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Walk in the Woods Wednesday
The warmth of the landscape is everywhere right now. Countryside woods, county lanes, and front yards are blanketed with orange, yellow, dark green and brown. The ground looks like it is hand stitched with irregular sized threads of maple, oak, elm and 17 other variety of trees leaves. Patterns form and then are whirled by south, east and north winds. Either the tree is on fire, or the artist is showing off the paint pallet!Zooming down the highwayThe stands of trees by the highway make me happy that I am the passenger in the car as my eyes zoom through the depths of the foliage. I love this time of…
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Screen Time and Summer Time – Finding Balance
I am not an educator by degree but I am a mom by nature and I love to watch my boys flourish! But as a mom I grow concerned watching how much my 9 year old (in particular) /LOVES/ electronics. He could easily sit on my iPad, his DS, our computer for hours at a time playing games. I want him outside playing, splashing, running, laughing, kicking, riding, smiling, living. Making memories! I also have certain thoughts on summer-brain freeze as well as learning responsibility around the house. To keep our brains working we use Evan-Moor books titled ‘Daily Summer Activities‘. We used these workbooks last year for the first time and I highly…
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Spring Brings Winged Marvels
Cardinals are forever brilliant.Winging this post… Sunday morning visitors! Red Headed Woodpecker A suet stop for the woodpeckers Male red-belliedFemale red-belliedDoves wait i n the wings.A chirping black capped chickadeeA lone sentinel Blue Jay – Waiting to call in the flockJoin UsJoin Us byDeborahonMonday, April 30, 2012Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestMilitary Life:Deborah,military family,Nature,Sunday
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Tragedy in Chardon – Talking about Emergency Preparedness with Children
Sunday night we were at the kitchen counter and my boys said something to the effect “I wish we could blow up the school.” I stopped. It was typical school-age conversation. If there’s no school they can stay home and play all day right? This was their logic. I was immediately taken to Columbine, Jonesboro, even Virginia Tech. What came out of my mouth was a stern but caring “We don’t joke about that.” Kind of like you don’t joke about firearms and terrorist activities standing in line at the airport, you don’t joke about guns, bombs or other activities of that nature in relation to school. It’s not funny.…
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Drink More … Feel Better
It was a rough start to our Christmas Break. The night before the final day of school and my first-grader was thinking of a school field trip in the morning and a class-party in the afternoon. What a fun day it was going to be. He had a rough cough for the past week but I just knew it would go away. Eventually. As we were settling into our bedtime routine that Thursday night *C* lost it. Vomit, vomit, vomit. Gross, gross gross. He spiked a fever and I knew he was down for the count. That cough stayed with him for another week. Cough medicine didn’t touch it and I was…
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A Minute Out of the Norm: Helping the Birds
I love birds. We have a couple of feeders around our house and a much used bird bath in the front garden. My favorite feeder is viewable from my kitchen window as well as the deck door. I’ll find myself sometimes just staring out the window watching the birds. Other times my boys will give a loud shout-out. “Mom, a Cardinal.” “Mom, a Blue Jay.” ” Mom, oooo come look at this one.” It is just fun to have a simple thing to enjoy with my boys. (After all I can only feign so much ‘interest’ in Pokemon, jokes involving bodily functions and games like Mario Cart). Today in my monthly-newsletter from my local metro-park…
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The Rubber Band Effect
This isn’t going to be one of those feel good , I know what I’m doing, all is well, posts. After all I haven’t had a stretch of more than three hours of sleep in oh … many many moons. Baby Boy *L*, 6 months old, as cuddly as they come. I am trying desperately to establish an earlier bed time routine. We have been nursing from 8:30pm till 11pm – Yes, for that long – in the comfort of my bed, my legs stretched out with a good book in my hands or my iPad at my side. By 11pm I’m exhausted. If I try to put him in…
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A Walk in the Shoes of a Wounded Warrior
Have you ever been confined to a wheel chair? Recently, I had to have surgery on a foot and the doctor prescribed no weight on the foot for a month. Easy enough, let me have those crutches and I will move around I thought! Then came the devastating news! I just didn’t have a lump removed from my foot it was cancer. I visited a couple of doctors for care and one took the cake for lack of patient comfort and bedside manner! Ok, this is an almost exact quote if not the exact words. I have to say I was in a bit of shock but I did have…
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Training the Afghan National Police – DoD Roundtable
With the US Attorney General Eric Holder in Afghanistan this morning conducting high level talks about their legal systems it was very appropriate that we met with Col. Chadwick W. Clark, deputy commander for Combined Training Advisory Group Police (CTAG-P) during a Department of Defense Roundtable to continue our discussion of the Afghan National Police (ANP) training programs. The critical nature of the ANP training efforts and how it fits into the overall war effort to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people was a great topic. The Afghan and NATO men and women with boots on the ground in Afghanistan will be the ones deciding if this…
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Down and Dreary … What is your message?
It is a rainy, cold, dark day here in northeast Ohio. I was just scanning my friends’ feed on Facebook and couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit about how irritated most people were this morning. People are just feeling a little down… lacking motivation… ready to throw in the towel… at 10am! Isn’t it a little humorous what the weather does to our mood?! (I know it sure affects mine.) The other thought I had was, most of these friends doing all this grumbling are usually pretty positive. Do you surround yourself with positive people?! I think it is very important to (a) be positive and (b) surround yourself…
