Donation Drive at work

I work at a pretty generous place (other times not so much, but that’s not the point of this post). I have a close coworker and friend, Sarah, whose husband is a history teacher at one of our high schools. Sarah’s husband, Kent, is the leader of the National Honor Society group at the school, is working on his Masters degree in military history, and his father, as well as Sarah’s father, served in the military in Vietnam.

At the beginning of Seth’s deployment, Sarah went to her dentist (who is now my dentist because he’s awesome) and she asked if he’d like to donate toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss to Seth’s recently deployed unit to Afghanistan. He donated I think 40 of each and this got Sarah’s mind wondering and she suggested we get our whole building (I work at the administration building) in on donating goods. The turnout was awesome!!! I think we had 4 huge boxes of stuff, weighing over 80 lbs, and a coworker named Lynn generously gave me a monetary donation of $100 (her husband also served in the Army) to help with mailing costs, and purchasing whatever else we may have wanted to buy. I couldn’t believe it! Sarah and I went shopping at Sam’s Club with a portion of the money and got feminine hygiene products, multi-packs of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, razors for male and female, lots of beef jerky and other snacka. Kent also took their two sons to a video game store and they picked out a handful of games to send. I couldn’t believe how awesome it turned out. We sent it in time for Memorial Day last year, and of all the boxes, the one that got there first was the one that had feminine hygiene products. (Knowing Seth, I knew he’d round up a bunch of guys, take pictures of them with the tampons…and sure enough, he did).

Anyways, Seth’s brother Shane deployed last month. Kent recently asked me if his students can do another donation drive. I told him Seth’s deployment is wrapping up, and they didn’t need/want a bunch of things but I would ask Shane if he’d like to be the lucky recipient. He said that’d be awesome. So, Shane has agreed to this and is looking forward to receiving the goods. I asked him for ideas of what they’d like and he said, “any kind of hygiene item, blank ink pens, cookies – especially Oreos – beef jerky, any kind of military book, and xbox games.” My dad and I work at the same place, and I didn't tell him we were doing this for Shane. He emailed me yesterday and said his bus drivers wanted to do a "stuff the bus" donation drive for deployed military members. (They do this during the holidays and donate the food items to a local food pantry and toys to Toys for Tots). This is going to be bigger than I anticipated and I think I'm going to recruit some professional help.

So, my question to all you readers is: do you have any Marine specific recommendations for us to gather? I need to make a list to give to Kent for his students. What do you normally put in a care package? I know what I send to Seth but I feel pressure to make an ultra cool package for Shane.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

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

Sweet Spiced Nuts - recipe

Like any good military wife/fiance/girlfriend, I bake a lot of stuff to send Seth. I found the following recipe in Food Network Magazine* from a friend. I think it will be a good taste from home, and a little different than the normal cookies I send him.

Sweet Spiced Nuts

Ingredients:
1 large egg white
2/3 cup sugar
Kosher salt
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie** or chai spice blend
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cups assorted mixed nuts
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

(aren't my granite counter tops just gorgeous? lets pretend like they are and you said yes)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 275. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper***
2. Whisk the egg white with 1 tablespoon water in a large bowl until frothy.
   
3. In a small bowl, combine the sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, the spice blend and cayenne pepper.
   
   
   
4. Toss the nuts in the egg white mixture, then stir in the sugar-spice mixture and Worcestershire sauce.
   
   
   
5. Spoon the nuts onto the prepared baking sheet in small clusters and bake until golden, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely then break into pieces.

*The Food Network site has this picture of this recipe, which is completely adorable and I LOVE the waffle cone idea! However, since I'll be sending this in the mail, I will not be putting my baked nuts into cute little cones with cute little ribbons to my soldier. (Thanksgiving and Christmas though...you bet I'm doing this!!!)

**Note: if you suddenly find yourself sans pumpkin pie spice (like me), here's a quick little recipe that makes a lot of it:
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Stir all spices together. Store in a glass container.

***Parchment paper is different from wax paper. I learned that the hard way this weekend. Not sure why I thought they were the same, but they definitely aren't. I wasted the whole first batch because every single nut had wax paper stuck to it. I don't have any parchment paper, so I just used some non-stick cooking spray on a cookie sheet and that worked very well.

I have another busy Saturday/weekend. I made my to-do list yesterday:

• Gym training session today at 11 AM
• Get a birthday present for a friend (this was also on my to-do list last weekend and I never got around to it. But her birthday is this Thursday so I don't have a choice now!)
• Drive to the lake shore and watch the sunset and find pretty trees and capture it all with my new camera
• Email future mother in law about getting together to finalize our guest list
• Complete our Save The Date card. I need to have them in the mail by the end of the month.
  
