I can not pretend it won't happen anymore....Houston we have orders

Our life is making another twist. Brad has been offered a job to be active duty in the reserves. This means he will work with his unit during the week to make sure the  soldiers needs are taken care of the rest of the month that they aren't at drill. Every three years we will have the option to stay put, or move into the unknown that awaits us for another three years. It has been described as the best kept secret in the army because it has all the perks of the military, but with a civilian schedule. In our 11.5 years of marriage, Brad has never worked a set schedule that allowed him to be home for dinner every night. I am so looking forward to that! Since this job with the AGR (active guard reserve) is so secretly wanted it is hard to get a position because usually members of the unit that has the position will fill the spot. Brad has had his packet in every year for the past four years, and we didn't really hold out much hope for it. Then he got a call with one spot to offer him in Kansas. So, a month and a half later, here we are. Counting down the days until we leave this city we had started making long term plans in. We are so excited for the opportunity, and yet so incredibly sad.

As I was wallowing in my self-pity about moving from a place with so much culture and history, and the most phenomenal friends anyone could ask for, who are more like family, I read this quote on an amazing blog that some of my friends from our Arlington days started (check it out: doeadeery.blogspot.com), and it made me look at our upcoming departure in a different light. Still incredibly sad, but also with a feeling of being so blessed.

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

And, I do feel so incredibly lucky. 

We truly love this place. I have had the chance to have the most stellar friends that lived just seconds up the street. They were my family when Brad was deployed, and they continue to be even though a couple don't just live seconds away anymore. The kind of friends that volunteer their husband for babysitting and rearrange their evening to take you to a cheer up dinner when you find out you are going to have knee surgery just days after you sign up for a half marathon.  Friends who you know you can say anything to and they won't judge you, that love your kids so much that they throw skewers of shrimp on the BBQ because they know it is the pre-pre teens favorite, or that you see every single day and they never get annoying. Those friends are so hard to come by. 

Kansas has its work cut out for it. 

Dragon lessons

This is one of the many reasons Ashton is absolutely the best big brother ever.

 

All City Band debut

A few nights ago Ashton rocked his sax in his first ACB concert. The concert was short and sweet since they haven't learned too many songs. The clarinets were a little off in some of the songs, but I'm sure everyone will be great in a couple months.

 

I was a video recording master at the performance (Brad had to work) with the video camera as well as my phone going at once so I could instantly text Brad each song that was played. It was like he was watching it live. So, these are videos from my phone which means they are not zoomed in. If you look close, and make the video full screen, you can see Ashton's big head third up from the back row on the right side.

 

 

 

 

Silencing the Pre-Pre teen

As we get closer to the gates of purgatory the start of Ashtons eleventh year of life, I've been noticing a definite shift in our house. According to my mother in law, I have about 3 months to live. She describles ten as the last tolerable year for boys unti I assume adulthood, she has never actually given me and end date for that.  I have been noticing a change in Ashton's personality lately. We have seen a SLIGHT shrink in irrational teenage girl meltdown, and a huge increase in sarcasm. I love some good sarcasm, but 7 hours of it a day is a little much, so I came up with house rule # 23:

 

For every day you are awesomely sarcastic

you will spend 10 minutes in the evening meditating, isnt that fantastic!

 

 

He found out he loves meditating, which to him means imagining himself as a wizard taco fighting whatever wizard tacos fight, and I enjoyed my quiet time.

Professional pouter

Lately, Syphr has been the king of pouting. He pouts for many reasons, some are justified pouting circumstances like when he can't have his way, and other times he pouts for silly reasons.  Here are a few pouting episodes over the last week that I find irresistable. He is just so good at it!  

 

Pouting becuase we forgot to put on his rain boots so he couldn't jump in the puddles:

 

Pouting because they don't allow Lightening McQueen matchbox cars on the pinewood derby track:

 

Pouting because I came to pick him up from his best friend Reagan's house: 

 

Pouting because he found a random water bottle and asked me if it was his. I told him no and tried to give him his cup, but he only heard no:

I'd like to say pouting doesn't work, but look at how cute he is! How could you not give in occasionally to this professional pouting master.

The Gift

In the card that Talan made at school for us was a really sweet poem. What he kept a well guarded secret until a few days after Christmas was that he had been working hard to memorize the poem at school. The sweetness of it plus his 5 year old speech impediment makes for a melting heart.

