Where we've been

For the past few months, I haven't been able to write much.  At the end of January, Greg went away to CGSC (Command and General Staff College -- formerly ILE) an Army mandated school, which stretches nearly the span of the year; he will graduate from the course in mid December.  At first, I had intended not to write about it, because I feel uncomfortable with publicizing the fact that Greg is away and we are, essentially, "home alone".  However, without being able to write about it -- an outlet I've come to rely on -- I've found it hard to write about anything at all.  And that's no good for me.  So after discussing it with Greg, we have decided to go public.  This is happening.  We are living a year without Greg.  And it sucks.  But we are still having fun little adventures, engaging in crazy single-parenting struggles, and all sorts of other tasty little moments that just BEG to be blogged about.

A little bit of photographic catch-up of our year so far...

My parents and my sister Hannah and her 3-year-old son came to visit us for 10 days in April.







They visited the elementary school, met the children's teachers and participated in an awards ceremony, we went to the library, playgrounds, went to pet the tiny chicks at the farm supply store and got an on-the-fly lesson on shoeing a horse, among other fun.





I love watching Billy and Chazz together.  They are only 5 months apart, and their interaction and diverse personalities are so amusing.



The bluebonnets bloomed!  Billy unfortunately celebrated with a friend by gathering a few (illegally) for me....lovely, but ill-advised.  We love spotting the great waving banks of bluebonnets along the side of the road when they are in full bloom.



We learned one of the most complicated ways to cure hick-ups when we convinced our friend Josh H. that the only way was to stand on his head while someone fed him water upside-down.  Truly a Kodak moment if there ever was one.



The children had Field Day at their school, with all sorts of water fun, colorful sno-cones, etc.  Mostly we hung out with the Pre-K class, which Billy fit into seamlessly, and somehow didn't manage to get any shots of Max at all.  Oops.






Catapulting water balloons into a crowd of waiting kindergardeners.









We had a bit of unwanted excitement one night while, during a party, our kitchen light fixture started falling out of the ceiling.  My dad had noticed this happening several weeks prior when they were here, but I never got it fixed.  Oops.  Anyway, our man-friends JUMPED into action, pulling out all manner of tools, etc., that I didn't even realize we had in our garage.





All of us ladies had some fun watching them all work it out.



In the end, the light was secured to the ceiling once again.  Beer + man-power = success!  And a fun story from the party.  Score!

For our church's anniversary celebration this year, we had an ice cream competition, so my friend Grace and I entered a batch of Bacon Praline Pecan (using this base -- the smoothest ice cream EVER) that we froze using dry ice and my Kitchen Aid mixer.



 

So fun!  Also rather exciting in the beginning when we didn't quite know what we were doing, and made it boil over a few times and shoot dry ice at us out of the mixer bowl.  Oops.

Also that night, there was a whipped cream incident.  Ahem.  No comment.


Me, Grace, Angela

And that's all I've got to say about that.