He will be back in California in about 13 hours.....I cannot believe it! It still hasn't hit me yet! Maybe because I've had so much going on at school and am so overwhelmed with everything else that is going on...who knows but HOLY SHIT HE WILL BE HERE TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so beyond excited, relieved, anxious..the butterflies are kicking in now and I can't stop thinking about what that awesome moment is going to be like, when we FINALLY get to see him again! I still get goosebumps whenever I think back to May 6th and December 10th...the return dates of previous deployments...just the sheer joy, excitement, anticipation, there are so many emotions that go along with a homecoming and I can't WAIT to be feeling all of them tenfold at this time tomorrow! MY LAST NIGHT OF GOING TO BED ALONE!!!!!!!!!!! THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BED IS OCCUPIED TOMORROW NIGHT.....WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to my 3 faithful readers...love you girls, couldn't have done any of this the past 6 months without my yayas!! :)

It still hasn't sunk in that he's coming home...I'm not in denial or anything like that (as someone suggested "not-so-nicely") it just seems so surreal to me. He hasn't been in this house for SIX MONTHS and the thought of him being here seems odd..in a VERY VERY VERY good way! It will probably hit me on Wednesday night at about 11:30 or so as I'm rushing around making sure I have as much done as I possibly can...and I KNOW I'll still scramble around on Thursday before we leave to pick him up!

It just seems like Thursday will NEVER get here! Thankfully I have enough going on in the next 5 days that will keep me insanely busy, I'd go nuts waiting otherwise! Sooooooooooo lose a few pounds, finish painting Alex's room, clean the house and we should be set! :) FIVE MORE DAYS!!!!

Ok, so December 14th it is!!!!!!! YAY YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!!!! I cannot BELIEVE that he'll physically be here in less than 2 weeks! I'm still in shock...I can't wait to have him home finally!

His mom called today....BARF! It was the single most awkward conversation I have ever had with another human being before in my LIFE, even Sam said to me at one point in talking to her "mom, I don't know what to say!" The funny thing is, adults cover up the mouthpiece at moments like that, not so much with a 5 year old! LOL

But whatever, I could seriously care less! I have more important/exciting things going on...like my DESIGN TEAM position!!!!! I was chosen to be on the 2007 Design Team at Scrap4Life and I am SOOOOOOO honored, thrilled, shocked, excited...you name it, I'm feeling it! I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY feel somewhat vindicated in my scrapbooking! YAHOO!

We have decided that we are staying in CA with our little family for Christmas and I am really looking forward to it! It'll be hard not being at home, especially since Christmas is SO huge on our side of the family but this will be good for us. Vince also suggested going somewhere in January WITHOUT the kids....yahoo to that! :)

Could this post have been MORE ADD????? Sheesh...I'll make it more random and add a picture of a recent Alex page..lol

MAYBE December 14th?!?!??! I got an email from another wife the other night telling me this is "THE DATE" for them to come home! But Vince has yet to spill the proverbial beans on that one...I think he's being cautious, doesn't want to get my hopes up or anything, understandable I guess but at least we now have a tentative date to look forward to! SO much more concrete than, "in a few weeks we hope" Hopefully we'll know for sure soon! We got to talk to him the other day and unfortunately after he talked to the kids, he and I got cut off...as I was babbling about Christmas lights! :( We never got to say I love you, and I hate it if our conversations don't end that way. I haven't heard from him since, not even an email. Today would be a great day to hear from him, I need him right now. Well I ALWAYS need him, but today is especially bad. I'm just ready to be done...pretty sure I've said that about a billion times by now! On a slightly more cheerful note, the house is decorated; looking and smelling (cinnamon pinecones..yum!) very Christmasy and ready for him to come home! :)

It's been a few days since I've heard from Vince...no big surprise there! Half the time I expect him to pull one of his "surprises" and walk through the door, and other times I'm dreading him telling me he won't be home as soon as we had hoped he would be. Once we get a better idea of when he'll be home, I'll feel better...I hope. In the meantime, there's plenty to keep me busy. I've submitted for a few DT calls, but I don't have high hopes. For every GOOD layout I do, someone is always better. I'm very proud of what I do, regardless of it being validated by me being picked for a DT, but I'd love an opportunity like that. It's frustrating to get rejected, because that's essentially what it is! At any rate, I certainly hope that the people choosing the KMA team will be more careful about their choices this time around...amazing that even in the world of scrapbooking, a name can mean everything!

Ready for him to come home!!!!!!! Oh so ready for this to be over with, I'm at the point where everything makes me sad and all I do is daydream about him coming home! LOL I scrapped this picture of us the other day from my trip to Okinawa...makes me even more anxious to have him home!

I cried at the grocery store tonight...twice...once when I saw a carton of egg nog (one of Vince's favorites) and then again when I guy wearing Vince's cologne walked behind me at the checkout counter. How pathetic am I???? I wasn't hardcore bawling, but if I had let myself, I definitely could have turned on the waterworks! He needs to come home and SOON, this is getting ridiculous! LOL OH and then he chose tonight to send a picture, I bawled and the kids almost killed each other in their rush to press their faces up against the monitor...all to see daddy!

I feel like I need to kind of negate the bitching with some happy stuff..lol

Believe it or not, we were at the BEACH yesterday! Gotta love California! The kids had so much fun, and more than once Sam commented "I wish daddy was here"

UGH.............this deployment totally sucks!!!! I hardly ever hear from Vince and when I DO, it's not like we have a GOOD conversation, there's no time for it or our emails are full of other stuff.....it's starting to piss me off. I KNOW he's busy, but come ON, sit down for 5 damn minutes and email your wife and children! I don't get it...

