Leaves On The Wind

Sorry it has been so long. Things kind of got a bit crazy right after Jake's Birthday.
Here are some updates to catch you up. Photos to follow once I find them all... :)

August:
School started for us.
Nick moved to a new school about 5 miles away called Clear Creek Elementary. While this means I have to drive him to and from school, it has been a wonderful blessing for him. Nick was put in a Multi-age TAG program at his new school. Originally he was in a combined 1st and 2nd Grade class. But as the 1st grade class grew they split the 2nd graders between this class and the 3rd grade class. So now Nick is up with the 3rd graders. He is really liking it a lot. He misses a few of his friends that he made in the 1st Grade class, but because all the classes spend some time with each of the classes and still sees them.

Tabatha started on a new adventure herself. Rather than going to a traditional school, she started a new on-line school through IQ Academy (they are spreading across the nation..check them out if you are intested). Here she goes to school in a format very similar to on-line college classes. The big difference is that they actually hold class (once a week for each class) in a virtual classroom. They do have the option to chat, talk, webcam and of course share the whiteboard (for playing and the teacher showing the lesson).

It has had its ups and downs but over time has been a wonderful blessing in our lives.

September:
Sped by in a blur. So much going on, but I will admit I kind of was on auto-pilot. Trying to make it those last couple of months til Sean came home from his 2nd Deployment. Also things at work picked up for me and the increase in hours kept me busier than normal.

October:
Nick's Birthday. A big one for him. He turned 8 this year, which meant he was old enough to get baptized. We had decided to wait until his Dad got home and we all could make a trip to Utah so that we could share this with family and friends.

And the countdown began. We had a few false starts with rumors of them being home a bit earlier than planned but by mid-month we knew it would be sometime after the 1st of Nov. when Sean would be home.

Halloween was a quiet time here. Choices were made and because of that we all stayed in that night.

November:

We were all getting excited. Sean over in Iraq and us here. We had hoped to have him home on the 3rd so he could go to the Veterans Picnic at Nick's school, but it wasn't to be. But Nick still had a really fun time.

5th of November: Happy Day!!! Sean came home. We were all so excited. We waited with friends at the new West Fort Hood Gym for the guys to come in. We decorated the car and had some other fun things.

Again as soon as I find where those pictures are, I will add them here.

6th of November: Well the whole US knows went on this day. I will do a seperate post later about all that took place. Most of it we did post on Facebook, mostly I think because it was short updates, a lot more of our concerned friends and family could see it posted there. Mostly it just seemed so surreal I really didn't know what to say.

Nov. 18th: The kids and I got on a plane in Austin. Sadly without Sean. Due to last minute changes (of course after we bought our plane tickets) block leave got moved and Sean could not get away to fly with us. Instead he joined us a couple of days later.

Our time in Utah while sounding like a long time, almost 2 weeks, came and went so quickly.
Our Niece was blessed, Thanksgiving was celebrated with Sean's Family at his brother Bill's place surrounded by a sorts of family.

The day after Thanksgiving...and well after the "Black Friday Sales", we all gathered together in Brent and Julie's Stake Center to first have family pictures taken since all of Sean's brothers and sisters and their families were all together there. Then to witness Nick's Baptism.   It was a special experience, even though everything did not go as smoothly as hoped. Nick even provided a bit of Comic relief when he tried to go "swimming" in the font after getting out after his Uncle Bill Baptized him. He was later confirmed by his Dad, surrounded by: Great Grandpa Loveridge, Great Grandpa Hansen, Grandpa, Grandpa Roger, Uncle Bill, Uncle Dan, Uncle Mike and Uncle Brian. (I hope I did not forget someone)

December:

Dec. 1st we flew home to TX. It was nice getting back to our house but we all wished we could have stayed in Utah longer.

Sean was on leave until about the middle of December and then he went back to work 1/2 days through the Christmas break.

Nick was out of school and loving it...Tabatha was not so lucky. She had fallen behind in school and spent many a day sitting side by side with her Dad catching up. She pulled it off at the begining of the New Year and passed all of her classes with mostly A's and B's (we were so proud of her).

Christmas was a magical time, though it seemed to creep up on us. We knew it was coming, but before we knew it, it was here. We were supposed to have the Sister Missionaries over for Christmas Dinner, but unfortunately just days before, Sean and Tabatha came down with a really bad stomach flu. We did arrange to take Dinner to the Sisters and enjoyed a traditional dinner of Ham, potato casserol, rolls, and Waldrof salad. The kids then got to open one gift, their christmas PJ's. After everyone was off to bed. Santa did come and even was so kind to put up our Christmas tree (now these pictures I know are still in the camera, I will have these up very soon. ).    Christmas morning we open presents and had our traditional "finish pancake" breakfast.

New Years Eve was upon us so quickly. We were excited and a bit sad because we knew our time with Sean was almost over. We stayed up until midnight at which time we went out on the front porch and let off tons of poppers and dranks some sparkling grape Juice. I never thought I would miss have TV (we turned off the Satelight last Jan) but I really missed seeing the Ball drop at Midnight.

January 2010--Hmm wasn't there a movie about this year?

With the New Year rung in it was time to look forward to when Sean was going to leave to go to Florida for school. (Forward as in direction, not excited one bit about it). And while we had a few snaffus getting his orders for school. We got them, plus the "Official Orders" for England.

January was spent getting passports done and running around making sure Sean had crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's to leave. All looked well for his drive to Pensacola. He rented a Uhaul truck to move his motorcycle and his stuff to Florida. And all was set for him to get some sleep before heading out at 2 a.m. to make his drive.

Of course just like the rest of life, not everything can go smoothly. While waiting for Tabatha's friend, Kimberly's Dad to come pick up Tabatha for Young Women, Nick and Tabatha go in an argument at the front door, when Nick accused her of "locking him out" of the house when they both went outside to get something out of the car. This lead to an argument in the front entry, and finished with Tabatha shutting the door. Which sounds all ok, until you realize that Nick's hand was on the door jam.

I was upstairs comforting Jake who just realized that Daddy was leaving... when I heard the scream. My first thoughts was that the argument had led to someone hitting someone else. Sean who had been in the Kitchen (I think) came running out to see what happened and yelled for me to come down. Nick's right hand middle finger was bleeding very heavily. After cleaning it off a bit among all the chaos, it was determined that stitches were probably going to be needed since the nail was coming off.

Tabatha went to Young Women, Sean stayed home to finish up some last minute things and kept an eye on Jacob, while Nick and I went to the ER.

Knowing that Nick was panicing and knowing he hated shots which we figured he would get if they did stitches, I gave him his meds and off to the ER we went. I watched him closely, mostly worried about shock. After a short wait in the ER we were sent back to get evaluated. They sent us for X-rays and back to wait for a bit more. Nick tried to stay distracted by watching TV. And did everything he could to avoid looking at his finger.

Well the first thing the Dr. tells Nick is that he isn't going to get stitches, because he broke his finger and they wanted to leave the nail to help support the bone. You have never seen a child happier to hear "you have a broken bone", because it meant no shots. After cleaning, wrapping and splinting it we were done. Picked up some meds at the pharmacy and because he had been so brave we made a special trip to Burger King for dinner (or maybe it was McDonalds).

We got home and said our goodbyes to Sean and got the kids off to bed.

Sean made it ok to Florida and has been doing very well at school. He even challenged Tabatha to see who could get better grades. So far she is doing pretty well keeping up with him.

So that brings you up to date on the craziness that is our lives. I will work on keeping this updated more often.

Off to get the kids up for school and hoping that this rain will stop.