Life has been truly busy and complicated here at the VB household! My husband and I are both enrolled in college full-time. He is working on his Pre-Engineering degree, while maintaining A's in college-level Trig, college level chemistry, a programming class, and not quite as well in an English Lit class (he HATES anything dealing with English and grammar...LOL). I've been working on pre-req's for admission into the RN program. It's been harder on me because I work nearly full-time as LPN, go to school full-time (and all my classes are ONLINE this semester), run a Girl Scout Troop once a week, run family errands, do all of our daughter's activities (which includes Girl Scouts, violin lessons, and now basketball), maintain a home, cook meals, etc. I'm doing pretty good in my classes considering that I rarely get the time to work on them, but I could be doing better if I did not have so much on my plate. It's tough, but it's worth it in the end!

My husband's National Guard unit is preparing for deployment to Afghanistan, which has been taking a whole lot of family time away from us. I never could understand why the military insists on taking our Soldiers away for training after training and for long periods of time each time right when they are preparing to take them away from us for a full year or more! This is our 2nd deployment to deal with. The first was to Iraq in 2006. It does not get any easier, and this time around, we have 2 children being separated from their daddy. It was hard enough watching my 4 yrs. old daughter struggle through the deployment, but now, I'll be dealing with a 10 yrs. old daughter and a 3 yrs. old son. I don't think life could get any harder than that. :(

The Saturday BEFORE Halloween, while we were preparing to get ready for some early Halloween festivities, our baby boy received a 2nd degree burn on his left palm and fingertips, after having touched a very hot iron. We rushed him to RMC ER for treatment. He was all cute in his little pirate costume and having to spend all that time at the ER. They immediately sent him to Childrens Hospital burn unit for treatment due to the severity of it. Children's Hospital burn unit was awesome and took great care of our baby boy. He went back that next Wednesday and had the blisters cut open and dead skin removed. His poor little baby hand was mostly raw skin. It was so sad. Now his hand is still receiving treatments, but they are no longer everyday, now they are every other day. His hand is healing well though. After his hand heals, we'll have to do hand massages indefinitely to prevent his hand from contractures.

Our Girl Scout Troop has gained 3 new girls...welcome Nicki, Anna, and Kyla! We are due to receive another new Girl Scout next Monday. Our girls are doing a Girl Scout Troop Thanksgiving dinner on the Monday before Thanksgiving. They create the menu and get to prepare and cook the meal by themselves, plus they get to serve it. They are so excited.

Well, that is all the updates for now. I need to get to bed. Have a great week!

Fall is here! :) I am so excited. I love this time of year! I love the trees changing colors, the grass dying (and my allergies to grass fading!), the pumpkin patches, the yummy food, the holidays, the weather....pretty much everything that fall has to offer. I LOVE FALL!