Absence makes the heart grow fonder...and ache.

Every once in a while I get an inspired idea. It's nice when these "inspired ideas" happen at Christmastime and also do not cost any money. So sit back and enjoy, if you'd like, my very, overly-long explanation.

My husband and I knew each other in high school. We went to the same church and our families were friends. Even though we were the same age I was better friends with his younger sister. Our little brothers were best friends. We were acquaintances who occasionally flirted with each other, harmlessly of course (as both of us dated other people throughout high school.) We never went on a date in high school. I did, however, find him rather charming and attractive and would have said "yes" had I ever been asked. So we graduated the same year, same high school and went our separate ways: I went to Brigham Young University in Utah and he left to play football for the Naval Academy in Maryland. We didn't really see much of each other at all until the summer after our sophomore years.
He was home for a couple of short weeks between Navy summer cruise and school and I happen to have come home unexpectedly for the summer because I came down with Mono. A few days before I was to return back to school for Fall semester, I got a random phone call from Clark. He was on his way home from Colorado with friends and he wanted to take me out. Random. Out of the blue. OK. We didn't set up an actual date and I dismissed the phone call as interesting and kind of strange.
Then a couple of days later I found myself sitting at a table with his Dad at a wedding reception at the church. His Dad was supposed to drive a couple of hours away to pick him up from his sister's house that afternoon in College Station. A mutual friend of our families was sitting at the table with us and encouraged me to surprise Clark and pick him up myself. This, again, was a very random thing for me to do. We weren't close friends by any means so I am still surprised that I went with it. But I did. When I showed up he was indeed surprised but happy to see me. We had a fun drive home chatting and joking.
That night he went out to a casual dinner with my family and then he and I, and my little brother, went to see a movie. He held my hand. He was begging me to stay a few extra days instead of leaving the next day to go back to Utah. I was very hesitant because I was worried about the cost of changing a ticket, and the commitment of staying to spend time with him if I decided it was not worth it. My older sister Amy happened to be home from Utah visiting also. (She is a fun, spontaneous risk taker.) While we were discussing staying, back and forth in the backseat, Amy, who had picked us up from the movie turned around and said "what would you say if your ticket was already changed?" There you go.
I stayed.
She may have very well been solely responsible for us getting married. We spent the entire week together. Everyday. We went horseback riding and exploring. We ate out and walked around and swam and talked. I kissed him first because he didn't want me to feel like he was rushing things. Not being an overly sappy person, I hesitate to admit that we were pretty sure of each other from that very first week. It was exclusive and I lost the interest in dating anyone else (not that there was a lot of that going on anyway, mind you.) Midshipmen at the Naval Academy cannot get married and once they begin their third year they are committed and cannot leave without great penalty.
Thus began our long distance relationship. We talked on the phone nearly every day. I would wait for that call. His schedule was pretty much dictated to him so I waited patiently for him to make his way to the basement of his barracks.
He would sit for hours on the payphone. In the rare occasion that a desk chair became available, left behind by another Mid, I would hear him dragging it across the tile...that sound. It makes me happy. If I wanted to call him it meant phoning their central office and sending a message up to his room to call me. We had a funny little doodle-sketch thing. One night I made the little Mid answering the phones in the office draw it. I talked him through it and then asked him to deliver the message to Clark's room.
We wrote letters. Lots of letters, and notes, and e mails. E mail wasn't the sole means of communication as it is now. I love our letters. He drew me pictures, I sent him a poem. We were cheesy and sappy and in love.
Giddy and silly with love.
We continued this dating, with a visit every other month or so to each other. We dated long distance for a year and then got engaged on one of my visits to Annapolis. I went out for their big "Ring Dance" where the Junior year Mids ceremoniously receive their class ring.
He proposed to me that morning before the dance, in New York City, on top of the Empire State Building. Really. It was pretty cool. We like to joke that we were on top of the world....
However, we still had an entire year left before he could even get married. So we waited some more.
I went back to BYU. He continued on. I graduated a semester early and decided to move out to Annapolis. You know, to actually live near each other for a while before getting hitched forever. I got a job at a temp agency that employed me at the local community college. I did random jobs for the purchasing department while I waited to get married. The job was very exciting (but not really.) I would leave work and drive home over the beautiful bridge that has a great view of the Naval Academy. I would think about Clark and then I would drive on the yard and park outside his window and throw rocks to see if he was there. I got to be a pretty decent shot to his third story window. He had limited time to visit. They weren't allowed to leave the yard whenever they wanted. We spent as much time together as we could but we obeyed all of our rules. He never slept over at my apartment and we were happy. Very happy. Though all the liberty he got from school still wasn't enough.
Finally he graduated. It was a very very happy day. I was proud, really proud of him. And I was excited because it meant after two years of waiting, I only had one week left.

