Passin Time in Fiji

It's been the regular old holiday madness around here lately!   Before the holidays, Tricia and her kids came over for some holiday crafts and treats - an annual tradition for our family.   It was fun!  All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth!  (and loads of sweets!) the final creation Mere and the girls had fun hanging together this week too.  Lots of down time at home equates to selfies galore.   I also had a Christmas Eve cup of Christmas cheer with my girlfriends from home.   Who knew you could Facebook video conference with so many people at once!   Holly wants everyone to have a Holly Jolly Christmas season!  She's so cute.  We are falling hard for this one! Christmas Eve jammies - courtesy of Bebe- love this tradition Presents all wrapped and ready for the morning- Finish time- 1:30 a.m.  Yikes! Especially when this was the wake up time so I could ta...

It's that crazy time before the holidays when life feels so busy.   It's nice here, but I'm also feeling homesick.  It's hard to muster up my Christmas spirit in the sweltering heat/non-stop rain storms.   I SO love this time of year- the music, the lights, the kids' excitement...but I'm missing my peeps too.    Mere came the day after Anne left.   The first day she was here we ran into Santa at the mall! Yay - no searching all over town like last year.    They asked me why Santa had brown skin and I said, "Well, maybe Santa changes his color every where he goes according to the culture he is in.  No one really knows what Santa looks like for sure."   They seemed ok with that answer.  I keep waiting on Andie to ask the real real truth....but she hasn't yet.  Mere is pleased she is so comfortable with the escalator!  We went to a fun embassy Christmas party where we played the white elepha...

Check this out! Mom is published! Just in case you can't read it all, here's the story itself! When I was in high school, I never ever considered how I would feel, what I would think about, and certainly not how I would look when the 50th reunion of my class came along. It simply never reached the edge of my conscience. Kids don’t think about things like this. Kids don’t contemplate what it will be like to be semi-old. And frankly, life is busy enough that when you have become an adult, you don’t contemplate the looming retirement, or the friends you haven’t seen since you moved away. We are too busy living our lives. Caring for our loved ones. Earning a living. And then one day you open your mailbox and find an invitation to your class reunion. The class reunion for the 50th anniversary of your high school graduation. 50th! The first thing out of your mouth might be “Oh my God!!” You will definitely say “50th??!!” How can that possibly be? You wonder if it’...

We said goodbye to Amma/Anne/Warren's mom yesterday.   It was harder than I expected it to be.  She is so lovely.   She's easy to have around so nice to be with.   It was great for the girls (and me and Warren too) to spend so much one on one time with her.  (I am pretty sure she won't want to play another game of Uno or Go Fish for a long time).    I cannot believe it will be a year until we see her or any of our stateside family or friends again.  It just seems too long.   We all miss her. After she left, we had a rainy day inside and then finally right before bed, the girls got outside to swim.  Andie accidentally hit her head on the side of the pool and now she has glue stitches.    She was super brave at the hospital and I was surprisingly calm throughout all of it.  I am however very grateful that Warren was home!   While she may not like the scar or the swelling, right now she is quite happy with the ...

Here is my overdue PSA for any of you who get ANY sun exposure.  A few months ago Warren noticed a weird dry patch on his back.  I would have never noticed this patch.   It was barely recognizable.  It stayed for a long time so he decided to check it out at the doctor.   The doctor took one look and said that it looks like a BCC (Basal Cell Carcinoma) - skin cancer.   Luckily this isn't serious if it is caught early so we were not too worried.   Turns out a few days later he got medically evacuated to Singapore to have a biopsy and possible removal.   Well, after the biopsy they figured it out that it was actually cancer and he got the spot removed.   He now has this 3 inch scar on his back - which has healed nicely.  At first I couldn't handle even looking at it....but now it just looks like a normal scar. Warren has not spent an abnormal amount of time in the sun and he almost always swims with a swim shirt, but he does have fair ski...

To begin, look at where I’m finally sitting down with a quick 30 minutes to myself.    Can’t imagine a better place to sit and write about life.   current view   It’s been so long since I wrote.    We’ve been very busy!    First of all, school’s out for summer!    But before we got into our holidays, we had to say the toughest goodbye yet.   I’ve been pre-grieving this goodbye for so long…..but it didn’t really make it any easier.     It actually felt like the longest goodbye ever.     After we got back to Lelluvia, we had the Robertson’s over for a goodbye dinner and Holly hand-off.   (I mentioned before that we now have their 14 year old Staffie as she is too old to make the trip.   We are already falling in love and know that when her time on Earth ends it will be difficult for us as well).    Lainie says goodbye to Holly Monday night I had ...