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.

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!

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.

A real update coming tomorrow….