Passing the Time

As March came to a close, I was excited to flip the page for good on yet another month of this deployment. I'm the type of person who loves to have little (and big) things to look forward to to make the time go by faster, so each month I have key days that are just a little bit special when I get to cross them off the list. 

I have a calendar that I originally made for Andrew for Christmas on Shutterfly, but recently made myself a copy and named it my "Deployment Countdown Calendar 2011". I love crossing off each day as it passes and it's super exciting when I forget a day and I get to cross off two days at the same time, even though this only happened once when I went up to Boston.

For whatever reason, I don't have a picture of my March page, but here is February completely over!! 

All those colorful little symbols mark an important day (two circles, our wedding date, yellow ribbon: deployment day, pink heart: first kiss day, purple ?!: proposal day, green box[random but I couldn't think of anything else]: Ranger School Graduation Date). At the bottom of each month I wrote "By the end of this month XX DAYS will be behind us!" I also noted the big "countdown" days, like Day 25, 50, 100, 150, 200 (which happens to fall on our pre-versary: August 4th of this year, exactly a year before our wedding day), 250, 300 and 350. I pray that I don't have to count much higher than that, but there is no "rule" that a deployment will only last 365 days. Some are shorter, some are longer; it's just the luck of the draw and we won't know for sure until he is home again and in my arms. 

April's calendar is really exciting with lots of extra dates! I drew a little baseball on yesterday's date (for Opening Day; which I have avoided talking about for a reason. I'm actually in an utter state of depression at this point and it has absolutely nothing to do with deployment) and a little Cross for Easter. I took this picture last night of my calendar (planning ahead for this post, and I just love messing around with our new camera). This little guy sits next it on the shelf (along with Cami, the Ice-Ice-Baby-singing-Camouflaged-Camel) and I just can't seem to get enough of him. I just love looking at him and can just picture this little boy in his Daddy's gear waiting for him to come home and wanting so badly to one day be just like him. It makes me love America a little bit more than I already do; which is a lot!

I also have some news to share from the Sandbox! While I am finding crafty ways to pass the time and have things to look forward to, Andrew is passing the time in an entirely different way. He's been going on more patrols and missions lately, and according to him "being outside the wire is 100 times better than being in the TOC". There is not a doubt in my mind that he wasn't born to do this. Here he is on his most recent mission with a Polish Platoon:

That's about all the news we have to offer from our world. It feels great to have another month swept away, never to return again, and with a few more flips of the calendar I'll have my solider home again!