FINALLY!!

After many months, counting down the last days and then the last hours, Dave is finally home and I am a happy, happy lady!

The buses didn't pull into Victory Field until almost 2am. One of the seven buses broke down about an hour from 29 Palms. The remaining six buses came in and unloaded at the armory, but the Marines didn't want to go down to meet their loved ones until they knew that their brothers were at the armory and close behind them.

Our best friends Dave and Linda Mc went with Cathy and I and did their best to keep us occupied and sane during the five hour wait, giving up their 22nd anniversary to be there with us and act as our photographers.

We got word, finally, that the buses were loaded and our Marines were coming down from the armory. They were escorted by a local motorcycle club called the Patriot Guard Riders. They had escorted our men from March AFB, rode in with them, and stayed with them at the armory. Then they escorted them down the streets of the base.

What a sight that was all those Harleys with their engine's roaring, most of them decked out with American flags, and right behind them the buses with Marines hanging out of the window searching for that first glimpse of their loved ones.

There were so many people crowding up to the buses, I hung back a first, looking for him. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder and someone pointed him out to me. I just ran to him and at that moment, all was right in the universe. It that brief and beautiful second, I felt like nothing could ever be wrong or ever hurt me.

My life is complete again!

Soooooooo Close

OMG, I can't believe how close we are getting to Dave being home and in my arms again.

He totally made me cry today. The FedEx guy walked in with a package marked from Flowers.com and I asked "who's the lucky lady?" Much to my surprise, it was me. Dave must have found his way to a computer while he was in Kuwait.

First I opened the card on the outside and what he wrote was so sweet and beautiful that I started crying. Then I opened the box and found a dozen lavender roses and a purple teddy bear and I started crying again.

Purple is my favorite color. He knows me so well.

I'll be posting updates on his homecoming as I can.

Updates from Dave

I got another call from Dave last night. They are still in the first stop over place, but should be leaving there today.

He said that base is like Club Med, you would not even know you were in the middle of a combat zone. He had Pizza Hut last night and says he thinks he's gaining weight from all the good food in the chow hall.

He also reported that they have gone through all their decompression classes, which he boils down to: "don't fall in the bottle, don't spend all your money, don't beat your wife, and don't get in fights".

That doesn't sound like it should take three days, huh?

I also heard from my KV today and the dates and times that she gave me were right on with all the rumors we have been hearing. Time is slowly winding down and it won't be too much longer before I can post some wonderful reunion photos!

Hugs to all, and anyone that wants to call me to get more information is more than welcome!

Playing With Photshop

Trying to keep myself busy as the hours pass ever so slowly!!

The Long Journey Home....update

I just got a call from Dave and his entire group is finally in their next location in Iraq. He says the base there is really big with a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, and a Baskin Robbins. HECK, we don't even have a Baskin Robbins in 29 Palms!!

He says they are there for a day at least before their next leg, which should take them down to Kuwait to wait for the big freedom bird!

The Long Journey Home!

Very soon, maybe even tonight, I will get an email from Dave telling me he is walking out the door to board his first of many, many modes of transportation to come home to me!

It'll be a long journey, starting with a helicopter and ending with a bus, but that moment that the bus pulls up to Victory Field aboard 29 Palms MCAGCC will be so amazingly wonderful!

Stay tuned for updates as I am allowed to post them, but we are under 200 hours until I can finally wrap my arms around him!

201 days behind us. 4,834 hours of worry and lonliness; but the end is in sight!

***ETA - Just got an email from Dave, he is heading to the flightline for his first flight!***

Planners

Remember how I said that I was a Planner married to the King of Planning?

Well I have from now until November 1st all mapped out:

Tomorrow morning I go to the local Social Security office to get a new card. Can you believe that I've worked at the Clown College for over a year now and they just figured out they don't have a copy of my driver's license and Social Security card?
Then tomorrow afternoon, I'm going back into the base hospital to have a mole removed. I'm 37 years old and this will be the first time I've ever had stitches!
I also need to drop off our duffel bags that just arrived at the alterations place to have the name tapes sewn on (more on this later) and tan again at the Fake & Bake.

I work Wednesday - Sunday, cleaning the house and doing laundry in the evenings, and baking at the tan place two or three times.

