The Life and Times of the Greenes

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all my friends and family! Tomorrow is our families 'first' Thanksgiving, complete with a ham dinner and chocolate moose pie. In November we go with the traditional American Thanksgiving fare and have a lovely Turkey dinner.

I am Thankful for so much this year.

My children are all healthy.

My husband is not out to sea for this mission AND we can see the retirement 'light at the end of the tunnel' light. Nine and a half months....that's it. And then after 20 years of service to his country, the love of my life starts a new adventure. I have no doubts he will embark on something equally fun and exciting!

I am Thankful for having a truly deep relationship with God. It's taken a lot of years to get back with my walk with God and it feels nice to feel his power in my life.

I am thankful that we no longer have stress or grief over Shelby. Don't get me wrong. Mary is still a raging nut job. She has gotten progressively worse over the years, but we no longer allow her to bring stress into our home and it's nice to have finally gotten to this point.

I am thankful that in this economy, Mark and I both have jobs (at least he has one for another nine and a half months! lol)...

I am thankful that I am married to a man who loves me unconditionally. No questions asked. He just loves me. And I love him. He is good for me...and I am good for him. And I still find him the most sexy man alive! :)

I am thankful for my friends. I have surrounded myself with the most amazing group of women and I am truly blessed to have them in my life.

I am thankful. Just that...Thankful. And I never take any of it for granted.

Hugs to all,

Jaye

Saturday, October 10, 2009

K-Tel

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about the oddest things! Last night was a prime example. For whatever reason I started remembering old 'K-Tel' records commercials. For those of you reading this who are thinking 'records?' I mean VINYL music disks! Yes...I am old enough to have been around for them. In fact I have a whole BOX of them in our shed...most of the artists are dead now...I have Elvis...Sonny and Cher...yah..I am THAT old! ;)
Anywho...the one commercial I remembered in particular was the one when K-Tel came out with this nifty contraption you could put your records into..sort of like little slots..then all you had to do was slowly pull the first one towards you and all the others would slowly flip so you could go through your records easier to select which one you wanted to hear. My father was a 'gadget' NUT. We owned them all. The blitz hacker (I kid you not, that was it's name!), potatoe fry cutters...you name it we had it. He was like a man possessed when it came to gadgets. And so...we were one of the first families I knew who had the K-Tel record storage/flipper thingy...in fact, we actually had TWO! Yes..TWO. We rocked! Literally! :)

Hugs to all,
Jaye

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Thats my BB yo!

So I haven't blogged about the whole 'Jon and Kate plus 8' saga simply because I don't think the world needs any more opinions on the whole thing...until TODAY. There was an interview posted on the internet by TMZ (think people magazine gone scummy but on live video!) showing Jon Gosselin outside some business or other in New York City. The reporters (and I use that term loosely) asked him if he had plans to spend his day with the twins tomorrow as it was their birthday and what his plans were. He said he will be spending the day with ALL the kids, when asked what he wanted to do to celebrate the twins birthday he said 'I'll get them a cake or something' (uh..their bday is TOMORROW...shouldn't he have this a little more thought out? But I digress!). Then he says 'I just got an email from Kate and she doesn't want to see me'. He then pulls out his blackberry and starts looking for this email. One of the camera men starts to film the blackberry screen and Jon pulls back and ......and I kid you not...says (keep in mind this is a WHITE KOREAN GUY) 'this is MY bb yo!'. Uh.........SERIOUSLY? BB YO? He did NOT just say that?

I get that they are going through a divorce and it's going to be contentious. There is a lot of money involved both earned and potential. There are going to be the usual custody things to sort out...who gets what holiday etc etc. Then there is the whole other side of it, in that Kate and Jon really hate each other...Jon is out with exceedingly younger women and not hiding it....and I really GET all of it..I do...But TURNING GANGSTA????? Really Jon? You have 8 kids....going through a high profile divorce..and you think being all 'cool and gangsta' is going to get you far?

sigh...see? This is why I don't blog about them. They are both Stupid. Capitol S. Selfish...another S word.

Hugs to all,
Jaye

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Colds.......Advent calendars...and coffee

Ben is home today sick with a cold. He has no fever, but I wanted him to stay home and just 'rest' so that instead of one missed day today, he doesn't have to be home ALL next week because he pushed himself while he was tired and run down. He is thoroughly enjoying laying on my bed watching movies and tv and doing crafts.....oh to be 8 again!

