Coming Up For Air...

Its been one week and two days since John returned home.  The first day felt like six weeks.  The second day felt like two days and 4 hours.  The third day felt like a day because John had to start going back to reintegration that morning... 

Ha ha ha...anyone a fan of Steve Martin's The Jerk?  If so, you'll understand that little above reference..  If not...you should watch it.  :D

That being said...I figured it was time to come up for air and bring you up to date on the joyous reunion of the Larson family...

Last Thursday night I had chatted on Yahoo IM with John for a few minutes and was told that the earliest he would be flying in was probably Sunday evening.  So, I went to bed that night thinking I had two whole days to finish cleaning and organizing the house and getting everything ready for his return home.  Imagine my surprise when at 8AM on Friday morning I got a call from Sgt. Meyer telling me that John was on a plane and headed home.  She had confirmation from a "friend" that texted her.  WHAT!  I didn't fully believe her until 10:30AM when I got a call from Rear Detachment telling me that John was in the air and the welcome home ceremony would be at 18:00 hours.  (thats 6PM for all you non-24 hour clock peeps...)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! was my first reaction and then it was scramble time!

By 4PM we were pretty much ready to go and I had given the girls an early dinner and they were in their pretty dresses and we'd fixed their hair and we were all just sitting...waiting...anticipating...

At 5PM exactly we got in the car and drove the 4 minutes it takes to get to the Memorial Gym and snagged our front row seats.  We had an hour to wait.  One hour.  The first minute felt like 6 years...the second minute felt like 3 years and 3 months...the third minute...just kidding...ha ha ha...

And then it was nearly 6PM....and....they told us the busses were late and we had a whole 20 more minutes.

GAAAAAAAH....the longest 20 minutes of my life.  The first minute felt like....ha ha ha.  Still just kidding.  We took a "waiting for dad" snapshot...

And then all of a sudden it was time for the soldiers to come in...

Keep in mind that we'd been planning this coming home moment for a year!  I had planned on video taping and taking a bunch of photos but when the moment came I ended up with a partial video and just three photos.  I know... crazy

But...the partial video makes me cry every time.



The whole ceremony took about 3 minutes.  There was a prayer, the National Anthem played...John mouthed that he loved me and I melted into a puddle of tears...(thats my handsome soldier in the stetson..)

...General Salazar made a few comments and then released the soldiers.  And then it was madness.

Imagine grown women shoving small children aside as they race to their soldiers...  Maddie was one of the first to reach them so she managed to dart inbetween people and got to John quickly...Bella and I held back some to allow for the trampling to subside and then went and got our kisses.

Bella was a little apprehensive at first...

We took another photo with both of them...

Its so good to have him home.  Really good.  And now that I've come up for air I'm headed back down again. 

Welcome Home John.  We love you and missed you. 

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Tied to the tube...

About 10 years ago when I was living in Northern Virginia...I owned a tv set that was one of those small 19 inch televisions that was probably already about 10 years old (which in TV years is like 100 years old and everybody knows that television has a life expectancy of about 100 years...so this TV was the grandfather of television sets...)

Anywho...the point is that I lived in a rented condo and the people before me had spliced into the neighbor's cable.  So, when I moved in I automatically enjoyed the benefits of cable...  And to be honest...in those years I really was still very sweet and innocent and gullible and didn't even think twice about just "having cable" instead of wondering why I wasn't paying a bill each month for it and realizing I was stealing it from my neighbors.

Ok...so back to the point...(which is not my gullible innocent nature)...The neighbors that had lived there for nearly 15 years decided to move...and when they left...so did the cable.  Which left me with nothing but a century old television set...

And for 4 years I lived completely without tv....

And loved it...

Fast forward to this morning...  I had a conversation with a new friend about television.  Both of us rarely tv watchers BD...What does BD mean, you ask?  Before Deployment. 

This was interesting to me because what I have discovered is that many a non-television watcher becomes a television watcher DD...What does DD mean, you ask?  During Deployment. 

I think its like an epidemic of "adult conversation needs."  I truly do.  I can go an entire day without speaking to an adult without trying too hard to avoid them.  Its pretty sad.  Now, granted I get out and about and make a point of connecting with people, but the truth is...I miss having an adult around that I get to chit chat with about mundane stuff...without having to purposely go to the grocery store so I can talk to one...or the library...or my neighbor's house...or wherever.

And so now the tv in my house is used kind of as an "adult voice."
No...I do not mean I'm playing "adult tv" alto voce in my house...I can just imagine the "lingo" Bella would pick up....

But, I do now find that I turn on the tv set just because its nice to hear another human being over the age of 10 speaking.  John even commented on it when he was home.  "I can't believe how often the tv is on in this house."

Which I would like to note really isn't THAT much except that he's mostly used to no tv at all...so something more than that seems to him to be a lot of tv.

I'm not even quite sure what the point is anymore to this post...other than it was an interesting observation to me about one way in which things really have changed since John's been gone.  Don't think that this means I'm suddenly going to leave my tv tube friend in the lurch and immediately switch back to lonely nights with just me and my book and the radio...  Especially not Sunday evenings at 8PM...thats when Project Runway comes on and even though we're rerunning Season 7 I'm still totally hooked.

