It's Almost Over

Sorry I haven't posted in so long, but I'm afraid I might jinx everything. Sprout is busy preparing to head home and it won't be long now. He has been real busy working and he is more than ready to end this deployment. Sproutette is ready too. Hopefully, he'll be home by Christmas and we are planning to take the kids and head on out for a very happy Christmas.

For the time being, I am sort of holding my breath, keeping my fingers crossed, and squenching my eyes shut tight so that nothing happens to interfere with Sprouts homecoming. Soon we can relax, but for now it's just hold on tight.

Counting down the days.

The Best Calling Home Website for Deployed Soldiers

Since Sprout has been in Iraq, one thing that has gone consistently well are communications. Because of where he is at, he has had access to phone service the entire time, so we have stayed in constant touch with him or at least his wife has. At first I was buying phone cards and mailing them over as part of his care packages, but early on he found out about THIS website and it has been a Godsend. I took it upon myself to make sure that he always had a way to call home. With the SPAWAR website, I was able to establish an account, give him the code and he can use it to call home anytime he wants to. And best of all, every couple of weeks I can go to the website, check out how much money is left on his account and add more anytime it's needed. This has been the best gift I could give him while he is there and he has thanked me for it over and over again.

I just thought there might be other folks out there looking for best ways to provide their soldiers with phone calls. This is the easiest way I have found.

My Sagging Yellow Ribbon

Fifteen months is a really, really, really long time. I am so ready for this year to be over.


My yellow ribbon needs a hug-ectomy.

John McCain for President

I heard about this guy's video on Rush Limbaugh's show today. Wow! Be sure you watch it all the way to the end.

The Most Powerful Moment in Politics

Last night during the Republican National Convention while Sarah Palin gave her speech accepting the nomination for Vice-President, her little daughter, Piper, held her sleeping baby brother and did what any big sister would do during such an important moment. I watched this and laughed out loud. You gotta know she has seen her Mama do this.

Birthday Boxes

Sprout's birthday box is in the mail. Since I can't send him a birthday cake, I am sending him a birthday Tootsie Roll instead. One of those big ones that takes all day to eat. I'm sure he will just love it.



In other news, I have been reading Atlas Shrugged since the middle of May when I begin reading it while Stoicdad was having this done...



I'm beginning to wonder if I am the only person who has read this book just for fun and not as a college requirement. Man, it is a long book. But it's really good. I only get to read it on my lunch hour and sometimes at night, but I am only about 150 pages from the end and I am determined to finish. I feel like I have been serving a prison sentence being tied to this book for so long. But I can't stop reading it. It is that good. It's a novel about the world collapsing under socialism and it is kind of scary. It really makes you think about our world today. Anyway, I am 3 pages into a speech that I've been told goes on for 75 pages. I guess I should be reading and not writing right now.

Oh, the heck with it. Who is John Galt?

Immortalized on Google

This is weird. I was just checking out Google Maps and looking at our house in the street-view. If you haven't checked out Google Maps and looked at the street-view, you need to go now and look at it. You just enter your address in the box and click on search. Then you click on street-view and you can scroll down your street and get a 360 degree view of the entire street. I would post the link here but I don't really want to splash my address around, not that I don't think everybody out in Internetland is perfectly nice, but you never know Hey! I found a way to post the picture from Google without broadcasting my address.

What's weird is that it is so dated. I could probably narrow down the exact day the picture was taken if I really tried. I know that it was most likely on a Tuesday because the trash cans are out and Tuesday is trash day although sometimes they come on Wednesday. And it was in December because my door is decorated for Christmas and I know it was this PAST December in 2007 because there is a yellow ribbon on the door and a sign in my yard that I put up for Sprout that says "Support Our Troops"


Here's a nighttime picture of the same sign.


Wow, I don't know how often Google can afford to update the street-view pictures...I doubt it will be very often, so Sprout's time in Iraq is sort of immortalized on Google. How cool is that?