My Ramblings for the Day

Today is Wednesday. Hump Day as it is so eloquently called. It occured to me today as I was reading a beautifully written blog, that sometimes I am an ungrateful soul, imagine that (lol). Well I am going to try to change that up a little bit. I am not going to be that person. I am not going to wander around being whiny or feeling sorry for myself, afterall I am very grateful for my life so I am going to do something a little different today. Today in honor of the month of November, a month where we celebrate our thankfulness I am going to drop the attitude. I am going to raise my head up high and I am going to shine, well at least in my mind.
I am so happy to be me today. I am happy that I get to live in a place where I am safe, and where my children are safe. I am thankful for my husband and my children. I am thankful to have the priviledge of raising such handsome, honest boys. I am thankful for their courage. I am thankful that they face each day with a smile. That they stretch out their arms towards the sun and say,"Come On World, Give it all You got!" That is such an example to me. What an amazing husband I do have. As we get older I truly feel that I married above me. Clint is always trying to take care of others. Even when he is feeling like he is drowning in quicksand, he takes one more step or breathes a little deeper so he can bring his family to a happier place. I know that I am not an easy person to live with sometimes, but not only does he take care of me but he thinks that I am amazing. What more could a woman want.

I am so thankful for my Heavenly Fther. His presence in my life is immeasurable. If I allow myself to feel of the joys that are allotted for me how happy I truly will be. What an amazing gift I have been given. I am so very thankful for my membership that I enjoy in The Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints. No matter where I am I know that my family will be well taken cafe of. It is difficult to be a military family and be away from our extended family all the time, but because I am a member of the church, I have the joys of a ward family, a family that cares where I am Sunday and everyday and misses me when i am away. I am grateful for the calling that I have in the church. being in the Primary helps me to practice patience and to feel of amazing spirits of GOds children. It amazes me to be given such an opportunity to bless their lives as well as them blessing mine.
I am grateful for a mother and a father who taught me right from wrong. I am grateful for their patient example in my life. My mother always knows when to offer advice and when to cry with me and tell me that I am loved. What an inspiring woman she truly is. How I hope to grow up to be just like her. My dad amazes me everyday. he is such a faithful honest man. He inspires me to put my face to the world and always be true to what I know is good and right, and keep moving forward. What an amazing father he is.

I am also so grateful for good friends. Good friends are the ones who always have your backs. Good friends are there in spirit even when they cannot be there in person. No matter what life brings or where life takes you, you can pick up a phone or type a few words and it is like you talked yesterday. Lives will always continue but you will always be an important part of each others lives. I am grateful for friends that can call me or stop by and they just brighten my face and my life. Yesterday one such friend came by. She brought a scrapbook practice over. I was still at a meeting. She went into the house and without being asked she started to fold my laundry. What a sweetheart she really truly is. I am so grateful to has such wonderful gracious people call me friend.



I am so grateful to live in a home that is warm and big and comfy for my family. I enjoy the love that is shared between these walls. It does not matter where my house is, home is where my family is and where true love does reside.
I am also grateful to have good vehicles. I am grateful that we can drive to and from work, church, school, wherever we might need to go in a warm car or truck. What a blessing that is in our home. I can't imagine living here in this place without it.
How truly blessed I am. This list of blessings is obviously not complete, but it is a nice start to keep me grounded and reminded. I can now get on with my day with my head held high and my face to the wind. I love being me.

