Ok, so as you all figured out, I did not make it back here on the 28th to type up an actual informational entry.  But, I'm back now (just a little over a week isn't too bad, right?) and will try to catch up on as much information about what has been going on, as I can in the time I have before dinner fixing has to be started!

I guess I will start with the oldest event that taken place since we got back from OH. Gee, I guess it is a good thing that it was our Wedding Anniversary that happened before my Birthday, or I would have had to say, no pun intended! LOL

Yes, DH and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary Back on the 20th of July. It really seems like we just got married a few months ago, and I don't say that in a bad way. Considering all that we have been through these past 4 years one would think that it would seem like we have been married forever, but it really does not. In fact I think I loose track of time so much the weeks just seem to fly by. I know what your thinking,  how can I do that with having children in schooll, but it does some how, I'm just not sure how or why. The only way I can remember how long we have been married, or how I'm reminded how long, is by how old Asher is. Asher turned 3 a few months back, so that means it had to be 4 years ago that DH and I got married. That is, unless there was some kind of immaculate conception that went on. That's because I was in OH and DH was in SC until the day before our wedding, and for nearly two months before that. (Just for the record, I'm not comparing myself to Mary and the Bible by an means, just a figure of speech.) But, Asher was born just 1 day after we had been married 9 mos. 

DH and I and I did get to celebrate our Anniversary in Peace and Quiet and without children. Although, we didn't get to celebrate it until a week and a half later, once the kids and I got back from OH, and there was a night that it worked out for us to go, before my Mom went back home to OH. It ended up being a really nice evening. We started out going to dinner at Red Lobster, of course our first choice would have been Olive Garden, but, since the city of Jacksonville does not have an Olive Garden, nor does any town/city  within a 2-2.5hr drive, we had to settle for the next best thing other than a steak house, pizza (which really would not have been so bad ) or chinese, and go to Red Lobster.  They do not take reservations, so when we got there it was about a 20 minute wait, and boy, was it good to go and wait and not have to worry about children like every other couple there seemed to be doing.  We didn't however get away from all the screaming and noise of children though, we got put right next to a large group of about 3 families and 4 screaming, not wanting to be sitting down, children.

Anyway, dinner was good, and I just couldn't eat it all. We had gotten an appetizer and I told DH, that  really I could probably just have eaten that and a salad or something, but I went ahead and ordered a dinner also, at his suggestion. What I didn't realize was not only did it come with all the shrimp dishes and pasta, but it also came with a salad and potato. I was stuffed to the rim and there still was food left and I didn't even get to eat the garlic and cheese biscuits the waiter brought!

After dinner we went to the Movies, and ended up watching Lady in the Water. It was a fairly decent movie, although I think they showed most of it on the advertisements on television, but the movie actually ended up being a little different then the way the made it out to be in the advertisements. After the movie we stopped by Sonic and got desert. DH got his Cherry Lime-aide, and then we shared one of their new Hot Fudge Brownie Blasts. And boy was it good, but quickly got to be a little too much. DH and I both figured there would be brownies on top and then the rest would just be soft serve ice cream. We were totally wrong about that! There was at least one, usually 2 or 3 little chunks of brownie in every bite, plus, they had blended the hot fudge (and alot of it) through the soft serve like a milkshake. It was rich, rich, rich!

The next event that has happened is I had a Birthday! So now, I'm officially sliding down the BACK SIDE OF 30, bypassed the 35 and now officially heading towards  that road to 40, and looking forward to it. Lets see in 5 years my oldest will be nearly a year older than I was when I gave birth to him. I wonder, will he finally grow-up and mature enough by then, and could I be a Grandma by age 40?  Five years from now I should have one child successfully out of school and hopefully in College or the Military(which at the looks of things right now would be the best thing for him). Another child will be half way in High School, and the other in Middle School, and the baby will be going into 3rd grade. Wow, what events to look forward too!

