Holy Hair Batman!!

Carter really, really hates to get his haircut. We are talking really hates it. With Cash we have always taken him to the barber shop on post and spent $7, but with Carter we have tried everything, including one of those kids haircut places that charges $20 for a haircut. That all being said, this weekend I was talking to a friend about his and she said that her middle son was the same exact way and her husband purchased a pair of clippers and started cutting his hair and all was good. She said that Ryan would sit just fine for his dad and get a nice cut. Well, I thought to myself, we have clippers and I could do that. I mean come on, how hard could it be?? I came to found, that it can be very, very hard..... Randy had his final masters level class on Tuesday evening and so it was just the kiddos and I at home. The weather was really nice and we were hanging out in the backyard, when I got the brilliant idea that this would be a great time for a haircut. I came in the house and got the clippers and a couple of Popsicles, figuring that I could distract Carter withe the Popsicle and maybe he would not notice what I was doing to his hair. So, I handed him the Popsicle, sat him in a patio chair and turned on the clippers. I went with the biggest guard there was, but Carter's hair is so thick and curly that it didn't even seem to be doing much cutting. On top of that, the Popsicle was really not doing its trick, as Carter was turning and trying to stand up in the chair. At this point, instead of doing the smart thing and just calling it a wash, I proceeded to put the shortest guard on, and this is where the total disaster really began! I got the top of the head pretty short, but he would not sit still for me to get the sides, so he had the bald old man look going. I ran inside for another Popsicle, hoping that this would do the trick and had to chase him around the playhouse when I went back outside, to get him to sit in the chair again. The poor kid was not happy, while he was clutching his hair covered Popsicle and at this point he now just had long tufts of hair covering the sides and back of his head. So.....I decided to come in the house and get the scissors to try to finish off the job. Oh, and by the way, Cash is back there yelling that he wants Mama to cut his hair next @@! I get the scissors, chase Carter around the playhouse again and proceed to try to fix this horrible thing I have don, without chopping off my babies ear. I get a couple of tufts cut off when I realize that this just isn't going to work. I finally just look Carter in the eye, admit that I have completely effed this up and tell him to hang on, it is all coming off and I remove the guard from the clippers. Two minutes later Cash and I are both staring at a completely bald-headed Carter and Cash is asking me what happened to Carter's hair. I felt terrible. The poor kid has some big ears and this really accentuated that. He himself ran into the house and looked in my full length mirror and turned and said, "Hey, where is Carter's hair?" Needless to say, this was my first and last attempt at a home haircut! The only good news is that Carter should not need another haircut for a long, long time!

How Did I Get So Lucky????

As many people know, I was a little bit "older" when I met Randy and we got married. While people are waiting longer to marry these days, by age 32, I was wondering if I would ever find "the one." Once you hit a certain age, it seems like it is harder and harder to meet people. I had great friends at work, but most of them were either married, or in relationships and didn't really want to go out and do the singles scene. I gave my best friend Krista a lot of grief for doing the Internet singles thing, and I swore I would not do it.......that being said, I finally decided I would give it a try, since I wasn't meeting anyone any other way! Boy, did I meet some doozies!!! I usually assigned them names, as it was easier to keep track of them this way. There was T-Rex, who had these really short arms; Corvette man, who was the largest man I had ever seen stuff himself into a tiny car; Stinky, well lets just say if you fart on the first date, you aren't getting a second; Crazy Dave...fairly self explanatory; then there was Howdy Doody! My first date with Doody, he took me hiking and to lunch. I am not much of an outdoorsy girl, and I did worry a bit that he was going to take me to the mountains and chop me up, but it went okay and I agreed to a second date. On our second date we went to the movies. I thought he was a little odd, because he made sure that our arms didn't even touch on the shared armrest. Our third (and supposed to be final) date he took me to a drum recital at UTEP. By this point I had decided this was a nice guy, but a little too nerdy for me and I needed to move on, so I wrote him an e-mail saying that, but without calling him a nerd!! Well, he was composing an e-mail to me at the same time that said he knew he had come off a little nerdy, but he had been married before and things had ended horribly and he didn't want to move too fast.....so, I decided to give him another chance and nine years later here we are, Me and Doody against the world!!! I could not have asked for a better husband or father for my children. He loves me unconditionally, even when I tease him mercilessly and accidentally shave one of the children bald. I often tease him that the third time was a charm for him, but I am indeed the lucky one, and I would not trade my Doody for anyone else!!! I love you, EUGENE!!!! lol

