Educating me

Children...

There is something about the innocence, the sincerity, thirst for their own knowledge that makes us dig deep into who we are as people. Children are always looking to learn, asking questions, in a state of wonder and awe. So as their parents its our job to be as well equipped for these moments as possible. We have to try and get down to their level, and think about what kind of questions they may ask so we can be prepared to answer.

Our 3 rowdy honey bunches of oats, are knowledge Monsters.
Ryans Favorite new line is "whats that?"
Sophie has her epic PHI face, that says everything it needs to.
Emily has her grasp of everything she was taught this year in school applying it to day to day life.
We are in a constant moment of flux
Everything is possible, every possibility is questioned and every question has a possible answer.
We are bounced around from idea to idea, question to answer, moments the suck up knowledge.
AND these kids, stick it in their brain and hold on to it for forever.

How can we not as parents do anything and everything in our power to provide answers, and bring them to places where they ask more questions? Where they learn and grow and have these terrific moments of life that stick with them, and help shape them for the future.

As I watch these kids understand these moments.
Take in these moments.
Grow from these moments.
It reminds me that I need to be the best me as possible. I need to be that roll model that helps them see things clearly. Fully knowing I will make mistakes along the way, but praying that will also teach them.

Lets face it, its really not easy being a mom to 3 young kids. Lord, Help those with more, Truly. I think At the end of our day with 3 Im wiped out. Had we had more at this moment...I'd puddles. Adding into the mix A special needs Child, with the temper of her father and the attitude of her mother, That makes things a tad more complicated. With Sophie being deaf, and cute...she plays her strengths well and easily ignores us when she wants to. Mostly when we are telling her NO~ Or Wait~ Or STOP!

The kids and I sat around the lap top this afternoon as I pulled up different pictures in Testing Sophie and her language skills. Each week her teacher sends out a flyer about what they are learning in this week of school, and I "TRY" and keep up so that we are not behind on signs. The problem is knowing the methods used in school. For instance...Sophie wanted to know the sign for A Scuba diver last week in class. But her teacher didn't know it. As Sophie was more persistent on knowing the Sign Her teacher went and looked it up on the computer. The Sign She showed me Was NOT the same sign I found online on www.ASLPRO.org So Sometimes it is not easy to keep up. Im super thankful for Sophies class and her teacher this year, but I am so looking forward to a more sign stable environment. In any case, We went thru a list.
Lion
tiger
Giraffe
frog
cow
dog
horse
bird
duck
zebra
grass
sky
cloud
sun
moon
caterpillar
worm
bug
ocean
whale
seal
jellyfish
crab
sea turtle
octopus
shark

All things shes been learning about. Last month they did bugs. This month has been concentrated on Sea life. And every word we went through Sophia knew by heart. Now Emily and Ryan know them well too. "lion" and "octopus" were among the favorite signs. Making faces to match each animal.
Grass was A new one for me. Im glad I know it now :)

Education. Is not just something we are supposed to leave at the foot of the School building. It is to be shared at home, nurtured at home. USED at home. Education doesn't just have to be Find the sum of X. ya know~ Its more then that.
Sophia's Language skills has come so far. For a Kid who literally quit using for CI in September, shes A super star. Even babbling these days. Full on BABBLING. Not just yelling anymore, or single toned. But adding in a few letter sounds here and there. Lots of m's and G's and D's More A's not just O's. And Using it in reference to things. Sounding back to use and signing.

Emily has been officially granted completion of Kindergarten. Technically her last day of class isn't till Thursday, but I guess her Teacher got her report card completed over the weekend and opted to send it home early. He reports thats she will be an outstanding 1st grader. She is doing so well with her reading, her exploring words and sounding things out. I make her spell each morning before getting on the bus, and she is so awesome. Her report card was 97% outstanding in the grading system.

My Ryan boy, is ready for school. Talks about "ryan schoo" all the time. Wears Sophies back pack and makes pretend that he and Emily are getting on the bus to go to school. I really hope to get him into SOMETHING this coming school year. He knows all his letters visually. But knows his colors in sign language more then verbally :o lol lol lol


We are always learning here in this crazy Decker house. Its awesome. We are learning this in 2 languages and growing and growing and growing. Its a blessing. As new adventures are with in hands reach, Im excited to experience more. Show our kids more. Teach our kids more. Fill them up with moments not too many people get to do. Feed their travelers blood.

All the while, The world is our School. We are teaching them. They are educating me.

Means to the End. Shall we Move on?

Often in my short life, I've been faced with the decision to either MOVE on, and continue down the path. I've felt the sting of letting go, I've felt the repercussions of heading the same way. I've also experienced the relief and joy from both.

