Where was I when the world stopped turning

that September day......7 years ago....I was in the backyard on a crisp clear sunny September morning playing with my son in Virginia....he was 3. We had to do the dreaded commissary shopping trip....we never made it.....I would wait for hours before I would receive word that my husband had survived the attack....then hours later we'd hear jets flying low over our house escorting planes into Reagan National, by that night I would comment to my neighbor to listen, she asked to what and I said to the quiet.....my husband would not return home from the Pentagon until late....smelling horribly....covered in things I'd rather not talk about....and we knew our world had forever been changed. The other night we saw him on a show on the History Channel and we both just sat there with nothing to say....tears streaming down my face....we turned it off....we'd lived it once, it was enough.

Last year I spent it with my closest friend as we remembered those agonizing hours as we prayed across our post for friends, neighbors....... leaders that we both knew separately.....but this year it will be different....we are once again separated, but this time by many, many states and are spending it once again with our soldiers home.....who knows what our futures hold for either of us....but for those two September 11ths....we were on the same military installations....one grieving, the other remembering. Today, I miss you!

To all those who were the first victims of the war on terror and to each and everyone since as well as their families, as we once again look upon this anniversary of sorrow for our Great Nation, I pray for you, that you are able to move past what this war has done to you. That God grace your lives with love and comfort.....

To America, do not think for a moment that our enemy has forgotten what he did to us......he remembers far more then most of you do.....he laughs at our grief.....revels in every death caused by his hand and will stop at nothing to continue his path..... Support those that defend your Country, support their families, let them know that what they do for each of us, you honor. When the time comes that you find out that someone you know has laid down their life for you......let their family know that it was not done in vain......help them to know how much you appreciated that ultimate and great sacrifice....you have no idea what happens to a family who loses their service member, it does not end when the funeral is over, in fact, that is really when it just begins for most...... And America, where is your flag.....you make such a great stand of flying them when something horrible happens to our Nation....and yet my flag is the only one that flys on my street......it has flown every day for 20 years...... Why don't you honor our nation by flying it's national Flag?

The Pentagon Memorial......

I could not have said this any better!

My friend and fellow milspouse blogger Cat and I had an interesting email conversation the other day.  It was about opinions and the election.  She is very strongly set about her opinions on our up and coming Presidential Election and will speak to anyone about those feelings, but as outspoken she is in person, she was very standoffish about making a post on her blog about it....

Now while I am not a huge political writer, that does not make me any less passionate about the election then the next person, I only touch on the subject....which makes Cat and I different...she really wanted to write about it in depth....so I sort of gave her some reasons why she should...and I'm very proud to say that she went ahead and wrote about it....Please take a moment and read her post.....I think she made some good arguments as to why she feels the way she did.... reasons that just add to why I am so against O'bama, but not everyone will know all of it, because it was never reported on in the news......

Anyway here is her post entitled PACKING A PUNCH

To My Daughter

I wrote this on Monday morning after I took my children to school. This is my oldest daughter's last year in school before she will head to college.....ever aware of her fear of the future, I did my best to not reveal how I felt inside over her last year of high school.....but after being inspired by this from my friend T, I thought maybe, well....that I would go ahead and publish it.

Baby,

I did not know what I was having when I was pregnant with you....I didn't want to know. The miracle that you were was enough for me, I found comfort in knowing that you were just there, often when I was all alone.......I was overwhelmed when the doctor said "it's a girl." I cried......I still do when I think about it.

I am not sure when you got to be so beautiful....was it when you first cried, back when it was just you and me kid? Were you always so inquisitive? So full of questions? You walked early, talked early, got teeth early....so ready to just get on with it, you began growing up before I realized it was possible. Do you remember when I knew you could read? What the first word you read aloud to me was? It was Donut, we were driving....and you told me you wanted one....I laughed out loud and turned around and got it for you....you were five. Do you remember how you used to repeat everything I would say....often using the same colorful adjectives......I was apalled, but everyone else thought you were so cute.....

Your eyes always took in so much and were always the first thing anyone ever noticed about you.....so blue, so big......so beautiful, they still are, followed by your beautiful smile. You were the wind beneath my wings when I was just discovering how to be an adult.....the one thing that brought me out of the dark days of a war....did I ever tell you that?

How did you get to be almost 18 years old and graduating this year? I look back at photos and videos of you growing up. How proud I have always been of how you gracefully eased through all that life through at you.....the loss you experienced, the pain you went through and even coming close to losing one of your closest family members, not once did you fall......but then I have always been there in case you did.

As I looked at you this morning, my heart filled with so much, I hardly knew where to begin and so I was pretty quiet......you twirled around like you used to when you were little, looked over your shoulder at me and said, "Hey Mom, it's my last first day." It was all I could do to not let you see the tears as they welled up in my eyes.....when did you get to be so grown up, where is my little girl....with the bright inquisitive blue eyes and giggles when I held her....she has been replaced with this stunning creature I sometimes hardly recognize.....did I miss your life? I know I was there.....but being your mother has never once been hard, so maybe that is why you seem to have grown up in the blink of an eye.

Those hard days, the ones that stand out in my mind, the ones you rose above and showed what kind of resolve you had in you......the day I took you and your sister's cell phones away to make sure I was the one to tell you about your friend dying and then you held your little sister, the day the war came home to us, the day your friend at school didn't wake up.....through glasses and braces and disappointments you took life in stride, never once turning away from me. You knew I was there for you and you always sought the solace and safety of my arms, knowing that I'd make everything alright.

