Saturday, February 26, 2011

Wedding song

When you got married, did you walk down the aisle to the traditional wedding march song? Or did you walk down to a different song? If so, what is it?

I'll be walking down the aisle in 140 days to this song!! Chantel Kreviazuk's Feels Like Home. The moment I first heard this song, I knew it'd be the song I'd walk down the aisle to. (For the record though, I had always been one of those girls that wanted the traditional wedding march. Not so anymore and I couldn't be anymore excited for it!!).





Friday, February 25, 2011

MilSpouse Friday Fill in #4

Head on over to Wife of A Sailor to link up!!


  1. Aside from no deployments, what is one thing you would want to make the MilSpouse life “perfect”? submitted by Oh How Delightful

    How about some definitive plans? Like, when he's told he's going to leave or get home, he really will be leave/get home on that date, at that time. No estimated dates and times...I need something concrete! This would greatly help me out in planning a trip to Germany for the homecoming.

  2. Just how many peppers did Peter Piper pick? submitted by Married into Army

    Enough to make me unlimited amounts of fresh pepper jack cheese! omgiloveitsomuch.

  3. If you could have any career in the world with nothing holding you back, what would you do? submitted by It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To

    Most likely a teacher. Or a professional world traveler. I could write stories or travel guides when I travel. I could be the girl version of Rick Steves. Yes, we used one of his books when we were in Germany last spring.

  4. Do you have a service oriented tattoo and if so what is it? If you don’t what would you get? submitted by The Squid’s Accomplice

    Oh no, I don't do tattoos. Seth has tried numerous times for me to get one, but I never will. Just not me. He's in the Army, not me. I fully support him, but I don't need a tattoo to show my support. Plus, I'm scared of needles. However, they are sexy as hell on him. :)

  5. Imagine a block of time has opened up in your busy day for you to take a class in anything you like. What subject would you choose? submitted by To The Nth

    Probably a photography class. I have a semi-new camera and I still haven't gotten around to reading the manual and I surely don't know how to use everything on it. I took it over to Seth's parent's house a few months ago and his dad taught me something the first time he looked at it (after I had it for a good month and a half).

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Wedding...Thursday.

As you can see, I’ve avoided Wedding Wednesday because I’m a slacker. But here’s why:
  1. I’m meeting with Bekah, Laura and my sister tonight to talk about and figure out the flowers!
  2. I just emailed our cake baker our flavors and fillings (which, for your virtual taste buds will be: French vanilla with Bavarian crème, chocolate with red raspberry filling and red velvet with crème cheese!!)
  3. I know the kind of vanilla beans I’m going to order…just waiting for payday tomorrow to order them.
  4. I have blocked out our hotel rooms and the contract is coming to me in the mail.

Which leaves me with:

  1. Attending the flower shop…might be hard to do with my sister because she leaves in less than two weeks and the flower shop has very limited hours.
  2. Figure out the wording on our invitations… I’ll find some samples this weekend and hopefully order those early next week.
  3. Order the vanilla beans and get that started...will be started by the first week in March.
  4. Publish our wedding website on theknot.com…that’ll be one of my weekend projects!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Staying in Touch With Home, for Better or Worse

My sister shared this article with me the other day. It's about the amount of contact we have with our deployed service members, and how great it can be, but how it can also add a level of extra stress.

I definitely struggle with this. More at the beginning of this deployment than now. When this deployment first started, we were talking on the phone once a week for 15 to 20 minutes. Seth was able to send me an email usually once a week (but it was a great week when I'd get two emails!). I emailed him every night, and even made a list of things to ask him about during our weekly call. But when the phone call time came, the things I had wanted to talk about, just weren't talked about. They seemed little, seemed petty. We had better and more important things to talk about than what I listed. It was a waste of precious time to talk about little things. (Ok and to be perfectly honest, I don't think I talked much because I was holding in sobs and if I said a full sentence he could surely tell that I was crying, which made us both feel like crap. So I mostly just mumbled). I remember talking to his Dad about a month into the deployment. It was an important, financial issue, and we talked about me just taking care of it and not mentioning it to Seth VS telling him about it. I felt like I needed to tell him about it (it was his issue, afterall), but I didn't want to cause him unneeded stress, and possibly cause him to lose focus. After contemplating it in my head for a few days, I ended up telling him. It wasn't want he wanted to hear but he needed to know. Thankfully though, the ability to be able to communicate has greatly improved. We email pretty much every day, I'm able to call him when I want, we text back and forth, and we usually talk on gchat a few times per week. Considering the circumstances, I'm good with the amount of communication we have.

The original article can be found here on the NY Times website, but is also posted below.

