I ♥ my home!

And when I say I love my home, I don't mean my house (though I love that, too).  I mean I love my new city, my new place to be.  We've been in our new home for just over a year now and I am really really happy here.  A lot of my happiness comes from all the great people we've met since we moved here.

I don't make new friends easily.  I was terribly worried when we moved here because I was moving away from my dear friend "E" and was worried I wouldn't click with anyone.  E was the first friend-you-can-call-tears-at-any-hour friend I had had since high school.  And I do miss E a lot (always will -- she is a gem), but I've also made a lot of really great friends here.  I feel a lot like I've come home, even though I moved some place totally new to me.  This place feels like the place God intended for me, which is a really great place to be.

I'm relishing having a great group of women around me and don't for a minute take that for granted.  So, maybe I should say that "I ♥ my peeps", as that is more accurately what I've been thinking about this evening.

Hiking and crying and whining, oh my!

On Sunday, we headed out for an unplanned hiking expedition.  We went back to the same spot that we visited last August.  Ironically, when I got home and started digging through pictures I realized that Jeremy & I are wearing the exact same clothes we wore on our last trip to this location, so all our pictures look very similar!

The trip started out rather well.  There were two directions to hike from our van -- a long one leading to several sets of falls, including the biggest ones and a short one leading to a smaller set of falls, which included a nice little area to swim in.  We decided to start out on the long hike, so that we could end the trip with swimming.  This part of the hike went well...there were no major incidents, no crying and no whining to speak of, really.  Lucy was a rockstar of a little hiker -- she did so well and walked most of the way.  

 Someone was nice enough to snap a picture of all of us in front of "High Falls".

Then we headed down the path to the smaller falls with the swimming area and that is where things went terribly astray.  Lucy pretty much refused to get in the water because it was too cold (but she did stand on a rock with her feet in the water and pee everywhere so that all the spectators around could see -- I swear I've taught my children not to pee in the pool).

The boys had fund splashing around and would have gladly stayed all afternoon, if we would have let them.  However, shortly after we arrived dark rain clouds started gathering over head and we decided that we should head back to the van -- I had no desire to hike through the mud to get back home!  Ross had an absolute melt down over this.  He yelled, screamed and pulled us in the wrong direction the entire trip back to the van.  He has been belligerent about the incident ever since, insisting that his behavior was our fault because:  1) we made him get out of the water and 2) it didn't even end up raining and it was our fault for mis-predicting the weather.  Needless to say, I was quite grumpy by the time I got in the van.

This was my attempt at a group picture...looks like they were cooperating, doesn't it?

On the way home, we stopped and tried out a local German eatery in Hendersonville.  It was pretty good, fairly authentic from what I can tell, and was a fun place to stop.  We got a German beer sampler for Jeremy & I to share, which helped immensely with resetting our patience with Ross.  All in all, it was a good day, though it is too bad that Ross's rowdy antics had to spoil part of the afternoon.

Nooooooooooo!!!!

When Jeremy was deployed, I got quite attached to watching old NCIS re-runs on USA.  Wednesday nights were actually something I looked forward to, because it was NCIS marathon night and I could watch NCIS for something like 4 or 5 hours straight (maybe longer, but I usually turned the TV off to talk to Jeremy at 11:00).  When he got home, we started watching the series together from the beginning (using Netflix to get the DVDs).  When we moved here, we dropped Netflix (because of their crazy price increase) and started using the DVR (which I LOVE LOVE LOVE, by the way).

Last night we finally got caught up.  And I am so sad about it!  Now we have to wait until September just like everyone else to see what happens.  Plus, we have nothing else to watch if we want to crash on the couch after the kids go to bed.  And, seriously, did they have to kill of Ducky?!?!?!?

I'm really tempted to start over at the beginning....again.  Jeremy wants to watch NCIS:  LA.  But, uh, really, Chris O'Donnell just can't compete with Mark Harmon!

Swirlies!

