Nostalgia.

It's amazing how much life changes so fast. Before we left Abu Dhabi, it was something we'd both been dreaming about for a LONG time. Now that we're back in America, the UAE seems a million miles away. And I don't mean that physically because obviously it is not very close to Idaho, but mentally. While we were there, America and getting home was all we could think about it, and it feels weird that we don't think about Abu Dhabi more since we've been back. It was our home for a long time after all.

But now we've been away long enough that the bad things don't seem so bad and the things we miss start to nag. We talk about going back all the time, for the money, the simpler life, the shawarmas :). I think we both finally appreciate what we had there, when we can look at it from a distance. Living in America again is every bit as good as I'd hoped, but we fit there too. I was looking back at pictures of how much we did and accomplished while we were there and how much of Kaden's development happened there, and I know Abu Dhabi will always hold a special place in our hearts and memories as we move forward with "real" life now.

Speaking of real life now, I am freaking exhausted! Haha. Maybe that is why remembering the days when ALL I had to accomplish was keeping my son alive, and having dinner ready for my husband, seem so fancy. In all honesty, it is absolutely harder to be away from Kaden all day than I thought it would be. I always miss him and regret that I am not there to share his day with him. Not to mention with the pressures of school and that little part about growing another human, and my days are pretty tiring. But soon this semester will be over, a new baby will be here, and we will fall into yet another new routine with our new addition and I'll probably miss these days. :)

Speaking of the new baby, I had my 20 week check-up yesterday (half-way done! :)) and everything looks great. I am right on track (if not a little behind) with my weight gain, MY vitals are perfect, and baby's heartbeat is 151 and super strong. We go in this Saturday (only three days! woot woot!) to find out what we are having and do the anatomy scan to make sure everything is growing as it should be. While I still FEEL like I am having another boy, I can't help but hope for pink! :) Plus Kaden is adamant that he wants a sister and not a brother, so who am I to dash our hopes until we know for SURE? :)

School, et al.

So, I opened up a window for Blogger early this morning when I got to work. Then I realized how behind I was in reading my many favorite blogs and the reason and desire to blog were suddenly lost.

Now, I am back from class and I am feeling only slightly more interested in it, but I feel like the world's worst blogger and I can't help but feeling like I have become exactly like every other blog I used to read, whose owner went back to America and dropped off the face of the blog-world.

Determined to not be so cavalier with my blog (heh :)), I am here to recap what's been going on.

We still have Jasper, though after a few days of him being a particular pain in the ass, I found myself silently wondering if it would be SO horrid to cash in on their "30-day policy". Doubts aside, he really is a great dog and Kaden just loves him. They play together so much longer than Kaden used to play by himself. And although they do find double the trouble to get into, they are two of a kind and have become the best of friends. I'm glad we got him (and have kept him! haha)

School is going fine. There are some days when I get home (night class days in particular) where I fall into the nearest comfy chair and feel sorry for myself for having left before the sun came up, and gotten home after it went down. It can't last long though, because I have a husband and toddler to cuddle, and typically a crap-ton of stuff to get done to prepare for the next day to do it all over again. I do try to remember, in my darkest moments, that there are so many people out there less fortunate than me, and while I envy my husband's ability to stay home with Kaden and only have to focus on school, it could really be so much worse (I could live in Haiti...). I have a good breakdown about once every two weeks or so for now though.

Work is fine as well. Again, working full time and going to school and growing another person, is really all hard work by themselves, together they are downright debilitating some days, but I just keep telling myself, "tomorrow will be better" and it usually is. We've been taking full advantage of the time we DO have as a family and it has made those moments even sweeter.

For example, last night we got to christen our new fire pit we got this weekend. It was great. We made frozen pizza for dinner and had a "picnic" (which Kaden ALWAYS thinks is the coolest way to eat a meal... and let's be honest, isn't it???) outside by the fire. Then we made s'mores of course! I did take some pictures but didn't have a chance to upload them yet, so I will post them later.

Yesterday was also Joslyn's baby shower. For those who aren't on Facebook, or don't keep up, Joslyn and Aaron have had a hard time having a baby. After several miscarriages, this one is a keeper after Jo underwent a cerclage, but he is likely going to have some trouble with an arm and possibly a leg. The neonatal surgeon won't know the extent of the surgeries the baby may have to undergo until after he is born. For now, Jo has a scheduled c-section on February 22nd. We're hoping everything goes well and he is not as bad off as he could be. But the party went well, I think everyone had a good time, and it's always nice to see people you rarely get a chance to see.

That's about it from me for now. Back to the grindstone! :)

Jasper.