Post Wide Yard Sale

Yesterday was the spring post wide yard sale here on lovely Fort Leavenworth. You are not allowed to have yard sales here on Leavenworth, if you live in quarters, except for on designated days twice a year. We had not been here all that long when the fall sale happened, so we did not participate, but since we are fixing to move again we decided to go ahead and get rid of some stuff. Boy was this an eye-opening adventure! First of all, the sale itself was from 6-3 on Saturday, but most people were out in their garages and driveways getting things priced and together on Friday evening. Starting about 4pm Friday afternoon, the early birds showed up in full force! We are talking 80 year old couples with Iowa plates, folks! We (being the Day family, as I have posted before) were of course no where near ready, so no one stopped at our house, but I swear to God the guy across the street from us had half of his stuff sold by 6pm Friday night! He and his family are PCSing overseas, so they did have a lot of stuff to sell, so I was very happy for him. Fast forward to 5:30am on Saturday morning. Randy got up to get all out big stuff out into the driveway and told me to sleep, but I felt too guilty (and also because I know Randy very well and he just wants to get rid of stuff, so he would sell things at a ridiculously low price if I were not out there to supervise) and went on out to help him. When I stepped out into the garage, there were already people buying stuff, so yay for us! As I said, we didn't have a lot of stuff, so I had a lot of time to just people watch.....and oh what a sight it was! We had been told that people come from four and five states away to attend the sale. I guess since this is the most transient post in the Army, and about 80% of its occupants are officers that will be moving soon, people figure they can get some good stuff. I saw several U Haul trailers and a few trucks. I am guessing these people either owned thrift shops, or were people I had seen are Hoarders:Buried Alive, because they were really serious about their yard saleing! I saw several people on those motorized scooters with baskets piled high, and I even saw one of those suckers that was equipped with its own little trailer. Let me tell you, I saw a lot of stuff I had never seen. The other thing that got me, was the fact that some of these people absolutely REFUSED to pay the price you had on items. I understand trying to bargain, if what you are buying is, oh say, $50. I get the whole, "I will give you $30 for it," thing, but I had a wooden stool in the sale that I had priced at $2. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this stool, I just have two others that are a little taller and I did not need this one anymore. A lady comes by, looks at the stool, turns it upside down and looks at it, asks if she can take it across the street where the ground is level and try it out and then brings it back and proceeds to say, "Will you take $1 for it?" Seriously..it was TWO DOLLARS!! I went ahead and gave it to her for the dollar, just because I had very much enjoyed how seriously she had taken her whole stool shopping thing. All in all, it was a good day. We made about $300 and the entertainment was priceless!!!!

You may not want to follow us around...

Randy and I have noticed a trend amongst the Day family. It seems like whenever we move someplace, or at times visit someplace, there is some sort of bizarre thing, totally out of the norm for the area, that happens while we are there. Some examples: we had not lived in Louisiana for more than six weeks when Katrina hit. Initially we thought we were getting stationed in New Orleans, and I was a little bummed when it turned out to be Monroe, but was way happier with where we ended up after Katrina hit! We were also in Louisiana when Rita hit, so I guess I need to apologize two times to the people of Louisiana. After we left Louisiana, we moved to the Fort Hood area, where crazy ass Nadal Hasan decides to shoot up the place right down the street from Randy's office. In fact, Randy was supposed to be at the procesing center to get some shots, but a meeting ran over and he wasn't able to get there. Thank goodness for small blessings! Next stop, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the area has the worst winter it has had since 1912. They had to cancel school for something like 11 days, and post actually shut down three times, which is unheard of around these parts! Then the Day family loads up and takes a little vacation to St. Louis, where a tornado hits while we are there and destroys the airport. We didn't even know a tornado had hit, since we went to bed so early that night. We woke up to text messages and Facebook postings asking us if we were okay and we had no idea what people were talking about until we turned on the news! So, this summer we are moving back to Louisiana and that does not bode well for the state. I must apologize beforehand for anything that might possibly happen while we are living there, but hopefully we will be able to break this streak we seem to be on!

Living in a Male Dominated World!

Growing up I often thought about my poor dad, and how he would have probably enjoyed having a son, so that he could have some male-bonding time, but instead was trapped in a house with three females. Well, I am now living a parallel life to dear old dad, except that I am the only female in my household. Even the dog we recently got is a boy! It is quite interesting, being the only female. I haven't had to do things like play dolls, or put makeup on, but I now know more about trains and superheroes than I ever thought I would. Yesterday there was an incident at the Day household that really hit home the fact that I am going to be surrounded by a testosterone filled bubble for the next 15 or so years. Our Internet went out on Monday night, and when it was still not working on Tuesday, I called AT&T and they scheduled someone to come by yesterday morning. The technician calls at about 9:00am and says that he is on his way, and will check the outside box, but that he may need to come into the house. Okay, that is fine, as housing maintenance had already been by for their yearly inspection of the house, so we were all up and at'em. So, the technician does have to come in and he and Randy (who didn't have school yesterday) have some sort of techno geek conversation and the technician heads back outside. It was at this time that Randy shut himself in his man cave (the downstairs half bath) for a little light reading. Well, about 30 seconds after he goes in there, the technician comes back in the house and asks to speak to my husband. He follows me, as I go knock on the door and let Randy know that the guy needs to talk to him. So, the technician and I are standing outside the bathroom, looking at each other and waiting for Randy to finish his article, when we were approached by Carter. This is where the story becomes horrifying! Carter looks up at the technician and the following conversation begins:

Carter: What was that noise?

