SPRING

Spring in Kansas?? Well it hasn't quite arrived yet. We have had a few days when we were teased by the seemingly arrival of the allusive spring type weather, but no, the cold wind blows in from the north and it chills us to the bone. We actually had a day when it was 70 degrees but then we have days like yesterday when it was supposed to get to 45 degrees and the wind came and it was like 20 degrees. The kids are trying to play soccer but I have to say they looked a little funny running up and down the field with puffy winter coats, wool hats and mittens. The parents were all standing around with hoods pulled up trying to keep warm. Needless to say, practice was only 30 minutes.
There are the usual signs of spring, like trees starting to bud, tulips pushing up from the ground, the green returning to the grass and birds chirping in the trees. There are the not quite so obvious signs such as the pelicans are back and there is more road kill in the form of nocturnal creatures who were too slow to cross the roads, possibly from their winter slumber and the return of thunder and lightning. Tis the season. All of the signs of spring are here, but the weather is just not cooperating. I long to be warm and not have to sit at my desk with a sweatshirt on and a blanket wrapped around my legs to keep the chill off. The days of flip flops and shorts and the warm morning sun as I sit and sip a cup of coffee. I suppose spring will come eventually, followed by the hot days of summer and then I will be saying it is too hot but for now I just want to be warm. Beside we have little plants that are just waiting to be planted in our garden and kids that want to ride their bikes for longer than 10 minutes. Enough of winter already!!

UPDATES

I realized I have not given any updates of late. So much is going on and we are constantly on the move.
Weather - It is still cold in Kansas. Although the temperatures are cold, we have been blessed with many sunny days and little rain here and there and some snow sprinkled in for interest. The wind that blows across the plains feels like it is straight out of the Arctic. It brings the wind chill factor down to the minus degrees. The weatherman last night on the news informed us that we might want to think about going to Alaska as it was warmer than it is here. Who knew??

Kids - Busier than ever of course. Playing outside is at a minimum with short bursts of 10 minutes or so. They are growing like crazy. Kaylin is almost potty trained and talking up a storm. She seems to like to sing and is nuts about Dora. Kegan is a sweety pie most of the time. I just love his smile with his little dimples. Kyran is busy planning everything and loves doing art projects. It is time for daddy to come home so he can instruct in the more "manly" things.

Jeremy- It is getting close to when Jeremy will be home. It is looking like around the 6th of April now. Of course nothing is in concrete but at least we have a tentative date. We are all excited.

Move - Some may know by now that Jeremy has orders to move to Fort Sill Oklahoma. Yes that is where the wind blows ...... I can't remember the rest of the words. That will probably be at the end of summer or early fall. Am I going? Well what else do I have to do?? I am hoping to get back to the west at some point as I think we all are hoping but for now I may have to find contentment in Tornado Alley.

Josh and Kendrie - They are getting ready to move to Memphis around the 1st of March. He has been commuting from Mississippi and it is a little rough. It will be closer to us when we all move. He has been flying and also sitting on reserve which is not too fun but eventually he will be doing more flying than sitting.

Lisa - Has taken on child care for three other kids, all pre-school age. It is a challenge but I think she is doing a good job with them and they never seem to want to go home. She also had her wisdom teeth pulled and came through that quite nicely.

So between church activities, keeping track of kids and working we have passed the time and Jeremy's deployment seems to have gone fairly quickly. We passed the one year mark on February 9th.
That is about the long and the short of the last month or so.