A Year at War

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Forget the drones, laser-guided bombs and eye-popping satellite imagery. For the average soldier, the most significant change to modern warfare might just boil down to instant chatting.

Consider these scenes from northern Afghanistan:

A gunner inside an armored vehicle types furiously on a BlackBerry, so engrossed in text-messaging his girlfriend in the United States that he has forgotten to watch for enemy movement.

A medic watches her computer screen with something approaching rapture as her 2-year-old son in Florida scrambles in and out of view before planting wet kisses on the camera lens, 7,500 miles away.

A squad leader who has just finished directing gunfire against insurgents finds a quiet place inside his combat outpost, whips out his iPhone and dashes off an instant message to his wife back home. “All is well,” he tells her, adding, “It’s been busy.”

The communication gap that once kept troops from staying looped into the joyful, depressing, prosaic or sordid details of home life has all but disappeared. With advances in cellular technology, wider Internet access and the infectious use of social networking sites like Facebook, troops in combat zones can now communicate with home nearly around the clock.

They can partake in births and birthdays in real time. They can check sports scores, take online college courses and even manage businesses and stock portfolios.

But there is a drawback: they can no longer tune out problems like faulty dishwashers and unpaid electric bills, wayward children and failing relationships, as they once could.

The Pentagon, which for years resisted allowing unfettered Internet access on military computers because of cyber-security concerns, has now embraced the revolution, saying instant communication is a huge morale boost for troops and their families. But military officials quietly acknowledge a downside to the connectivity.

Some commanders worry that troops are playing with iPhones and BlackBerrys (as well as Game Boys and MP3 players) when they should be working, though such devices are strictly forbidden on foot patrols.

More common are concerns that the problems of home are seeping inexorably into frontline life, creating distractions for people who should be focusing on staying safe.

“It’s powerful for good, but it can also be powerful for bad when you’re hearing near real time about problems at home,” said Col. Chris Philbrick, director of the Army’s suicide prevention task force. “It forces you to literally keep your head in two games at one time when your head should be in just one game, in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

It took the military several years to come to terms with both the cyber-security and safety issues. Initially, the Pentagon banned access to social networking sites. But when officials realized that they were falling behind the times and angering young Web-savvy troops, they conducted a study and determined there was more to be gained by allowing access. Classified-network computers still have no access to social networking sites.

To see the upside of a well-connected force, one need look no further than the Morale, Welfare and Recreation building, fondly known as the M.W.R., at Forward Operating Base Kunduz, home to the First Battalion, 87th Infantry for the past year.

In more than 40 plywood cubicles that are available all day, soldiers sit in front of computer terminals or talk on telephones, all of them connected to home. There is virtually no privacy, so the arguments over money and children, the love talk and baby talk, are clearly audible in one cacophonous symphony of chat.

Pfc. Briana Smith, 23, medic and bubbly single mother, is regularly in the M.W.R. checking up on her 2-year-old son, Daniel, who is living with her parents in Tampa. She tries to call home daily and routinely logs onto Facebook to check in with family and friends. And at least once a week, she uses video conferencing on Skype to visit with Daniel.

The close communication thrills her, but can leave a pang, too. “I can’t be involved in the everyday things,” she said. “I only get to see the little tidbits of his life. It’s good to see, but it’s a little heartbreaking at times.”

The Internet connections and phones are not all free. Though troops do not pay to use computers in the M.W.R., they do pay for the phone calls. And those soldiers who bring their own cellphones pay fees that typically start at $70 and frequently run as high as $300 a month. A few chatty soldiers have received bills for more than $10,000 when their texting spun out of control.

To veterans from previous generations, it all seems like something out of science fiction.

George Moody, whose son, Billy, is a gunner with the battalion in Kunduz, spent 25 years in the Navy, deploying on ships that were at sea for months at a time. Letters home to his girlfriend and now wife, Mary Jo, sometimes took six weeks to arrive.

Now Mr. Moody, 49, has the family computer programmed to play reveille as loudly as possible whenever Billy logs onto Skype in Kunduz. With an eight-and-a-half-hour difference between Afghanistan and their home in Ashville, N.C., he and his wife are waking after midnight almost every day.

“It’s like having a baby again, because we’re back to getting up at 1:30, 2 in the morning to talk to him,” Mr. Moody said. “But we could not live with ourselves if we could not talk to him when he wanted to talk.”

The easy communication can relieve fears — but also stoke them. Once families become used to hearing from troops daily, lapses in communication can send imaginations racing.

Christina Narewski communicates daily with her husband, Staff Sgt. Francisco Narewski, by Skype or instant messaging on their BlackBerrys. But when he does not call back quickly, she frets. “It’s an anxiety just waiting to hear from him again, just waiting to hear when he gets back,” she said.

