our wonderful weekend

Well, those four days we had with Jeremy were about as wonderful as they possibly could have been. We ran some errands as a family, went to see a movie, had good friends over for dinner, visited with more friends at a piano recital, attended Seth's last baseball game of the season, enjoyed a lovely Sunday morning service, and had a fabulous birthday dinner for Jeremy. It was a busy weekend, but not really rushed. We just had so much fun being together, and Reuben almost acted as though Daddy had never left.

Somehow we were able to get through the whole weekend without falling apart all the time, in fact...it wasn't really even a temptation. Frequently enough I'd watch Jeremy do something and the reality that this could be the last time I ever see him do that would cross my mind, but I was always able to just acknowledge that ugly reality and then promptly cease to dwell on it. The evidence of God's grace and the prayer support of many is rather overwhelming. Even when it came time to say our final goodbyes, we were both calm and collected. Tearful, but not falling apart. Frankly, I don't understand how that was possible, but it happened.

This morning I got this e-mail from Jeremy:

Good morning everyone! I just wanted to let everyone know that I was just promoted from E-3 (Private First Class) To E-4 (Specialist).I really didn't expect to get this promotion until later this year, (even as late as the Christmas, New Years time frame) so I was really surprised and excited to get it this early. This promotion gets me a little more money each month and gets me one pay grade closer to sergeant, but it really doesn't give me any additional authority or responsibility. Even so I was pretty happy.

While I'm typing I guess I'll fill everyone in on what's going on out here. We have a couple of last minute things to take care of and then we'll be off to Kuwait. We have to have all our personal stuff packed and moved out by 4:00pm on Friday, so I'm thinking that we will either leave late Friday night or in the small hours of the morning on Saturday.It's getting closer all the time, and I'm glad. I'm ready to just do what we have to do and come home. I think we'll be spending two to three weeks in Kuwait and then we'll fly into Baghdad International Airport and then chopper into our FOB (Forward Operating Base). While we're in Kuwait we'll be acclimating to the heat and re-qualifying with all our weapons. Beyond that, I don't know what we'll be doing, but it shouldn't take two weeks to do the ranges that we need to do. I'm really not looking forward to the heat, and I fully expect to be a heat casualty at some point before the year is over (that doesn't mean that I think the heat is going to kill me, I just think I'll probably pass out or something like that at some point). Just to give you an idea of how hot it can get, they have recorded a temperature of 158 degrees Fahrenheit in Iraq. That's a little toasty.

Well, I'm going to sign off for now. I think of you all often, and I'm sorry that I haven't been better about returning e-mail or snail mail.

Have a good one!
Jeremy Minter

It's now only two weeks away from my due date, which incites a mixture of relief and hesitancy all in the same moment. I'll be so glad to not be pregnant any more, to hold this little one in my arms instead of my abdomen. But...I don't quite have everything ready for her to come yet, and...well, childbirth kinda hurts and so that's a little bit of a downer. On the upside, Jeremy may be able come home on emergency leave when the baby's born. It may not work out, but it's something to hope and pray for.

"And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
Philippians 4:7

Heatwaves and Homecomings

This past week Connecticut had a bit of a heatwave, with four days in a row mostly in the 90s. Now, being from Texas such temperatures should not phase me, but in Texas people live in air conditioned houses, they don't have to just sit and bake amidst a puddle of prickly sweat. I was never pregnant in the heat before either, which might be another factor, but regardless, I was so very grateful when the weather took a turn for the cooler on Wednesday last week.

Before it was all over though, I got our patio area rigged out for Reuben to play outside where it was cooler. I installed a hinged baby gate and filled up a little $6 kiddie pool with about two inches of water. Since he discovered the great outdoors, he was often to be found clawing at the door to go out and play...and now he finally can.

This Thursday (which happens to be Jeremy's birthday) I drive down to Fort Dix, NJ to pick up Jeremy at 3:00p.m. for four days of leave time. He has to be back by 10:00pm on Monday, and they should be flying out to Kuwait July 2, then traveling to their new base near Baghdad by convoy.