On Sunday evening, Grandma & Grandpa M. treated the kids to a trip to the dairy bar in McClure.  The kids were all told that they needed to use the facilities and wash their hands before we left for our excursion.  I went in to check on them, because the task was taking so long, and Lucy got quite flippant and defiant with me.  I calmly told her that I could stay at the house with her if she didn't want to do what she was told.  At that point, Ross finished washing his hands, took off for the door and yelled over his shoulder, "I'll tell them we can leave without you and that you want a swirly."  A swirly?  I think he meant twist, which has become my cone flavor of choice lately.  Thanks for the offer, Ross, but I'll pass on that swirly.

And it was a very deja vu-ish (so not a word, but I think you know what I mean) feeling getting a treat at the dairy bar...reminded me of some very long gone summers.

16!!!

Yes, so it has been a long while since I have posted.  I have my reasons, which I will try to get into soon, but for now I wanted to share some pictures.


Hannah turns SIXTEEN this week.  Isn't that crazy?  The kids and I spent the weekend in Ohio and I gladly snapped some photos to commemorate the occasion.  You know what?  It was REALLY nice to take pictures of a willing subject for a change.

This one is my favorite!

I did manage to get one of all four kids.  They are at least all looking at the camera, which is about the best I can hope for at this point in life.

More from me later...I promise!

Anyone need a snarky 5 year old?

Because I have one that I am quite through with (at least momentarily).

Ross is just being an a** today.  I'm sorry if that offends you, but it is the absolute truth.

We had some friends over for a play date today and pretty much the entire time they were here, Ross was being loud, obnoxious, disobedient and rough.  He was fine both before & after they were here.  He did the same thing to me on Tuesday at the grocery store.  He was fine in the van on the way to the store, but the moment my hands hit the shopping cart handle, he turned into a devil child.  And you know what?  He was awful the entire time we were in the store, but turned into a model child once we were in the van again.  In fact, pretty much any place with an audience serves as an invitation for misbehavior.

This evening he just pushed every limit imaginable and to top it off, he smacked Jeremy across the face.  The source of that conflict was his bike, so that has been packed off to the basement for an indefinite period of time.   And at the very least, he won't be going to soccer on Saturday (and possibly for the rest of the season).  And if I have my way, he will have to pay us back every penny of the fees we payed for him to be on the team.  I hope Ross is ready for some weed pulling.

I need to go blow off some steam on my elliptical and pray that my temper recovers before breakfast.

Yard work!

I love our house, I really do, but lately it has started giving me a stomach ache.  Since the warmer weather has set in, our yard has become a jungle again.  Having grown up in the country with a massive yard, I know it really isn't that big.  But it feels that big right now.

I have slowly, but surely, been working on getting all the beds weeded and cleared of debris (and then putting down a weed stop product to help in the future).  I've still not gotten around to all the beds yet and today I was depressed to realize that the first ones I did need some major attention again.  The sad thing is that the weed stop seems to be helping.

Our house is surrounded by natural areas on three sides -- two are wooded and the third is a lot that was cleared (probably 4 or 5 years ago when our lot was cleared) and is now a grassy, weedy mess.  I feel like our house is surrounded by a patch of light resistant devil's snare (FYI -- a reference to Harry Potter for you non HP fans out there).  Am I ever going to get this place under control?

We have thick patches in the front lawn of creeping charlie (which comes from the mint family), spurge and several other highly invasive weeds.  I have put down some herbicide, but I've also been (vainly) trying to pull as much as possible.  To help with this task, I have taken to paying the kids to help with weeds (I have 3 different buckets, all worth a different amount when full).  Reid is really quite good -- he is both quick and capable of getting just the weeds.  Ross is very thorough, but slow.  Lucy is worth nothing more than a bucket 1/2 full of grass dumped in a flower bed or on the driveway or in the grass (luckily she has a short attention span and spends little time "helping").

It rained here all day today, which is nice because, even though it will make the weeds grow, it gave me a day off from the incessant weed pulling.

Maybe in another 3 or 4 years we will have the yard beaten into submission.  Until then, I am highly considering hired help of the professional kind (and if you know Jeremy & I, then you know we don't usually hire help).

The good news is, however, that the front bed I re-did last summer looks quite nice.  I also managed to clean up a rather large bed by the road.  I really should try to get some pictures...maybe later this week, once the monsoons cease.