Dude: What noise?

Carter: It was Carter's heinie!

Dude: What...???

Carter (turning around and pointing at his rear end): It was Carter's heinie..see, see!

It was at this point that I wanted to die! The poor dude didn't know what to do, and we were all just standing around waiting for Randy to get off the throne! Luckily I was able to find something else to occupy Carter, but I am afraid that this is going to be a long 15 years. I wouldn't trade them in though, and I can relish in the fact (I hope) that no one will be wanting to borrow my shoes or make-up ever!

Bogie

Randy and I are both dog lovers and when we met and married, I had a chihuahua/dachshund mix named Rebel. All was good with Rebel, until Carter came along. Once there were two little ones in the house, poor Rebel did nothing but stand on the couch and bark and shake! Neither boy ever did anything to Rebel, but I think there was just too much going on in the household for him to relax. So, we found a new home for Rebel with a lucky fourteen year old who had recently lost her pet of ten years and was really looking for another "baby." This was the perfect job for Rebel, and I still keep in touch with the family and he is doing great. After the Rebel incident, we decided that we would not have anymore pets until the boys got older, and were able to appreciate having a pet around, and were also able to respect the fact that this was a living creature and they had to be gentle with it. I started getting "puppy fever," about four or five months ago and have been checking out petfinder.com since then. We knew that when we decided to get another dog, we had to have one that was good with kids, and also we decided we wanted one that was a little older and past that whole puppy stage. I have looked and looked, but just never found a dog that was calling out to be a member of our family. This is where my mom comes into the story. She and my dad lost their Pomeranian, Jingle, about four years ago. They went for a while without a dog, but decided about two years ago that it was time for another house pet. I started looking around while they were visiting us in Texas and found a Yorkie that looked promising. I took my mom and dad to meet "Jackie" and it was love at first sight. Jack is the greatest dog. He is gentle and jut loves to be loved, and is wonderful with my boys. So, when my mom was reading Sunday's paper (she is here in Kansas visiting us) she ran across an ad for a 1 1/2 year old Yorkie poo for sale. I contacted the owners and found out that Bogie was indeed, great with kids and an all around great dog, but that the family just didn't have the time to devote to Bogie that they felt he needed. They had four daughters, ages 7-14, that were very involved in many activities, and Bogie was just spending too much time crated up. Well, the Day family decided to lead up, Beverly Hillbillies style (except we did not strap my mom to the roof) and go meet Bogie. What a great dog he is. He is playful, yet gentle with the boys, and has a great disposition. He has been well trained, and other than a couple of chewing toy incidents, has been a perfect gentleman. We are so happy to have him in our family and are looking forward to many, many years with him!

Parenting is scary stuff!!

Two nights ago I wrote an entire blog with this same title, ranting about how scared I was that Cash was going to be starting kindergarten in the fall, and I just wasn't positive that I was going to like the elementary school in Louisiana, but for whatever reason, I could not get that blog to post. Well, yesterday my friend Keala posted something on Facebook about doing research on the elementary schools around Bliss (where they will be stationed next year) and how she was not very happy with her findings, so I decided to sit down and do some more research on the school that Cash was supposed to attend next year. What I found almost sent me into a panic attack! Apparently this school is all about discipline and not academics. They also do not have walls that seperate the classrooms, but 3/4 partitions and curtains! Both of these things disturbed me, but what finally sent me over the edge was the school policy called "lips and hips." It seems that kindergateners, when walking in line, must keep one hand on their lips and one on their hips so they don't talk or touch the walls. Oh HELL no!! I taught public school for 14 years, and I did not run my classroom like this, and I do not want my child to be treated like this. My husband may be in the Army, but my child is not. I want my precious, creative, smart boy to continue to love life and learning, and I just had such a bad feeling about this school. So, of course, I called my mom and talked it over with her. She was also appalled by some of the things I read to her, and so we decided that a private Christian school would be better for Cash. I think things were a lot easier before everyone in the nation decided they knew what was best for "my" kid. Before standardized testing and sucking the creative juices from the teachers and the students. I want my boys to love school, not be afraid of it. This parenting stuff is just so scary!!