This weekend was great. My Mommy came into town from Coeur d'Alene and it is ALWAYS so nice to have her around. It made both Stu and I want to move to CdA to be closer to them. Kaden was absolutely in LOVE with his "Momma E". He followed her around and wanted her approval for everything he did. It was so great.

We ended the weekend by getting a puppy! :) He is a 14-week-old black lab mix from the Humane Society and he is so sweet. I had been adamant that we couldn't get a dog yet. We were both starting school, another baby on the way, we just didn't have enough time or love for a puppy right now. But then he did the unthinkable and showed me a picture of a sweet little 14-week old puppy with a blue bandanna around his neck. I melted. I caved.

We jumped in the car with my Mom and my cousin Flower (who had also fallen in love with him by just his picture) and headed down to the Humane Society. It took us less than ten minutes to locate him and then before I knew it, we were signing adoption papers and picking out a collar and leash.

We named his Jasper and brought him home and then Stu and I set off in search of a doggy bed and supplies for him. He got to go play with my Uncle Doug's dogs (Woodie and Ozzy) and then we all went home. He has been so great so far with potty training and getting used to his new place in our family and we have been happy to have him. Kaden and Jasper play for much longer than Kaden used to play by himself and last night he didn't go potty in his "kennel" (our mud room) at all! So that's great!

Stu and I both grew up with black labs so it is a nice tradition to pass down to our son. :)

Jasper playing with the other dogs at Marcia's house.

Taking a little snooze.

We start school today and as I type this, Stu is sitting in his Sociology class (hopefully taking lots of notes! :)) I have math after work tonight in a double session (on Tuesdays) so I won't be home until after 7, which sucks, but hopefully the next 4 months will fly by and then we will be that much closer to our degrees when the new addition to our family makes his or her arrival this summer.

Christmas 2009 Update.

I have just been a bad blogger since I got home. What a shame. I keep forgetting I even have one. How's THAT for being otherwise prioritized? Haha. I used to LIVE on this blog.

Anyway, so we've been pretty busy the past few weeks getting our house organized more and unpacking the mounds of boxes I didn't even know we had (and tossing a great majority of it).

Christmas was fun. My little Kaden boy delighted in opening his cool gifts and partaking in the magic of Santa. His favorite part that was Santa actually ate the cookies and milk we left out for him! He was amazed. :)

We also went sledding with friends up in Idaho City and made time for Christmas lights and of course some Christmas movies.

The rest of the week I had off, Stu and I got into the routine of organizing/unpacking in the morning then after lunch Kaden would go down for nap and we would cuddle up on the couch (and recline of course! hehe) and watch Man v. Food, Anthony Bourdain, and the Discovery Channel to pass the nap time.

Now I am back at work and we are trying to get our house ready for both my Mommy's upcoming visit (no fog this time!!! I mean it!) and starting school in less than two weeks. My evenings get drastically shorter once school starts (as does my lunch, heh) so I want to have as much done and ready to go as possible.

We found out how unorganized we still are when this weekend Kaden came down with a pretty gnarly fever and we couldn't find any of the 3 or 4 thermometers were had. So I had to make a run to the store for a new (super cool 8-second) thermometer and Children's Tylenol to soothe my poor sick baby. Luckily, thanks to his super immune system, after two doses of Tylenol and a good deal of lounging in from of the TV all day, he was back to his happy, mischievous self the next morning. Thank God.

Stu is adjusting well to being back home. Though he did have his first twinges of reverse homesickness last night, saying, "I miss it there sometimes." I had talked to him about this phenomenon while he was still over there, to which he replied, "No way, I hate this f**king place. I won't miss anything about it." Told ya! :) But otherwise he is starting to get bored of being home all the time with Kaden and seems eager/anxious to start school.

I have been pretty good. I feel pretty "normal", though I definitely have a belly now that wasn't there before. I'm not feeling nearly as sick as often and only certain smells trigger it for me now. Which is way better than everything making me ill. Everyone keeps asking, but I still don't have a good due-date yet. I'll let you know when I know. :)

Mr. Mom

My husband is so great. So last night on my way home I got a text asking me if I wanted onions on my salad. Wow. Making a salad! I said, "Green."

I got home and the house smelled of apples and cinnamon. Stuart was in the kitchen slicing vegetables for our salad to go with the mashed potatoes and apple baked pork chops he'd prepared. What a great guy!

I rushed upstairs to shower while dinner finished and then got to greet my boys with dinner on the table. It was kind of funny too because earlier in the day Stu sent me a text saying how well-behaved our son is and how great it is to hang out with him. But by 3:30, he's a terror and is just ready for something "new" (something I've said to Stu a hundred times, but now he understands, hehe).

