Stewart

Besides impregnating me, Stewart has been up to a lot in the past little bit. He came home from Afghanistan March 27, 2010. I was SO happy and I think he was too. ;) After he came home we had some time before he had to go back to work so we went on a few vacations. The first one was to Capitol Reef which was a failure since we all three spent the weekend puking in a hotel room.
Our next trip was too Mesa Verde and on our way back we hit a couple National Parks in Utah. It was awesome. Probably the best family vacation we have ever taken. I loved every second of it. Part of the fun of that trip was the truck that Stewart bought. He loved driving it and even offered to let me drive it when we were off-road. That's true love. I didn't take him up on it but still...true love.

Stewart also had a birthday! The big 31. We had a 31 flavors of ice cream toppings to celebrate. That was a lot of sugar.

Stewart's hobbies nowadays are making bullets and then shooting those bullets out of guns. I think both parts of that are equally fun for him. He has had some camping trips and other types of boy things that I mostly stay out of. He built some target stands that were pretty sweet.

He's had some wicked fights with Eli (Eli won) and some kissing matches with me (I won).

Other than that he is still in the Vegas Cavalry unit so he goes down there once a month. He is currently job hunting more than he is rabbit hunting. Having him home has been so much fun and I love him to bits.

Finishing the Race

Quite a few years ago Stewart and I ran a 5k. It was kinda pathetic because I hadn't trained at all and if you know me you know I'm not a natural runner. Anyway, we were near the end of the race and the finish line was in sight and Stewart told me that we needed to sprint. I couldn't sprint! I could barely keep shuffling. Stewart told me that there is always energy to run because it's anaerobic or something else that I didn't understand. I just remember that it seemed impossible to run faster than I was running. I think I managed to run a little faster the last 100 yards or so.

Fast forward to now and I feel like I'm nearing the end of a race and I have to sprint to the end. I still feel like it's impossible and I can't do it anymore!

I know that people go through things that are hard and they realize that they are stronger than they thought. After going through this deployment I have realized that I'm not as strong as I thought. I'm so glad that it's almost over and I will have my husband back where he belongs.

I think that with support even the weak can be as strong as they NEED to be. I'm thankful for the support that I have had while he's been gone from family and friends.

But most of all I'm thankful for him:

Christmas Letter Post

Christmas letter 2009

Dear Friends, Family, and people who I perennially annoy with my exaggerations and bold faced lies…

It’s time for the Brough Family Christmas letter. I’ll skip the lengthy preamble and start with the updates.

Eli is 6 years old, and quite the ladies man now that his front teeth have grown back in. He has cut quite a swathe though the female population in his kindergarten class and is an unrepentant playboy. His current interests also include Lego’s, viva piñata on the xbox, and of course his longtime goals of world domination.

Becca has spent the last year putting up with my crap (or maybe more appropriately the lack thereof, since I haven’t been around for most of the year). With Eli in school for 3 hours a day, and me on the other side of the world, Becca doesn’t have to get us dressed, tie our shoes, or make us snacks all day long. She works out, edits home movies, cooks wonderful creations, and she makes me wish I were at home with her instead of playing Army on the other side of the world.

Here is the recap of the year:

After spending the holidays in Utah, we went back to Kentucky for a month while I attended the Army Reconnaissance Course, which culminated with the worst ice storm the region had seen in decades.

Graduating the course ended our six-month stint at Ft. Knox. We then started preparing ourselves for a deployment to Afghanistan. This of course consisted of a lot of denial while we attempted to simultaneously live life to the fullest and ignore the dates on the calendar and eventually the ticking of the clock.

This deployment has taught us that no matter how much we drive each other nuts, we prefer to drive each other nuts from a distance close enough to give each other hugs.

Regardless, I’ve still been able to accomplish some of my personal goals:

· Promotion to 1^st Lieutenant (I can’t believe it’s not butter!)

· Lead men in combat and bring them back safely

· See my family for leave

· Find Osama Bin Laden crap…

We still have a bit of a haul in front of us, but we are freshly energized after I was able to come home for leave over Thanksgiving. For those of you who are with your loved ones this Christmas, be thankful and let them know that you appreciate them.

Love

The Broughs

Eli

Naughty: Staying up late to play Lego's, draw, or play the Leapster under the covers.
Nice: confessing these things the next day.
Naughty: Sleeping in so long because you didn't go to bed until midnight.
Nice: Leaving a note for your mom outside her door.
This note says "Dear Mom, I know you miss Daddy, you deserve a great big hug."

