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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Outdoor Wednesday - Field of Dreams

I'm back to participate in Outdoor Wednesday, hosted by Susan from A Southern Day Dreamer. Click on the link or the photo below to see more of what others are sharing today.

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I have been so absent due to travel and planning a move, etc. It's life. So anyway, I want to share a bit of Harrington Delaware today.

A sunset. You know how much I love to photograph the sky so here it is. It's majestic, calming, hopeful that a new day will come again.


Soybeans.

A water sprinkling system over a field of corn. I can't help to think of "if you build it, they will come" -- remember Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner?
Here's a sprinkler in action early in the morning.

Here's my little man taking in the wide open spaces. No cars to worry about here.

Although I do enjoy seeing so much green uninterrupted by building and cars and street lights, I miss the mountains. I think I prefer to have a little more definition in my life but it was a nice place to visit.

Enjoy and have a great Wednesday!! Stay Cool!!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Can I ride a Harley?


About a year or maybe more ago one of my good friends (my sister Lin) decided she would do something different.  She was going to learn how to ride a motorcycle.  At the time it was just a goal to break that "you look so nun-like" label I gently placed on her when we first met.  She wanted to do something wild, something completely out of the box, just for fun of course.  Little did she know there would be a Harley, a leather jacket and cute helmet in her future.  At the  insitence of her hubby she bought a bike and got her license and now rides on a regular basis.  She loves it!!  

I have been a "back seat mamma" for a long time.  In fact, when I met my husband in Hawaii he had a bike and to me, it was really exciting to ride along the coast.  All I had to do was hold on and enjoy the ride - it was and still is fantastic to go on these rides with my husband.  I love it.

However, since my sister got her license she's been telling me how much fun she has riding her bike and insist that I let myself go through the same mid-life crisis she went though after turning 40.  Well, I'm there and I think she's right.  So I've been sharing this idea with other friends and telling my hubby to teach me how..etc..etc.  He said once we get to our next duty station he will teach me how to ride.  I'm excited.  

Last week I had the pleasure of having breakfast with a very good friend from when I lived in Pennsylvania and shared with her my goal of learning to ride a bike, preferably a Harley.  She smiled and said "I could really see you in a leather jacket, riding a Harley."  We both laughed not sure if either of us was serious.   Well after our meal and chatting session was over she asked me to walk over to her car.  She opened the trunk, ripped open a box and out came a beautiful, black leather jacket with the Harley-Davidson logo printed on the inside label and on each zipper pull and button.  

I was speechless.  She said "I told you I could see you in a black leather jacket, now the pressure is on to learn how to ride that harley...I want pictures."  Well the pressure is on so I know I will do it within the year.  After all, I can't let my friends down, right?

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Visiting family and friends

Well this has been a fun filled travel week for us.  We are currently in Pennsylvania with father in law (FiL), have already visited Great Grandma, uncles, aunts and cousins in New Jersey, college orientation for Josh and soon we travel to Delaware and then back to Virginia until moving date.

Whew! That's exhausting.  This is when we appreciate having a big Chevy conversation that seats 7 and hold a week worth of stuff.  I generally keep 2 trash bags in the car for easy clean up, 2 coolers with traveling snacks and drinks, a bag of toys and books and of course some electronics to keep kids entertained.  Oh and lets not forget the good old GPS for detouring when traffic gets ugly - that is definitely a life saver.

The kids have visited the local Zoo with daddy and the park where their dad used to play when he was a kid.  We are planning to visit the King of Prussia Mall in a few minutes here-- it's time to let the baby run himself tired.  You ever been there...it's a big mall with more stores than I can handle but it's fun to walk through it.  It's a bit on the expensive side for me so there's a lot of just dreaming going on --Ha ha!!

Daddy has been reconnecting with old friends and with his brother, going night fishing and catching nothing but good stories and a few mosquito bites but it's the quality of time that matters right? No?  A big fish for dinner would have been fantastic, maybe tonight.

Time to go "window" shopping at KoP Mall Plaza and The Court.  Look forward to sharing more about wine from Neil, more about our trip, and more about life.  Have a great week everyone!!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Outdoor Wednesday- The Sand Pool




Outdoor Wednesday is hosted by Susan from A Southern Daydreamer. Visit Susan to see the outdoors from another point of view :-)




I have been lost in the land of the living running with the kids, attempting to sell a house, working and well...the best part, still having fun, playing with our Wii and spending quality time together, apart and with friends. Staying on the bright side of life...that's all that matters.

For outdoor Wednesday I will share my little ones in black and white. Despite feeling crummy this past weekend I took the kids to the Sand Pool on base. They had a blast!!



Getting there was the first challenge of the day. First we wanted to go to the community pool in our housing area but I could not find the passes, then we tried the pool on base but they were closed, just that weekend, thankfully I remembered the Sand Pool and I was very glad we made it there. The kids had a great time going down the water slides. Unfortunately I was the only adult so I could not be my kid's paparazzi while trying to keep them from drowning. Funny thing is, I forgot about my allergies and my head cold and was feeling great by the next day...hmmm, maybe the sun helped a little.

Enjoy.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Living with a pessimist when you're an optimist

For the last 19 years I have been married to a man I love with all my heart. We have four kids, have moved several times and have shared many interesting experiences in our journey.  It took me a long time to figure him out, actually, I'm still working on that. But my biggest issue with him is his pessimism.  It wasn't until I learned the meaning of pessimist and optimist that I could really begin to "get him" and his attitude towards just about anything in life.

