Before the Weekend

While back in Germany I purchased a nice cowboy style hat that did not make the move very well. It had been crushed and stayed that way during the entire trip. Crushable wool hats can take a rough treatment, but that was too much. I found a store on post that steams cowboy hats to shape them. I was able to get my hat steamed at no cost and it looks as good as new now.

When we moved into this house last Spring, we found that there are birds that live nearby that use the overhangs under the roofs as places to build their mud homes. Everyone in the neighborhood who had a stucco home had to fight off these birds and nests each day, and sometimes several times a day, with the garden hose. Our land lord payed to have a smooth board installed and painted to match the house all the way around the overhang underneath the roof. It was finished just a day before the birds showed up and it has worked well. Without the rough stucco to build on the birds move on to another house.

Several days ago I came home to a big bowl of Tricia's famous potato salad. I prefer my potato salad to be warm so she left the bowl out on the counter for me after making it. Delicious.

I was invited by some friends from church to ascend the Incline once again this weekend. This time I did not stay with the group, but took my time going up to take some photos of nature.

On the Road Again...

So with a deployment comes block leave, which is 30 days that a soldier can take during a specified time for vacation, etc. We are planning to take our 30 days, and spend just a part of that in Utah (around June 23rd to July 5th -- don't take time off yet, the dates aren't set in stone). My brother and his wife just bought a new house and have offered us their entire basement to stay in during that time. So if you want to find us and we're not out and about, we'll be in West Jordan. We decided that we are going to host one big "Welcome Home Cory" party at his house sometime during that visit. That way we can see those who we wouldn't get a chance to see otherwise because we're going to be there for such a short time. If you know my family at all, it's sure to be a great party!

Since there are so many people we would love to see and since it worked on our visit when we came to Utah the first time, when we know the dates for sure we'll make a calendar again and have people pick a day or two when we can spend time together. I know it might be frustrating not to see us every day we're there for two weeks, but we're always here in Colorado. The road goes both ways. :) There will be a few things that we're planning to do as a family but we're looking forward to being able to see you all again!

Adventure Is Out There!

The service project that I participated in yesterday allowed me to meet up with some friends that were going to hike the Incline this morning. I was invited to go along and was glad to attend. At 0600 Hans Tuft pulled into the driveway with his big diesel truck and I was off along with Taylor, Tyler, and Tycen. I fell behind the group on the Incline just after the outset. It sounds like a few of these guys hike this route once a week to keep in shape. After our decent we went out for doughnuts. This is a fun group of guys to spend time with. We are already planning another event for the coming Saturday.

While Tricia went to dance I stayed with Jeffrey outside and worked on my homework while he played in the front yard. As always, he was excited when the neighbor boy and girl came out. He always calls them my friends. I have watched how they interact with him for the last two times he has gone over to play in their front yard. It is apparent now that they are not thrilled to see him. I suspect it is because he is too young to interact with them on their terms. Jeffrey is going to do what he wants and will not likely join their games understanding their rules. I brought him home before he became an annoyance to them. He does not yet understand the hard lesson that not everyone is going to be his friend immediately. Perhaps when he is a little more mature they will warm up to him. I took him out for a wagon ride instead. We found a big hill with a sidewalk that both Jeffrey and I rode down in the wagon together.

I Love to See the Temple

After dropping off Tricia at dance I took Jeffrey on a 20 minute ride to see the Denver Temple. The parking lot was nearly full showing the temple was getting some good use on a Thursday night. Before we got out of the car I told Jeffrey we would have to talk quietly and not run in order to be reverent. He put on his whisper voice and walked with me. Then he saw the water fountain and the reverence was reversed. He was obedient and did not climb up on the fountain to touch the water as he wanted to, but he did keep running around it over and over. I wanted to take out my camera and take a few photos of Jeffrey by the fountain when the lights came on and lit it up, but I was afraid that as soon as I turned my eyes away he might run out into the parking lot. Once he started to run around too much we went back to the car and admired the temple through our windows.

