I have said a few times in the past that this blog is my happy place. It is a place where both my daughter and I are perfectly healthy and we spend the days playing and I spend nap time creating. This is because in reality that is not always how it is, we both have health issues that we deal with daily and they are not easy to deal with. That is why this is my happy place.
Now, I’ve known for several months now that I was going to need to take a break right around when I disappeared. I have mentioned before that we are a military family and as often happens with military families, the time has come for another deployment. My husband left for Afghanistan 2.5 weeks ago. This is never easy, no matter what age your children are (I’ve now done it with a 6 week old and now a 2.5 year old), and I wanted to make sure that I could completely devote my time to our daughter. Anne is still adjusting, WE are still adjusting. I like to say that we are looking for a new temporary normal, because whatever normal we land on it will only be temporary, and then we will have to find a new normal once again.
I would like to share a few pictures, the first 2 are from a photo shoot we had done before my husband left. My goal was to surround my house with pictures of husband and my daughter so that wherever she went she would see her daddy and see the 2 of them together. Here are 2 of my favorite pictures:
Here are 2 pictures of the day he left:
Now, I don’t think this would have hit me nearly as hard as it did except for the fact that Anne’s health and my health both took nosedives in the week leading up to his departure. Not easy stuff to deal with, actually to be perfectly honest it was one of the scariest weeks of my life. A lot of words were tossed around by specialists like Cancer and Stroke. I am OK now, more monitoring will be needed on some ongoing issues, and Anne is also ok, she too needs more close monitoring than before. Needless to say it has been stressful and scary. My husband has arrived safely at his destination and we actually mailed him his first care package yesterday. I didn’t want to write about any of this until I knew that he and his unit had gotten to their final destination and were indeed safe. You never know who might be reading, and writing about troop movements is NEVER a good idea in a public forum.
Regardless of all that, I continue to count my blessings and remind myself that I am part of an amazingly wonderful community. I had countless people offer to guest post for me (having no idea why I was taking a break), I had my sponsors in my corner throughout the last several weeks, and most importantly I had all of you in my corner. I can’t tell you how much your caring and supportive emails have meant to me. The next 9 months will not be easy for my family, or any other military family for that matter, but being part of this community I know will help get me through.
So there it is, nothing cataclysmic (though it certainly felt that it was heading that direction at one point), just another life adjustment. Anne and I are in California right now, I thought it would be good for her to be surrounded by family while we get used to daya (that’s what she calls her daddy) being gone. Ok, enough! Tomorrow I will show you a couple of the things I managed to sew the last couple weeks. Back to my normal happy place 🙂
Don’t forget to go enter the 2 giveaways I have open right now. One from Superior Threads and the other from Stitches N’ Giggles.
P.S. Did anyone watch the House Series Finale last night? Loved it!
This is a Bubba Doll. He didn’t come with the name tape – we happened to have an extra one at my parents house (don’t ask me why, I’m not really sure why it was here). His uniform is made from an actual ACU top and it even has a pocket in the back so you can put a picture of daddy in there. He came with his own birth certificate and care instructions. All that aside, he just made my baby girl’s day!
Thank you to everyone for all of your support this past month, we are at 34 days and counting.