It would be impossible to describe the cacophony of emotions rushing through me right now. I'm desperately looking forward to seeing Jeremy again, and to him seeing Reuben - who has learned so many things since the last time Jeremy saw him. Will Reuben remember his Daddy and just pick up where he left off as though Daddy had never been gone? How on earth will I manage to joyously embrace every moment we have together with that constant anticipation of an all too eminent goodbye just hours away. Pregnancy hormones are raging, and they certainly don't help at a time like this!

In the mean time, there are so many things I'm busily finishing and preparing before Jeremy's all too brief homecoming. It's rather encouraging to look back over the past three months Jeremy has been mobilizing at Fort Dix and see just how many things I've done and projects that I've completed. The time has been well spent, and that leaves me hopeful that I can use the rest of this year+ apart in a useful, meaningful, and productive manner.

the Waiting Game

Well, life keeps rolling on. My days are filled with keeping house, playing with, caring for, and training Reuben, a few ongoing projects for Church, and keeping up with Dr. visits and insurance type stuff. The highlight of my day is generally the phone call that I get from Jeremy every evening. It's a pleasant enough existence really, my schedule remains pretty open and my stress level usually stays pretty low as far as responsibilities are concerned. We've adjusted pretty well to life without Jeremy, and yet every moment of life would be so much nicer if he weren't so miserably absent. There's so much I love about my life right now, but I am officially tired of being huge pregnant now, and very tired of Jeremy being gone.

Playing at the Park

Wadding in the Pond with Aunt Hannah

It's only two weeks until I get to go pick Jeremy up for a four day weekend at home. Three weeks from the approximate time Jeremy will go overseas. Four weeks from my due date. The mixture of emotions produced by this upcoming sequence of events is really quite bewildering. I'm desperately looking forward to having Jeremy home again, if only for a few days... And yet, that marks the beginning of the end, the last little bit of together time before a very long time apart. The past 10 weeks have been long and hard, but there's still the reassurance that he's only about four hours away and quite safe. The sooner he gets to Iraq, the sooner he gets home, but the sooner he gets to Iraq, the sooner he'll be surrounded by hundreds of crazy people who would like nothing more than to take out another American Infidel.

To further complicate the situation, there's a temptation to hope that Anna Beth will be born before Jeremy ships out so he would have the chance to meet her. Yet I know it's folly to allow any such expectations. Best to just hold the whole situation with a very open hand and happily look forward to seeing God work out His own perfect plan for us.

Watching Uncle Seth's baseball game

My New Car

Well last week was pretty excieting for me. We used our Economic Stimulus Check from the IRS to buy Michael's car he just replaced (Michael is Jeremy's next youngest brother). I had been resisting the idea of getting a car for some time, insisting that it was working just fine to simply use the truck that we already have. I love our little truck, love driving it, and I dreaded the seemingly scarry process of getting a second vehicle registered and insured - something I'd never done on my own. With time I finally came around, and as it turned out our insurance only went up $32/year once the multi-vehicle discount was applied to our policy, and the registration process was more simple than I had imagined as well. The convenience of having a car impressed me immediately, especially since Hannah rides with us more and more these days (a rather tight squeeze in the truck!) This is the first car that was ever bought specifically for me, registered and insured in my name...which I think is pretty cool.

The other little bit of excietment this past week was discovering a bump in my left hand right where it had been hurting for the past several weeks. I had assumed there was a minor sprain that was just taking awhile to heal, but when I found that bump I started really wondering if I had broken a bone in my hand without realizing it. It was all rather mysterious and concerning, and so, with the encouragement of everyone I talked to (husband, Mom, Mother-in-law, Obstytrician's office, etc.) I did something I almost never do: I went and got it checked out. Because of our present insurance situation I won't have a regular family doctor until the first of June, so after trying and failing to use a walk-in-clinic, I ended up at the emergency room for the first time in my 24 years of life. Much to my embaressment it turned out to be nothing more than a little ganglion cyst, which is perfectly benign and usually goes away on it's own. It does have the potential of growing and, without any warning, snapping your tendon or ligament or whatever it's attached to. That was a bit of a scarry thought, but my case was a long way from that becoming a possibility. To further my embraressment at rushing off to the ER, on Sunday morning I went to rub my hand to see if anything had changed...and the cyst was completely gone. Not only was gone, but the "sprain" I'd been suffering from for weeks was almost completely gone too. Praise the Lord! :)

