The Army Man Ages

The Army Man celebrated his birthday last week, to little fanfare. He was busy with work and didn't leave until pretty late, so Laura and I met him at one of his favorite little places for a quick dinner and some ice cream. I guess this is what happens on birthdays as an adult-life goes on. I prefer everyone to stop what they're doing and celebrate my birthday, but the Army Man is much more mature than me and realizes that's not what usually happens. I think all in all his birthday was pretty good-I know he enjoyed all of his presents, and he loved his dinner. What he's not loving is getting older.

That's right, you can all laugh at him, I'll wait. I laughed plenty too, believe me. Those of you who don't know us personally might not realize that I'm actually older than the Army Man, by about 2.5 years. Yes, shocking I know. I don't think my poor mother will ever recover from that shock. But alas, there's nothing to be done about it now. So as I find myself approaching 30, my dear husband turned a whopping 27 years old and has suddenly decided that he's old.

Turns out everyone he knows in the Army marks age 27 as the year their bodies started breaking down. The Army Man claims he felt a pain in his knee on his birthday, so obviously this urban legend is 100% true. He's started groaning when he stands up. He gets tired easily. Naps are more common. He gets mad at kids for walking on his lawn. He turns the TV up louder than he used to. So maybe he is getting old! But the older he feels, the younger I feel, so Army Man: feel free to keep this up.

And now I have to embarrass him with a few pictures. It's hard to find ones of just the Army Man-most of them seem to have Laura in them.

Before the Bataan Death March in 2004

One of my favorite picture of Laura with her DaddySummer 2007On a jump in 2005

One of my favorite pictures of the Army Man

A silly picture from this month

I could keep going but I suppose I'd better stop there. I spent a lot of time going through my pictures this morning, trying to find the perfect ones to post, and it was actually a very nice trip down memory lane for me. The Army Man and I have known each other for over 11 years and are coming up on our 6th wedding anniversary. All of the pictures I looked at reminded me just how lucky I am to be married to such a funny, smart, sweet (and younger) guy!

Moxie The Goofball

At night before we go to bed, Moxie usually turns in for the night, exhausted from a full day of chasing birds, eating treats, and being harassed by Laura. It amuses me so much that a dog who is so full of energy during the day can be so exhausted by 8:30pm. This whole summer she has chosen the entryway as her place to rest and I've found her in a number of interesting positions. These pictures are from a few days ago. I was sitting at my desk and looked over and saw her laying down like this...And she stayed that way for quite a while, through many pictures and much laughing on my part. Eventually I called her name and she rolled over a bit, and laid like this for a while, which basically made my day...She looks like a fox posing as a rabbit. Dogs putting their front paws like that just kills me, and the ears completed the overall look for me. I laughed and laughed, and I think I offended her because she got up, moved over about a foot, and sat there looking at me like this...I'm not sure what message she was trying to send me, but I shaped up immediately and stopped laughing at her.

A Visit From Nana

I'm just now getting my act together to post some pictures from our wonderful visit with my mom. She comes every July, all the way from California to visit her favorite granddaughter (and only granddaughter, but don't tell Laura that!) We all had a wonderful time while she was here, and ate way too much food. Moxie especially enjoyed Nana's visit since she got lots of long walks out of the deal. In fact, she pouted for about 2 days after my mom left-and I'm not making that up. So not only did I have Laura coming down from the high of being spoiled by Nana, but I had a sad dog too. Not to mention the Army Man and I were sad that our babysitter, I mean visitor, had left. I really hate that first day after a visitor departs-the house seems so quiet and empty.

We didn't take too many pictures (I guess we were having too much fun!) but I do have some pictures from our trip up to Raleigh to meet up with her parents. And of course, we have lots of wonderful memories too!

Laura with her great-grandparents

Laura, Nana, Great Grandpap, Great Nana, and Mommy

4 generations of women, and Laura continuing her tradition of making a weird face in this photo

Laura and Moxie showing off their "hug" for Nana

I hope to be back soon with several posts covering our empty (bird) nest, Laura starting pre-K, the Army Man growing old, and some new crafts I've done.