I learned some more about changing my MOS in the army, but it was not good news. I went to see the division reenlistment NCO who explained to me that anyone with an ETS date of 31 March 2012 is able to reenlist. Dates after that are on a hold until October. I have an ETS date of 10 April 2012, so I have to wait until October to see what the new guidance will be. Hopefully public affairs will still be in the BEAR program when October comes around.

Service and Caterpillars

I met Tricia at the commissary where Jeffrey had discovered a fun cart he could ride in while shopping.

I volunteered to participate in an Eagle Scout project as some Friday evening service. Quite a few people from several wards showed up to help paint signs that will be put up at a local camp ground. I met a few new people during the work and had time to talk to a few old friends that also came along. It was refreshing to get out and do something social and participate in community service.

Our wards have been rearranged which is sending us to a new building. An announcement was made last week that this new building does not have toys for the primary, so Tricia and I decided it was a good time to go through Jeffrey's toys and bag up what he has outgrown. While working on this project Jeffrey became upset about a toy he had not seen in a long time and wanted to find the several pieces that go to it. Already upset we went out to the garage to find a few of the pieces that may have been taken out already when Tricia pointed out a hairy caterpillar crawling through the garage. Jeffrey lost it. He screamed so loud the neighbors probably heard it and squeezed his body up against the car as he took the furthest route he could around the scary creature to get out of there. He was upset and crying for the rest of the night, scared that around every corner he would find another caterpillar. He was even afraid that a caterpillar would come up the drain during his bath. We had to convince him that they cannot climb and so he would be safe sleeping in his big boy bed. Tricia read Charlotte's Web until he fell asleep.

Days Like This

We were released early again from work today. Once our work was done and we could do no more there was no use in us sitting around looking at each other. Days like this balance out the others when you are required to stay late or come in extra early.

Jeffrey was not interested in noodles for dinner. He opted to eat a pile of shredded cheese after which he fell asleep. His daily afternoon nap time routine is over. Giving him a nap began to mean he would be up very late so we decided he is big enough to go through the day with no nap and go to bed at a decent time.

When my homework was done I watched an hour of America the Story of Us with Tricia on the History channel. It is a great series worth checking out. It is times like this that on demand TV is worth it. We can sit down together when we are both ready to watch a program rather than scheduling our day around the broadcasters schedule.

I stepped outside for a few minutes and was reminded how great a view we get from our front and back yard. Being up as high as we are the weather overhead is usually dramatic and we get a panorama view of most of the valley.

Up with Jeffrey

This is what it is like to watch the movie Up with Jeffrey.

Image and Place

My new photography website is up and running now. It will be both a web gallery I can refer people to for viewing my work, a place to refer people who want a photo taken, and the home of a photography blog I will be posting to. There are still steps to go before the website can be called done, but it is far enough along that I can let people take a look at it now.

Image and Place describes the type of photography I will be specializing in as a business, that is on location portraiture. 

If you are wondering what host I am using for the site, it is Square Space. They offered a low cost way to put together a great website.

Happy Birthday, Jeffrey!!

I first thought I would be working late today, but as luck would have it I ended up coming home early in the day. Tricia and I spent our time with Jeffrey in celebration of his third birthday. Wow, we were back in Germany at the Klinikum Weiden in the delivery room three years ago! Our first act of celebrating his birthday was to clean Mommy and Daddy's room along with the living room down stairs. A clean house is a happy house.

Grandparents sent several packages to Jeffrey along with our own gifts. We broke the gifts up by their respective senders and allowed him to open each set throughout the day to prevent the excitement from going out like a big fire cracker and to ensure that he had to time to realize that the gifts were from different people.

You can also see that Tricia decided to step up our blog a little more with a great new header and changed the color layout.


As a side note, I learned today that yet again the flight returning our troops have been pushed back. This is partly due to the volcano and partly due to changes that just happen any way. Several families traveled across the country to be at the welcome home ceremony only to find out when they arrived that their Soldier would not be there. This is why Tricia and I sometimes do not tell family and friends what we know about our own plans when it involves the military.

