Time

When did my child turn into a man? I saw this guy running to retrieve a ball at the soccer game and wondered if we had a new service member assisting — then I recognized that that man was my almost grown kid. 

Pretty soon it will be this little guy, today sweetly helping his sister with her costume and leaving me love notes, that will become unrecognizable.  It’s hard to imagine. 

My apology letter from Caleb. All is forgiven. 

She dressed up like a 99 year old woman for the 99th day of school. She is going to be a fancy grandma. 

And just like a 99 year old grandma, after a hard day she can fall asleep anywhere. 

With her friends from school celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday. 

A party with green eggs and ham — though all the kindergartners declined the green eggs in favor of yellow. I don’t think they got the point of the book. Funny enough, since the celebration was on base (the kids walked over as a class) they served actual ham. At the school cafeteria they don’t serve any pork products and they’ve even been out of jello for a while because the last shipment “wasn’t the right kind” (meaning it was made with pork gelatin) so they couldn’t serve it. I’m not sure if anyone at the breakfast party noticed or cared, but it’s kind of a big faux pax since it’s a mixed group of kids. 

After ham and eggs there was cotton candy, popcorn, henna, facepainting and bouncy houses. We waited 20 minutes for cotton candy since it’s the only thing she cared about besides the slide.

Waiting to slide. 

I love that I can drop in on their special days and enjoy them with her. 

Springtime means it’s time to cram all the special things into one month after the end of the first semester, but before it gets hot. In addition to 100 days of school and Dr. Seuss celebrations, they also had the elementary school choir concert. The kindergartners sang a bunch of songs telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. She looks like she was all into it, but she was mostly singing in a reserved way and only belted it out on the last song when she was happy it was finally almost over. 

Relieved. 

Another kind of relief. Caleb has been working on a research project about the country of Cambodia for over a month and it has been a slog for the entire family. 

I don’t do the kids’ homework, but I was typing and cutting and handholding throughout. It was terrible. 

And springtime means time for orders! (Finally.) We had to wait until March to get them, but our orders to Abu Dhabi finally arrived. Summer 2016, we will move to our 4th country in the region, United Arab Emirates. 

In with the orders, out with the stuff — the purging has begun as the first of the “give away” boxes are headed out the door.