but wait...there's MORE!

Oh yes, there's more... add to the Deployment Disaster list:  new axle for the other Subaru and the heat went out yesterday in my tenant's house!  Yes, this would be the $5K brand new heat pump we had installed 3 months ago, frozen!  At least they are of course covering this, but seriously?  The repair guy acted like it was completely reasonable for this to happen, this is America now, low expectations.

Anyone wanna trade lives just for about the next 6-9 months?  No takers?

Alright then.  Today's topic will be Thing Two:

This kid has been busy.

He is in the Lego Robotics League this year at school.  Really great program for the little mini-nerds engineers.  He stays after school 2 days a week and has volunteer engineering type adults from the community to help along with his Math & Science Academy teacher and a few high school students that are also in the program and come to help the younger elementary students.

Loch and BFF Kenny, who clearly is awesome.

Every year there is a "challenge" that they have to design a project for.  This year's challenge is to build something that will help senior citizens.  Below is Loch working on the project.

These Legos are no joke, below is one of the robots, there are Lego bricks he uses that are $240 apiece!  Needless to say, I am completely freaked out when he brings something home to work on or tweak a bit.

Here is Loch at a district competition.

Inside the competition.  There are teams from all over the state and the Washington D.C. area set up.  The competition goes all day with different events for presentation and judging.  This Lego League is active all over the U.S. right up through college/university level.  Geeks unite!

The school garden is looking good for winter this year:

Why can't my garden be this orderly looking?!

Last month Loch was selected as one of 30 students to compete in the National Geography Bee, and yesterday was the first competition.  After surviving about 10 questions of increasing difficulty, he was out in Round Two.  He did great and unfortunately the video I got of him was the one where he got the question wrong LOL!  Ooops.

The Setup...

...and he's out.  But to be fair, so was most of the 1st and 2nd row! 

 These are 4th and 5th grade students.  They did great, Loch at least made the first 2 cuts.  The winner was a 4th grade student from Loch's class, which isn't surprising because his teachers have been consistently amazing in his Math & Science program.  The winner goes on to state level next.

***

Add to this both kids are still in music lessons, Cub Scouts and now swim team which has practice twice a week and Saturday meets and you have one very tired mama!

***

Finn wants grandma to know that he's been busy, too!

Finn showing his improved time ribbon in the Freestyle, and Loch finished 1st place in the 50m Backstroke.  They are on the same team so there is a bit of brotherly competition!

Yes, I have completely lost my mind:

I am a stroke and turn judge at the meets.  Go ahead and laugh... just don't swim in my lane or I'll get revenge in the form of two letters:  D. Q.   !  (insert evil laughter here)

I do get to be up on deck the whole time, but consequently can't really watch what my own kids are doing, and one day I am going to have one of my own kids in my lanes and face the possibility of DQ'ing my own kids :)

I did manage to get one video at last Saturday's meet.  Loch is in Lane 2 (lane 1 is unoccupied so he's the swimmer on the left).  When you watch just imagine how much faster he'd be if he didn't stop at the turn to do his hair and makeup...  but I can't get on him too much, he was 1st place!

Sorry this post reads like a big brag book, but it's months worth of activity and I got to get rid of all the guilt I have been feeling for not posting the boys' stuff for the grandparents!  I think we may be up to date now on their shenanigans.

I gotta start somewhere...

Have I been too busy to blog?  Or is it that I am becoming a poor manager of my time in my old age?  Even though I am busier than usual and have had some situations thrown at me over the past few months, I think it is actually just a time management issue.  The "old me" used to blog in the morning early, like most of you do, I was good about it then.  The "new me" decided that I needed to get chores done in the morning and that I would blog in the evening, you know - after the kids were in bed and I could relax and blog in peace.  In reality I've found, I'm done by the time I finally herd the kids off - to do nothing more productive than check Facebook and flip channels on the tv looking for anything decent to watch (ha!).  Useless is what I am that time of day, useless.  I also find that these days I am more scatterbrained than usual, and my usual is OCD freak out Type A, so any amount of ADD I am not dealing with very well.  I think it's hormonal, but whatever, it's completely unacceptable in my book.