When we were having our first baby, I remember him saying "watch, he'll probably come in the middle of the night," or "he'll probably cry all night."  I used to back it up with "it is entirely possible that he comes during the day and doesn't cry much at all, have you ever thought of that?"  I remember so many moments when he would take the negative approach to the situation as opposed to just seeing the positive side of thing and that just made me angry and we would end up in a big fight over what? Nothing that really mattered.  I just didn't know how to handle his attitude or his outlook on life.

Today he remains the same, although, he does try a little harder to not ruin a nice moment by throwing in his two cents of negativity.  Recently I heard him say "just plan to go broke when we don't sell the house for the asking price."  I, on the other hand, expect we will sell the house and everything will be fine.  No need to needlessly worry myself or the kids at this point.

He says that he would rather think something wont work then if he does he's pleasantly surprised, rather than think positively and be disappointed if things don't work out.  To me that's just backwards.  I mean, I think one can be a realist at the very least.  I don't see any benefit in thinking negatively all the time.

Negative thoughts stress me out, make me feel defeated before I even start, take away all my energy and everyone pays.  I don't like me with that attitude.  Living a positive life fills me with energy, I become more aware of the beauty that surrounds me and while the possibility of disappointment may be there, I can look back at the experiences in my journey and still be happy, even when things don't go my way.

We've grown together and matured, somewhat, still maintaining who we really are but learning to accept each others quirks.  I seek out quotes, poems, books, and stories that are inspirational and feed the mind in positive ways.  He reads them and never comments on them probably because he will most likely find something negative to say.  He does make me laugh sometimes, which is probably my way of putting up with his negative ways.  I often wonder how he comes up with those comebacks...amazing.

The moral to my story is that we all have quirks and not everyone likes everything about us. We need to always work hard to learn all that we can about the people we love so that we can better understand their behavior and hopefully they will reciprocate.  One thing is for sure, our kids are and will be well rounded.  They are mostly very positive--thanks to me-- but depending on the situation, they are able to be realist and see the potential negative in a situation without letting themselves drown in it--thanks to dad.

I'm sure we wont be living in a cardboard box after all is said and done. It's all good!

Monday, July 6, 2009

Blue Monday- Kids fun day





Blue Monday is hosted by Smiling Sally. Visit her site to see what other blues are being posted today. Sometimes I forget how much blue we have around us.


This weekend we took only our two youngest to see the fireworks at the Yorktown Victory Monument. It was definitely different not having our older kids running after the little ones. We don't make them do it, they just do. Well this time we had to be like the young parents we were with the first two, except those are not 15 and 18 and our babies are 7 and 2.5.

They were wild!! It was so much fun watching them run around all over the place. I just kept thinking how great they would sleep at night. My little bear, 2.5, wanted to run everywhere. I think he'll be joining the track team because he loves to run. It was hillarious. My little peanut, 7 kept wanted to do gymnastics on the lawn or as I said in my post from yesterday, she wanted to play make believe volley ball without a ball.

We were quite the clows but we had a great time and the kids really enjoyed themselves and yes, they slept until 9:30 am the next day.



I am having technical difficulties...aka...ready to throw my PC out the window and stick with a MAC...grrrr!
Have a great Monday everyone!


Sunday, July 5, 2009

Making Memories on the 4th


U.S. Airforce Heritage of America Band
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So I set out to make some wonderful memories for my little ones and I think I did okay. We often see the fireworks from a distance and it's been a while since we've been this close to the action. We made it to the Yorktown festivities last night without any problems. There were thousands of people there but the event was so well organized that parking and leaving the parking lots not an issue at all. That was my only concern.

We arrived early enought to find a spot on the lawn and let the kids run around for a while. We had a great time playing fake volley ball. Yes fake, we didn't have a ball so we made believe we did and played down to running for the ball and hitting the deck to keep it from bouncing. It was quite hillarious and at first people looked at us like we were out of our minds but the kids were having such a great time and laughing so much I could hardley stop. After a while I could see them turning their head from side to side as if they were truly following a ball. I think they were following the reaction to each player.

The baby seen here calm, had a major breakdown just before the fireworks started. Once he saw the first light.....
and heard the first boom, he was set --



They both sat there and oohhed and ahhhed the lights in the sky. I have to admit, this was the best show I have seen. I don't ever want to miss another live fireworks event again. To top it off, the event was enhanced by live music playing in the background and that really tied in well with the lights and the people. We were all one nation, under God!! It was a thing of beauty and we were so glad to have been there to experience this live. There's no better way than to sit under the stars and watch as these mini rockets go off and creat such awesome beauty.

I think it's safe to say that we created some memories last night!!





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I have to recognize that celebrating the American Independance in Yorktown, VA is truly an honor as so many events during the revolutionary war took place in Yorktown. Here is the link to learn more about this topic.
Yorktown Victory Monument
Victory Monument
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Saturday, July 4, 2009

Celebrate the 4th!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
~The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

Photo by LeLisa

I am planning to pursue a little happiness in the faces of my children by taking them to the 4th of July celebrations in Yorktown, VA tonight. It will be busy, lots of traffic, lots of people but my kids will remember this event for ever. The smell of the fireworks, the diversity of the people, food, and music, all represent what we celebrate today...Independence Day!

I hope you all have an opportunity to celebrate, be with family and friends, and create very special memorable moments in life!!

Be safe and have a great time!

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