Merry Christmas at the hangar!

Today was our squadron's Christmas party for the kids!  We decided to have it in the hangar to let the kids feel a bit closer to their deployed parent for a few hours... they had a blast and ate the required amount of sugar!

Pulling up to the squadron...

Finnegan "posing"

Posing again!  The place is a ghost town since they are deployed!

I'm not sure what's behind the locked door, but since hubby was promoted to First Class, he is now a member of the 1st Class Mess... so what goes on in there?  LOL

Upon walking into the hangar, we were overcome by the smell of JP-5 in the air, and for once, instead of cursing that smell and demanding hubby leaves his clothes and boots out on the porch, the smell made us miss him more!

Plenty of "trip and bust your teeth out" floor to run on!

stroller parking fore, jets aft

when was the last time you told your kids, "hey, stay this side of the bombs, okay?"  or... "we don't pet the bombs sweetie..."  LOL

Luckily the hangar doors were closed keeping it plenty warm inside, but were open a crack so the kids could keep a lookout for Santa.  Santa always arrives in a SuperHornet instead of a sleigh 'round these parts, we do it Navy Style!

Kids craft table, making signs for homecoming

Cookie Decorating

Yep, even Navy kids require vast amounts of sugar during the holidays!

mecca for little boys in here...

SO MUCH FOOD!

Santa has arrived!  Kids anxiously awaiting to see what's in his bag!

 Finnegan 

Saved the best for last...

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE HANGAR OF VFA-32!  

See why I'm not getting anything done around here?  Too busy!  They had a great time though, I just can't wait until their bedtime tonight, I've got stuff to DO!

I'm still here...

I so wanted to post today!  I really need to put some things into writing to get them down in black and white so I can organize my thoughts... once again, no time.  Kids are home from school, need dinner, then need to go to a friend's house for an hour or so, Finn was very sick a month ago the day of his "bestest girlfriend's" birthday and couldn't make it, so we are going over there so he can see her and give her his gift!


I have gotten nothing done in the knitting department.


I have a feeling I will get on that tonight after the kids go to bed.  Who knows?  If I have enough wine I may make it back to the computer late tonight and write an unintelligible post - just kidding!  I have been so tired I think more than one glass is too much obviously because I just plain fall asleep!


Thanks to all of you who are so good at updating, you are bright spots in my days that have been filled with too much stress and anxiety lately!

My machine, my friend!

Remember when I said I would have at least a year before having to sew heavy stuff again?  Yeah...

Thanks to a combination of hubby being promoted and someone stealing a set of his cammies, here we are again, forcing my machine to sew through about 3 layers of canvas like material, patches + uniform = thick!  (BTW, I hope whoever stole his $200 set of cammies stabbed themselves trying to get his name patches off of them!) This time however, I paid attention to the needle size, thread size, and went slowly.  First I used that iron on sewing stuff to fuse the patches on so I wouldn't have to stab myself trying to pin those thick layers, then I had a nice conversation with my machine, stopped often to tell her what a nice job she was doing for me... and it worked!

Since I had the machine out, when I finished the uniforms I finally got around to the reusable gift bags that were to be my first "real project" (uniforms don't count, they are no fun at all!)

I have NO TIME for this in my schedule, but putting it off doesn't work, either.  I slapped them together quickly, only using an iron and the machine, no pins or measuring, LOL!  If you were to turn them inside out you'd laugh at the construction but from the outside they look okay for their purpose - it's not as if anyone will be wearing them :)  All that is left is to thread drawstrings through the tops, hopefully I'll do that while watching tv tonight.  

I was able to get all these done, and match gifts to the right size bag, but what's scary is how many are EMPTY in this pic... all those empty bags are waiting for knitted items that I need to knit in the next 2 weeks?!  It's my own fault, I decided I would do nothing but handmade gifts this year, and didn't give myself enough credit to start learning socks earlier.  As of October 1st, I was still saying it would be years before I would try them :)  I will start much earlier next year, like January 1st!

But I do thrive on challenges, and it's something I enjoy - so I'll leave you now as I have a LOT of work to do!

Stay tuned for a very "interesting" project with more buffalo plaid I hope to have done later in the week - it has to do with homecoming!

things bugging me today...

As I suspected, the snow was gone by 8 a.m. this morning!  But it is really cold with all this wind we are having.  I'd rather have about 20 degrees colder as long as we didn't have this winter long gale force wind that blows in off the ocean, brrrr!

Below, new tires are on, I filled up the squirter thingie with some freeze your butt off bug juice, changed the oil, and we are ready to roll!

Here's what's currently driving me insane...

This is hubby's new smartphone.  He has always had the crappiest, cheapest phone available since he does have a history of dropping them, sending them through the wash, etc.  I was having a "good wife" moment and thought in honor of his promotion and he will most likely be in charge of his shop and need to keep in all forms of contact with his "peeps" he deserved a decent phone when he got back.  I was thinking of getting a new iphone and just giving him my old 1st generation iphone but it's so big that he would never carry it around in his pocket, rendering it useless if he doesn't carry it!  So I selected this little one, the Flipout from Motorola.  Nice size, pain in the ass to set up!  It's not just the phone, it's my husband's fault too!  Started out by me having to manually enter in ALL our contacts since it's not very compatible with our iLife (read: everything is apple in this house!) - AND I couldn't ask for his SIM card since his phone broke on deployment and I believe the SIM card is sitting somewhere on the bottom of the Arabian Sea.  


Next comes trying to sync all his email and other random accounts.  They are a mess!  In an effort to stay in some sort of communication with us (heart's in the right place LOL), he sets up accounts as needed (nightmare!) depending on where he is and what he is able to access from that location.  He's got ship's email, squadron email, home internet provider email, Skype, iGoogle, Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, Google Chat, 2 Gmail accounts, Facebook... there's probably more I don't even know about, and all have DIFFERENT passwords that he can't remember half the time and I'm doing this from half a world away.  UGH!  I've been at it since 5 am today and have it all done except the most necessary:  "smart"phone won't sync the email!  Smartphone, indeed.... I will stick with Apple, completely seamless from my desktop and every thing I've run into in the 4 years I've had it!  Okay, I'll move on now...

Here's what Finn was up to last night!

The kids have been driving me completely insane this week, I won't sugarcoat it - I'm sure part of it has to do with the imminent arrival of daddy, but come on, give a mama a break!  Loch is Mr. Backtalk lately, and Finn goes into tantrum hysterics over everything these days.  I get the feeling that when hubby gets home I am just going to fall out from exhaustion and emotional upheaval from making sure they had a "mom" every day, when there were times the past 7 months where I had fleeting fantasies of walking out and taking a road trip to anywhere but here!  Not much longer, though.  I keep meaning to do a post about what life is really like for us left back home, the good and bad, but somehow always find it easier to ignore the white elephant and keep on keepin' on!

One thing I WILL do, is share what I found on the internet last night... this object is currently the focus of my daydreams....  :)