Ok, back to the present! The kids have officially been back in school for 7 whole days. There should be 8 days in the count, but due to lovely Tropical Storm Ernesto, school was cancelled last Friday. Every one seems to be doing well in there new classes to far. Tyler is realizing what homework really is, Joshua seems to be having a fairly lite semester so far, and Brianna is finding out the teacher she didn't want doesn't seem so bad after all. I will write more about school in the boys diaries and more about Brianna here later, and then there is the issue of Asher wanting to go to school.

Tropical Storm Ernesto: We here in Jacksonville fair pretty good with not too much damage other than some broken down tree's and some flooding that took a bit to go down, and just a bunch of limbs, branches, leaves and pinecone's to clean up from our yards. But, it could have been much worse, and we are Thankful it wasn't. There was wind, wind, and more wind, and rain, rain, and more rain, and then finally around 3:30 am the power lines or reactors or whatever had all they could take, and we lost power for about 5 hours, until around 9:30 am Friday. So, I guess the power issue and the combination of flooded roads, was the reasons for school being cancelled on Friday last week. Which really made for a nice long Labor Day weekend. But, not so good for the kids, because now there is one day they will have to make up and one day off that will be taken away from them for October that was scheduled as a day off. Here it is only the first Storm we have had, not even a Hurricane, and we already have to make up a school day. I don't see why we don't get inclimate weather days here like they do in OH. OH and other states get government granted, no make-up school days,  Snow days, why don't we get Hurricane days which the South Coast gets, as up North gets snow. It just doesn't seem right.

Now, if we have any more storms or hurricanes, which we are more than likely to have, Fran is currently heading right towards our coast, we will loose our day before ThanksGiving, and then after that starts our day at New Years.

WEll there you have it, a little rundown of what has been going on in my crazy life. I know it does not seem like much, but those are just the main events. We also have started back up playing baseball. The middle two children are playing on Fall baseball teams. Once again, there are two kids with practice at the same time and on the opposite sides of town, and only one me to get them there, because DH usually isn't home from work by the time they have to be there. It is a good thing that there was not enough kids for an older boys team or I would have been once again split three ways. The good thing is though, once games start there will be a night or two during the week that both kids play at the same time, but at least they are at the same complex playing and Asher and I will just have to run back and forth between the two fields.

Also I just finally did something for Myself. i guess first off I should explain that we recently started going back to attending the First Baptist Church that is right here outside the end of main road of the subdivision. We attended this church for the better half of a year when we first moved here, but just felt it wasn't right for us. It was so large and then there was the issue with Asher having to be in the service and not wanting to be quiet, but we couldn't keep him in the childcare during the service because they couldn't deal with the screaming from him not wanting to be away from us. We stayed as long as we did because they have a wonderful Youth Group and I felt since we hadn't found anywhere else yet, we may as well stay going there for the oldest to be involved in something positive until we did find another church we felt we belonged. And that we did, for a year and a half we went to another church across town and past the base, but once again it being so far away just made it not easy for us to be involved and we started feeling we didn't belong there either.

So, we have been back at First Baptist for a little over a month now and I'm feeling a sense of belonging. Especially since we know a few more faces now, and I recently signed up to do the Fall Women's Bible Study. I have been feeling I needed something to refresh my relationship with the Lord, and I felt this was what he was telling me to do. A couple Sunday's ago, after picking Asher up from childcare after the service I stopped at the table in the vestibule and took a form and filled it out to participate in the study, then I went out to the car and told DH I was dong it. He just looked at me and said Good! Not that he would have said anything negative regarding me going, but I think it surprised him that I was going to do it. I had been telling him I wanted to be involved in the church, that was the whole reason to come back to this one, so we could be close and be involved.