Christmas 2012

I am so glad the world kept spinning a few days ago because, and even though I say this every year, this has been my favorite Christmas. Ashton rarely gets excited about anything we do (year 11 is upon us. According to my mother in law I have about 5 months left before all hell breaks loose and my pre-pre teen is amplified into a fire breathing pre-teen. I've been trying to enjoy year 10 as much as I can so I can remember the rare moments of joy when they start to disappear.), Talan is so overly into Santa that he nearly came unglued with excitement when Santa sent him a special video message, or that Syphr said that every present was his favorite thing and just about beamed with excitement until he crashed. Mostly this Christmas is great because Brad is here to celebrate with us. I know someday there will be another Christmas that he has to be away, so we try to always enjoy him as much as we can. 

This year Santa's family gift was several Wii and Playstation 3 games. Santa can never go wrong when video games and boys are paired up. 

 I think Talan makes the absolute best excited faces.

Even though Santa brought video games, if you are a 10 year old two extras might be the icing on the cake.

Talan might have nearly died of excitement when he pulled a sprite out of his stocking.

 "What! I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED THIS! I KNEW I WOULD GET THIS! WAHOOO!" Once again, best excited face ever!

Two of Syphr's most favorite things are backpacks and Mario. That makes this his most favorite present:

These are apparently not stacking blocks, but Syphr has been making towers with them all morning. All three boys are pretty sure they have the best aunt ever, and also, that toys from Thailand are the best.

After much excitement, we found Syphr curled up in an empty box with his two Mario guys pretending to sleep. 

The two big boys rigged a Mario kart track (can you guess we like Mario in this house?) with the train tracks. Pretty awesome actually.

Merry Christmas! 

Love, B.R.A.T.S.

In case that wasn't enough of us, Talan insisted on singing for 8 minutes. His teacher told him he had a beautiful singing voice. It has gone to his head. Enjoy.

I think it is awesome that Raphael fights with a sai, or "two forks" as Sy calls them

Every day Syphr is obsessed with one of the three following things: 

Lightening McQueen

Mario

Ninja Turtles

I just never know before I go to bed if I should find the ninja turtle dvd, locate his red car that he thinks is Lightening McQueen, or have his mario costume ready for the day. It is always a mystery and heaven help me if I am not prepared.

Today, we watched 5 episodes of TMNT on Hulu to feed the addiction, dug the Michelangelo mask out of the abyss that is Talan and Syphr's room, devised a holster for Donatello's bo staff so he would stop sticking the pool noodle in his underwear, fought a million bad guys that looked a lot like Ashton and Talan minding their own business, and Syphr made me call him Raph for most of the day. Today we were the ultimate Ninja Turtles.

Overflowing with awesomeness

I'm not sure if it is possible for Ashton to contain any more academic awesomeness. 

A few weeks ago Ashton was re-routed to the gifted math class. He was insanely bored, and could multiply decimals in his sleep so his teacher kicked him out to give him a new challenge. In a matter of three days he went from doing fifth grade math to sixth grade honors math. All I can say is I am so glad Brad is home to help with math homework, and I do not have enough patience to be a teacher.

Other than Ashton's huge excitement over being introduced to graph paper, and extreme fractions and decimals, he is also thrilled about his new seat in All City Band. All City Band is basically like honors band. It is comprised of kids fifth through eighth grade who audition, and if accepted, meet once a week for a 90 minute practice, and several concerts throughout the year. It is kind of a big deal, and he is so excited he was sitting at the door 2 hours before his first practice started. 

I hope the academic/musical awesomeness always continues!

Talan's Christmas list

Mrs. Cox is encouraging all the kids to try to spell words themselves by sounding them out. Talan loves to do this more at school then he does at home, but I figured he wouldn't complain if he was having to sound out words for his Christmas list. I was wrong. He complained, took several days, and even more breaks, and might have added more to his list if he didn't have to write it.

In the end, I think he pretty much did a great job.

Talans Christmas List

remote control car

hex bug

remote control helicopter 

poke-bol and guy

toy story claw

vet medicine bag

stuffed spiderman

After writing 'hex bug' Talan stared at his paper for a bit and got a discouraged look on his face and said, 

"Santa is just not even going to read this because my letters are so good he will think it is from an adult."

I assured him this was not the case and I would even send Santa an email to let him know that the author of this Christmas list is 5, not 25.