The Reunion

Ever been so focused on one thing that everything else (even the easiest things in the world) some how escape your mind? Or over prepare for something and then some how muck it all up? That's me in a nutshell..lol. I try my darnedest every time to plan things so they go smoothly, which is totally silly since all military wives know (or will learn) that you can seldom plan things in the military. Hey it sure does keep you on your toes.
On each leg of your Soldier's return you hope he doesn't get stuck in transit, you hope he can call between flights, you hope he makes connecting flights. All I can say is I am so thankful that I knew he was coming home. It didn't matter how long it took, just that I was lucky enough to still have him and hope all I wanted when there are so many families who can't hope for a return anymore.

It ended up that he had a connecting flight that wasn't going to get him into our airport of choice in time to make the last flight out that flies into our small local airport. Not making that flight would mean that my husband would be sleeping in an airport over night, held up over 16 hours, but only 3 hours away driving distance. Ya, that wasn't going to happen I am terribly impatient, come on who wouldn't be! I didn't plan on getting ready for hours to come. I got the phone call that he landed and that the connecting flight issues would delay him further at 4pm. His flight would be getting in at 8!!!!! A 3 hour drive meant TOTAL mayhem! So much for looking cute, getting into that dress I planned on for months and so on, who cared! I knew I was seeing him within mere hours!! Shoved four kids and a Mother in the car and booked it. Booked it an hour in the wrong direction, ya you read it correctly. An hour in the wrong direction! How many times have I driven there? Too many to count! Somehow between Mom and I, phone calls from Matt telling him when we would be there and so on we got on the wrong on ramp! Oh kill me now! Flipped a U-turn and .............well, I drove fast enough I made up that hour and even got there 15 minutes early. Don't ask how! LOL There was not one single highway patrol or cop along the route! What a blessing! During the drive while I was ever so cool, calm and collected,(completely freaking out, sweating bullets and twitching from the idea of a highway patrol car seeing me) Mom had the idea to call my awesome Aunt and Uncle who lived within a 45 min drive of the airport, to ask them to go ahead of us so we wouldn't have Matt coming into an airport just sitting and twiddling his fingers! Man I love family!
I love how involved people have become over Soldier's coming home! Not that you could miss us and not know what we were there for with our tiny understated (HA) signs, but we had multiple people stop and wait at the bottom of the escalators to wait and watch. A sweet woman who sat next to him was so excited she made sure to tell us "He's coming!! I saw him!!! Any moment now!!" (I almost busted into tears at just that!). When we finally spotted those boots coming down the escalator it was too much! Michael bolted with Cody and Matthew in tow. He ran UP the down escalator politely shoving (if one can politely shove) past other travelers to his step Father. I froze. I literally couldn't move a step and burst into hysterics! WHAT THE EFF! I mean, really, I am NOT a newbie at this, this is not my 1st deployment, where on earth did all THAT come from? The emotions around this deployment are like nothing I've experienced before and I was just so relieved to see his face, his gorgeous smile beaming at seeing his family, the fact that I knew that for those next two weeks he was safe and mine all mine! As you can see from the pictures the shock wore off and I could finally move towards him while Matt tried to maneuver 3 clinging, grinning boys out of the way of the other passengers heading for their luggage or standing around watching. Also as you can see, that little squishy baby had not one issue going to his Daddy after 8 long months! within mere minutes he was kissing Daddy and didn't want to leave his arms. That is something I know every Soldier who leaves a wee one behind worries about. If they will remember them. Even now I am in tears being reminded of how amazing those moments were! Oh R&R how we needed you!!!!!!!!
Welcome home my love!
My Uncle Allen (who looks so much like my Dad it almost hurts to see him) and Aunt Lynda! Oh how I love you guys! Thanks Aunt Lynda for taking pictures while I sobbed like a basket case!

My sweet boy's waiting for Dad.

Michael running up the escalator to Matt.

Matt Shuffleing the kids out of the way while being hug attacked.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do NOT cry pretty, let alone Kiss and cry pretty..lol Poor Matt, 1st time he see's me in months and he gets that hot mess..lol

Daddy testing the waters with his little man, he wanted so badly to rip him out of my arms and bear hug him but was tentative as to how Aidan might react after 8 months.

And seconds later........it was fine!

Good even.......

And not long before it was GREAT just like he never left!!! Thank God!!

My awesome nephews David and Bob drove all the way to meet us at the Ihop so they could finally get to meet Uncle Matt! That was so very sweet of them and we always love seeing them!


The evening was just amazing!

The Best Two Weeks Ever!