The first year and a half was good, busy but good. We were together, finally. He continued schooling as he worked through the Navy's Nuclear training pipeline. Then he was assigned to his first boat and we knew separation was coming. We had done it before but there was no doubt we were dreading doing it again. We had a daughter. It was hard. We were a long distance relationship. Again. And again.
We went from one daughter, to two. And still more separations. More letters. More e mails. More waiting for those rare phone calls. On his first boat assignment his schedule was two and a half months gone, three months home...for two years. Then we did a shore tour with a "desk job" for two years in Texas. We thought it was going to be a cake walk, a break, time together. But more stuff happened and we were busier than ever. We had another baby, lots of family, crazy-busy church assignments, and an MBA program by night. He studied a lot, he took a business trip or two, his MBA program went to China. More e mails. More phone calls.
We came to another sea duty. He was assigned to a new boat. One that does countless deployments of varying lengths and then a sixth month one, every 18 months. We've already done one of those, last year. It was a long time...that is a very long paper chain.
Here we are nearly 11 years after our first date and almost 9 years of marriage and it is still sometimes a long distance relationship. More e mails. More letters. Rare phone calls. We have yet another little lady to miss him and know that he is not here where he should be.
I was talking recently to a good friend who knows exactly what it feels like. And we both agree that it doesn't feel right. They should be here. With us. With their families. But they are not... and the strangest part about it is that we are OK with why. We are happy and proud and patriotic...but we miss our men. My heart aches when he leaves, even if for a day, or a week, or a month. At the beginning of our family I suppose that I needed and missed the help when he was gone. Now, more than ever, it's the companionship. I am lonely without him no matter how many people surround me. My daughters are a comfort. They are my joy, but his absence weighs on my joy.
My intent on writing this post was simply to share what I did for Clark for Christmas. Really it was for both of us. For 11 years I have saved our written correspondence in a big box. I finally organized it and compiled it into notebooks that we could look at. My, the things I remembered while reading these again and putting the gift together. Many nights I cried or laughed while I recalled what life has been like. A timeline. Changes. And not so many changes. Ironically enough I didn't even have to hide my project from him. He was gone. I know that I am missing many in between but the first letter in the notebook is from the week following our first date and it ends with e mails from his most recent deployment just before Christmas. It is a treasure. Truly a treasure. We wouldn't have these treasures were it not for our times of separation. It is a way to have him with me, whenever I want. It is beautiful especially in those times of separation. But nothing beats having him right here, right now, by my side. Nothing.
Was that a long enough explanation?

Sickies of the world unite!