Barbara Van Dahlen Romberg, a psychologist and founder of a group, Give an Hour, that provides counseling to troops and their families, called the connectivity “a mixed blessing” when couples spend too much time waiting for calls or excessively discussing problems that cannot be repaired long distance.

“It’s just stress, stress, stress,” she said. “I talked to a mom who was counting the minutes between calls from her son. I gently told her that may not be good for either one of them. It is a burden.”

The ability to keep tabs on people at almost any hour can also be dangerous for soldiers suspicious of their lovers or spouses. “It’s nothing to go ask your friend: ‘What was she doing last night?’ ” Pfc. Billy Moody said. “They might tell you one thing, she tells you another, and the next thing you know, there’s drama.”

Specialist Kyle Schulz, for instance, learned via cellphone that his girlfriend was taking up with another man. The news sent him into an emotional tailspin — until he rekindled his relationship with an old girlfriend, by cellphone and Facebook. They later discussed marriage, also on Facebook, until that relationship, too, flickered out.

“In a way I kind of think I had too much communication,” Specialist Schulz, 22, said, “because the more I know back home about what’s going on, the less that I am concentrating out here. And it could potentially hurt me or other people.”

In extreme cases, breakups over cellphones or Facebook have sent soldiers to suicide counseling, or worse. In one case involving a different battalion, a soldier in Iraq killed himself in 2009 after spending hours tracking his girlfriend’s movements and then arguing with her and her sister via cellphone and MySpace.

Half an hour after the soldier, Chancellor Keesling, shot himself, his girlfriend sent him an e-mail asking to make up.

“Chance knew exactly who his girlfriend had gone out with and where she was,” said his father, Gregg Keesling. “She stopped taking his calls, and that is what really sent him into the spiral.”

In Kunduz, the battalion chaplain, Capt. Tony Hampton, said he often advises soldiers to shut off the phone and stay away from the computers when tensions are brewing with loved ones back home. Take some time to think, he counsels. Write a letter.

He doubts anyone listens.

“The access is too easy for them and they just can’t rest,” he said. “This is the microwave generation. They need it, and they need it fast.”


Saturday, February 19, 2011

MilSpouse Friday Fill In #3


Another MilSpouse Friday Fill In with Wife Of A Sailor. Go link up!!
  1. 1. What is your favorite MilSpouse blog (not including Wife of a Sailor who we all love, or your own)? submitted by Our Crazy Life (Wifey note: whaaaat? You can’t say my blog? No fun! LOL, just kidding)

    Oh gosh, I can’t choose just one. I do have a soft spot for ‘cause I don’t know how it gets better than this….I think she was one of my first followers, we’re very similar and we it seems like our guys are too, and we email back and forth pretty much all day long. We’re both going through a deployment right now, and her husband left just a few weeks ahead of Seth last year. Plus, I steal cool craft ideas from her, one which will be coming soon :) But rest assured, I have a LOT of favorites

  2. What are your favorite perks about your s/o being deployed (we all know there are perks)? submitted by Ramblings of a Marine Wife

    My most favorite thing about a deployment, besides the most obvious homecoming/reuniting moment, is not having to shave my legs. The other day I shaved them for, I think, the first time since he went back after R&R. And it’s been almost 1 month. Yikes, huh? I also love making care packages. I did a blog about this a while ago, here.

  3. How long did you date your significant other before getting engaged? Married? submitted by Utterly Chaotic

    Let’s see here…met online in March 2008, met in person in June 2008, dated from June 2008 to December 2009 while he was in Iraq, and Germany and engaged from December 2009 till nowish. Our wedding is in July and I can't wait :) (I use the term "dated" loosely because he was in Iraq, then Ft. Drum, NY for 5 months, then Germany for a year, so we physically didn't go on dates. We webcammed though and that was the closest we came to going out on dates. Don't get me wrong, we we were in a committed relationship from June 2008 and there was no dating others, but not physical dates for us together either. Just to clarify...)

  4. What do you think your would do if s/he wasn’t in the military? submitted by Adventures of M-Squared

    Oh dear, you name it, he wants to do it. We’ve talked about this many times and he wants to do a little bit of everything. First and foremost, he’d love to own his own business (preferably a bowling alley), perhaps be a police officer or a fire fighter, a professor, a CEO of a company, obviously a soldier, investment banker, financial consultant. We’ve seriously talked and thrown a bunch of careers out there, but I am almost positive, that no matter what, he’ll be a career soldier. I think he would be a great CEO, but he would have a hard time sitting at a desk each day. He needs more physical activity and excitement that I’m pretty sure a CEO position wouldn’t be able to provide.

