Important Work

We paused after for a family photo.

 

But that day, the kids all helped pin rank on their dad.

 

It was serious business.

 

And complicated, all those bells and whistles.

 

And we reaffirm again that we all will serve, but the children were already eyeing the cakes by this point.

New Beginnings: Baptism

 

Elaine, Alida, and Benjamin

Baptised, Sunday, August 23, 2015

 

Memorial Day

We decorated.

And decorated.

And we were appropriately somber and learned as we went.

But, I still can't help looking at this picture and thinking about the Bad News Bears.

 

 

November: Veteran's Day

 Elaine: Gator of the Week

And our girl who comes home with warnings for talking too much, went and got all shy...

 Then Patric and I took a rare day off with a few of our neighborhood friends at the school.

 And listened to these kids put on a great annual tribute to the troops.

 The 11:11 moment of silence gets me every time.

 Lunch with the munchkins--the highlight.

And later that weekend, we returned from a road trip to Austin to this from our great neighbors.

(And ha, they got the message that when you stop to thank a man in uniform, take a look around because there is likely a disheveled woman standing around with Kleenex, hand-sanitizer, and a hoard of kids that should probably be thanked too.)

Our Wandering Weekend

 Saturday it rained as we rolled into San Antonio for the weekend.

It was dreary, and we wound up in the mall.

When we saw no line in the break in the rain with this most beautiful Santa on the river, we took it.

Alida was the only one that would go to him.

Nicholas asked if he couldn't just write Santa a letter?

And later, when I had snuck away to a few stores and came back, the kids, tired and kind of cooped up, were acting crazy at the play area in the mall.

Patric was on the phone.

Everything had just been off.

"My grandfather died today," he mouthed.

 And we felt appropriately heavy on our dreary day.

Later we went to dinner, and we had a nice meal.  We did. We had a nice meal with these folks who were tired from our wandering and lost sort of day.

 And we headed to the hotel, and we let the kids roam as we were quiet.

And it seemed like the right end to the day to be forced into quiet in the hotel with the kids tucked in.

And we sat quietly with our view and remembered grandpa with no housework to finish and no tasks overwhelming us. 

We will miss you Great-grandpa Stuber.

Update from Iraq

Sometimes, we're reminded that this is just sad business.

"Yea, just a bad day. We had machinegun round mis-seat a round and blow brass into one of our gunner's legs this morning so I have been working with that. The worse thing is that it was due to truck commander screwing up. So I have been up since untangling that. Found out LTC Kaki* was killed in 2006 yesterday from Tomberlin. That sucks. It been a long day and a half with another about 24 to go with end of month suspenses and getting the Article 15 compiled with legal to frag the truck commander. So no, I am in a pretty grim mood. I'll call later on."

*LTC Kaki was a Kurdish commander that Patric was close to during his 2004-2005 deployment to Iraq and the inspiration for the deployment mustache.

Veterans Day

"It's been my responsibility, my duty and very much my honor to serve as Commander in Chief of this nation's Armed Forces these past eight years. That is the most sacred, most important task of the Presidency. Since our nation's founding, the primary obligation of the national government has been the common defense of these United States. But as I have sought to perform this sacred task as best I could, I have done so with the knowledge that my role in this day-to-day-to-day effort, from sunrise to sunrise, every moment of every hour of every day of every year, is a glancing one compared to yours. ... But it's not just your fellow Americans who owe you a debt. No, I believe many more do, for I believe that military service in the Armed Forces of the United States is a profound form of service to all humankind. You stand engaged in an effort to keep America safe at home, to protect our allies and interests abroad, to keep the seas and the skies free of threat. Just as America stands as an example to the world of the inestimable benefits of freedom and democracy, so too an America with the capacity to project her power for the purpose of protecting and expanding freedom and democracy abroad benefits the suffering people of the world."

--Ronald Reagan