The Wilson Family

I have finally posted some photos from our trip to Florida last month, if you care to take a look.  I have to figure out why the pictures come out so grainy when I put them on the web.  Because most of them are really great pictures.  Some of them were taken on my cell phone, but the majority were taken with high resolution digital cameras.  So we'll keep working to improve the quality.  I still have some videos and more photos to add.  But it's late and I'm tired and want to go to bed.  This has been a crazy week.  On Monday my kitchen was taken apart because I'm having my floors re-done.  It has been a long process...one even the guys doing the job probably underestimated.  They say they will have my kitchen back together Saturday.  I'm hoping they're right...because it's hard to run a household without a kitchen!  Today was the hardest day of all though.  My wood floor was refinished today, and the polyurethane requires 24 hours to dry before we can walk on it.  So that means we were pretty much confined to the living room and den.  It looks so nice though, compared to before.  Well worth the expense.  Next week they'll tile my bathrooms.  Hopefully those won't be as difficult as the kitchen turned out to be!

 

Chris left Tuesday morning for Fort Belvoir for 3 1/2 months.  We all really miss him already.  We will see him in October for Columbus Day Weekend.  We are going to Ohio and are planning to spend a couple of nights in the Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati.  That's a long time from now...but we'll be keeping ourselves busy until then, so the time will probably pass quickly!  Morgan's potty training has suffered a huge setback this week.  Between Chris leaving and the house being torn apart for remodeling, it has been a rough one.  Six accidents today alone.  I think that's a record high.

 

I do have to say that it's pretty amazing how capable I become when Chris goes away.  Today, since there was virtually no way to remain in my house, I decided to do something that had never occurred to me to do before.  Don't get me wrong...this is a job I knew needed to be done...and I have hoped it would get done...but never considered doing it myself until today.  I painted the wood railing around our front porch.  I had to spend a couple of hours preparing it first, and then priming it where the raw wood was exposed after I chipped away the loose paint.  So this was not a quick task!   I even had to trim the bushes back a little bit so they wouldn't be up against the wet paint.  I guess ever since the kids came along, I have left most of the hot, dirty jobs for Chris to handle.  But this wasn't so bad, and I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.  I really needed to feel that after a week of not being able to control the state of the inside of my house! 

 

Melanie is really ready to go back to nursery school and asks daily how many days until she can go.  She is so eager to be a school-kid.  Morgan isn't begging to go like Melanie is, but I think she is also looking forward to it.  I'm hoping that the structure and routine of the school year will snap Morgan back into her potty-trained state.  I'll be surprised if she has accidents at school.  She normally doesn't when we're away from the house.  It typically happens here at home.

 

Melanie should be starting soccer soon.  I'm eager to see how she likes it.  I'm a little anxious though, about how it will affect our schedule.  We'll manage, I'm sure.  But I can't help but wonder if they're too young to already be filling our week running to their extra-curricular activities.  Those days will arrive soon enough, when I become the ultimate taxi driver.  But for now, I do hope she enjoys it and has a positive experience, and wants to return to it next year.  Of course, if you ask her right now, she'll tell you she wants to drive a race car when she grows up.  No lie.   

 

I'm off.  Until next time...

 

Chris keeps reminding me that I haven't updated the website with pictures in awhile.  I'll try to get to it today.  I do have lots of pictures and some videos to share, but it's a time-consuming process when there are so many!!  Whaaa.  We had a good and busy week.  On Monday, we went to a nearby park with a few other moms and kids from the MOMS Club.  It was a really great park morning...it has been so mild lately.  So it was sunny but in the 70's and not humid.  Dunlop Park is really pretty, with woods and the river alongside the park.  There is a sign by the river that says "No Swimming Snakes", and it is always a point of discussion when we go there.  What does it really mean?  Are there no swimming snakes, or is there to be no swimming due to snakes?  For my part, I'm going with the latter, and I am pretty sure that's the intent of the sign, but it's fun to contemplate it.  We really had a nice time that morning, and I got to know a woman a little better who I just met last week.  It was really interesting meeting her.  Her 5 year old son, who seems like a perfectly normal, bright, fun-loving child, has been fed by a feeding tube, which he carries with him in a small backback, since he was 6 weeks old.  He doesn't tolerate much real food at all.  It sure puts things into perspective for me, with the troubles Morgan had as an infant and in her first 18-months, while we figured out what foods she could and couldn't tolerate due to food allergies.  But this little boy really impressed me because he played just as hard as all the other kids and that backpack doesn't seem to interfere with his life at all.  We were talking about how good we have it with Tricare (the military health insurance), and how a lot of people complain about it and have no idea how great it is.  Yes, sometimes the military health system is a pain because it can be difficult to access sometimes.  But it costs us next to nothing and pays for just about everything. 

 

 

Last night we went to Jazz on the Lawn at Beachhaven Winery.  I can't believe how crowded it was. I've never seen so many people there.  We always have a good time there.  We ran into Amanda Johnson and her family, which was great, because the girls had other kids to play with, so they didn't get bored.  Amanda's boys are close in age to Melanie and Morgan.  It was a beautiful night to be outdoors.  It was in the 70's and not humid at all, and the moon was full.  That's why there were so many people there. I'm glad we left a little early, because all those people trying to leave at the end was sure to be a mess. 

