Military Monday: Preparing for Homecoming

There is one word you can say that will get any military wife with a deployed husband completely giddy; homecoming. Wives prepare months in advance for this welcome home celebration for their guy. I am no different. I knew I would begin work in the fall so I prepared my homecoming signs and banners in the late summer. Homecoming signs are a pretty big deal among military families. Most of the time you hang them on the gate lining base and/or outside of your home. A lot of times, more than one sign is made. I made three actually. I made one on a twin size sheet for the gate alongside Camp Lejeune, one to hold in my hands, and a small banner for my home. I know it was way too early, but i actually hung my finished banners up on my wall. It's daily reminder that I am getting so much closer to him being home.

Matthew and mine's saying for the deployment is "8 months is nothing when we promised each other forever". We got married so young that 8 months is just a very small fraction of our life together. But anyway, that is what I decided to put on his "big" banner.

The other sign I made was more like a banner, I'm going to put it on our front porch. I saw a sign here from Pinterest and decided that I could "totally make that". So I did. This is sort of the rough draft of it, but I plan on tweaking it a little before it's time to hang it up. 

My final sign is the sign that I will be holding in my hands when I'm at homecoming. I wanted to make a fun sign with pink and glitter, because I'm lame like that. I decided to put something ridiculously cheesy to give Matthew a laugh. This is what I came up with.

Homecoming outfits are a huge deal. It's the first time your guy will see you since he left, so you want to wear something that looks great. I have asked many homecoming veterans about what I should wear and actually got great advice. Here are the tips I got.

• Keep Weather In Mind- North Carolina weather is pretty unpredictable in the fall/ early winter. October/November can be pretty warm, or it can be freezing. So as great as the cute little dress may be, you may just freeze your butt off if you decide to rock it. 
• Dress For Comfort-Even when you get a date for your homecoming, you still may be sitting there for hours. So, as cute as those heels are that match the little cute dress, think about if you could actually stand in them for hours on end. Keep that in mind for your outfit as well. You want to be comfortable. 
• Keep It Classy-Marine Corpse events bring out pretty entertaining people. Some feel the need to dress as inappropriately as possible. Basically, keep  it covered. As much as your marine wants to see you half naked, save it for your bedroom. Keep your bra from showing, and make sure you can jump into his arms without your underwear showing. 
• The Verdict- I will probably wear my signature skinny jeans, a cute top, my riding boots and some sort of jewelry to jazz it up. I may or may not buy a new top to wear. Those who know Matthew know that he will be more impressed if I can make clothes I already have work and look great than go out and buy something new. 

Today, we are at 26 weeks down. We are getting so close to the end. I will be posting a blog post in a few weeks posting pictures of the signs, In Use!!!! 

The Capital: Part Two

Our second day in Washington DC was crazy. I swear my feet and legs were rebelling against me. We left our hotel bright an early again and hopped on the metro. Our first destination was the National Zoo. My guide that I read online warned me that the Zoo was quite a bit away from the metro, but I overlooked that small detail. Never again. I will take a cab to the zoo next time. It was only 9 in the morning and we were already regretting our decision to walk to the zoo, despite wearing my most comfortable pair of Sperry shoes. Honestly, our trip to the zoo didn't last very long. If you look on the map based on the animals that we saw, we only saw the front half of the zoo. It was extremely hot that day, and our poor little feet were dying.

After our short trip to the zoo, we hopped the metro and headed to the National Museum of Art. We only went through one Wing of it, but it was still a blast. It was possibly my favorite part of our entire trip. Side note: Tricia got me completely addicted to the show White Collar. With my Matthew being gone, it was really nice to just sit and look at Matthew Bomer all day! That's besides the point, but I enjoyed the museum so much more because a lot of the Artist mentioned in the show had pieces in the museum. Okay, back on track. It will be much easier to show you rather than tell you about our experience...

