Are we there yet?

 It's been 11 months, 5 days, 22 hours, and 52 mins since we gave "knucks" to daddy and said "see ya later" at the hanger.  But who's counting, right?  Anyhow...if you're wondering why our goodbye sounds so informal, it's because it was.  I never got out of the car, never unbuckled the boys carseat.  We didn't hug, we didn't kiss...there was no long embrace, no tears.  While some would say that sounds terrible, you should know this...We've done that before.  We did the tears, the hugs, the painful goodbye, and it was HORRIBLE!  It's like having someone you loved ripped from your arms.  We couldn't put our son through that.  He is still too young to fully grasp a deployment, though for weeks leading up to the deployment, we had many many discussions about daddy's job, where he was going and what he would be doing.  He seems to understand, but like I, has not shown much emotion regarding the deployment.  I attribute this to the fact that we don't often refer to it as a sad thing, but instead an honorable situation.  Our son tells his friends, "Daddy is my hero, he's fighting the bad guys".  He is very proud of him.  But as strong as we have all been these past 11 months, the last several weeks are certainly proving to the hardest & most trying.  While I'm doing anything and everything to keep my mind and body busy, the days are CRAWLING!  But even so, I'm seeing signs of a redeployment in our future.  Tough boxes are beginning to show up on our porch, my husband has recently moved out of his room to allow for his replacement soldiers to take over, the FRG's are having redeployment briefings, my "Welcome Home" signs are arriving in the mail this week, and I've been making "Welcome Home" daddy outfits for friends all month.  In case you were wondering why I had not added any new care packages to my posts lately, it's because we've passed the mail cutoff date.  To help my son (and certainly myself) get through these next few weeks, here's some of the things we've done to pass the time and prepare for daddy's return:

 I made my own camo purse...still don't have a name tape for it.

 Making Welcome Home signs at an FRG function. 

Made my own door wreath for daddy's welcome home decor.

I've also created a Popsicle countdown for our son.  He gets one Popsicle per day.  When they are gone, daddy will be home!!

This week, I'm breaking the rules and I am sending out one final care package...it's just a box full of cookies and nothing but cookies...7 dozen cookies to be exact!  My husband has no intentions of keeping them all for himself.  He just wants something to hand out to everyone before they head home.  Hopefully they make it, but if not, no harm...someone else will enjoy them I suppose.  I'm also beginning to nest this week.  I've redecorated my kitchen, started repainting some rooms, replaced bad light bulbs throughout house, organized closets, and there's so many more (unimportant) things to do.   Preparations are finally underway for the hubby's return and I couldn't be more excited!

Operation Camo Care Package

Based upon yesterday's posting about the camo cookies, you should already know that today's box theme is all about the Army.  HOOAH! I packed this box with camo cookies, some camo cake jars (later posting), a military movie (Born on the 4th of July-also appropriate for the month), The Art of War (a common military book he's been requesting for a while now), and a couple other odds and ends. I recently found some camo paper that I had apparently bought 5 years ago this week.  I had bought it for our wedding for some reason but never used it.  Anyways, I finally put it to use.  I wrapped his jars of cookies and cakes in the paper (and also in bubble wrap for extra measures) and then covered the box in the paper. I topped the box off with the team of soldiers I hired to protect his cookies in transit.

Combat Cookies

I'm on a cookie kick this week.  Considering this week's box theme is ARMY, I decided I wanted to make camo cookies.  I figured I would bake sugar cookies and decorate them with a camouflage pattern with icing.  So I did a little google surfing for ideas and I came across a whole new idea.  Bake them camo!!! What an awesome concept!

First you make your cookie dough (packaged or homemade will work)

Next you divide the dough into 4 separate bowls and add your coloring (Brown, Green, Gray, and leave the last bowl alone for the tan.) You can use basic food coloring if you'd like. However, I prefer Wilton's coloring because it tastes better and the colors are more accurate.

Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention and picked up a butter mixture sugar cookie pack, which resulted in a sticky dough that was too hard to work with.  If you made this same mistake, just refrigerate the dough for about an hour before continuing on to the next step.

Now you want to take a little bit from each bowl and mix it together in your hand to form a ball.  I burned my thumb on the oven and it was in killer pain, so I opted to use my cookie scoop instead.  Luckily, this was a much cleaner method anyhow.  I just scooped a little out of each bowl and dropped the balls onto the cookie sheet.

 

Bake at the time indicated on the cookie package or in your recipe...and viola!

CAMO COOKIES!

Since I intend on mailing these to my hubby...I decided to stack them in a jar and use the last of my camo material to cover the jar and make it pretty.  I also hired a team of soldiers to guard these cookies until there safe arrival in Afghanistan.