H1N1 flu, be careful!

Just days after my last blog post stating I'm fine and Tommy is fine, here I am landed in the hospital with "swine flu". Since I'm left with quite a bit of time on my hands, I thought I would go through my experience so far and also give you the info. I've gotten from my doctor about how NOT to get it. Trust me, you don't want to get it!

When I first heard about this flu I never thought I would get it. I never get sick. I want all of you to know that you most certainly can get it, and quite easily as it's passed from person to person with ease. All you need to do to get it is be in the same room with someone as they sneeze or cough, or touch something an infected person has touched and then transfer it through eating or even blowing your nose!

Swine flu can last a MONTH. Typically it lasts about 7 days for your average joe, but if your immune system is down for any reason, or if you're pregnant (yipee for me!) it can last much longer. You can have it for a good week and not know it, but that's a good amount of time for the virus to grow and mature and then WHAM! You wake up with the full blown symptoms. You won't even know what hit you.

The best way to stay flu free is to wash your hands as frequently as possible. Don't eat, drink, rub your face or eyes unless you've washed your hands. If someone sneezes, cover your nose and mouth and get out of the room. Of course, if someone you live with gets it, my serious advice is to stay out of the house until that person is most definitely well. You will get it, no question! Justin has coughed on all surfaces in our house, and no matter how clean I tried to keep everything, Tommy and I still have gotten it. Tommy's symptoms arrived today. Luckily kids have gotten over it much faster than adults and he is still his playful self. He is running a fever, which is sometimes the first symptom. For me, it was a cough.

Please pray for my family! Justin still has it and Tommy is just starting it, my poor baby. And be careful! It can't spread anymore if we are all aware of how to stay clear of it!

Sickness has hit our house!

Where do I begin! Our little family has been plagued by illness for about the last month. Started out as a small cold for all of us. First Tommy, then Justin, and finally me. Tommy got over it in about two days, and it didn't really seem to bother him. Justin got it pretty bad, and actually got sent home from work for two days. His cough has been lingering for the past couple weeks and now the full symptoms have returned with a vengeance.

Here he is in our bedroom, trying to sleep it off. Luckily he got another 3 days off this week to start feeling better. You can hate me for this picture later, Justin. :)

Tommy has managed to stay healthy through all of this, and I have only the normal pregnancy sickness. I threw up for the first time last night, so I can see the fun is just beginning! I live on animal crackers, watered down juice, and the occasional bowl of cereal. The upside to all of this is that our food bill has gone down some. No one but Tommy feels up to eating these past few days. I just try to remind myself that getting sick every now and then is healthy, and things can only get better once you're past the worst of it.

I have to admit the hardest part of all this is trying to figure out whose water bottle belongs to whom, since I don't want this spreading around. I found a sharpie fixes that problem beautifully.

Tommy turns two, new baby, oh my!

So Tommy is officially living through the terrible twos! He turned two October 2nd, at 11:30am to be precise. The party was fun, it was Horton Hears A Who themed. The cake was ordered from the German bakery by our house and it ended up being pink. We ordered it to be raspberry filled and we didn't realize that meant the frosting would be raspberry too. Oops! But it was delicious! I would love to post pictures from his party, but they are too big and won't upload onto blogspot. However, they are all on facebook. Make sure to check them out if you haven't already!

Here is Tommy, he's helping daddy in the kitchen.

Also, I'm pregnant! Justin and I found out about a week ago. We were both very surprised. Yes, I was crying in this picture. We are both very excited and grateful to have another baby on the way. We're hoping for a girl but would be happy with either. The due date is June 27th.

We have a lot to look forward to! Can't wait to share it with all of you here on our blog!

Carving Pumpkins!

Today Justin, Tommy and I carved our first pumpkin together. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I've never carved a pumpkin before and I thought it would be harder to cut through the pumpkin than it was. It only took us about 45 minutes for two pumpkins! Here are some fun pictures we took.

Here is Justin's pumpkin

This one is mine

Justin finishing his up

It was so fun to get the insides out!

Our neighbor's black cat Merlin came by, it was perfect timing!

I love this picture!

Tommy taking a break, cheez its are his favorite.

He is such a sweetheart!

Justin's Homecoming

Justin is finally HOME!!

