Happy Birthday, Jake!!!

It's been awhile since I've been on here, and while that's no surprise to those that follow this blog, I found it fitting that on such a day as this, I come back to write...

Today is what would be our first son's 14th birthday. How has it been FOURTEEN years?!?! It feels like just yesterday, we were sitting in the hospital room at the Army hospital in Würzburg, Germany waiting and wondering to see if our son would survive. At just 21 weeks, my water had broke (for unknown reasons), and there was very little hope. James was there with me instead of in Bosnia with his company, where he was supposed to be that day. Sitting there in tears, knowing the worst was probably upon us. Then we received the news that his heart had stop and the dreaded news was received. I can't believe it's been so long. We were newly weds, having only been married just over a year at that point. So excited about having our little guy and starting our life as a family. Then this happened. After delivering our son, Jacob Tyler, silently, we sat there and just stared -- trying to memorize every feature. We knew that not only was this the day we got to meet him, but it was also the day we had to say goodbye. So much to swallow. I'll never forget how beautiful he was. His sweet little body was so fragile, yet you could tell he was his daddy's son with his features. Our son...how could it be that this happened? The shock of it all was overwhelming.

Night At The Pool...

While I talked about this on the new blog, I figured I may as well share it here as well. I want to bring this space back to being all about the boys and just life. So here's a little documenting of something they love.

Being in Southern California, with this nearly year-round warm weather, we spend from around mid-March until late-October at our neighborhood pool. In fact, this month, we've been there almost every single day. The boys both love it! Caleb loves jumping in and being thrown up to do flips, etc. He's definitely still in the daredevil stage! Sam was once there, but he's much more cautious now. However, he's slowly getting back to that once-daredevil self and jumping in again. With that said, he's been wanting me to get videos of him jumping in. It's not often that I actually remember to bring the waterproof camera, but I happened to the other night and Sam decided he wanted to make a YouTube video about it. His goal right now is to be the next big YouTube kid, ha! I don't know that he'll quite hit that mark, but we'll sure try and start making videos more often!

Here are the boys at the pool. I love that I caught Caleb doing the Hulk Smash move in the pool, ha. He's always reenacting his favorite superheroes...

If you like it, make a comment. Sam is super excited about seeing what people think of his first video...

Splitting Off...

So, never mind the fact that sadly I'm not very active on here anymore, I decided to split off onto a new blog for many of my posts. I realize that homeschool-related posts have kind of taken over. What was once a grief-related blog after our daughter passed away, then turned a baby book for the Sam-man and a sad attempt at one for Thunder, it now seems to be all school-related. Sooooo....if any of you would like to jump on over and see more homeschool posts, deals that I find, and more FREE printables, join me at....

This Crazy Homeschool Life of Ours

and

check out the Facebook page

Growing Up Too Fast...

So, as I sit here skimming my Facebook On This Day page, I just can't get over how fast my boys are growing up!

All About Reading...

So since I'm on a roll, I may as well make another post while I have the chance, ha! I still hope to go back and do an end of the year response to the post I made last year about the curriculum that we used -- or in some cases, didn't use. However, that'll have to wait. This particular topic is fresh on my mind so I'll put it out there.