wandering in Clarksylvania

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!

Oh! What a festive week.

This past week has been insane and part of me is glad it's over and another part is sad to see it all pass.

June/July is birthday season here and this past week we celebrated Quinn's 5th birthday. The 5th birthday gets special treatment in our house, so in addition to celebrating Quinn's birthday ON his birthday (July 4th), we had the big 5th year birthday party on Saturday with a crowd of friends.

Quinn's actual birthday, also known as America's Birthday, was mostly relaxing and fun. This year was special because we were able to spend the day with old friends, college friends, from Pittsburgh. Our friends Josh and Leslie and their daughter passed through Monterey and spent the 4th of July afternoon with us. We hadn't seen them in years and to be honest, it was comforting to have some Pittsburgh accents in the house, even if just for a short visit. We also had an old Pitt and ROTC friend, Jarrod, and his wife and boys over. They relocated to the Presidio about a month ago and surprised us! Jarrod and Andy were roomates in college and have kept in touch on and off, but now we are practically neighbors! Having Josh and Jarrod and their families with us on the 4th of July was special - to be surrounded by old friends on such a special day. I actually teared up when we brought out Quinn's birthday cake and heard a chorus of friends singing to him. We've spent so many birthdays alone (just the 5 of us, or sometimes just the 4 of us - no daddy) that having such wonderful people with us for that moment did wonders for all of us. I didn't do a great job of taking photos that day, but Josh did and said he'd email me the photos when his CA vacation is over and he gets back to the 'Burgh.

We actually began the day by attending the Monterey parade which was my very first 4th of July parade. It's hard to believe that in 33 years of life, I had never been to a hometown 4th of July parade. The parade was nice enough, but the war protestors IN the parade sort of soured me to the whole experience. I'm all for free speech, but it disturbed me that the protesting was actually part of the parade. It wasn't unexpected (after all, it's Monterey), but it did bug me to see it anyway. Well, enough on that. I'm no longer in the mood to rant about such things. Here are some photos from the parade:

Watching soldiers march by.

Cool! Bagpipes.

Batman (or maybe some local rich guy) was in our parade!

3 red, white and blue kids

The birthday boy and his brother

And his sister

Quinn's cake (thank you Pioneer Woman Cooks)



After the parade and our afternoon/evening cookout with friends, we took the kids to the Presidio to watch the Monterey fireworks. They weren't the greatest fireworks, but it was cool to watch them out over the Bay and it wouldn't be the 4th of July without fireworks. Right? Quinlan still thinks that they are for him and Huey is still frustrated that he doesn't get fireworks every year on his birthday. While our Pittsburgh friends didn't go to the fireworks with us, we were able to link up with Kristina and James and the boys to watch the fireworks. Kristina will be heading back to Germany with the boys soon, which means I have yet another sad farewell coming up with an Army friend. :( I met Kristina here, in the commisary, one day. We were at the deli counter and kept staring at each other as if we knew each other already. Sure enough, she had been in Germany at the same time as we were and her husband was in the same unit as Andy - but we didn't know each other there! I ended up following her back to her house after shopping and we had coffee (German coffee, of course) and got to know each other as best as we could before I had to pick the boys up from school. She is homeschooling her oldest son and scheduling time to get togheter has been challenging, but the times we have spent together have been fun and she has become a good friend. I'm insanely jealous that my friends are moving back to Stuttgart soon. Yup, I still miss Germany and now I'm going to be missing yet another great friend. Sigh. I believe they will still be in Stuttgart by the time we get to Austria in '09, so we will hopefully link up in the future and until then, do our best to keep in touch over the miles.

Thursday and Friday were busy as we finished up the boys' first two-week session of swimming lessons and ran around getting everything we needed for the big Piarte Birthday party in order. Swimming lessons went very well and Quinlan was given the go ahead to move up a level. Huey did really well, but will do one more session in the same level that he started in. I sensed a bit of sibling rivalry after the swimming certificates were handed out. Huey was upset that Quinn moved up and he didn't. Thank goodness they started out two levels apart, because I don't think Huey would have handled Quinlan moving into his level very well. I need to whip out my Siblings Without Rivalry book for some tips on how to deal with that. Lately it's been all about rivalry (between the boys) and I need to get a handle on that. The boys start a new session of lessons tomorrow and I'm anxious to see how Huey progresses this time around. He has told me at least once daily that he's not going to let Quinlan catch up to him in swim lesson groups. See what I mean about rivalry?

