The weather down here has been just superb the last couple days! I'm sitting here with the windows open, breeze just flowing through our house. It's great. I'm not sure if I've said it yet, but I really like it here. I've met some great people. We have great neighbors. The kind that come over to borrow aluminum foil, and watch Fuzz if I have an appointment. This is a first for me. I feel like we are home, and it's great.
Yay! I met my first blogging buddy! Sara, Fuzz, and I met up yesterday, and it was so fun.
I can't imagine how it sounds to a non-blogger. "I met this girl on the internet, and we're going out for lunch." But it was very un-weird actually. She was taller than I expected, but other than that, there were no surprises. Her true spirit just shines on her blog, so I felt like going out for lunch was something we had done many times before.
After lunch, Fuzz and I got to meet Jagger. I'm willing to bet Fuzz liked Jagger more than he liked her. About 5 minutes after dealing with Fuzz, Jagger was hiding by Sara begging her to get rid of the crazy little girl.
She got some great pictures of all of us playing at her apartment complex, go check them out!
*Disclaimer* Although it looks very much like I had it out for Jagger on the slide picture, Sara assured me it was alright to let go. Don't listen to what she says. :)
Holy moly!
My best friend from way back is trying to buy a car. The owner only speaks Spanish, and she wants me to translate on a 3-way call tonight. Yikes! I mean, I minored in Spanish, but I haven't spoken a lick of it in years.
This could be interesting....
PCS season has begun. This past weekend we partook in a little get together for a friend who is leaving this week. Yummy Mexican food and a homemade cake (by me of course). It was fun. After dinner I came home with Fuzz and the rest of the guys went out for a few drinks. Well, maybe more than a few. Stryker got home and had the hiccups for about an hour and a half before he finally fell asleep. Haha.
This was the first close family that I have had to say goodbye to. I've been pretty lucky I guess. Married almost four years and this is the first one. Stryker and I aren't far behind, and neither are the other families that I've grown close to over these four years. I just hope at our new location I meet more couples and families like the ones I've met here. Maybe I'll meet some of you!
Wow, I am really surprised by how many of you also have missing jewelry! Mine did have a pretty stellar ending, I hope yours do as well.
One of my friends from college is coming to visit next week. I'm so excited to have her. The last time she was here I had just moved in and had to go digging through unpacked boxes in the garage to find the wine opener. I'm happy to report we will not have that problem this time!
She's a vegetarian, so if any of you have good dinner recipes, send them my way! I love to cook, and I'm not bad at it, I'm just not very fluent in vegetarian dishes, I like meat! So if any of you ladies (I don't think I have a single male reader) could help out, I would appreciate it.
I never thought that a point would come in my life that I wouldn't really have any friends. I have a few friends who I can talk to about anything, but none of them that live close to me anymore. I don't have friends around who I can call on the drop of a hat and say "let's go do lunch". I miss that...so very much.
I was the girl in high school who heard people say that once you graduate you don't really keep up with your high school friends and thought it would never pertain to me. It did. I still talk to a handful of those old friends, but not very often, and we are not nearly as close as we once were. When we do get together, we mostly talk about our other old friends and if we've heard about what's gone on in their lives lately. Gossip, reminiscing, idle chat.
I am a "handful of tight friends" girl as opposed to a "tons of party friends" girl. Let me explain what I mean by party friends. Say you're at a party, sitting in a chair people watching. You see a girl who runs up to everyone she's met even once and gives them a huge hug. You might think they are best friends, but they probably don't even know the other's last name. Party friends.
This is one hard part of the military life. You might just start to develop one of those tight friendships and then you move. Suddenly you're in a new place and starting all over.
I'm a stay at home mom right now so I don't have a lot of opportunities to meet new people, and somehow I think thrashing on the floor in Walmart crying "Waaaa! I want a friend!" is going to help my cause. Well, then maybe the Mrs. would write about me....
After reading her latest "Deployment Week in Review", I've decided Kristen deserves this:
Sounds like you are taking great care of your soldier even though you are completely busy!
Fuzz has been so great lately. The biting has subsided. She must have just had a tooth that needed to break through. I've said to many people that Stryker is coming home at a great time. She is so fun, has personality plus, and actually does things. She is thisclose to walking, but might be waiting for daddy. She is standing on her own more and more, even doing the excited arm circles without losing her balance.
