It's official

Well hello single parenting! I never saw you in my future. Care to stay for dinner? We're having cold cereal (again). Everyday. For the next three months. Won't this be charming. And much, much, cheaper.

Braden has been gone for two full days. We are already enjoying all the many perks. I bought my favorite scent of candle that he hates and our house smells like Black Cherry heaven. Um, what else? I haven't cooked. We eat strictly chick food in this house. Because after all, we are a house full of chicks. Salads and yogurt and cottage cheese and fruit...basically a man's starvation station. Um, well...I guess that sums up the perks.

We had a terrible time getting him out of here. He had to stay in Montgomery on Monday night so I went with him. Our computer guy who has had Braden's computer for the last 2 months and knew he was fixing it for OTS did not finish it and avoided us completely. We went to his house and called him a jillion times and he was hiding from us. So in the only few hours we could have had together we were freaking out at Best Buy trying to figure out what to do. Grrrrrrrrrrr. The next morning he had to be at MEPS (military entrance processing services) at 5am. I went with him just to spend any and all time together that we could. I was the only spouse there. I walked down a hall to get a snack and some Sargent got in my face and yelled at me, assuming of course that I was joining:

"ARE YOU SHIPPING OUT TODAY?!"
"Um, well, no"
"THEN GET UPSTAIRS TO THE SECOND FLOOR!"
"um,well, I'm just here...my husband is...
"THEN GET DOWN THE HALL IN THE FAMILY WAITING AREA!!"

Yikes. I can't believe I got busted. There I was thinking that I wasn't even bustable. I am a Mom, I am the one who does the yelling. The only place I was shipping out to was the vending machine for the third time. And they had signs with rules like, "NO TOUCHING, NO SLEEPING, NO LOUD TALKING". They would yell at you for slouching. It was clearly no place for a lazy loud sleepy sloucher like myself who likes to buy M&M's whenever I so desire. Eight hours later, we finally got out of there.

We had an hour or so before he had to report so we went to the mall and had a skee ball tourney at an arcade, got a milkshake, and took best friend pictures in a picture booth. In case our wedding rings don't say it enough, now we really know that we are besties to the end.

And then we went to the base and said goodbye and I cried my eyes out. But just for a minute. He got to call that night for a minute to tell me his flight number and his voice was so raspy from yelling all day. He sounded exhausted, I hear they have 20 hour days. So after 2 years of waiting for this he sounded like he was really enjoying the warm welcome of the military.

Two days down, 84 to go. On my way to the post office to buy stamps.


Braden swearing in

An amazing cake that a friend made for the sendoff party from the ward. Best ward ever? Yes, definitely yes.