Okay, the Pirate Party.

After running around like a chicken with my head cut off Thursday and Friday AND working Friday night, I somehow managed to get the party together. Sort of. At 11:30 PM Friday night, the pirate ship cake totally collapsed. I also realized that I completely forgot to pick the key to the community backyard annex (the party location) up from the housing office. AACCCKKKK! I ended up baking a new cake and was able to get it together in the morning. Andy was also able to track someone down early Saturday morning and we got the key to the annex. Phew! I have no idea what we would have done if we didn't get that key. Between 7:45 AM and 11:30 AM I decorated the new cake, made the fruit and veggie platters, fed the kids, dressed the kids, and finally loaded the cars. Yeah, we had THAT much crap for the party. I WAY overplanned, but I figure it was better to overplan than underplan. We had just shy of 20 kids + parents at the party and I think we did a great job keeping them busy the entire time. It was a LONG party and I'm not sure if I'd do that again. I made the party 3.5 hours, because many of the families were driving to us from Salinas and I wanted to make it worth their while. Aren't I considerate? We had a Pirate themed bounce house for the kids which I have to say, was a great asset to have. It was totally worth the rental fee and the kids really loved it. The trend this year has been to have parties at a place called Jumpin' Around, which is a huge warehouse filled with bounce houses and other deluxe style bounce thingies (with slides, obstacle courses, etc.). I entertained the idea of having the party at that place, but
a) we've been there SO many times that I wanted something different
b) I feel like the birthday kid and his friends don't interact as well at places like that
c) darn it, I wanted a classic "backyard birthday party"

We opted for pizza over cooking out, which was so smart. I have to say, pizza is the easiest party food in the world. One phone call and you have a food to serve that most everyone loves. I had some other munchies out and even forgot to put the tray of grapes and the spinach-artichoke dip out. How does that happen? Oh I know, I was busy with the kids. :) This was a very hands on party for me as I had a bunch of activities and crafts and games for the kids to do. We gave them pirate tatoos, decorated treasure boxes, played "sink the pirate ship," and "pin the treasure on the X-marks the spot." I had these cheesy pirate costumes from Oriental Trading Company that turned out to be complete CRAP, so if you are having a pirate party, don't order the pirate costume kit from OTC. Some of the kids wore the hat for a bit, but the things were such a pain in the ass that no one really wanted to deal with them. Oh well. I totally forgot to the treasure map activity too. Did I mention that I overplanned? So now I have 24 treasure map projects (also from OTC) to use in the future. The Pirate themed party was a blast to plan and execute, so perhaps we will make use of the extra treasure maps yet. I would love to do this kind of party again!

The kids had a blast and most importantly, Quinlan had a great time. He has been counting down the days till his 5th birthday party and I think it was a memorable one. He got a bunch of Transformers, books, some games, Moon Sand (oh boy!), k'Nex, legos and a Playmobile pirate ship and accessories for his birthday. Quite a haul for a 5 year old! I was completely whipped after we cleaned the party up. Andy was as well and fell asleep as soon as we got home. I bathed all 3 kids and then we all cuddled on the couch until bedtime. I had to work today and forgot that we were working some extra hours after closing to put up all of the new Fall signage and "back to school" specials. Ugghhh! I love my job at Gymbo, but I was completely beat today. I was scheduled till 7 (2 hours after closing) and didn't even get home till 8:45! Hey, at least the store looks pretty for Back to School now. It's hard to believe it's almost time to buy backpacks and sweaters. Besides swimming lessons, my intent is to take it easy this week. Unfortunately I have a ton of hours at Gymbo this week so my evenings will be busy, but I hope to keep the days nice and simple and catch up on some much needed summer R&R (rest and reading).

Till next time. Photos from this past crazy week are uploading now. I'll share some tomorrow.

PS: How could I forget? This week's episode of Army Wives was so good! The bet one yet. How on Earth did I get sucked into this show?