I just realized something that I've been doing for the past several weeks...checking in at various sites (ie KMA) BEFORE I even bother checking my email to see if I have any from Vince. Does that seem odd?? Don't ya think I'd be rushing to check to see if he has emailed me at all??? I used to, but now since I hear from him so rarely, I figure what's the rush? How friggin sad is that? The way this deployment has been going for the past month is so totally different from any other deployment, even when he was in Iraq. At least when he was over there, he had a valid excuse for not emailing regularly. I don't buy into the "I'm busy" bullshit...EVERYONE is fucking busy!!!!!!!!!!!! Does he not think I'm busy with a full time job, 2 kids, a house and everything that goes along with it?!?!?! It pisses me off, but of course I feel I can't "burden" him with that...he is after all, so very busy....

29 years old...sometimes I still feel so young, sometimes I feel WAY older....and a lot of times I look at my life, and think I'm just playing house! I feel too young to have a full time career, TWO kids, car payments, mortgage...all of the "fun" stuff that goes along with being an adult. I remember when I was younger WISHING desperately that I was older...now I want to go back! :) Just back to the simplicity and innocence of being younger, the worry-free days of playing ding-dong ditch with the neighborhood kids, walking down to 7-11 for a slurpee...those were the good ol' days! Not that I'm unhappy where I am, I truly can't think of anything that my life is lacking at this point. I have a husband who loves me and who I love more everyday, 2 children who are the reason I do what I do everyday, a family who has made me who I am, a beautiful home, a job that is so completely rewarding, one in which I can genuinely say I LOVE going to work (I'd say "everyday" but that'd be pushing it!)...there's nothing missing (other than a winning lottery ticket!) So if 29 is this good....bring it on 30! :)

Is it bad to say that I feel totally disconnected from my husband right now? I don't ever remember feeling this way during a deployment before...we haven't spoken in over 2 weeks, all I get are very brief emails, and he doesn't know when he'll be able to call. It's very frustrating to say the least! I just feel so withdrawn from it all, I'm basically going through the motions right now, unable to snap out of it. I'm tense at home, tense at school, snap at the kids (biological ones and students!), not sleeping...what the hell is up with that?? It's just so odd that I'm here, doing my thing day in, day out, and I have absolutely NO idea where my husband is, what he's doing, HOW he's doing...I just miss having regular communication, at least before we had that. Now it feels like I have no connection to him at all! Maybe I'll send him this link so he can at least read what's going on with me! :)

The kids and I discovered "Photo Booth" on my laptop tonight...gotta love my Mac!!! I had NO idea there was an integrated camera in this sucker! It's going to be so much easier to email pictures to Vince now! YAY!!!!!

Whenever you are going through something in life, doesn't just about EVERY song on the radio "speak" to you? When I'm lonely and missing Vince like crazy, it seems as if every sad, sappy song was written about ME and my life...the one that I'm considering my "theme" song for right now is SheDaisy's "Come Home Soon"....friggin depressing as hell and I cry every time I listen to it. So one might wonder, if I cry when I hear it, why the hell do I listen to it over and over??? Apparently I like the constant reminder that I'm miserable and lonely! :) I guess it's just one of my many outlets for dealing with him being gone. I'm not going to post the lyrics for the entire song, but the chorus is my favorite part....

"I wonder, I pray
I sleep alone, I cry alone, and it's so hard livin' here on my own...
So please, come home soon...come home soon"

That's all I want, is for him to come home soon....only about 68 more days!

So have you ever "googled" an old friend or even an old significant other? I'll admit...I've done it! Kind of seems a little "stalker-ish" but I'm just curious what happened to people I was such good friends with and have lost touch with over the years. In my searching, I came across the website of the husband of one of my best friends from high school! I haven't seen her since her wedding and although we've emailed back and forth a bit over the years, it's never been anything consistent. I got an email from her this morning! WOW! I don't know if it's a coincidence or if her husband can tell who hits on his site, but it was good to hear from her! I always tell myself that I'm going to try harder to keep up with friends from high school (ok, so it's really just Paula..who am I kidding??!?!) and college (hi Amy and Michelle) :) and I never follow through. Maybe I need to set a more realistic/measurable goal...like "I will email one old friend a week" or something like that. These people were some of my best friends at critical points in my life, why should I let that go? SO, if anyone comes across this that I knew "back in the day" (yeah, right..doubt anyone has ever "googled" me! LOL) I'd love to hear from you! :)

So in searching for a picture of myself to add to this...I realized there are NO pictures of me!!!! I just scrolled through damn near 1000 pictures and only came up with this one of Vince and I from a wedding last fall!

Sad, or just one of the many "perks" of being a mom???

Well...here goes nothing! I figured it was time to join the "blogging" world, after all I do hate feeling left out! :) I doubt anyone will ever come across it or read it, but if nothing else, it's a good way for me to vent/whine/complain/ramble...and SO much easier than writing in my journal (and my hand won't hurt after writing 3 sentences!) :)

Tonight was a good time for me to start this...I haven't heard from Vince in a few days and I'm just tired, stressed, overwhelmed and tonight was one of those nights when it all hit me like a mack truck. The kids were upstairs watching a movie before bed, and I was doing the nightly clean-up routine. I guess every now and then I realize that I'm doing EVERYTHING alone and it sucks, I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor and cried...hard...I was over it pretty quickly and felt a little bit better, but I know another night just like this is just around the corner!