From Inmates to Playdates

Posts Tagged ‘Deployment’

I am sitting in my big, blue, bloggy chair watching Big Brother. It has been a long day spent mostly on the road from South Carolina to our home in West Virginia. I spent the day thinking about what I was doing one year ago today. There was the little matter of deployment and on this day one year ago, McDaddy returned home from his stint in Cuba.

This summer has been so much different than last summer. And I am thrilled that we’ve been able to spend so much time together. What a difference a year makes.

We have been home approximately six hours and in that six hours, I have showered, bathed the boys, went to evening service at our church, washed and folded clothes, unpacked and repacked. In a matter of eight hours, I will again take my place in the ghettovan, er, Caravan passenger seat and in the words of Willie Nelson, I’ll be “On The Road Again.”

The boys and I are accompanying McDaddy on a short business trip and if I had any sense whatsoever, I would’ve done our last bit of  laundry before leaving Florida.

And speaking of Florida, ohmyword! I miss Florida. I miss the chaos. I miss McDaddy’s family. And the pool.

McDaddy is the oldest of five kids and all of us (the siblings and their spouses) are close friends.

I feel blessed to be a part of their big, honkin’ family and I enjoyed spending the week with them.

And just look at this view.

We have plans to return next year, but as we all know, a  lot can change in a year.

Happy Monday, y’all! And don’t forget to link up to What I Learned This Week tomorrow!

It occurred to me recently that some of you folks are newcomers to this here blog.

For that reason, I thought it might be fun to visit a few of my favorite posts. I’m diggin’ deep in the archives today because that seems easier than filtering out some of the nonsense rolling around in my brain tonight.

Enjoy the crazy. Clearly, there is plenty to go around.

1. The one where I watch an embalming – What I Learned At The Funeral Home.

2. The letter I wrote to the naked lady – Y Are You Naked?

3. Very often here at From Inmates To Playdates, I write letters to crazy people. On days that I’m feeling, oh, I don’t know, particularly crazy, I might even write a letter to myself. – Dear Me.

4. The longest post ever and one you’ll certainly want to read if you’ve ever considered getting Mirena – A Long, Windy Tail.

5.  A post about what ails me – The Heels And The Spurs.

6. My first trip to The Price Is Right - The Price Is Right, But The Fashion Was All Wrong.

7.  About my time in Jail - I Spent Five Years In Jail. Really, I did!

8. One of the few times I’ve blogged about the Saturn Sky – This Is How I Roll!

9. Kicking deployment in the booty, after six long months – Taking A Deep Breath.

10. Topless and Shoeless - all in the same night.

11. The crappy job you’ll have if your child swallows a coin. – This Too Shall Pass.

12. Because I’m a control freak, I’ve planned every detail of my funeral. – Over My Dead Body.

13. Visiting McDaddy during his deployment on Guantanamo Bay – It Don’t GTMO Better Than This!

Happy Thursday, y’all!

And happy reading, too!

Exactly one year ago today, we were in the home stretch of deployment.

My sweet boys and I missed McDaddy terribly and we were counting down the days until we would be together again.

Simply seeing the flag brought tears to my eyes.

When I see a flag, I still cry today.

Exactly one year ago today, my sixth niece, Annabelle Grace was born.

Happy first birthday, Annabelle!

On this day, I have so much to be thankful for.

I am thankful for my family and for the fact that we are all together!

I am thankful for our military and for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers serving at home and abroad to keep us safe!

Most of all I am thankful that I live in America! The greatest country in the world!

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy 4th of July y’all!

We had an awesome anniversary weekend.

It wasn’t as awesome as last year’s anniversary. You know, the one we spent together in the Caribbean.

Um, because as you may or may not remember McDaddy was deployed in Cuba and the boys and I left Guantanamo Bay on our anniversary after spending a glorious week with him.

Only to spend three more months missing him before he returned home.

And, no, I did not tear up when seeing that picture.

But I did spend the day thanking God that he was home and we were together and that we spent the entire weekend relaxing.

In fact, I was so busy relaxing, there is no way I left a gallon of milk in my van yesterday while it sat in the garage.

I also didn’t leave the hospital after surgery without a bra because um, the girls, they um, need support.

It wasn’t me who ate cake three times in three days because eating cake three times in three days is never a good idea. Especially for someone who is trying to lose weight.

I also didn’t almost spit coke out of my mouth as I listened to a waitress explain to a customer how her husband made a vinegar bomb (filling a two-liter bottle with vinegar and baking soda) and then threw it into the air so he could shoot it with a rifle.

Seriously. It that’s not red-neck, I don’t know what is.

I am not counting down the days until school is over because I don’t mind waking up at O’Dark Thirty to take Stevie to school. I am a morning person who thrives on waking early in the morning.