I have read too many blogs in the past week of illness. It is time for the sickies of this infected world to unite!! We have had so many hacking, congested coughs this week that when all the kids are finally settled into bed at night all I can smell is Mentholatum fumes wafting through the house and the soft hum of the humidifier lulling us off into an interrupted night of sleep...then the coughing starts and it suddenly sounds like the Tuberculosis wing of a hospital....minus the bloody handkerchiefs. The fevers come and go enough that at night they are miserable but by day they are full of energy and pounce. Haley was apparently on death's door last night but cheerily jumped out of bed this morning anxious to go to school and not miss out on "crazy hair day" at the start of Spirit week. (Tomorrow is fairy tale/Star Wars day...no doubt trying to accommodate a wider choice selection for the young gents in the school...What we found amusing was the argument over what Star Wars character they were going to be seeing as how that is all they have been watching for about 3 weeks now. "I wanna be Princess Leia with buns!" "I get to be Padme....no! Queen Amidala with the white face!!"....On a side note, Clark and I were laughing to ourselves on Saturday. We were sitting in the office working on things and the girls were playing and doing each other's hair in the bathroom when suddenly they went from singing Barbie and the Diamond Castle to Darth Vader's death march...dum dum dum, da da dum, da da-dum...how sweet.
Was that ALL in parenthesis? Forgive me while I close that very long afterthought .)
Anyway, I have opened up the windows to freeze out the germs and let in fresh air while dousing the house and everything that little hands touch with this little gem in life that allows me to sleep at night knowing that infectious germs have met their end (I don't really want to know if it works, I just like the comfort of believing that it does an absolutely thorough job.) I keep all of my disinfecting products in the "Clorox Shrine" section of my cleaning cupboard. I light a candle and choose my weapon of disinfection for the disease of the day. We have been pushing fluids and vitamin C and we will prevail. Our hands might just shrivel up and fall off due to the amount of antibacterial gel applied 100x's a day. I take comfort in knowing that both of my daughter's teachers have antibacterial gel bottles bigger than your head sitting right outside of their classrooms and strategically placed around the desks. I will spare you the nagging quandary that is a parent's decision to send a child to school or keep them home. What are the rules? A hacking cough? A fever? a child with puppy dog eyes and a plea that could melt Darth Vader's heart? (goin' with the theme here...) I mean, if I let them stay home every time they begged me on their knees I would be arrested by the truancy officer faster than you can say home school. And then I would have to home school them. And by home school I mean a lot of Wii and Disney Channel interspersed with reading selections from Wikepedia. Trust me, the Scharman home school would get you to adulthood only to land you a job as some kind of professional gamer or talk show host....or better yet, they wouldn't ever get a job and live at home forever and isn't that really the point of them learning stuff?...to learn and grow and get an education, and then a higher one so that they will eventually move out?.....but I digress, where was I?
I keep imagining the sequence from the Scrubs episode of "My Cabbage" where they show how germs spread with green highlighter...it's disturbing. (Go ahead and you tube it, it's funny though only slightly inappropriate at times...what Scrubs episode isn't?)
So it's time to spray the house again...faucets, door knobs, light switches, chairs, toys...I'll spray anything that stands still...maybe for Family Home Evening tonight we'll do Clorox-Anywhere-Spray-Baths. A nice antibacterial "dip", if you will.
So America, infuse yourselves with Vitamin C, Echinacea or Zinc...whatever floats your boat to annihilates those germs....and then don't touch us and I'll keep drilling my children with the mantra "hands out of eyes, nose, mouth...hands out of eyes, nose, mouth..." Good luck, may the force by with you.

This is as about as "crazy" as we get at 7:30 in the morning...on the other hand, I could have just let them wake up and put a bow in it...that's pretty crazy sometimes too.
**Disclaimer: Lest you read this and not pick up on the heavy layer of sarcasm...I love my kids. I find them charming. In fact, I like to ask them regularly to stop growing and live with me forever so that they can sit on my lap and read actual books until our eyes pop right out of our smart little heads. And I really do have a Clorox shrine...but does it really have candles? Of course not, most cleaning products are flammable, doy.

I like my baby

She is cute and I like her. She is old. And sometimes she wears leg warmers because, why not? Chubby cheeks, chubby legs, crinkly eyes and a wide, frog smile.

Blogger's elbow.

When I sit down to read blogs I always end up sitting in the same position. After many years of doing so, I have developed a most unpleasant sensation in my left elbow (freeing up my right hand to scroll and click.) It's kind of a bony, uncomfortable nerve-tingly sensation and it doesn't feel good. So this week I finally diagnosed my own problem as "Blogger's Elbow". (I thought the pictures above were a lovely play-by-play illustration of my problem.)
Does that ever happen to you?
Do you think I could sue blogger?
I need to go ice it...maybe I'll step outside and stick my arm in our fresh 6 inches of snow from yesterday.
*Our weeks continue to slide by with little action, in case you couldn't tell. I think today we are going sledding in honor of Martin Luther King. Maybe I'll take the camera.

Today's game...

Harmonizing with my children's whining in slightly louder volume until they
A) stop
B) laugh
C) stomp out of the room saying "Moooommmm!"

This week had better pick up soon...but it's not looking good with impending snow storm in the forecast and the possibility of another snow day tomorrow. I'm fresh out of rice krispy treats.

.

In our last house, the nursery had a peep hole...looking in. I miss that. It was pretty cool.
My day hasn't really picked up...in case you couldn't tell.

?

Why is it that January, the beginning of a new year is so invigorating and exciting...but Mondays, the beginning of a new week, can be such a drag?
That is my question today.