It's finally time for me to blog about R&R (Rest and Relaxation, the two weeks a Soldier gets to have a little reset period), ohhhhh R&R how we all needed it and how amazing it was! We literally milked it for every possible second! Can I just say, the weeks preceding R&R are tortuously long! Ohhhh man it was fantastic though!
We have been so lucky since getting married to get to see Matt's wonderful family 6 times between them coming to visit us or us going to see them. It was time to venture North and see some of my family and show my darling husband some of my favorite places! Since we found out that our next duty station is to be Germany (Hallelujah!) that would mean that between deployment and moving we likely wouldn't get to see my side of the family for another 3+ years and I was afraid they might mutiny. Ha Ha! A family trip to Idaho Falls/Yellowstone/Jackson Hole was planned! Man can I say exciting! We logged over 4000 miles on the van, had 1 teething baby, 2 cases of food poisoning and 5 cases of severe road trip over load and 6 cases of happy hearts! By the end of this trip we were about ready to give up and let Aidan drive home. If I ever see the inside of that van again it will be too soon! I drove the entire way there and back by myself because I was NOT going to waste 4 days of our R&R just to drive to our destination, and while he was home I wanted that man rested, not driving a car back and forth through windy mountian roads!
These are a few pictures of what a road trip looks like. The good, the bad, and the ugly!



And this is the face of a woman who just drove two days with four children, one of whom got food poisoning with me. Amazing!

Update in Pictures of Matt

Matt is doing great, well, as great as one can be while deployed to somewhere as AWESOME as Afgahnistan, haha. He is very ready, as are we all, for him to come home and as this deployment is getting closer and closer to the end I want to make sure that I get some of the great photo's he has taken onto the blog so that when we print next years blog book we will have them forever. Since it's not like he can sit and discuss his day to day over there I can say, it was cold....it's now hot..lol very hot and he's ready to trade it for Louisiana heat! For those of you who have so sweetly sent packages and letters he really appreciates them and doens't always have the time to email or write a thank you, so this is me thanking you for showing Matt in action not just word how much you love him!
Love you Baby! We can't wait to get you home for good!


This one is alllll for me. Sigh! He takes pictures sometimes that just give me butterflies in my tummy. This is most definatly one of those!

HEHE ya, he has a mustache............a mustache! Frankly it kills me because I think all mustaches are....gross or weird or both but hey if you're gonna have one...better look this good! Think he was rather adorable with it yes!

Go speed racer, go, go, speed racer!

I love this photo. I love seeing him in any photo's with the Afghan people there. It reminds me to think with a gentle heart and not lump all of them together, because not all of them are his enemy.



I love this photo. I don't really know why, I just do.

Matt and his buddy Sgt. Petersen

Yummy much??!?!?! Right!!! lol



Matt getting his CAB (Combat Action Badge)

And last but not least........a camel....because, well, whats a good blog post about Matt in Afghanistan without a picture of a camel? I thought so, thus...the camel..lol

Attack of the Mystery Fevers

Before we get into Aidan's mystery fevers I have to add this adorable photo of Aidan's 1st hair cut. Can we say cute!!!!!

So since Novemeber Aidan has, like clock work, gotten mystery fevers each month for anywhere from 1 week to 16 days without a break in them. They don't start as some low grade fever and then sneak it's way up, he's goes from 0-60. No fever what so ever to 104 point whatever. It usualy can't go below 102 even with all the mortin and tylonol I can throw at his poor little liver safely. Pedialyte, water and fever reducers have been our friends for months.
After mutiple doctors visits I had to cave and aknowledge that Bayne Jones Army Community Hospital unfortunatly were not able to figure out what this was and were allowing it to go on and on treating it as though I were crazy and over reacting even after taking him into the E.R. with once monthly fevers of 106.5 and the shakes. Really?? He's not sick? He is....teething, or has an ear infection, or a bug, or a virus, or whatever other random non-answer you can come up with this week? Finally Not long after the spur ride I ended up taking the little guy up to Rapids Regional in Alexandria since they have a pediatric department. As soon as we hit the E.R. He was seen and it was taken very seriously. We were only in the E.R. a short while before they decided to admit him. He looked great after some IV fluids and massive doses of meds in the ER so they let him ride up in a little red wagon. AWWW!! kill me much!


As you can see here that "looking great" didn't last long. They were stumped as to why he was fevering so high. His White blood cell count was super high, and after 3 times a day blood draws they still couldn't figure it out.


