He's home!

I've been in a bit of whirl wind the last couple of weeks and have seriously been slacking on my blogging. I guess I have a good excuse though. My husband came home! If you follow me on Facebook, you may already have seen that but I should probably share some more pictures and actually blog about it.

In case you somehow missed it or you just started reading my blog, my husband has been deployed for the last nine months. On Feb 14th, he came home! What a fantastic start to my Valentine's Day! I've known for a couple of weeks but due to OPSEC I couldn't share the info. If you aren't military affiliated, you probably have no idea what OPSEC is. It stands for OPerations SECurity and basically means to keep information guarded so that potential "threats" wont know what is going on. Especially when troops are overseas, we don't want anyone bad to know where they're at, when they're traveling, etc.

I helped Gideon to make a welcome home sign for dad, and as you know, Gideon LOVES pirates, so we made a pirate map sign! It turned out fairly cute and added that touch of originality so that we didn't have the same sign as everyone else. I also should add, Gideon keeps calling soldiers' Mateys. Hence another part of where the sign idea came from.

I will admit, I was a little nervous to have him come home, as it seems like he's been gone forever. You get a groove of just you and the kids and to add hubby back into that, is a bit intimidating. I was also worried about how Gideon was going to handle it, but all of my worries seem to have been for no reason, overall. We've been working on getting a routine started, which is a little hard since Michael is still working half days, but we've got something at least. And Gideon was so excited to see daddy and has been all about going everywhere with him, which is better then I could have hoped for. I thought he might need a little warming up, but nope.

Patiently waiting

I see feet!

They're here!

Even the dogs were super excited to see him and I wasn't sure if they'd remember him or not. Coco was whining up a storm when he was petting them. So sweet.

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Interested in helping some single soldiers?

In case you didn't know, my husband is deployed. They will be returning shortly and I have to say, I can't wait :-) Of course that's probably not a surprise to any of you out there. Now that the time is coming soon, we're trying to get things together to make it easy on all of the soldiers returning. This includes creating welcome home baskets for all of the single soldiers who might not have family here waiting. The actual date of their return is confidential and can't be released which makes it next to impossible for even extended family to make travel arrangements to be here. Could you imagine coming home from an overseas deployment, spending probably the last 72 hours on a plane and countless months away from family, only to return to an empty barracks room? Most likely in the middle of the night where they can't even go to a store to pick any immediate items up? We don't want our heroes to come home to this.

The USO is kindly donating toiletries but we're still in need of many items. The majority of businesses in the area are completely tapped out to be able to donate due to being located near a mega base (Joint Base Lewis McChord) with constant soldiers coming in and out. Because of this, I'm reaching out to you, my followers.

Ideas for donations:
Welcome home letters/card
Bottled Water
Ramen or cup o'noodles
Easy mac
Chips
Coffee and Creamer
Small laundry soap
Dryer sheets
Dish soap
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Bed sheets
Towels
Anything that will make a house a home

The day my husband left

 

 Thank you for any and all donations. You are all amazing and I am always astounded at the support out there. If you're interested in donating (and every little bit helps), here are the addresses of where you can mail them:


If mailing though the post office (USPS):


13712 F St
Box 339500, MS 118
JBLM, WA 98433-9500

If mailing though UPS or FedEx:

5-3 Field Artillery Regiment
ATTN: Charlie Battery Rear Detachment
BLDG 13712 F St
Lewis-North, WA 98433

And please make checks payable to: CHARLIE 5-3 FRG (and send to above address depending on carrier)

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Deployment talk

Most of my family know this already, if not, sorry I missed you. lol.

Michael will be deploying soon.

I can't tell you when of course but soon...

I'm hoping to get his address soon so I can try and get people to send him care packages and letters. If you're interested in mailing him anything, please let me know. I can't promise he'll write back.

I've been on pinterest and google, pinning ideas for care packages. There are a lot of cute themed ones out there.

You should follow me on pinterest if you're not already because I have a ton of ideas on there. I will be writing about any packages I put together and of course just my daily musings on here. It's hard because I can't give any specifics about what he's doing but I will be writing what I can.

I also just started babysitting a little boy, so that will help to keep me busy.

Keeping busy will be the trick I think.

The longest we've been apart is a month and  that was when he first got to Korea. That wasn't too difficult, just boredom with being at my step-dad's house and nothing to do. Oh and the 6 weeks I was staying with my mom last summer to visit, same thing. I was able to talk to him all the time then. At least I knew I could around his work schedule which was pretty easy to work around minus the time change.

This time will be harder, I think.

I wont know when I'll be able to talk to him...

It'll work out though. I'm fairly independent.

Anyone want to help me put up Christmas lights in December?

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Back to bloggin

I haven't been on here since this last summer... And even that was something I was just starting... I'm going to try and get on the blogging train again though.

So what's been going on since the last time I posted? I went to Washington for a visit and then I was able to get on Space A to get back to Korea! Yah for me! I enjoyed my last few months in Korea and in December 2011, we left Korea for good and moved back to Washington, to Ft Lewis. We stayed with my sister at her boyfriend's house (thank you Travis and Terri), where Gideon had a birthday

Monster Truck show

Gideon and Auntie Terri

 and we had Christmas.

Gideon opening Christmas presents

Next thing on the agenda was to find a house a little closer to post. I grew up in Enumclaw which is where Terri and Travis live. This is a good probably 2 hour drive to post, a bit far for daily travels... We learned the hard way that moving from overseas back stateside really sucks. You don't receive your full BAH (Basic Allowance Housing) until the SM (Sponsor Member) signs in. Not only that but if something goes wrong with your pay nobody will help you till the SM signs in... Michael took a month leave to go visit his daughters and ideally to give us time to get the house set-up. Unfortunately his pay got screwed up which made this difficult... We were able to find a house eventually in Puyallup, a little farther then I wanted to live but it's a really nice house. Older, but nice and big, with a huge yard! Fantastic when you have little ones around.

Our pretty house covered in snow

As you can see, it snowed right after moving in! SO much fun! It was a huge snow storm.

Making a snow man with daddy

Yaki-do

Coco

Gideon posing with his snowman

 However, the day after the snow storm, there was too much snow! And trees started falling! Including on our car! The day after that was an ice storm, which made the rest of the trees fall....

Trees down in the front yard after cutting tree off car

Tree laying on car

Front of house

Side of the house

My poor mirror

After the snow recovery, Michael was back at work. I've been trying to find a job but haven't been having much luck. I decided to try babysitting and then I could stay home with Gideon. I now have one little boy named Uriah who is almost 4 years old that I watch on the weekends and I am working on finding a child for the week to watch. Gideon also will be starting school soon too (another blog will be posted about that) and we also found out recently that Michael will be deploying in the next couple of months as well. So lots coming up and lots going on. I will try my best to keep up with everything and I hope you're interested in reading.

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