12

On the twelfth day of deployment my true love gave to me, the first email of this tour. Neilson is on the move and safely at his next destination. He is busy taking care of some business over email and I know is looking forward to settling in for the long haul.

Today was a busy busy day for us back in Texas. We had friends over to celebrate Jesus' birthday at lunch. We made steaks, baked potatos and salad. I also made "death by chocolate" cake.

The church program was tonight. Grace was in the angel choir and looked beautiful. She did a great job singing her songs and behaving in mass. She sat with the other kids across the chapel from mommy so behaving tonight was a BIG deal.

Creighton was a good boy in mass as well. He rode in the sling for most of the time, had a snack during communion and went right back to sleep. During pictures afterwards he made a new friend in one of the other mommys who was talking to him and making him grin and laugh. Who knew he was bilingual? The mommy was chattering away to him in Spanish and he looked right at her like he understood.

11

we had a productive day. but i need to back up to last night. Neilson called. he's on the move to his course he has to take and then will be at his final destination in a week or 2. no news from him really other than he's bored. oh, and he has no internet right now. he's also heard that the internet where he's going is not that great :( very slow so it looks like webcams are out but we'll see.
grace was upset she didn't get to talk to daddy last time so i made sure to wake him up. she talked to him for a few minutes and promptly went back to sleep. it was after 11 our time. sadly, she doesn't remember today but hopefully she'll get to talk to him during daylight hours soon.
we went to child and youth services this afternoon to enroll grace and creighton. during deployments each child can receive 16 hours free hourly care per month and after that it is only $2 an hour. each child also is elegible for 4 free classes adn 2 sports during the deployment. it is a real blessing and i wanted to make sure we were ready to go.
after that we ran to the commisary. our favorite bagger was there and came running over and loved on the kids. she still won't tell me her name so for now she is bagger 19.
this evening we went to the church for pageant practice. it really came together and i can't wait to see it tomorrow. grace is an adorable angel and is in the front. i am planning on getting a good seat to video it. we'll see if i can swing it.
so that is what we are up to. neilson still hasn't been able to look at the pictures and the blog but i know he'll love hearing about our antics these first few weeks.

Comments

I've had a couple of questions about how to leave comments so I thought I'd post a little walk-through :)

First look at the bottom of a post and in green it has a time stamp and *a number* comments. Click on comments and it will bring you to a screen that has two columns. On the left are the comments left and on the right it says, "Leave a comment".
You type what you want to say in the box and then you have to choose an identity. If you don't have a google or blogger account, scroll down and select the little circle to the left of ANONYMOUS and hit post.

Just a note, if you use the anon. identity to post please sign your comments so we know who you are :)

Let me know if you need more clarification.

10

it was cold again today in texas. fear not they are forecasting 70s for christmas day!

creighton had his 2 month check up and shots today. he's been a tired, cranky boy as a result. and very very big. 13lbs 13 ozs and 24 inches long. he is very healthy as well.

we had dinner with friends of ours today and as we were getting out the door i was struck with the image of how we are the picture of deployment. i was wrangling a preschooler and a newborn in the cold into the van by myself then i headed back for the stepladder which i wrangled into the van. our friend has cathedral ceilings and needed help changing a lightbulb. her husband is deployed as well. only during a deployment would such an odd scene be normal.

speaking of deployments i had a bit of a scare this morning. the doorbell rang at 8am and woke me up. let me just say NO ONE comes to my front door and rings the doorbell and i'll leave it at that. it was the mailman thank goodness.

9 was fine

I think I'm cracking up. I lost the peanut butter in my pantry for umm.... 5 days this week. Yes I looked everywhere for it. You see, I live on pb&j. I had decided that I must have accidently thrown it away. It was on the list for the next grocery trip. Tonight I happened to be walking by the open pantry and I swear the PB jumped out and yelled, "Here I am!! Here I am!!!" It was at eye level in the front. I had just put the couscous on top of it but it was still very much visible. Doh!