• Work on our TheKnot.com profile (I'm mostly done...just need to put a few more things/pictures on there)
• Start and finish Halloween themed care package
• Call art place about mosaic class

I better get going!

Blog around the world

I've got a fairly busy day. Right now I'm eating oatmeal and participating in...

and reading up on a few different blogs around the world. Cool, huh? You can join in on the fun by going here!

After this, I'm going to go to the post office to mail out a care package. I was going to mail it, but due to a last minute request that I had to fulfill last night, I am mailing it today. Seth told me a few weeks ago (after I had neglected to send a care package for a little while) that he was feeling "deprived." Nobody likes a deprived soldier, so I packed up up 2 boxes and off they went. I can't say what's in this one because he hasn't gotten it yet, and I don't want to ruin the surprise. When he was in Iraq and I first started sending him care packages, we agreed not to cheat by looking at what was listed on the customs forms. We have to open the box entirely to see what's in it. I always liked this idea, but it was very hard for me to do. I always had to remove the customs forms before opening the box and put it face down so I couldn't accidentally see what was listed. He sent me a few esrever (reverse) care packages...which is what we called the fun boxes he sent me with Iraqi stuff. It was fun. I wish he had outgoing mail where he's at now...I miss getting letters and a random box. :(

After the post office, I'm going to the gym where I'm participating in the Biggest Loser Contest. We get 4 personal training sessions and this is session #3. We're working our booty's and legs today. Last time I worked with this trainer, I could barely walk for like 5 days. I'm not joking either. It's going to be awesome.

I also have to go to Best Buy and look at cameras, and I think I'll go downtown to find a friend a birthday present. I have no idea what to get her but I'll find something good. I was going to bake an apple pie this weekend, but since it's going to be in the 80's, I don't feel like turning on the oven, so I'll scrap this idea and wait for a cooler day.

Have a great Saturday!

House/pet sitting, spiders and another care package

I am house/pet sitting for a family I babysit for, for the next 7.5 days. I'm really not looking forward to it, but I'm doing it to afford my wedding shoes. That's bad to say, but it's sorta true. They have lots of pets, and I get itchy and my eyes get watery when I spend a long time there. Luckily (actually I don't know if this is lucky or not), they live right next door to my parents, so I'll actually be spending the night at my parents house, and hanging out and going for walks with the animals here and there. I love my parents and all, but I will be so over seeing them by the time the week is over. I'm somewhat dreading it. Parental overload for sureeeeee.

I should really be packing up my stuff right now, but as you can clearly see, I'm not too excited about it so therefore I'm procrastinating. I'm even watching Police Women of Memphis on TLC. I also keep watching a hugeass nasty spider on my balcony screen door. I keep thinking about killing it, but it's rather large and it has pinchers I'm pretty sure. (It's trapped between the glass slider door, and the screen door, so it can't get me right now). It looks to me to be a baby tarantula. It looks furry. I'm no spider expert, but I'm sure it could pass for one. I'm contemplating killing it to death with a shoe, but since it's rather large, I'll have to press pretty hard on my screen door and I don't want to break my hand through it. I don't know if that's even possible, but I don't want to find out. I wouldn't worry too much about this, except I want to spray the bees or wasps or whatever are now building another stupid nest on my balcony railing. I don't want to let this sit for the next week while I'm gone. Lord knows how big the hive will be by then. I'm wondering if I could vacuum up the spider, but then I also think that won't actually kill the spider, which is my ultimate goal, and the spider will eventually crawl out of the vacuum, which brings me back to square one. I would SO make Seth be the killer of spiders and sprayer of the bees of the household, but in his absence, I need to grow some balls, suck it up and kill the damn thing if I'm afraid of it. It's what he'd want me to do anyways. It's just that this one is bigger than other ones I've seen.

On the bright side, I went to the post office and mailed Seth some care packages again. This time, I got another newish lady. It always amazes me that with how often I go in there, they've recently just begun asking me about Seth a little bit. I've been going to the same post office for over 2.5 years and for the most part, it's been the same staff members. This lady, Deanna, was pretty nice. She was talking to me about "support groups" (for lack of a better word) for military spouses in our area, which I have yet to find, and how there is an older lady who comes in very frequently and her church collects and donates stuff to military members. Deanna said she would try to ask the lady if she knows of support groups in our area. Deanna also asked if I needed more boxes, and I told her I had plenty of home, and she said that I could get the special, "America Supports You" flat rate boxes that aren't just out for taking. I guess they have to be specially asked for. So she hauled out a huge box with 25 large flat rate boxes!! She gave me the whole box! I'm so excited for this. She thanked me for Seth's service too. She said that when she was younger, she dated a guy in the military and he was in Vietnam and she said it makes her teary eyed (which I could see in her eyes) when she remembered sending him care packages, and being separated from him. So, I like her. Tis what my life consists of.