  5. If you could talk to the Secretary of Army, what is one suggestion you would like to bring to their attention in order to improve the lives of military families? submitted by My Life as His (Air Force) Wife

    I haven't experienced military life to the fullest yet, because we've been separated our whole relationship, so I don't think I'm too qualified to answer this completely. However, I would like to inquire about shorter deployments for the Army, and while I'm at it, longer amounts of time between deployments. And also, perhaps getting just a girl with a status of girlfriend on his orders so I could have gone to Germany with him when he PCS'd there...and not have to pay all of the expenses out of my pocket.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

What A Military Spouse Knows

I saw this article posted on this blog that I read. It gave me chills as I can relate to almost every point in the article, and I may have shed a tear or two. At work. Seems to be the theme during this deployment.

It was too good not to share with all the other military spouses out there.

The original article can be found HERE, but the article is also posted below.

---------------------------------
By Melissa Selgiman

As many of you know, my husband came home from our third deployment not too long ago. During the deployment, a reporter asked me to share “What I Knew” about deployments and military life. This was my answer:

As I forced my hands to unfurl from his neck, feeling the familiar sting in my nose as tears pushed against my will, the words rattled and echoed in my brain. “Not again.”

I watched him walk away–that uniform, identifiable gait—and my heart bent and splintered as the reality of a third deployment began to shower over me.

I picked up the phone, dialing the numbers my numb fingers always meander toward, and sat in silence while she tried to ease my pain. “I can’t imagine…He will be home….I’m here.” And then she said six words that shot through my ears, penetrated my brain, and stiffened my spine: “You know how to do this.”

She was right. I do know how to do this. I intimately know the all-too familiar lump in my throat. The year of being both father and mother, making the best of a situation. I know exactly how one year feels as I X each day off my calendar. And I know how to ensure that while our lives are on hold, we still live.

The truth is I know a lot:
  • The thought of being alone for a year doesn’t bother me. The fear of being alone for a lifetime—does.
  • Flat rate boxes can hold twenty whoopee cushions, four kindergarten projects, and five perfume-scented letters.
  • Technology can be a double-edged sword—one side delivering his face; the other a brutal live-action feed of explosions and camouflaged body parts.
  • Murphy’s Law is a constant companion. The moment he walks out the door, anything that can break, collapse, bleed, or explode–will .
  • Five hours of uninterrupted sleep is a gift from the deployment gods
  • Holidays are hard, but manageable.
  • Deployments come and go, but sand from his boots never leaves.
  • Nothing can replace a handwritten letter. Through those beautifully folded pages, he is holding my hand again.
  • When the National Anthem is played, I know goosebumps will rise on my arms, and a lump will fill my throat.
  • The silence in communication following a war zone attack is agonizing.
  • Laughter is a powerful ally.
  • Each deployment offers two options: grow or regress. This is a choice.
  • Cereal is always a dinner option.
  • Videos of lost teeth, ballerina recitals, and preschool graduations can be emailed to Iraq nearly instantly.
  • Five powers of attorney and the intimate details of his will are needed to navigate a deployment.
  • White out blizzards can actually bury a truck in five minutes.
  • Rosie the Riveter was right: We can do it.
  • Children cling to hope and the promise of tomorrow.
  • Living in each moment together is possible when facing the fear that it could be your last.
  • Welcome home kisses are sweeter than the finest chocolate.
  • Anger will grip me and depression can hold me, but another military spouse will steady me.
  • A six-year-old child can feel the absence of her father so deeply that she can suffer from clinical depression.
  • A military spouse will often hold her/his tongue, silencing a story, for fear of sounding “unpatriotic.”
  • The sound of a bugle can make my heart swell with pride or collapse in sorrow.
  • Duct tape and a monkey wrench can fix nearly anything.
  • Despite the protestors and those who tell me I “knew” what I was getting into, I know there are countless American citizens who will go above and beyond to show they support us.

There are many things I know.

I know how to change the brakes on my truck, rappel from the side of a cliff, shoot a double-barreled shotgun, balance a checkbook, earn my keep, and kiss a child enough to feel like two.

But there are still so many things I don’t know.

