I Know Heavenly Father Works Are Not For Us To Understand

The longer we are here, the more I know that we are meant to be here.  We had a meeting at Dean's school today, wow, amazing!  The school that he went to in Texas was great, they worked on several things and were amazing.  Georgia, not so much.  They stopped his social skills services when we got there (halfway through second grade) and at my request they began to work on them again before we moved here.  That is six years without services and I feel he suffered so much in that time without them.  We do as much as we can at home to reinforce them at home as much as possible, but having them in the two areas he spends the most time does so much more.  We try to be very active parents, but as a child grows from childhood to teenager, that becomes difficult, they withdraw and become more focused on friends and not family relationships.  They automatically reinstated this when he started in his schedule as a class.....wow!  That left me speechless, I could not thank them enough!  Today's meeting went so well, they asked for pointers, a sort of rescue plan if he has a meltdown or becomes angry, what his triggers are, things that concerned him that they saw in his file from his old school.  Gerry and I (especially me) have never had this kind of proactive approach from a school before.  Something that really bothered me, Georgia was constantly retesting, it went something like this: moved to Georgia, retest for services; moved to new grade (I think forth), retest; moved on post to new school; retest again (yes that is twice in one year); moved to another grade level (I believe it was sixth this time and a new school), retest; and they just retested again right before we moved here, not to mention they retested in Texas when we moved there.  So in the last seven years he was tested six times, so on average almost once a year pretty much except one year that he was there, and I may have even missed one for when he was in third and fifth grade, hard to keep track of all the testing.  So when they said that he qualified without testing again, I was so relieved, I even volunteered whatever IEP's I had at their disposal.  They asked for his most recent one, relief, I have them all, just have to find the one they want!  They are also very concerned about his relationship with biological father and even offered to help us in whatever way they can.  Again, wow!  This is another first.  Dean has expressed, already, the abuse (not specifically what he went through, but that is has happened) at his hand.  This made them very uncomfortable and where other school districts where he has said something have wanted to wash their hands of this, they are willing to do what it takes to severe visitation.  Not sure what their involvement would be, but we were at a loss for words.  My understanding is that schools are obligated to report and be involved if needs be but we could not get help.  Needless to say, Heavenly Father placed us here.  We found that several members of the ward were praying for a priesthood holder to be placed here in our new hometown.  We were prayed here.  There is a need for a good man like Gerry, we needed a good school like Dean (although at this point I would say excellent), as for me, I am not sure what my need is, why I need to be here, or what my need is from this beautiful little town is, but I am willing to find out!

GoodBye Old Life, Hello New Life...

So after twenty years in the Army, Gerry is done!  That is right, he retired with honors!  I am proud of my man.  Life has new adventures in store for us.  We initially thought we were moving to Arizona, but things changed, then it was Montana, but here we are, Decorah, Iowa!  The last year has literally been a hectic one.  Gerry kept trying to submit his retirement paperwork for approval to no avail, it kept getting kicked back to him.  UGH!  sometimes the military makes me so angry about things.  To retire, papers have to be done and turned in a year before the retirement date, so he was following protocol, they were not, we dealt with it and tried to roll with the punches.  He had to redo his medal, his NCOER (which he should not have been doing himself, duh, it is an evaluation, why would he evaluate himself??, just don't get it, but Kelly Hill had been having him do his own since he got there).  After nine months of this, things got tiring, we got concerned and started coming up with a backup plan after Retirement told him that he needed to have his paperwork in at seven months to retire on time, and that he needed permission to retire on time!  Crazy and stupid!  He continued to have more troubles with this same issue and after January still no papers to start his Retirement Briefings.  Backup plan became more and more of a "Do we do this?"  What was the backup plan??  To contact news agencies, Mitt Romney and some other people to highlight the problems we were having, specifically that Gerry was having.  Twenty years in the military deserved better than this treatment.  To top it all off, he found out that if the papers were not done and they continued to do this, we would lose all benefits: housing, MWR, commissary, Tricare, and pay.  So we would be homeless with no pay, no grocery shopping, could really careless about the MWR, rarely used it anyway, it was the rest of it that mattered!  So after some serious worries, he got his papers, FINALLY!  So we started making plans to move to Montana, we looked into places to live, found an apartment complex to apply for and got the application and filled it and started supplying paperwork they needed.  We started packing, preparing for the Retirement Ceremony (whole different ball of wax!), and sorting through the things to keep and not to keep.  Life was hectic and the man that was home for almost two months, was no longer there to help out so much again.  He was hectically trying to get all of his briefings in that he should have had already.   So the big day starts to come, Gerry goes to his Retirement Ceremony practice just to find that they do not have his medal!  WHAT??  The Brigade "took" his medal paperwork to NTC in California and it was downrange.  So Gerry did not (once again) get the honor he deserved from stinking Kelly Hill!  Long story.  He did not get to walk and if they did not find his paperwork, he would not get to clear base and we would not be able to leave on time.  I took it upon myself to vent my angry and upset emotions on four different Facebook accounts that were associated with 3rd ID.  Needless to say, that got the ball rolling and some higher officers were even scrambling to make things right and find his medal paperwork, not that it would matter for him to walk the next day.  So we got to leave on time.  We left and headed north to visit Gerry's brother in Minnesota.  After two days, we decided we needed more time after a very emotional day with Carl for Gerry (they took Carl's daughter Molly back to school and had a very long talk on the way back and things that he did not know were found out, it was very hard for him).  Long story shorter, we decided that Montana was out, Heavenly Father wanted us here in Iowa and so we moved into their house in Decorah and have been searching for a job ever since.  We love it here, Dean loves the school and his teachers and the school counselor.  Gerry's brother and sister-in-law are fantastic and we are so grateful!