Ahem!

And, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t totally looking forward to three months free of PTA responsibilities and whathaveyou.

Regardless of what you might have heard, I did not allow my sweet boys to get mohawks this weekend because I am not that mother.

Nope.

Not me.

What about you?

What didn’t you do this week?

For more Not Me! Monday posts, visit MckMama’s place.

For more Wordless Wednesday pictures, visit 5 Minutes For Mom!

“I am the McFridge.”

“I stay busy, what with the apple juice and the Dr. Pepper, the “strawberry milk” and the fruit cups that need to be retrieved.”

“Those two little boys are constatnly opening and shutting.”

“And opening and shutting.”

“And climbing on the bottom step (as they call it) to reach the stuff on the top shelf.”

“It makes me smile. To know that I’m such an important part of the family.”

“And the lady of the house? She loves to hang stuff on me.”

Ahem!

“What do I look like a bulletin board?”

Here are just a hand full of things that are hanging around.

1. Go Topless Magnet – Well, before you go and get all crazy on me, you should know that the whole “Go Topless” business doesn’t actually mean I go around without my shirt on. It is a national holiday (which this year happens to be May 8, 2010) for Jeep Enthusiasts to take their tops off and let it all hang out.

2. An upside down magnet from Cal Poly -It’s a very long story but basically an old friend of mine attended Cal Poly (a male friend). McDaddy turns the magnet upside down every chance he gets just to aggravate me my OCD.

3. Picture of our first World Vision Child, Mercy – If you haven’t read Mercy’s story, you should go there right now and read it.

4. My Beachfront Property – A little magnet from Hawaii with a pinch or two of white sand from the white sand beaches.

5. McDaddy’s Welcome Home Invitation from Deployment – I leave it on the fridge as a reminder of the six long months McDaddy was away from us AND to remind me of the thousands that are deployed and away from their families every single day.

6. A little hand that says “Stevie’s school work” which he made in nursery school.

7. A rectangular magnet that says “It’s A Jeep Thing You Wouldn’t Understand” – Those Jeep fellers sure love their jeeps. And yes, I don’t understand.

8. A picture of me and McDaddy on the beach in Florida, shortly after we were engaged in 1996.

9. 2 birth announcements – Because hello? Steve’s side of the family has 15 grand-babies under the age of seven. We’ve had three nieces born in the past five months. Lydia, Kessa, and Gwen. Sweet, sweet baby girls.

10. A bright pink piece of paper for Teacher Appreciation.

11. A picture of my sweet boys with the Easter bunny. I know. I know. This is May already.

12. Alex’s Pioneer memory verse for the week – God saw all that he had made, and it was good. Genesis 1:31

13. GTMO Jeep Club magnet – Can you believe there is a stinkin’ Jeep Club on Guantanamo Bay? Well, there is. And McDaddy found it.  Those Jeep Peeps are everywhere.

Now, wasn’t that fun? 

Care to share what’s on your fridge?

For more Wordless Wednesday pictures, visit 5 minutes for mom.

Weeks before McDaddy left for his six month sentence deployment to Guantanamo Bay, we  made some plans involving  our basement which included some major renovations we wanted to complete. I had some grandiose idea that heading up the construction of the basement would help pass the time and that somehow, I could have it all completed before he returned.

Ahem.

That’s a little much even for me!

Shortly after that idea I discovered first hand how difficult utterly impossible exasperating it is to peel wallpaper from a wall. Wallpaper that had no desire to be separated from the wall it had been attached to for the last ten or so years.

Needless to say the removing of the wallpaper was a slow job that was not finished when McDaddy returned home. My sanity however, was finished, especially after McDaddy announced that peeling the wallpaper was not necessary because based on the shady construction of the basement walls, we should just go ahead and replace the drywall.

Alrightythen.

Sometime between the period of plotting and peeling of the paper, I was introduced to Wall Words by my URL friend, Darcie. I knew then that I wanted the Wall Words in our new area.

Even though the Great Basement Remodel of 2009 2010 is nowhere near completion, I wanted to at least share the Wall Words with you. I ordered Wall Words for the Laundry Room and for our new playroom/music room. And speaking of peeling paper off of the walls, Wall Words are pretty simple to apply. After some preliminary measuring and leveling, all you do is apply the words, rub the words and then peel the paper away.

But I will warn you though, there are colors and fonts, and colors and fonts, and colors and fonts which means that the hardest part of the Wall Words might be deciding between the colors and the fonts.