Sunday Afternoon Thoughts

While Tricia and I were driving in the car a few days ago the subject came up about how glad we are now that we are renting a home in Colorado Springs rather than having purchased one. When we arrived here in the Springs one year ago it was a prime time to purchase a house for first time buyers with all of the assistance the government was willing to offer. In order to take advantage of the prices it is of course necessary to have a steady job so that you know you can make the payment each month long into the future. We certainly have that since I plan to stay in the military for the next ten years. We got a lot of good advice from family and friends who did not want to see us waste the housing allowance I am given each month get throwing it away on a rental when it could just as easily be used as a morgage payment. We did not feel good about jumping into a house having just come from Germany and knowing I would be leaving soon on deployment. With me looking at changing my job in the Army now and going in a totally new direction for the next ten years it is possible that we may be sent to a new post. If we felt chained here because it is so hard to sell homes now, the new direction I want to go with my military career could not be possible. As for this house, we do not regret renting it at all. It has been a dream house for us. What a find, Tricia (she did all of our house hunting on line from Germany before we left).

A few minutes after Jeffrey jumped into my arms when we met each other at the redeployment homecoming he gave me an Ellie Badge. I did not understand the Grape Soda bottle cap with safety pin at the time, but that is because I had not seen up. Once I had seen the movie with Jeffrey I put the badge on my suit coat and have received many comments about it from people at church.

I have found a great trick to get Jeffrey to brush his teeth. I used to have him brush his teeth after a bath which was right before bed. I asked him a few days ago to brush his teeth along with me in the middle of the afternoon. He was excited to do it and could not get to his brush fast enough. He has followed this pattern for the last few days and has given me no trouble brushing. I thinks this works because now brushing teeth is no longer a step before bed. Besides this, since he is excited to brush teeth with Daddy, he sees how I brush and is doing well to copy how I brush front teeth and molars differently.

Daddy's Homecoming

I'm so glad when Daddy comes home, glad as I could be;
Clap my hands and shout for joy, and climb upon his knee,
Put my arms around his neck, hug him tight like this,
Pat his cheek, the give him what? A great big kiss.

Every day when I come home from work Jeffrey greets me just like the song. It makes me happy that Jeffrey is excited to see me each day when I return and not just for a quick minute. From the moment I make it in the door I feel like the best thing since cookie dough ice cream. When I do arrive home I have more to accomplish than flop on the couch and watch TV for the rest of the night, so I cannot spend all of my entire night playing with Jeffrey, but I can ensure that my attention always goes to him first.

Jeffrey is also in the habit of spontaneously saying I love you. I am sure he gets it from me and Tricia as we say it to each other and to him at random times, but it is very pleasing to hear it come back from him. Even when Jeffrey begins to get out of hand when sleep or a toy is getting the best of him, but our living room rough house to distract him usually go from a wrestle to a giggle.

While Tricia was away Saturday for the Dance Festival I spent the day with Jeffrey. The nice weather that is coming around brought out the dogs next door that Jeffrey loves to play with. The are very friendly and our neighbor is good about letting Jeffrey interact with his dogs. We went outside where Jeffrey found several tennis balls next to the fence but on our neighbors side. He quickly figured out that he could reach his small hands through the wire fence and lift up the ball one hand at a time until was over his head when he would throw the ball to the dogs. When it began to rain he put on his rain coat and got out his "umbalella" from the closet. 