The nights the lights went out

By now, I am sure most of you have heard about the ice storm that hit the mid-west, and yes we were in the midst of it all. I am used to storms. You know the usual, high winds and lots of sideways rain with the electricity also going out at times. This storm was a little different. The temperature was down around 20 degrees or so and then it rained. There was no wind just cold temps and rain. I awoke on Tuesday morning to a winter wonderland of clear ice. It covered virtually every tree limb out to each small twig, every blade of grass, bush, electrical wires, even my car looked like a giant ice cube. As I stepped outside to take in the view I heard the sound of crashing limbs all around. It was the proverbial bowl of Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, pop. The area looked like a battle zone with tree limbs broken and laying everywhere. Limbs that had not yet broken were either touching the ground or draped over wires. Standing beneath any kind of tree would not have been adviseable with the liklihood of a branch tumbling down. The power was out of course but little did we know we would be without power for the next four days.
The good news about all of this is that we were able to practice our indoor camping skills. It was a test to see how prepared we were in the event of any emergency. I think we fared better than some in that we had a propane camp stove, two oil lamps, candles and flashlights. Jeremy and Lisa's house surprisingly stayed fairly comfortable heat wise. We donned extra socks and sweatshirts and were ok. We took perishable items such as the milk and placed it outside the back door as it was colder outside than in the refrigerator on a normal day. The other piece of good news was that our hot water tanks are gas so we had water and a good hot shower on any day is a good thing even if getting out makes one take great haste to get dressed. We went to a neighboring town and found a Walmart open so we hung out there for a couple of hours. Some church folks invited us over in the evening to share pizza, movies (their power was still on), and conversation with other people also without power. So all in all, we survived pretty well. Lisa's power came on Thursday night and mine came on sometime on Friday afternoon.
There are scattered people still without power but the crews from this area and from neighboring states have been working hard at restoring lines and getting our lives back to normal. And if there were not enough, it snowed Friday night and now we truly have a winter wonderland with about four inches of white fluff to top off the ice. So that was our week, how was yours??

Mutart's Muse: Flying High

Mutart's Muse: Flying High

Flying High

For those of you who might be interested... Josh is finally flying for real. He was hired by Mesaba Airlines after completing 1,000 hours of flying time at Pan Am flight school in Phoenix. Mesaba is a commuter for Northwest based in Memphis Tennessee where he will be moving before long.
This is the kid who never wanted to study in high school and just barely managed to graduate by the skin of his teeth. This is the kid, who since about age 2, packed around some kind of airplane, talked about planes and worked for local float plane companies just so he could be around them. He has had to study very hard for exams, instructed Chinese and Korean students (good for communication skills) and has spent many hours in a simulator, but it has all paid off in the end. As of this week, he is officially a first officer for this airplane, a Saab 340. And no, I don't know much about airlplanes so I couldn't even venture to tell anyone about this plane except that it is a 35 passenger. Our family is very proud of what he has accomplished which just goes to show that diligence and hard work do pay off. Congratulations Joshua!!

Growing up Part Two

As a follow up to part one of Growing Up, I would add that there are some definite disadvantages to the girl being the youngest in the family especially followed by two boys. They other day I rounded the side of the garage to find Kegan with his pants to his knees going potty in the grass. Standing beside him was Kaylin with her pullup down to her knees proudly announcing "I go potty". What do you say? I certainly do not want to encourage them but I have to say, it was hard not to laugh. You gotta love them.

Growing up

This goes into the category of "kids do the darndest things" and "I wish I had had a camera". I often pause to wonder what kids think at times and how their little minds work. This will have to be one of those mental images because there are no pictures to go with this tale. My daughter-in-law takes child number two shopping at the commissary at the base the other day. He announces he needs to go potty. Being the grown up boy that he is at the ripe age of three, he decides to venture into the world of the men's bathroom. After a period of time the child announces that he has gone "poop". Mom sends son number one in to help. Now we all know that in the women's restrooms there are only the stalls with a normal looking toilet. However, in the men's room there are generally urinals and toilets. Please keep in mind that daddy is in Iraq and has not had the opportunity to explain the uses of these devices to his sons. A man comes out and sees mom and this child and proceeds to tell her that the boy has somehow managed to do his number two business in the urinal. Even now as I write this, the mere visual image almost sends me into hysterical laughter. We cannot quite figure out how he managed to get up on the urinal, much less sit there long enough to do his business. . I am quite sure that at least a couple of people had their chuckle for the day with this one and so I thought I would share a little piece of our day in the life of a three year old with you so that it may bring a smile to your face as well. Who but a child in their simplistic thinking would come up with a new way to use a funny looking toilet.? I don't know about you, but it sure made me laugh.