Needless to say, we had too much fun for our own good. I swear I saw a guard laugh at us. After that we decided to hit up the Holocaust Museum. We had lunch there, which worked out perfectly because it started to rain so we took the opportunity to grab a few cookies after our delicious panini sandwiches. We decided to head back to the hotel after that.

The weekend we went to DC was crazy hot, so in combination with walking, we needed a nap when we got back to the hotel. Our 20 minute cat nap quickly turned into an afternoon fiesta because when we woke up with was almost 6 in the evening and almost time for dinner. Being the classy people we are, our "out to dinner" night was spent at Bdubs. Well, known as Buffalo Wild Wings to the crazy people out there. What can we say? We love boneless wings. It was a blast, and delicious. We decided to class up the night and have drinks at the bar in the hotel. And, by drinks that means I had a fruity non-alcoholic drink since I'm not of age. It was still a great time!


Tricia, being the most amazing person she is, decided that we deserved to really treat ourselves and order from room service. I've never ordered from room service so it was a real treat. Whenever I stayed in a hotel nice enough to offer room service, I was with my family. There were 5 kids in total, needless to say my family didn't have the funds to pay 8 bucks for a slice of cheesecake. As lame at is was, it was nice to have people wait on us for a change after being alone for 5 months. After eating what room service brought, Tricia was possibly my favorite person in the world!

I am going to include day 3 in this post as well. Labor day was our last day in the city. We checked our of our hotel and drove to the Roosevelt Memorial. It was on it's own little island so it required some walking but was worth it. I don't have any photos but it was beautiful. Our next stop was Georgetown, where the infamous Georgetown Cupcakes is located. I can see why so many people love the area. There are so many shops that would leave me completely bankrupted if Matthew let me go crazy. Anthropology, Urban Outfitters, Betsey Johnson...I could go on forever. If we could live there without having to live on the streets because of cost of living, I would in a heartbeat. Only in the summer though, because as you know... I hate the snow. We went to Georgetown cupcakes, after waiting in a killer line. They were really good cupcakes, don't get me wrong. But, I will probably not spend that much on a cupcake any other time in my life. 

Oh! I forgot to mention about our awesome car ride. I stumbled across this blog via pinterest and thought it'd be a fun way to break up the car ride. Basically, it gives around 30 questions to answer that range anywhere from hardest thing you had to forgive to your dream job to even what animal you'd be. It was actually pretty funny because we could only answer about half of them because we practically new all the answers already. Talk about true friendship! What we also did, which I thought was pretty cool, is bought a ton of post cards to send to the guys so that they could see all of the places we got to visit. I also sent a few to send to family and friends. It was a fun way to send love to our family and let them know we are having a blast. 

 All in all going to DC was my favorite part of this deployment. It really gave us a chance to get away and not thing about the fact that we haven't seen our husbands in months. I am hoping to take Matthew before we move to Louisiana for good, but who knows if we will be able to make it. I hope you enjoyed reading about our trip, I have a few videos that I may get the courage the post. They are on the thin line of awesome and embarrassing! Well, until next time.. 

The Capital; Part One

...and when I mean The Capitol, I mean our nations capitol! This past labor day weekend, my good friend and I went to Washington D. C for a girls weekend. We are both nerds cool kids so the idea of running around the Smithsonian made us giddy like little school girls. There are a few reasons why this trip was so exciting for us. First off, we have been planning this trip since our first official friend "date" this past February, before the deployment, so knowing it was finally time for our trip made us see how fast this deployment really was passing bye. Secondly, this is our last "big" thing before our boys come home from deployment. All this deployment each of us have been taking many trips and adventure so knowing this was our last one made us super excited! I must warn you, I am uploading a ton of photos so bare with me!

