HE'S HOME!!!

Donald's HOME!!!!!!

...just thought everyone would like to know. :-)

I love having a husband.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Bastards Awareness Day to all my fellow illegitimates! :-)

No but seriously, if you grew up without a dad, you know how uncomfortable this holiday can be. I'm not trying to say that growing up without a father and being the odd kid out every 3rd Sunday in June was particularly traumatic, because it wasn't. It was just REALLY FREAKIN AWKWARD.

Granted, I had a Grandfather I adored until he passed away when I was 12, and I called my Uncle Mark (also an awesome father-figure) daddy until I was 3 or 4. As I got older I stayed with a family from my church who was headed by a fantastic dad(Ron), so I definitely don't want to deny credit where credit is due. Also, it's worth nothing that my dad didn't know about me until I was nearly 14, so the dude can hardly be blamed for being absent, and we now have a friendly (albeit virtually non-existent) relationship.

Still, the fact remains that I'm a dadless.

Growing up homeschooled and active in church made encounters with fellow dadlesses rare, and there was nothing I hated more than being reminded of how different I was (and prepare yourself for a future blog on the topic of being different, fyi) and making some stupid craft at church every year for a dad I didn't have .

So I was thrilled today to realize that this will be mine and Donald's very LAST awkward Father's Day! Neither of us grew up knowing our dads, so in 12 months we will both be celebrating Father's Day for the VERY FIRST TIME with our child... who will ALSO be celebrating it for - you guess it - THE VERY FIRST TIME!

Thus, I joyfully dedicate this post in honor of the Winn Family's very last Bastards Awareness Day!

Here's to hoping that our first Fathers Day comes quickly! Hurry up, time!!

PHEW!

We're not moving!

Donald's orders have been fixed.

Our home sweet home, here in Washington, shall remain our home sweet home.

Moving?

The Army sure knows how to keep things exciting.

It's entirely too complicated to fully explain, but suffice it to say that the Army made a clerical oopsie, and Donald's orders to return to Fort Lewis after the deployment have been deleted. Most likely, the error will be amended, and we'll enjoy a few years together in Washington, here in our new house.

But... with the military, that "slightly less likely" chance of us moving is still an "actually very likely" one, and we'd be relocating within the next 2 months. Where? Who knows.

Like I said, we'll probably stay put. The odds are overwhelmingly in our favor... but I felt the urge to blog the situation. Why? Because crazy possibilities like this are an every day part of being an Army wife. I'm not complaining, honestly. Sure, a potential move would delay the adoption by another couple months (due to homestudy complications), but I'd welcome the wild adventure. When I married Donald, I did so knowing that the Army could move us as frequently as they wanted, and that for the next 15 years (roughly 10, now) our time spent together could, and would, be severely compromised. I said "I do" knowing full well what the risks were. The benefits(having him for a husband) have far outweighed those hardships, and the Army has always (okay, usually) taken care of us. If they want to move us... so be it! I just hope we can find renters!

Donald and I have lived together for less than 2 years of the 4 years and 2 months that we've been married. So long as we're in the same house, geographic location is small potatoes at this point.

We'll see! Stay tuned!

The Emoes

If there are two things I've learned in the last 3 years, they are this:

1.) If I stay up late, I get emo.

Not the next day, for lack of sleep. No, I get less and less pleasant as the night drags on. If I'm up late, 80% of the time I'm doing nothing productive, and I start thinking too much. Every additional, unnecessary minute spent in the waking makes me progressively unhappier.

2.) If I start getting emo, I need to go to bed.

I never fail to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next day.

...Okay, so they're essentially one in the same. Listing them separately just illustrates how very true and important of statements they are though.

It's after 11pm (abnormally late for this old girl), and I'm missing Donald more than usual. Only one more month-ish of this deployment to go! Not long at all, whee!

I have heaps of homework to do this weekend, a Relief Society lesson to plan, and WAY too much housework to even mention.

So.....

Bedtime, before I get a full-blown case of the emoes!

Tomorrow brings me one day closer to the hottest dang soldier in the U.S. Army... eep! :-)

Shopping Complications

However trivial it may be, one of the most difficult aspects of Ukrainian adoption is that you don't specifically know the age or gender of the child until you arrive in country (at which point you are presented with several profiles of potential matches, much like you would normally do prior to traveling, with other countries). It's not like we don't have a say in things, but between the Ukrainian system and God's will... we could come home with just about anything, haha!

All we know is that Little Winn will be somewhere between 12 months and 5 years old.

So... pacifiers or preschool? Time will only tell! We'll be thrilled with either, but my obsessive compulsive planning/online-shopping has become a bit more complicated lately.