By the 3rd day, still no idea what was going on, they would come up with an idea of what it "might be" test some more and then....nope..ruled it out. Everything from Leukemia's to Staph infections to mystery virus's (which at this point is still our best guess), but by then he had been given a spinal tap, and tested for everything under the sun and massive doses of 4 different antibiotics and he was starting to perk up.



Fevers would crop back up and make him miserable and stop them from releasing him and drag out the hospital stay. Thankfully I have some really amazing friends who helped out! Even Jon helped out taking the boys early for the weekend and keeping them an extra day. Jessica, Mary, Allysha and Caite saved my butt! I didn't have to worry about the older kids at all. I knew they were getting to and from school, I knew they were being fed and clean and my friends were even driving up to Alex to bring me clean clothes (that they had to dig through the pile of clothes in my room..lol sorry after a baby has been sick two week straight, Momma can only clean so much and my room was the last place in the house anyone was going to go, or so I thought, so it was the last on the list of places to pick up) and baby food from the grocery store because Aidan was refuseing to eat hospital food of any kind and if he wasn't eating they wouldn't release him either.
Poor Matt was so stressed out. That is something you never want to do to your Soldier. Worry them or stress them out when they have plenty to stress and worry about while deployed. I had been down playing how sick he was when Matt would call so he wouldn't end up too stressed but when he heard Aidan was admitted and Mommy was sleeping in the hospital with him he definatly hit that "freaked out" stage. He was lucky to get to call as often as he did to check in on Aidan. 2-3 times a day. It really made both of us feel better. This is Aidan talking to Daddy on the phone. Aidan had a lot of phone calls from loving family. Nana, Grandaddy and Oma called often to keep him entertained. Evidently your forehead is necessary for proper phone calling protocol..lol

This is just hours before we got to be released. The specialist said if it had been anyone else he wouldn't have allowed us to leave but that I was very well informed and had done a great job making sure I was an advocate for Aidan's health and that I knew what sympotms to make sure he was brought back in for while we waited for some tests that would take another 2-3 days instead of making us stay in the hospital to wait for them. He was still so pale but after almost a week he was wanting to get down and play on the floor for about 30 minutes.

Despite being in the hospital so long they still never figured out what was wrong with Aidan but the mass doses of antibiotics seem to have kicked whatever was going on and we haven't yet had another episode (fingers crosses and knocking on wood and all that jazz). I watch him carefully and get him seen for anything I feel is out of the norm for him. We have specialists in Shreveport and New Orleans and Alexandria and we will just have to go from there. Maybe it was a 7 month long fluke and it's over??? Ya, I don't think so either. Guess time will tell. I hope it's over and done though, I felt so helpless. I hated seeing my sweet boy so exhuaseted and miserable from fever and not feel like what I was doing was helping.

My Mini Cav Spur Holders

First I have to thank my fantastic husband for sending me these beautiful tulips for Mother's day!! He also let me spend money and get my own gift..lol He would have gotten me something great but I just so happened to find something I loved while in shreveport and couldn't help myself!

This is my gift, a Peter Pan shadow box! Is it not too cool! Not, your style? Who cares! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!! I fell in love with Peter Pan as a kid. I love the art style from the 50's and the typical music from the era, just over all, love this cartoon and this shadown box captured just a little of that for me!


Ok so now onto the spur ride~ It was sooooo cool!!! The kids (and I) Loved getting to see them do things like what Daddy has to do. Despite Aidan being sick, I dragged him out into the heat so that the older boys would have the oppurtunity to participate. Poor baby was sick with his mystery fevers again. He looks thrilled to be there right? lol

Doing the 1st aid station, they had to carry a 200lbs dummy (the group of smaller children just had to carry everything minus the dumy) and drop to the group and cover the dummy each time they heard artillery.



Matthew and Cody doing the artillery run. Aren't they too cute all Rambo-esque!

Matthew, Cody and Michael after the obstacal course.

They then had to partake in all the yumminess that is an MRE(meal ready to eat). Most of the kids hated them. Who didn't? Oh right, that would be Michael who will eat most anything and lucked out getting the sloppy joe meal which happens to be his all time favorite. Yuck..er, I mean yum!

They each got a stetson and spurs. The older kids got "spurred" which was really cute!


The following four photos were taken by Sarah Peachey, a wife in our troop who writes for "The Gaurdian" and wrote an amazing article about the kids spur ride and this photo of Matthew and another young lady from our troop was the picture on the front page. Matthew believes himself to be a superstar now..lol




This photo was taken by me and man do I love it! My little Spur holders trying to look all tough for Daddy who was so proud of them all!