Happy Veteran's Day

I realize we're a day late with this, but I still wanted to do it. Elliott was talking about an assembly they had at his school for "St. Vetrick's Day" the other day and he said there were lots of grandfathers there. I asked if they were veterans and he said no - only two of them cause they had their uniforms on. I realized that even though they had talked about Veteran's Day at school that he still didn't understand that there are thousands of plain-clothed veterans that we probably see everyday. So I explained that Grandpa and PaPa were veterans too, and they were pretty intrigued by this. We tried to think of others and of course my Grandpa Hosselton came to mind, but they never got to meet him, so they kept referring to Grandma Hosselton as a veteran - I do consider her a veteran of the war (and all other war wives) since she had to sacrifice so much also.

Anyway, they decided to make cards for Grandpa and PaPa and I decided to dedicate a blog entry to them. I'm lucky enough to have my sister's wonderful wonderful family history scrapbooks here at my house right now (these aren't just pictures of our ancestors, but treasured family stories and memories that she took the time and effort to make sure are written down for us to pass on - thank you Erin!!!). So I have this photo of my Grandpa, Gill Hosselton, around 1942 in the Navy and also of my dad, John Hosselton, around 1967 in the Army. I wish I had a picture of Brian's dad, John Weiler, who was also a military policeman in the Army - I'll update if I get one.

While I was looking through the scrapbooks I found this picture of my Uncle Ronnie (my dad's oldest brother) standing on the steps of my Great Grandparents' (Hosselton) house around 1944 (while my Grandpa was on a ship overseas with the Navy). I don't think I would've noticed this, but Erin pointed it out in her journaling. You can see in the window a flag with 3 stars. Each star represented each of their 3 sons that was serving in the war - Gill, Russ and Junior. Wow. Sometimes we become immune to the everyday scenes on the news about fighting overseas. Our hearts always break for the families that we hear about who lose a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a sister, a brother. But in my day-to-day life I'm ashamed to say that I rarely think about what's going on over there. But when I saw that flag with the 3 stars hanging in my Great Grandparents' window, I was really struck. Three sons fighting in the war. I want to cry just thinking about the heartache I would experience if my two sons were fighting in a war, so I can't imagine how my Great Grandmother felt thinking about the safety of her three sons everyday.

So to all of you who are Veterans, we say thank you. And to all of you who have family serving right now, thank you. Thank you for your sacrifices for our country and for us and know that we are praying for you.

Blessings

It's very gray, dreary and cold out today. All of you know how much I dislike the cold, dreary winters here. I can feel my mood changing just looking outside and feeling my permanently frozen fingers. But as I ran out to get the mail a few minutes ago I thought back to how just 3 days ago I was sitting in that grass with my neighbors wearing FLIP FLOPS and realized that I have so many blessings in my life that maybe if I focus on them instead of that gray sky outside that I'll bear the winter better this year.

So, here is my list of blessings that God has put a great big flashing neon light on today:

1. Two wonderful girlfriends to sit in the grass with (and warm enough weather to wear flip flops)

2. The boys' friendships with the other kids on our street - especially the Adamses and the Duffs (we'd be lost without them) and who can forget my future daughters-in-law Grace and Clara

3. A night of uninterrupted girl time and scrap time with Vicki, who is one of my very best friends along with her wonderful family. We love that we live so much closer to them now and can hang out together more often.

4. Rest time. Ethan actually napped today and Elliott played quietly in his room. Aaaahhh....

5. Family. It's so rare now that marriages last over 10 years, and we feel blessed to have parents on both sides who have been married for over 30 and 40 years. Blessed also that they love us so much and we get to see them and enjoy them often.

6. A really nice weekend alone with Brian. My parents wanted the boys to come over to their house, so we were so excited to have time to ourselves. And it was so nice - in the mid-to-upper 70s all weekend so we took advantage of it and went hiking (hadn't done that in a long time). Beautiful fall trees!!

