Veteran's Day

For me, Veteran’s day takes on a whole new meaning now that I’m engaged to a Soldier. Yes, prior to meeting Seth I always admired and had the utmost respect for those serving in the military, but I think it’s different when you’re marrying one. Everything hits more “close to home.”

I have more respect than ever for service members now.

I have a better understanding of what they do. (I understand what the spouses and family members back home go through too).

My heart swells with pride and I get teary eyed when I hear the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem.

It makes me appreciate my freedom more than ever.

I get so excited when I see someone wearing ACU's, I just want to hug them. (I think it'll make me feel closer to Seth).

Marrying a soldier makes everything a lot more special…the time you spend together, the holiday’s spent together, the times you get to talk. We talk on the phone an average of 3-4 times per week and we’ve only g-cammed twice in 8 months. Do you know how incredibly excited I got during those 2 times we g-cammed? They were the middle of the night and lasted less than 5 minutes each time, but I was so thankful that I was able to see his face, see him, and see that, yes, he is real, and we do have more than just a phone relationship.

He makes me appreciate the little things in life, the things that he sacrifices, for the sake of American’s that he doesn’t even know.

Below is a part of the email I sent him this morning:

I wanted to tell you Happy Veteran's day and how proud of you I am. You're a GREAT soldier, A Great American and a Great fiancé. (You'll be a great dad too, but I'll save that for Father's Day). I love that you always put others before you, and are willing to make sacrifices for others... for people you don't even know. I love how safe you make me feel, and how when we're together, I'm never scared, because I know you'll take care of me. I love the overwhelming sense of pride I have for you when I hear the National Anthem. I love how humble you are when people tell you thanks for your service. I love how you set people to very high standards, and you set yourself to a very high standard as well. I love your bravery and your courage to make America a better and safer place. I love your motivation to be a better person, and a better soldier. I love you so very much and I cannot wait to marry you and to call you my husband.

I love you babe, and I am so incredibly proud of you. Thank you for your service to our country. And thank you to all the other armed forces, past, present and future, for their service as well.

Wedding Wednesday

Holy crap I didn't even realize it was Wednesday. Well, I knew it was Wednesday, but I was thinking about what I'd write about for Wedding Wednesday's post for tomorrow, but then I realized that tomorrow is actually Thursday and Veteran's Day, and I'll be doing my Veteran's day post then....so today is my wedding post.

Anyyyyyways. I don't have much of an update. I have more addresses gathered and entered, and I'm sicking my dad on the task of re-creating our save the date in Word. I'm not good with measurements and meeting post office measurements for our postcard and my dad likes that crap, so I'm asking him to do it. We'll get that accomplished this weekend, I'll take them to the printer next week, and we'll mail them out after that.

I have a serious love obsession with TheKnot.com It's a free wedding website and I have used it sooo much and it's kept my ass on track! It also has a daily countdown...and we have 248 days till our wedding!!

Random updates

I've been a busy bee the last few weeks. Here's what I've been up to:

• Christmas shopping...this is by far the earliest I've started. Today I even wrapped presents. It's not even Thanksgiving yet!!
• I work with Molli and she is amazing. We are so much a like and have been getting together every Thursday night for the last few weeks. We go out for dinner and drinks. I live for Thursdays right now. She's also going to be joining the Boot Camp thing at my gym, so she'll be my work out buddy for November 15 through December 18th.
• Speaking of working out...I've lost 7 lbs in the last 7 weeks, doing the Biggest Loser thing at my gym. I've lost quite a few inches overall and I'm keeping this up. I can't wait for the Boot Camp classes...they have a class called "butts and guts"! I'm super excited for it! I have 7 more lbs to go to meet my goal for when Seth is home, and 3 lbs left to reach the weight I was when he deployed. Totally doable if I stay focused.
• My sister is coming home for Christmas!! And my brother is probably too!!! I CANNOT WAIT!!! I haven't seen my brother in......shit, I don't know. I think the last time he was here was when he came out for Christmas 2008 and stayed through April 2009. Holy crap that was forever ago. I haven't seen my sister since February 2010, which is forever too. My sister and I are very close and she's thinking of staying the winter here (she currently lives in Oregon). I told her she can stay with me if she'd like, except when Seth is home. haha Having my siblings home will definitely help me get through Christmas with Seth deployed.
• Speaking of Seth, he's been in a different location, and we actually talked quite a bit over the weekend. Just a lot of little random phone calls and some text messages here and there. I think he's paying for internet access and it's consistent, so we're able to have a full conversation.
• We've g-cammed (yeah, I just made that up...it's webcamming on gmail chat...whatever you want to call it) only twice this deployment. TWICE. It's very frustrating. Hopefully this weekend we'll get a chance to do it again.
• I really want (need?) a new couch. We've been looking at them online and sending links back and forth. I finally found one that I really like, and I've even tested it out in person. It's superduper comfortable and Seth likes it too. He said I have his approval to purchase it for us, and we'll have it in time for our little belated holiday dinner in January. I can't wait to have everyone over and show off our new couch!! I did want to wait until he was home so we could go to the furniture store and try them all out together and get in dumb arguments about which one to get (hey, it's true. We've never done that before because we've always been apart, and I would love to have a dumb, stupid argument over what couch to get), but he said that we can purchase a new TV when he's home. I'm not one to complain in this department.
• I have to get my wisdom teeth out. It's going to be friggin expensive. I hate insurance. (If anyone has any advice or knowledge in the TriCare dept and dental insurance, please feel free to let me know). I'm going to have to do it twice, because I refuse to pay $1,118 out of my pocket to get sedated once, and get all 4 teeth taken out. I'll save about $500-600 by doing it twice. So I have one appt in December to get two teeth taken out, and then I'll make another appointment for February to get the other two taken out. My dental insurance resets in January, so this is why I'm doing it again after the new year. The money I'll be saving with this will go towards my couch.
• After I get my wisdom teeth out in February (I'll spend time recovering on my new couch!!!) we'll be in the very home stretch of this deployment and I'll be heading to Germany for the welcome home ceremony :)
• My deployment donut says 60% done and 40% to go. Still a great deal to go, but it's going by fast, to be honest.
• So Seth sorta annoyed me today. Not really, but yes really. He wants new boots for Christmas, and since he'll be in the 'Stan on Christmas day, I wanted to get him something he'd use over there, and not just a bunch of junk. He told me he needs new boots, and he sent me the link to the ones he'd like. I waited a week or two before purchasing them, and ordered them last night. He emailed me this morning and sent me a different link to a different pair of boots that he wants more. Ugh, figures that I just ordered them last night, and now he wants different ones. I swear that he knows exactly what's going on in my head and knows when I purchase a gift for him. Somehow any surprise for him gets ruined. So I had to cancel the boots (at the new place he's at temporarily, he was able to try on the first pair of boots that he sent me, and he didn't like them, so I'd rather not waste $150 on boots that don't fit comfortably, but still). Now I'll purchase the new pair of boots. He KNOWS every single present I buy him, even if I don't give him any hints. It makes me so mad. On my bucket list goes this: purchase Seth a gift and actually have it be a surprise.

I suppose that's all the updates for now. I guess I'll go clean up my Christmas wrapping mess in the living room and fantasize about cuddling with Seth on our new couch in 2 months. A girl can dream, right?

Mil-Spouse Friday Fill in # 9!

Thanks to Wife of a Sailor for the questions!!

1. A different twist on last week’s question. This week, the first question is: what’s the nicest thing a MILSPOUSE has ever done for you? (brought to you from navy_smurfette)
   The nicest thing a milspouse has offered to me is to let me stay with her next spring when our guys come home. They have an apartment in Germany, and even though she's been in the US for this deployment, she said that I am more than welcome to stay at their place when I go there for the homecoming. I already can't wait. She has a beautifully adorable little girl who will be 1 next month and I wanted to baby snatch her last spring when I went there and we went to Rothenburg ob der Tauber for the day, but Seth told me I couldn't. He said it'd be weird for our friendship. He's probably right. He'll be mad at me for posting this publicly too. Sorry in advance. She's just the perfect little girl.
   
   


2. How often do you drive faster than the speed limit?
   Often enough...without getting caught. Word to the wise: I recently learned from one of our school police liaison officers that he'll ticket someone going 13 mph or over. Also learned that crying gets nowhere with him. Note to self on both items.
   
   


3. Did you have a nickname in school? If so, what was it?
   Nahh...can't really get any cool nick names out of Stacy. Stace is about as much as you can get. Not too exciting.
   
   


4. If your life was a book, what would the title be and how would it end?
   Oh dear. I have NO Idea what it would be titled, but I know it'd end happily ever after.
   
   


5. Look back (in your planner if you have one) to September 14th… what did you do that day?
   I looked back on my work calendar and had nothing work related scheduled. It was the 6th day of school, so I'm sure I was pretty busy. After work, I'm sure I went to the gym. Little did I know it was the day before my robbery.
   