Thus far, these are the only safe purchases I've decided on, as they will be appropriate for any child in our age category.

1. A Britax Boulevard car seat (or seat with similar capabilities and features).

I've already decided to keep my kids rear-facing for as long as possible. It's far safer, and I'm cool with swimming against the cultural stream on this issue. The seat rear-faces to 35 pounds, so a 1-3ish year old would be well protected. It can then be used forward-facing, with 5 point restraints, to 65 pounds. As I also plan to keep my kids "locked down" in 5-points longer than most, a seat like this will work for any child in the age range we've applied for.

2. Toddler Bed. I googled crib mattress measurements. I also consulted a CDC growth chart. Any normal 1-5 year old will fit in one nicely. I know, I'm obsessive. I have extra time on my hands with Donald still deployed... so go easy on the judging ;-) . If we get a squirmy 1 year old, we'll pick up a pack n play. We also have a twin bed in the craft room, so if Little Winn turns out to be a gargantuan kindergartner, we're equally set.

The inability to fulfill my insatiable shopping-itch is a good thing. It forces me to keep things simple, and to keep pinching those precious pennies.

...because seriously, when Little Winn gets here, we're going to the mall, and staying until they kick us out. That requires lots of pinched pennies, I'll tell you what.

New Addition: Coming Soon! (edited on 1/23/11 for privacy)

(The country we're adopting from prefers that they remain anonymous until after finalization. For privacy reasons, I've gone through and edited things accordingly.)

Donald and I are thrilled to announce that we're adopting from eastern Europe! We've just started collecting documents and completing the mountains of paperwork, so we're still very early in the process. I debated for a while whether or not to go public now, or to wait... but ultimately I decided that there was NO way I could keep this much joy to myself. I stink at happy secrets.

So if, by chance, you've seen me bouncing around and full of smiles lately, you now know why!

We still have so much to accomplish, but the thought of our European angel coming home to us makes it all worth while. From start to finish, adoptions from this country usually take between 9-12 months. If that timeline holds true for us (things can easily change for the better, or for the worse) we should be bringing our kiddo home in early spring of 2011.

I've started a blog devoted to the progress of our adoption. You can find it at *blog removed*.

It will be heavy on technical aspects (forms, timelines, legalities, requirements, etc.), as I'm hoping to track things for the benefit of other families hoping to adopt.

All the warm and fuzzy bits will still be found here, though... so stay tuned!

We humbly ask that you keep us, and our baby, in your prayers. He or she has already spent too much of their life in an orphanage, and we're hoping to bring our "Little Winn" home as soon as humanly possible.

Bad Week, Good Week... Works For Me!

Last week was bad. Just terrible.

I accidentally answered one very important question wrong in an essay for one of my classes (similar to "2+2=5". Yup, one of those type of inexplicable mistakes), which brought my grade down from a hard-earned 4.0 to a 3.7.

One afternoon, in the hours between my normal morning shift and an evening shift I was covering for a co-worker... my car broke down. Yup, my 2008 Prius WOULDN'T start.

This wouldn't have been so catastrophic if I wasn't parked in the Steele Lake Park parking lot with my windows rolled down. I couldn't just leave it there. :-(

Thankfully, the dealership paid for the tow-truck and rental car, and my boss was nice about me being late. The next day, however, they couldn't find ANYTHING wrong with my vehicle. It was working just fine! I've decided that it's a temperamental hippie, hell-bent on making my life difficult.

Many other miserable things happened last week. Some self-created, some acts of God, and some just rotten luck. No more of which I'll continue to complain about here.

This week is different. This week is a glorious, bright shinning light of happiness and hope. This week, NOTHING can get me down. And I mean nothing.

I'll be blogging a little later about what makes this week so fantastic, so check back soon.

Ultimately, I've decided that bad weeks are necessary to balance out the really good ones. Life just wouldn't be fair of God allowed EVERY week to be as great as this one is cracking up to be.

THE DREADED SAG

It has always been difficult for me to lose OR gain weight. With exception to brief periods of time when I've made significant "effort" in either direction, I've been roughly the same size since 7th grade. It's party a curse, and partly a blessing. As a Junior Higher I was always one of the fat kids, but as time has passed, the natural progression of age has caught up with my peers, and I'm increasingly more average. I've come to accept my body's love for maintaining homeostasis, haha. Ultimately, I've decided that if my body really likes a certain weight THAT much, then that's where God must have intended me to be. Mostly, I

've embraced my slight chub, and (with exception to reasonable issues I have with my arms) have found an odd affection for my chunkier bits.

