Say Goodbye Once & Leave...

This is one of our 3 new trees in the backyard. This is how tall it is on the day Dave left for Oklahoma (tonight). I'll take another picture when he comes home next year.

The send off was brief and hot/humid. Good ol' Mayer Crews from Cedar Falls was there and gave a short and nice farewell. General Dardis was there too and did the same. Our thanks to Perry & Lori, Chuck, Brad, Kandie & Lucas Vaughn, & Jim & Mary Lee for joining us to say goodbye. It was good to have you there and know you care about Dave and our family so much. We love you guys too!

This time, we agreed that we wouldn't watch him get on that bus and wait until it left. We just said goodbye and head out. I think that was easier on all of us, Dave especially. The ceremony started off with the national anthem which of course, all of the soldiers in uniform saluted. Halfway through, I turned in time to see Lucas standing at attention in his little uniform and saluting too. That's when I lost it. It was so sweet and cute.



Lucas and Alexis

Deployment Briefing-GRRRRRRRR!

That's what they call the meeting that takes 4 hours and gives you all of the info that you should know while your "soldier" is gone. It actually only took 2 1/2 hours, I believe because our group was smaller than most (30 vs. 200). I think I have this down pretty good. However, the reality is hitting me pretty hard today. I found myself feeling anxious and not tolerating any kind of inconvenience. Even though the meeting was short, we had a family picnic from 1-2 and then were supposed to get ID cards issued from 3-5. Guess what? No ID personnel showed up. GRRRRRRR! People brought their children and we killed 2 hours before the other meeting. Oh yeah, the meeting room had no AC because of the construction at the hangar. GRRRRRR! You know how I feel about heat and humidity. Thankfully, the meeting was very informational and necessary, and was much shorter than planned. Phew! I'm home now and trying to relax. Dave's send off is Thursday at 5 pm. Won't see him until August for about 4 days and then he leaves out of country for a year. I might be cranky then too!

By the way, to all of our dear friends and family who have been there for us and continue to be there with offers of help and company: We love you and Dave will miss you. You won't miss me though...I'm calling you!!!

It's a lot of BLOG

Ranger: He is doing great since his surgery. The vet said he would start touching his foot down at about 3 weeks and he was touching down after less than a week. He still has that funny haircut. We got an Elizabethian collar for him so he wouldn't lick or chew his stitches (staples). However, I just couldn't put it on him and leave him home alone. I put it on Tyler instead.


Spring: Our flowering crab tree out front was beautiful this year. It helped that the winds were down and no hail or hard rains so it stayed full over a week. It looked like snow when the petals fell. Carrie brought me some lilacs from their yard, which makes me happy. I remember walking to school down Lilac Lane and picking them to smell all day in school.




Fires: We have had two fires in our back yard...in the fire ring of course. Perry came over one night along with Mike and Carrie, Tyler, Laura and Brody. It's so nice to gather around with guitars and fires.


Mushrooms: Mike brought us some beautiful morel mushrooms and even cooked them for us! They were so yummy!






Tornadoes: Where we live, it's hard to believe that the tornadoes even happened. We never even got any rain at our place but boy did they ever get hit in Parkersburg and Dunkerton area. I'm sure you've seen pictures of the houses and businesses that were just leveled. We were grilling steaks when the sirens went off. I hate to say it but we pretty much ignored the sirens because we could see the weather was north of us. After seeing Parkersburg though, we will go downstairs next time.


Memorial Day: What a gorgeous day! Dave and I got Thelma and went out for lunch and then to the cemetery. We told Big Davy stories. He sure is missed. I am including pictures of Travis Vaughn's site. He is in the same cemetery as Dave's dad. It was so hard to think of the young soldiers who were killed. There were 2 new graves of young soldiers this year, very close to Travis's grave. God Bless their families who miss them.

Poor Ranger

Our little buddy had his ACL surgery yesterday and we picked him up this morning. He looks pretty rough with his new haircut. He has lots of staples on an incision about 6-7" long. The physical therapy will be intense however. He has to be on a leash for 3 months every time we go outside, for everything. We will be taking him swimming every day too once his staples come out. Thank goodness it's warming up! I stopped in to see him at the vet yesterday after his surgery. He was so happy to see me but he was kind of dopey. We sat on the grass and he fell into my lap and fell asleep. It's really good to have him home. Oh yeah, Dave's home too! It's good to have him here. He wants to take his recliner back to Camp Dodge.

And so it begins....

Well, it has started. One week down, about 60 more to go! Dave was in Des Moines last week at Camp Dodge going through the Combat Lifesaver Course (see pics). Having been trained as a Medic when I first joined, I was quite impressed with this intense course, which ended up with the guys starting IV's on each other.




We had a very nice weekend together. Dave was so tired Friday night and his arm was sore from an anthrax shot. We stayed home and grilled pork chops for supper. Saturday we went to Lowes, Menards, Best Buy, Blaines, & Walmart....looking for the perfect tomato cage for the monstrous plants I grow. That wore both of us out! We did manage to stay up late and head downtown CF to the Reverb to see Tyler's band play. Quite an interesting place with lots of artwork on the ceiling panels. Tyler's band rocks out pretty good. It was fun to see all of the "youngsters" in their different styles of dress. (Do I sound really old yet?)

Mother's Day: What a lovely day! We all met at the Hong Kong and had yummy Chinese food. Brody was mostly interested in leaving the restaurant to go see the Ironman movie. Thelma and I were showered with hugs and love for being the moms. We went to her house for a while afterward but it was soon time to leave so Dave could finish loading up his car to go back to Camp Dodge. I got a cool phone call from my Mom and talked to Mom, Elaine, Steve, & Dave. I am excited to go up to Minnesota in June to see everyone again. Dave left around 6:00 and the blues set in. I'm gonna miss my guy so much. Sigh.

Let's go to the Dog Park!

We had a beautiful day Sunday. All of the windows are open and the house is airing out. Tyler, Laura and Brody stopped by around 2:00 to pick up Ranger and Maggie...and ME. We went to the dog park, which is always fun, but this day was so nice, everyone had the same idea. There were really really big dogs and really really little dogs. Maggie was one of the smallest. Ranger is wheeling around on 3 legs these days due to an injury so people were very concerned about him. He always gets a lot of attention cuz he's so cute. Brody hasn't been all that comfortable around bigger dogs but you sure couldn't tell that Sunday. He was running with the dogs, throwing the toys for them, and even got knocked down by a big lab that just turned at the wrong time and bumped him. He would take his hands and brush them together, get up and go some more!





After the park, we came back to the Morse house for some cartoons and root beer. Brody really likes root beer now. The guys got a little sleepy after a big afternoon at the park. Aren't they cute?

Ribs, Ooey Gooey Ribs!

If you want really really good ribs, there's only one place in town to go...Hickory House. We went there for Dave's birthday last week. He was a bit jumpy from all of the surprise parties he had and wondered who would come around the corner next. hehe. Tyler's mom Vicki joined us and it was her birthday too! After dinner, everyone came over for strawberry shortcake, which was really yummy and promises summer. When Myndi walked in, Dave started getting jumpy again...hehe.