The Dance Festival

So last July/August I went to a friend's house for dinner. After dinner I was helping her clean up and we were talking about stuff. She found out that I was an Irish dancer and was pretty interested in it. I didn't give it another thought until that weekend when I got the strangest call ever. It was a guy in our ward asking if I was an Irish dancer. Wow! Random, but yeah I dance. He said he was so glad someone had told him because they needed another teacher for the Irish dance for the stake dance festival. What?? My friend totally ratted me out, but I'm glad she did. He explained that our stake was holding a dance festival this year for the youth. They would each learn 4 dances from different cultures around the world. He had been through the MDT program and BYU, did the whole folk dance team thing and wanted to include Irish dance in the show. Interesting. I took dance from the teacher who started the whole Irish dance program at BYU, Tina Shelley! But he knew her by her maiden name since she wasn't married at the time. Isn't it a small world?

So I was called and set apart as a choreographer and teacher for the stake dance festival. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it with a deployed husband and a two year old, but I told them I would do it. A long time ago when I called my friend Cori to be my counselor in the Primary presidency and her husband was deployed, she said it was just going to be an opportunity for the ward to step up and help, and thanks to amazing friends Jeffrey always had someplace fun to go! So now almost a year later and countless hours of practice time later we are opening the show tomorrow night. My fellow choreographer Heather and I have taught 100+ miamaids and teachers the basics of Irish dance. I'm proud of my dance group, they have worked hard and I think they are one of the best numbers in the show!

The Administrative Process of Return

I attended the Soldier Readiness Process (SRP) which turned out to be an all day event. 425 soldiers moved from station to station in the SRP building to process all of the administrative data with doctors, dentists, legal, finance and others to ensure that the administrative side of our return was up to date. The process moves quite smoothly until you get to the last station which can take up to 20 minutes per soldier, and with 425 soldiers, that adds up. I spent nearly three hours waiting in that line. 

We did our first real PT session. The altitude at Carson is kicking my rear. What would have been an easy day of PT took my breath away and left all of us light headed. It is going to take some time to get used to this altitude again when it comes to aerobic activities. 

After PT our small group of Aco soldiers went down to the company to see how it had been remodeled while we were away. Wow, what an amazing change took place. From floor to ceiling the building has been refurbished and brand new furniture has been placed in each room. I have never seen a company level building look so nice. I checked out my own office where I will be working at the battalion and was not disappointed.

Years ago SRP used to take place in a hot gymnasium where doctors and administrators would have to set up tables and chairs. Now so many soldiers are constantly going from here to there and back that whole buildings have been erected just for the purpose of SRP. 

In my communications class we are studying how people from different cultures can communicate. I need to write an essay based on a story presented in a film. Tricia rented Dances with Wolves from the Blockbuster for me. I do not have time to watch the film all at once in one sitting, so I will take it to work with me and watch it on the laptop at lunch. It is a good thing that we have such conveniences to make the best use of time. 

Jeffrey In the Pantry

This is a short clip of some of Jeffrey's typical antics through the day. I will be making more of these short videos for the blog. I have had a video camera for many years now and utilized it very little. Since we still live far away from family and friends I thought it would be a good way to stay connected.

Spagetti Dinner

Tricia had me take the lead on making dinner tonight. She has purchased a recipe book that shows how to make ordinary foods more healthy by adding ingredients that bring more nutrition. Our meatballs were made with butternut squash puree. It was a contest to get Jeffrey to eat. He gets some healthy snacks though out the day, but when it comes to sitting down to eat he can be a pill. I had a good time cooking dinner and it was nice to be with Tricia while we worked and laughed together.

A New Face

I noticed that some new features are available on Blogger. After looking into them I decided it was time to give the MacNeil Family Blog a face lift. It took some convincing for Tricia as she was the designer of the last look and was fond of the personality it showed. The wider column will give us more room to write and allow for display of larger photos. For those of you that use Blogger yourselves, the there is a new post editor available that I have found has greatly improved the ease of setting up a post, especially when it comes to placing a photograph in just the right spot. Also, misspelled words are now immediately highlighted during the initial writing of the post.

 

The insert jump break allows you to mark a place at which Blogger will initially halt the display of your post until the reader chooses to click on the read more button which opens the rest of the text that was hidden. Now you can add the location to post to let people know where you were when you wrote. This would be great for writing about a family trip. It appears as a link at the bottom of the post which takes the reader to a Google Map of the location. Lastly, the post editor can now be sized to fit your screen so that you can take advantage of having a larger screen when writing your posts.