The Bible Study will serve two purposes. For me it will enrich my life, by better understanding the Lords word and strengthen my faith in him and my relationship with him. I have been feeling a little down, or overwhelmed in my daily life lately, and this is something I really need in order to organize things. I need to start purging, so to say, all of my things. I have so much stuff, things, feelings, and such, that I just need to get rid of and I need to just do some big soul searching and get rid of that stuff be it old belongings, kept items that I will never use again but have such sentimental memories, or whatever else. I need to help my children heal about their father and deal with their feelings and help them to understand the things they don't, and get rid of all the things that keep those bad memories hanging around. Not that all the memories before the past 4 or 5 years need to be gotten rid of, but there is just so much hatred that the 3 of us, Brianna was too young to remember, need to resolve. Things that we couldn't and can never change, but we can change our thinking and clean out those bad times in our heads. Not that I'm a mess of a person or an angry person or anything like that. Everyone I meet says what a sweet person I'm and what a good Mom I'm, but deep down I know there are things and stuff that is constantly trying to weigh me down and ever so slowly just eating away at me. I totally Love the Lord and know he and my faith in him, are the reason I'm where I'am today, but everyone needs a little encouragement and recharge every now and then, to keep you plugging away.

The second thing it will do,is give Asher some socialization with children his own age. Since the older children have started back to school, that is all Asher talks about, especially when we go by St. Anne's, the preschool he went to last year for a brief time and he totally hated. Regardless, he keeps saying when I go to my School, and when you ask him where that is, he always says St. Anne's. I tell him he wouldn't even have the same teacher, or be in the same room, or maybe not even have any of the same kids in with him, and he just says "SO!" I'm going to go to school."  With things kind of tight right now financially (since the ex decided to just stop paying for his 3 children back in March) we have decided it is just best that we do not try to scrape and send Asher to PreSchool right now. But the good news is I have found a playgroup to be involved in, along with a Program sponsored by United Way and Peers, that is free and once a week you can take your child to for up to 4 hrs, for the parent to go to appts or just have some time away, and now that I'am going to Bible study Asher gets that interaction also. Although the Bible Study is just one morning a week, that gives him a couple hrs with kids his age, and then on Sunday he gets another hour plus with some of the same kids and other his age in his Sunday school class.  And going to the Bible study has given the opportunity to meet some of the other Mommy's of the children Asher's age and now maybe we can get together for some play dates ourselves.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I need to document this so when I forget it will be written down somewhere to later on remind him. A couple of weeks ago, the week before school started. The older children's Grandfather came down from Virginia with his Fiance' and they took the kids to Emerald Isle and stayed in a Hotel and did some fun things. Anyway, while the other 3 kids were gone, DH decided he and I and Asher would make a trip down to Wilmington to get him Soda (we can only get what he likes down there in that market now) and we would go have lunch at Wild Wing Cafe (that was the first place he took me 5 yrs ago when we got to SC) which they just recently got in NC from down the Charleston, SC way. On the drive down to Wilmington, Asher was having his usual conversation with us about whatever he thought of or saw along the way. It was really cute, out of the blue, DH and I were talking and Asher came out with the question, "Daddy will you take me up in a plane so I can go up there in the sky and meet the clouds?" It was just so adorable and cute, really actually pretty smart too. He had been looking at the sky and the clouds and it just occured to him that planes fly up there in the clouds, that that would be a way for him to meet the clouds. How many 3 year olds ask to go meet the clouds!

Well, I know this entry has been going on and on, and I think I'am going to end there for now.  There of course is a hundred other things going on in our family and lives, as there is with any other family, but that is all I have to write about and time I have to write for now.

Thanks for checking in and hanging in there!

Until Next Time.......

God Bless,

Bridgett and Crew

Here are some pictures of the kids on the first of the the first week of school(I forgot the take the yearly first day picture, but since it was only one day before the next week started it was ok!) Sorry no picture of Asher, he of course was still in bed at this time!, at least that day anyway, or there would have had to of been a picture taken of him, he is a camera hog when he sees one his picture has to be taken and he has to see it.  I never realize this before until I put these two pictures together, but both the boys have shirts on about their sister! And of course it is real good.

Tyler says: My Sister Did it.                                 Joshua's says: Missing Sister and Dog, Reward for Dog