Wedding Wednesday

I feel like I've made a significant amount of progress in the wedding department this last week. I met with my future in-laws over the weekend and we finalized the guest list. They had three additions, so I proposed them to Seth and he agreed. So I emailed his mom back to get their addresses. Yesterday I went to a printing shop in our town to check things out. We're I'm doing a simple post card for the save the date. I have it mostly done, I just have to finalize it. So I went to this print shop yesterday with my dad and we asked all the right questions. I created it in MS Publisher but now I have to re-create it in Word to meet postcard mailing standards. Luckily, my dad has a postcard template for work, so he's emailing me that, and then I just have to transfer over our pictures and wording, send Seth the proof, get his approval, take it all to the print shop, print the mailing labels and pop them in the mail. Easy, right? Nov. 15 is my personal deadline. This will be about 15 days after my original deadline...it could be worse, I guess.

I also want to re-take the picture of me on it, because it's old. It's a picture of me when I dressed up in Seth's uniform when he was home on leave from Iraq in 2008. So it's an old picture. I didn't tell him I did that at the time...I thought I might get in trouble...so I didn't tell him until we were half a world apart again. Then he wanted to see the pictures, and thankfully he liked them. I do have a not so lovey pimple on my cheek so I'm waiting for that to clear up before I re-take my picture. You all wanted to know that, I know.

I wish there was more that I could be doing right now. I suppose I could be creating little recipe cards for the wedding favors. That would mean though that I would have to keep track of them, and keep them in tip top condition until next July. I'll wait for this.

So we have a total of 126 people on the guest list (don't freak out, babe, it'll be OK. We won't really have that many). But I'm expecting something more like 70 because we have a ton of people invited from out of town/state/country. :)

A Deployment + Cold Fall Weather =

I don't know when I last shaved my legs. Honestly. It's been a few weeks, probably. Gross, I know. It's not like Seth is here to even complain about them, so what does it matter how hairy they are? But before you stop reading this, rest assured, I am not including any pictures. (You're welcome). Anyways, I was washing my feets the other night before bed for two reasons: 1) I wear high heels all day at work and they make my feet stink. Gross, but it's true. 2) My feet were really cold and I just wanted to warm my toes up. That's when I noticed my leg hairs were getting outta control. I guess maybe for a brief moment, I wanted to feel the smoothness of a freshly shaven leg, but since it was right before my bedtime, I wasn't going to bother shaving both legs. My pink razor caught my eye in that brief moment. So what does any sane girl do in this situation? That's right. I shaved a reverse mohawk in my leg hair. Just one strip of hair was shaved off from my ankle to my knee. It was totally cool looking, and feeling. I felt the smoothness of it and it felt good. But not good enough to shave both legs. Yep, a reverse mohawk in my leg hair satisfied me just fine.

I got Halloween flowers!!

This is the second time Seth has randomly sent me flowers this deployment. They're always sent to my work and they make my coworkers jealous!! Not going to lie, I do love that part (he knows that I love it, and I'm sure he loves the attention just as much!). And I love when people come down from different parts of the building to check them out. I love that word travels fast for when I get flowers!! This was a happy Halloween bouquet (who gets those!?) and had red roses and orange lillies. It is a very pretty Halloween bouquet! He's so good to me :)



On a different related yet not note, I went out to dinner with Molli the other night and it was like 67 degrees in my apartment when I got home. ABSOLUTELY FREEZING! When Seth was in Iraq, before we met, I convinced him to wear a t-shirt for a few days and then send it to me. He did this (then I got a wicked sty in my eyes - totally gross, I know - and I totally blamed him for it. I thought it was pink eye, and I was thinking, "what a jerk, he's giving me pink eye and we haven't even met?!" I think I used to get sties in like elementary or middle school...I haven't had one in forever, so of course it was his fault since I had just gotten his shirt and suddenly got one). Anyways, he sent me the shirt, I lived through the sty and I've worn it to bed since I've gotten it. So after I got home from dinner, I had the bright idea to put the shirt in the dryer to warm it up. When I put it on, it seriously felt like a big amazing warm hug from Seth. It felt sooo amazing for a good few seconds. But I was so cold and my coldness sucked the heat out of it, and then it just felt like a t-shirt, but for those few seconds, it was as close to a hug from him that I've felt in 7 1/4 months. And it made me even more excited for R&R. 2monthish2monthish2monthish.....

I'm off to the gym, going shoe shopping (DSW sent me a $20 off $49 coupon because they "miss me!!" How can I resist that?! I can't. That's how), going to my future in-laws house to finalize the guest list and do some wedding talk (I'm contemplating taking over my whole wedding binder, or will that freak them out?!), going to my parents to carve my pumpkin (and bake Seth pumpkin seeds) and then I'm going out with Molli later tonight. Should be a fun weekend and I'm super stoked for it.

I'm participating in blog around the world again!! Thanks to Amanda

Hope you all have a great weekend, too!