Cheap Carpet or Good Vaccuum

Have you ever had one of those day when it is time to go to bed and you just feel like you got hit with a MAC truck? You just can't take anymore? Well so you know how I felt this last weekend. So here is how it went. First thing first.
It was time for Tim's parent teacher conference. I get in the van start it up and roll it out of the garage. Screeeech! The brakes seriously sound horrible. I decide as I am going to the meeting that I will not be driving the van until I have time to take it in and get the brakes fixed so for the weekend we are down to the truck. Hallaluhah!
Friday night after taking the boys to rent a video and getting a pizza i decide to do a craft. I really think crafting or painting is my therapy, but that is not the loveliness of this post so we won't go into that. I get this cute terra cotta pot snowman all made up. it is so cute. When I am done it is time to cleanup. I start with the counters and the fronts. I wipe everything down and begin sweeping. I get done cleaning the kitchen and decide to go ahead and vaccuum the rest. I put the vaccuum on bare floor setting and hit the tile. WooHoo that was easy and I was on a roll. I then decide to go ahead and do my stairs. Now I just start. Clint says something to me and I am destracted and where my vaccuum sits and where the wand is sitting out my carpet is literally missing. I now have a hole about three by four inches all the way to the wood. Oh my heck. Now before you say must be crap, I have to say my carpet is brand new put in in May and my vaccuum is only about 3 weeks old. Seriously looking at my floor is making me ill. How can this happen? Is it a good sucking vaccuum or a crappy carpet. My guess is a little of both.
So that is Friday. Saturday we wake up and head out as a family. We go to a Swimming party with our friends. Seriously fun except that this woman that I have never met in my life starts talking about a certain person being offended and all of the fixings that go along with it. Well guess what the story was about me. It was an untrue story, but non-the-less It really hurt my feelings but I kept that one right on in.
So Saturday night we go off to bed. Now Tim has had this cough for about a week and a half and so i decided Sunday morning that maybe there was something to this cough. I try unsuccessfully to get an appointment with the acute care clinic on post. That was a joke. I try to figure out the referral system for the urgent care center. That is like pulling teeth. Finally I decide that the reason we have insurance is to use it and since we are Tricare it is free for us to go to the ER. I take Tim to Samaritan Sunday morning. He is promptly checked out and I am told he has bronchitis, sinusitis and pertussis. The mother of the year award goes to me. I had no idea. In fact I kind of thought he was faking. We now have a stay out of school order til Wednesday and lots of antibiotics and meds.
I just felt drained. I just can't handle many more weekends like that. I think I need to get a new supply of ST John's Wart. Anyhow I am doing better this week but seriously that is enough. On the bright note... I still cannot get over the sucking power of my vaccuum. Wow that thing really sucked!!:)

Pictures of Henry the Dog

Our little Dog Henry

Many of you know that this summer we added a family member to our household. No we did not have another baby, that is literally impossible, but we did add a baby... DOG. In August while Clint was still on his block leave after returning from OIF once again we decided to go to the mall Pet Store. I have always said I ws not a pet person. Clint has always said he is not a pet person, but this little guy just kind of got your attention. Henry is a little morky. What the heck is that? You may ask. Well a morky is cross breed. Henry is a Yorkshire mix/ Maltese mix. The maltese has stronger bones then a yorkshire so they breed them together to make them stronger. Henry is black and has big hazel eyes. We had looked at him the day before we bought him but that is all it was is looking. We came back to again look because we were bored the next day and Clint put this little puppy up over his shoulder and starts walking to the register. When I asked him what he was doing his simple reply was, "I am taking this dog home." Well that was a surprise. I could not even say no, this little dog already had a hold on us.
We have now had Henry for three months. He is just under six months old and at his maximum size. He is black and as I say BEAUTIFUL! We just love him. He is quite the entertainer. He follows you around everywhere including in the bathroom. He also sits right by you. He dances and wrestles and is quite a riot to watch. He is my companion while Clint is at work and Tim's best buddy too. I am so glad we ended up being Dog people after all. I now believe their is a dog for everyone.

Clint

Veteran's Day

Another Veteran's Day has passed and I think about all the many blessings I have because of the Veterans in this great country. I think that we tend to forget that our everyday life aand freedom is because very brave men and women have come before us and fought for us and others to be safe, have fought for us to be able to live, have fought for us to be able to blog about just whatever our little mind wants to. I for one owe such a debt, one I will never be able to pay.
As we wandered around town yesterday, because Clint was home and the kids did not have school, I heard a variety of comments and snippets of different things. At the mall as I was checking out at Bath and body Works I hear,"It is just another day, after all I am at work." My thought not stated is ..."You have the freedom to work. You have the right to make a living for your family." Then as we are getting lunch from Taco bell I hear," You would think something special was happening today?" now I believe this was meant in a joking way... Still my response again not stated but thought is,"No something extraordinary has already happened so that nothing special would happen today." Later on we headed out for dinner. They had all sorts of discounts and free items for veterans. We decided to go to Texas Road House for dinner. We were met with a smile. There were stickers on the door welcoming active duty military and veterans and saluting them. That was nice. Clint got a free appitizer for his service. I really think it would have been nice if his meal had been free after all I think that these guys earned that one meal a year. But dinner was still wonderful even if we did pay full price.
I still can't help but think how lucky we all are to have been born in America. I am so grateful that I get to speak when I want to. I enjoy going to school and being able to go to which ever church I so desire. These freedoms were given to me at no cost to me but at great cost to these Veterans. Being a military wife means I get to see a glimpse of what is sacrificed so we all may be. I have friends who have lost their husbands. I have friends have lost their fathers. Currently I have friends that are without their husbands, or wives, yet we all continue to live and try to smile for the children and for those around us. How amazing are the men and women that make these sacrifices for us. How amazing are the kids who are left behind or the women who have babies by themselves. How amazing to me that my own husband would sacrifice so much for me. I am so grateful to have celebrated this past Veteran's Day with my husband, a veteran and a member of the US Army. I am so grateful that he has come home safely each time he has had to go. I am one of the lucky ones. Thankyou to all our Veterans. I hope this Veteran's Day was wonderful and that we , the free Americans remember why these men and women serve, and quit complaining about the stupid things. Thankyou to those who currently serve. To those whose wives and husbands are here and also to those whose wives or husbands are currently in harms way. You are true American Heroes.