Money And The 4 Year Old

Laura had her first foray into the world of retail today. She’s been diligently saving up money in her piggy bank, and she finally had enough that I decided to take it off to the bank. To lessen the blow of all of her cash being taken away to be saved for that mythical thing called “college”, I told her she could keep $2 to spend how she saw fit. It just so happened that we were heading to Target after the bank, and the dollar spot at the front of the store was just calling her name. Usually I just pass by that little section, but today it was just what we needed for a little girl with $2 to spend. Here is Laura with her choices.I had to document her choices, because I'm sure someday I'll wonder what it was that she picked when she was allowed to spend her money all by herself. I also have to point out that as a baby, those sort of weird, squishy toys freaked her out to no end. I was pretty shocked that she chose one, but she’s been playing with it all afternoon, so I guess she’s over her fears. Talk about being grown up! Her other choice was alphabet stickers, which I was very pleased she selected. Maybe our attempts at teaching her to read are paying off! I think in reality, she was attracted by the pretty colors and the stickiness factor. Oh well.

Laura got to pay for her order by herself (the sweet cashier welcomed her to Target and treated her like a real customer), and luckily Mommy was there to provide the necessary 14 cents to cover the tax. She was so proud of herself, and was absolutely thrilled with the fact that she got change. AND A RECEIPT! The entire car ride home consisted of her singing a song about her change (a penny) and her receipt. She can’t wait for Daddy to come home so she can show him the receipt. I guess in her mind this makes her grown up? Perhaps the receipt is what really makes her feel like she paid for it herself? I don’t know what the attraction is, but I hope I did some good today in teaching her about money. She’s always been a bit of a saver (don’t know where she got that from) and I really want to encourage that. I’ve been toying with the thought of starting her on an allowance, even though she seems pretty young. If I do, I’m hoping it will get me two things: a daughter who is responsible with money, and a cleaner house.

Laura with her change and RECEIPT!

I HATE Hackers

I'm not sure if all of you will be able to see it, but on some browsers, my cute brown background is gone, and now this garbage is showing up:

Click Here To View The Crap

This is so frustrating for me. Not only is there something showing up that I didn't put on my blog, but when I tried to report it to Blogger, their help site takes me around and around in circles, never letting me report it. Argh! On top of all this, my Hotmail email account that I've had since 2003 was hacked a few weeks ago, sending spam to all my dear family and friends. I had to delete all my contacts so they weren't spammed again, which wasn't that big of a deal since I have gmail now. The big deal was that I had to delete all of my old emails-I couldn't stomach the thought of these weirdos in my email, reading things written between me and my family and friends.

And worst of all-all of the sweet emails that the Army Man had sent me over the years, gone. Emails about silly, mundane things, yes, but still, they were our modern form of spousal correspondence. Discussions about what to have for dinner, what movie to watch, or how annoying our jobs were, are all gone. I kept a few from before Laura's birth when he was in Georgia and we were frantically trying to arrange for him to get to California in time for her birth (he made it, but more on that another time). Everything else, (68 pages worth) I deleted. I was, and still am, furious that someone accessed my personal information. It's like someone broke into my house and read all my love letters and old cards. To have it happen twice in such a short time is doubly upsetting.

I suppose I'm lucky that it wasn't my bank account, but honestly, I would have almost preferred that. Inconvenient, yes, but send me some new bank cards, refund the charges, and I'm good to go. Instead, I lost almost 4 years of emails and now have an ugly blog background that doesn't even make any sense. I think I'll go read my new Entertainment Weekly about Harry Potter and try to calm down.

Update: Here's an article with a few details about what happened. Apparently ImageShack, which hosts the images for my blog (whatever that means) was hacked by this Anti-sec movement to try to make their point with their manifesto. I think it's interesting how quickly the internet caught wind of this-people are talking about it like mad on all sorts of websites.

No Time To Blog!

This has been a busy summer-so busy that I haven't had time to post much. But I have plenty of excuses! Such as, you ask? Well, let me fill you in!

Laura had a month's worth of this, although we missed several times

I did some of this

Moxie did this while I was painting

Then the Army Man did this for the whole deck and fence

We've been keeping our eyes on this new addition to our porch

Then Moxie had her first one of these at home, and wasn't happy about it
We've done this a bunch of times, to my stomach's great joy

Moxie has hung out by the A/C a lot

I've manged to make a new dress
And something else newThen yesterday we had some visitors!

They took a picture of us in our 4th of July outfits (the Army Man's was the best)

We met up with friends for fireworks
The Army Man and I enjoyed ourselves

Other things that occured lately but were not photographed were a visit from my cousin Lisa and her two children (so much fun!), a broken upstairs air conditioner (not fun at all), professional painters painting the stairs and master bedroom, and two seperate visits from my Aunt and her two girls (also great fun). Now things are calming down a bit-all we have coming up is a week long visit from my Mom (hooray!), pre-K starting on July 15th (more on that later), and Jury Duty for me on July 16th. No big deal, right?