This is one of those stories that just brings you back to what it is all about!

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Life continues for us with a ton of snow on the ground and a new foot or so every weekend or so it seems to be for the past few weeks. Even though everyone is so so done with it we also realize we have a good two full more months of this weather.

Today when I went out to add wood to the wood furnace outside I realized it was shut off. Not sure what went wrong... but since I only have a few weeks worth of wood left, I don't think I will pay to have it fixed, since I am not sure if I will be reimbursed. So that puts us on propane for the next two months (or however long we still live here). I called the propane company today to get a delivery and she said there is a propane shortage...are you kidding me.....I will get enough to last a month or so, which is fine with me...but propane shortage...how does that happen?

Talked to housing today and they are still estimating end of April before new homes will be done and people assigned to them. Since I have no idea how long it takes to build a new home in upstate NY...I have to believe them. Some of them have the paper wrapping and windows in... I didn't get by this weekend to get pictures due to the snow so maybe next week I will get a new picture up of the progress. I have to give those construction guys credit...they are still framing a bunch and if you have been watching our weather we have had very few days above 20 degrees...glad I don't do that for a living.

Dylan has decided he wants a Leopard Gecko.

I figure it is a harmless enough pet so this week when he is getting out of school early for the next three days we will go check one out at Petco.

Terry is doing well. They are at their final home for the next year. The living conditions are much better than we anticipated. He is still fighting a cold that he has had since arriving in Afghanistan. Here are some photos of him there and a lovely sunset.



He is making new friends, some artillery folks from France last week. We (he) have been so lucky in our many years in the Army of meeting so many soldiers from around the world, and like most of the American soldiers we have had the privilege to serve with they too are the best their country has to offer.

So with a month under our belts the kids and I are doing well and staying positive for the most part. We all have our "poor me" moments but they pass and we move on to the next thing.

And I wonder why none of our airbeds hold air!!!

Today is my sister in law's birthday... Happy Birthday Liz.

It is also a month before the year anniversary of losing Kirk.

Kirk was a meat and potatoes kind of man...he loved certain things more than others here are a few I can think of....

Grandma's homemade buns
Green chile
BBQ sauce
and
Homemade ice cream and homemade fudge sauce

Wonder what his favorite things in Heaven are?

I looked out the window at 3:00am...no snow yet. At 7:40 I woke to the dog barking and looked outside and we probably had at least a foot of new snow...It has almost stopped now at 10:30am. I would guess anywhere between 1.5 to 2 feet of brand new snow....and it is 8 degrees....Gotta love upstate NY weather.

The snow that DB was walking thru was as tall as he is his back....

This is looking at my neighbors house...where is it?

Yesterday we had a front blow in...along with lake effect snow we had wind like you wouldn't believe. So what do we do...we get in a car last night at 6:30 and make the 10 or 15 mile trip to Fort Drum for a mandatory parent meeting for Tyler's 1st reconciliation. 5 years ago I would have never driven in weather like that on snow packed roads, yesterday I did it with 3 kids in the car. About 2 miles outside of Drum there were white out conditions, and I am not kidding about the white out part. Don't forget that the roads are all ready snow packed, so they are white, everything on either side of the road has 2 or more feet of snow on it and now the sky is white. I can see how easy it would have been to just drive off the road, since I had no idea where the road was. For MOM...I didn't realize how bad it was when I left the house, and once I got in the stuff, never in a million years would I have tried to turn around in it...going strait and hoping the car in front of me was on the road was all I could do. By the time the meeting was over, it had stopped snowing and was just blowing and only in a few places was the snow blowing so hard across the road making it really hard to see.

Now our temperature for the next 3 days is going to hover around 3 or 4 above 0....At night another story, one night they are expecting -20 or below. That is some cold stuff for us at least. Again I just don't really need to retire here or spend any extra time if we can help it, just not my cup of tea.

Found the baby pictures last week, but couldn't get the scanner to communicate with the computer...all is well today. Here is Tyler the day he was born...a little background.

