A Public Service Announcement from Orren:

You know how you get really excited when your mommy says you're gonna eat oatmeal for breakfast? You know how it's so hard to wait while she puts the brown sugar and the cinnamon in it, or maybe the pieces of fruit? Well, when mommy says it's hot, and you don't need to dig in right away, she means it's HOT! No matter how excited you are about the oatmeal, do not stick both hands in right away when it's too hot to eat from the spoon, because it will hurt, and you will cry, and breakfast will take twice as long as usual. You'll probably miss Curious George in the process, and I don't know about you, but that really messes up my day.


Yeah, the poor guy couldn't contain himself and got burned on oatmeal. He's fine, though.






On an entirely unrelated note, we found out we were accepted for Heroes at Home this year! That's the program from Sears that gives gift cards (in undetermined amounts) to the first 20,000 military personnel to register. Like I said, I have no idea how much we will get. Last year, most people got in the $300 range, so who knows for this year. It's all dependent upon donations, and they haven't even begun taking donations yet, so we have no idea if they will be as high this year as they were last. Only time will tell.

In some ways, I almost wish we didn't register for it, though... It kind of feels like we just stepped in a hornets' nest since this program is so controversial within the military community. Everyone thinks they have the inside scoop on how it works (They are all wrong. A quick google and a call to customer service will easily tell you that.) and some people think that you'd have to be a massive freeloader to ever sign up for it. While I leaned that way in the past, just seeing how some people (whom I otherwise like quite well) get extremely greedy around the holidays, tapping every "gimme free goodies" program available to the military, to the point that they don't even bother to save up for their kids' presents because they count on the handouts constantly, I don't think it really has to be that way. Guilt by association is real, but at least we know we're not freeloaders. That's why when we thought about it this year, we decided to fill out an application. For one thing, there are other families of our rank doing this ever since they lifted the rank restriction last year, so obviously it's not noble or anything to "step aside and let the lower-enlisteds get it". Nobody else is doing that. For another, we need to save every penny we can for when Thak gets out, so having a chance at some extra holiday cash that didn't come from our account, is definitely going to help us put that much more away for later. We were really surprised that we were one of the first 20k applications received! (It's first come, first served. The only qualification is that the person whose name the application is in must be Active Duty.)