Fluffymail!!

Our Sassycloth covers came in yesterday!! Erin saw the big envelope going into the mailbox, and ran right out there to get it. I was inside with one of my friends who had come to buy a purse from me. When Erin brought in the package, I opened it as fast as I could, and I was VERY pleased with what was inside!

These covers are so cute! One of them has dragons and fire on it, another has Lightning McQueen and 'Mater from the movie Cars (that one is Thak's favorite), and the last one is a really cute shade of blue-green. They're a little big on Orren right now, but I don't mind. They're excellent quality, and they'll last us a long time. I love them so much, and they were made by a mommy with a home business, just like me, so you cannot beat that. While cloth diapering companies are far from evil corporate giants, and most contract with work-at-home moms to make their products, I'd still rather buy directly from the person who made it. They make more for it that way, so it's good. I'm going to recommend her to all my cloth diapering friends (and I have more now than I did! I got two friends here to switch to cloth!) and maybe buy have some covers made for one of my friends who's expecting a new baby within the next few weeks, and is planning to use cloth (and borrowing our newborn diapers). These covers are not only excellent, they're SO cheap, too! It was only $8 for the fancy ones we got, and $7 for the simple one, but that's only because we ordered a size Large. It's less for smaller sizes.

Oh, and another awesome thing is that these covers close with snaps on the sides. Orren figured out yesterday (no kidding, yesterday) how to undo the velcro on his other covers, and would probably figure out front snaps before too long, too, but side snaps are kind of out of sight, out of mind, so that's perfect for him.

Here's Orren in his Cars dipe cover:

Sooooo

Tonight, we have the parents' meeting for cheerleading. Erin is psyched because it means she'll get to start cheering very soon, probably next week. That's great. I'm glad she's getting to do this. We'll see how she likes it, and I'm actually thinking of getting her into West Texas Cheer this fall, which is pretty much a cheerleading school with very good instruction, and a lot of emphasis on the various things a cheerleader needs to know (tumbling, dance, etc), and it's a bit more high intensity than the YMCA program she's doing this summer, but the Y's is a good place to start. I haven't talked to Thak about starting Erin with West Texas Cheer in the fall yet, but I'm sure he'll be cool with it. He's all for anything that will help our kids succeed, and Erin's wanted to be a cheerleader ever since she knew what that was, so getting her the best of instruction will only help her to succeed at something she really wants to do. I think it'll be fun to do this more relaxed program over the summer, though. I can't wait to see her in her little uniform. She's going to be so cute! Awwww my baby girl is a cheerleader now!! She's getting so big!!

We also have so much else going on today. I have more customers coming by to work out their purse orders with me, and that's just more money for us, so I'm happy with that. As soon as my morning customers are gone (in like half an hour, probably), we're heading across town to this one girl's house for a playdate (only NCO families, THANK GOD!! I can take off my politically correct mask.) Once we come back from that, we'll actually have a few hours between then and the next customer, but I'll need those few hours to sew orders so I can NOT sew this weekend, and then at 4, I have another customer, and at 5, the cheer meeting. When we get home from that, Thak will probably be home from work (his new Sergeant Major came in, and believe it or not, she doesn't like to hold everyone until 8 pm every Friday), and he doesn't have school tonight, so at least we'll be able to just do nothing tonight, which is great.

Oh, and next week is Thak's summer break from school! Yay!!

Things are so hectic, but at least next week, we only have to deal with all my stuff, plus Erin's cheerleading practice, plus Thak's work, but not school. That will be a welcome break.

New pics 3, views from the air tram

View from the top platform, looking east.

Looking west...


Can you find our car? It's the little red dot in the parking lot below!


That's what the tram itself looks like.


Going down!!

New pics 2

OK, the next round of new pics.

Here are me, mom, and the kids at one of the picnic areas on Transmountain Road. The peaks behind us were just beautiful, and actually, the whole drive really is. It's exactly what the name sounds like, a road cut through a mountain.




And here's Orren's newest trick. He now bites his bottom lip. He got that from his daddy!!
And here are Thak and me going out for the first time in forever. If you are ever in El Paso, you absolutely MUST try Singapore Cafe on Mesa. Their food is excellent.

The following day, after we dropped mom off at the airport, we had to go to the outlets at the state line to get Thak some new running shoes, Erin a swimsuit (and also ended up being some new shorts, a shirt, and a dress also), and completely reoutfit the boy. (If you're keeping track, he is now in a size 12-18 months. Yes, at 5 months old.) While there, he decided he wanted to ride on daddy's shoulders, and he had so much fun!


OK, next installment, views from the air tram...

New pics

Random pictures from the past week:

We were bored while Thak was in school one night. Here are Erin and Orren in aluminum foil hats.

You didn't actually think I'd make aluminum foil hats without making one for myself, did you?


Here we are at the top platform of the Wyler Aerial Tramway. We did have one with mom in it, too, but that one turned out really badly, so I'm not posting it.

Here's mom helping Erin look through the thing on the top platform.

Orren trying to drink daddy's water after we came down from the air tram. He was so thirsty.


More pics to come....

One thing I won't miss...

I was doing some research today on civilian health insurance policies, and posted on a general online forum of which Thak and I are both members, asking a question of the American civilians there what a normal deductible is since I kept finding a lot that were ridiculously high. (I specify American civilians because it's an international site, and probably 5%-10% of the members are military for some country or another, so you have to be specific.)

