Down to Business!

Tonight Brian sang at the Ice House, he did good! His one man show was entertaining as usual. We had lots of friends and family there it was really nice. Thanks to everyone that came!

Below: Logan, Eric (Jeremy's Brother in case you couldn't tell) and mom


Sisters! I wonder what they are looking for? Me and Janey(long time family friend)
Ashley and Logan dancing to Brian's music.

Brian and Uncle Glen
One of the family tables...clockwise

(Mom, Logan, grandpa, Uncle Glen, Jody and Amanda(cousin), Aunt Rachel, Aunt Reba, Grandma, and Kareem)

Me and Logan
Brian entertaining
Jana and Andrew
Chloe and Aunt Jana at home after the show :)

Look out world...

Barney told a funny joke :)

Chloe's Aunt Jana picked these bows out for her the other day, good choice!

Big thanks to Kira for taking mine and Jeremy's picture this afternoon. I got to talk to him again on Skype! Kira and Eric have Skype now too, so they all got to talk today. I got to see Logan for a little bit too, he is so cute!I I didn't get any pictures though, we were trying to get everything set up with the computers so that Jeremy could see and talk to everyone. Maybe tomorrow I will get the chance to take some pictures of everyone.

I talked to Jeremy yesterday and he is doing fine. They keep moving his R&R dates, so again we are looking at around July 4-7 instead of late June for his R&R.I also talked to Erin about their upcoming trip to Little Rock in June! I am so excited about them coming to town, we haven't seen them since Hawaii. They are living in Springfield Missouri now and Dave has some training in Little Rock for his new job with the Red Cross. We are going to get together for sure down here and have a cookout or something. Kevin has grown so much since we last saw him. Today I am going to have lunch with Jana and then do some spring cleaning to this place. I actually got some sleep last night and I forgot how good that felt! I was asleep by 2:00 a.m and awake at 8:45 a.m. I thought it was noon when I woke up because I actually rested. It is so pretty outside today. I should hear from Jeremy at some point, not sure when.

Steroid talk and I'm preaching like my husband...

I am really not liking being on steroids at all. Does anyone else think 10 mg, 6 times a day is too much?? He has me on 60 mg a day until today and now I'm backed down to 40. They make me restless but unproductive at the same time. When I finally fall asleep I have crazy dreams that wake me up AND my wrist isn't any better. Ohhh and I wonder if it would be too much to ask for prednisone to NOT make me eat everything I can get my hands on? I have less then 2 months until the Mr. gets home and I was doing so good! I was down 15 pounds in a little over a month and then low and behold life handed me another lemon (more like a rt 44 coke, a peperoni and onion quesa pizza with ranch dressing, cheese dippers, a Hershey bar, 2 stalks of broccoli, a cheesy potato broccoli lean cuisine, half a jar of pickles and a bag of pretzels) :) No big deal I guess as long as I don't form a habit of eating for 10. Besides, I'm pretty sure Jeremy isn't going to measure my waist when he gets home.

Jeremy finally called this evening and I got to talk to him for about an hour on Skype. He is doing pretty good, he said he had been out hunting bad guys. GREAT! So I guess I can quit hoping that he is just really caught up in a ping pong tournament or guitar hero marathon like mom keeps implying. Yeah, so I was supposed to hear from him on Sunday and they told him they were going to be out for 30 minutes maximum. 3 days later they get back in. Poor Jeremy, on R&R he will probably sleep all the way here on the plane and then sleep for the first week he is home too. They really need to let those guys rest more. The problem is: there are very few guys doing the work and many, many more hardly working at all. You hear these stories from soldiers that watch all kinds of movies, work out constantly, play games, poker tournaments, etc.....Jeremy is not one of these lucky guys. He is always doing one of 4 things.
1. Working
2. Eating(while working)
3. Talking to me (when he should be sleeping)
4. Sleeping (lots of times while he has a break on a mission)

I am definitely not saying he does it all, but he does a lot without nearly enough recognition. I talk to enough army wives, read enough blogs and message boards, and listen to Jeremy enough to know that all men are not equally involved over there. I WISH Jeremy was one of the guys that didn't have to do anything. I am certainly not downplaying the other soldiers' duties at all. Each and every one of them are heroes. After all, they are sitting in a war zone while we sit in America with our freedom. I am just saying that my hubby is my hero no matter how much he argues with me that he isn't. I appreciate him so much and this will only make him stronger when he gets home. I really wish that every average civilian citizen of this country could live just one day in the life of a soldier at war. Then the day to day "problems" might not seem so important after all. The little things that I see people obsessing over daily around here are so small compared to what really matters. So what if we have to work late, deal with ignorant people, or get caught up with too many boring routines. Which is worse, 15 months of people trying to kill you or a little extra overtime and inconvenience.........I'm just saying think about it.
Lets not forget the third option! Being born into a country like Iraq.

Anyway, on a totally different note....I made this :)

Happy Mother's Day!

We took grandma and mom to the Josh Turner and Carrie Underwood concert Sunday night for Mother's Day. It was a lot of fun, we went to Waffle House afterwards and I brought everyone home totally exhausted! :)


Here we all are, I asked the girl behind us in line to take our pic.