On Monday one of my oldest and best friends came to visit. She moved to Colorado a few years ago and I don't get to see her often, but it's one of those friendships that falls right back into place like it was only yesterday that we were together.
She has a little boy who is three months older than Fuzz and it was so fun watching them interact. Fuzz was so excited from the moment he walked in the door. She was waving and making all these excited noises. She crawled right over to him and was trying to give him kisses.
He wasn't having it.
It was great, I wish they lived closer.
First off, thanks to everyone for your kind words, thoughts, and prayers. They mean a lot.
I have not been able to stop thinking about this all day. I keep reliving it over and over in my head. I can practically see the attack as it occurred.
The phone rings at 7:41AM, Stryker. I can tell something isn't right. He says in this quiet, sensitive voice, "Did you get word?" Me, "No...what" Him, "*G*'s dead." I said, in a horrified voice with my heart in my throat, "No!"
I held it together for him, listened, tried to comfort him, and when we hung up the tears just came. This is the first fatality that has really hit close to home for me. Yes, they have had other fatalities in the brigade, but I didn't know them, so I was still able to keep the distance.
I know this guy, he held Fuzz, his wife and I have been emailing each other throughout this deployment. He was just home on R&R in July, got back and two weeks later he's gone. How horrific.
My heart is breaking for so many people. His wife, all I can think about is his wife. Is she ok? What is she doing right now? What can I do for her? The guy who was working on him screaming at him to hang in there. Because I know him, I feel so much...I can hear him screaming at *G*, I can see the look on his face. Oh my God, I know all of these guys.
Stryker was understandably upset when I talked to him this morning. He feels guilty that *G* took his old job and now he's gone. He feels grateful that he's ok. And then he feels guilty that he feels grateful. He's afraid that *G*'s wife is going to blame him. He also feels guilty that he hasn't been telling me much. At one point in our conversation he said, "I haven't been telling you a lot of what's going on here, and I'm sorry." Baby, do not worry about that. I know that you are just trying to keep me from worrying, and it doesn't upset me.
Now they turn around 2 or 3 days later and have to just jump back in. How can they do that? How can they be expected to do that? I am amazed by the strength and the capabilities of our military men and women. I am so proud of them. Who else could go out there after losing someone you've known and seen almost every day of your life for five years, and get the job done? I'm in awe. I know that they will probably carry this loss with them for the rest of their lives and it's not going to be easy.
We truly have some of the strongest, finest people out there. Here's to you *G*, here's to you.
I know that a lot of what I've been writing lately has been pretty negative. Here is something that is just melt-my-heart positive.
I am amazed by the generosity of strangers. One particular stranger actually. Katie's mom emailed me shortly after I sent all the 4th of July packages to Stryker saying that she had a bunch of beanie babies she wanted to donate for the soldiers to give to the children.
I couldn't believe it. My little blog? It was heartwarming. Tonight she informed me that she has six...SIX large flat rate boxes to send. Not only with beanie babies, but other snacks and goodies as well. Not only that but she also offered kind words of support and encouragement for me. Wow. Most of my friends and family aren't that thoughtful. Thank you. Thank you so much. You have proven to me that there are still wonderful people in the world, willing to do amazing things for strangers.
Chicago was great! Our trip went amazingly well. Fuzz was a wonderful traveler. My feelings switch between being proud of myself for actually taking the plunge and doing a road trip with her by myself, and feeling foolish for being so worried about it in the first place.
I didn't go for the shopping or the sightseeing. My main objective was to reconnect with a fellow army wife, and that is what I did. It was great. We did make it to the Navy Pier, which was beautiful.
Thanks for the well wishes and traveling tips!
Well folks, I'm taking my first big road trip with the babe. It should be interesting. I'm prepared for the worst, so hopefully it will turn out better than that! Traveling 4-5 hours with a 9 and a half month old could get pretty hairy, but I'm excited and up for the challenge. I can't just sit home all the time because I have a baby.
I'm meeting an Army wife friend in Chicago. It's about halfway for both of us. We both decided to move back to our hometowns during the deployment. I do miss many of the comforts of living so close to a military community, but it was far FAR away from my hometown, and I think I enjoy the comforts of being close to both mine and Stryker's families more.
Still have lots to do! I'll be back Sunday or Monday, probably with pictures!
