A Long Week....

It has been a LONG week. All day I kept looking at my plans for Thursday. This whole week has been long. The kids are still crazy at school. We got 2 inches of snow last night, that in combination with St. Nicholas Day tomorrow, and just the excitement of Christmas.

I spent the night getting things organzied. I ran to Wal-mart to pick up presents that I had shipped to the store to save money on shipping. It actually was great to have purchased everything online and then just have to pick up everything. There was no line today to pick things up, so it went smoothly. I then had to pick up the kids and the neighbor boy. We got home about 5 and got dinner going. I ended up making soup, because I was so cold all day. I think it didn't get above 25 all day and had below zero windchills. I picked up somethings to make "Puppy Chow" for AJ and got that made. I realized that Keegan had no uniform shirts left, so had to do some laundry. Then, I sorted through the kids presents to see what I still needed to get. I found that I probably need to get a few more little things for the boys. But, really they don't need anything else.

We will be doing some Toys for Tots shopping with the Marines on Saturday, then will head to Champaign to spend the night in a hotel with my friend Angie and her two kids. Angie was my rock last deployment and I haven't seen her in almost 2 years. I am so excited. We got adjoining rooms, so that the kids can be put to sleep and then we can visit. Then.. the we will all get an early Christmas present on Sunday. We will get to spend a half an hour with AJ via teleconference through the Freedom Calls Foundation. The boys don't have a clue, as I know that anything can change and I don't want to deal with them being disappointed. So, I won't tell them until we physically get there or maybe not even until they see AJ. It's been hard to keep a secret, but I think it is best and they will be so excited. We haven't seen him in over 70 days now. I don't think he will believe how big they have gotten and how much they have learned in school. I am sure they will spend the half hour preforming.

Well,I am totally exhausted. AJ has been catching me on Email around 10:15 each night.. so I have to stay up for that. The past few nights I have turned off my computer at 10 and he has called me to tell me to get on. He has said it is to cold to stand outside and chat with me. It's been getting down into the 30's at night there.

I hope you all are enjoying your week and getting things done for Christmas. It is overwhelming this year since I have to work through the Friday before Christmas. There won't be a lot of time before, and I just want to get everything done I can before so that my grandma and I can bake before Christmas.

That's all for now....