  • I don’t know how to start my heart again when I see a death notification car on my street.
    When that knock echoes on the door of my neighbor, I don’t know how to forgive myself when I am relieved.
  • I don’t know how to hug him enough to last a lifetime, or kiss him just so in order to feel satisfied—should our reunion be at the foot of a pine box.
  • I’m not willing to learn how to pretend he doesn’t exist, to keep him out of our life while it goes on without him, or to build a wall so high he has no way to scale it.
  • I don’t know how to stop his panic attacks, and I have no idea how to make my nightmares of rampant bombs and lifeless limbs disappear.
  • I don’t know how to adjust to his presence in my house when our floor rarely feels the weight of his boots.
  • I don’t know how to tell his small children that, yes, he leaves them all the time. But because he loves them so deeply, he is willing to die to keep them free.
  • I can’t understand those who would question my desire to stay with him, or how I can peacefully sleep beside a “killer.”
  • I am amazed and confounded that despite all he has seen, he still has the courage to laugh.
  • I don’t know how to give up on my family.

But, most importantly:

I have no clue how to still my pounding heart when he finally walks through our door again, I don’t know how to pull my hands from his sand-stained neck and say goodbye, and I don’t know how to ever walk away from a man who stands while many choose to sit.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Wedding Wednesday

It’s 150 days away!! :)

I have a few things accomplished from my to-do list from last week:
Ok, I wish I would have gotten a little more than that done in the last week. Crap. But, I did make a lot of progress on our wedding website, but pictures have to be uploaded one at a time (after I spent a good 30 minutes picking out our 20 best pictures, I learned this when the page said it failed to upload the pictures). So that was really annoying and I was frustrated, so I stopped for the day and I’ve only managed to upload one other one since then. I have the rest of it mostly done, I just have to copy/paste the stuff onto the website. I worked on it/typed it all up a while ago, and put it all in a Word doc, because I was waiting to ask one of the girls if she’ll be a bridesmaid, so I’d say I’m like 90% done with this.

And about the flowers…Bekah and Laura were supposed to come over last night, but that didn’t work out. I was looking forward to it, and was semi-annoyed when they both cancelled. They both claim next week is better for them, so we’ll see. The flower shop is only open until 3 PM on week days, until noon on Saturday’s and it’s closed on Sundays. That severly limits when we can go, since we both work during the week, and it’s about an hour away. So that one will be an interesting trip to plan.

But, in my defense, my sister has been living with me for the past few weeks and I’ve not done a lot of the stuff I could normally accomplish because we’ve been hanging out and working on vajournals. She’ll be going back to Oregon in about 3 weeks and then I’ll be back into the swing of things.

It would be really convenient for Seth to be here right now so we could plan these things together. He would keep me on track and focused on getting this stuff done, and he would be able to help out. Instead, we have to email back and forth, which just delays things even more. (You would think that knowing that, that would get me in gear for getting things accomplished sooner rather than later. Unfortuatnely, that is not the case. I don't know what my problem is). TheKnot.com said we need to figure out our groomsmens’ tuxes this month, which is more of his part to coordinate, I think, but I'll be doing that too.

Is this deployment over yet?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Valentine's Day

In keeping with tradition, I got a pretty bouquet of roses yesterday at work :)



This is technically our third Valentine's Day together, but we've only spent the first one together in person. Andddd....that night, we both ended up hammered drunk in the hotel room. Thankfully we had dinner in the hotel, so we just hand to stumble back to the room, and at some point I had to take my heels off because I couldn't even walk in those. Then I may have thrown up in the middle of the night got up to to go pee in the middle of the night, and when I attempted to crawl back into bed, Seth was sprawled out in a slant, across the bed, and he was drunk too and wasn't moving so I could get in. I in a drunken stooper had to pick his legs up and physically move them so I could get a little piece of warmth and attempt to go back to sleep. That was also the Valentine's Day when he was living in the barracks and I made him a huge portable pan of lasagna so he could take it back to the barracks. The things we do for love :)

For the record, I never drink that much...but I was having a conversation with the bartender about how mad I get when people talk about Octomom and she just kept pouring me long island ice teas. And the next thing I knew, I was very drunk. It was still a very memorable weekend though :)


Vagina Monologues

Have you ever seen the Vagina Monologues? If not, I highly recommend it. I went a few years ago with my sister and it was awesome. It's a series of women talking about, well...their vaginas. Some stories were hilarious, some I didn't understand and some were sad (getting raped, for instance). All the stories were empowering though.

I'm going again this year with my sister and I can't wait. She contacted the show coordinator a few weeks ago and asked if she could sell "vajournals" that she's hand embroidered. She came up with this idea all herself. She's been making these vajournals for the last few months (she sold a few to friends in Portland, OR, where she's been living) and has been making a ton for the show. We're going to sell them together and she's going to teach me how to embroider tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow after work, we're going to a craft store and we're going to make t-shirts advertising the vajournals!!

She's has a big variety of colors now, lots of bright colors for backgrounds too. No two vajournals are the same (like in real life).

