How To Prepare for a Visit From Your Adopted Soldier

Stay up till after 1:00 a.m., because you are too hyper to sleep.

Wake up shortly before 7:30 a.m. and bake two dozen cookies. Accidently burn them. Throw them away.

Bake two dozen more cookies. Somehow screw up the recipie so the cookies turn out really bad. Throw away.

Give up the baking; call hubby who is conveniently at the store, and ask him to bring home some cookies. :(

Frantically run around the house, cleaning.

Wash the blankets, sheets, & pillow cases in the "guest room" (which is really your daughters' room, but since one of them is at a church camp, the other one is being temporarily evicted for a night to her brothers' room.)

Frantically run around the house, dusting. (This, after an extended and annoying search for the Pledge spray stuff.)

Hubby returns with necessities such as cookies, beer, wine coolers and food.

Retrieve sheets, blankets, pillow cases from the dryer. Try to make up guest bed. Get into an argument with the stretchy elastic bottom sheet, which does not want to cooperate. Get one corner on, and another corner comes loose. Eventually, after a valiant battle... the sheet loses and is forced to stay properly affixed to the bed.

Frantically run around the house, cleaning more stuff.

Try to make the 11-year-old sweep the sidewalk & the porch -- well.

Finally, relax. Contemplate posting on your blog.

Suddenly realize you still haven't done yer hair OR yer makeup yet.

Frantically fix hair and makeup.

Accept three cases of Girl Scout Cookies from a local Girl Scout leader who stops by to dontate them to be shipped to the troops. Put cookies in office.

Contemplate cleaning more.

Figure that this is about as good as the house is gonna look, give up.

Type blog post, and wait!

Only 11 hours to go...

....until our adopted Soldier get here to visit for the weekend! Wooohooo!

Why it is SO important to support the troops

From CJ's blog, "A Soldier's Perspective" comes this sobering truth.... our support DOES make a difference, and it IS needed, far more than we could ever imagine....

I ran across a story today that literally just broke my heart and reinforced once again, why it's so important that we do what we can to support our Troops, especially when they're deployed.

While we're all sitting in the comforts of our homes, we need to remember our troops who are deployed so far away from home. Not only in our words, but in our actions as well. I'll start out with a short quote from a young soldier's blog.

"mail is something to look foreword to. normally i dont get anything… but there was one time i did and it felt soooo good. everyday people come in and ask the supply sergent if mail has come for them. and almost everytime the answer is no. some people just stopped asking. ..by"Soldier" aka SPC Michael Crutchfield

Sadly, SPC Michael Crutchfield, age 21, serving in Iraq, took his life on December 23, 2006. Is his death something that could have been prevented? Very possibly so.

READ THE REST HERE....

It is SO importa nt that each of us does everything we can to SHOW our troops that we DO support them and appreciate them. This breaks my heart into smithereens..... We MUST stand by them -- both when they are deployed, and AFTER THEY COME HOME.... they need us.