The Final Countdown

We're marking off the days until Chad leaves. He's heading back to Iraq in just days. This will be our longest deployment yet, 15 months. Those three months may not seem big to those of you who've never been through a deployment, but trust me those 3 months are pretty huge, especially when you have young children and so much can change in 3 months. We're praying that he's home in time for Jackson's 6th birthday, we're pretty sure he won't make it back for Emma's 2nd. There's so many things I was hoping we'd get to do and get done before he left and there's just not time enough now. We've, or I should say Chad has been working on Emma's room the last few days. He got it all painted, pink/mauve and tonight he's going to take the rug that's in there and take it over to recylcing, pull one of the dressers out and put it in the boys room, put together the crib so I can put her in there for naps and not worry about her falling off the couch or having to lay her on a pallett in the floor. I'm in the process of looking for wall decorations right now for her room, a cute rug and we already are getting a nice larger carpet/rug for her to be able to sit on and play with her toys.

I know it's boring, but it's life really. Laundry is constant and I hate laundry. I hate putting it up too, really hate that! :X That's why I have baskets of it just sitting in my room to be put away. I'm not sure what we'll get done before Chad leaves, but before the end of the month I plan on having our room looking good. I'm going to buy a new quilt for our bed, get some high thread count sheets, and make our bedroom into my sanctuary that I'll actually look forward to going into! Now that will be a change! Trust me it's a disaster area.
The boys have been working on their bedroom and it's looking a lot better. Jacob and I had a long talk on Monday about how we want things to go this deployment. They can either go nice or ugly...I can spend my day not yelling and screaming and feeling like I'm losing my mind or I can yell and scream and lose it! We're obviously going for the first! LOL So together we're going to create a chore list for each boy, they're going to help with what chores they will be doing. Some things they will do for the simple fact that they're part of this family and that's what is expected of them, some they'll earn money, and some they'll earn rewards such as a movie night (movie of their choice). I'm also going to surprise the boys with a coin jar. Every day that Chad's gone they'll be putting a nickle in the jar, every Saturday they'll put a quarter in the jar, when Daddy gets home for good we're going to take the money and do something special with it which the boys will help decide on! Maybe we'll let them split the money for our trip we take when we go on block leave. Either way it'll be a very nice sum of money saved. Next week I will go to the bank and buy a month's worth of nickles!

Well, Chad's heading home in a moment so I need to get off of here and spend as much time as I can with him.

God Bless