Of course, the first person who replies is this stupid and very stereotypical military ex-wife, who's so bitter because her husband left her, yet like all military ex-wives, is so eager to give unsolicited advice about the military. She tells me some ridiculous crap about Tricare which wasn't even true (I was also asking if there were any insurance companies which covered home births, and she was saying that Tricare would. They won't. I know this for a fact.) and as always, how to get things for free, things which we don't want anyhow, and have gone to great lengths to avoid (and knew all along that we can get for free because it's common knowledge). People like her are the ones who made me hate all military wives for so long. It's even worse with her since she's divorced. Nobody wants to hear from the ex-wives, and I hate it more than most. I don't like to deal with ex-wives because a lot of them, including this one, remind me of Thak's ex-wife, and she makes my skin crawl.

So yeah, that's something I won't miss. Actually, that's one of the things I'm SO eager to get away from. For some unfathomable reason, a lot of people still mistake me for being younger than I am, and NOBODY guesses that I have been married for five years to a Staff Sergeant with now 16 years of service, and that I am prior service myself. They all guess me to be some lower-enlisted wife who fell off the truck yesterday, and for that reason, I can't ever be even in the vicinity of any of them (in this case, a virtual vicinity, at that!!!!!!!) without coming away with ten tons of unsolicited BS "advice" which is usually wrong. For some reason, I've been navigating the system just fine for the past 8 years, and have never had a problem. I even did something most people are deathly afraid of, and had a baby on Tricare Standard (that's the one where you have to pay copays, but get more choices), and STILL have no issues. These people talk of issues and fighting the system nearly constantly. Hmmm.... One of us is doing it wrong, and I'm thinking it isn't me.

I will be so glad to lose these morons. The day Thak gets out, I am giving away everything I own that has the word "Army" on it, because frankly, I'm just that much over it, and want to put as much distance between myself and people like that as humanly possible. It's just so blatant and stereotypical. "I have a question for all American civilians", and of course some dumb ex-wife of some random soldier comes out of the woodwork with unsolicited and irrelevant crap. It happens in person, too, you know. There is a reason I don't go to the commissary here. Every time I do, some idiot stops me and has me occupied for half an hour talking my ear off about some stupid crap I either already knew, or which doesn't pertain to me, and won't take no for an answer... I'm so sick of these people.

Aaaahhhh..... chilly!

The air conditioner is fixed! It has been since yesterday. It's still working this morning. I'm sort of afraid to say anything about it because this thing has never worked for more than two days straight, but I have hope that maybe this time, it'll be fixed for real. Well, whether it is or not, it's nice and cool in our house now, and for the first time in weeks, months even, we're not sweating our asses off just as badly inside as we do outside, so any way you cut it, that's a good thing.

On an unrelated note, Thak has taken my car to go get its Texas safety and emissions inspection. He wanted to do this over the weekend so that I wouldn't have to do it during the week, but apparently, every place he goes to is closed. He's gone to one place off post that he was told might be open, and I'm thinking it probably was since he's not back yet. Well, I hope. We have to get my car its Texas plates next month. I'm actually not really looking forward to giving up our Georgia ones, but hey, this is just another step along the way. Next time we get new license plates for our cars, we'll actually be keeping them for a while, not like we've been doing, where we end up switching them out every couple years. Texas plates once more... Ironically, this means that every vehicle Thak and I have owned since being together or married will have been registered in the state of Texas at one point. That's just another way this assignment is the completion of a full circle for us.

Oh, and we're below 700 days. 698 days until Thak is out of the Army, and 28 days until I am out of the IRR.

The desert, without air conditioning

As everyone knows already, out here, we have swamp coolers instead of refrigerated air like the rest of the country. What I never knew about swamp coolers is that they just plain don't work. Well, ours doesn't anyhow.

This thing has worked, as in actually functioned as intended, for one day out of the entire summer. Mind you, on the days we don't hit 100 degrees, we only miss it by one or two. It's hot out here. If our swamp cooler isn't blowing hot air, then it's got a bad line and making it rain through the light fixture in Erin's bathroom.

Swamp coolers are fabulous. The summer in El Paso with no air conditioning is extra fabulous. And if anyone dares say to me, "at least it's a dry heat" I will hunt you down! Come here, feel yourself roast in this desert sun, and then tell me it's cooler or more manageable than any humid place you've ever been.

Tomorrow, they're supposed to come out and look at our swamp cooler again. I don't hold out much hope that they'll fix it this time, but maybe I will be surprised.

This week....

...we will drop below 700 days left until Thak is out of the Army!

Oh, and also of interest, I am out of the IRR in 33 days. If you don't know, IRR is Inactive Ready Reserve, basically, the pool of recent veterans they can do call-backs of if they need us. I can still be called back for the next 33 days, and they can keep me as long as they want, but after that, I'm done! Uncle Sam can never touch me again! Now, the Army is notorious for calling people back to Active Duty a couple weeks before their IRR time expires, but I don't think that's going to happen to me since my MOS is very easy to get people for, and it's balanced personnel-wise right now. They don't need me back. I don't think I'm getting called. But yeah, no more mustering. No more moment of hesitation before opening the mailbox, nor fear at letters from DOD. No more uncertainty for me. 33 days, and I am free!!! 703 days, and Thak is, too!!! It's about time. We've done ours.