Side note about my sister: the first time she met Seth, we had a "tea party." Like, with a real tea set: little bitty cups, a little tea pot, etc. We were having whiskey sours and she had the bright idea for us to drink them in tea party stuff. Seth went with it and drank a lot of them and when we left, he asked me what the hell that was all about. haha Oh fun memories :)

Anyone want one?!?!


(I wonder if I'll lose any readers after this post....)

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Valentine's Day care package

Seth got his Valentine’s Day packages a few days early...and has already opened them. He called me yesterday and said that he got them. For Halloween and Christmas, I painted the innards of the boxes to make them more festive. I intended to do it with the Valentine’s Day box too, but was so pressed for time, I just didn’t have time. I still liked the contents, but I wish I could have made it all cute too. Oh well.

In his Valentine’s Day care package, I made these cute little cookies from Amanda’s blog.



They were pretty time consuming, but thankfully a snowday came at just the right time and I used that day wisely. They turned out pretty good, but I thought the chocolate cookies were a little dry and hard. Seth said they were good though, and that is all that matters. He said that he and a buddy ate a lot of them that day. I also included a guy-ish little photo book made out of folded paper lunch bags. I put all sorts of pictures from R&R. I should have taken a picture of it; I really liked how it turned out. I didn’t use fancy pages or backgrounds or stickers or embellishments, I just wrote a few little lovey things on each page or decorated it with a Sharpie marker. Nothing fancy, but (I hope) easier for him to have a little book with pictures than random pictures to keep track of. I also included 4 jars of canned blueberries (which he probably enjoyed more than anything else in the package) that my mom and I canned during the fall. Seth LOVES blueberries. He tells me he sits down with a jar and a spoon and just devours the whole thing. Sometimes he’ll offer some to a friend, but they usually decline the offer. I can just picture him sitting on his bed with this pint of blueberries and a spoon…and happy. :)

These are pictures when the canning of blueberries was taking place.

Lots of blueberries!!

(I put my finger tips in the blueberry juice and then wrote his name. (I may have also put my whole hand in the berry juice and made hand turkeys). That's supposed to be a heart above his name, but for some reason, it was difficult and looks dumb. Oh well.)

Also, as a related side note: after we started talking, but before we met in person, somehow we were talking about Valentine’s day. I said to him, “oh man, next year, Valentine’s Day is going to be on Friday the 13th!! That sucks!” He sweetly reminded me, “umm, Valentine’s Day is on the 14th each year, so it will never be on Friday the 13th.” Haha, oops, blonde moment. He managed to look past that little stupid moment I had and loved me anyways :)

For fun, here are the boxes that I have painted. Dang it, Valentine's day would have been so fun to paint!!!

Halloween. I made little 'ghosts' out of tootsie pops and kleenex. And I drew a face on each one. Call me cheesy. Once soldier (not Seth) who was lucky enough to eat one thanked me for them :)

Christmas #1

Christmas #2

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

February Wedding To-Do list

So our wedding is 157 days away (WHOA!) and time is going to go by really fast, especially with homecoming, going to Germany at some point, end of the school year, etc. And my sister is only here through the end of the month, so I decided I needed to make a to-do wedding list for this month. I’m going to be hard on myself for following this to-do list too, for the sake of my sanity.

  • Finish our wedding website on theknot.com

  • Consult with Bekah, Laura and my sister about all flower arrangements

  • Go to the flower shop with Bekah and my sister

  • Finalize and order invitations

  • Order mass amounts of vanilla beans (and vodka) for wedding favors

  • Get vanilla extract brewing

  • Fill in all the fun details in my wedding planner and organizer pink/white polka dot book!!

  • Get a sample color green for our cake baker so she knows what color we need

  • Email cake baker our flavors and fillings

  • Book a block of hotel rooms at a few different places around here

It might not seem like a lot, but I feel like it is! Wish me luck!



Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Homecoming

The FRG is meeting today to make homecoming signs. I really wish I could be a part of it. My friend Amy is going and I’m jealous. I so badly wish I were in Germany right now. It would eliminate a lot of frustration for me.

There are some days when I wish I didn’t have a job. I could hop on a plane and go to Germany for homecoming, and again for block leave, to visit Seth. Hell, maybe I would even live there. I wish I didn’t have to worry about having only X amount of vacation days, hoping and praying to God that they get back when they say they will, and aren’t be delayed and I’m not in Germany “using” my vacation days all alone. But for the rest of the deployment, I would go crazy without a job to keep me busy while he’s away.

I wish I had answers... and some extra money wouldn't be bad. Not a lot really, just you know, a couple hundred.