While I think about whos precious in my life, the list is short. And Thats Great because that means I've grown emotionally. I feel like, you can not trust everyone, but a few at a time, and those are the people you need to cherish most.

While I Think about Whos Birthday it is today I remember the journey. The extreme of the bumps, the extreme of the highs, the love, the drama, the patching of deep wounds. The last time we broke up, I remember Everyday wondering what I was missing in her life...BIG THINGS AT THE TIME. I was wondering if We'd never exchanged such harsh words if  We'd be experiencing these things together. I remember saying all the time to mutual friends, that I'm sad We can not fix it, that I wish she would just respond to my attempts.
When things Finally were starting to come back together, and the glue was "drying"
I remember being so grateful. So excited, but walking slowly and quietly and being cautious not to just stick my nose right into everything I had missed.
The near YEAR of our biggest break up ever, I felt as though A piece of me was missing the entire time. I desired to have her back and things mended. I thought about it often. Reached out often. Not always in the right way granted.
It was so hard. So heart breaking where our friendship of SO long had wound up.
At the same time, as We know God allows things to happen for specific Reasons, I feel like that rough year was a palate cleanse. She And I, from my point of view, had been on this jagged edge for quit some time. Both stubborn, both ignoring the signs till we had to face them straight on.
Here we are almost 3 years past the break up, and well, we are not in the same place. Not the same place we were as kids, not the same place we were as teens, nor young adults, nor before the breakup. We are NEW. We are better. And while distance is a huge gap. In a sense...thats what broke down walls.
God Sends us on Journeys for a reason, He puts people in our lives for a time, or for life. And he has a plan. With this relationship, I never felt like She was supposed to be gone forever. I never was at peace with it. On my end. I knew I wasn't supposed to move on from this.
And Im glad to be where I am with her today.


But God does Challenge us, and our lives, and our hearts. For even though he knows our truest of true wants and desires. He challenges us so that we can learn from life and see the CLEAR reason for his actions for us. Not always easy. Not always something happy. But reality.

When God tells you to move on, it's because He has something so much better for you than where you are right now!

 

Is something I read this morning. And After my Conversation last night with my Brother, I felt like it was set before at the most perfect of times.

 

 

I will not pretend that my distance from certain family members is easy. I will admit I do At times wonder about how life is going for them. I will always love them. I will say that im not surprised on our outcome. I made one last feeble attempt in December, a sliver of an out reach, and it didn't go so well. And thats ok. Now with it being May, And knowing things I do know...I feel as though I'm ok. Im strong enough to understand what it is I am supposed to do from my side. And that is to MOVE ON. I have no struggles with it, surprisingly. I have no doubts about doing so. No panics about what it means, or where it leaves My family and I. Too much was said from my side, too much said from their side. Too many emotions then floating around, clouding judgements. And We both made choices. And  our means to an END was our Own versions of our truths. It got us to where we are...which is...far apart.

 

Our oldest does wonder why we do not speak to everyone. I have been asked "why does he not talk to me" And then get lack of memory from them. Who knows if in years to come something brings our lives closer again. And He can spend the time he wants to repair the relationships he could have now. But thats a future I can not see myself, thats in the hands of God only.

 

Moving on is never easy. Sure I'll catch myself in thought and wonderment. I'll be reminded by little things. Ill be curious. But I know...Some people are meant to be with you forever, some for a short time, Some to raise you up and teach you, some to hold your hand through tough times, some to challenge you, some to knock you to your feet. Some to pick you back up. Some through thick and thin, and some to tell you Goodbye 

I write therefore Im....NOT YET?

Evolving...


How does one Evolve?



LIFE?


Career?


Studies?


How can one take their true passion and make it into a productive living?


I want to write, I think about Writing, I do random scribbles and such...but nothing is truly complete.
Im so A.d.d With my writing that Im not even kidding...

I want to share it with the world. But who cares enough to read it? I want to see it in print...In my Favorite Magazine "elle" and see it at every news stand.

I want to hear my writings Shared.

I want to keep it going and going and going and going...



But Im merely An Army house wife...so how can I make this possible. With no budget! No idea of the avenue to take...


Can't I just fall into it? Can't I just be discovered? Its not like I have not put a TON of work into my own Passion...professionally, no, Morally and emotionally YES~~~~~~


Im a writer, I write...and I want to write to live





Is that really too much to ask for! Honestly?

We...

We...

We create Art, life, morals, family values, beauty

We make time and Sense of things

We Seek fulfillment, Satisfaction

We honor truth and Hope

We learn from mistakes and always make new ones

We...




