wandering in Clarksylvania

Happy First Days of School to my Boys

Quinn started "Kindergarten" last week. He's still in Primary at the Montessori school, so it's not a huge transition for him, but still, he's a Kindergartener.

And HP started the 2nd grade today. He gets more and more handsome every day.

Eight thumbs up for the Rat and a bloody, fat lip

Andy's shoulder surgery has come and gone and we think it went well. He had a pain med pump for the first 48 hours which kept things comfortable, but he's now feeling some soreness at the points where they made incisions. To give him some quiet time to rest today, I decided to take the kids on an outing to see "Ratatouille." What a hysterical movie! I thought the storyline was extremely clever and the movie had a good pace, good enough to keep Andie in her seat for most of the movie. The movie gets 8 thumbs up from the Clark family (2 thumbs up X 4 movie viewers).

After the movie, the kids talked me into Coldstone Creamery for a post movie snack (as if the popcorn wasn't enough). The outing was going so well so far. I asked the kids if they wanted to head down to Borders and look at books for a while and our uneventful outing became eventful. Quinlan was skipping/running/hopping/spinning/jumping his way to Borders, with his arms inside his shirt and he tripped. I have no idea why he needed his arms inside of his tee shirt, but that's where they were. As a result, when he fell he didn't have any hands and arms available to break his fall and take a good guess what did break his fall? His face. A huge gash in his lip and tons of blood thwarted our trip to the bookstore and we just headed home to get some ice on his scraped up face. It's always something.

In travel news, which has been light this year (compared to last), we booked a hotel for an overnight in San Francisco. Andy's brother is visiting in a few weeks and we're all going up to SF for a ball game and some sightseeing. I can't believe SF is so close and we haven't been up there yet. If anyone has any favorite child-friendly sights that are must-see's in SF, I'd appreciate the advice. I also booked us a beautiful hotel for Christmas. The Clark family 5 will be on the road and in transition (again) for Christmas and we have decided to spend Christmas in Salt Lake City, a place that we've been dying to go to. I don't know why, but I thrive on making travel plans, so making these arrangements has put me in a pretty good mood.

I had a pretty good opportunity for at-home employment pop up a few weeks ago, but that fell through today. So I'm back at the drawing board for a job that will work for the next 5 months. I'm getting very frustrated about my move back into the workforce and if any positive thoughts can be spared, that's where I need them. I keep trying to tell myself that this will all work at at the right time, but I can't help but feeling hopeless about working.

Other than that, this should be a quiet weekend. I think this is the first weekend in ages that I haven't worked (my part time job) Sat. or Sun., which is nice. All I have to do tomorrow is make Huey's birthday cake, which will actually be Birthday Pie. Huey specifically requested my deep dish chocolate mousse pie, which I think I can fairly call the Official Dessert of Clarksylvania. I think I'll make two of them.

Lending support and I actually uploaded some pics from Disney "Wheel-ed'

First, the serious stuff.

I blogged yesterday about the 1-10 soldier who was killed in Africa last week and how his mother is here in Monterey.

When I woke up this morning, I felt like I needed to go see the soldier's mom and offer my condolences. And after speaking with my friend who is working to help the soldier's wife in Germany, I got the go ahead from her to attempt to contact his mother.

I picked up a beautiful orchid and wrote a card. We met up around noon. I had my friend from Gymbo link us up, since I've never met this woman before. This whole situation continues to have irony because the office where they work (my gymbo friend and the lady who lost her son) was RIGHT next to the surgery center where Andy had his surgery today. Which, by the way, went well. Needless to say, I picked up my woozy husband, put him in the car with the kids, and then walked over to meet Joan. She asked me if I was at her son's wedding in Germany, which I wasn't, I didn't know him over there. But she swore I looked familiar. Hmmm. I gave her a copy of an email my girlfriend in Germany sent me with contact numbers and email addresses and a note that let her know that they are there for her and will provide anything she needs when she arrives in Germany. She, of course, will be linking up with her daughter-in-law and her grandchild, but my friend made it very clear that she will do what she can for her while she is in Germany for the memorial.

She told me that her heart will always be with the Army and our soldiers and that she has no ill feelings towards the US Army. She is an amazing woman.

My heart is aching. I think I held it together well enough to speak with her and she was so humble and appreciative of me stopping by to lend support. She was so sweet and I could tell that her heart had been ripped out last week when she found out. She actually leaves for Germany tomorrow and I just can not imagine her going through all of that travel (CA to Germany) knowing what's in store when she gets there.

What a sweet, sweet woman to suffer such a loss. She told me she wants me to keep in touch and that she'd like to meet up with me when she returns from Germany and the funeral and memorial service.

I got in the car with poor Andy (in a sling, coming out of anesthesia, headache) and I bawled like a baby. He had wanted to go over and talk to her too, but he didn't think that she would handle seeing a bandaged up soldier very well, and I think he was right. I needed to go lend a shoulder today. Like I wrote yesterday, we may have left that unit 6 months ago and we may have even left the SF community to move onto something else, but part of me and Andy will always remain with the soldiers that were there and those that will serve in the future. I was nervous that showing up unannounced as a stranger would make things even harder for Joan, but instead, I think she was touched that someone with even a minor connection to her son reached out. She told me that she needs that right now.