Chilly Willy

Today we thought it would be fun....

to keep the kids home from school
use no electricity
take the fridge and freezer food on a little field trip to the back porch (where they experience what it would be like to NOT live in a kitchen)

coat my car in a bubble of ice thus rendering us immobile (and turning our driveway into an ice skating arena)attempt to keep a fire going ALL day to warm a "way too small" area...(I think we stayed in a 15 foot diameter of each other all day long)

and set up a tent in the living room allowing the girls to fill it with as much "stuff" as possible.

But the ice was real pretty-like. And I enjoyed kicking the thick layer of ice off the trampoline from underneath on one of my many many trips to the wood pile.
We asked probably a dozen people during the summer about what we could expect for winter weather...they were all WAY off.

2008 Revisited

I like to look back.
I love memories.
I love remembering (or in many cases being reminded as my memory fails me more and more) about things that happened, places I've been, people I've met, things I've done and not done and how I have changed and stayed the same. I love to see how I have learned or progressed and can appreciate even those things that have not changed or progressed...yet. There is so much potential learning in looking back. I find that sometimes the most gratifying lessons that I glean are from taking a good look at myself. I wrote myself a pretty little note that I had stuck in my calendar all year. The situation that I found myself in January of this year called for action, a goal, an inspirational thought to carry me to the end of the present challenge. I have found that it not only carried me through that deployment/pregnancy but has served me pretty well throughout the entire year. It read: "Rise up. Overcome. Learn. Nothing shall be lost but all can be gained. It is what we are intended to do."
So in the past year that has seemed to fly by and taken a million years at the same time....2008.

January
The first part of 2008 was rough. We started our year out in Utah where we had gone to live with my parents in October for some extra help during pregnancy #4 and Clark's deployment (I'm not sure what number we are up to for that.) By January we were 4 months into the separation, 7 months pregnant and very tired...but we were surrounded by awesome family, lots of moral, emotional and physical support, and all the delicious food you could handle. This is from our Christmas card last year.And this is when we voted Mo off the island and made her stand outside of her own house that had been taken over by three energetic little girls and one bossy yet tired Mom.

February
In February my parents went on a trip to Israel so I somehow convinced my pregnant sister to come up from Las Vegas to sleep in the same bed with me so I wouldn't be so afraid of the dark. (We like to compare pointy stomachs.) Mia wrapped up all of her binkies and mailed them to Baby Shamu. We played with cousins and all three girls got strep throat (not from the cousins.) We endured lots more snow, laid around in my black velour jogging suit, grew a baby and finally welcomed Clark home for a few short visits before we could join him back in Connecticut.


March
In March our home in Texas finally sold after an entire year on the market--it would have been more of a relief if closing costs didn't require an arm, a leg and our unborn child. Really most of March was spent getting bigger, and bigger causing semi-permanent nerve damage in my right hand. I couldn't feel my finger tips for nearly 4 months. My blog seriously suffered from this unfortunate loss of typing capabilities...just kidding, I totally know where my priorities are. I absolutely love this shirt but wearing it now would just make people uncomfortable.
We enjoyed Easter, adored being with our cousins and ate ham. Papa was there with notebook and pen in hand to make sure all the eggs were found. Mia took one little trip to the ER. *See March's entries to re-acquaint yourself with the rules regarding small children and treadmills. Just for the record, her lapse of judgment, not mine.April

April was, of course, the month we had been waiting for for nine months. Clark came back to UT for a visit that was supposed to welcome a baby. One failed induction and one week later, she finally graced us with her presence. (In the meanwhile, Clark got to miss a little underway to stay that week until they could try inducing again....I love this picture because it pretty much sums up what I did nearly every night of my six months there...if you look close enough, you can even see my swollen feet no doubt from all the hard work of being a mother...I'm sure it has nothing to do with the popcorn that my Mom and I ate by the case-fulls...or the unlimited supply of soda in the fridge downstairs.) This is another favorite picture because it's also what we did for six months...love and be loved by my parents. I won't ever be able to express my gratitude for what they provided for us...a loving, comfortable home with many hands to ease my burdens. What a special time for us, really and truly....
Where was I? Oh yeah, we had a baby in April...this could be a long post indeed.
I was lucky to have two of my sisters and my Mom there at the delivery. They fed me ice, rubbed my back, applied long lasting lip color and made wincing noises when they felt sorry for me. Alone with your husband is special for giving birth, but on two occasions now we have loved our little cheering squad of attending angels.

