The boy who keeps me company when my husband is away..

Duke, yeah he's grown since I last posted about him. He's officially 30 lbs of 4 month old German Shepherd.  He is the man who keeps me company while Tim is away. He greets me in the morning, snoozes at my feet while I work on my homework and lays behind me in the kitchen while I cook and wash dishes once the kids are in bed. Duke and I, we're gonna have one heck of a strong bond by this time next year.

I love this puppy, he's stinking adorable.

Let's stay busy!

For the next month, I plan on staying busy, well as busy as I can.

Tim leaves the end of this week for NTC, which for you non-military folk, stands for National Training Center. It is at Fort Irwin in California and without going into detail..it is basically where the Army sends their soldiers to train and prepare before deployment. Tim will be gone at NTC for a month and hopefully will be home sometime before Thanksgiving.

The Army sure likes to prepare wives for the long separations that come with deployments, NTC is another prep course for me. Less than a year ago Tim left for BCT and AIT, and 8+ months later he came home. We have spent the last 4 months, well less actually, enjoying over night fire guards, field trainings and long days with the Army. They really care about me, really want me to be trained for this. ;)

Tim is getting ready to leave for the next month and then will be home for about two months before he deploys. Yesterday was spent folding, organizing and packing Tim's gear. Tonight we are going to sit down and explain to the girls that he is having to leave again for a little bit, I pray Mackenzie doesn't cry.

Speaking of Mackenzie and this deployment, she is in a deployment support group at her school. They meet every Tuesday morning. This is why I am so thankful for us being able to live on-post and her to be able to attend an elementary on post, the support is amazing. In this group they are able to talk about their feelings, and they do projects that they send to their deployed parent. I'm sure once he is actually overseas, that this will be a big help for Mackenzie, to help her transition.

I'm not sure what the point of this entry is, besides talking about deployment..I guess just a way to keep my mind occupied. I'm not sad, not yet at least. I know this is his job and what he signed up for, it's what I signed up for too. I'm not sad yet, but be prepared for the entry the day he leaves in January. I'm sure it will be full of raw emotion.

Anyway, back to NTC, he leaves later this week. So far the week isn't rushing ahead of us and I'm thankful. I know when he comes back..the next time he leaves he'll be leaving for overseas. I hope the next month goes slowly, that it takes its time.

Toddler potties aren't just for toddlers..

Why are some kids so stinking mean?

This morning when walking Mackenzie to school, we passed a girl in Mackenzie's class who yelled out to her 'Hi Mackenzie!'. Mackenzie turned, waved and while smiling said 'Hi ::name::' and we kept walking to school. Once at school, Mackenzie and I were waiting for them to open the doors so she could go inside when Mackenzie looked over at the friend she had just waved to earlier and said 'Hi ::name::, can we come sit with you?', to which the little girl as snotty as she could be replied with, 'you're not my friend, don't sit with me'.

Mackenzie got this look of confusion on her face and her smile vanished. She looked at me and just hugged me and said 'I love you, mom, thanks for being my friend'. While my heart was melted with what she just said, I felt so much hurt for her.

I understand I'll be facing many more years of these situations, after all, I do have two girls, but I don't understand why kids have to act that way. I don't get why they need to be so rude. Is it bad parenting where the parents just don't teach manners and respect or is it mainly age. I know age plays a huge role seeing as this girl was only 4 or 5, but still, even at that age I know Mackenzie would never say anything like that. I hope I'm able to raise my girls with manners and to show respect to everyone they meet, regardless of that persons age. It also makes me wonder how many people I've mistreated over the years. I wish I could go back and apologize to every one of them.

Now that I was able to vent and get that off my chest, I can stop being so darn emotional.

My last update was while the boys were in the field, they have been home for awhile now...hence the no update.  They are once again preparing to leave, this time for NTC which is training that lasts for a month out in California. Some of the guys are leaving this week and some are leaving next week. My husband will be leaving next week. I am hoping that he will be home in time for Thanksgiving, but I know better than to get my hopes up for anything in the military. My life has become one of countdowns..without an exact date to count down too. Hopefully the month he is gone flies by, I want him home..even though that I know after he comes home..the next time he leaves will be for his deployment. I can't believe my husband is deploying. The closer it gets the harder it is to wrap my head around. He'll be gone..for 12-18 months of our daughters lives, of our marriage. When you really think about it, it's so hard to imagine.

We went camping this past weekend out at Lake Buchanan. I haven't been camping in many years and it was nice to finally get back out there and to do it. We went with Tim's family (his mother,father,sister and her boyfriend). It was the girls first time to go camping so we were curious how it would go, amazingly it went really well despite the girls being tired from not taking a nap during the day. We found out that Mackenzie is an awesome fisher, she can cast a line better than I can. Duke found out why it's not a good idea to sniff a cactus after he was blessed with 15-20 needles in his nose. Michelle's boyfriend, Travis, had to use his pliers and have two of us restrain Duke so he could pull them out one by one, poor pup. Tim found out that no matter how many times you wrap a bag of chips with duck tape, that a hungry raccoon can still tear it to pieces. I found out how nice it is to have a toddler potty in your tent at 2am when you really need to go and your campsite is under siege by hungry raccoons. We had an awesome time!