We stayed that the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City. I highly recommend it. We found it through price line for an amazing $89 a night! We checked later and realized that the room normally went for about $150 a night. Talk about a bargain! What was also important for us was how safe the area was we will be sleeping at night. We soon realized we probably picked the best area as far as safety went. We were able to park around the block, because lets face it $27 a night for valet parking was not in our budget. We felt completely comfortable walking around the area surrounding our hotel at night, which helped ease both of our anxiety.



On a side note, wearing fashionable boots in a city made for walking around is probably not he best idea...

Starting our day off at 7:30 am 

 

Outside of the gate to Arlington National Cemetery, our first stop of the day 

 Tricia's Turn!

 Such a sobering view..

 Fun fact about Karen: JFK was my absolute favorite president, I used this quote many times in English assignments

Tricia's favorite quote from the memorial as well.

I normally don't get all emotional or "moto" when it comes to the military, but my view of Arlington has changed drastically since my first trip to Washington DC in the eight grade. I have always appreciated those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, but it was different this time. Maybe it was the old man we saw sitting at the grave of who we assume was his son. Maybe it was the young girl who looked about our age grieving at a grave. Maybe it was the fact that our main purpose for the trip was to lay a stone on the headstone of one of Tricia's husband's good friend who didn't make it home from his last deployment. Or maybe it was the one headstone with a photo strip of a young happy couple similar to the ones we both took with our husbands before they left on deployment. I think it was a mixture of all of the above because when we saw the photo strip of a the couple who looked the same age as us and knowing that the girl in the photo was without the love of her life, made us break down. Here we were, crying at this strangers grave because of the overwhelming emotion we were feeling. It really made us open our eyes that our boys, my brother, and even more of their friends, who might as well be family, could easily be one of these graves we were looking at. We are so fortunate that we still have then, which I think made us both cry a little more. 

Onto a little more upbeat aspect of our trip. The next stop was the International Spy Museum! We got awesome "secret identities" when we entered the museum. My name was Jane Meyer and Tricia's was Greta Schmit. We stayed in character, and may or may not have continued the use the names Jane and Greta even after we left the museum.

 You do not was to mess with us!

 On our way to see The White House, we stopped by this little building because of my love for criminal minds. It's not the BAU, but I'll settle for the plain old FBI.

 I couldn't go on a trip and not get my little nephew, Parker, something really great to wear.

 Tricia modeling little man's shirt!

 The Washington Monument!

The White House! 

We also went to The National Achieves. All we could think of was the National Treasure movie. It was a sight to see for sure though. 

After we went to the "historic" part of DC for the day, we went to the mall in Pentagon City. I absolutely loved taking the metro all over the city, I was born to be a "city" girl! We went to the hotel around 4pm, jumped in the hot tub to soak our aching feet and then ordered Chinese food to end the night. It was an amazing day! More on the rest of our trip later, so until next time! :)

My Sister Clearly Stole My Ovaries

I am that type of person who really gets going on my Christmas presents in July. I just like the head start,  plus I'm cheap crafty so a large portion of gifts for our loved ones are handmade so I need extra time to get it. This year, I started in August. It's not July, but I am happy to say that I'm not knitting a million scarves this year so I gave myself a few weeks off. An idea for my parents and grandmothers Christmas hit me like freight train. More on the full story of the idea later, but it does involved sorting through lots of pictures. I have determine my sister has stolen my ovaries because boy does her son look like me when I was a baby.

A little background information, I was a bald baby. I'm pretty sure I didn't grow hair until I was going on three, which is pretty accurate according to the photos I received. So, I really do look like a little boy. I got over my embarrassment a long time ago for my baldness.

So here is my baby photo...

I know, I know. I look too adorable for my own good. Bald, but adorable.

Now, here is a pictures of my nephew Parker..

Well, it's a picture of me, my sister and Parker. But, this is a picture that has a similar facial expression. I have concluded...that my sister did indeed steal my ovaries because there is a freakish resemblance. 

This is a rather random post, but I found these pictures while working on a project and was really freaked out. All this time we thought Parker just took after my brother in law, turns out he does take after our side too!