I felt this event deserved a few pictures. And suddenly we were a family of six...until Clark left the day I came home from the hospital. We decided to wait until Hazel was old enough to make the trip and allow Haley to finish up the school year (to avoid a second switch in one year.) So we settled back into my parents house for another month or so. They helped me ease into juggling four kids. The baby was skinny and the healing was rough. But they continued to ease our transition. My Dad even retired to be around more...just kidding. He did retire but I think it was to eat more popcorn. We even pretended that Spring was here by eating dinner on the porch in April...remember that? Good times, good times.

May
Abby turned 5, Haley finished school, we blessed baby girl #4 and finally headed back to Connecticut to rejoin our missing husband/father. But that meant driving away and saying goodbye to our home and family for the last 6 months. Were there tears? Oh yes. That was a busy month of moving in (though Clark had done most of the work before we even got there, bless him.) And dear Mother in law made the drive from UT to CT in a car. with three little girls. lots of potty stops. lots of public restrooms. and helped unpack so that I could fly in comfort. through Houston. to sleep in her house while she was doing my Motherly duties elsewhere. and I ate Los Cucos. then flew in comfort once more to CT. She must really love us. a lot. And we really love her. a lot. What?! You want more details! OK. My first impression of Connecticut happened to be me getting off a plane with a newborn, finding a new car that I had never seen before in a wet parking lot (the number of which my husband had forgotten) getting lost on the way home in the pitch black forested streets of rural New England with a cell phone that decided to die right at that moment. Did I mention that I was driving to a house that I had never before seen or been to? I had no map and the newborn was crying with hunger. I literally made it there on a prayer, a very frantic prayer. But then things got totally better. Oh yeah, also this month: Abby graduated from preschool, ate salmon and Haley had a boy at school tell her that she was an alien and he had a crush on her all in the same sentence. And I may or may not have tried to drink Los Cucos green sauce up through a straw. (I promised you all the highlights, didn't I?)


June
Clark and I celebrated 8 years, I made a really pathetic cake and we took lots of kissing pictures.Then we played. Sometimes we did worksheets so their brains didn't totally turn to mush. And sometimes I took pictures of their increasingly dramatic and entertaining fits.
Hazel laughed, we went to the zoo and played on the trampoline. Also, we did some landscaping, Haley got taller, we celebrated Father's Day and we got rid of our barbeque grill after a mouse decided to have babies in it.









July
Are we there yet?
We celebrated Independence Day on the mall in Washington, D.C. with Spencer and Sho (my babiest brother and his wife whom we adore, doesn't everybody?) Hazel laughed some more, I got a wicked big kidney stone, we took a family picture (photoshop gave Clark an extra chin) and Clark tried to eat the baby.
Also, we went to the beach. a lot.
And oh heavens! Can't forget that Clark's little sis Sadie came for a visit. We did the beach, New York, church history sites, Hill Cumorah pagaent, Niagra Falls, Six Flags and lots of ice cream. We didn't want her to leave. Come back. No really, come back.



August
I turned 30 and Haley turned 7. We went to a family reunion in Utah and had a blast with the fam. They are pretty awesome. Clark was able to come for a few minutes before the boat decided they just couldn't live without him. He is pretty special. Oh, and Mia got four stitches.
September
The kids started school, Mia turned 3 (she got sparkly shoes that didn't come off her feet for 2 months), Clark turned 31 (doesn't he look happy to be 31?) and my two best friends from high school came to visit. It made me very happy indeed. Then fall crept in and CT was on fire with color.
Either September was boring or I am tired of this post.

October
Spencer and Sho came for a visit. They took super hero pictures. The girls were all super heroes for Halloween. They were cute even though they ended up looking a lot like Nacho Libre. I sewed so much that my sewing machine isn't speaking to me right now. We also picked some stuff.











November
Aaah November. I cleaned the house and had lots of guests for Thanksgiving. It was wonderful.









We got a Christmas tree. Can I just leave November at that? It was nice.






December
That brings us to the end. We finished off our year with a trip to Texas for a wedding and wonderful Christmas with the Scharman clan. It was everything it should have been (that's good!) The girls have been earning money for a Wii for about two months and they finally made their goal. So when we got back from Texas we equipped ourselves with all the necessaries and spent our last week of vacation laying around in our pajamas, eating whenever we wanted to, playing in the snow, and perfecting our golf swings in the living room. Now it's back to school and the Wii in moderation lest we all begin the new year thinking that Abby can really bowl a 160 and I can beat Clark in a boxing match. It's been a truly happy year of lessons learned.


Happy 2009! I need a nap.