Here's your pepper spray...

Ya'll I am terrified.  We have our very first women's self defense seminar this weekend and I am scared to death.  Logically I know that it will be awesome, but that logic is just not translating to my gut.  The gut keeps doing summersaults anytime I think about it.  And as it is the day after tomorrow I am thinking about it a lot.  We have gotten a huge response for it, at last count we were close to 50 paid-for attendees.  That being said, we have no choice but to be great.  Because I go to church with these women.  I work for some of them, I call some of them friends.  

Ugh.

I taught a self defense class once upon a time, but it was pretty close to a disaster.  It was through the dojo where I trained, and was working for at the time.  We got a pretty poor response, about 6 women, and I wasn't told until the very last minute that I was actually teaching the thing.  And by last minute I mean after the women had been waiting to begin for about 10 minutes and I had tracked down our head instructor to tell him to get a move on only to be told, that no, you are teaching.  Get to it.  

It did not go real well.  

Don-e on the other hand as taught many of these, to great success.  Our studio was actually known in the town we are from for having 'hot' instructors.  Women ranging from 15 to 80 would sign up for our classes just for the chance to be handles a bit by them.  Don-e was one of them.  Needless to say he is not nervous.  The man is a natural born teacher so I suppose this would be no different for him.  But I am not sure that I won't be sick.  Hopefully just not while in the middle of it...

Something about a jet plane.

So you all know my brother right?

                            

Well, meet PFC Morgan Miller, aka Jimmy, aka MJ.  He is a sniper in the Army, 4th infantry division based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  And he is deploying September 1st.  A month from now.  I will not see my brother for a year.  I am not sure that 9 words strung together to make a sentence has ever made me want to cry more than that.  I will not see my brother for a year, and in that year I am sure that he will live through the closest thing to hell on earth that we've got.  He is 19.  He is 19, and one of the greatest men I have ever met. 

 

I have a question to pose to all of you.  When is the last time you thanked a soldier for their service?  Have you ever?  Well, you should.  You need to.  I don't really care what your stance on the war is, and it doesn't really matter.  The men and women who give even two years of their life to defend what this country is, and what it stands for, deserve every honor that we can give them.  Even if it is you stopping them on the street to say thank you.  

We are going to Colorado to see him one more time before he goes, and to pick up his car and personal belongings.  He wants to store all of his things at our house while he is gone, plus we still only have one car so he is letting us drive his.  Great guy, huh?  We are going to fly out (on a jet plane) August 22nd and drive back that Sunday.  

Oh and did I mention that we are not taking Elijah with us.  That it will be the first time we have been away from him for more than a few hours.  And we are going to be gone for an entire weekend.  AN ENTIRE WEEKEND!!!  UGH.

                                                               

Thank you M.

Going back...

So it appears that I am going back to work.  By work I mean an office job, where I am paid a decent amount for the hours that fall between 8 am and 5 pm, give or take.  For the past 

year-ish I have been watching a little boy who is two months older than Elijah during the day.  

The extra income allowed me to be able to stay home, and eat on a regular basis, but it is stopping in 3 short weeks.  His parents are wanting him in a more structured pre-school type setting starting when he turns 18 months.  He will be so exactly 3 weeks from today.   I am excited though.  A second, full income will make things way more comfortable around here, and on top of that I am excited about joining the real world again.  

 

It was really hard to take at first though.  I mean, I have watched this kid for most of his life. Since he was 4-months old.  I watched him learn to sit up, to crawl, to walk.  I taught him what a doggy says, and how to sign 'thank you'.  And more than just being about me, he and Elijah are like brothers.  They play so well together.  I almost think that they are slow to talk because they have their own language, much like twins do.  Don't get me wrong, they have also learned to hit, and shove and bite on each other, but I think that has made them all the more like brothers.  I have threatened his parents that I know where they live if we do not stay in contact with each other, and let the boys get together often to play.  They feel the same way.

 

Our little family is going to miss having our Thae-Thae-Shaney-Ney on a daily basis, that is for sure.

*thump* *thump*

"testing..... testing........"

"anybody out there................?"

Well, hopefully.  Although I can not blame you if you've decided to leave me.  It has been days since I posted last.  But in my defense anything that I would have written would not have been worth reading.  I don't know what happened to me, but it was bad.  Real bad.  There was such anger, and, and.... anger.  I was just mad.  At everything.  And anything.  But, I think I am past that.  A big part of getting past it was seeing my family.  Until I moved here I never knew how much my family centers me.  My husband and my son make me flourish, but my mom, my brother and my sister ground me.  The people I come from give me my base to be who I am.  And so now I am going to celebrate that with pictures!!

To start us off, the hotness.  It is blinding.

This is my brother.  In case you haven't had to listen to me brag about it, he is a sniper in the Army.  It was amazing to see what he could do with the low-grade weapons we went shooting with.  I would love to one day see what he can do with is 50-cal.

This is my mommy, my baby and my Papa.  

These right here, these are my people.  And my sister looks like me, not the other way around.

My Grandma and this kid that was following us around our whole trip.

It doesn't get much cheesier than this.

Four generations right there.  And some of the best salmon I have ever had.

******************

More to come later, but I have to go get ready to take this kid that has shown up in my house and done something with my baby to his 15 month check-up. Eeeck!