Is it True???

Could Justin really be coming home in 2 weeks?
YES! He will be heading back to the States on Sun. and demobilizing at Ft. Lewis in Washington, then he will be home in 2 weeks!
I am still in a little bit of shock I think, but I have some advice for everybody.... Don't ever ask someone who has been without their husband for a year, "Has it already been a whole year? Wow, that was fast."
Yes it has been a whole year! And although it may have gone quick for you, I have missed Justin every day of the last year, and it has been anything but fast.
Now, I say that all in fun, but I think I really did get sick of hearing comments like that this past weekend while I was up visiting family for Steven's (my bro-in-law) farewell.
Here is what our flag looks like today!!!



Today something happened that hasn't happened for a while....Remember this guy? He engaged me with a very similar conversation. :) I laughed the whole time....He probably loved it cause he thought he was so funny, when really I was more laughing at him than with him. ;)
At least this crazy old man-encounter was pleasant...much different than the encounter I had on Sat. night. I debated putting this story on my blog, but then I decided that I want to have a record of it. So here is goes...I'll try to keep it short.

I was driving from Lovell to Powell for my brother's bday. On the way I passed a car...no big deal, right? Then he immediately passed me. I was wondering what the crap he was doing because I was following him for a while. When he got to the side of me two men were yelling and waving their arms in anger and telling me to pull over...Umm yeah right. Like I am going to pull over for you. I realized they were mad at the pass I made that was a little tight with a car coming the other way, but it was definitely not a dangerous pass. When I refused to pull over, the car swerved at me sideways and inched closer and closer to me. When that wasn't working, he finished passing me and slammed on his breaks. I moved into the other lane, and so did he. He wasn't letting me by him. Our speed had slowed to almost a stop with the back and forth, and then I took the opportunity to floor it and go around him when it looked as if he was getting ready to get out of his car. At this point I figured it was over...nope. He came right up behind me and was riding my butt. I decided it was time to call someone. I dialed 911 and all that...He had kept up his attempts to get me off the road for almost 5 mins, and as I came into Byron the men pulled up beside me once again and were yelling, telling me to pull over and roll down my window. I refused and he cut me off and stopped on the main street at an angle...I had to stop to keep from hitting him. I was still on the phone with the 911 operator, she could hear him as he came up and hit my window and started yelling at me about how I almost killed him...What a nut! My girls were bawling in the back seat and that is when the police arrived. They talked to both of us and told me I did the right thing by calling....Then they told me that he was an ornery old man, and they told him to leave me alone. That was it. They sent him on his way and told me I could go when I felt ready. I was just relieved to have over at the time, but afterwards I got really upset that he didn't get into any trouble for the massive road rage tantrum he just threw.
I could go into it so much more, but I don't need to. I guess it is over now and I am just glad my girls and I are safe.

Puzzle Bags

Vicki asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would sew her some puzzle bags in exchange for one of her nativities...of course I agreed. I am far from a pro on a sewing machine, but figured these simple drawstring bags were something I could handle. I only had issues with one of the fabrics...it was very hard to work with and it took me a while to get it to work, but 37 bags later....I am happy to be done!

Fall is here!!!

**Update on Justin's status...
The replacements have arrived! Justin has moved out of his little plywood room and the men taking their place are moved in. Justin just finished his last day of being on duty, and in a couple days he will be leaving Salerno and heading to Bagram. Tomorrow marks 3 weeks until he is back home with us, but steps to getting here are well underway and we just keep getting more and more excited.

*The Fall has always been my favorite season and I am so excited that this year, I get to enjoy the fall and it's holidays WITH Justin. This Fall will be WAY better than last Fall. :) I have my Fall decor out, Fall scents fill my house, time to start up with crock pot cooking...my favorite kind of cooking, and enjoy the sweatshirt weather.
The girls and I went through our Halloween costumes and I realized we have quite a few 6months-2T costumes in case anyone is looking. :)

*While and if I have your attention, I want to direct you here. Get your orders in before the holidays. ;)

Justin's bday...and stuff

Since I couldn't send Justin a cake for his birthday, I sent him a big rice krispie treat and a candle. Here are a couple pics he sent me the other day. Johnny and Shane (aka Mickey) got in the pics with him.

Today was Sydnee's school picture day. I didn't have time to get any pics of her before school, so I snapped a couple of her after school...eating a pop tart. She said the picture guy was funny because he called her twinkle toes. :)

Charlee and Justee got to talk to their Daddy on the phone today. They were both pretty cute about the whole thing. I love seeing the big smiles on their faces when they hear his voice. Justin asked Charlee if the flag was filling up. Her response was "yes."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means you are coming home soon!"

