Tim leaves for deployment

Most of you know that Tim is in the Air National Guard and has been in (between the Air Force and Air Guard) for 26 years. He has been on many deployments through the years we have been married, but this is his first long one. Most of them have been two weeks to a month at the most, but this one is about four months long and to the Middle East. This means he will be missing a lot of special days (birthdays, anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.). I know there are a lot of people who have been through this before and many whose husbands have been deployed for much longer than mine so I am going to be asking them for help and gleaning from their wisdom on how to make this time the best we possibly can.

The first thing I am really going to try to do is to almost daily update my blog. I want him to feel like he is a part of our daily activities and included in all the stuff we are doing. Therefore, everyone who might chance upon my blog will notice that I have been much better about updating (I hope).

We took Tim to the airport this morning at 4:30am. Now, I am an early riser, but 4:30 is a little TOO early for me. One of the girls' friends from church and school got the bright idea of having a bunch of them meet us at the airport and surprise him. They made T-shirts and posters and everything! It really was an awesome sight to see all those kids (and a few parents) waiting to surprise him. My mom and her husband even showed up so there ended up being about twenty of us. After more than a few tears were shed, we all said good-bye to Tim and the rest of us went out to breakfast. Denny's was our only choice at that hour and there is one near where we all live so we headed over there. My video camera had been commandeered by the kids and they filmed all kinds of things at the airport and at breakfast. I am going to try and make Tim DVDs every week or two so he even feels more like he is a part of all of our lives. If I get some good stuff, I may have to upload it here as well.


The gang at the airport

I do have to say that I am so happy that I have such a great support group around me...online from my email loops as well as in real life from my family, friends and my church. They and my faith will be what helps us get through this stronger and better than ever!

After we got home, we all crashed! None of us had slept very well the night before so we were exhausted. Tara and I fell asleep on the couch and the girls went up to their rooms. I slept for an hour or so, but the girls slept quite a bit longer. Of course, the fact that it was a cloudy, rainy day didn't help. We all just wanted to have cozy, relaxing day anyway and I hadn't planned much so it all worked out fine.

Finishing Catching Up--Landscaping

Otherwise this summer we have been trying to finish our landscaping and doing some other last minute things before Tim leaves. One of the biggest was the landscaping. We did get in some people to help us because, let me say, landscaping would not be considered on of our biggest strengths. They got it all done in about a week...including putting in the whole drip system. It was well worth the money!


Here's all the plants after Tim picked them up at the nursery. It took three loads in the flatbed trailer and then we had to move them all next to the garage so they wouldn't get damaged by the wind.


And here are the plants we (meaning the girls and I)couldn't move so we left them there until they could be planted.



Here is the finished product. We will still have some to do on the side and back next spring, but it was enough to satisfy our home owner's association and since they are holding some of our money hostage until we are semi-finished, we wanted to make them happy. It will be nice to get it back (and be able to use it for the vineyard area we are planting in the back next spring).

Trip to San Francisco

Tim and I decided that we needed to try and do a few special family things before he left for his deployment and one of those was a trip to San Francisco. Tim and I were going to a preseason 49er game and wanted to visit his grandmother with the girls as well.



We spent one day at the aquarium in San Francisco and got to see a bunch of great fish and other aquatic animals. The girls especially loved the penguins.


Tim and I went to the game that evening and met all our tailgating buddies for the first tailgate of the year. We had a great time!

The next day we went to the Jelly Belly factory on the way home. It was really fun to see how they make their candies and to get to taste them. They also have a lot of flavors of Jelly Bellies that you can't find easily other places. Of course we had to buys some of them!


It was just a weekend trip, but it always fun to be able to spend time as a family together.

Just a quick update....

For those of you who think we have died and fallen off the planet....we haven't, really! Tim is getting ready for a deployment that will last four months and we have been busy getting ready for that. I am really hoping to be able to catch up on Saturday after he is gone so keep your eyes pealed for updates from the rest of the summer and ALL of our news. I also have to figure out how to use the video uploader so I can upload some family videos.