Next Monday, I have Terminex scheduled to come out and treat the place inside and out. No, I haven't been that sloppy for the past 7 months; we're just having a bad ant season.

Tuesday morning into the beauty salon to get my roots touched up. I'm way too young to have this much grey! Then Tuesday afternoon, carpet cleaners are coming in.

Tuesday night, the group of Officer's Wives I hang with are having our last social gathering (called a "coffee") at a local nail salon. They are closing it down so it's just us. We're going to drink some bubbly, have a good time, and get all pretty for our guys.

I work Wednesday and Thursday. Then at some point between Friday and Sunday, (again OpSec) I become the happiest woman on the West Coast!!

The only thing I don't have planned between now and then is when the cleaning lady is going to come in. I lost her telephone number so my friend is getting it for me today.

Then when Dave comes home, I'm off work through Sunday, then I work Monday the 2nd through Wednesday the 4th, then he has a 4 day weekend and I'm take that off as well. Then I work Monday the 9th through Friday the 13th.

Then the vacation starts!!

Our friend Linda is driving us to Vegas on Saturday the 14th and we fly from there to Dallas to visit with my family. Dave is going to go with our niece Sam to her first grade class to be her Show and Tell! LOL! We are also going to go with my folks down to San Antonio for some sight seeing.

Wednesday, the 18th, we hop on a Greyhound bus and scoot up to Kansas to visit with Dave's family. Dave's Mom is all excited because on Sunday, the 22nd, she is going to have all six of her sons, all six of her daughter-in-laws, and all six of her grandkids together for the first time ever. The last time she had all of the boys and their wives together at once was 8 years ago, and we have 2 new wives and 3 new grandkids since then.

We're picking up Dave's 1973 Corvette which he has been keeping in storage at his folks house and doing the rest of the trip in that. Hence the duffel bags.

Finishing up the trip in the Vette, we are going to be very, very short on luggage space, so I ordered us two olive green duffel bags. We should be able to cram both of those in the small storage space behind the driver's seats. It's going to be a jeans and t-shirts kind of vacation and we'll have to do laundry every place we stop. Luckily, I'm a low maintenance girl!

Dave came up with the great idea of ordering some military name tapes and having them sewn on our bags. You should have seen the look on the guys face when I ordered two name tapes, one with the name Wendylicious and one with the name Big Daddy Dave!!
We're also going to buy souvenir patches as we travel and sew them on our bags as we go so our luggage will actually become a souvenir itself!

On Monday, the 23rd, we hop in the car and head to Colorado to visit Dave's father and stepmother for a few days. We're staying in the cutest little Bed and Breakfast called The Jewel of the Canyons. We even have a massage scheduled for while we are there.

Friday, the 27th, we leave Canon City and start to meander our way back home. Depending on the weather, we may head directly west and see Utah, or if it's snowy, we may go south and go through Arizona. We would like to get back here by the 30th, so we can have the 31st for recuperation time.

Then we both go back to work on November 1.

I've very excited about all of our plans for the next month and a half!! Especially the him getting off the bus part and all the sex afterwards! LOL!! I still need to go down the hill to Palm Springs between now and then and buy myself a new pair of jeans. I've lost so much weight, all my clothes are falling off of me.

Between that and the 3 or 4 inches of hair I've grown, I joke that I will need to be holding a sign when Dave gets off the bus that says "CWO3 J... here is your wife!"

OpSec

In the name of Operational Security, I took down my countdown timer.

I got an email from my KV (Key Volunteer) saying that the dates had changed slightly, but that the KNV (Key Volunteer Network) would not be posting any arrivals via email for OpSec reasons and asked that we did the same. She said she would be contacting everyone in the next week to let us know what the new dates are.

WTH? You just tell me that my husband's date has changed, and that you will call me in the next 7 DAYS to tell me the new date???

Luckily Dave is a pretty smart feller and, in the course of an email, mentioned that he was looking forward to the day that our favorite team plays (he named another team) and how nice it was going to be to be together and watch the game in his own house.

All I had to do was look up what day our team played the team who's name I won't mention here and WHAM, I knew all I needed to know!

Hit a Goal!

Remember my New Year's Resolutions that I posted back in January?

