March Madness!

And this post has nothing to do with basketball. Seriously, I didn't even get around to filling out a bracket this year. What I have been doing is a crazy amount of not being at home. When I arrived back in our home on Sunday evening, began my first set of consecutive days at home. Prior to that moment I had spent less than 48 hours actually in my house.

I kicked off the month in Vegas! Friends of ours are getting married out there this fall so we had ourselves a little planning excursion. The Bride, Groom, Maid of Honor and my Bridesmaid self had a fantastic trip. We saw several venues and they ended up choosing the Mirage. I'm super pumped about it because it's the poolside option which I was secretly hoping for. I think it will be so beautiful. I didn't win big, but the MOH did on the last day and she was kind enough to take us to a nice dinner. :) All in all we were very productive and still had plenty of time to play!

The day after returning, Piper and I made our way up to the burg. Mom and I were headed off to Chicago for the weekend to see the limited engagement show of Mandy Patinkin & Patti LuPone in concert. In a word, amazing. It was followed up by Cheesecake Factory, so another win there.
We returned home for me to begin my week of playing mom to my favorite munchkins, D & A, ages five & two. I will admit that this week was a little rougher than the last time I had them for a week in November, but we still survived. :) This time they're both in preschool so I had a few hours in the morning which I vowed to use for exercise, but mostly used for napping and catching up on the DVR, haha.

I stayed in town that weekend for Mom's birthday bash and then I made my way on to SC!! I got to spend 6 super fun days with T!!! :) Regrettably, all the Travel, his work schedule, and a bit of selfishness for soaking up as much time together as possible did prevent me from being able to make it to Kansas for spring break like I had originally wanted. But we managed to get through and have a pretty good time. :) T even convinced me to go for a run. . . outside - I must've been delirious with joy, haha. Time to go back reared it's ugly head and I drove home. In torrential downpour and snow in West Virgina. Yes, snow! >:( But I survived, spent a night in my bed and went back up to my parents' to pick up Pipe since mom & dad were so kind as to watch her whilst I was away.

And I remained in town there because McDavey was on spring break and it gave us a chance to hang out. Also that Saturday was Kay's birthday party and I'm kind of a big deal so my presence was required, lol ;).

Sunday, Piper and I made it home! She's readjusting to life without other dogs to play with a lot better than I thought. And the days since have actually been spent trying to get the tornado wreckage that is my house a little back in order. And finalize some things with the wedding photographer so we can finally get our album & print book. I'm actually surprised with the progress I've made considering my TiVo is bursting with weeks worth of shows I haven't yet caught up on, but my grown-up self has taken over and said, "keep your house, woman." :)

The remaining 5 months of this deployment should calm down a bit, but I've still got quite a few adventures planned to get me through. :)