Vacation Pics and pics of Dog Henry

SO I did not say much about this, but we got a new member of the Family in August. His name is Henry Rascal Hollingsworth. He is a Morky, which is a Maltese, Yorky mix. He is super cute and super sweet. We are glad to have him in our family even if we have to tell him carpet is not an appropriate part of a dog's diet!

Fall Fun

I have not blogged in it seems about forever, yet I guess I have a burr or something because I feel it is time for another. So first I am going to play catch up, then present and then future.
Clint got home from his last deployment in July. We were so happy to see hime. I cannot express how hard that year apart was. It seems the more separations and deployments we go through the harder it is for our family. Nonetheless i do feel that we did a good job. We made it through that year with the least amount of bruising. We all learned so much and grew to know what love really truly is and how it will endure. Anyways enough of that. Since Clint got back in July we were able to take a month of block leave. We went out of town to the Adirondacks, which are amazing in the summer. Our favorite camping place is Adirondack Camping Village in Lake George New York. So that is where we were. We enjoyed camping, shopping swimming, water cruises, and Six Flags. What memories we made.
Summer ended quickly. Septemebr began and the boys started school. Steven who turns twelve this December went on to Middle School. This year he settled on joining the band. He is playing the tuba, and quite well i might add. The big change for him this year is the amount of homework he has each day. On average he does about four hours. Sometimes it seems undaunting to him, but of course he does it and really quite well. The other big change that will be occuring but has not yet for him is this is his last year in Primary. His birthday is the 10th of December and then he will be off to Young men's. They sure grow up fast.
Timothy also had many changes with the start of this school year. he went on to the fifth grade. Now he is one of the big kids. This is his last year at the Intermediate School, but he seems to be handling the pressure fairly well.
Clint went back to work at his current company. He did however get promoted in December, so it is better for him and for our family, even though i know he gets super tired, as he says it is just because some people are just tiring to deal with all the time. Clint is in the Elder's Quorum Presidency in our ward again, and that is also a very daunting task. With so many of the Elder's deployed Clint and the other memebres of the presidency are in charge of 216 members of the Elder's quorum and their families. Quite a task considering there is only Clint and one other man to fulfill it.
I try to keep myself busy. I moved our family off post in May of this year. I was feeling cramped in our little apartment and was ready to spread my wings and have some space. We currently are living in Philadelphia, New york. I have had lots of time to decorate and make this house a home. I also am going back to school. I am registered and if the DOD could find the records that prove that I have the educational benefits that Clint gave me I would be starting school. Hopefully it will work itself out. I am currently serving as the first counsellor in our Primary Presidency at Church. It takes up a lot of time, but those kids are so worth it. I just started a scrapbooking group. Today will be our first, well kind of second time getting together to get some beautiful memories set for history. :) My house stays pretty clean and I am a pretty fulfilled person.
Our family continues to grow in leaps and bounds. This fall we will be in our home enjoying activities such as dipping carmel apples, and making sugar cookies. Thanksgiving is coming and we will be having many friends visiting our home. Excited for that time. I like feeling so grateful for the things that I have and the feelings that our in me. Not too long and it will be Christmas. So excited for that time. Which is my absolute favorite. Does my heart good thinking about it. I love my family. I love watching Steven grow into a man. I like watching Tim being so happy. I am so very proud to be an Army wife to Clint. Life is wonderful even though at some times we are are certainly tested. I am so grateful for the trial we have been through and the blessings I now recognize because of those trials. I am grateful for the growth of my testimony. I am grateful to know who I am and where I am going. I hope that next year only gets better. Anyways that is the end of my feelings for today. Stay tuned!