I'm totally counting on Seth Aaron to win the whole thing.  Those other fashion designers are pbtttttttt! Read More...

2SCR Banner

Can you believe its AT MOST...69 days from now when all the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Soldiers return home? Well, at least if our Commander keeps his promise and they are all home by the end of May.

I remember the start of this deployment and how LONG 69 days felt. Two months, 1/6th of a year, about the same amount of time as kids have off in the summer for school...

It felt like forever.

But here we are, nearing the end of our time away from John and I can't believe we actually made it.

We made it!

Ok...lest I speak too soon... the real purpose of this post is to show you the little squares I made for the Welcome Home Banner. Some ambitious angel of an Army Wife decided to make a 12X12 square welcoming home every soldier that deployed from our Regiment.

She is sewing them all together...not quilting it or anything ridiculously crazy like that, but its eventually going to be a gigantic patchwork banner for our soldiers.

And, of course, she invited anyone and everyone to make a square for their soldier. So I did...Actually, we made 2 for John and one for each single soldier in his shop.

A friend heard I was making these and asked, "Oh! Do you like to sew?" I had to laugh...of course my reply was that as much as I'd like to claim that domestic gift and much to the sadness of my mother, I did not get the gene that makes for a great seamstress. Our squares consist of felt, hotglue, glitter and puffpaint...but I still think we did a pretty good job.

And the single soldier squares...

I also made a square for the fallen soldiers.  Sadly enough I have to add yet another two names to this square for soldiers that died in combat a few days ago.   

The squares are due by the end of March.  I have a little extra material so I will probably make a few generic ones for other soldiers who don't have a square yet.  It's a small way to show my thanks for all they do.

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Its been a long week...

...its just been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where I should have stayed in bed. all. week. long.

Sunday night...Maddie barfed 4 times...fell asleep in my room, finally, then woke up in the AM insisting she go to school and that she felt fine... (she did and she was fine...go figure...)

Various craziness all week long (I'm giving you the cliff notes version so you don't have to sit through serious whining...) And, I haven't spoken to my husband for 4 days now...

Last night was what I hope was the grand finale...Bella was barfy and fevered and finally fell asleep at 4AM. I'm exhausted.

She's wide awake now singing a song about being "barfy girl" (apparently I used that term a lot in my exhausted state) and eating toast.

Mama needs a nap. Read More...

The switcheroo

Well, today I did something I've been thinking about for awhile.  I'm calling it the switcheroo.

Are you intrigued?  It sounds like some kind of sneaky double cross thing....unfortunately, my life is way too boring...

So, before I build this up anymore only to let you down with a roll of your eyes...the switcheroo happened in the girl's rooms.  When we moved here, Maddie got the biggest room because of all the "stuff" she had...toys, books, clothes, stuff...  Bella was a wee baby and didn't need much space anyhow...

But, ever since Madmad McGee and the trouble she's been in...all the toys were removed from her room and I created a playroom downstairs...but its a small playroom for two girls of such drastic different ages...because they don't really play much with the same toys.  Plus...when we are home during the day and I need to be upstairs there is nothing up there for Bella to do...so she gets into my clothes and shoes and drawers and before you know my "drawers" (quite literally) are strung from one end of the house to the other.

SO...I switched the girl's rooms and now Maddie has the cozy littler room...and Bella has the larger room where I'll be creating her own little playspace.  I'm quite excited about it.  Both rooms look really good.  It makes more sense so that we can best use all the nooks and crannies in our little house.  Both girls like their new rooms and with just a few more touches they will be perfect.

Maddie's room needs paint and decor and a desk.  Paint, because right now there is a large, Isabella painted on her wall.  She loves her sister, but I don't think she wants her name painted on her wall. 

As for decor...I just got a little note from her grandma that she's shipping me some wall decals.  I had picked them out for her new room and grandma was looking for something for Maddie's birthday...these will be perfect!

And I'll be looking for a desk for her on the yard sale site...she is getting to that age where she wants to sit at a desk and do homework and craft and write letters... **sigh** She's growing up so fast!  I know I complain sometimes, but I'm gonna miss that "little girl."

Bella's room also needs some paint and I ordered her wall decals as well...

I'll be moving some of the toys up from the playroom so she has something to do while I handle incredibly important homemaker tasks....like shower.

And last, but not least...I changed her bed from a crib to a big girl bed.  **sniff sniff**

She was SOOOOO excited that she played in her bed all day long.  She read stories to her stuffies, pretended to sleep, got some barbies in there...it was a regular all-day slumber party.  She even dressed up for the occassion...yes, those are her swimsuit bottoms over her pants...yes, they are on backwards.  The scarf is from John....today it was a shawl, head wrap, baby blanket, skirt, tent and trampoline. 

Love the imagination.

Me, well I smiled and laughed and tried not to burst into tears at what a big girl she is.  She wanted to tell Daddy about it so we made this video... 



P.S.  I just checked on her and she's sound asleep in her big girl bed.

A successful switcheroo day. Read More...