Uniform

For the last five years, I have been totally and utterly intimidated by John’s uniforms. When we first got married, he was wearing his blues and BDU’s all the time. I didn’t touch them, unless it was to take them to the dry cleaners. All the other wives I knew would commiserate about washing and ironing their husbands’ uniforms, but I did no such thing. If my husband wanted his uniform pressed, I handed him the iron.

When we graduated to flight suits, things got much better. They can be thrown in the washing machine, they don’t have to be ironed (hooray!), but every once in a while, the hubby will bring home new ones that need all kinds of crazy Velcro sewed on and rank sewed to the shoulders. In all honesty, John knows better than to bring them to me. When he gets new ones, he takes them straight to whomever it is that we pay to do all that nonsense, somebody that knows what they’re doing. Once out of desperation, he asked me to sew new rank to the shoulders. Luckily, his mother was in town visiting, so I was off the hook!

Yesterday, after hearing about this, a friend asked me to fix up her husband’s new flight suits for him. Something possessed me to say “yes.” I was terrified. Last night, I set to work cutting all the Velcro pieces to be sewn on. I started to attach one, but I got scared and stopped. This daunting project loomed over my head all morning, and when the kids laid down for their naps, I knew I had to take the plunge. It took me about an hour, but I did it! I have conquered the flight suit!

No matter what, though, I still refuse to iron anything.

FYI

I've opened up an Etsy shop to "peddle my wares." I've only got a few things in there so far, but I will hopefully be able to add more in the near future. I've added a link there on the right side of the page under my new and improved bio. Please visit my shop and direct your friends there, too! Thanks!

AAAAH!

It's a horrible picture, but here is my new baby! I had to drive an hour away to get her, and John is already calculating how much I "owe" him for his birthday present this year, but I don't care. It's like there's an aura around her and the angels are singing. I'm so excited. Now, I just have to learn how to USE her.

Weekend Update

I feel like we've packed a lot of action into this weekend. Saturday felt especially long, because I woke up early to be at a 5K by 8:00am. Don't anybody get too excited about that. I only did it because Ashley needed a walking buddy. We did pretty well, though. Our goal was to be finished in 45 minutes, and our actual finish time was 41 minutes and some change. We walked the first mile, and then for the last two, we'd jog to one light pole, walk to the next, jog to the next, etc. I'm pretty proud of myself for not finishing last. No pictures of that, though. I can tell you what I looked like - sweaty and purple. And the humidity was something like 80% yesterday. Yuck.

It was also garage sale day on base. Not a lot of people participated, but I did find this sweet pair of roller skates for Aidan. He was super excited. He did surprisingly well for his first attempt at roller skating. I guess he's got good balance. He only fell two or three times, and even then, he was smart enough to lean into a sit and land on his lil' booty. Most of his falling happened when John came outside to watch as we were making our way back to our house, and Aidan started showing off. Boys.

The final thing I wanted to share is that I've taught myself how to do appliques! I'm proud of myself. John keeps teasing me over how excited I am. I put this cute little "N" on a tank top for Neely. I have a couple more of the shirts, so I'm going to keep practicing.

The gift that keeps on giving.

What is this wonderful box of fun? According to the packing slip, it was a birthday gift for Aidan (6 weeks ago) from his Uncle Mike and Auntie Jamie that I have never seen. I was straightening up all my crafty stuff that's threatening to take over our guest room yesterday, when I saw this box stashed under that antique bassinet that I need to take apart and send along to my cousin Alisa before her new little one arrives. Anyway, I saw this box and thought to myself, "Hmm...I wonder what that is?" It had been opened and shoved under the little bed, with all these fun goodies inside. I don't remember receiving the box. John doesn't remember opening and putting it there either, but he thinks he may have done it anyway. So Aidan gets to celebrate his birthday some more! Lucky duck.

Thanks, Mike and Jamie! And here I thought you'd just sent him the biggest coloring book known to man (or child). You also sent the biggest collection of Playdoh!

Something to Smile About

Preschool Crush

I have no pictures to accompany this one, so hopefully the story itself is good enough.

When I dropped Aidan off at Mom's Day Out today, one of his little girl friends, Victoria, was being dropped off by her grandfather at the same time. (A little aside about Victoria - she is a supercute little brunette who is always wearing a huge, fancy bow.) I must have called Aidan's name as we were walking up, because Victoria's grandfather said, "Oh, so this is Aidan." Apparently, on the drive to church, he'd asked Victoria about her friends at class, in particular if there were any little boys that she liked. She talked about Aidan the rest of the way there.

Victoria overheard Grandpa telling me all of this, and you should have seen her light up when she realized Aidan was on the other side of the door. As we opened the door to let Aidan in, she immediately comes out and starts bestowing hugs on him like crazy...all while he was hiding behind my legs and trying to get away from her. It was cute, cute, cute.

Grandpa also warned me that I may be in trouble when Aidan gets to be a teenager. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, I suppose.