Deployment Positive Thursday- Week 11

The day I have been dreaming of for almost six months is finally here (or, um, will be tomorrow)! Red Sox Opening Day! There are no more glorious words to hear in my world as a sports fan. A new beginning. A new(ish) team. New ways to reach the ever-present goal. It is a beautiful, beautiful time of year! All I have to do is make it through the next 17 hours, and then baseball season will officially be in full swing. Yeah, pun intended... I'm that excited right now.

I'll be honest, I've been planning this post in my head for several weeks now (tomorrow is one of those "benchmark" days that feels especially good when I get to cross it off the calendar) and I had been thinking that I would write about the beautiful springtime weather and how it ushers in a whole new season of America's most beloved sport. Well, Mother Nature has different plans for me, as we are expecting a wintery mix tonight and Boston is expecting a full 6 inches (good thing our Home Opener isn't for another week). So even though I would love to write about all the cute sundresses and skirts I'll soon be wearing and how gorgeous the weather has been, I'll be wearing boots, pants, a sweater and a heavy coat and gloves to work tomorrow to ring in Opening Day. But honestly, nothing can get me down, a brand new season awaits! 162 games, I couldn't think of a better way to pass the time before Andrew comes home on Midtour Leave!

Speaking of my favorite soldier, I was so happy to hear that he received my latest care package yesterday-- in under two weeks! That's pretty much unheard of! It was loaded with everything a baseball fan needs for opening day... peanuts, cracker jacks, a Red Sox program that his parents bought when they went to a spring training game, lots of other goodies and whiffle balls! I also decorated the inside of the box so that  it would look like Fenway Park- complete with a replica Green Monster on one panel. I wish I had thought to take a picture, but you'll have to use your imagination on this one!

In other news, and keeping with the theme of positivity, I am happy to report that my brother, Mark, just landed his first full-time job! After graduating from college last May, he worked over the summer and then took the fall off to hunt and fish before diving head first into the real world. (I'm proud to say he took a page out of his big sister's book on this one- I did the same exact thing except I spent my time with Andrew before he started BOLC II training, not hunting). The most exciting part about it is that the job is in Washington, DC, only two hours away from me! I'm so excited to have him close by, and can't wait to start seeing a lot of him and his girlfriend this summer! Here is one of my favorite pictures of us as kids, goofing off after dinner one night:

At only 18 months apart (almost to the day) and with me being small for my age, we were often mistaken for twins!  Here we are practicing some crazy funky dance moves! I'm pretty sure the whole family was in a goofy mood this night and if I remember correctly we were listening to the Beatles... on Vinyls! Something we liked to do every once in a while. You can be assured that my dad was at the sink working on the dishes and my mom was taking a break from clearing the table as she snapped this gem.  

So all-in-all it feels great to cross another week off of this deployment list, and the start of baseball season is sure to make time start flying! I really can't believe this day is finally here! And even though the Red Sox don't start until tomorrow, some teams had their Opening Day today, which means Baseball Highlights were all over the TVs at the gym. I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear when I saw that! This is the best time of the year!

GO BOSOX!!!

Quick Update from A-stan

Andrew's weekend activities consisted of work (no 5 day work weeks on deployment), emailing with me, and oh yeah, running a half marathon. At 7100 feet elevation. On the gravel trails at the FOB. Incredible! I was thrilled with myself when I ran my best ever mile for time last week and then he turns around and runs 13.1 without batting an eye! Pretty darn amazing!

Andrew ran it with 130 other soldiers (both American and Polish) and finished in just about 2 hours. Not to worry though, they stayed inside the wire... they weren't running around Afghan-land unprotected and without body armor or guns! Just all around the gravel "roads" of the FOB. According to Andrew, you get used to the elevation after a while, the worst part was running on that gravel.

So there he is (second from the left if you can't tell) right before the race! A little bit different than the start of the Boston Marathon almost 2 years ago. It really is a whole different world over there... 

Anyways, thought I would share this picture with you all so you can all get a better concept of what it looks like over there. The Striker is in the way, but hopefully you get the general idea!

Deployment Positive Thursday- Week 10

YEUPPPP! Week 10! I can't believe we are to double digits! And if everything goes according to plan (which it won't, because we're dealing with the Army here) that also means that as of last Tuesday (day 65) we have less than 300 days left of this beast. Still a long road a head of us, but we're slowly but surely making our way through this.

I've been pretty under the weather this week, so last night instead of going to the gym I stayed home to unpack from my weekend in Boston (those who know me know that this, along with packing, is hands-down my least favorite thing to do; in fact, when I was traveling to Louisville every weekend this past fall and winter I never actually unpacked completely, I just took my dirty clothes out and replaced them with new outfits). While I was putting everything away, I came across our Ranger School books (read about them here) that I made of all the letters we wrote back and forth this summer during Andrew's time at "the bad place", as he and his buddies call it.

