Army basic wasn’t finished, but my love and pride are endless. ❤️

Little Napoleon let the walkers go with car riders again today. Badger said that they got in such a hurry they forgot to call day care. I'm telling you, the man is dead set on proving me wrong. He's bound & determined to prove that walkers have always been dismissed at 3:05 PM, come hell or high water. I find it rather amusing.  I probably should have worn a watch and took a picture of the time, each time Badger came out of the building. I could have proved that the time varied greatly day by day, but I didn't realize there would come a time when I needed proof of time. At least my waiting buddies are benefiting from this. I'm sure they're enjoying having their kids pop out at a reasonable time lately. Tutoring went well today. CA had a doctor's appt. after school so it was late again, but I had Badger practice her handwriting while we waited, and then we took the dogs for a walk, so I think she was more able to focus today. She got a little rest from work and got some energy worked off. CA is working on having her memorize her times table, and she got the 6's memorized today. In 5th grade, she probably should already have these memorized, but she misses a lot of school and when they get behind, they can't catch up. The teachers simply don't have the time to make sure each student is up with the rest of the class. The whole reason I'm having her tutored is that she is behind & I can tell she's behind, but the school isn't wanting to take any measures to see that she gets caught up.  Someone broke into the Baptist Church in front of our school, they stole the communion cups, stole food and did over $1000 worth of damage to the church. The sheriff has been cruising our street since Tuesday. Every time you look out he's driving up the hill or sitting at the corner, lurking like a buzzard. Heron & CA said he was even parked at our light pole and walking up and down our little path that we've got carved out of part of the farmer's field when they came home today. He's been questioning every single teen or young man that's like in their early 20s that he finds walking or sitting around our little town. Heron said that CA left her computer at a friend's house so they stopped to pick it up on the way home-I'm thinking the guy lives the next street over from us-and the sheriff was questioning him and seeing that they were there also, he just questioned them too.  I'm not sure if it's even legal for a police officer to question a 16-year-old without a parent present. I know where Heron was, or at least where he said he was:he was supposed to be at work when it happened. If needed & I have my day right, we have a witness to say where he was. Cowboy doesn't like the situation because that church is where Heron & Big J likes to skateboard. All the skate board crowd gathers to skate their parking lot. I know Heron wouldn't break into a church, we raised him right, but sometimes it's guilt by association, you know?  I haven't heard from Raven in two days now. I'm worried.  I had hoped we would get that famous 2-second phone call saying that “hey ma meet me at the airport tomorrow” but no.  I'm sure he's fine, but I still worry. Edit: I got the call!! He had to call from a pay phone because their cell's had been confiscated because some of the guys were taking pictures and sending them home (and probably to Facebook.) But anyway he'll be home Tuesday He doesn't know how or when yet, but he'll definitely be home on Tuesday. I guess I'm glad this part of our lives is over, and we can move on. I'm almost ashamed to admit I wasn't sure who I was talking to. It was a pay phone, who gets calls from pay phones these days? I thought maybe it was Raven, but then it didn't sound right after I talked to him a couple seconds, so I said “hang on, who are you wanting to talk to ?: And in this hesitant little tone he goes" Jane?” I said, “are you my Raven?” “Of course I am” Well excuse the heck out of me kiddo, but you sound funny  &  it was a pay phone. Now tomorrow I'll have to turn Badger's room back into Raven's and find the boy a cot. I wish we had had a crystal ball back when we bought this house & could have seen the future, I would have passed it on up and gone for a bigger house. God has a wicked sense of humor sometimes. We thought we were done with 3-God thought we'd be done with 4. He just didn't tell us that in advance, and we bought a too small house. Oh, well, we make do. You learn a lot of ways to creatively fit in more people than the house was built for, and you lose a bit of privacy but no biggie. I wouldn't trade our “Christmas Surprise ” for all the mansions in the world. Being given one more chance to mother again, after the boys had got old enough they weren't much for mothering, is worth it all.  It's that time of the year thoughts turn to pumpkin.  I love pumpkin anything.  My favorite thing is my mamma's fried punkin. I haven't had any of that in years. So when I saw this new tea today, I had to try it. I'm disappointed in it. It's good, but to me, it doesn't taste anything like pumpkin. Badger said it doesn't really even have a taste. Heron said he couldn't taste pumpkin in it, but he really couldn't describe what it did taste like. I definitely taste cinnamon in there, but to be quite honest, it's beyond description. Let's just say it's not pumpkin and just leave it at that. Mind you, it's not nasty it's got a good flavor, it's just not a describable flavor. I'll tell you something I've been craving for 10 years now & still haven't found any of. When I was pregnant with Badger, my niece worked at Krispy Kreme, and I'm almost positive it was KK not DD, and she brought us the day's left overs-something like 48 doughnuts.  One of those was a pumpkin crème filled doughnut.  For the last 10 years, come fall I've hit up every darn doughnut shop I can find to see if I can find that elusive pumpkin doughnut, and I'm about to the point where I say it was a pregnancy induced hallucination. Oh, I find plenty of pumpkin doughnuts, but none of them are crème filled. They're like a cake doughnut. I even checked KK's website out and all they have is the cake type doughnut, so I must have just been imagining it.  I had such bad morning, noon & night sickness with Badger all I got was a bite of the thing before puking my heels up and let me tell ya, doughnuts don't last in this house. You try having 4 males around. They suck up food like a Hoover vacuum. I think I'm just looking for a unicorn, though.