 

We have just over a week until Chris leaves for his school at Fort Belvoir for 3 1/2 months.  I know we'll see him a couple of times during the course of those months, but we will miss him a lot when we don't see him.  Morgan asks every morning when she gets up "Where's Daddy?" and "When is he coming home?".  And that's when he's just gone to work for the day!  So it's going to be difficult to explain to her when and why he is gone for so long.  We've been so lucky all these years, that Chris has not had to leave for any long periods of time.  Living here has really put things into perspective for me and makes me appreciate the time we have with him.  Most of the ladies I know have been without their husbands now for almost a year, while they are in Iraq or Afghanistan.  And for most of them, this isn't the first year they've spent without their husbands either.  Many of the guys were gone for a year, home for less than a year, then gone for 15 months.  My friend Teresa has 4 kids.  Her twins are Melanie's age (4 1/2), and their dad has been gone for 2 of those years.  So it's hard for me to complain about Chris going away for 3 1/2 months, and especially since he'll be in Virginia and not Iraq or Afghanistan. 

 

The last big thing going on here is we're about to get a new kitchen floor...FINALLY.  Well, that is, if the contractor we met with can get us in soon.  We were going to do this earlier in the year, but then our dog required surgery to repair his ACL, so there went the money we had planned to put into the floor.  But now that we are fairly sure we will be here for about 3-4 more years, I want to go ahead and do it.  I'm not going to wait until we get ready to move to make the house nicer for someone else to live in!  I'm really excited and can't wait to get it done now.  Hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks it will be complete.  It is going to be such a huge improvement from what's there now.  We currently have these dingy vinyl tiles that are scratched, stained, and just plain ugly. 

 

That's it for now. 

 

I know, I know...it's been awhile.  Well, our vacation was really great...but it did NOT go as planned.  Right before we left it looked as though we would never get on those flights to Florida (we were attempting to go on Buddy Passes,which meant flying Stand-by).  So at the last minute we decided to drive to Florida instead.  It all worked out better in the end.  Chris was spending the first week with us in Florida, then had a TDY in San Antonio the following week.  He was going to have to fly back here to Nashville on Thursday or Friday, to make sure he would be home in time for his flight to San Antonio on Sunday morning.  He was able to rearrange his government ticket so that he flew directly from Florida to Texas, which gave him 2-3 more days with us.  We were really glad about that.  Plus, by driving, it meant we were able to bring our dog, Casey with us.  And we had our vehicle with us the entire time.  So it all worked out well, although if you're not one for "rolling with the punches" or "going with the flow", I'm sure our constantly changing plans would have driven you crazy. 

 

The first week in Florida was a bit stormy.  We had two days where it rained hard all day long.  So we went to see the movie "WALL-E".  That was a cute movie and we all really enjoyed it.  It has some interesting messages, to say the least.  By Wednesday of that week things were starting to look up a little bit, and after that it was sunny and hot the rest of the time.  So we all came home with great tans.  Melanie and Morgan really enjoyed the pool, and we spent quite a bit of time in it.  Both of them improved their swimming by leaps and bounds.  This has been a big year for both of them, as far as their swimming skills are concerned.  Melanie is still working on her confidence as far as swimming across the pool goes...but she figured out how to swim to the bottom of the pool to retrieve and object, and she got very very good at that.  That was a big accomplishment for her. She can do that in 3-4 feet of water.  Much deeper than that and she gets nervous before she gets to the bottom.  Once in a while she wore a vest with removeable floats (and I removed half of the floats on her vest so she had to work a little bit to stay afloat), but most of the time she didn't wear any floats.  Morgan has a similar vest and she wore it most of the time (with all the floats in it).  She is very comfortable in the water also.  We had to really watch her because she would sometimes take the vest off by herself without telling anyone, and then try to swim.  She can swim a short distance...she's just not very efficient at it so she kicks but doesn't move very far very fast.  It's really incredible to watch her though, because she is really good for 2 1/2 years old.  Plus she's small, so it surprises everyone to see such a little thing actually swimming. 

 

We did go to the beach some.  The beach was right across the street from us.  Melanie got a small cut on her foot from a shell on the beach, and after that wouldn't go back.  Morgan really enjoyed the beach.  The water was very calm and relaxing.  One morning we went out early and there were a whole bunch of manatees cruising up the beach, in about 3 or 4 feet of water.  I got a video of it with my cell phone...so the quality is poor.  But it was neat, and you can watch it in our Home Video's section (once I get it loaded, that is).  One Saturday, we participated in the Sea Ray "Aquapalooza" party, which was supposedly the largest on the water party in the world.  All the Sea-Ray owner clubs across the country and around the world participated that day, which is why it was so large.  It was really fun, there were games, contests, water olympics, and lots of freebies. 

 

We also went out on my dad's boat a couple of times.  We saw lots of wildlife that way...birds, dolphins, manatees, fish, sting-rays, birds, more birds. 

 

Chris and I went on a date one night, and left the girls overnight with my parents.  This was the first time we have both been away from the girls overnight.  I think it went well...however Morgan was a little miffed about it after the fact.  She has been pretty clingy to me ever since.  As if she wasn't before. 

 

All in all, we had a wonderful time.  All the time in the pool kept me out of the outlet mall, which was good.  Now we're back home getting back into the routine here.  Our local pools closed Friday.  It's crazy that they don't stay open - at least on the weekends - until Labor Day, but they don't.  School starts here next week, but the girls don't start Nursery School until after Labor Day.  And it's unbelievably hot and humid here so we're going to have to find some creative ways to stay cool. 

 

I'm working on uploading the photos and videos we took on our trip.  I'll try to get some done today...so stay tuned...