I couldn't see it at the time, but Ranger School (and all the stress that came with it) was totally, one hundred and fifty million percent worth it. Part of me misses running to the mailbox every day to see if there was a letter waiting for me, and believe me, I would have never guessed that I would have said that seven months ago. I can't describe the feeling I had when I saw surprised Andrew after over three and a half months apart, and I won't even try to say how much it meant to me to pin his Ranger Tab on his left shoulder two days later at graduation. All the pain from the summer disappeared into thin air the moment I was in his arms again, and it's really nice to know that I have that feeling to look forward to again this fall... only we will have been apart three times as long, so it is going to be three times as sweet!

Reading through all of those letters (yes, I really read them all; it took several hours) made me so thankful that we have that period of our lives documented forever. All the emotions, the stories, and day-to-day happenings are all there for us to re-live whenever we want. We aren't the type of couple that writes ten page long mooshy-gooshy love letters pouring our hearts out, which makes the sweet little "I love you, girl" lines mean that much more. We planned out what we were going to do on leave, different trips we could take, what life was like. The summer of 2010 seemed to drag on forever, but knowing there was a letter coming soon, or a call (even if it was just for 5 minutes every three weeks) was due soon, was something to look forward to and helped to pass the time.

I still get emotional when I think about that summer. It's not easy waking up every day knowing that the one person you love most in the whole world is going through absolute hell, barely ingesting enough calories in a whole day to sustain an average adult for 4 days, not to mention the physical aspect. I read somewhere that it takes the body three full years to recover from the damage that is done during Ranger School. But it didn't matter, this was Andrew's dream, so it was my dream too. Forget about the physical and mental torture and shear exhaustion, Andrew's letters were usually upbeat and positive. I loved when he wrote about blueberry pancakes or sneaking off into the woods to find patches of blackberries, or silly stories of "Sleepy Rangers", like the one who he found giving a safety brief to a group of bushes and trees. It was the little things that made him happy, and they always made me smile. My favorite was always when he fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, which often happened a few times in a row before he would finally start over on a new page.  I love that we have stories and feelings written down that we probably would have never remembered otherwise.

So basically what I'm trying to say in this rather long-winded post is that even though Ranger School wasn't exactly ideal while it was happening, I'm thankful for it. It was so worth it in the end, and so many amazing things came from it that we could have never foreseen. Not only do we have these amazing letters to look back on, but we also were engaged almost exactly two months after Andrew graduated. Even though we were apart, Ranger School really brought us together in ways I could have never imagined, and I really enjoyed looking back on that last night. I can't even imagine reading through all of our emails, letters and cards in the years to come that I'm putting together in our Deployment Communication Binder. A whole year apart is a long time, but I can't wait until the days ahead that we get to look back on this time.

Graduation Day
27 August 2010

"Mid"tour Leave

After an amazing weekend in Boston and New Hampshire, it is time to re-focus and get back to reality for a while. My next big trip will be to Orlando for work in just about two months, and while it is always good to have something to look forward to, it's not really the same as looking forward to being with my soldier once again.

The Army is kind enough to give their soldiers a brief 2 week reprieve from 24 hour-a-day 7-days-a-week work about halfway through a deployment, often called Midtour Leave, or R&R. We have been planning all the amazingly fun summertime activities we'll do over Midtour since before Andrew even left... until he got his tentative dates for leave a few weeks ago. Unfortunately our dreams of basking in the summer sun and catching a game at Fenway Park will have to be put on hold until Summer 2012. Andrew will be getting his leave on the last possible date for his entire unit. I can't tell you the date, because of OPSEC, but I can tell you that by the time he is home again in my arms, we will know who the 2011 World Series Champions are.

A whole baseball season lies ahead of us. Actually, an entire pregnancy (NOT MINE!) is still in front of us. Someone we know just announced that she is pregnant and she is due before Andrew is due to be home. That was a tough pill to swallow, that she will have her baby in her arms before Andrew will be in mine, but I am still excited for their family.

After the initial shock of what lies ahead of us wore off, I realized this isn't all bad. Once Andrew comes home and goes back over to Afghanistan, we will have the vast majority of this deployment behind us forever. It'll be an amazing feeling to countdown from the end of leave to actual, real, beautiful homecoming in weeks instead of months!

So the summer will be tough to get through without him, but so was last summer with Ranger School, but I know it'll all be worth it when I go running into Andrew's arms in the airport one cold fall day! And as we round out day 65 (is that really all?) of deployment, I find solace in the fact that I have one of these waiting for me in a little over half a year:

Deployment Positive Thursday- Week 9

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!

Today I am happy to be celebrating one of my favorite holidays in the most Irish City in the country! 

I love Boston. I love everything Irish, and I can't wait to have that strong Irish name in about 16 more months! 

Today also makes me smile because of one of my favorite memories from my Senior Year at Stonehill. St. Patty's fell on the first nice day of Spring so pretty much everyone was outside enjoying the amazing weather! There was a bagpiper coming by in a kilt, everyone wore green, and I ate a clover plant to prove a point. And you know, what? I'm pretty sure it was excellent luck! 

So raise your glasses, have an Irish Car Bomb (the nastiest drink ever invented: Guinness with a shot of Baileys and Jameson dropped into it) in honor of my favorite soldier and his buddies, and may the Luck of the Irish be upon you today!

When Irish Eyes are smiling you can hear the angels sing