Memorial Day

Bear with me as I'm experiementing with Picasa photo collages, but I wanted to well-document our Memorial Day.  With us expecting an upcoming deployment for Brian, the day honoring fallen soliders had special meaning this year.  I dressed Bradley and myself in patriotic garb, and we even snagged some cheapo fireworks for the occasion.  Brian shot off some spinning, screaming tops called "Crazy Eyeballs" on Sunday night, and on Monday we did sparklers and poppers- both of which Bradley loved fearlessly!

We hosted an impromptu barbeque, and our friend Ami came over to eat with us.  The Himes family made an appearance later on, and even later still our friends Kim, Greg, and Kim's friend Michelle also stopped by.

Aside from the flies swarming around our food, the weather was perfect for a night out on the patio.  We talked, listened to music, and had Brian's special hamburgers, french fries, and corn on the cob.  It was a relaxing evening spent with great friends.

Home sweet home

As of Wednesday night at 5:29pm Brian is home from Afghanistan!!!

Here's Bradley waiting for daddy in the airport, waving his flag! His t-shirt says "Welcome home daddy"

Holding up our sign, waiting for Brian's plane to arrive






The Vilendrers reunited after 3 long months

We had everyone in the airport crying at our reunion! Bradley and Brian bonded instantly. There was no question that Bradley knew exactly who his daddy was. We are so thankful to have Brian back home, and he has wasted no time making a trip to Lowe's and starting several home improvement projects already. He even fixed the icemaker that I had left broken months ago.

After picking him up from the airport, for his welcome home dinner Brian chose Buffalo Wild Wings, so that's what we did, then called it an early night. Tonight we'll grill out and have a few people over to celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out through this first deployment; for anyone who mailed Brian packages, to Ann for helping me out every week babysitting Bradley so I could go to choir practice, to Kim and Jess for making sure I got out of the house daily, to mom and dad for taking such good care of us on visits and giving me a break, and the biggest thanks goes for everyone who prayed for us. Now we will continue to pray for our other friends who are still deployed that they make it home safe and sound. God is good, all the time.

Hearts apart

So apparently we have hit a big milestone in our deployment (the amount of time I have been gone). As many of you know (and the few that will read this) I don't blog much (I think I have like twice) but thought I would give this a shot. I can't post pictures and don't have any funny sayings and can't talk about what I do or even what the weather is like so really this stands to be a short and boring blog that at the end of it you will wish you had not wasted your time. I always tell Amanda that every day is like groundhog day. I wake up around X time and shower in a make-shift bathroom then walk back to my shack where I put on the same uniform before having a cup of coffee and eating my breakfast that for some is their dinner or lunch. Everyday I have about the same food. I do not want any hamburgers when I get back. I drive my sweet humvee with no doors into work where I do what I gotta do then contemplate the vastness of space and time. I have a Mountain Dew in the afternoon and then in the evening a Dr. Pepper and two chocolate chip cookies.
Which brings me to a nice note. Every day around the same time I go and get a sandwich and it is always the same kind (provided they have the lunch meat I want). There I grab two cookies...normally. Recently they have been running low or even out of them when I go. I asked the lunch lady (and not Chris Farley) if she had more. She goes in the cupboard and opens a box, looks around and gives me a six pack of them. This happened about two weeks ago and every day since she has set aside just for me a six pack of Otis Spunkmire chocolate chip cookies.
This brought me to a hard point that we often forget in life. Our mood, although often influenced by things around us, is ultimately up to us. We should make the best of each day we have and find joy in the little things.

Dubs Down

I am still learning all the protocol for what is acceptable and not acceptable to talk about and write about concerning Brian's deployment, but last week we hit the 20 day mark of him being gone. In the long run, 20 is still a small number, but I feel like it was a good milestone to achieve. In my OCD-ness, it is a nice, neatly packaged set of 10, so that makes me feel like we've accomplished something. 20 days in reality feels like a lot longer though. It's hard to believe it's only been a few weeks, and can get discouraging when I think of how many days are still ahead of us, so that's why I count down to the next set of 10 days, so I can put another check mark in the box.

Thankfully, I've had 2 sets of visitors, first Ari, and then my parents and sister, so that has helped fill up my time. I'm still running 3 times a week with Jess and Kim, and I have still met my personal goal to get out of the house at least once a day. Brian has easy access to a phone, so he has been able to call me almost daily, and usually more than once a day. He's doing fine where he is, except that he has mentioned killing a lot of mice, and the food there being terrible.

Bradley is walking a ton now, so he is keeping me busy. More than once today he has appeared behind me out of nowhere seemingly, and silently, so I've started to refer to him as "my little ninja." I leave him in his room to play, and then BAM! out of nowhere, he's behind me as I'm folding laundry or at my feet as I open the refrigerator.

If you're keeping up with the tropics (and you know I am!), tropical storm Claudette dumped a lot of rain on us here, but nothing else to report, and it looks like we don't have much to worry about with Hurricane Bill in the coming days either. As always though, you can count on me, "Hurricane Bradley" to stay abreast of the latest tropical disturbance.

One week of deployment down...

Too many to count to go!

So far Brian and I have been able to talk on the phone almost every day. Our longest phone call to date has been 12 min 38 seconds; most average around 6 minutes. I'm so thankful for that time though. He usually sounds tired when I talk to him since he's just finished working and getting ready to go to bed, but no news is good news otherwise. I've been told that if I don't hear from him, it means everything's A-okay, and that if there were some kind of emergency, I'd be notified quickly. This has become our reality for the next 3 months. I'm grateful that the calendar now says "August" because it means November is just a little bit closer.

So far I've met my goal to leave the house at least once a day. I even went running Thursday night with my 2 friends/neighbors Jess and Kim. We ran for 30 minutes at a nearby park, with walking intervals in between. For someone who hasn't run in a long time, and to have to push a stroller while doing it, I was pretty pleased with myself. We're supposed to go again tonight, so wish me luck.

Not much else to report on the home front. Bradley is walking a little more at a time. He still would rather crawl, or have me pick him up so I need to encourage him to self-propel since my wrists are starting to act up again. Pray for that, and pray for Brian, Bart, and the rest of our troops.

Shoes Blues

Twelve minutes and thirty five seconds. That is exactly how long I got to talk to Brian today. I never knew that a phone call could make me so overjoyed, or so overcome with sadness at the same time. Most of you know this by now, but Brian has left for Afghanistan, and won't be back until sometime in November. It seems like an eternity away at this point, but those who have been through spouses deploying before tell me that the first two weeks are the hardest. After that, you realize you can do it, and you create a new normal, and a new routine.

I look around and see Brian everywhere. His shoes by the front door, his towell hanging in the bathroom, his Mountain Dew bottle left on the counter, and I don't want to move any of it because I don't want to take "him" out of our home, and of our lives. But then my OCD kicks in, and slowly but surely I am starting to put the towell in the hamper to be washed, and rinse out the Mountain Dew bottle and put it in the recycling bin. The shoes however, are a different story. Even though that's one of the tiny things I've learned to accept about living with Brian- he leaves a pair of shoes by the door so he can slip them on when he leaves. I would prefer they stay hidden on a shoetree in our closet. But those shoes laying there on our front step just remind me of him, as if I could forget anyways. So the shoes will stay where they are. At least for now.