Playground with Daddy

The weather, with the exception of a day of rain, has been just beautiful lately. Last night Don dropped Sean off at Guard practice and then took the Littles to a great park in Aldergrove. This is a new feature at that park! As you can see, Patience has no fear of heights.

After a lot of hard playing, they got ice cream sundaes at Dairy Queen! Lucky Littles! And lucky mommy, who was at home with nobody for a good 90 minutes or so. Not that I don't madly love my family...it's just so nice to have peace and quiet for a little while : )

Dylan is stepping up to the plate in a big way. Bigger than I've ever seen before. In addition to his usual music commitments (enough to keep him busy in and of themselves), he's playing senior boys' volleyball (daily practice), taking (and studying!) Physics 12, and is playing in the local community college orchestra twice a week. He has zero internet during the school week, and he hasn't even had time to complain once about being abused and mistreated. I am impressed.

Nick turns 1 next week! How can that be? And my other baby, Nathan, turns 20 in two weeks somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Maybe he'll get two birthdays if he crosses the international date line at the right time. Or maybe it wouldn't work that way...dates and time zones are kind of confusing for me.

We've fallen into a comfortable little routine. I have stepped up my food production to meet the needs of Dylan and Sean who are gone sometimes 10 hours at a time and the addition of my daycare son, Darrell. Darrell and Patience attend Kindergarten daily from 8:40-11:15. Jordyn goes to preschool Tuesday and Thursday at the same times (making drop off and pick up a little tricky). When Jordyn is home alone with me (Nick naps in the mornings) we spend time baking or preparing food...we're having such a great time and she wears her little apron that Heather and Haley made for her last year. She's turned into my little helper.

This morning after taking Patience to kindergarten I put Jordyn and Nick in the double stroller and we walked about a mile. That's a great workout!

So, all is still well in our corner of the world. Life is good : )

First day of Kindergarten!

All ready and very excited!

Boatswain's A-School Graduation

"Colors" parade. All the students in formation in their various classes. Yorktown teaches most of the Coast Guard trades, or rates.

Most of the students are in their ODU's (ordinary dress uniforms). You can see the graduating class in their trops with their white tops standing front and center.

Nathan marching from the parade square to the graduation reception, where they served a continental breakfast and had some short speeches/presentations.

Nathan's favorite person at A school, BM1 Lisa Pillips, who was in charge of the class. She was well-loved among all the students. They all pitched in to get her a gift, and they wrote a letter of comendation that will go in her file.

After graduation, we hit the dusty trail! It was a good trip. Long, indeed, but lots of fun. It was nice to have countless hours to visit with Nathan after not seeing him for 13 long weeks.

The end of August through the middle of September

Wow...I don't know that I've ever taken such a long hiatus from blogging. If it's any consolation, I have felt guilty most of the days that I've taken "off."

At the tail end of August I travelled to Yorktown, Virginia to see Nathan graduate and drive back across the states with him. I'll cover that in a separate post. We came home and he had exactly one week of leave in which to pack for his new duty station in Cordova, Alaska. The fun thing is that his ship, the USCG Cutter Sycamore, is currently underway on a training trip (I think) to Japan and Russia, so Nathan flew out there and met up with his ship at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Tokyo. He flew in on September 10 and called me this evening from the ship to let me know he got there without incident and that "everything is amazing." He's going to try to find some internet somewhere so he can write an email or something, but in the meantime it's nice to know all is well.

The kids all started school. Dylan is in Grade 12 (horray!), Sean starts Grade 9, Patience is in Kindergarten, and Jordyn begins her second (out of three) year of preschool.

I am providing day care for my friends little boy, Darrell. He's here M, T, W and he's in Patience's kindergarten class, so it's very convenient.

Nick is walking more and more! I counted 12 steps today. Also today, he took a few steps away from me, realized that was a bad idea, turned around, and took a couple of steps back to me. It's great to see how much he grows and changes every day.

Don is BUSY. Two full-time jobs, it seems. This time of the year is always extra stressful, as he's under the gun to get all the tree work done in time for harvest. Thankfully Dylan is on board to help him both days this weekend.

Dylan and Sean are both on volleyball teams at school. It's hysterical because they come home from practice (4-6 p.m.) so sore and tired that they can barely lift their arms. They've done really well the first week of school, especially considering we cut off their internet habit cold turkey. We're reserving the internet for weekend entertainment...the weekdays are for school, music, cadets, and other worthwhile interests.

So, in case you were wondering or concerned, all is well in our neck of the woods! : )