Happy Easter!

Wow - I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted!

Went to the post Easter Egg hunt this morning. You see Nate dog and his loot. His personal best of 64 eggs. Much more organized than hunts at other posts we've been too. I surprised that he didn't want to do the inflatables and games, but it was a nice 45 minutes or so.

Right now he's out riding bikes and playing with the neighborhood kids. Band aids and scraps are a now a regular occurrence. This is a picture of him on his way to school - a Miami Ink extreme sports helmet, a Speed Racer see-through backpack, glasses, braces and his socks pulled up to his knees. He's definitely the big man on campus.

We're not doing track and field any more. One of the male coaches was laughing about how slow he was to another adult at a track meet. That, plus a couple of miscues about where he was supposed to be for 2 field events, made me so angry I was crying. (I hate that, because no one takes you seriously when you cry). They obviously have given up on him to focus on kids that are fast enough to make the state track teams. It would be different if I could see them working with him to improve, or to encourage him even when he comes in last. But they didn't. We talked about the message we were sending by not making him finish, but come on - if the coaches don't care, why should I force the kid to do an activity where he knows he's always going to come in last?

But he stayed in long enough that he did show improvement (at least to us) and he can get a cub scout badge for it. We'll see about either baseball or some beginning martial arts, instead.

His report card came in. Kid's a 'pleasure to have in class'. But we knew that already, right? He's adjusting to the braces. Tooth brushing is definitely a 2 person activity now.

I got contacts again. Hoo-ray! Plus a new bike! Hoo-ray! We might actually try a family bike ride tomorrow afternoon. Eric's cooking rib eyes for Easter dinner. And nothing says Easter like red meat.

Still no news on the job front. I've applied for several jobs on post. I've never applied through an automated system before - all my other jobs have been a small non-profit orgs. So it's been a learning experience to figure out the keywords to adapt my resume for every job. There's 3 jobs I've applied for where I've made it past the preliminary round and my application has been forwarded to the selecting official. And I have no idea what magic inbox they're languishing in, 'cause it's been over a month. Oh well. It'll happen....... eventually.

Eric is swamped at work. Things are gearing up the deployment in the fall. Apparently, however, either things change so radically between deployments (and the 3rd ID band has deployed 3 times already since 2003), or nobody took notes, because it seems like they're having to re-invent the wheel. Which is aggravating. But I seriously think Eric's temperament, life skills and his past experience during deployment is going to make a huge asset for his unit.

Spring time is beautiful here. The azalea blooms are so big and bright, they look like plastic flowers. I saw a japanese maple in bloom and was so struck by the red coloring that I actually googled it. (Because believe me, I didn't know what a japanese maple was 2 months ago.) The mugginess and heat is starting to creep up, however.