Weekend Top 10

Without a doubt, some of my favorite blog posts are the Weekend Top 10 features. They are ways to quickly recap all of our adventures and when we look back on them months later, it feels like a speed skating roll down memory lane.

So, here we go… this weekend’s Top 10.

10- After a year’s hiatus, the grill finally made a comeback. Steak… it’s how Friday night should be.

9- When your puppy doesn’t understand that Saturday means sleeping in, you can get a lot done before the sun comes up.

8- Although working out at 5am isn’t fun, at least you get it over with early.

7- “This is the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten” is a pretty fantastic compliment. Feeling like Betty Crocker sure puts a girl in a good mood.

6- Did you know that college football hash marks are wider than NFL hash marks? If you’re ever on Jeopardy, you can thank me. J

5- After eating a week old brownie, I have a new appreciation for Robert always telling me they were still good when they got to the other side of the world. When your motto is “when you don’t know what to do, throw a brownie at it”, a little white lie is what a girl needs to hear to make her believe all’s quiet on the western front.

4- When you leave the puppy out in the house while you go to church, be prepared that he’ll probably “read” the paper and “thumb through” the coupons… all over the house… by the time you get home. (It’s a good darn thing he’s cute!)

3- Staying up until midnight is worth it when it means two weeks of vacation starts at 12:01.

2- Half a fence is better than no fence… and by this time tomorrow, a whole fence will make for two very happy puppy parents.

And the number 1 best part of the weekend was…

1-  that this place is once again filled with the sounds of football, the smell of fresh brewed coffee, and the love that makes a house a home.

And then there were three

Off and on for the last several months, Robert and I have been talking about expanding our family. And by expanding, I don’t mean my waistline. I’m talking about a four legged, floppy eared, wiggly tailed, bundle of fluff. Robert’s wanted a puppy for as long as I’ve known him but the deployment put those plans on hold. Or so I thought.

In April of this year, I got an email that Robert had found the perfect puppy. What?? You’re not coming home until September! I can’t raise a puppy from now until September by myself! Yep, that’s me- Little Miss Panic Attack.

The good news was that the world’s most perfect puppy hadn’t been born yet so I had time to research food, register for puppy class, puppy proof the house, and generally wrap my head around the idea of being a puppy parent. Isn’t it funny how quickly Little Miss Panic Attack can turn into Little Miss Masterplanner?

With the puppy plans settled, all we had left to decide on was the name. Robert chose the first name- Chet- and I convinced him to let me choose the middle. As a joke, I told him it should be Ercheze so that his full name would sound like Cheddar Cheese. Robert didn’t find that too funny but somehow it stuck and more days than not, our baby is referred to as “Chetter” or “The Cheese”.

Chet came to our home in July and despite a few growing pains and one chewed up cell phone charger, it’s been a fun couple of months.

I'm sure The Cheese will make regular appearances here; after all, he's a member of the family... our family of three.





The Boys of Fall

If you’ve known me for at least two minutes, you know that I love, love, love football. Well, I take that back. If you knew me in high school, you know I performed with the drill team for every football game but that I couldn’t tell a hash mark from a Hail Mary. We went to socialize, not watch the game, and I couldn’t even tell you the final score by the time I got home. But somewhere between high school and now, I actually started learning what was happening on the field and I fell in love with the game. I’m not an expert by any means but I know enough these days not to ask stupid questions when I’m in mixed company. I actually even impress myself sometimes (but not very often!)

I’m a supremely lucky gal because Robert loves football as much as I do. He’s a lot more vocal about it, mind you, but if there’s a game on, we’re pretty happy campers. If I could only get him to pull for my teams… but I know that’s a lost cause; he remarked Sunday that “there’s nothing like loyalty” so I guess we’ll just agree to disagree.

