Before anyone sends me a concerned email, no little boys were actually drinking beer!  Cole is merely holding the glass (okay, okay, he took a sip) to show off a regular beer vs. a giant beer.  For that matter, that’s not even Christian’s beer.  It’s Mr. Chips beer.  We all helped Mr. Chip drink that beer.  It was a group beer.  It was also Mr. Chips goodbye beer.  Yet another family has PCS’d (Permanent Change of Station) out of Stuttgart and back to the states.  I hate, hate, hate goodbye’s.  Even if they come with giant beers.

This week I fit in every medical/dental/vision appointment I could think of for my big boys, and a couple for the little ones as well.  I wanted the big boys to leave here this summer with every single need met.  Both Soren & Chris are heading into grown-upland.  Both are hoping to be working by next month, earning their own way in the world and no longer being my baby.  Ha!  They are so confused.  They can be as “manly” as they want.  They can have deep voices, beards and be 10-feet taller than me.  They’ll always be my babies.

Vision appointments were Monday, I thought maybe Soren needed glasses.  He’d had a little weak eyesight two years ago, and I figured, by now, it would be worse and he would need glasses.  Nope!  Not only was the weak part gone, he’s now got eagle-eye vision.  He’s proud as a peacock.  Cole, on the other hand, is a little on the near-sighted side.  Poor Cole has a great fear of anything new, and taking him for his eye appointment is really a personal note all in itself.  Suffice it to say, he had both me and the doctor in stitches with his total fear of all the big machines, and yet his complete willingness to try it (with a serious case of the nervous giggles).  Cole’s laughter is contagious.

I thought he might resist the glasses, and I had a whole speech prepared about glasses first, contacts in 6 months, but it never came up.  He was very excited to get his glasses.  I was very excited that our eye place was able to have them ready in half an hour! Cole put them on immediately and the rest of the day he walked around marveling in wonder.  That night I got a big hug and thank you; “I feel like a new man!”  Ha!  He’s my baby too.