Every year I buy advent calendars for everyone in the family. I usually buy them at the END of Christmas one year, to be used the following year...after all, they only have the dates on them, not the DAYS and chocolate doesn't go bad, which means I end up with advent calendars for everyone that cost me 49 cents each...yup..49 cents..Anywho...last year, I found these 3d houses that have chocolates in various doors and windows etc of the house. Kewl! And as they were marked down to 1.49 from 8.99 I was stoked! So they sit in my closet waiting for December first to arrive...then I found these WAYYYY cool advent calendars while I was shopping at Playmobil.com. Each day there is a piece to a playset (playmobil is like lego only BETTER!) so that by Christmas eve, the child has one complete playset! Soooooo...I spent 15 BUCKS (yah..not near 49cents right?) and bought Paige the woodland creatures set and Ben the Knights set. They should love them as each day in December they will be able to open a small gift and then have a complete toy to play with by Christmas eve! I also bought each one an additional 'extras' pack (an animal family for Paige, an extra knight with weapons for Ben) to put in their stocking..after all, Santa SO knows what they are up to! :)

Coffee dates...the adult version of 'playdates'! I love them! It gives me a chance to connect with a friend over a cup of something yummy and maybe a snack to boot! Recently, I have reconnected with a woman who's husband used to be on the Alabama with Mark. We didn't have much in common with them other than the guys were in the same division (sonar techs in same duty rotation). We'd see each other at birthday parties or boat functions. While we weren't mortal enemies or anything, we certainly weren't 'freinds'. Flash forward three years. She is now an Ombudsman for her husbands new command as am I for Marks. Our kids are older and into the same things. And for whatever reason (cosmic karma??) we reconnected last month and OMG. She is wonderful...and she gushes about me! I have found a new friend whom I adore! We have LOTS in comman and have the same warped sense of humor! So we've been having 'playdates' once a week and thoroughly enjoying them! I was able to gripe to her a few weeks ago about how my entire command support team ditched me to do other things, and therefore I didn't go to the Navy's annual Ombudsman Appreciation Dinner as I didnt' want to go alone. What I DID do that night was to attend a hastily thrown together dinner that the wives organized as they too were 'dumped' by our command support team. This was SO wrong of our team to do, but they did it and in the process snubbed alot of people. While I COULD have gone to the formal dinner and sat with my new friend (aptly named Joy!) and her husband, I felt my place was at the wives dinner supporting THEM as the guys are gone AGAIN. Anyways..when I showed up to the dinner, ,there was a GORGEOUS bouquet of flowers waiting for me from Joy! She'd snuck in ahead of me (on her way to the formal dinner) and left me flowers with a card that said 'she was so proud to serve with someone who serves for the right reasons and not for the glory'. I was sooo touched! So this week when we meet at the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble I'll be taking her a nice loaf of homemade Banana Cranberry bread in a nice ceramic loaf pan in celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving and our new found friendship! :)

Hugs to all,

Jaye

Sunday, October 04, 2009

One Million Preemies

There is a new article on CNN tonight that talks about a new statistic released by the March Of Dimes organization. It states that more than 1 million premature babies die before they are a month old. Its a staggering statistic....but one that really put something into perspective for me. As most of you know, my 18 year old son Sam was a twin. His brother Brian died in utero at 32 weeks, and Sam was born 8 weeks premature weighing a whopping 4lbs 4ounces, which is actually quite heavy for 8 weeks early AND a twin. However, I couldn't help but think during that time that I was 'supposed' to have twins. I had to mourn that loss. How come it happened to ME? WHY? Why did MY son die? How come women all over the place seemed to be having twins, while MINE had died? It seemed that everywhere I looked, there were sets of twins. Even people who didn't want ONE baby seemed to have conceived twins and given birth to them successfully...heck, there was a mother in the hospital with me who'd managed to give birth to TRIPLETS! It was a hard time in my life and I deeply mourned the loss of my son..even though I did it silently.
After having read this article tonight....18 years later..I realize how LUCKY I was to have Sam survive. Yes, we lost his brother...and that was a sad thing. But we could have lost Sam too, and I just never realized the stats on such a preemie baby actually MAKING it. So my healing has come full circle. From 'why ME?' to 'Wow....ME...I got to have my son live!'.
Truly fortunate...

Hugs to all,

Jaye

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Wisconsin Vacay!!

I am now in Wisconsin till the end of the month. What Mom and Dad and the rest of the family didn't know was that Mark was able to come back with us for six days! We pulled a great stunt when we got off the plane. The kids and I walked off the plane and met Mom and Dad and Terri and went to baggage claim....while Mark waited back until I texted him. Once he knew we were down in baggage claim, he called my cell and wanted to talk to Dad. He got on the phone and said "HI!" (keep in mind that everyone thought Mark was out to sea!). Dad said 'where are YOU?' and Mark lied his ass off and told him the sub broke and they pulled into San Diego to fix it. As he was saying this he is walking towards us all. Dad keeps talking away with his back to Mark. In the meantime, Mom spies Mark and is trying to wrap her brain around this guy walking towards her who LOOKS like Mark but isn't he in San Diego? This whole process takes about 20 seconds before she realizes it IS Mark! She lets out a great big SCREAM and Dad turns around to see 'what the junk' is going on...all in all it was a great surprise! Now we are here and having a great time. The kids have been swimming both days and we've done an awful lot of eating! lolol...

Paige on the shuttle to the airport....