Hello World

Hello again, blogland.

I feel like a hibernating bear that's decided to leave my cave from my winter siesta and re-join the world with the hiatus I just took from blogging..

I'm sure some of you understand though--1 day missed becomes 3 days missed, becomes a week, becomes 3 weeks, and then you just aren't sure how to break back into the groove again, so (if you're like me) you put it off searching for the perfect "thing" to jump start and motivate your blogging activity again.

Unfortunately, I never found that "thing".  Friends, my life is clearly just too dull.

Apparently my life is so dull, I couldn't even keep up with a 30 day blogging challenge that GAVE me a topic to write about each day.  Personally, I like to think my life is too busy to stay on top of my writing on a regular basis, but saying that is really just making excuses for myself and being too lazy to stay on top of my writing.  I'm just being honest people.

So maybe hopefully over the course of this year I'll get those 30 questions about myself answered so you can fully understand me, I'm just going to have to re-name the 30 days of blogging into something more appropriate, like 30 questions you probably never wanted to know about Rachel but will get to learn in hopefully 12 months, but likely 24 months.  I'll phrase it better than that though; something a little more concise will be the best option (or the word cloud to your right will be too full).  This blog--much like me--is a work in progress.

To update on a few things--

1) DT is going through her last round of chemo, and will follow up with her doctors in the early summer to see if any additional treatment will be required.  While she tells us on a very regular basis that she is completely exhausted, she is still working every day so that she can stay active, and looks fabulous for someone who is undergoing rigorous cancer treatment. 

2) The cat (Whiskers aka Whisker-kitty aka Whiskerina) still despises the dog.  She also has a trampy boyfriend who's come back around the farm to visit her on a regular basis (mainly from 2-5am).  When she is not allowed to go outside and visit said boyfriend, she will do some combination of sleeping on your face, knocking items off of bedroom furniture, and peeing on dirty clothes loudly until you give in and let her go outside.  Also, she only does these torturous activities to me, so I am suffering from a severe lack of sleep most days, while my husband wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed most mornings.

3) Bulleit (aka Bubby) the dog is yet to be house broken at 8 months of age.  Unless he's removed from open indoor spaces every 30-45 minutes (he can stay in his crate for 8 hours--someone explain this to me??), he will find a spot out of sight and "do his business" on rugs, carpets, and recently refinished hardwood floors.  Professional dog trainers have told us they don't know how to solve this problem.  Lovely.

4) I have accomplished only 1 project on this house in 2 months, and it really wasn't even my project, it was Whitney's.  In the near future (so, maybe 6 months from now?) I'll share some pictures of the awesome bookshelf he built for our living room, inspired by Pottery Barn of course.  Everything else around our house still looks half-done, because we keep finding new things to start, and can't manage to completely finish the existing projects we have.  Someone has already told me that's just part of having a house though.

5) Finally, the biggest news...drumroll...(no, I am definitely NOT preggo) Whitney found out a few weeks ago that he will be deployed the end of July.  He's going to have a 400 day deployment to Kuwait (I've been told it's like the Las Vegas of the Middle East--that's not totally reassuring) with an Army Reserve unit that is based out of Seattle, Washington.  This week he'll leave until the end of May for part of his training, then come back home for about 2 months.  At the end of July he'll go to Ft. Bliss, Texas for a few additional months of training, and then on to Kuwait.  While I am certainly not excited about this endeavor, I knew it was coming at some point, and I'll honestly be glad to get it behind us.  I couldn't have prayed for a safer place for him to be deployed right now, or a safer mission for him to be working on over there, and know that with him being stationed on a base I'll get the opportunity to talk to him more than most wives of deployed soldiers get to do.  We both know this will certainly not be easy, but I suppose because I've always known it was a possibility, it simply became a fact of life I knew I'd have to accept being married to Whitney.

He has already promised to send "party in the USA" dancing pictures in the desert.  I'm excited.

SO that's a little catch-up on things lately...promise this bear is out of hibernation and back on the blog-wagon!