I'm going to kill the stupid spider now and then start packing I suppose. Time to get my ass in gear.

It's August. Holy Crap.

I’m excited for this week. Mostly I’m excited for Friday though. Here’s what I’m doing this week:

• Going to World Market to get fresh vanilla beans so I can start brewing the vanilla extract with the vodka I bought yesterday.
• Dropping off my favorite pair of black heels to get fixed so I can wear them again come fall.
• Go shopping for Seth and get him some mouse traps. He specifically requested the “snappy” kinds, not the glue/sticky kinds.
• Mail out care package with above item, and other things. Maybe some cookies for his friend. We’ll see.

And last but certainly not least, on Friday, I’m going to take a half day and go to the wedding ceremony/reception site in the afternoon! I have long time family friends coming into town and they really want to see the location, so we’re going to do a little shopping in the afternoon and then head to the site. It turns out that there is a 3:00 rehearsal on Friday afternoon, so I’m excited to silently stalk that from afar! I’m always open to ideas.

Also throw in a few times at the gym, a few hours at the pool. Oh, I also begin house sitting on Saturday, so that’ll be some extra money in my pocket for the wedding. Specifically it will be spent on wedding shoes.

Deployment donut says 33% today!! Slowly but surely...

"Thank you also for your sacrifice." To me? Really?

I love going to the post office. I go there usually once a week, and at minimum once every other week. I usually have at least 2 boxes to send to Seth, and yesterday was no different. I even have a favorite postal worker. Her name is Lucy. I really like her, she’s very nice and has a sweet little voice and she’s been there since I started sending Seth care packages back in 2008. I always hope to get her when I go in there. Yesterday I got a new lady. I’ve seen her there lots of times before, but I don’t think I’ve gone to her window. I really dislike Douchebag David. He’s rude and I try to avoid him. This new lady yesterday, I’ll have to find out her name, but she was really nice too. She told me I could go to the website and order large flat rate boxes and have them sent directly to me, and I told her I’m at the post office so often, I just pick them up while I’m there. I was sending quite a few books yesterday, so my packages where sort of heavy. I put them up on the counter and gave her the customs forms, and she was reading through them. In one of the care packages, I was sending only books and magazines. She said they probably don’t get many magazines, but I always send my dad’s Time magazines. I’ve asked him to save them for Seth. In my other care package, I sent Seth a few bottles of hot sauce per his request and she asked if they were in “absorbent material in a plastic bag.” I told her they were wrapped in paper towels and placed in the plastic container I was sending (which is for ground coffee I sent in a previous care package). She said something like, “I take it you’ve done this before?” I told her yeah, I’ve been sending packages to him for 2 ½ years now. We made other small talk and she said it was nice of me to support the troops. Then she said, “thank you also for your sacrifice.” I really didn’t know what to say to that, so I mumbled a lame, “thank you?!” I don’t know what I was thanking her for. I need to come up with a better answer, but it caught me off guard. I sacrifice some things while he’s deployed, but I think he sacrifices a whole lot more.

I do have a fairly standard answer of when I get the occasional comment of, “I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t do it at all.” I try to keep it simple for their sake. I just say, “he’s worth the wait.” I could go into a much deeper reasoning and explanation of why I do wait and tell them how hard it is and how not fun it is and how I would love for him to be home every day, but it’s easier to keep the answer simple and also if I were to really explain it, I would increase my odds of crying and I prefer to keep that at a minimum if I can control it. Especially in public. So it’s simple: I wait patiently because he’s worth it.

Ugggghhhhhhhhh

Today I'm in a weird mood. By "weird," I mean everything is pretty much pissing me off.

Examples:

• Today at the post office, I was waiting patiently for a lady to turn. If I would have known she was going to go 2 f'n mph, I would have turned in front of her. I waited to turn to be safe, but my gosh, she should have been going to the damn speed limit. I've been very impatient with slow and/or stupid drivers lately. I find myself yelling obscenities at people in my car....ohhh, pretty much every time I hop in the car.
• I hate doing the dishes, yet I hate having dirty dishes. I will never live without a dishwasher.
• I stepped on the scale the other day at the gym. It was up 6 pounds from since Seth deployed. This should be backwards theoretically. I chalked it up to that I weighed myself after a work out, which they always tell us not to do. Then I realized what I ate when I got home from work today and is all contributing to that 6 pounds. Of course, he has lost at least 15 pounds since he deployed. God, I SOOOO wish I had his will power when it comes to food. It is NOT fair. I also wish I had his motivation when it comes to going to the gym.
• I mostly enjoy Cake Boss on TLC, but Buddy drives me crazy. He's so egotistical and I hate it. I really only like watching the cakes he makes. I do NOT like his personality and I could never work for him. He's an ass.
• Also at the post office, I got my least favorite clerk. His name is David. Or Douchebag. (He is the one that really made me mad a few weeks ago. I had made a care package for Seth and included deodorant. He asked me if it had alcohol in it....and I kind of hesitated to answer cuz I didn't know the honest answer, and then I told him no. He then said somewhat threatening me, "you know, if there is alcohol in there, and it catches a spark in the belly of the plane, and takes it down, you will be held responsible." Now, I understand they have a job to do, to keep the military safe, and the postal people and all that, but really, do you think deodorant is going to catch on fire and make a plane the crash? No. Do you really think when a plane goes down, the first thing they think is , "oh, who was shipping deodorant?" No. You suck, David. Don't threaten me.) Anyways, he is always unfriendly and not pleasant to work with. Figures his window was open at the post office today. I'm not nice to him either. So there.

I'm going to go for a bike ride now. Then I'm going to come back, hop in the shower, then paint my nails. I'm just annoyed at everything right now. I'm ready for this deployment to be over.

i'm mad

I'm mad today. I packaged up a care package, actually 2 last night. Today I went to the post office to mail it this morning and sure enough the post office closed early because its a holdiday weekend. I got there at exactly 12:04. So now I have to wait until tuesday to send it out. What sucks even more is that my friend amy and I have coordinating packages for the guys. Her hubs adked if we could get them a percolator coffee maker so she asked I'd get the coffee and some travel mugs for them. We planned to send them at the same time in hopes that they'd get there at the same time (I know hopeful thinking), and she mailed out the coffee maker today and the damn post office was closed so I cvant send them the coffee they need. Ugghhhhh can't the postal workers work for 5 extra minutes so I could mail it out to freaking The Stan. Its already takes 2 weeks to get there. SHhhheeeshhhhh

In other happier news, I got a wake up call from my lover today! It was great and I was totally out and I needed to be up. He wanted to tell me he got the 4th box from a group of students who donated it.he hasn't called to wake me up on a weekend morning since he deployed so it was a nice surprise to hear his voice first thing.

Nowim off to a bbq for the day and I'm blogging from the back of my parents car. I'm already addicted to blogging.

Happy 3rd of july!

Ok, so.....

I've been completely obsessed with this one blog. I discovered it today and I won't admit to how many hours I've devoted to reading tonight, and catching up on her life story since she started her blog. It's from a fellow military spouse, and she's so real, and so honest, and funny, and unfortunately her husband was killed in Afghanistan just a few short months ago. I can't imagine what she's going through, but my heart goes out to her and her newborn daughter. I started reading her most recent posts, and then realized I needed to know the rest of her story, so I went to her very first post and I've been addicted. Does that make me sound like a creep? Oh well.

I'm still fairly new to this milspouse business and the military in general, and I've not "known" someone who has had a loved one killed in action. Needless to say, it's got me a bit freaked out. I can't help thinking of the worst possible things right now. These thoughts can literally consume you. Honestly. I KNOW he's in the military and he's currently deployed and I KNOW what could happen to him, but I can't let myself think like that the whole time he's deployed. I think I do a fairly good job of thinking positive, but right now, after reading that, it's sorta hard. I know I probably shouldn't read stuff like this right now, or read news articles about things going on where my soldier is at, but I can't help it. They have for the majority of my evening. If I hear the town where he's at in the news, I have to read the article or stop what I'm doing and watch the news clip. If I don't know where the town is compared to where my soldier is at, I have to look it up on Google Earth. I've cried at the majority of her posts, just insanely sad for her loss, and sad for the loss of the dad of their child she gave birth to while he was deployed and he never had a chance to meet. It breaks my heart to think about that.

On a related note, in between catching up on her life story, I made a care package for my love. I got him some boxers (what guy doesn't need some new ones once in a while?) and he said he loved them and asked if I could get him more. So off I went to get him some more. I even go as far as to wash them up, and put them in a ziplock baggy so they are fresh with the smell of laundry detergent from home. I also had a free $15 coupon at Banana Republic, his all time favorite store, and boxers there are $16 for one pair. Pretty expensive in our books, so he's never had a pair. So I got him a pair. He'll have the most stylish boxers under his (sexy) ACU's. And let me just add that I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to rip those boxers off of him. Well, I won't literally be ripping them off of him, because even though I technically spent about $1 on them, they still cost $16 and no way am I about to rip those. I also got him a magazine, lots of coffee, some peanuts, a few travel mugs, and a few handwritten letters. I also included a new installation of our newlywed game show questions, and I can't wait to see his answers this time. God I love him.