I was huge...the people at work asked me daily if I was having twins. At 36 weeks my doctor assured me I wasn't having a big baby... My due day came and went with no baby. (even more background, Dylan was breech so I had to have a c-section, this time I was able to choose and wanted to try have him). At 41 weeks they do a stress test and discovered there wasn't much fluid and decided to induce me...this was on Friday the 5th. Around noon they started the pitocin and all was good till 11:00 that night, I was having good contractions, but wasn't progressing much, so they decided to stop the pitocin and let me sleep. I continued to have contractions all night and starting getting that they call titanic contractions lasting well over 3 minutes and gave me some drug to stop all contractions. At this point the doctor on call asked me what I wanted to do...C-SECTION!!! Tyler was born about 45 minutes later and when they weighed him we discovered why he didn't want to come out...he was 10 lbs and 3 oz....

Just occured to me today that a year ago today we moved into this house...it was cold, rainy and the heat didn't work all weekend. We had spent the prior 3 weeks in various places finally at an Apartment I wouldn't wish on anyone. And no house on post any time soon. (Most likely March/April time frame.)

This last week was very crazy...Monday our first day back after Christmas started off well for the boys with a two hour delay for school, Tuesday was Tyler's birthday and we all enjoyed our family party. Wednesday school was cancelled and I hurt my back and couldn't stand up straight for the rest of the day, thank goodness Dylan was around to help out. Thursday was another two hour delay for school, but they did go and I did make it to get my hair cut and colored, it looks much better. Friday we had dinner at a friends house with 4 other families for a total of 18 kids ranging in age from 14 to 10 months. Saturday was Tyler's friend party at a place called Velocity in Watertown, where the kids played on huge bouncy houses and played laser tag and ate tasty pizza and cake. Great day.

My favorite Dog in the world (DB) learned a new trick...or maybe I should say he forgot a trick. Friday morning after Dylan left, but before Jason and Tyler left for school he went down in the basement for some reason. I heard him whimpering, but thought him and a cat might be having a standoff...finally I look down there and he has his stuffed pheasant in his mouth looking up at me...okay no cat in the way, just come on up. I wasn't worried to much and the kids tried to bribe him with treats and such, no luck. I got them on the bus, opened and closed the door a few times (he loves to go outside with me) no luck. I went down and tried to have him walk up with me, no luck. Went and got a hamburger out of the fridge...gave him a bite put another bite a few stairs up and more a few more stairs up...NO LUCK. I got his leash and tried to force him up, NO LUCK. I finally had to get behind him and put his paws on the 2nd step and lift his bottom on the bottom step and move his paws to the next step and lift his bottom to the next step...and so forth all the way up. He has been up and down those stairs a million times in the past year, and has never had a problem. He goes upstairs to the bedrooms all the time. I don't know why he has decided the basement stairs are scary... Love my 80lb brave dog.
And wouldn't you know he went downstairs twice on Saturday and Dylan and I had to bring him up the same way both times...Door is now shut...but it is only a matter of time till someone leaves it open.

So life is going well we have a house over our heads, kids are thriving at school. Terry made it to his final destination.

Tyler celebrated his 8th birthday today. Wish I had the energy to go thru my boxes to find I picture of my 10 lb 3 oz boy, maybe tomorrow. He had a great day today and on Saturday we will play laser Tag with several of his buddies.

That just shows you how crazy it got here the few weeks before Terry left...so today after dropping the kids off at CCD I drove to the new houses...and got out and checked one out...so here are the updated photos...

I really like the location of this one...we'll see if I can sweet talk my way into it...


This is the house I always take a picture of...

I was surprised to realize today that a week has gone by since Terry left. Maybe that is a sign that the next 51+ will go.

I received a really nice Thank you note in the mail today from my neighbors. We had given them a basket of goodies for Christmas as a small token of thanks for all they have done for us. In the note she thanks us for the items in the basket ending with an ornament that says Fort Drum saying they will think of us each year when they put it on the tree. She goes on to offer their help during Terry's deployment. At the end she mentions that having a "military neighbor" helps them to see the sacrifices the families make for our country.

I was moved to tears by her kind words. I am so eternally grateful for what they have done for us in the year we have lived here. God is taking care of me....

Finally found a video from the Deployment ceremony...the sound is not great but is worth listening too...Turn your speakers up, that might help. Also you have to listen to one other story before the Deployment video comes on. One more thing, to turn off my music player, look at the player and at the very top left hand corner under the picture there is a box with two lines on it, click on this and it will pause the music.