Anyway, today we were working on cleaning up. We did laundry, dishes, Grace cleaned her room, oh and we made gingerbread cookies. We were supposed to go to the greening of the chapel and potluck but I fell asleep about 30 minutes before we were set to leave - oops.

I think Creighton's thrush is much much better. My biggest clue *TMI ALERT* his diapers don't smell yeasty anymore. They just stink! ha ha ha

Grace is continuing to practice reading her books. She is getting quite good I must say and I'm very proud of her.

We have a READER!

http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e99/ksuwahab/?action=view&current=MVI_3235.flv
I still haven't figured out how to imbed the video clips just yet so a link will have tod do.

8

Like the new look? The gorgeous blog header is all thanks to my wonderful friend Laura (her blog is linked on the right boy-oh-boy) who suprised me with this treasure and the instructions in my email today. She is so good at giving instructions even computer illiterate me managed to make the change. Thank you Laura for the new look! It's just what I've been wanting.

Today we were a little evil. We went to the quilt store and I got 2 more projects to work on. I got a pattern called Yellow Brick Road that uses fat quarters. I then got the fat quarters (on sale!) for both a fall and Christmas quilt. Now I have a whole year to get them finished which will require me teaching myself to free motion machine quilt. I guess I need to post some pictures of my crafty goodness I've been doing of late. Since NTC in September I've done 4 lap quilts, 3 reusable shopping bags, a whole pile of American Girl doll clothes, PJs for all the nieces and nephews and kids, matching Christmas outfits for Creighton and Grace, an angel costume, a cat costume, baby blankets too numerous to count, oh and who could forget the evil carseat cover and well you get the picture. I've allready broke one walking foot and my poor machine which is only 6 months old probably has more miles on it than the machine it replaced.

Of non crafty note, we got a cool gift from our wedding photographer today. It is a Christmas ornament with one of our photos on it. Very cool and I need to get a picture of it to send to Neilson.

We went to mass this evening and Grace did a lovely job. She is learning the responses and actions and is coming along wonderfully.

Creighton is single handedly trying to stink us out of the house. I think he's on the mend with his thrush but I am sad to report, still riddled with gas.

Trying Something New

i tried taking video with our camera and uploading it. let's see if this works. it's a video of creighton in the bathtub last night.
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e99/ksuwahab/?action=view&current=MVI_3223.flv

Deployment Day 7

Isn't this cute? We went to HEB today to get a turkey and on our way to the checkouts we found these mini poinsettias and had to get one. Of course we were destined for pink since Grace picked it out. I guess in this picture you can't really tell that it is pink rather than red. Oh well, Neilson really is better at pictures. For a little perspective, the pot is the size of a dixie cup.

We were pretty boring today. I did a mountain of laundry and managed to clean the kitchen and mop the floor. I'm sure that will last all of 1 day - HA!

Tonight we went to Cici's Pizza for dinner and then walked around Kohl's. I'm sure Grace will be mortified to know that I am going to tell you we bought her some new undies. We also picked up a cute frog from the Eric Carle collection for Creighton. Of course Grace wanted a toy but I had a surprise for her at home.

Last month I ordered her a set of easy readers from the book order. I presented them to her tonight and we had to read all 12. She is thrilled and wants to practice them for when Papa and Mama come.

Deployment Day 6

Well day 6 was a busy day. Grace had her last day of school for the year. She starts back January 6. Creighton and I got up early and proceeded to fall back asleep. It was responsible Miss Grace that got us up so we could get to school.

After we dropped her off Creighton and I went to the commissary. Our favorite bagger was there (bagger 19) and she got to love on the baby for a bit. Lucky for Grace there were cereal straws on the scratch and dent table. She has been asking for them for at least 6 months and they were finally cheap enough for mommy to buy.

There was a nice surprise in the mail. A box from Topeka. Grandma Jo and Grandpa Bob sent Christmas presents. I'll have to get a picture of Grace tomorrow playing cards with her new Tinkerbell card games. She and I played Go fish tonight and she beat me handily.

I had to laugh when I opened Creighton's. It was a gloworm. Neilson and I have been calling him our gloworm when he wears the green gown in the picture. I know his daddy will love his new toy when he sees this.

