When You Wish Upon a Star...

It’s good to be with family. I have my husband home. His parents and sister are out visiting for the week. I pulled Trey out of school, Leah out of babysitting and I’m taking two days off so we can have some fun. We hosted Christmas, Part Deux today, complete with turkey dinner and all the trimmings, presents and fancy dresses. Tomorrow? DISNEYLAND!!! We haven’t taken the kids yet. In fact, we haven’t visited the Happiest Place on Earth for over six years. What’s our problem? I hope it’s as magical for my kids as it always was for me when I was little. Pictures....when I finally decide to upload them assuming we come home instead of clinging to the pixie dust and the smell of churros and popcorn while happy music plays in the fake streets.

At Last

The day Bill returned home, we were supposed to have rain. Instead, the sky was bright and clear, the palm fronds were shiny from the sun and white caps were forming on the ocean. It was cold, but beautiful. He came in an hour after he was supposed to arrive, which considering he works for the government, is not bad at all. All of the wives, girlfriends, parents, kids and brand new babies waited outside, shivering as the busses drove in with our men. Six months, completed. We were so happy to see each other we were shaking, partially from the 50 degree weather, partially from the anticipation six months builds. I had to show him which car was ours since the Ford was an addition to our family long after he deployed. It was fully decked out with glass marker drawings on the windows welcoming him home.

The kids thought that Bill would be back on Sunday when in actuality, he returned Friday. I decided to have a little fun with them and didn’t tell them he would be home that evening. I had a couple of different people relay babysitting and I had Bill wait outside while I walked in the front door. The kids both ran over to me yelling, “MOMMY!”, clearly from being abandoned by me earlier that morning. Trey came over and gave me a hug, noticed a big, camouflaged man out of his peripheral vision and screamed “DADDY!”. His big blue eyes opened as far as they would go. Leah looked over at all the fuss, pointed at Bill, looked at me and matter-of-factly stated, “Daddy”. Yes, that’s the man you’ve been missing all this time.

It’s been great having him home. The kids have been crawling all over him, yakking his ear off instead of mine and I’ve only washed the dishes once in the last week. There are many other reasons I’m happy he’s home, of course, but sharing the brunt of parenthood is HUGE, especially with two preschoolers. We invited our closest friends over for a welcome home party Saturday night. He finally feels like he has some good buddies, and that’s huge. Now, if everyone would stop moving out of state, we could be on to something.

I’ve been happily banished to my room. My ungrateful kids made dinner an unpleasant experience. I cooked for nearly an hour. After some smart mouth comments, fits of crying, being climbed on and having my hair pulled out as my daughter used it as her swinging rope for her impression of Tarzan, I gave Bill ‘the look’. He told me to run and lock the door behind me. I love that man. He saves my sanity. And he buys me chocolate.

Here We Go

Bill's just about ready to turn in his room key for his barracks room. He'll be boarding his flight within hours. I should be getting ready for my leadership meeting for MOPS. I should have had my to do list done. Instead I'm blogging and I have a lot left to do. I was an A student when I left things till the last minute and a C student when I worked on things way ahead of time. Explain that one to me? I wrote two ten page papers over a weekend while in college, the same weekend as our Marine Corps ball and managed to get an A on both.

That being said, here is my very abridged version of my to-do list:

Clean the kitchen
Make welcome home sign
Clean out the Saturn
Clean out the Ford
Decorate windows on the ford
Put up welcome home sign
Laundry (completely possible this will NEVER be checked off)
Clean my room and bathroom
Vacuum the floors
Sweep and mop the floors
Clean the kids’ rooms
Clean the kids’ bathroom
Pick up entryway, living room and dining room
Pay bills…yuck
Clean family room
Get my nails done?
Run to the store for fruit, veggies and champagne

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!

Didn't see that one coming

My life is consuming me one bite at a time. As if the whirlwind of single parenthood isn’t enough, there were the holiday festivities of to embrace all around. Baking and shopping for teacher appropriate gifts sans apples and gifts for the babysitter and co-workers and those out of town and all the other confetti laden, shiny things that go along with Christmas. It was all wonderful but a little fraying to my nerves. My buffer is in Japan so being exposed to the elements gives me a little chafing.

Now I have a new list of things to accomplish this week. Cleaning and paying bills and buying paint to decorate the car. Finding out what’s for dinner tonight with my small group of friends and finishing (or at least starting) my Bible study for Wednesday. Shopping for work so I can paint yet, another sign, for the youth room. Did I mention cleaning? And school starts up again this week. Friday I had plans to get my nails done and a bit of last minute shopping done. My sitter was going to have BOTH of my kids for the whole day so I could do these indulgent tasks without yelling at a blue eyed boy to stop harassing the woman with her feet in the whirlpool. Saturday: the plan was to decorate the house, put the sign up on the garage door welcoming Bill back home and to get the cars in decent order so he wouldn’t feel obligated to do that himself. Sunday I would drop my kids off at church, letting my mom deal with them for the afternoon while I drove up to pick up my husband as he was due home on Sunday.

Last night my phone rang somewhere between me falling asleep and Leah waking up. One-ish? I didn’t answer it in time, and then I forgot all about it until I read my email this morning and encountered the title of one as, New Flight Date. Uh oh. That’s never good.

Except this time, it is. My husband will not be home Sunday. He’ll be home Friday.

=D

Last year was by far one of the most challenging years. I’m thinking this is a pretty good start to the new year. I have a few things I need to get done. Maybe for your viewing pleasure, you know, if you need some good reading material to fall asleep to, I’ll post my list and my progress. That will also be a good way to get my butt into gear instead of leaving it all until Thursday.

Guess I need to ask for Friday off.