Hey I got some new boots!  (see? ADD)

So today I dump all my phone pictures onto the computer and I have 394.  394???  This is normally not a problem when I post 2 or 3 with a daily blog post, but now where do I start?  I spent 2 good hours deleting junk photos and still was left with a bunch.  Another thing I noticed, I have a penchant for having my camera handy when humorous things cross my path...

like this... I liked it

or maybe I just have a weird and sarcastic sense of humor.  I think that's it.  In any case I have enough strange photos now that I can ensure a regular WTH? weekly post for at least 2 months!

So I am left with a whole bunch of unrelated stuff that I will present in ADD fashion over the next few posts.  My mom probably wants to smack me for not posting photos of what the boys are up to so we will all have to endure lots of stuff of which has nothing to do with my suburban homesteading efforts, but I'll get back to that eventually.

Some of you may know that the hubs has left the building... he's out west in an undisclosed location that I like to refer to as Area 51 dropping bombs and doing Navy "stuff" in preparation for deployment.  It's a long one, he left right after Halloween and has missed Thanksgiving too.

He was here to vote and left the next day, wow it really has been awhile since I've posted!

It was cold that day!

Does your state let you use a Concealed Carry Permit as a voting ID?

awesome - totally using that next time :)

We had an "early" Black Friday before he left... bet you can guess where we are :)

Time for him to put on his lovely can't-break-em Navy issue glasses and say good bye!

A rare photo with me in it -

We spent a great Thanksgiving Day at a friend's house, which called for Mama Pea's Almond Cranberry Cake - it's becoming quite a tradition, I've made it for 3 years in a row now.

It's even better than it looks :)

Now that the sugary sweet stuff is out of the way, I'll give you a brief overview of the beginning of "Deployment Season".  We have our own reality show, and it's real.

*Starter went out in one of the Subarus.

*I got really sick, like ew.

*Then Finn got Strep.

*Then Loch got Strep

at the doctor we learned how much sugar is in a Mtn. Dew, good thing we don't drink them!

*Then I had a pipe break inside the wall behind the toilet. (this was exceptionally fantastic)

 Oh joy, on a Friday night too.  Text hubs and complain and scream and threaten to throw seabags on the lawn when he returns.  (Don't be alarmed, this is perfectly normal and acceptable behavior for a Navy spouse).  

Crawl under house, (ew) and shut off well pump. Cry some more.  

Then this appears...yes I believe this Honey Boo Boo good ol' boy truck is larger than my house!

2 Navy guys set up shop in my bathroom, jab a big hole in my wall (who cares about that?!) and proceed to put a patch job on there that is still holding today.  On a Friday night.  And wouldn't accept my money.  I did force cookies on them however and will make sure the hubs buys them lunch when he gets back.  Apparently these are a few of the guys that were left behind on this trip to keep an eye on the squadron and the hubs called them from Area 51 and dispatched them.  Don't know what they patched it with, don't care - they are awesome!  Immediately regret thoughts of throwing seabags on the lawn and now cry because I'm so grateful I have such a great husband.  Manic Depressive, anyone?

This is all normal that everything explodes, implodes, etc during deployment but the annoying thing this time is that deployment hasn't technically started yet!

The icing on the cake:  find out that hubs will get 5 days of leave for Christmas when he returns. Um, going to Minnesota is a 2 day drive, each way.  It's the Navy's job to make sure the hell will rain down on grandma, too.  Good thing she was a Navy wife herself, so she gets it, even if she doesn't like it :(

Many more things have been making me crazy lately, Loch had Lego Robotics League, both kids are on swim team, I'm a Cub Scout leader and they have music lessons to get to, I feel like I should have paid more attention to people when they warned me about how crazy it gets as they get older!

Up tomorrow, Loch was selected to compete in the Geography Bee, so hopefully I can get some video of that for grandma, but here's the letter, mom -

So hey, that's that - I did it, I'm back in the game!  Makes no sense I know, but eventually I'm going to find my way back to canning, seed catalog discussions and the like, at least I hope that's where I'm headed!  Speaking of, headed to a meeting to start the process of legalizing hens in our city, will be a long process I'm sure, but hopefully we will have a good turnout and lots of people that will fill the aisles at city council meetings.

Today's Goal...

I WILL BLOG LATER TODAY!  I have no excuses, and this is me officially stating that I refuse to be a lazy blogger any. more.   But you got to give me a few more hours :)