar parenting styles. Thought I may invite them over for a play date.

Today I met a mama from LLL at Starbucks. I don’t know her well but, after last month’s meeting, we exchanged numbers. We didn’t do anything though. LLL was Tuesday night and I mentioned I’d be in her town this week, so we met up today. I had a good time with her, very relaxed.

We booked our trip home for September. We’ll be home just barely a week. It’ll be nice. But it also means that this deployment really is happening.

We’ve decided we’ll tell E about this deployment after we go to Indiana. She has no real sense of time, so telling her now would be nuts. And she gets SO anxious about things that are a long way off. So we’ll tell her when we are 3-4 weeks out.

This morning I woke up to her crying in my doorway. It was a 3yo whiney cry, so I told her to go find something to play while I slept a little more. She broke down. She wanted Jim. I told her to go find him. She said she looked everywhere but didn’t know where he was. Then I remembered he had to go in early today. I told her. And she really broke down. She was hungry but needed HIM to fix her breakfast. And she couldn’t eat cereal because he may want some. And he may be sad if she ate cereal without him. She didn’t want to eat at all but I finally got some food in her. And I just cried. I called him but he didn’t answer. And that made her cry even more. And me too. Its gonna’ be a long year.

My baby has a tooth! He’s been teething on and off for a couple hellacious weeks. One tooth has barely broken through the gums, just enough to feel the sharpness. And the other too is getting ready to break–you can see the ridges of it just under the gums.

I took a two hour nap this afternoon. I have a feeling I’m going to be awake late tonight!!

Truly, I have the cutest kids ever. Ever!

I had this nice long rambling post about how disconnected I feel here and to my family and how blah I feel.  And WP ate it.  And, for once, it didn’t auto-save as I was going along (it just updated its auto-save for this ost…lovely timing).  Now I’m irritated and even more blah.  Its really late and I should head off.  But not before I say this. I really dislike Sunday nights.  I loved them through high school.  Sunday night church and then a made for TV movie (why did the Big 3 stop those every week, I wonder).  LOVED that!  Sunday nights in the dorms were weird.  Sometimes everyone was around, other weeks it was so lonely.   Fall of my sophomore year was really rough for me on Sunday evenings.  I worked in the ed library those nights.  When I went back to shelve books, it felt so incredibly lonely to me.  I’ve never been able to kick that feeling.  When Jim was deployed, we had a “family” dinner each week.  Myself and three other ladies & their kids were the core group with drifters many other weeks.  I suggested it precisely because of my aversion to Sunday nights.  They were lovely evenings.  But then I went home to an empty house with a sleeping babe.

So I’m off.  Sleeping babe, bad TV, a post eaten by WP and yucky lonely, blah, Sunday night feelings.  Monday can’t come soon enough.

As you may recall in part one of this series (HA!) I talked about moving up in the hip/cool world. Well, I’ve (oops!) done it again (wasn’t that the name of a song?? as I fully admit, I’m not FULLY hip/cool, just working my way there! ) I was browsing on myspace (again) and found an old classmate that I’ve tried numerous ways to get in touch with and could never find him. I did last night but, in order to send a message, I had to register. So I registered but planned to NOT create a page. That didn’t last. So I did it. My page is here. I need lots of friends on it now, though, so I don’t like like such a dork. LOL

Yea, I know my interestsn are a bit “odd” (geeky?  dorky?  cool?  I’m fine with anything) by some people’s standards. And just to prove it…check out some of the new links in my blogroll–all TV food blogs! That Tyler’s chef blog is Tyler Florence. And a few other cool ones, including one dedicated to Alton *swoon* Brown.

A real update coming tomorrow….