But the one thing we do agree on is that there’s not anything much better than a game on a perfect fall afternoon so we headed out on Saturday to watch the Carolina Tarheels host the Pirates from East Carolina University.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day. The weather was picture perfect- not a cloud in the sky but a moderate 75ish with a slight breeze. The seats were fantastic- 50 yard line, of course! The company was amazing as always; there’s nothing that isn’t fun when Robert’s around.

Carolina won but I guess some things never change; it occurs to me right now that after spending an entire afternoon actually watching the game, I still can’t tell you the final score. J

Sometimes Behind is Right in Front

When I decided to start this blog again, I said I'd put the deployment behind us and was ready to move full steam ahead toward the future. As it turns out, I was, as we like to say at our house, "less than right".

Yesterday, after Robert received a standing ovation from the congregation at church welcoming him home, I looked at the bulletin and noticed it was September 23. September 23? Last September 23, I was dropping him off to get on that plane bound for lands I never want to think about. I remember the foggy drive down to the base, the tearful goodbye, the miserable ride home, and the endless string of sleepless nights that followed. As I sat there, it dawned on me that deployment is not something you put behind you; it's one of those things that you carry with you always. It's not in your central line of vision but it's always there, blurry in the corner of your peripheral view. From time to time, it'll remind you that it's there, sort of like a sore muscle or that bruise you'd almost forgotten... until you touch it.  So I guess the memories associated with deployment and the year we spent apart will raise their little noggins from time to time; it's to be expected I suppose. I just hope that when they lift their little eyes to mine, I'll smile and be reminded to appreciate what I have and to not take any moment for granted. After all, it's soldiers like Robert who are protecting our liberties and our freedoms, those things we so often take for granted, that gave me those memories in the first place. Even though they aren't always pleasant little jaunts down memory lane, to honor him, I will honor them.

I know that the new memories created over the coming days will far outweigh the old memories of the past year. Case in point- we had a FANTASTIC weekend and I'll tell you all about it tomorrow...

In the meantime, I hope your weekend was worthy of a scrapbook page and that your week will be something special, something fantastic, something MORE.

Remember me?

After much consideration and some gentle nudging from Robert, I've decided it's time to blow the dust off this blog and get back to doing what I love with people I love and sharing it all with you.

Where have I been the past 9 months? If you followed the blog the last time around, you know that Robert left in September 2011 for a year long deployment to somewhere most folks can't pronounce. Having been married only a short six weeks, it goes without saying that a marriage built on love but held together by skype and email is a special sort of challenge but one that we accepted and, I think, mastered. To be honest, being apart sorta took the creative wind out of my blogging sails (Either that or all of my creative energies were directed to care packages and daily snail mail) so at the end of the year, I let the blog lapse. It just wasn't fun to do things without Robert and when I did do something fun, I felt guilty that he was stuck somewhere having anything but fun so I didn't really want to publish my good times to the world or to my 16 blog followers, as the case may be.

But September 9, 2012, all of that changed. It's funny what happens when a plane lands on the flight line and you finally see your husband after 352 days of being apart. In the same moment that you're beyond thrilled to hold him, you realize that you've been holding your breath for a solid year. You allow yourself that first breath and all of the fear and worry you couldn't acknowledge while he was away bubbles up from the place where it's been pushed down all year. In the same instant that you're overwhelmed with gratitude that he's home safe, you wonder if you have the stamina to do another year of this should he have to go somewhere else. At the same time that you're feeling all of this heavy stuff, you feel like a huge weight has been lifted. It's a confusing mix of thrilled and terrified; elated and exhausted; anticipation and anxiety but at the same time, it's amazing to know that he's home where he belongs and that things are going to be just fine.

And in a day or two, when all of that emotion settles back down and life begins to return to "normal", you realize that things are more than just fine; they're fantastic! The past is in the past, today is a gift, and tomorrow holds the promise of something wonderful. There are lots of adventures on our calendar to be shared and I hope that you'll hop on, buckle up, and enjoy the ride on our crazy roller coaster life.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I hope to see you again soon! In the meantime, as always, make today something special, something memorable, something MORE.