Sam's Visit

Sam came home for Thanksgiving.  Blogging fell by the wayside, of course, as we spent time enjoying having him here for almost 2 weeks. 

He surprised us by coming home 2 days before we were expecting him! 

His former football coach picked him up at the airport, and then Sam changed into his uniform at their house before showing up on our doorstep.  Doesn't he look great?  I'm so proud of him. 

Sam and Eli are pretty much tied in height right now, although Eli's hair is fluffier. 

Paul's trying to prove that he's taller than them.  I'm pretty sure only Zach is taller now. 

Jack is going to pass me up in the next year. 

It was fun to see my boys hanging out together. 

Sam's coach gave him a giant Snickers bar, and he polished it off in just a couple of days. 

Whenever I sat my phone down, I would find random selfies on it later. 

Not even all taken by Sam, actually.  I think I must have been making school lunches or something here. 

One day, Zach and Brayden came to hang out with us. 

We went out to lunch, and the boys told bidet stories.  :blink,blink:  Who knew?

Shockingly, we ended up with leftover pizza, which the school kids were happy to polish off when they got home. 

On Thanksgiving, we went out front for a quick family picture.  We're missing Annaliese, who is still in New Zealand, and Heather, who had to work.

Brayden was being silly during pictures, but I got one that was okay for a Christmas card. 

After the big meal, we played games. 

A fellow Marine friend that Sam met in tech school drove up from Camp Pendleton to spend Thanksgiving here. 

That seemed kinda grown up ish to me...  until I found them eating crayons. 

Not. Even. Kidding.

"Who me?" 

But it was a really good visit.  Sam got to go out with his local friends.  We went grocery shopping together (which is one of our favorite things to do together), and Christmas shopping.  We had some good conversations, and just hung out. 

The tree went up the day after Thanksgiving.  I wanted to do it before Sam left, since he wouldn't be home for Christmas. 

My boy.  My Sammers.  My Marine. 

My fourth child.  The one who taught me that no two kids were ever going to be the same.  My athletic, class clown, fearless (except for glitter) son. 

 

The days passed quickly, and soon it was time to say goodbye. 

We said our goodbyes at bedtime because Paul and Sam would be leaving for the airport super early.  I secretly thought I'd wake up and get one more hug in before he left, but I missed it. 

Vaya con Dios, my son.  Your mama is super proud of you. 



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My Fourth Fledgeling

It's bittersweet when my little birdies leave the nest.

I mean, he's not little, exactly.  He's taller than me.

But it's a really big world out there, and sending him off into it is hard.  Especially when I won't be able to just pick up the phone and text him or call him any time I want.  For the next 13 weeks, he belongs exclusively to the Marine Corps.

He's my Sammers.  He makes me laugh like nobody else.

He also makes me a little bit crazy like nobody else.  We're cleaning out his room to prepare it for the next occupant, and Paul found a partially eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Boot camp is going to change him.  He'll learn and grow and mature.  But he'll always be my baby.


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Graduation!

I wanted to share pictures from Sam's graduation last week, even though some of them aren't very good.  It's a momentous occasion, and I don't want to let a lack of photos relegate it to a single paragraph in a weekly wrap up post.

During the ceremony, BCS sends the graduates out to give flowers to the special people in their lives who've helped them get to this day.

Getting his diploma.

The hats fly up.

Sam with Grammy and Carl.

Sam with me, Annaliese, and Katie.

Poor Josiah heard "hold this" several times during picture taking.  Purses, flowers, programs, even the hangar Sam's cap & gown traveled to the church on (which I'm totally surprised Sam actually brought home).

Katie was thrilled to see Annaliese again!

I'm trying not to blink, because I know if I do, I'll look up and Katie will be the one in cap and gown.  It goes by so fast.

We really ought to have had one person at a time taking pictures.  Because we didn't end up with any where we're all looking at the same camera.  It's weird to have a "family picture" with so few of us in it.  I hope the kids who are at camp are having an amazing time, but I miss them.

I'm so proud of my boy!  Sam's plan is military, like big brother Zach.  It's looking like he won't leave for boot camp until around January, but nothing is set in stone yet, so we'll see.


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Warriors of Honor DVD

When Sam sprained his ankle last month, I was happy to have a new video to review that he could watch while keeping his feet up.

We received the Warriors of Honor DVD from New Liberty Videos.  Sam said it was good.  He mentioned that it gave him some insight and things to think about.

Eli watched it later, and he thought it was really interesting.  He used the words "historical" and "learningish" when describing it.  When asked what stuck with him, he mentioned a firing squad scene.

Jack, who is 10, watched part of the movie, but wandered off about half way through.  When I asked him what he thought of it, he told me, "It was okay.  It would have been better if there wasn't that voice in the background, and if it had been all war."  Um, that would be the narrator he's referring to, and the war wasn't actually the focus of the documentary.  Looks like it was pretty much over his head at this point.

Paul and I watched Warriors of Honor together, and he said, "There's a perspective you won't get in public schools."

One of the early quotes that stuck out to me was that the Civil War was a battle between two different cultures.  I think that's a really interesting point.  The United States is still not entirely cohesive from sea to shining sea, even in this age of rapid travel and social media.  It's easy to see how two separate worlds could have evolved in our fledgling nation long ago, as the north focused on industry and the good of the whole, and the south was a slower paced, agricultural society with a live and let live mentality that favored the rights of the individual.

Many people believe the Civil War was about slavery--and slavery was certainly a part of it.  Rebel homeschoolers might teach that the Civil War was more about local government versus national government, or state rights, and that's a part of it, too.  This American history documentary opens the mind to question the "north good, south bad" propaganda that many of us learned in school, by illuminating the character of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Thomas Jackson.  Warriors of Honor shows through letters and personal accounts that they were both men of faith.

Jackson inspired his men to follow him anywhere with devout loyalty.  He was known to be a man of near constant prayer, and a friend of blacks.

Personally, I found the bonus features as interesting as the main documentary.  The slavery feature gave a vastly different perspective and statistics that we don't hear in the "history written by the victorious North."  It indicated that free blacks were treated better in the South than they were in the North, where white men often refused to work side by side with them.

The only time I'd ever heard of Palmyra was in reference to Mormon history (and it turns out that was another Palmyra in an entirely different state), so the account of the Palmyra Massacre was shocking to me, and I wanted to research and find out more about it.  To me, that's the hallmark of a good documentary.  When you finish it and want to delve deeper into the topic, picking various threads of the tapestry presented to see where they lead.


Warriors of Honor sells for $19.95, and is intended for general audiences.  My main reviewers are 13 and 16, and while there were horrible acts of war portrayed, there wasn't anything that I felt was inappropriate for them to see, given the topic of the Civil War.  I would say this movie is most appropriate for teen and adult audiences, from a comprehension perspective.

This was a nicely done film, with haunting music and original photographs, modern photos of historical sites, and reenactment footage to give a moving look at a difficult time in our nation's history.  I would recommend it as a springboard for research for the high school student studying American history.

Other Crew families reviewed Anthem for a Nation, The Forbidden Book, Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, A Nation Adrift, and Teaching Origins Objectively, as well as Warriors of Honor.  You can read their reviews by clicking the box below.


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