Thank you, April, for finally showing up...

It's been a busy week, and I'm glad to say that we're now into the month of April. March had some ups and downs, so I'm glad to have that past us. Although, I'm sure April will have issues of its own. Between the deployment and grieving our daughter's death, I doubt it will be a breeze. At least we've hopefully got less than 2 months left of the deployment if everything goes according to plan. That's one thing to be happy about. James is somewhat looking forward to an upcoming mission, simply because it will make the time go by. I imagine sitting on a base is a bit of a drag...

Assuming no interruptions take place, I'm finally going to get Liv's headstone ordered tomorrow. I thought it would be done and over with last week, but just when I thought we knew exactly what we wanted, the cemetery owner pointed out more options or more specifics that we hadn't thought about. Of course! Nothing in this situation can come easy. Apparently, ordering a piece of granite requires a lot of decisions. Do you want jet black, diamond black, american black, or sparkle black? No, there's not just black, now is there? Of course not! Nor is there one standard way of displaying the information, etc. It would be much easier if James were here with me, but instead we have to play the game of waiting for that next phone call to figure out what we want, and how we want this designed. It will be good when this is all behind us. Then maybe sometime this fall, we can head to Indy and see how it turned out.

Speaking of Indy, it appears as though we'll soon be much closer to home. James talked to branch and got orders for the armpit of Georgia, so we'll be heading there this fall. So instead of a 34 hour drive to our hometown, it will only take 10. That's a bit more manageable when the time arises that we feel like visiting. We're not exactly keen on the new location, but knowing that he will have to go there for a school next year anyways, we figured why move twice? We want to get away from our current surroundings after losing our little Livy, but don't necessarily want to increase our chances of having a nightmare experience with the movers with two moves in one year. Plus, with moving to this particular base, James will have a TRADOC job, so he will not deploy for a little while. It's one of those situations where you just have to pick your poison. Work in an active combat unit and deploy all the time, or work in TRADOC and have long hours and much frustration at the office. Right now, he'd rather have the long hours, but still sleep in his own bed. Hopefully we don't regret that decision. All we ever hear are complaints from friends that are stuck in TRADOC...we'll see if we follow suit come October/November...