But now, I think you know that it's time to spread your wings, to find where your place in the world is, to discover where this last year of high school will find you.....ever knowing that I am always going to be Mommy, even on the day you become a mother yourself. I love you with all my heart, my love, my firstborn, my beautiful grown up daughter. I will always be proud to be you mom, privileged to have you in my life, thanked God every day for you, even before you were officially you, but as you grow up, I am excited about being your friend....

What a smile!

Shawn you rock!

BEIJING - AUGUST 19: Gold medalist Shawn Johnson of the USA smiles as she stands on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women's Beam Final at the National Indoor Stadium on Day 11 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 19, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) courtesy of yahoo sports

Is Spell Check dumbing out our children?

My oldest daughter sat in my room last night filling out a couple applications for interviews today....and I gotta tell you....it was a brutal eye opener for her mother.....

See, this is my honors child...the one who, since kindergarten has been the child each of her teachers stated would do great things....12 years later she is an English major....taking AP this year in English, Government and Economics, on the Newspaper and Yearbook......she will graduate with distinguished honors....even her new teachers are excited about her being in their classes, so much so the counselor called her to tell her.......

AND while we are very proud of her and her siblings, I was dumbfounded when she asked me how to spell IMMEDIATELY and then asked me if she had spelled AVID right.....I guess after thinking about it, I was just a little perplexed. Of course I too spell things wrong and have to admit that I have become reliant on my browser's ability to underline in red what it does not recognize as being spelled right, especially on my blog......but all and all I am a very good speller....

Such a small thing, but such a big impact.....to me, being a good speller comes with being a good reader....which my daughter is, in fact all of them are........so why the issue? As a comparison I asked my middle daughter to spell IMMEDIATELY to which she did without issue, and while she is a strong English student, her areas in honors lie in math and science.....and come to think of it, she has not had a computer for as long as her older sister either.

Even though I know what classes my children take, and I have guided each of them so that they will be prepared for college, I guess I get to own up to being a bad mother now for not knowing exactly what is in the syllabus. But since they are such great students, I guess I just assumed they each had vocabulary, never really asked them about it. Anyway, I spoke to the girls about their English classes and they both stated that they did indeed have vocabulary, but my older daughter said that in her course, it is such a small part of the class, that her lowest grades were in that area, usually in the low 80's. She said that she did not study as hard for her vocabulary as she did the Lit part ....considering the course often had her reading European Poetry as well as Literature of up to 800 pages, but even with her explanation, she got a dirty look from mom it. She did get a 94% in the class, but imagine what she would have gotten had she not blown off her vocab, not to mention the fact that it is far easier for her to ask me how to spell something then to be confident in her own knowledge of it.....

This will be my daughter's third high school in four years and for the last two years she attended a high school that had block scheduling. For those out there that do not know what this is, it is where you complete a course in a semester instead of a year (much like college, same amount of information put out over a shorter period of time, but for a longer class time). The classes are 90 minutes long instead of the 40 or 45, and you have 4 a semester for a total of 7 or 8 credits per year......instead of having the standard year with 4 quarters, you only have two, when progress reports are sent home they are pretty much looked at like a quarter grade that does not count.

So I'm curious......

Is it the computer age? Did her attendance at one high school that had normal scheduling and then 2 years at one with block scheduling affect her and the way she had to study in order to pass classes that were shorter with just as much information....or was it something else? Many experts say that our adolescents are more prone to low attention spans due to over exposure to television and gaming, but what does it say about computers?

The following is taken from an April, 2008 Article in the NY Times:

James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, drew laughs when he expressed concern about what he called “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought, the sentence,” because young Americans are doing most of their writing in disjointed prose composed in Internet chat rooms or in cellphone text messages.

“Overall, American students’ writing skills are deteriorating,” said Will Fitzhugh, the founder of Concord Review, a journal published in Massachusetts that features history research papers written by high school students. He expressed skepticism that the national assessment accurately measured students’ overall writing skills because, he said, it only tests their ability to write very brief essays jotted out in half an hour.

“The only way to assess the kind of writing that students will have to do in college is to have them write a term paper, and then have somebody sit down and grade it — and nobody wants to do that, because it’s too costly,” he said.

Mr. Fitzhugh cited findings of a 2006 survey of college professors, in which a large majority said they thought most high school graduates came to college with limited writing skills.

In an age when we use computers as if they were always part of our lives.....when most of our children think they always have been, are we losing certain aspects of old-school learning while we focus learning how to use our computer programs? We now rely on the computer for everything from writing mail to writing books and blogs... as digital photo albums and for online support and friendships.... We communicate with our friends and share information via Myspace, Facebook and other like websites. We use programs to balance our checkbooks, watch movies and listen to music, use web-cams and talk on the phone to our loved ones thousands of miles away, use spreadsheets and charts to explain everything from household chores to major proposals by large corporations.... and so much more. All things we used to have to do by hand or without the aid of our expanding technology. How often do you hear someone state that their laptop contains "everything" on it or when it crashes they are determined to save the data?

With so much being accomplished with the aid of computers, is one small program that we all use at one time or another .....called SPELLCHECK, making our children less smart? Or is it just a compounding problem of many media applications? I don't know the exact answer to it, but what I do know is that the idea has opened my eyes up a little bit more AND that I will be checking to ensure my Senior will be studying her vocabulary a little harder this year......

By the way, the word spellcheck, was not recognized as a word by my computer.....funny.