Happy thanksgiving!!

It seems like everytime I post, its been 3 weeks or more since my last. I guess that means time is flying, which is always good!! I have 1 more test this semester, with 1 final. No more careplans til January! Feels great to say that!!!

Two more weeks of school, and I will be in my final semester. ANDDDDDDDDDDD in 5 weeks, I can say my husband will be home "this year." That will be great too. I have all my christmas shopping and decorating finished, thanksgiving is over, and I have a whole lot of things to be thankful for. Only one more major holiday without my man, and that will be over in a few weeks as well (except V Day).  I have an awesome valentines day present already planned for kasey and I cant WAIT til january to mail it!!

Wedding Pictures

Karmen was the flowergirl

The proverbial Ball and Chain

100 days down

Woohoo finally made it to 100 days!! I can't believe its been a month since my last post. I say that time drags on while the hubs is gone, but I guess it really doesn't. I was thinking it had been a couple weeks since I posted last.

Not much to update. Deployment still sucks. The next 300 days will go by quickly I hope. My brother got married, I've passed all my nursing tests, clinicals are going great, school will be out in 6ish weeks! Woohoo I will have a month off. I plan on spending alot of time with ms teri payne if the weather isn't too terribly bad like it was last winter.

I can't wait for this semester to be over. In 6 weeks I will have 1 semester left!!!!!!!!

70ish days down

His final 4 day pass was this last week, and it was great. Karmen was in heaven with her daddy home, and keeps trying to convince me that he will be back in a "couple days." :( Poor baby. I will say, "No, Daddy's going to be gone a long time for work this time." And she looks at me like I need a straight jacket, and says, "No a couple days."

Anyway, enough of the sad stuff. Its been 20 days since my last post (oops), and time is a tickin'. Thank goodness for that. I've been s.w.a.m.p.e.d with school, and I am studying today for my 2 exams tomorrow. I have to make 100 on one of them, so no pressure or anything. Seven more months....I can do this, I think I can, I think I can.

I have clinical at the hospital from 630 am to 7 pm (ack) Tuesday, and will have lots of fun paperwork to go along with that. Then I have two more tests (one online, 1 in class) on Thursday.

THEN, this weekend I am going to go get fitted for my bridesmaid dress. My soon to be sis in law had the dresses hand made, and its ready to be tried on now. October 16 is her and my brothers wedding, and the night before is her bachelorette party ;) Its going to be fun! I booked a hotel last night for that night, and the night of the wedding and I'm excited. Its going to be a beautiful wedding. Kasey was supposed to be the best man, and he feels awful about missing it. I wish he could come, but I'll take lots of pictures for him.

I'm a key caller for the FRG and I didnt know it involved so much work! LOL I had no idea you had to keep call logs, etc. Plus I'm writing two columns for the FRG newsletter: the spouse section and moms of young children. So needless to say, with karmen school and the FRG I've been busy!

Thats all I can think of posting for now. I have to get back to the books. More updates soon!

Close to 50 days :)

It's not getting much easier, but it's going. In fact, it's been harder lately because I had a 5 day weekend this last weekend and karmen stayed with my mom for 3 of those days. I missed her sooo much, because we've never been apart that long. Plus I had finished all my homework plus some, and then I was stuck at home with nothing to do. I was so happy to go back to clinical today.

I also found out today that I get to spend most of next monday with kasey and ALL of tuesday and wednesday!! Before I thought I had med/surg orientation tuesday and wednesday, but my instructor told us today we only had to go if we'd never been to that hospital before. I don't get to drive him to the airport thursday :( but maybe its better that way. I have class that morning. I'll probably cry through the whole class after telling him bye that morning. I won't see him again for almost 10 months after that. His R&R is at the very end almost.

Anyway, I'm bummed I don't get to drop him off to send him back to where they are going to leave from, but it'd be really sad anyway so it might be best that way. Just say goodbye the night before and tell him bye just like I would any other day the morning of. Ok, now I'm just rambling so I'll stop here :)

Day 39

So we are 39 days closer to him coming home than we were before. It sucks, because until I hit at least 100 the number seems so small. I try not to think about how many days we still have to go, because thats overwhelming.

I made a 94 on my first exam of the semester! And I'm off next monday, tuesday and friday! woohoo! Then the week after that I'm off on tuesday, wednesday, and friday. I'm sure I'll spend those days studying, but oh well I'm still excited. Days off make the semester go by faster, and in less than 2 semesters I will not only be an RN, but my husband will be home not long after that!! :)

4 Day Pass

His 4 day pass starts this coming weekend, and I'm pretty bummed about it. Nursing school is ruining my life!! I will get to spend saturday and sunday with him, but I'll probably have homework. Then I have class Monday, and clinicals all day Tuesday. So I guess I should call it more of a 2 day pass for me, and 4 day pass for him. The day I have off (wednesday), he will have to go back. :(

I knew it would happen that way, so I wasn't surprised or anything. Just bummed.

Sleep

Or maybe I should say lack thereof. I don't even think it has to do with anything deployment related, I just can't sleep. I usually fall asleep around 1 or 2, even though I try to go to bed around 10. I just lay there for hours and watch the clock. The only nights I can go to bed at a decent hour is if I take tylenol PM, and I dont want to depend on that to sleep every night.


Then of course either I have to get up at 6 or 7 on the days I have to be somewhere, or karmen wakes me up at 7.

Annoying. Its already midnight.

My saving grace

I don't know how I would get through this without my daughter. Shes the light of my life, and she definitely keeps me busy. Here are some new pictures.

She's started this thing where every morning at around 6 am she runs in my room and gets in bed with me. I said yesterday, "Why dont you like your bed?" She looked at me in all seriousness and said, "The people scare me." I cracked up, because I have no idea what shes talking about. So I wake up to this every morning now.

Her new swimming pool. Her other one was just a tiny hard plastic pool, so I got her this one at Target yesterday. The flowers on the sides shoot out water if you cant see it in the picture.

FRG

I love our FRG. Its a great group of people who really want to make this deployment as painless as possible. We are trying to arrange it to where we all stay the night in the City the night before the meetings, and that way we can hang out, shop, eat dinner, see a movie with the kids, whatever and get to know each other better. Its hard to find time to talk in the 2 hour meetings when we are rushed for time. Emotional support is one reason I attend the meetings and take part in the FRG.

 Being Guard, we all live in different parts of the state (or out of state), so I think it might be easier for some to stay the night anyway. We found a place that will let us stay for 30 dollars per room, and thats pretty darn cheap.

Karmen had a great time in the kids class during the meeting, and I was happy to see that she enjoyed it as much as she did today.

This is my last week of freedom before class starts back, and I'm dreading it!! I will definitely be busy, and that will be nice, but the clinical paperwork and studying I am not looking forward to!!