Well I'm very excited that I hit one of my goals. Yesterday when I stepped on the scales, I officially weighed 160 for the first time in many years! I can't believe how flat my stomach looks!

Now the hard part, to keep it off once Dave comes home and we go on vacation!

17 Days!!!

Only 17 days until Dave comes home!

I was reading back over all my blogger posts the other day and I can't believe that we are finally at this point! I remember being excited because we were 10% through this mess and now we have less than 10% left. In fact, we only have 8.16% left!

I'm excited and nervous, but no reunion anxiety this time, thank goodness!

Everyone stay tuned for details of our vacation dates. Being the planners that we are, we already have it all worked out!

And keep your eyes on the countdown timer that I have installed here
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A link...

I been talking with a journalist who was imbedded with Dave's unit for a few months back when they first arrived in theater. She gave me a link to her blog and I've enjoyed reading her view of our Marines, what conditions are like there, and her thoughts on our men's mission.

She's a real firecracker and I'm looking forward to meeting her when she visits 29 Palms to welcome our Heroes home!

Betty Kilbride

It Makes Me Thinks Of You....

Dear Davy Puppy, I miss you so much every day, it's funny the little things that make me think of you!



Pepsi
Corvettes, old muscle cars, Harley Davidsons, and big trucks
(remember the time between our wedding rehearsal and the dinner?)
Outback Steakhouse
Bon Jovi songs (remember our first date?)
Survivor
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (or first movie at the drive-in)
Cowboy boots
Sonic and Schlotsky's
The Dallas Cowboys (and the Cowboy Cheerleaders)
Alan Jackson, especially Chattahoochee!
Cows
camouflage
Lasagna
A tight pair of jeans
Lanvin
a high and tight haircut
mudpuddles
black cats
The American Flag
Lightning
Erasure (remember driving around Okinawa?)
Playing pool
Bunny Rabbits
a blue vase
"Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac" & "rubbin's racing"
AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long"
Reindeer games
my shoes in the middle of the living room floor
the smell of sawdust
a campfire
Smirnoff Black
marching bands

So many little things every day!

24 Days and Counting

Oh joy, oh joy! Dave's coming home date has been moved up! He should be home by the 1st!!

I'm really excited and best of all, I'm not having any reunion anxiety. (yet) Reunion anxiety is so impossible to explain; it makes no sense. I'm excited and look forward to him coming home, but for some illogical reason, I'm scared of it too?

Just a preview of the earthquake that is going to rock Southern California in a little over three weeks, here are some pictures from our previous reunions.

True Friends

Well casual reader, I have introduced you to a lot of different people in my life; my sisters and brother, my parents, my Mother in Law, just to name a few.

Today I want to take a moment and recognize two people who are the epitome of true friends, Dave and Linda M.

Dave and I met Dave and Linda through a motorcycle club we used to ride with. We enjoyed their company at the meetings and on the rides, so we started to get to know them better outside of club functions, and over the past eight years, we have come to love them dearly.

We don't see them as often as we would like, especially after Dave was transferred to Camp Pendleton, but every time we see them again, we just pick right up like not a day has passed.

Dave and Linda are the kind of friends you can call at 2am when your car breaks down an hour away and they will get up and come and get you. They are the kind of friends you trust with your house keys, your cars, your money, and your hearts. During Dave's Iraqi tours, they have stored at different times his Harley, his 73 Vette, his 90 Vette, and our motorhome. All without complaint.

They have been my rock through all three of these deployments. While my Dave is deployed, Dave M. will come and pick me up on the motorcycle and take me out for a ride. They have me into their home for dinner and long nights of good conversation. They love me enough to force me to get out, sometimes when I don't want to, because they know it's good for me. About a month after my Dave left on this deployment, Linda called me and informed me that they were taking me to dinner, where did I want to eat? Not did I want to go, but where should they take me? They knew I was still moping, but cared enough about me to force me to get out and get on.

We've shared everything about ourselves with Dave and Linda, and they accept us as we are with no judgments. That is the greatest gift we have received from them; their unconditional support.

I know they both read my blog (even though they never leave comments) so let me take this time to tell them both:
Guys, I don't know what Dave and I would have done over the past eight years without you guys in our lives. We value you and treasure your friendship more than we can ever express in words!