Reuben continues to learn and grow more and more each day. I think his little ears may be bothering him as of the last couple days. He's been in this state where he's perfectly happy and content most of the time, but at regular intervals, for no apparent reason, he suddenly falls apart on me. That, combined with him walking around fiddling with his ears, and of course he seems to be taller every other day I look at him too, so growing pains a probably a factor as well. After a few late nights out last week his sleeping patterns are all wacked out at the moment, keeping me up most of the last two nights. So that's our big push for this week: get back on some kind of workable pattern of sleeping at night and regular naps during the day, before Mama looses her mind. (chuckle)

Jeremy's time out at the "FOB" has been going pretty well. He's computer has not able to get online out there, but otherwise he's really enjoying the training. It's been some of the most realistic, pertinent training exercises they've done since arriving at Fort Dix, so they're all doing their best to absorb every moment of it. At this point it looks like they'll be moving back to regular barracks about a week from tomorrow.

Notes from Jeremy

After a much better return flight we are now home, Hannah is officially "moved in", and we had a lovely Mother's Day Sunday. So, now seems like a great time to give an update on Jeremy.

"Full Battle Rattle, minus weapon, ammo, elbow pads, and knee pads"

E-mail from May 5
"...The gunners don't have anything to do today, so we've been sitting around doing classes all day so far. We were told yesterday that the gunners will be getting alot of training later on this week, including some of us who will be qualifying on shotguns. I really want to be one of those guys!! I don't know how they're picking those people, but I've already started pressing my case. We'll also be doing some M2 training and we may be doing some M240B and MK19 training soon as well. By the time we leave, I should be trained on almost every individual weapon that the army issues, with the exception of maybe the AT-4 (a shoulder fired anti-tank rocket) and the M203 (a single shot 40mm grenade launcher that mounts under the barrel of an M4 or M16). If I was a terrorist, I would be afraid of me.

Everyone that isn't a gunner had to be out at the parking lot at 0530 this morning to do PMCS (Preventitive Maintinence, Checks, and Services), and then they had to roll out for the range by 0630. They needed to zero their aiming lasers (PEQ 15) at a time when it was dark enough to see the laser pointer on the target. I almost felt bad because I didn't have to be at formation until 0730, but I did what any good soldier does in that position - I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour. When we did have our formation and started our classes, I actually got to teach one that I had made myself. When I got the Power Point program I sat down and made a Close Quarters Combat presentation that I had a chance to present today. Even though there weren't any NCOs there, I got some really good feedback from the guys. It was a really gratifying experience, and I definitly want to Improve that presentation and maybe even make some other ones as I come up with different subject ideas..."

This past week, one of the guys in Jeremy's platoon got pretty banged up in a Humvee accident. For a while now there had been a real lack of organization and over site for many of the little training exercises going on every day. This finally showed when, after one group of guys had a late night training exercise and were back out for an early morning training exercise after only 4.5 hours of sleep, a weary Humvee driver swerved to miss an oncoming car while rounding a corner, and would have rolled the vehicle had they not run into a light post. The gunner was injured badly enough that they thought he had broken his femur and foot, though x-rays later proved it was just some very deep muscle bruising. The private involved was very well liked by everyone, and his injuries may make it difficult to impossible to complete all his training with the unit, which means he may not get to deploy with them. The positive side of this is that those higher up have started being more careful about how they dish out the training schedule.

This past week also saw Jeremy's unit doing some chemical weapons training. He told me all about it on the phone, and it was all really cool, but it's also kinda in a different language that I call "Army Speak." I can usually understand it fairly well, but I have a hard time remembering all that technical stuff necessary retelling purposes. I remember that they did their training using real gas, whatever gas it was, to encourage everyone to really take this seriously and do the training exercise right.

