Needless to say, I have been busy.
News came down "through the line" that March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day, was going to be the day. Well, the night anyways....their ETA as of that morning was for later in the evening, around nine pm.....I debated going in to work that day, just to make time go by quicker, but decided I'd probably be a crazy grouch to deal with, so I didn't go.
I met with Steph, Luke, Jenn and two of her minions, Ben and Lexie at Panera Bread for breakfast to kick start the day. I had never gotten to go to Panera breakfast with them, so this was a treat for me that they constantly have tried to talk me into.
After that I was off to the gym and then the mall to get a pedi and mani. Gotta have cute toes when your man comes home, you know, priorities!
Definitely carried all my "homecoming" clothes and stuff with me throughout the day though, just in case you get that crazy phone call that they came in early.....well, they didn't, the phone call I got was that they were now coming in at 11ish pm.
Ugh. This is going to be a LONG night.
To pass time, Jeanette met up with me when she got off work (at my work, LOL) and we went out for sushi. It was a great distraction. Sushi seems to solve most world problems, I'm convinced.
By then, it was time to meet up with Stephanie, Luke, Jenn and her kiddo's and head to green ramp. We had to get there early, waiting for one company ahead of us to do their homecoming, and then not only set up for ours, but also set up to sell our fundraising t-shirts for the FRG.
Without going into insane detail, the food got there, the shirts got there, the families got there, and after about 4 hours of waiting at green ramp, the guys marched into the hangar at about 11:40ish pm.It was great. Homecomings are always such a slush of crazy emotions and no matter how excited I am or non stressed I am, I still get emotional. It's just such a happy time.
Dad's got see their kids, some for the only the second or third time since they've been born. Several of our friends were this way, it was almost more fun to watch their first reunion moments than have fun in our own.
The guys finished around 2-2:30 am and we finally got to head home.
Our poor animals were so confused.
First of all, why is mom out this late at night....and second, who the heck is this guy?! Hurley of course will love on anyone that looks at him, so he was all for it, but Jax ran away with a puffy tail, and Bella, of course, couldn't be bothered either way.
John had to be in at work the next morning/afternoon for a half day, ugh.
But I had that day off too, so I puttered around the house making sure that our first weekend home wouldn't be laden with household chores.
Our first weekend with him home we drove up to Raleigh to not only buy him so new clothes, etc. but also to get his Chipotle addiction fixed for the time being. It was so fun and nice to walk around Crabtree and shop and not care about money, time, schedules, work, or any of that. It was just so great to literally do and buy whatever we wanted. Finally our hard work this deployment paid off and it was so great to enjoy it without a care in the world.
The next week we played musical cars, taking turns who took who to work and who got rides, etc. John was instantly on the prowl for his future truck that week and luckily with only in-processing taking half days, gave him a good amount of time to scour the town to find what he wanted.
Problem is he had a general idea of what he wanted, but me, being the pessimistic thing I am, didn't think he could find it. Not in Fayetteville anyways.
But he proved me wrong, and in these cases, I prefer to be proven wrong, so I was so happy when he found "his" truck.
What was even better is that we paid for it all in cash. This is what I was most excited about, but ya know, John's more concerned about his future motorcycle fitting into the bed of it.
Priorities.....
Without further delay, this is John's 2002 Ford Ranger XLT, I don't know anything about trucks and what's cool and neat with them, but I do know it has FWD and that in itself is a rare find here in NC. I've wanted to name it Lucy, but considering it's not a "manly" name, it probably won't happen....
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