We also celebrated Mother's Day in our home with a great roast dinner after church. One of Tricia's very best roasts I might add. I am usually not a fan of left over roast, but I could not stop nibbling on this one. Jeffrey crashed out after church and gave Tricia and me some time to spend together. Once he woke up though, it was game on again. Jeffrey build the Eiffel Tower in our living room. I was amazed at how high he was able to stack the blocks before they finally toppled over. 

The Greatness of Ordinary

While shopping for groceries with Tricia and Jeffrey (it is great to do ordinary things with the family again) we picked up a copy of Avatar. I saw a bootleg copy in Afghanistan and thought it would be fun to see it with the family back here on a genuine DVD. We folded clothes while the movie played (ok, I am not ecstatic to do all ordinary activities again).While at the store Jeffrey was my shopping buddy and went every where with me. As I selected items from the shelf I would hand them to Jeffrey who gladly ran them back to the cart and tossed them in.

When Jeffrey saw me with my tripod he expressed a great interest in wanting to play with it. I thought he might just want to see how it adjusts, but he already had a game intended for it. He used it as a telescope to see the air planes fly around our house. In the midst of our game an air plane was heard above us and it added a great effect to the fun. 

Jeffrey is also non-stop with his Up antics. He quotes lines, reenacts scenes and can turn anything we do into a play game based on the story line. He did so with me during the entire Saturday we spent together while Tricia was away at a dance rehearsal. 

It is great to be back for the ordinary activities of life.

First Days Back

Jeffrey has been nonstop entertainment for me since I returned. I opened an item yesterday that contained a set of instructions printed on a tightly folded piece of paper. This morning Jeffrey wanted me to help him find his snake paper. I thought it was a made up item until he found the instruction set and carried it all over the house all day long and kept calling it his snake paper. I have a set of master locks that Jeffrey can recall from before I left for Afghanistan that I keep in my top drawer. He was excited to get me to let him play with them. Those locks have been a source of hours of entertainment for him already.
Jeffrey has a lot of funny sayings that he suddenly says at all times of the day. Tricia had me watch the movie Up with him, which is his new favorite, so that I would understand many of his cryptic sayings. Jeffrey has whole scenes of the movie memorized that he will act out. I am amazed at how much Jeffrey is talking now and how much he is able to say and express.

We all went out today for our first day of yard work. We pulled a few weeds growing among our plants, evened out the mulch, and I even got the lawn mower going so that I could cut half an inch off of a few of the taller spots of grass. It felt great to get outside.
We have begun to read a new book as a family. I have had the three volume set of War and Peace for many years now and decided it would be a fun family read. I enjoy the dialogue that takes place in the book as well as the omniscient narrator telling about each person.

I took Tricia to dance on Wednesday. She was excited to be able to begin the month dancing as she has had to miss for a while since there was not someone to watch Jeffrey.

I did put my two new lenses on my camera and tried them out along with a few light shaping tools I saved for while away.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

It took almost a week, but I have finally made it back home to Colorado. Most of my journey consisted of stop and go at different bases along the way while my group waited for helicopters and air planes to pick us and our baggage up. In all, the process was smooth and well organized. The 4/4 Brigade thought well ahead about what had to be done to get everyone, their equipment and personal items out. A police escort took our buses through all the red lights from Peterson Air Force Base to Fort Carson so that we could go through a quick ceremony and get back to our families. It was awesome to see Tricia and Jeffrey run up to me with their welcome home sign. Channel Five News did a short interview with us just before we left for home. We got Chinese food on the way home to celebrate.

Jeffrey was all over me from the moment we got back together. He probably said Daddy 500 times since last night.

I will give a call to family and friends during the next three days that I have off to say hello to everyone. Thank you to all of our family and friends that have supported us in so many ways while I was away on my adventure.