You can feel the excitement in the air. ;)

Not long after we got off the phone, and I started sewing (I am sewing some puzzle bags for Vicki...you can see the first 12 I finished today behind Sydnee in the pics above) Char and Justee started fighting. Char didn't want Justee to sit by her so Justee was pushing Char off the chair and that kind of stuff. I told them several times to knock it off. Finally I told them to both get off the chair or they were going to be in big trouble. Justee put her bottom lip out and told me forcefully, "But I am just a little baby, mom! I am just a little baby!"

When I cracked a smile, she started to smile too and then quickly went back to her angry face.

Useful Brown

...strange name for a paint color that looks more green to me. :)

I decided I wanted to spice up the girls' bathroom. It just had plain white walls and needed something fun done to it, and I like having projects to keep me busy while I await Justin's return.
Before:
After: Ok, rooms are hard to capture with pics (especially without a wide angle lens;) but here are a few.
I found this black collage frame at Target, and thought it would be perfect if it was brown...so I painted it. I took some pics of the girls just for the frame and tinted them colors that matched the other decor.

The bathroom still isn't complete...I am waiting on a vinyl order that I will place on the wall behind the door. I will post pics when it is done.

three zero

30 days people...

30 days.

Friday Flashback....Old Man

9/11...Today is Justin's 33rd birthday. It is definitely a unique date to have a birthday on.

This is the second year in a row Justin has been gone on his birthday. Last year he was gone for some pre-deployment stuff, but he was home a few days after and we celebrated then. This year he will be home in LESS than 5 weeks. (That just keeps getting better to say.:) The girls have all three picked out a special present for him. They are VERY excited about it. I think they did a great job of picking out the presents. :)
I wish I had some pictures of Justin on his birthdays as a child, but I don't...so these few pics I scrounged up will have to do.
Here he is on his 28th bday...We were in Laramie and I'm pretty sure we were at Burton's house and celebrated with them : This was his 29th bday...we were in Alabama for flight school this year, thus the helicopter cake:

For Justin's 30th birthday we were in Lovell and back at Burtons. We had a surprise party for Justin and most of my family and his were there.

I hope you had a great birthday Justin, and we can't wait for you to get home and celebrate it with us! We Love you!

Sweet Sentiments

SYD:
The girls and I were running errands yesterday...while we were in the store, Syd saw all the Halloween stuff and she got really excited, "I wish tomorrow was Halloween!" she said.
Then she thought for a second. (We have talked about the sequence of events coming up a lot lately: Daddy gets home, then Disney World, then Halloween.)
"Wait, I mean I wish Daddy was coming home tomorrow!....No! I wish Daddy was coming home TODAY!....That would be awesome huh, mom?"
"Yes, that would be pretty awesome."
I guess while she was day dreaming of "awesome" things, she decided to go all out, "You know what I wish, mom?" she said.
"What?" I asked.
"I wish Daddy never had to go to the war."
"Me too. That would be nice."
"And I wish that Daddy never had to work ever again. That way we could be together as a family all the time."
Sydnee has always been a Daddy's girl. I can't wait to see how happy the girls are when he gets home.


CHUCK:
As Syd was walking out the door to go to the bus stop this morning, everyone was saying their goodbyes and I love yous. Char yelled out to Syd as she was walking down the driveway, "I love you all day, Sydnee!"


JUSTEE:
Justee has been loving the play makeup lately. Today she was begging me to let her play with it. I was trying to hold her off by saying, "later" and "in a minute." She started getting upset and said, "But my eyes not pretty! I need to make my eyes pretty, right nowwww!"
So I gave her the makeup and told her to just use a little.
...I guess this is what she thinks is a little...she's going for the natural look:

Longs Peak...the Sequel

Cause once in less than 2 weeks wasn't enough...

Apparently I am so cool that Dana wants to be like me. ;)

Dana has wanted to do a 14-er for a while, so when she saw that I did Longs Peak, she asked me when we could do it together...little did we know we would actually be doing it just over a week later.