And for your viewing pleasure:

I can't believe that it's getting close. This deployment has seemed NEVER ENDING at times, but it's getting there. THIS is the first time I published my donut...oh my how it has come since then :)


Monday, February 7, 2011

I'm a creeper too, apparently

Seth read my blog yesterday, shortly after I posted it and I called him a creeper for reading it so shortly after I posted it. I assumed he checked my blog every few days (hey, maybe he does, and Sunday was his checking day... I really don't know). Anyways, he said I was the creeper because I haven't washed all of his clothes yet and I still smell them. Yes, I even put them away in the closet, unwashed. He doesn't think it's "normal" for me to smell his clothes when I miss him. He just thinks it's weird. I tried to explain to him it's a normal thing (he said next time he gets ready to leave, he's going to put all of his laundry into the washer, so I can't creep and smell them after he leaves. I know he won't do this, because he won't do laundry unless his life depends on it!!!). So, girls, if you could just reiterate the fact that I am normal, and it's normal for me to not wash his clothes, put his razor away, leave his shoes by the door, I would greatly appreciate it.

He did end his email to me last night by saying this: "...I don't mind that you're a creeper though, I think it's a little odd, but I love you so it's alright."

All that matters, really, is that he loves me and accepts my creeper tendencies.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

MilSpouse Friday Sunday Fill In #2

Yeah, so I'm late. I was getting my wisdom teeth out on Friday and my face is still swollen. I look like a chipmunk! I wish the doctor would have told me that the most swelling occurs on day three! Just in time for me to go back to work tomorrow. Awesome...

Thanks to Wife Of A Sailor of these questions :)

1. Since most of the country has had nasty weather, what has your weather been like this week?

We got hit pretty hard on Tuesday evening. We got an email on Tuesday afternoon that school was canceled for Wednesday, for ALL employees, including ME!! It came at the PERFECT time. We got quite a bit of snow...I think 14 inches with lots of blowing and drifting and sub zero windchills. Thursday was a snow day for the students also, but unfortunately, not for me. I didn't go in until 9 though, so that was a bonus.

2. What is/are your best money saving tip(s)?
Ummm...I try to put a lot into my savings account when I first get paid and then I try really hard at not dipping into that savings. But care packages do get expensive and I tend to forget about mailing costs. I like to keep just a little in my checking account so then I actually have to transfer the money, which makes me (usually) think twice about if I really need it or not.

3. What was your favorite vehicle you’ve ever owned??
My current car!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Passat :) It's the second car I've ever owned...my first one was a Toyota Corolla that I also loved. But I love my Passat dearly and do not look forward to the day I have to trade her in. I may or may not have cried when I traded in my Corolla.

4. What is a question you’d like to see asked in a future fill-in? (Your question & blog just may appear one week!)
Oh dear, I have no idea. I'm lame. I admit it.

5. Fill in the blank: You might be a MilSpouse if….
(I will be including some of your answers in a future post (with a link to your blog, of course!)

You might be a MilSpouse if....2 weeks after your love goes back to war, you finally get around to washing the towel he last used and left hanging in the bathroom. (Side note: the only reason I'm washing it is because my sister is living with me right now and we need more clean towels. I suppose I could go buy another one or two, but then I would have to transfer money to my checking account and I don't really need more towels.... His shoes are still by the door, his razor blade on my purple razor is still on the counter, his clothes aren't fully washed yet because I still smell them...yeah)


Friday, February 4, 2011

Wisdom teeth...or lackthereof

Right this very minute, I’ve got an IV stabbed into my arm, I’m slowly on my way to being knocked out completely and all four of my wisdom teeth are being yanked out of my mouth. Sounds pleasant, right?? Yeah, I’m not excited either and I’ve actually been stressing about it for a few days now, especially after seeing these pictures:


(I added my high heels and lipstick here...and made me into a girl!)


(I hope I look this cute!)
(here's my wannabe doctor. imagine that's me in the patient chair, not some random dude)

(this will be how I recover...with my parent's cat on my lap...except, again, I'll be a girl and the cat will be way cuter)

(this is just awesome...because it's totally from the 80's!! I hope to have a picnic table cloth wrapped ice pack wrapped around my face for a few days. I can only strive to be this cool)

(all picture credits go to google images....)


*Yes, this is a scheduled post :)

Thursday, February 3, 2011

i hate crying

I hate crying at work. And coworkers overhearing me crying at work.

I’m so over this deployment.

I don’t want to make a big decision right this very moment, I want to think about it.

But no, I can’t. Why? Because it’s the Army and they want their answer now.

I also hate that I’m about to start my period, which makes everything SO much worse. And the crying non-stoppable.