Then he said the sweetest words ever: "I never gave you enough credit for doing this." Ahhhh... there is nothing better in the world than having someone understand you. :) He couldn't believe how exhausted he was from taking care of a toddler all day. (Told ya! :)) What a great opportunity for our family. Not only have we both had the opportunity to be the breadwinner, but now we have both had the opportunity to be the stay-at-home-parent. And Stu can appreciate how hard it really was for me staying home all the time in Abu Dhabi (I said, "Imagine doing all of this with no vehicle, no yard, and not leaving the house but once a week..."). And now that I'm working again, I know all too well the feeling of "missing it" being gone all day and then feeling too tired to really play when I get home. I am so proud of Stu for taking the initiative to take care of Kaden and the house AND dinner because I am gone all day.

On a side note, he also went to RC Willey yesterday and bought a 52-inch Sony Bravia LCD TV, a surround system to go with it, and a new dining room set (to be delivered and set up on Wednesday! Yay!). Today he has his sights set on a stand for the TV "stuff" (you know, DVD player, Wii, Xbox, etc.). I am hoping he picks one that is reasonably cheap. Heh. We HAVE stayed far under budget for everything we'd planned (the cars, living room set, bedroom set, etc) thanks in large part to my super skills (i.e. standing in line at RC Willey for 2 hours on Black Friday), so that makes me feel much better.

The caffeine Nazis will be happy to hear that this morning I made MYSELF a decaf Hazelnut latte instead of giving in and heading to McDonald's for a caffeinated one made by someone else. :) Soon I will have steamed milk, not microwaved, and real espresso, not just super-strongly-brewed decaf coffee. But it is still yummy! :)

Daddy's First Weekend Home.

Our first weekend with Daddy home went great! We stayed super busy and it was full of running around AND relaxing and, mostly, just spending as much time together as possible.

Stu is so happy to be home, just like I knew he would be. He got his truck all ready to go (changed fluids, rotated tires, etc), got a phone, and today called me to clear spending almost 3 grand at RC Willey! Lol. He sure is taking this living life to the fullest thing pretty seriously. But, on Wednesday we will have a 52 inch TV in our living room, a surround sound to go with it, a new dining room set…. All so that we can watch local programming because Stu doesn’t want to spend the money on DirecTV, lol. Silly boy. I think he’ll be changing his mind after a few more days of him and Kaden having nothing else to do but watch movies. Hehe.

Friday night we had some friends over for snacks and to welcome our boy home. It is always nice seeing everyone and maybe next time we’ll actually pull out the games we’d planned on playing. Haha.

We got to go on a date to the movies this weekend! It was our first alone date in over a year and it was nice. We also got up early on Saturday morning and headed off for Cracker Barrel for a super yummy breakfast (with sweet tea for Stu). It was fantastic.

We got most of our Christmas shopping done and Stu has been pretty motivated to get the house done and organized so he keeps putting himself to work on that. Which, of course, is fine by me, because I hit my threshold for organizing last week.

We made a homemade pizza last night and then decorated the tree and went for a drive to look at Christmas lights (if you’re in Boise and haven’t gone up to Quail Ridge yet to see the crazy guy with the lights, do so, it was indeed crazy). We brought thermoses of hot chocolate and a snack-sized bag of marshmallows for Kaden, which he thought were the best things EVER! He kept falling asleep on the drive so we headed home after a bit and Kaden played with his cool new Cars bike he got from Kyle and Melissa for the millionth time already before we all headed off for bed.

It is so, SO hard to get up and go to work when there are two sleepy-eyed, jammies-ed, cuddled up, warm boys just sitting there. I was kinda late, but they’re lucky I got here at all. :) Oh, and fat-free vanilla yogurt with French Vanilla granola was just as heavenly as I’d imagined it would be. Thank you, Winco, for your practically free food.

Homecoming: How Sweet it is.

He’s home! He’s home! And I actually still can’t believe it. After everything that we went through yesterday, I didn’t think we’d ever get to see him walk through those glass doors at Boise Airport!

So, as some know, my Mom was also supposed to fly in yesterday in the early evening. She called me a half hour before her plane was supposed to board to tell me that because of dense fog in Boise, her flight was cancelled (for a few seconds I thought she was joking as Stu pulled the SAME joke on me before he got on HIS flight!). I walked out of my office to the huge picture windows in the breezeway and sure enough, I couldn’t see a few dozen yards. Crap.

So, after getting ultra-bummed, I had to accept that she really wasn’t coming and move on with my plans without her (she’d played quite heavily into my weekend plans and now they have to be changed. Poo.)

