Too excited to sleep these days...

My house is CLEAN!  for now anyways....!  I spent all day getting the house spic & span for hubby's arrival.  I know he won't notice a bit, but I feel better anyways.  It's out on the newswire now so I can go ahead and say it:  he'll be home in 2 days!  With a clean house, I can now spend tomorrow just relaxing a bit and packing for our vacation, and knitting - always with the knitting.  


Yesterday I spent an hour standing in line during the Christmas rush at the post office, for what?

A beautiful beat-up box of dirty laundry from the USS Truman!

 The dogs are getting their first scent of Daddy in 7 months!  And what a bunch of random crap in that box!  Within seconds of opening the darn thing my whole house smelled like the boat, yuck!  I can't describe the smell really, it's a mixture of JP-5 (jet fuel), hydraulic fluid (both from hubby's job), mixed with a horrible "boat stench" LOL.  If any of you know someone in the Navy, they will know what "boat" smells like, it's not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination.  Even though I am incredibly happy at this box arriving because it means he's almost here, that box now resides on the front porch until I can deal with it.


We are getting close to y'all not having to hear about this deployment anymore, just a few more days... before I let you off the hook I'd like to share some of the photos I've gotten during the deployment.  Photos are courtesy of VFA-32's photographer and their Facebook album.

The above photo was shot as they transited the Suez Canal a few short weeks ago.  This transit means they are officially out of the combat zone and have turned around for home, and it shows in their faces!  Beautiful shot by photographer.

Below, probably why hubby's hearing is shot!

 Below, Neil Armstrong visited the aircrew while  deployed... very cool!

 Below, not so glamorous... those are chains around his neck that secure the jets to the deck, some of these guys carry them all day, and remember it's about 120º over there and they have to wear all their gear on the burning flight deck, ugh!

definitely more hearing loss going on here!  What???

Below, ordnance dept -"When You Care Enough To Send the Very Best..."

I liked this one, just walking to work looking like an everyday commuter ...

Keeping the hearing aid business "afloat"...

Today, I heard the unmistakeable sound of an entire squadron flying overhead and ran outside and sure enough, one of the squadrons was flying in formation, signifying the return of the aviators!  This is phase 1 of the return, as the jets need to fly off the ship while still out in deep water so there is ample room for takeoff.

Evening news tonight:  this is actually a video, sometimes the play button is small?

Naval aviators return to Hampton Roads: wavy.com

Hubby comes in with the ship and it's 5000 other sailors.  Can you believe 58 babies were born during this deployment?!  Sadly, a young Navy wife here was murdered during this deployment by a stranger who broke into her home and I can't get out of my mind how horrible this homecoming has to be for her husband and family.

And I better stop now before you start throwing things at the computer... can you tell we are proud of him?  One more day of random posting, then homecoming, vacation and then back to the homesteading & gardening & recipes posts!

I actually took a break from sock knitting to knit something for myself - a hat and scarf to wear to homecoming.  I will be closing up the hat right after this but am only about 7 inches into the scarf.  I am thinking of letting the scarf hang around my neck with the needles in it when I go to the pier - I will have about 6 hours of waiting on the cold pier, lots of time to kill so that way I can knit while wearing it LOL.