When Donald deploys, however, things change. I always lose weight, and without significant effort on my own part. When Donald was deployed 2 years ago, I dropped over 20 pounds. I actually went to the doctor about it, because it was so uncharacteristic of me, lol.

I just... eat less when he's not around. Food isn't as much fun without a cute husband to share it with, I guess.

It's important to note that the weight loss is ALWAYS temporary. When hubby comes back to town and wants Enchiladas made with cream cheese every few days, my hiney grows back.

So what's the bad part about me losing weight?

SAGGY-BUTT-JEANS

I can hardly justify buying a new wardrobe for temporary weight loss, especially when I tend to only like more expensive jeans. (I'd like to pause here to note how ironic this is. I am cheap. DIRT CHEAP. I do NOT throw down money on clothing... with the only exception being JEANS. And, naturally, the only item of clothing that REALLY won't fit a

fter dropping weight is - you guess it: JEANS. Go figure)

This time around I'm down by about 14 pounds. Nothing crazy, but just enough to cause the sag. I have a couple pairs of jeans (bought last deployment) that fit good, but my recent favorites are bagging and sagging.

So, I'll enjoy being skinny-ish (for me, haha), and my saggy-butted-pants will remain as such, at least through the end of this summer, lol.

Back in the Saddle

The past week has been all sorts of busy, but in a good way!

I was asked the Sunday before last to speak in sacrament meeting the following Sunday (which was this last Sunday, in case you weren't tracking). So in addition to subbing in the Sunbeams class(3 year olds, for all my beloved non-Mormons out there), I had my hands full preparing for Sunday. The subject was on how we can create Zion by being pure in heart. A fabulous topic, if you ask me. Researching the subject was really uplifting and inspiring.
I was up WAY too late Saturday, preparing. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I would have prepared better earlier in the week AND if I wasn't so busy Saturday afternoon.
After working Saturday morning (which I don't normally do), the rest of my daylight hours were spent completing my garden bed, and filling it with soil.

Unfortunately, the only pictures I have are ones taken with my Blackberry. I still haven't figured out how to operate Donald's new-fangled camera properly, and since my Katrina-proof camera (an Olympus Stylus - totally indestructible) is missing its' power cord, my phone's camera is what I've been relying on.

I finished screwing the two layers(built a few weeks ago) together with support pieces:


Next, I laid down a some week-blocker and put down a layer of big rocks, gathered from my yard (I needed to get rid of them somehow!). They weren't ALL the big rocks, but they were at least the BIGGEST ones I could gather before I started to go insane and then gave up. Trust me, folks... picking up rocks is torture.



Then... mom and I filled it up with dirt! Woot woot! Props to my mom, by the way. Without her fabulous truck and the use of her time and physical labor, I would have never completed this job in the time that I did.





In other news, school started back up again this week for me. I'm actually going to full time this quarter, but since one of my classes is online and another is a hybrid, I only have to drive up to school once a week. So far, so good. I'm absolutely loving it.

The only bad update to share is that I have some sort of rodent(s) living in my garage. I haven't seen it(them), but their "leavings" are everywhere. GAG! Critters? In my brand new house? I DON'T THINK SO, GUYS! It's bad enough that I've already found three spiders. I need to hang a "GROSS LITTLE CRITTERS NOT WELCOME" sign outside my front door, and then maybe they'll get the message.

Anyway, I've found it VERY difficult to find humane and EFFECTIVE forms of extermination. Poison? No way. I don't want to be sniffing around to find a stinky little dead mouse/rat-corpse after its long and painful death. Glue trays? I'd cry if one got caught. The same goes for those little traps that just catch them inside and then keep them there until they starve to death. They may be gross little vermin, but I DO have a soul.
Standard snap-down traps? Scary, but hopefully effective... because that's what I got.
I'm no bleeding-heart, but I still don't like to see any creature suffer. Even spiders, which I abhor above all of God's creations, I kill swiftly and as pain-free as possible.


Moving along...

Well, I was given an assignment in the ward. Nothing too time consuming, it appears. The Graham Stake is putting on a fine arts expo-thingy in June. I'll be the representative for our ward, which essentially just means that I go to the meetings, take notes, and pass on the information to our ward.

The Bishop also said he had a calling for me. Oh snap... everyone pray hard that it's something wicked cool, okay?


Um... what else...
Oh yeah, D.O.G., our 11-month-old Newfoundland puppy, almost outweighs me. He's less than 10 pounds behind me. I'll soon be able to say that I own a dog who weighs more than me. Don't ask me why, but that's always been my dream. I adore large beasts, which makes me like a female Hagrid. Just smaller and far better looking, I guess.

That's all for now, folks!