Great weekend

Big weekend for me! I adopted a new soldier from Soldiers’ Angel, spruced up the house, helped celebrate a neighbor’s birthday and the arrival of their new kitten, and hosted a Mother’s Day BBQ at my home.

I’ve been a member of Soldiers’ Angels since 2006 and have adopted dozens of soldiers over the years. My infantryman went on mail stop May 9, which means he will be heading home in about a month. YEAH JASON!!!!! I’m always so excited when they go home safe and sound. My new soldier is actually a Marine. I’ve only had one other Marine, which was actually my very first adoption. Bless his heart, he emailed me almost everyday!! Some Angels get solders that write very little or not at all. That can be very discouraging. I can tell you there is nothing like getting “free mail” in your mailbox. You just get crazy excited.

Anyway, my new Marine is still a big mystery to me. There was no entry in the gender field and the name is non-gender specific so the box I sent out Saturday was pretty generic. I’m waiting with bated breath to hear back from them. It’s so exciting!!

Sprucing up the house is always a mixed bag. You inevitably find something you’ve been looking for and forgot where you put it, in my case it was a book. You also get things put away you’ve just been pushing to the side for a while, for me it was the staple gun. And, you finally make a decision on whether to keep things or throw them away. That can be a painful process, and you might need to call a friend to talk you through it, or rely on a heavy dose of chocolate for those really hard decisions.

Our little Emily turned 12 this weekend. She is the most delightful kid, who loves everyone and always brings a smile to your face. – Her mother (Debbi) assures me this is not always the case. – For her big day she got to go to the SPCA and adopt a kitten, a grey short-hair with four white socks, named Pepper. He’s very cute and seems to be quite sturdy, since he survived the first day in our neighborhood full of kids wanting to hold him and play with him. Then there is Rusty, the 100 lb dog next door who just wants the cat to love him. Can you imagine being the size of an adult shoe and having something big enough to swallow you in one bit, stick its nose in your face and sniff? All I know is I wouldn’t have lived through the day this cat did.

Mother’s Day was great!! We had seven mothers present and eight of their 15 children present. Some of us were doing double duty. Aunt Violet and Aunt Billie are mothers of sons and have no daughters, so our mom has always shared us with them. It was like having all three of my mothers there at once.

I received a very nice gift from my son, Matt. He sculpted, out of found metal objects, a flower on a base for me. It is so awesome!!

The BBQ was incredible, thanks to Mark. The house still smelled of BBQ this morning. Is there anything that smells better than the first BBQ of the season? It’s right up there with the first wood smoke of winter! The rest of the meal was just as good. I think I over estimated our need for pie. I made 4 and even after sending some home with everyone I had almost a whole one left.

It was really hard to come to work this morning and say good-bye to such a satisfying weekend; I just wanted it to go on forever!