So I left work bummed about my Mom, but also worried because Stu said he would call me when he landed in Chicago. Being that it was nearing the time he would have been boarding his flight to Boise (after a 5 hour layover), I was nervous/irritated and trying to figure out what logical reason he would have had for NOT calling me when he said he would (topping my list were: he was detained by customs for possession of pirated material, he had a stroke in Abu Dhabi and never actually boarded that plane and was dying in an Abu Dhabi hospital, or that he fell asleep waiting for his connection and was about it miss it and sleep in Chicago overnight ß I’m pregnant, what do you want from me?).

So after going grocery shopping I finally made it to Marcia’s where I had to break the news about Momma E to my son, who then decided he didn’t want to talk to her on the phone if she wasn’t coming to see him (spiteful much? Lol). I rounded up the phone numbers to United Airlines, Chicago O’Hare and Boise Airport and started making calls. Southwest had told my Mom that all flights coming into Boise were being diverted and that they would probably not tell me that until minutes before their expected arrival time (WHAT??). So I called United and they assured me that Stu DID, in fact, check in (so he wasn’t dying in Abu Dhabi at least) for his Chicago to Boise flight. That made me feel SLIGHTLY better and then irritation won over (“Then why the Hell hasn’t he called me?”)

After two hours of stressing about the fog and watching every flight before his get cancelled or diverted (as Southwest prophesized), Kristin finally called Boise Airport for the last time and asked if it would land or be diverted. He assured her that “it will land in 30 minutes”. Woohoo! So we let Jo and Aaron know and then headed off to the airport.

Upon arrival, our meager little welcome home party seemed just that when we realized a bunch of guys that were coming straight out of basic training were arriving too, and all their families had come out in full force with signs and balloons and great grandmas, despite the after-11 hour. One girl was obviously being surprised. She had a scarf tied around her head, an ipod in her ears, and ear muffs over those. We were almost as excited to see her reunion with whoever was meeting her there as we were for our own (almost, heh).

Kaden was none-too-excited about the hour and would only look any one of us in the eye if we reminded him that Daddy was coming home. He would perk up a bit and tell us that Daddy would be coming through “those doors”. Sure enough, a few passengers start trickling through and then Kristin and Jo assure me that they could see Stu (I’m blind, as some know), in the outfit I described he’d be wearing. Eventually I saw his pretty face too and couldn’t contain myself. I had to rush up and tackle him. :) I said, “I’m so glad you’re home!... Why the hell didn’t you call me?” He seemed shocked by the fact that because he said he’d call me, I’d expect him to and he assured me, “Well I would have if something went wrong.” Greaaaaat.

We got to see the reunion with the blindfolded girl and her boyfriend. Very cute, and then we proceeded to the baggage claim. Kaden latched onto his Daddy and kepy pointing his little finger into his chest and telling everyone, “It’s Daddy.”

I’ll tell you what, homecoming is great. I was nervous and slightly apprehensive about it. I mean, he HAS been gone for a long time and would he still like me?, heh. But as soon as I saw him and smelled him, that all washed away and it, of course, felt absolutely right. AND, I forgot how good looking my husband is! My memory-face of him is just that: his face. I didn’t think about his whole body and the way he walks and moves and smells. That sounds weird, but he has such a distinct, yummy smell that I definitely missed it. I couldn’t stop looking at him while we got his bags and (unsafely) in the car on the way home. I love this man.

When we got home I felt elated. Our home has just not been home yet without Daddy. Our family isn’t our family without him and him coming in and getting the grand tour just made it feel so much more like “ours”. I was so giddy and smiley that I never thought I’d be able to sleep. Kaden kept smirking and saying “Hi Daddy!” and didn’t want him to put him down for any reason.

This morning when Kaden woke up, he called for me as he always does to go get him from his room. Then as soon as I opened the door he said, “Where’s Daddy?” and the two of them got to cuddle and read books while Mommy got ready for work. I haven’t seen my baby boy so happy in a long time. He kept smiling and hugging his Daddy and petting him. Sweet boy.

And I’m at stupid work while my boys are home playing and unpacking. Stu is going to be exhausted later, but I offered to take Kaden to Marcia’s so he could sleep, but I couldn’t have resisted that bright happy face either if I were him. :)

I only have to work a half-day today because I worked an extra hour a day the whole first part of this week in anticipation of this day, so I get to go home in a few hours and see my boys for the whole weekend! I am so excited to get to know Stu again and share everything we’ve been through and done in the past two months, including all the new words that Kaden has learned!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I certainly will.