Sorry for rambling, but this event has really touched me. I'm NOT good at dealing with death and yet I found comfort today in reaching out to someone suffering the loss of a son. I will never forget that woman's face.

Okay, deep breath.

Just a quick note to say that even though I said I'd probably never get around to uploading my Disney World trip report or pics, I can now say that I did get the pics uploaded. From our trip in 2003!!! HA! I was sitting on the couch with Andy last night and blurted out, "Huh? I'm suddenly in the mood for Disney." He just laughed at me. Seven years ago I could have cared less about WDW vacations and now that we have two under our belt, two vacations that we thoroughly enjoyed, we both look forward to going back. By the way, the subject of this post says "pics from Disney Wheel-ed" because that is how Andie says Disney World. It's so cute! She loves to talk about Disney Wheeled and remind me that she got lost there and that a lady found her and gave her back to us. Yup, that actually happened and it was frightening. Disney handled that crisis amazingly.

So after thinking about Disney last night I remembered that we had our 2003 photos stored on our old hard drive (which I have nightmares is going to crash) and I frantically uploaded them all last night to Smugmug. This trip was pre-Andie, and Huey and Quinn were so tiny. I loved looking back through these pics and I'm glad that they are backed up on smugmug now. I actually have tons of old photos on that old hard drive and am working to get them loaded as well.

Of course looking back at the photos makes me want to go back even more now.

Whoa! The It's a Small World phenomenon rears it's head in a sad story

I was working at Gymbo last night and my co-worker mentions that she had a weird day. She had an array of dramatic stories to share with me from a missing friend to another co-worker of hers (from another job) who lost her son, a US Army soldier.

I asked for some details about the son, figuring that this would be yet another casualty of the war in Iraq, and my co-worker tells me that the soldier died in Africa, in a sandstorm. Huh? Hmmmm? I immediately asked her where he was normally stationed because I suddenly had a bad hunch about where this soldier came from. She said, "Oh, he's based out of Germany." GULP! And then I asked, "And?? His last name?? Do you know??" She called her friend from that other job to verify the name and gave me the name, "Mitchell. Sergeant Mitchell." I didn't recognize his name but I picked up the phone and called my husband and asked if he happened to know a Mitchell from his time in Stuttgart. He didn't, but I still had a bad feeling about the unit that this fallen soldier belonged to.

It has been bugging me all day and all day I couldn't help but wonder if Andy's old unit had lost a soldier. I know we've moved away from that unit, but we WERE a part of it and being a part of a unit, especially a smaller, specialized unit means that a part of that unit is always a part of you. I couldn't help wonder if it was a guy that Andy served on a team with or worked alongside of. Sure enough, tonight I found this information proving that my hunch was correct:
American Soldier Killed in Mali

I am still not sure who SFC Mitchell was, but I'm still sad that our old unit suffered a loss. And I'm sad that his mother suffered a loss. The way in which I found out about this soldier's death proves that it is a very, very small world.

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Okay, weird. Germany is 9 hours ahead of us. As I was writing this entry, my friend in Germany sent me a message filling me in on what is going on there. My friend is the family readiness rep for SFC Mitchell's unit and has been working hard (as I know she would) to find support for his wife and child, a 4 month old baby. A few other guys were injured pretty badly and one in particular isn't doing too well. What a sad, sad time for our old unit. :(

More news about the injured:
4 Special Ops soldiers wounded

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Tomorrow Andy will be having surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. If you could keep him in your thoughts tomorrow, we'd appreciate it.

Some photos from the Pirate Party

I think I got a bunch of good ones, but I didn't get as many as I would have liked.

The set-up: pirate ships and food table. We had tons and tons of balloons, but it was so windy that they were whipping all over the place.

My makeshift treasure chest (filled with "gold" = Hershey's nuggets, Rolos, Hershey's kisses, plastic gold coins, gold necklaces) and one cute little pirate guest.

The hit of the party!

Decorating treasure chests

This picture makes me happy - look at those smiling faces!

The kids playing "sink the pirate ship" with their pirate ships (big boxes) and canonballs (beachballs).

The good cake

The first cake that died the night before the party. I made the most of it and called it the Shipwreck Cake. People at the party thought I did it on purpose!!! Ha ha!!! I just had to put it out because the cake in the shipwreck (from scratch AMAZING chocolate cake) was a better cake than the second one I made (yellow cake out of a box). Figures that the box cake held up better.

Andy and I with our 5 year old!

Blowing out the candles

After everyone left, we had the bounce house for another hour and a half. Andy, the kids and I had it all to ourselves and had a great time jumping around.

It was so chilly the day of the party and Quinlan had his fleece on throughout the party. But look at this adorable pirate tee I had bought him for the party. The fleece finally came off during our family jump fest. :)

Daddy drew this pirate map for the "pin the treasure on the X-marks the spot" game. I loved this!

That's all folks!