Hello again, old friend.

Well here we are. 2013. And it's been nearly four years since I've written anything on this blog.

FOUR YEARS?!?!

Yep, four years.

So, why start again now? Well, there's a long answer and a short answer. The long answer involves a year-long journey of twists, turns, ups and downs, beginning with what I've labeled the "Unbelievable Sh** Storm" of early 2012 - a personal storm that I'll probably delve into more in a later post.

The short answer is because I feel like God is asking me to. He has given me a personality, a LIFE, a voice that is worth sharing. That voice has been very, very quiet for far too long. It has had various outlets over the years, but honestly, but because I enjoy writing so stinkin' much and a blog can be, well, anything I want it to be, this seems like the perfect venue for said voice. (That turned out to be a not-so-short answer, after all. Cheesy grin.)

So feel free to follow. Or not.

What can you expect? Who knows. I have all sorts of ideas swimming around in my head. Try not to be frightened. ;-)

Nervously excited,

Cindy

Penn State Blue & White Weekend

Okay, so I was exhausted by the time the weekend was over, but it was SOO FUN to take my boys up to PSU for the first time!! And my brother, Dave, is a super-senior up there, so he spent the weekend with us. Great weather, fun carnival, good food, great game - perfect weekend!!

Here are some highlights...

Reality

Right now, Ryan is explaining the events of September 11, 2001 to Ben. How do you explain that day and the days following to a seven-year-old? And how can his sweet mind comprehend that kind of evil?

He now has a knowledge of people's hatefulness, fear and abandonment beyond what he knew of before. A piece of his innocent ignorance has been lost.

Please understand that I am not criticizing my husband. I know that these lessons and discoveries are just a part of growing up in our fallen world. Ryan handled it beautifully. Now I'm off to hug my children.

Well helllooooooo!

Oh my stars! It's been a loooong time since my last post!! Like, eight months to be exact. Yikes.

Well, let's jump right back in, shall we?

Ben, having achieved his orange belt at Fear Knot Martial Arts in Elizabethtown, applied and was accepted into their leadership program. This is a big deal. He gets to train with (foam) weapons now and receives extra training after class. In addition, they take field trips, do community projects, etc. His homework for next class is to read several pages from "The West Point Way of Leadership," the book on which their leadership progam is based. Good stuff. I'm excited for him.

He's REALLY enjoying karate and seems to be a natural at it. Seriously. He just GETS it. It's been good for him in several ways. He's fun to watch, too!

2:32 a.m.

That's what time it all started. Actually it started sometime before that, but I don't know what time it was. At some point between going to sleep and 2:32 a.m., I heard the creaking of the boys' bedroom door and little feet going down the steps. I assumed it was a middle-of-the-night trip to the potty (remember - we only have one bathroom and it's downstairs and about two miles away). I must have fallen back to sleep. Then at 2:32 a.m. I awoke to the sound of life downstairs. Not voices, just noise - like someone was playing with toys. I rolled over to Ryan and asked, "Honey, did you hear that?" Apparently he had not, nor did he hear my question - he was still very much in dreamland. So I was on my own to confront the toy-playing mystery person by myself. I got up, walked out into the hallway, noticed that the door to the boys' bedroom was closed, but I could see light pouring out from under the door. Lots of light - all the lights in their room must have been on. But I knew that their room was not the source of the noise, so I ventured toward the steps. At this point, I noticed that, like their room, it was VERY bright downstairs. I started down the steps and heard that same "toy" noise - it sounded like someone was playing with something that had a lot of small pieces - like sorting through a bucket of LEGOS.

Back up for a second. We (the extended Keener clan) were all hanging out at Mom Keener's on Saturday evening for a lovely summer evening. Crissy and Steve had spotted an unopened Erector Set at a garage sale and bought it for Ben. This sort of toy (you know, the ones that include 40 gazillion tiny pieces and have instructions that children can look at and interpret with great ease but require intense concentration for the adults, so intense that we always walk away with a headache and a sore neck and we couldn't get it right anyway so why do we even bother...) is right up Ben's alley. He was very excited to get started, but we told him that he had to take apart the ENORMOUS roller coaster that he had constructed out of K'Nex before he could open the Erector Set box. So he spent a large portion of Sunday afternoon slaving away at the deconstruction of the roller coaster. He didn't quite finish before bedtime on Sunday evening, so Ryan had told him that as soon as he woke up the next morning, he could finish taking apart the roller coaster and then open his Erector Set. Unfortunately, to the detriment of my precious, precious sleep, Ryan did not specify what "as soon as he woke up" meant.

So we're back to o'dark thirty this morning. I turn the corner into the living room to see not one, but BOTH of my boys happily playing with Erector Set. Sure enough, the roller coaster was completely taken apart and the K'Nex box was closed. This is how the conversation went:

Me: Um, boys, it's the middle of the night. What ARE you doing?
Ben: We're playing with the Erector Set, Mom. (I guess an obvious question deserves an obvious answer).
Me: But it's 2:30 in the morning. You should be in bed.
Ben: But I'm not tired. Dad said I could work on this stuff when I woke up.
Drew: Yeah, we're not tired.
Me: But it's the middle of the night!
Ben: So? We're fine, Mom.

I pause, think about the situation, realize that it's not going to hurt anyone or anything if they continue to play. Then I notice that not only is the living room brightly illuminated, but that the ENTIRE downstairs is lit up like an operating room.

Me: Why are all the lights on?
Ben: I had to go to the back room to get Dad's screwdriver so I could get the batteries out of the guitar, and the guitar was in the toy room, so I had to turn on the lights in each room.

Sure enough, the dining room, kitchen, toy room, my office, laundry room and back storage room were all at full-watage lighting. I walked through and turned off the lights that were no longer needed and retreated upstairs back to my bed.

Ten minutes later, Drew comes upstairs whining "Mom! Mom! Ben was mean and ***! (insert some sort of tattle-tale story of which I do not remember the details because it was the 427th such story I had heard in the last 24 hours and I have begun to tune them out). I told him that if they could not get along, they would have to go to bed. He went back downstairs and all was well for about ten more minutes (or however long it took me to get so close to being asleep that the sound of my precious youngest's voice sent shivers down my spine) and Drew was whining and tattling again. Okay. That's it. They're done.

This is when Ryan woke up, when they were crying (loudly) on their march back to their bedrooms after I had informed them that their middle-of-the-night party was over. I filled him in on the happenings and he promptly fell back to sleep. Meanwhile, I'm tossing and turning when I heard a thud-thud from the boys' room. OH MY WORD!! What now?!?! Thinking that the sound may have been Drew falling out of bed, I scurry over to their room. I open the door, turn on the closet light and find that they are both in Drew's bed, giggling like the couple of goofballs that they are.

Me: What was that noise?
Ben: What, this? (thud-thud again)
Me: Yep, that's the one.
Ben: It's just me banging on the dresser.
Me: Okay, well, please be quiet and go to sleep.

I crawled back into bed (again) and continued to hear them talking and giggling. At some point, I feel asleep and they undoubtedly did as well. You would think with a night like that they would have slept in this morning. Nope. They were both up before 7 a.m.

True story.