I cannot describe to you how amazing it is to have a husband again! :)

It was so exciting going to his welcome home ceremony. I was so anxious all day. Another military wife picked me up to take me to the ceremony, she lives just 2 streets over. When we got there we were brought to the basketball court at the gym. We waited for about an hour, but we got updates when the soldiers arrived. Everyone was so anxious, there were a lot of military wives there that hadn't seen their husbands for a year. We thought the soldiers were coming in from the front entrance into the gym, but the wall lifted up from the left and the soldiers were there lined up. They played the song "the boys are back in town". It was so fun. Here are some pictures.



There were a lot of people, here is one side of the room.






Here's Tommy while we were waiting in the bleachers for the returning soldiers to arrive.



Everyone was so anxious, there are a lot of soldiers in Justin's company.



Here is the wall lifting up with the soldiers in formation. I was SO excited.



When Justin picked Tommy up he started pouting like he was about to cry, then he buried his face in Justin. It was really cute. Tommy didn't recognize him at first.






Tommy has never bit his bottom lip like that, but he was trying not to cry, it really was adorable. He had no idea what was going on!




First family picture we've had in a long time.

Thinking Aloud...

So lately I've been really thinking a lot about our plans for the future. Being in the army really does make everything unknown. You have no choice but to accept that you don't know where you'll be in 2, 3, and 4 years. Justin has 3 years active duty left, and then another 3 inactive duty.

I realized I kind of like not knowing. It's going to be so exciting each time Justin gets new orders and we'll finally see where we're going next. We have 2 more years in Germany (it's already been 1) and after that we really don't know where we'll be sent to. He'll only have a year left so wherever it is we won't be there long. He does get to have his "top 3" choices of where he wants to be stationed. I know our first choice will be Hawaii, which would be AMAZING.

After Justin is released in 3 years the army will set up interviews for him, and most people have job offers before they're out of the army. We'll go wherever the best offer comes from, but most likely it won't be in Arizona. We've thought about having another baby but we're not sure when. If it's a girl Justin and I have decided that will be it for us, but if it's another boy we'll try one more time for a girl. ( I have a feeling it will be a girl, fingers crossed!) Not that we wouldn't want another boy. :)

So Justin gets home in 24 days. They pushed it back to August 21st instead of the 15th. They may be back on the 18th but I'm counting on the 21st at the latest. I talked with another wife whose husband is in Justin's company and she gave me all the details of what to expect when the soldiers will be home. I'll get a call when Justin's flight leaves, another call when he gets to the airport, and then a final call when I should go to the base for the ceremony. They have a short ceremony where all the soldiers march out to their families, I'm not sure exactly what else happens but I know it's short and everyone just wants to see their husband and go home. I'm hoping it'll be around dinner time when he gets home so that I have all day to prepare. :) They'll be a lot of pictures to post of when Justin gets home. I am unbelievably excited. It's almost all I think about.

After he gets back he needs to have physicals and exams to make sure he is in perfect health. He and I are also getting lasic surgery (for free!) sometime soon. Most of you know that Justin and I have the same eye prescription and we are both almost legally blind. (short little story.. both of us woke up one morning and I saw this black smudgey blur on the ceiling, Justin and I wracked our brain trying to figure out what it was because we didn't have our contacts in, realized once we put them in that it was an air conditioning vent...) So that is really exciting news. After his exams he'll have up to 30 days paid vacation, we'll relax a couple days here and then head off to AZ. We'll visit with family and then drive our car up to the docks to have it shipped here to Germany and stop in at Disneyland, and maybe fly out from there back home... we haven't really hammered out the details yet. We just know we need a vacation ASAP.

Okay so back on topic, I've decided I like the mililtary lifestyle quite a bit, except for the deployment part. That part is really quite miserable. Other than that I wish Justin could stay in forever and we could spend our lives traveling the world, and getting paid for it to boot! :) Enough rambling, to see new pictures that I had trouble uploading here, please add me on facebook.

Lifes a bowl of cherries ♥

So we've discovered that Tommy loves cherries! I'm certain he would have them for every meal if he could. We're lucky enough to have neighbors who have a cherry tree (Danke Ines and Andre!) and they share with Tommy.

It's been raining here for about a week, so Tommy can't go outside as often as he would like to. I think the rain will stop soon though, this might just be monsoon season. It's so pretty and I love the rain, but too much of it isn't good. Tommy and I are ready to see the sun again.

Justin gets home in about 25 days!!! Love you Justin!