It just happened to work out that we could do it on Labor Day. So Dana came down and we hiked up. :)

I don't know what it is about trying to get sleep when my friends are here, but it is soooo hard. Dana and I knew we had to be up at 1:30 in the morning, but we could not stop laughing and go to sleep. We ended up getting a little over 2 hours of sleep. {Dang those thoughts of yummy sandwiches dancing through our heads.}

We got to the trail head and started hiking at 3:15 am. Dana decided to be a speedster on the drive up (so maybe I put us a little behind schedule with my one misguided turn, but I caught it quickly and I was pretty proud of myself that I only messed up once,;) and I had gotten a little sick, so the first hour of the hike was not very fun for me. Luckily the sickness passed and then I only had to worry about hypothermia. By the time we got to the boulder field the sun was starting to peek up over the horizon. It wasn't coming up fast enough though; we were frickin freezing! Some crazy guy was in shorts and joking about how he wanted a popsicle, "Anybody have any popsicles?" ...Dana did...also known as her fingers. My warm bed was sounding pretty nice right about now...How did Dana talk me into doing this? Dana had to put her hands in her armpits to keep them from falling off...

It had rained a few hours before we started hiking and the rocks were a little icy on the backside of the mountain as a result, but it wasn't too bad.

I opted not to take my heavy camera up the mountain this time, so I let Dana take all the pics with her cam. There are lots more dorky pics on fb...We had a lot of fun with it...Dana is good at bringing out the dork in people. hahaha :)
Because I'm cool standing right next to a huge cliff...

We made it to the summit in about 6 hours...it was actually warm enough to peel off a layer of clothing and enjoy some sunshine.

We got a kick out of the "bathrooms" at the boulder field...you can see every one's head when they are standing in them...apparently it wasn't in the budget to make the walls a foot taller.

Dana liked talking to people as she peeked over the top. lol

Only a half mile to go to get back to the trail head...phew

Dana was excited to be done! Woohoo!

It seemed a little easier the second time around, but I don't think I will be doing anymore serious hiking this year...I think I've had my fill. BUT...Next year it would be fun to get a big group of people together to do it....who's with me???

Flag Update

We have made it into the blue stars! Woohoo! Day 326.
The girls were very excited to be putting on the pretty blue stars this morning.
I have kind of been delaying posting an update on the countdown because the dates for Justin's homecoming keep getting changed...pushed back and then moved back up. It was really frustrating for a while and I was a little worried when they were saying Justin wouldn't be home before we are supposed to be heading to Disney World...but it sounds like the flag should actually be finished on the exact day Justin gets home (give or take a day...but that is expected when dealing with military.) We are keeping our fingers crossed that he will be home sooner rather than later.
Justin has been really busy lately, and has had some pretty horrific missions...Things have started to pick up over there and I am definitely glad Justin will be home soon.

Friday Flashback...Terrible Twos

Justee has been driving me absolutely crazy lately. Not that this is anything new, or that she is different from any other two year old out there...but man...I don't remember Sydnee or Charlee being this hard to take. The reason for her driving me crazy is her new independence phase. I call it the "me do it" phase. She has to do everything herself, which really gets me aggravated when we are in a hurry and she has to put her shoes on, open every door, climb into the car and buckle herself in her car seat. Even if I don't help, but she thinks I did, we have to start all over.

The other day we were at the gym and I was dropping her and Chuck off at the kids club...She insisted on opening the big heavy door. I tried to help her after watching her struggle with it...nope she wouldn't allow that. I was running a little late so I left her to the door and started signing them in. Then I heard her start screaming. She had pinched her fingers in the door. I couldn't help but give her a little of the "That's what you get" speech while I was taking her shoes off. That was a mistake...SHE wanted to take her shoes off..."No, me do it!" So I started putting her shoes back on...nope, she had to do that part too. So, I sat there as she put her shoes back on, just to take them off again. ahhhh
Here are pics of each of the girls on their 2nd b-days:

What I remember of Charlee as a two year old seems to be much different than Justee. She threw a fit here and there of course, but they were rare and easily diffused. She seemed to be much more mild-mannered than the other two.

Sydnee, on the other hand, knew how to throw a fit. She definitely had some major tantrums...but they were fewer and farther between than Justee's. The only thing that was worse about hers, was that she was very stubborn and her fits would last forever.

Jada's Balloons

My sister, Ashlee, invited us to participate in their tradition of letting balloons go for Jada's birthday...Jada would be 12 today, so we sent 12 balloons to Heaven along with a card containing messages from us.

You can barely see the balloons as they became dots in the sky.

We love and miss Jada very much. She brought a lot of happiness and laughter into this World, but I am sure she is and will always be providing those things throughout the eternities.