(from the left front row: Ashley(Brian's gf), Me, Grandma, Jana(My BF), and Grandpa. Back row: Mom, Andrew(Jana's Hubby) and Brian)

Here we are without the "grown ups" I realize we are all less than 10 years from 30, some closer than others, but I still wanna call my parents and grandparents "grown ups"
Grandpa and Grandma. Grandpa is representing Jeremy with his 25th Infantry Division Tropic Lightening hat that he always wears. People ask about it everywhere he goes too.
Our seats were AWESOME. I could have reached out and touched Carrie Underwood it was crazy.


Me and Brian in the living room at grandma's house. She fixed some amazing Mexican chicken for lunch after we got back from church. Brian sang a special at church and did great.
Chloe with Nana
Thumbs up from grandma! That means we can eat I think.
Here they are waiting on me to sit down, can anyone spot Chloe?
Jeremy had me download Skype Saturday night. It is an awesome program that allows you to wear headphones and see each other while you are talking. It has a very clear picture and sound. It is as close as you can get to talking face to face. I love it and it is free! I took his picture on my screen :) You can see me at the bottom left taking the picture. That is what he sees on his end.


We had a get together with the Shoptaw side of our family on Saturday. Shoptaw was mom's maiden name, it is her dad's side of the family for those that don't already know! It was soo great to see everyone! I really wish I had taken more pictures though.

We were sitting outside here in the sun, it was hot! (Me and Ashley)
We were looking at scrapbooks from years ago. (Papaw, Aunt Joan, and Me)
Anabelle and Mamaw Shoptaw
She wears those bunny ears well huh?
I took mom home and I found these in her front yard. I was really excited :) I made wishes!

So here it is Monday night and I was supposed to hear from Jeremy around lunch time yesterday. I haven't talked to him since Saturday night. I really wish he would call! Ugh have I mentioned I hate deployment?

Me and the foot longs...

Chloe and I were matching today.

Itsy is almost 5 months old, isn't he cute?
All of my shifts at Mazzio's were picked up by others and I am so glad. Luckily we had a girl come home from college for the summer, and another lady that kind of quit last week is working Friday night for me. Yay! I was really worried about how that was going to work. I haven't talked to Jeremy today. Chloe and I went to grandma and grandpa's then over to mom's house and spent some time with them. I helped Ashley with her final paper and that was about it! Now its storming outside yet again.

You don't even have to donate money, there is place on this link where you just pledge to help prevent animal cruelty. This is my favorite charity, we donate to them and the Petsmart charity. They are both great. If you do decide to donate to the ASPCA, you get a free bracelet and t-shirt! You may have seen the commercials on t.v. for the ASPCA. They feature the Sarah McLachlan song "angel" and have pictures of animals that were rescued from Hurricane Katrina, etc. EVERY TIME this commercial comes on, I am an emotional wreck for about 20 minutes. I can't help it.

I am so sorry I missed your calls today! I went to the doctor after I got off work and he did x-rays. Come to find out, I did fracture my wrist. He took me off work for two weeks, however I am working tomorrow night and Friday night. There is no one else that can work my shifts, so I will be waiting tables with one hand...awesome. The people of Sheridan are (not) that patient, I guess I should just be thankful that I don't have to work another Sunday night. The Sunday crowd is the worst! Last Sunday confirmed this and apparently I'm not over it can you tell? It was that bad.

Cookie Monster

Today is my first day off in awhile, I have been working a lot! My wrist is getting worse and worse. I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow after work, since the steroids did not help. Tonight, we are making cookies to send to Jeremy and the guys. He finally admitted that he would like to have some home made cookies sent to him. He said that he is always eating half of the cookies that his friend's wife sends them. Last I knew, we couldn't send anything that would melt! He found out that the post office is using refrigerated shipping for the soldiers now, and he would like some. I was wondering about that, because Jeremy loves cookies. He loves chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar, and peanut butter cookies if anyone else would like to send some too. They share some out there, so the more the merrier! The only time I wouldn't send anything would be between June 14th and July 1st (since he will be home in late June). He called me earlier and had not been to sleep in 48 hours. He was about to get a shower and go to bed. They had a very eventful night, which involved rolling a stryker off a bridge into a canal. Everyone is fine, but he is pretty sore from it. He fixed it all by himself too.

Friday night we went to Toadsuck for the Blake Shelton concert. It was a lot of fun. We went to IHOP afterwards and then to the new Wal-Mart in Maumelle. It is nice and very different than any other Wal-Mart I have ever seen. Me and Ashley
Our attempt at a group pic (thats Brian in the back in case you can't tell).

Saturday night I worked at Disco and then got up and worked at Mazzio's .That was our weekend!

If anyone would like to write or call Jeremy, please e-mail me at amandam_32@yahoo.com and I'll send you his contact details.

I talked to Jeremy again today. He is doing great. We are counting down and planning for his return! I wish he already had his plane tickets, so we could know for sure that he would be here at a certain time. I probably won't know when to go to the airport until the night before, if that. They can plan when the planes are going to leave post, but from there he has no control over. Jeremy said that some guys wind up staying in Europe for up to a week before they can finally catch a plane to the United States. I don't know why it is so complicated. I think it is because they have lots of stops because the army is cheap (our money goes to the Iraqi army, entrepreneurs, and schools you know). So anyway, lets see if he is here on June 27th...

Yay for May!!

This is how I found my pups when I looked out in the back yard...they were cuddled up and snoozing away!


Also, I love my camera the zoom is awesome! It wasn't supposed to be that great but I'm impressed.