A return to normal

What ever that is.....

After the last three weeks of DH being on leave in anticipation for a deployment that now is not happening, visiting family and spending time together here at home starting tomorrow I will be spending the better part of next week setting up a new routine and cleaning up this house. If I spend an hour in each area of the house everyday we should be golden by the weekend. I did not get anything done last week due to the work that DH was doing on the house but it was so worth it to get the projects that have been sitting done with.

I also have to sit down and finalize our budget. Since we will not be getting the extra pay and tax benefits we thought we would we are doing some major cutting back for a couple of months to see where we can get as far as financial goals. We would love to buy a piece of land and or a house near our parents to stay in when we go home to visit but we have a few other things to square away first, along with hoping to get orders overseas and needing to make sure we can afford to take our pets with us. We sat down the week and made a plan I just have to make the arrangements to finalize it, and take the time to write it out so that if DH has to take care of things he knows what to do.

I also want to start my household notebook this week. I have had one before but it got very outdated and/or complicated. It's time to get back in the groove.

Insomia

It's after midnight on a "school night" and I'm still sooooooo wide awake. This is not like me at all, for anyone that knows me you know that I'm early to bed and early to rise. For some reason though I have excess energy right now and no real outlet for it.

I have not been able to do much around the house the past couple of days as DH has it turned inside out putting all of our moldings on the walls. I am so glad this is getting done and will be glad when it is done. I was hoping to get some sewing done but since I cannot pull out my cutting table I cannot cut the larger projects I had hoped to do. I have a few smaller projects that I hope to do Thursday or Friday after I buy some supplies tomorrow, that is if I can unburymy sewing machine :). Someday I hope to have a sewing studio like this, for now I share a small room off the kitchen with the pantry and our "office". It used to be a mud room, was the laundry room when we moved in, and would be very well suited to a half bath if it were not for the expense of putting pluming into a slab foundation. This however is much better than sharing with the dining table or having no space at all so I will take what I can get, I may very well be sewing on the floor in our next home :).

One of the projects I have going right now are some craft accessory holders (knitting needles, rulers, seam rippers, etc.) A few of them are going to be denim on the outside and I think instead of regular top stitching I will put decorative stitching around the edges for a little something extra.

I have been around just not much time to blog, or if I have the time I just can't get the energy together to form complete thoughts.


The last few days have been spent recovering from our trip back home to visit family. My supervisor at my last job made a comment once on how we still call our hometowns back home, even after being gone for nearly ten years now and having lived around the world. I think it's because of being in the military. You never really put down roots and as soon as you do your uprooted and transplanted to a new home again. Home is where the heart is, but it's also where Grandma still insist on making you breakfast every morrining and you can go out on a date with your husband with no problem because there are about a million people that are biting at the bit to babysit your daughter.









Anyway, it was a very nice visit. We went back because my brother is deploying to Iraq and DH was to deploy to Afghanistan also (more on that later). We spent a few days with DH's family and then went to my family and spent the rest of the time there. We had a great time with everyone just hanging out and having all the siblings and spouses together at one time. I am the oldest of three with two younger brothers so I love having sisters-in-law. I made this bag for one SIL who lives in North Carolina with my brother who is a marine

So being a marine wife really has nothing to do with this bag....it has more to do with why she lives where she lives. The bag is a messenger type bag for a computer. Made of denim so that hopefully it is very durable. What is so special about it is that the lining is this great hippy themed fabric that I found on the clearance rack at Joann's. She loved the bag. I have another project in mind for her that involves old uniforms but that is all I'm going to say for now as she may read this blog some day.

My other SIL who lives in Illinois and is married to my youngest brother who farms is a wonderful photographer and getting into business for herself. She took pictures of Olivia for us. She has done all of Olivia's pictures but these are much better because they aren't at Seares in the studio but outside on my parents property. It was really hot thought so Olivia got tired of it really quick and we tried to get pictures of her next to the chicken coop. That did not go over well, my mom gave the birds some cucumbers to get them to gather close and a goose hissed at Olivia and that was the end of the chicken coop. Here are some pics...

You can see more of her work here.

Our trip was a very relaxed one with no real commitments or things we had to do which is unusual, but then we are normally back for only a few days not almost two weeks and it's normally an holiday so we are obligated to go to every relatives dinner (or so most people think even if we only get five minutes notice). This was very nice because we just kind of hung out for a few days here and there.

We got back and spent a couple of days just kind of winding down then DH went to go to a pre-deployment briefing only to find out that he is not deploying. We do not expect people to understand this but we were not happy when we found out. DH volunteered to deploy to help us out financially. I am very happy to have my husband home for the holidays and to spend time with him, I did not want for him to go. However at the same time we had made the mutual decision that if the opportunity presented itself the best thing for the family would be for him to go. We had spent three months preparing for deployment emotionally and made plans for me to go home to our family over the holidays. We also made financial goals based on him getting extra pay for the next four months and having less taxable income next year. The news took us from behind and made us reevaluate everything that we have on the table at the moment, time for a fresh look.

DH still has one more week of leave left so he is finishing up the inside remodel of our house that has been going on for three plus years. It won't be quite done but the base boarding and door molding will be on the walls rather than sitting in the garage :) and there will only be a few small things to do and a couple of maintenance issues and we will be ready to move :) If the Air Force will be that kind to us.

I have many projects that I will be getting to soon, and I may just get to posting more often also.