This is My Forties

Noah and Tristan came walking into the kitchen while Josh and I were cooking dinner last night. Sheryl Crow's "Strong Enough" was playing and we were dancing and singing. I had just finished singing my line "lie to me. I promise I'll believe" so I guess I asked for it. I grabbed Noah for a little dancing, trying to get his hands out of his hoodie pocket which was covered with a white, hairy substance. He had previously waltzed into the kitchen with the same affliction and I asked if it was dog hair or horse hair (from the big stuffed horse "Nougat" we got from Gma N. 5 years ago). He claimed it was Bosley's hair. His hands were sweaty and he was quite keen on keeping them shoved in his pocket. I discovered that his little mitts were wrapped around his 2 new transformers and a pair of scissors. The scissors were also covered in white hair. He looked shocked. He'd been found out! Noah... did you cut the horses hair? No, Mommy. Noah...

It snowed again last night!! We excitedly jumped out of bed to check out the 2 inch blanket of snow (those in PA are scoffing, but we were thrilled!). Then it rained all day long and will continue to do so for the next week, unfortunately. Maybe we'll be surprised by a drop in temperatures so we'll have a white Christmas. Cross your fingers for us! Josh doesn't have to go back and work a full day again until the 4th so we're enjoying a whole lot of family time! Today we made snowflakes and then stuck them to a banner for Santa Claus. I made a Spongebob and Patrick one! I love it :) Then the boys made Santa some thank you cards because, as I pointed out, no one ever thanks Santa... they just take his presents and ask for more next year. Not very nice at all ;) We also traced Tris and Noah and had them color themselves in. They lost interest once they got down to their necks, pretty much. They had a good time though. Brennan low crawled all over the floor, gle...

This week was a little hectic, but still good. Noah's Christmas concert was on Friday and , as luck would have it, I overslept and he missed the bus. So, we quickly got ready and I headed over to Josh's work to pick him up... we were on schedule to arrive in time to get Noah there and see him sing. Right outside the gate I got t-boned before my exit. They have a lot of roundabouts out here and I was driving on the outside lane, she was driving on the inside. No one usually exits at the NATO HQ, which happens to be the last exit from this roundabout. I guess she assumed I was going to exit before then because she tried exiting through our van. Luckily no one was injured except for our vehicles. This is a very common accident out here at this particular exit. I was busy paying attention to the oncoming drivers who are also not used to seeing someone exit and therefore jump the gun and end up hitting people. Guess I should have looked behind me too? Oh well. We were r...

We had a 4 day weekend thanks to Spain's love of paid holidays. We did a lot of Christmas decoration shopping, finally got both our trees and the trimmings. We also went out to the Plaza Mayor and are planning to go again during the day (and take pictures). We spent the rest of the weekend just relaxing, putting up decorations, having fun, spending time as a family, watching old Christmas movies like "The Bishop's Wife" and "It's a Wonderful Life". We lit a few fires, made a few cups of tea, cooked a few hot meals, and did a little cleaning :) Exciting, I know. Then once the kids were down Josh and I kicked some King Koopa butt on the new Super Mario Bros for the wii. It's greeeeeat. I was surprised at the lack of Christmas decorations here. Apparently, the big "to-do" around here is Three Kings Day in January. They don't have any real Christmas trees out here, no stocking holders, hardly any stockings, garland is outrageously ...

On November 5th, Josh and I were chatting through Yahoo Messenger the night before he left to come back to Spain from his 33 day TDY to Norway. I had just gotten offline with him so he could finish cleaning and get his laundry finished. I got on Facebook one last time and saw a status message from one of my friends "Don't worry everyone, I'm fine!". I didn't even know anything was going on for me to worry about so jumped on google news and looked at the headlines... "Shooting at Fort Hood Army Base". As I read more and more I started to recall a few things. I went back a few days on my sister-in-law's facebook page and confirmed my recollection. Josh's little brother Logan was at Fort Hood. Not only was he there, but he would have been in the building because he was filling out paperwork prior to deployment. Oh CRAP! I immediately called my sister-in-law (Torey) to see if she'd heard from Logan yet... if he was OK. I was sure I wa...