Deployment- Days 5-8

I haven't been blogging about these days because none of them were full enough to warrant an entire blog post. And then the snow happened. It wasn't as bad as initially predicted, but my back still hurts from shoveling it.

Day five was Sunday- it was a pretty laid back day. Zoe has started to question when DJ is coming home and no matter how I try to explain it to her, she just isn't understanding that he isn't just right down the road and can't just come home. She knows he went on an airplane-but we live near an air force base and she sees them every day. Every time one is taking off or landing, she thinks her daddy is on it. In an effort to try and get her to understand, we got out the globe and I showed here where we lived. Then I showed her where Texas was and she knows that is where all the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins live. Then, we spun it around and showed her where her daddy was. She was excited to look, but I am still not sure she really understood.



Day six- Monday- while the kids were in school, I attempted to make the house a little festive for Valentine's Day. I made the "Love" sign with scraps from my scrapbook stash and die-cut letters from my Cricut.



Monday evening, Noah started his indoor soccer practices. The practice was from 7-8 which seemed really late and we were all exhausted by the time we got home and got everyone to bed. I'm sorry for the poor quality of photo- all I had with me was my cell phone and, of course, they were moving and a distance from where we were sitting. That's Noah kicking on the goal.


On Tuesday, day seven, Zoe awoke sneezing, snotty and with that awful croup-y barking cough. I kept her home from school and she drove me bananas all day long!! I received a package in the mail with a surprise for me. My mother had my favorite bakery back home ship some cookies to us in anticipation of my birthday coming up. Zoe and I feasted on cookies and fought over the television.

Since she clearly felt fine, I took her to her first Tumble Tots that evening (a gross motor class- kind of like the Gymboree classes). She was initially angry because she wanted me to sign her up for ballet, but when we got there, she really enjoyed it and had a ball! Again, sorry for the poor photo- I didn't take my camera because parental participation was required and I didn't think I would be able to tote the camera around while playing with her. This was taken from my cell and is blurry from all the movement.


Tuesday night at about nine, we got the automated call from the school district that there would be no school today because of the impending snow storm. The snow started around eight or nine and it snowed until three this morning. We ended up with seven inches (not nearly as bad as they had initially anticipated).

I got up this morning, dreading shoveling us out all by myself. I decided I would quickly put on my boots and coat and shovel a small path from the doorway so the dog could go to the bathroom and would shovel the rest later. When I walked out the door, half of my driveway (the tough half- the bottom where the plow truck piles all the snow) had been shoveled. The teenagers across the street shoveled for me. I was so happy and thankful! So, I shoveled the sidewalk, a place in the yard for the dog and the other half of the driveway and went inside to feed the kids breakfast. After they were fed, I got dressed and went back outside and shoveled a path through the yard to the mailbox, around the mailbox so the mail truck can get in and a path to wheel the garbage cans and recycle bins out to the road. It could have been so much worse, but my back is still hurting me this evening.

While I was shoveling a path to the mailbox, the UPS truck pulled up and honked. My dad had ordered me one of those massaging chair pads and what timing! I took it inside and plugged it in and got a massage! Woohoo!

After lunch, the kids wanted to go sledding. We got everyone stuffed into their snow clothes, I dug my way to the shed to get the sled out and we packed the car and took off. On the way there, the clouds began to move back in and by the time we got there, the wind had picked up and was really blowing. As soon as we stepped out of the car, Zoe let me know she was NOT happy!
I got a little bit angry and told the kids they wanted to sled and we drove all the way out there and we were going down that hill at least once! I drug them both out to the hill, both crying and complaining, and Noah refused to get on the sled. Zoe and I got on and she cried and screamed all the way down the hill and then refused to walk back up. Noah had followed us down on foot to continue complaining to me about how NOT FUN the entire outing was, so I said, "Fine! Let's go!" And then Noah refused to climb the hill and I had to pull them both up the hill in the sled with the wind trying to push us back down.

On the way home, I had my point-and-shoot camera and I took a couple of random pictures. This first one is the pile of snow left behind by the snow plows. If you think that is big, you should see the parking lot of our grocery store!


The second is just blowing snow as we passed an open field.


Tomorrow, one of my friends is taking me out to lunch for my birthday and then on Friday night, our adopted family- the people that have invited us to spend every Christmas eve with them for the past four of five years, is taking the kids and I out to dinner for my birthday. I really feel like a lucky girl. Sometimes, I get caught up in the loneliness of being a military spouse and how my best friends and my family are so far away. And how when I do manage to make really good friends where I am at, they always seem to move away and then I have to start all over again. I get wrapped up in feeling sorry for myself and then something like that happens to remind me that there are people all around me that care for me and I just need to remember to reach out to them.

And now, looking forward to another day down and another day closer to seeing my husband again.