To wrap up our evening we took Creighton to the doctor. It was as I suspected, little Mr. has thrush. Never fear, we have medicine and he is on the mend. Also of note, he is now nearly 25 inches long and over 13 pounds. He is quickly outgrowing size one diapers. I won't buy another package. He is also firmly in size 3-6mo clothes. I'll need to start packing up the 0-3 mo. :(

Oh just a reminder. If you are interested, I do have Neilson's address. I'd say it is safe to start sending things the week after Christmas. Email me if you want the address and I'll be happy to send it but I cannot post it due to OPSEC.

HA

Neilson and I went to Chinese the day before he left. We got our fortunes at the end of the meal of course. I opened mine first. If you can't read it, it says, "your luck is about to change." ACK!
We thought that was pretty funny until Neil opened his. It says, "You will have an exciting business adventure." Well we about died laughing at the table. Go Confuscious.

Deployment Day 5

Day 5 is done. We had hash for dinner in my new cast iron skillet. The potatos were left over from Christmas and the roast was left over from Mindi :) All told dinner took 10 minutes to throw together.

After dinner we went to the library where they had a gingerbread making event. We actually made paper houses and Grace's turned out cute I think. The kids also got treat bags which included stickers. Grace quickly put all the gingerbread on Creighton's arm and put all the candy canes on herself.

We didn't win the decorating contest but we did win a doorprize - a very cool book about how to make different gingerbread houses.

Back Blogging

It's coldish today in Texas - yes it does sort of happen. And so I decided to do some summer dreaming and post some pictures from this summer because I was such a bad blogger.

These are from Grace's swimming lessons this summer. She took two sessions and went from crying and having to be "helped" (read thrown) into the pool to jumping off the diving board without a lifejacket all by herself.

She will take lessons again this summer but she came a loooooonnnggg way. She will put her face in the water. She can do the crawl and backstroke and most importantly, she has great confidence in the water. I credit it all to the large man you see in some of these pictures - Mr. Dave. Mr. Dave was very patient and encouraging and convinced a stubborn Grace that she could learn to swim. I will admit my first impression of Mr. Dave was wrong and I've had to eat my words. He was an awesome teacher and we'll be back with him next summer.

Just some pictures

Trying to catch a smile but that is proving difficult as Creighton is very intersted in looking at the camera and gets this concentrated look whenever i try.

Deployment Day 4

OK now I've really set myself up for a huge project. I've been doing a daily update and as much as I'd like to keep this up I just don't have faith that I can. We'll see.

Today Grace had school. As I suspected, it's a challenging task to get two kids out the door on time by myself. We'll get better I know. We just need the practice.

Creighton and I worked on the house today. We did laundry, cleaned the kitchen and wrapped Diane's presents so we could take a pile of things to the post office. Then we picked up a photo at Walgreens, picked up Grace from school then off to the post office. BAD CHOICE - it was insane at the post office but we survived and made our way home.

We had a quick dinner because Grace had practice for the Children's Pageant at church. She is a choir angel and gets to sing the songs. The pageant is Christmas Eve during the mass. She'll do great and Mommy will make sure to record it.

hmmmm that's about all we did today. I'm wondering when things are going to slow down...

Travel Update

I got a call last night at 11pm from Neilson. He has made it to Kuwait safe and sound. He reports that he will most likely not have internet access until round about his birthday when he is at his final destination.

His flight was long and thankfully uneventful. It was late, however taking off. We dropped him off at the company to draw his weapon Friday at 11:30 pm. Wheels up was scheduled for 7:30am Saturday morning. Well, the aircraft broke before getting here and the crew was up fixing it so they needed their required sleeptime so from my understanding, wheels up was at 7;30 pm. No, we did not go wait with him -- didn't want to say goodbye again.

Anyway, he did make it to Kuwait and they are busy getting organized to move north. Round about Christmas he will go to a commanders class at a different location and like I said before, he will be at his final destination on his birthday give or take a day.