And for some blessings that seem little but are equally exciting to me today....

7. A brand new scrapbook magazine in my mailbox this afternoon

8. Totally blessed that most of these babies had a place to go besides my hips! (Thank you Brian for taking them to work with you!)

9. A good Christian radio station - JoyFM (94.1)....although I do still miss the FISH in Atlanta - and there's another blessing....being able to listen online!

Halloween 08

Loads of fun trick or treating last night!! The boys started off with a very cool party at a neighbor's house and it was nothing but fun, candy, friends, etc. the rest of the night. Last year they only trick-or-treated 2 courts in our neighborhood (actually, Ethan managed 3 but Elliott was done and ready to eat the candy after two). But this year they totally understood that the more houses you trick-or-treat, the more candy you get! So they did as many as they could.

Elliott was Optimus Prime. Ethan was a Clone Trooper. Brian had this great creative idea to dress as an AIG executive - lots of laughs with that one. And I went as Sarah Palin - thank you to Tracy for most of my costume (and you can't see it in the picture but I carried Elliott's toy rifle around with me, too - very fun!!)

my protectors

Brian was out of town this weekend and that usually means lots of mixed emotions. Missing him a lot, yet glad to have a little time alone once the boys go down for the night. And typically I end up staying up until like 2am doing things like photo editing, organizing, scrapbooking, or sometimes just watching tv - just things I don't normally do at night when he's here. It seems too quiet when he's not here so I try to occupy myself with things to do until I'm just so tired I have to go to bed and then just fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. That way I don't have to think about every little noise I hear, etc. But this time I didn't need to be anxious about being alone! Why?

For one thing, the boys thought they should "sleep" (in quotes cause there wasn't all that much sleeping) in my bed with me, so there was no being alone and I couldn't hear any noises over all the noise they made moving around all night.

And more importantly, the boys were more than happy to protect me with all of their weapons and ammunition they've collected over the past few months. I'm pretty sure they only fight people named "Grievous" and "Megatron" and "Darth Vader" from what I overhear from their battle dialogue...

And if there just happened to be any bad guys at the pumpkin patch today.......

this cowboy and his gang of good ol' boys would chase them away in their speedy John Deere!

What more protection could a mom possibly need?

fun new decoration

Most of you know that Brian takes the wheel when it comes to Halloween decorations....I've tried unsuccessfully to have the cute jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, etc. No. It has to be scary. So I haven't even bothered to get anything out this year besides the fall wreath on the door. But when Ethan and I saw this cute haunted house-type ornament display with the Peanuts characters we thought we'd try again. I love it and the boys had the best time putting the ornaments on. Even Brian said he liked it....there's just something about Charlie Brown that you can't not like him!

Ethan's 4th Birthday

Ethan had a very full birthday this year....Erin, Ryan and Eli were here visiting so they got to share birthday pancakes with us, of course he got the butter on the nose, his friends at Sunday School sang to him, he got to pick the lunch place and then had a party that afternoon at the park with lots of friends! Plus he had celebrated with a special snack at school earlier that week...whew! It's fun being 4.

Here are just a few pictures..... (and, yes, that's a Georgia football cake - and, no, he was not coerced into having a Georgia Bulldogs birthday party....he came up with that himself!)

Back to school?

I was just looking through some pictures and came across this from this past summer. It was during the Cisne Reunion and they had opened the high school to the public for a couple of hours so a few of my friends and I walked over to see how it had changed. The funny thing about this picture is that we never had class in this room (apparently they do now). It was the library. We had study hall in there sometimes, but never a class like the chairs are set up for. AND it used to be double the size. Now half of it is another room used as a computer lab (yeah, we maybe had 8 of those monster computers with the black screen and green letters (DOS I think) that the whole school shared). The room was never blue either......just white. It was fun to go back and see how everything had changed and what had not. (For the record, I don't remember any of us ever so eagerly raising our hands to participate in class)