Oh, I forgot about the wind

We are getting settled into our new home here in Kansas. And one thing for sure, I had forgotten about the wind. When Rodgers and Hammerstein said the winds comes sweeping down the plain they were not kidding. We drove here dodging tornadoes and fighting to stay on the road. There are nights I think my house is under siege the winds are so bad. And we enjoyed a summer filled with tornado watches, but were blessed to actually not have tornado warnings.


As most of you know, with in two weeks of moving in to our new home in our new town, Roger deployed to Afghanistan. We were expecting this and prepared as best we could. But that still left me to put the house together and help the girls to adjust. As usual they are troopers, but its hard to understand all of this when you don't know how long a year is or where Afghanistan is. I have once again had to rethink everything when it comes to Lily as she continues to plow her own unique path through life.


I must say first that we have been very blessed here with so many people to help us, from family to new neighbors. Everyone has made the adjustment for the girls and me much easier. I have to say Roger hit a home run when picking this house. It is fantastic and the neighborhood is perfect. Four of the houses on our street have families with children, including one with a 5 year old and a 3 year old. In fact the neighborhood is full of kids! A big improvement over Fayetteville. And all of neighbors have been so helpful. I couldn't imagine being in a better place.


With Roger gone I knew I would need to enlist help, at least for the summer. I took 2 classes this summer, each 4 weeks long, each meeting 10 hours a week. After much struggle and prayer, I found a summer babysitter. A preschool teacher who decided to run an in home daycare. She was able to take both of the girls for the summer. I had originally planned to put Lily in the campus childcare when school started for the fall. But we liked her so much, after two weeks I decided to keep Lily with her for the school year. It was the best decision I could have made. Lily loves to go to Sandy's and Sandy truly gets Lily. She has blossomed there and Sandy has been a HUGE help with potty training. I know that changing childcare for the fall would have been more harm than good for Lily who has had to deal with so much change already. So I fell blessed to have found Sandy.


I also had to enlist help with the yard. The yard has always been Roger domain, but with him gone and a yard that no one had tended to in almost a year, I was overwhelmed. I found a horticulture student to come and sort it out. One issue was there were so many plants and trees that they were crowding each other. He cut out half of what we had in the yard and it looks so much better.

So, we made it through the summer. I love here so far. It is truly liking coming home for me. And Manhattan is a great place for kids with lots of parks and swimming pools. We have been to Nebraska fours time and Kansas City once. It has been so great to be able to visit my relatives and know that it won't be another year before we see them again. I'm sure I'll won't love it as much here when we have a foot of snow outside this winter, but for now I'm enjoying Kansas. I hope to take the girls to see lots of new things now that we are in a new region. Hopefully we will get lots of pictures!