We Have been taught the preciousness that life is offering us. With each day, each step, each breath, We find something that pushes us further and further. Journey men, of a path to created Bliss.

We Create.

We create our life's path by each choice made. And Its simple really. With each choice, We can also choose to be happy. Not that everything in life will bring us joy, not that every moment is a good one, Not that enjoyment is easily obtained, But by Choice, Do we bring it about.

Nothing in this Life is easy. but Life is simple. Believe it or not.

Our Children have reminded us about simplicity. Reminded us how honoring ourselves and our family will take us to where we need to be. Taught us about Love.

Sophie has shown us how to be humble.

The Army has taught us to be patient, and Flexible.

Emily has taught us about Humor

Ryan has taught us about stamina

The Lord has taught us about Blessings and faith.

Being Modern day Travelers have taught us about The World.

Friends have taught us about Acceptance.



No matter where we are or how much time has wrinkled our cheeks, We are always open to learning.

WE...

Are forever Students

Just me and the Blog

Water filled veins for 24 years...and Its just now starting to drain...

Replaced with the nurishment of healthy relationship goodness...

As times Change, and Persons Grow...

Minds Absorb more goodness and Feelings Show...




A Ball drops

The shoes on the Other Foot

The Grass is greener

All that Glitters isn't  Gold

Just around the Corner

Walk a mile in Someone elses shoes

You never know what you have until its gone.

The Ship has Sailed

Careful what you wish for

A fool and his money are soon parted

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

A watched Pot never boils

The Calm before the storm

Hindsight is always 20/20

Seeing is Believing

The Darkest Hour is just before the Dawn!







We live by our creeds





I write by mine.


I understand How we grow...we adapt...we Channel into different directions. We accept. We move on. We forgive. We do not forget. We do not change. But we add to ourselves.

Thats human

This is life

And

I

Just

Write

Let us Laugh

Laugh

Laugh like nothing else but laughter matters.

In this Crude and cruel World, We need to be able to just laugh...

We live but a short life, So to live bound and not free, stubborn and filtered...

Would be Tragic.



In A breath we wait for something to happen

We Mull over the moment and Forget for an instant that in fact we are but walking a frail line.

That line between what we perceive as reality and what it could be if we let go.

Who's life are we supposed to be living anyway, and in that case, isn't happiness key?

The key to success and solidarity.

What is it that we fear from laughter?

Is Laughter the catapult to all things coming unbound?

To our being lost in the mix of complex notions of life's perceptions?

Or Simply, Humility!?

Yet, it is so, that when true laughter expels from our guts, We feel a sense of relief. No?

So, Why do we hold back?

Laugh

And

Laugh hard

And

Mean it

Take it for what it is, and what it does, and how it expresses and heals and completes us.

Oh to Laugh, whole heartily. Without restraint, without care, without caution.

Freely and Openly. Amidst the Chaos that may be of that day, just laugh, and feel as the weight dissipates, the chains fall to the floor and you lift off feeling free and Calm and steady.

Oh to Laugh. Let us laugh and laugh, and laugh and

Laugh

la la la! Ooooo! hmm!

Everybody travels down the path they least likely wanted

Everybody has a moment of weakness

Everybody sees, trouble trouble trouble

Everybody tries to forget.



How can we grow, Up! Knowing How life goes?

How Can we trust our own Hearts and Mind?




Forget the Past, Forgetting our Woes, leaving the bitter, out in the Cold.

Seeking New Shelter, in the Storms path

Knowing the pain, is from, our own personal Wrath

Taking forgranted, The life we perserved

Who who who whooo Are We?

why Must we be, leading a life not free.

Anchored down, by our regrets, Anchored down, By our own mouths.

Gasping for air, as we try to untie.






When Will we see, A difference?

And Will it be Right?


Taking our Chances, yet We are holding tight.

Often

Leaving

A

Piece

Of

Us

Behind.


A Piece of our hearts, A piece of our Reason.


Who we once were, and Who we've become, Is never the same, as who we will be


Still

Do we really Change?


Are We stuck with our Simple Brains?


Adapting our sorrows, morals, and life, to the outside Changes?


So

We

Wonder

So

We

Ponder

So

We

Wait

For

A

New

Chapter.


la la la la, la la la la la, La la la llaaalllaaa

oooooo, ooo, oooooOooo, mmmhmmmhmmmmmhmmm

The Hours

Woke up this morning, and just like every other morning the sound of my children yelling and crying and ready to start the day. Showered and Coffee Children eating their breakfast while Watching the Disney Channel. I with a towel still wrapped around my head thinking about "The Hours" The Movie of course. I havent read the Book by Michael Cunningham. however I now want to.

