Down to the wire

Well the hubby is due back any day now. I still have things to do around the house, but I got the taxes done and at least 3 loads of laundry done. I still need to get a new battery for the truck, but that won't take too long. I think I'm going to try to finish my bed tonight. Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my dishes caught up once again.

Friday I am going to spend working my but off because Saturday I leave to go to my grandfather's funeral in Oregon. I was surprised that I managed to get relatively cheap tickets at the last minute. I think I'll make it home before my hubby, but I'm not sure. I'm going to leave keys with one of my friends, so my husband can get in the house and drive our truck if he beats me home. I'm not looking forward to the funeral, but it is important for me to go.

I'm taking my son with me. I'm not going to bring him to the funeral, but I think seeing my son will do my grandma good. I'm so glad that I took my son to visit my grandparents a few years ago. He was too young to remember the trip or his great-grandparents, but they got to meet him.

This is the hardest part of being a part of the military. Leaving your family home sometimes means that you rarely make it back. Since I left Oregon in 1998 I have been back to Oregon twice. The second time was just for my high school reunion, so I didn't have time to see family. I wish I had taken the time to see them, but it was my husband's first time, and I wanted to sight see with him. I also wanted him to have a chance to eat at some of my favorite places.

That is another thing that stinks, I miss Roake's hot dogs, Burgerville fish and chips, Buster's bar-b-cue. I also miss Powell's book store. It's the biggest bookstore in America I think. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm claiming. Sadly enough I think most of the places that I really want to go to in Portland or the metro area are restaurants. I also miss a really excellent Mexican restaurant called Tacho's from Oregon City. Or at least I think it's called that. It's been 10 years since I ate there, so it's easy to forget.

Speaking of easy to forget, it's really easy to forget to send cards, phone calls, letters, or any other type of communication to your extended family when you haven't seen them in years. Don't get me wrong I love my family, I just forget to stay in touch. If I call anyone from my family, other than my mom, more than once a year it is a miracle. I just get caught up in my life, and we only have so much vacation time a year, and the Army tells us when we can take vacation.

Lately my husband and I have had to take separate vacations with our son because I was in school when he had time off. My husband will take vacation and take our son, then I'll take a vacation with our son. So not only do I not see him for 14 months, but we can't even get mutual time off to take a vacation. I'm so glad my hubby only has 6 years left until retirement.

We decided to stay here at Ft. Riley instead of moving to a new base when he gets back. If we moved there is no guarantee that he won't deploy to Iraq the minute he gets to the new unit, so we decided a year of stabilization with a pretty much guaranteed deployment in a year is better that the unknown. Besides I'll be able to finish my degree before it is time to leave for another base this way. It also means that more than likely our next move will be our last for the military. We then have to decide if we want a dream assignment like Hawaii, or if we want to try to get based in the state that we want to live in for a long time. I won't say forever, because we might get wanderlust.