Navy Widow... Countdown has begun and is at T minus 6 months+

Close your eyes and it will all be right....The song is strangely appropriate.

Ok, now for the blog to end all blogs! Well, in length anyway! Im sorry I haven't written, but my priority was being with Andrew during the 3 weeks between the last cruise and deployment, including our vacation to CT and CA to say "goodbye" and "hello" to my side of the family, a weekend in Portland to do the same with his family, and running around town like fiends trying to get everything taken care of before he left... I think we did pretty good!
Some of our activities included: Having dinner with all our friends to say "Goodbye" to Andy, doing a photo shoot for our annual "family" picture (I got him to wear his uniform. w00t!!), throwing a small little soiree for Queenie's bday, cleaning out the garage, getting the car serviced, medical appointments, etc. All of this while A was working from 6 am until 730 or 8 every night! My poor love. :-(

We also got 2 chairs for our dining table, moved Andy's piano out of his Aunt's garage and into our house (THAT was an experience... me and 4 strapping Navy boys all grunting and straining to get that stupid thing off the truck WITHOUT A RAMP and into our house! I made peach crisp for all of us to "settle" with...it was a big hit!),bought and set up a bed (headboard, footboard, rails), a new desk for my office (l-shaped with FILES!), cleaned out Andy's office, started setting up a server, cleaned off about 17 gb of data from A's computer, did approximately 11 loads of laundry each week (Hubband had laundry from the ship, for the ship, and from home...what a mess! Meanwhile, IM almost out of underwear...), and I cooked him all his favorite meals. We also went out to eat a couple times, and "celebrated" our anniversary with a special dinner at home. PHEW!

In the course of all these activities, we had a couple of standout moments:

* While at San Remo, one of our favorite restaurants here in town, we were chatting while waiting for our meals, and were holding hands across the table. Our food came, and we were enjoying it, paying little attention to the world around us. Our waitress came over to check on us and said "You two are so much in love! I just have to tell you how wonderful it is to see. We were watching you guys from the kitchen and all of us commented on how obvious it was that you love each other." COOL! She asked us a few questions and was surprised that we have been married for a year. heheh. Thought we had just started dating or something. Course, we didn't tell her about the BIG DEPLOYMENT SEPARATION... but we did give her a good tip. :-)
* While cleaning off A's computer, we came across some untitled music clips, clicked on one and it was the song we did our first dance to at the wedding... so we danced to it again, in our pajamas and slippers...
*I learned how to make Queenie's famous FANTABULOUS flank steak, although I didn't tenderize it quite enough... it still tasted great! And I made Andy's favorite cinnamon chip cookies...
* Played cards with the cousins and in-laws in Portland...including Murray, who had flown out from London to surprise his fiance for her birthday. Had a GRAND time, even when I embarrassed A and I both by turning into my mother and telling him to eat only one cookie at a time. >sigh< Don't know where THAT came from, but the rest of the gang thought it HILARIOUS.
* Sneaking notes into Andy's seabag while he packed...

And that's about it... at least for the highlights version. :-) Im off now to work, puttin' in time and countin' down the months...