I also fucking hate that I spilled boiling water on my dumb hand this morning.

Is this all over yet?

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Finallly....the R&R post!!

Since it's a snow day and I technically don't have to work, I'm being uber productive with my life... such as catching up on blogs and posting about R&R. Enjoy!

omg his plane is HERE!!!

OMG HE IS HERE!!!!!!

finally he is home! HOME!!!!

within 5 minutes of walking through the door, he wanted to open his Christmas presents...so he did :)

we went to his parent's house...where his gift to me was. He wrapped it really extra special for me...see? (these colors just so happen to be our wedding colors. Coincidence? I don't know!)

first time driving his car and his battery was dead. my car to the rescue! we got him a new battery that night though

he's really really home!

we went to my parent's house and he met Harry. Seth and Harry are BFF's. Seriously. According to Seth, "Harry loves him the mostest!!!" And more than Harry loves me, apparently.

We went on a date night! Went to a tapas bistro in town and had rattlesnake/rabbit sausage, lamb with pesto wrapped in bacon, chicken empanadas, and a few plates of veggies. We also had a chocolate lava dessert and a piece of custard pie with fresh berries. Everything tasted soo good, even the rattlesnake/rabbit sausage!

We found ourselves in this hotel room :)

The next morning, we went shopping at a store in the hotel plaza...and found these amazing rabbit gloves that became SO much fun!!

We went to Clementine's with our families. (This is the restaurant we went to the day we got engaged).

This is the backside of the pier, the side that faces the water. It was covered in many inches of ice!

the rabbit gloves are ridiculous!

thick ice on the pier

rabbit gloves picking my nose...(but they were too big to fit in my nose hole)

sunset at the pier :)

some random photographers were out at the end of the pier and were playing with new lighting equipment. They started snapping photos of us, gave us their business card and then sent us a few. This is my absolute FAVORITE one and I've already enlarged it, now I just have to pick a frame :)

another one they took. my face looks all splotchy because it was soooo cold, but it does show my ring :)

rabbit gloves driving us home!

Around this time, we both got sick with the flu. He had a little bit of a cold the day he came home, promptly gave that to me by the end of his first day home and within 3 days, we were both sick with the full flu. We woke up, he said he had a stomach ache, he half puked by the time I left for work, texted me a few times during my half day at work that he had puked more and when I came home from work at noon, he was hugging the toilet and sprawled across the bathroom floor. I felt so bad for him. He looked miserable. :( I went to the store and got him some Pepto and Sprite and came back and we watched a few movies that afternoon. He was determined to go bowling with his dad that night, and luckily, he was feeling better by the evening. We went to his parent's house, found out his mom was sick with the flu too, I had a bad stomachache, so I laid/slept on the couch while he went bowling with his dad. By the time he got home, I had puked. Luckily I made it to the bathroom in time. Even though I still didn't feel too well, we still got up the next day and went here:

happy day :) january 12, 2011

he thought a Double Down from KFC sounded good and would cure him from his flu, so off to KFC we went.

I wasn't brave enough to eat anything but mashed potatoes. First meal in almost 24 hours!

That night, we went to his parents. I don't really know......


the night before our holiday dinner with our family. we made the cake and started defrosting the cornish hens!

our belated holiday dinner for our families. we made cornish hens with homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, Guinness Beef Stew, cornbread, some other things I'm forgetting and we made a checkerboard cake!

we went shooting with his brothers and dad...and the rabbit gloves kept me warm

I can shoot this one mostly by myself!

his turn :)

I'm a badass with a pistol!

awww, he loves me!!!

we went to the hot tubs, which we always do at least once while he is home

we went to the tattoo place so he could get a new tattoo...don't worry, he didn't get one of these, but these were in the tattoo books. For real? Do people really get tattoos that say this?? Do you have a Chinese symbol? Might want to make sure it doesn't match one of these...just sayin'.

he got his hair cut and looked all military like!

For their dad's birthday, Seth's brother, Shane, and him their dad a flag box with both of their ribbons and medals. Seth acquired the flag on his first or second deployment to Iraq, sent the flag to Shane during his deployment and it has gone back and forth between them, and the US, Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq for the last few years and multiple deployments. I absolutely LOVE this. I'm pretty sure his dad was about to cry, but was trying really hard not to show it.

What the hell? Leave is already over?? Waiting at the airport :(

He's on that plane. I waited until it was de-iced and was in the air. Then I left, and the plane was flying over me as I headed home.


I love you babe. This deployment is almost over and it won't be too long till I see you in Germany!! R&R was the best, and I can't wait till we can be together all the time. LOVE YOU!!!!