I was thinking about my most favorable line from the movie.
Where the Movie basically ends.


~ Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.~


Beautifully Written. Beauitfully left By Virginia Wolf Years way past.

But I cant help but wonder about the state of mind, it took to Write these words. The Emotion, the thought, the process. The Day that these Novelists went through, as they formed their pieces of Art.

Which will bring me back to my Days of "Sentimental" And the 6th and 7th grade.I felt like a different person through out that grade, and spent more time scribbling scorned and forlorned words in my black and white Marbled notebook. Creating a bunch of Saddened and life beatened Characters. All Based around a teen pregnancy. I spent that entire year writing this. Forming this. Watching Leonardo Dicaprio in Romeo and Juliet and then in The Man in the Iron mask over and over. Laid out on my Bed that was STILL in the family room of our old School house, Making worse a situation for myself so that my writing was as scarred as I was making myself out to be.
I remember feeling Unloved, unliked and alone that year in school.
I remember kind of taking myself and making myself lonely. I had a relationship bump with Jeanna that year, we didnt talk for months. Until that day she and her mom randomly showed up at the unfinished school house to say "hello" and see its progress.

So to say that "sentimental" was my most Emotional piece, would be true. And I regret and I am sad that I literally threw it away. A year later reading threw the mess of it. I got annoyed and just was done. I regret not having it to look back on. TO try and make it into something. In the direction it was going.

The Movie the hours, if you arent into the flashback dramas, the low tones and narration of stories, then its not for you. But how could you not get into it once you begin? How could you not be Drawn in by lines like;


~ If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the Capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.~

and


~ I am ungrateful? You call me ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in. I'm living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen?~

and


~ Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.~

Its a moving Movie, and Im sure the Book is only that much better. Ill know once I get my hands on a copy.

I was never really able to ever go back into that solitude of loneliness and write like i did. I was not able to flip through those pages of the Marbled notebooks. To Read what I felt and maybe take with me a piece of the feelings. I am not able to remember All the Words. But I can say I know about what I wrote. How the year went. Who my friends were, the Class I spent most of my time Writing in (that Bible class with the crazy box/clown lady)


The Aspect of Writing is much more then the technicalities of it. More then the placement of grammar, and more then Word placement. Its Emotion. Its taking uncalculated risks and just letting your mind run away with the characters. Its about Knowing the plot even if you dont know what you are going to say. Its about grasping the readers very soul and not letting go till the last page. Teasing them, making them keep coming back for more.
Speaking the truth, or in fiction, making the Fiction seem so truthful, that you forget, its just a story. One day, maybe when Im old and gray and living Just me and my husband, whos out hunting and fishing all day long. Leaving me and my cats to silence, Maybe then I can finally finish a FULL manuscript and get something in print. Its a dream I wont too soon let go of. And I have surely learned my lesson....IVE NEVER THROWN A NOTEBOOK OUT EVER AGAIN...and if I could go back...




Back to the hours...

nothing is easy...

Something wonderful happened.
I realized that I shouldnt be consentrating on what I should do for a living, but should be consentrating on what I do best creatively speaking. Which is Writing. I may not spell, or have great grammar. I may miss a letter or squish words, but thats me in my spellbound mind, typing fast and not giving a crap about grammar.
Whats so important about Great Grammar skills anyway? Isnt that what proof reading Edits and editors are hired for?
The problem is, I havent been able to write a lick, worth of decent material since Emily was born.
My mind focused on motherhood, and sanity rather then the mind moving paradox. YES paradox,that I worked in. May not make too much sense to my readers, but you've not been in my working head. When Im able to block out the world, sound, logic, reality and move into a character.
Best work for me, is that which I can outline the first few chapters, extensively had already created each and every character, down to the color of their favorite nail polish. Figure out their first several giant moves in the lined work, and then bam.............LOST. Blocked. Bored of my own work, regardless to what my fav writing buddy says or thinks about my piece....More often then not tho, im settled in my then opinion of the middle story before She gets to read it, so really shes out of luck in winning me over. And then its not till months, or now years later, Ill glance back at a story and think "how wonder" and know I was crazy for stopping. Crazy for thinking it lacked interest. Yet, cant seem to muster up the formalities needed to pick it up where I left it of. Not that I could even if I wanted go back to the mind frame I had at that point in time writing it.

So this concludes that I new manuscript needs to be in the works, and maybe If I pull out all the old stuff to awaken that spirit in me, something will come of it. But there lies one big question...."how do I block out my life, long enough to write?"
I am mom, to 3 young babies. Who every 10 mins or less Yell for me, for some reason or another.




AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH nothing is ever easy is it?