Jeremy & his Lieutenant right after the gas mask training

On Wednesday of this week the unit will move out to "the FOB", ie: Forward Operating Base. Actually, it's a simulated FOB for training purposes, and the training is really going to be intense from all they've heard. They'll get very few hours of sleep every night, be running missions all day long, and will be under constant scrutiny from all their leadership, and the special training unit there to oversee their time at the FOB. As Jeremy described all the things they have to know, all the questions they have to be able to answer at any time about their gear, standard operating procedure, or whatever....not to mention all they have to do, and all of it while carrying pounds and pounds of armor and weapons and miscellaneous other gear...I was starting to feel overwhelmed for him. They'll be out there at least two weeks, possibly as many as four or more. I just never realized before how strong, and how incredibly well trained and on top of things they have to be. They really have to know everything about what's going on around them, be able to pick up for anyone else as needed, regardless of their personal specialty, and so on. It's pretty insane...and though I've always known this, I'm now extremely aware just how amazing my husband really is.

Visiting Texas

On Wednesday, April 30, Reuben and I flew down to Texas (and quite an adventure that was!) so we could be here for Rebekah's senior recital Friday night. The trials of traveling with a troublesome toddler were well worth it, as that was by far the coolest recital of any kind that I have ever been to, let alone heard of (and no, I'm not at all biased). ;)

Hannah (her piano teacher) & Rebekah

Of course it's also been really nice to be able to visit with friends and family I don't often see. My grandparents, Uncle Ed, and cousin Cayla all made the trip out from Louisianna, and it was especially nice getting to visit with them, even though it was far too brief.

My Paw Paw, Uncle Ed, and Dad

Rebekah & our cousin Cayla

Rebekah, Melinda, Verity, and I got to do a fun little "girl's afternoon out" in honor of Verity's birthday (which I won't be here for later this month). We also got to be here for my Dad's 53rd birthday, finally got to meet my latest Nephew, Ian (Jennifer's newest addition), and tonight we get to attend Rebekah's play: Dan Daredevil.

Mostly we've just enjoyed hanging out with my family. As soon as he saw our greeting party of aunts and uncles at the airport, he broke into a grin and started reaching for them (which I thought was rather impressive). The whole visit he has very much enjoyed playing with his long lost family in Texas, and the feeling most definitely seems to be mutual. ;)

Reuben loves the backyard, and has had a marvelous time splashing in the little kiddie pool and wobbeling around on the trampoline. The family dogs have also been a delight as they're the first dogs he's ever spent time with that were close to his size, and will stay still and quiet long enough for him to pet them.

It's a Girl!

On Wednesday I had another prenatal check-up and did a second ultrasound to find out if we're having a boy or girl. Early on in my pregnancy I couldn't decide which I would prefer, while Jeremy was quite certain he wanted another boy. As time went on I always thought of this baby as a boy and always referred to him as a he...

Well, much to my shock, he's a her. I'm a little ashamed to say that I was rather upset right at first. I actually started crying when I told Jeremy on the phone, and I even stopped at Burger King to get myself a milk shake on the way home. My mind was whirling with unpleasant images of pink, pink, and more pink...frilly, poofy pink at that. My blissful imaginations about our little Levi chasing after his big brother in bare feet and blue jeans were dashed to pieces...and to make matters worse, I ordered a strawberry milkshake, which is very, very pink.

But after a day or two I started coming around. I quickly enough realized that Anna Beth can chase after her big brother in bare feet and blue jeans, and most likely will, just as easily as a Levi Mark would. And, while friends and family may shower our little girl with an abundance of pink and frills, I don't have to buy pink and frills for her, so it should balance out just fine. I really do like pink after all, just so long as it's in moderation. So, when Hannah, Reuben, and I went out shopping on Friday, I checked the sale rack at Kohl's in the baby section and decided to get a little girl outfit that I really liked, just to celebrate.

Now I'm totally thrilled to be able to pray for little Anna Beth by name during my morning prayer time with Reuben each day. I think it just threw me for a big loop to have my expectations all mixed up like that. Thank goodness we had the opportunity to find out before Anna is born, or else I can only imagine what a mess I would be at her birth... (chuckle) I'm quite sure I'll be emotional enough without getting a surprise that big. By the way, Jeremy's excited about having a girl now too. ;)