First up is the [clearly unfinished] laundry room which is actually more of a walkway between the playroom and soon-to-be-mudroom… but still, it’s where I do the laundry -

While we would never actually ‘Drop our drawers’ here (unless of course McDaddy has been working on his heap, ahem! I mean Jeep in the garage and needs to ditch the dirty clothes before entering the rest of the house), I love the saying. It makes me smile everytime I see it. The whole ‘Laundry Room – Drop Your Drawers Here’ is actually a ready-made quote from Wall Words. Don’t you just love it?

I love these daisies on the opposite wall too…

And yes, before you ask, the walls are very bright (Valspar Chickadee) and for some reason these pictures appear as though they were taken in a room full of smoke or steam.

Too bad I’m way too comfy in my big, blue, bloggy chair watching the Olympics (Oh TiVo, I do love you so!) to go back down and attempt the pictures again, so I do hope you’ll excuse the below average photography.

Just around the corner from the laundry area is the 2nd kitchen turned playroom/music room that now houses the drums, the piano and ultimately 523 versions of Lightning McQueen and his posse of course lots of  TOYS. Oh, andI still have two red mirrors to hang up but I want them to hang in a diamond shape instead of a square shape which means McDaddy will have to do some modifications to them, so I’ll post again once we get those up. (And hopefully the photography will be better!)

The picture on the wall is my favorite picture of my fellas and was taken seconds after we landed in Cuba after being away from McDaddy for over 100 days.

And my favorite part of the room, the Wall Words…

No truer words have ever been spoken written on our walls.

Very true indeed.

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And guess what? The kind folks at Wall Words Dot Com have graciously offered a $5.00 discount for any of my readers who might have some words they want to put on their walls. Just enter the code (2010JLY) at checkout.

Simple as that.

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Visit Rocks In My Dryer for other Works For Me Wednesday Posts.

When I first started this bloggy gig, I contacted a blog designer by e-mail. After a few e-mails back and forth, I kicked it into high gear and sent a list of questions that probably had her questioning her decision to work with such an incompetant client me. My questions ranged from ‘Why is a hosted blog better than an un-hosted one’ to ‘Which one of these blog titles do you like best?’

I knew what I wanted but I had no idea how to make it happen. My URL friend, Jo-Lynne and my other URL International friend, Cathy over at Desperately Seeking WordPress are the brains behind this operation. I guess you could say they make me look good.

Since that time, I’ve learned a little bit (a big emphasis on little bit!) about Widgets, Themes, HTML code, headers, Plug-Ins, and blog design.

If you are attentive to detail, and you notice a few changes here at From Inmates To Playdates, you should know that it is not my doing. I know only enough to be dangerous. Basically, I just e-mail my latest, greatest request to Jo-Lynne or Cathy with a message to ‘send me a bill’ and days later I show up on my doorstep and smile because I know they’ve been in there playing around.

For instance, Cathy changed my font last night.

And made a few changes to my theme (the layout of the page) and my widgets (those things in the side-bars like my picture, my blog button, and the calendar).

At this very minute, (or maybe not) Jo-Lynne is designing a new twitter button, subscriber button, and e-mail button because I saw snazzy new buttons over at her place and inquired about them. And before I knew it I was begging asking for them, too!

So, for today’s Thursday Thirteen, I thought it might be fun to feature some bloggy friends and facts since starting this gig back in November, 2008. The statistics are courtesy of Google Analytics.

1. Cathy – “The geek behind the beauty” at Desperately Seeking WordPress - Can I just say that Cathy is a bloggy genius. She is also “really artistic, nerdy, and nice!” She can fix what is broken, and coincidentally, she can fix what I break, too!  Which happens more often than you know. You should visit her place if you are in the market for a blog. DSW also hosts my blog which means my stuff is stored on her server somewhere.

2. Jo-Lynne – The creative owner of DCR Designs. – If you scroll through her designs, you’ll see my current blog design, as well as my old one. She is very affordable and easy to work with.

3. Over the past year, the post, It Was Me, Wasn’t It had the most page views (1000+).

4. Christmas Tour Of Homes yielded the second highest page views.

5. 12% of my new visitors over the past year came from MckMama.

6. 8% of my new visitors over the past year came from We Are That Family.

7. Google is responsible for approximately 9% of my traffic.  5% of that traffic is searching for wet t-shirt contests.

8.  Besides the words From Inmates To Playdates in some form or another, the words Preparing For Deployment were the most googled words landing people at my place.

9.  60% of my readers use Internet Explorer.

10. The average time spent on my site per visit is 1 minute 15 seconds.

11. The average reader reads 1.5 pages in that 75 seconds.

12. 12% of my readers over the past year were from West Virginia. Next was Texas, and then California.

13. And just for fun, my favorite blog is Big Mama.

And that, as they say, is that.

Hope you enjoyed my bloggy bidness.

A year ago today, McDaddy left for a six-month deployment in Cuba.

Today, I am thankful for togetherness.

… Rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  

 Colossians 2:7