Like I said before, he will not have internet access for a monthish. He does have a few phone cards (thanks mom!) to make calls. FYI he has access to AT&T phones so those are the phone cards that work. Be aware, that just because it says 600 minutes on the card does not mean that's how many domestic minutes. Iraq to America calls are expensive! Oh and I do have his address. due to OPSEC I will not post it but you can email or call me to get it.

Deployment Day 3

No pictures today. I need to get back into the habit of living behind the lens. We've pretty much settled into our deployment norm but today I realized I was missing one part - Kellie, Becci and Monica. They were my battle buddies last time and I've been subconciously looking for them this time around.

Deployment Day 2

Today was a beautiful day. We spent most of the afternoon outside in the carport with friends. Adrian, Loretta, Mindi and I chatted while Kyliesha, Lexi and Grace played. Did I get any pictures? No of course not. Pooh.

I also worked on cookies for cookie baskets. We made chocolate chip cookies and rice krispie treats and made up a big platter for Rear D. Creighton looked on with great interest can you tell?

Deployment Day 1

This is how we spent the first day of this deployment. We watched TV, played and made a gingerbread train. We also went to church that evening. One down, 364 to go.

Comments

mom brought it to my attention that only those with google or blogger accounts were allowed to post comments. well, i fixed that problem i think. :)

Random Picturing

Two of my favorite wildcats

Math

For a nerd like me I take comfort in math. Numbers don't lie and can be very powerful. Here are some numbers for you:

27 months - the length of time Neilson and I have been married
15 months - the amount of time during our marriage we have not lived together

Why do I bring this up? Well, Neil just left today for a fourth tour in the middle east. He is scheduled for 12 months which for the sake of my calculations we'll stick to for now. So if I add 12 months to the above figures you get:

39 months married
27 months spent apart

It's sad for separation and deployment to be the normal status of a marriage/relationship. At this rate using my conservative 12 month figure it will take roughly 2.5 years from today for us to get to the point where we are 50/50 in our seperation/living together.

All those numbers are depressing but numbers can be comforting too. For instance, a vast majority of soldiers return home to their families. The KIA rate is very low. And before anyone jumps down my throat, any KIA is too many but it is a comfort to know that an overwhelming majority of troopers come home. To expand on these numbers a bit, out of KIAs, officers make up a very slim portion. And that is my answer to "How do you do it and not me consumed by worry?" The numbers are in my favor - everything is going to be okay.

Priceless

Creighton always knows the perfect gift to give on just the right occasion. He gifted Neilson with real genuine smiles the night Neilson deployed. Priceless

What's Up Creighton?

Creighton, what are you looking at honey?

Why mommy, I'm looking at the ceiling fan with the lovely christmas ornaments and ornery elves.

Random Pictures

When you live with such good looking people you end up taking a lot of pictures for no particular reason. Tonight was such a night - just recording our evening.

The first photo are Grace and Creighton cuddling on the couch. I believe Frosty the Snowman was on TV. The second is another cuddle pose but I want to add a disclaimer. That is NOT a bruise on Creighton, we have a spot on our camera lens on the inside so I always play hide the spot when taking pictures -- obviously i lost this round.

Picture three is of Neil, Creighton and Grace for Grace's school. They have a wall in the hallway for pictures of all the deployed daddies with their kiddos. When the daddies are gone their photo is on a yellow ribbon with their name and who their child is. When they come back they take a picture of the child and daddy removing the picture from the wall and post the new picture to the "they're home" secton. Sadly, we are now providing a new picture for the hero wall and removing the "they're home" photo. poo

Christmas Program

Tonight was Grace's school Christmas program. She was an angel and got to twirl a scarf in her special songs. It was very cute and very much a typical preschool program (read mass chaos!)

All Dressed Up

Funny Faces

Purple Power

Grace got a new cheerleader uniform from Aunt Mandi, Uncle Wade and Gabriel for Christmas. She performed for us this afternoon and was cute as a button. We will have to post pictures of Creighton in his Wildcat glory soon as there was some unexpected flash flooding in his purple gear before we got pictures today.