... the rest of the story

Many of you already know our news, or at least part of it, but for those who don't...

Allen did get out of the Army. We were looking forward to civilian life and living near family. However, we left Germany jobless and homeless. We've been staying with my parents for the past month. Allen has been job hunting, obviously. As of last week, he has accepted a job in California. Yeah, that isn't near family. However, this job is just a year contract position. We are hoping that it will lead to a job closer to family around this time next year. So, one more adventure before (hopefully) settling.

All of the latest news

My father was in the hospital over the weekend with chest pains. Thankfully, the doctors found no problems with his heart, and he is now at home.

Ranger came out of his surgery just fine. He looks quite pitiful, but even in his pitifulness, he is still quite the beggar. He followed Ashlyn around this afternoon while she had a cracker. He will be on some restrictions for the next couple of months, but, just as with his other leg, he should be fine after that. I hope this can't happen to front legs, too! He will have the sutures taken out on the 1st, and should be fine to fly that evening.

John, Katie, Robyn, Chris, Wes, Laura, me and Allen

We went out with good friends last night to Lavelle's. Since John and Katie will also be moving VERY soon, we wanted to get together as a group before then. Chris and Robyn will be leaving this summer after having a baby, but Wes and Laura have become sourdoughs and will live here forever:) Thanks for a great time!

Robyn, Katie, Laura, and me

We had movers today. They packed up stuff that we are not taking to Germany with us. Mostly, art supplies and all of my teacher stuff. Makes me kind of sad that I am just assuming I won't need that, but that's how it goes. We will just have to travel on a smaller budget, I guess. But, hey, we won't have to travel around a school schedule or anything. Tomorrow starts the rest of the packing. I can hardly believe that we will be leaving so soon. Someone else will own our house in a week. I will probably always think of it as our house, though.

Ashlyn wasn't feeling well today, so instead of getting stuff done, I was holding her a good part of the day. Not feeling well has seemed to make her thrash around more than normal, so she's had some pretty major bedhead going on. She really loved having her hair brushed this morning.

I ALMOST don't want to post this, because I don't want to beat Jamie to the news. (I just checked their blog, more pictures!) But, Jamie and Chris had their baby boy this afternoon. You can check out his picture and stats online, but no name yet. Congratulations on a beautiful baby boy!

Birthdays, Home Selling, and News

Ashlyn with some type of plastic thing on her head. Party!

We went to two birthday parties this weekend. On Saturday, we helped Paige celebrate her 3rd birthday. Today, we celebrated Ethan's 2nd birthday.

Ethan, making a mess at Paige's party.

Fortunately, they are little enough that we could have adult interaction as well as kid birthday stuff. This also means that we've had lots of cake this weekend. I need to get back to working out again. FAME starts back on Wednesday, so I will be back to it then.

Pictures taken while waiting in the car. Notice the very cold temp. We had to leave Ranger in a warm car.

Ranger-dog, waiting for Allen

Since Christmas, Allen and I have been trying to get our house ready to sell. We gave stuff away, threw other stuff away, and put some stuff under the house in order to make things less cluttered. I have also cleaned the carpet, touched up paint, stripped and finished the floors. Our house was on the market as of Friday. This led to the all new fun of showing our home. Of course, the house needed to be perfectly clean. We also needed to be out of the house, including Ranger. At this point, we've gone out to eat, leaving Ranger in the car. We also just drove around, left Ranger in a friend's garage while we went to a party, and left the car running while grocery shopping. I hesitate to even tell anyone this, because I don't want to jinx it, but we have accepted an offer on the house. I can hardly believe it! Now, just keep your fingers crossed that everything continues to go smoothly.

I have both good and bad news to share. Some of it new, some old. My great-uncle Calvin died on Tuesday. On the good side, my cousin, Kylie is expecting twins. And, our good friend Laurie is pregnant as well. (Her husband has been home for one month.)

Remember those who aren't coming home

Michelle's article for this week.

Freedom and Patriotism

These are Michelle's articles, from the last two Fridays.

Michelle's article

Here's Michelle's article from yesterday

Input Desired

So, another person has written a complaining letter about one of Michelle's articles. Like the girl doesn't have enough problems on her hands with a job, a 6 month old, and a husband deployed. I am planning on sending in my own letter in support of Michelle. I mostly just changed what I wrote about her articles back in August, but I updated it and changed it to 350 words or less (that is really not very long at all!) I just want input, so I don't sound whiney or dumb or whatever. So, here it is:

When my husband and I were planning our family, we knew that he was going to miss a year of that baby’s life. We knew that in 2005, he would be deploying to Iraq. For that year, we were prepared. He left when our baby daughter was 7 weeks old. When we were given the news in July that he would not be coming home as expected, we were devastated. While trying to find the positive side of this extension, we truly struggled. There were days where I could only count my grievances and all the moments that had been stolen from us. God had not abandoned us, though, and sent me friends that have helped me remember the blessings in my life.

A couple of times since the extension, someone has complained about Michelle’s articles. There is a war in Iraq. Not a single military member or their spouse needs to be reminded of that. For those of us whose husbands are deployed we can hardly think of anything else. Our empty houses remind us constantly. More than others, we know that all soldiers are not coming back. We've been to their memorial services and cried with their families. We lie awake at night, worrying about our husbands, praying that they will come home safely. Sometimes Michelle does write about things that are trivial. Because, in order to survive, we can't always think about the war in Iraq. Sometimes, we just miss our husbands. Sometimes, we just want someone else to hold the crying baby. And, sometimes we want a hand to hold while watching TV or another person to help finish off the chocolate chip cookies.

As we are going on fourteen plus months in this deployment, thank you, Michelle, for writing your articles. Thank you for reminding everyone how we can help others in the military community. Thank you for making me cry as you wrote about the same things I am going through. But, most of all, thank you for making me laugh. I needed that.

Friday Article

I forgot to add Michelle's article from yesterday. So, here it is.

Self Defense for Military Spouses

Oh, Michelle's article this week is really funny! (And, yes, she too has a beagle named Ranger.)

News

Allen was on the NBC nightly news tonight! If you missed it, the video clip is online, but I don't know how long they keep this stuff on their site. He doesn't talk or anything, but you can see him.

In other news, I'm sure many of you read/heard that Rumsfeld was in Alaska this past weekend. Leaving his talk, I felt kind of ok about it. But, the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. He was asked if steps were being taken to find someone else to take the brigade's place in Iraq after the 120 days. Of course, I didn't expect him to say that we would definitely have them home in 120 days. (He didn't even know when the 120 days was over. He asked when it was over, and, in unison, we all answered December 13th.) The more I think about it, though, he could have made it sound a little less likely that they would be extended again. He said something about doing everything he could to make sure that our guys weren't extended again. Not enough. I thought maybe it was just me, being my worrying self. Tonight I was talking to other wives, who all were feeling worse about the extension since seeing Rumsfeld. I didn't really expect him to be a cheerleader or anything, but to make us all feel worse? He sucks.

Friday Article

This is just the link to Michelle's article for today.