He was already asleep when I found the note. It made me SO happy. I smiled and went in and kissed my sleeping little boy. I feel so blessed to have such a sweet little boy! He is very perceptive and kind and loving. I talk about Stewart with Eli but I really don't cry or anything. Yesterday I was very worried about Stewart and he was on my mind a lot. This letter was very sweet to get at the end of a day like that.

Oh Really! For Me?!

I came home from school today to FLOWERS. I know! He's in Afghanistan and STILL remembers to send me flowers.

*sigh* I miss him. We talked today about plans for when he comes home on leave and I started getting SO excited and then realized it's 2 months away! Way to early to start getting so excited.

Remember when you were little and Christmas seemed to come SO slow! It was the anticipation. Anticipation slows time down.

But for now I'll look at my flowers and be happy.

The Party Post

The party for Stewart was absolutely wonderful! We had so many friends and family come to support us it was beyond what I expected. The weather cooperated with us as right at 9:00 when the party was scheduled to conclude the wind picked up and the sprinkling started.

It was a bittersweet party because while I was so happy that everyone came it meant that I would have to say goodbye to Stewart the next day. *boo hoo*

We are so lucky to have such amazing support from our loved ones!

A Party!

Everyone is invited to come to this party! We are going to have ice cream and desserts. I didn't want to put my address out here on the World Wide Web so e-mail me if you need the address Beccabrough[at]gmail[dot]com.

Catch-up

I lost my camera and with it the will to blog. I don't want to use the old yucky camera!

Here are some things that have happened lately:
1-The truck was broken into. BLAH. What was stolen? My temple bag. Jerks, I hope they burn. The truck has an alarm with and impact warning. We figure the alarm buzzed at them when they broke the window so they grabbed the bag and ran. If they had popped the lock the alarm would have gone off. The temple stuff is sad because it was very sentimental to me.

2-To get this truck registered I had to replace the headlight. Not just the bulb but the whole fixture. I like doing stuff like this because it really shows Stewart that I'm just using him for his body.

3-We have been trying to have lots of fun and spend time together because Stewart leaves in like a week and 1/2! I had an anxiety attack when I realized this yesterday. Somewhere I have lost a whole week! We are going to stay in Vegas with Stewart for a week until he actually flies to Camp Atterbury.

So that's been us. Just doing our thang.

And here is this in case anyone is going to be in Vegas on April 17th.

Yesterday

All our troubles were so far away.

We had the best day together. We started the day with some sledding. The picture of me is when I tried to do a really cool move but slid off the tube into the snow.

We went to lunch, bought Eli more video games (Stewart's idea), and Stewart learned the proper way to jab his wife with needles.

Eli said it best this morning after he realized that Stewart was back at work. 'Oh that's too bad, we didn't get to spend enough time with Dad."

AMEN to that.

Photoshop Education

Oh yeah! My first collage. I'm so excited to learn some photoshop. My friend Jeri is doing some photoshop posts on her blog. If you need a blog tutor go see her!

I can't wait to play with Photoshop a little more now!

Arizona-The End

We are home again. We actually got home Monday evening but we hit the ground running so I'm finally getting around to blogging. The rest of the trip to Arizona went so well. It was so good I was not ready to come home. I missed Eli a lot but it was SO fun to be with Stewart and hang out with other adults for days at a time. The whole time that we were in Kentucky Stewart and I never went on a date alone together. It is so much fun to be together and remember that we are a couple and not just parents.

So we went to a ghost town that wasn't really a ghost town. It was Jerome, AZ. I take full responsibility for the junkyard that we attended! Anyway here are the highlights:

Steve in some old car. He barely fit in it because the "cab" was so short. Good thing Steve didn't live in the "olden days."
The next picture is my FAVORITE. It's Stewart with his old ball and chain. Haa haa love it!
The next picture is really freaky. It was some old mannequin prostitute! Freaky. Seriously.


Here is Stewart at the old mine opening, and me with a donkey. OK the last picture is of Stewart's great aunt and uncle. His uncle Bud had a birthday so Stewart used his smooth espaniol to set up a birthday song. The guy in the background tried to feed Bud some ice cream and missed the mark.

The only thing missing from the trip was that we didn't get to visit Bahama Bucks. I was pretty sad but I guess if that's the only thing to go wrong we didn't do too bad.

The End

Arizona-First Update

On Thursday, Stewart and I left Salt Lake City for the sunny skies of ARIZONA. We arrived with Stewart's parents and have met up with a bunch of Stewart's family for his cousins wedding in Prescott. We are going to be here until Monday.

The first stop of the trip was over to the Mesa Temple for a private tour with the temple president. Have YOU ever had one of those kind of tours? No? Oh that's too bad because it's really neat. Stewart's great-grandfather is LeConte Stewart. He painted some murals for the Mesa temple so we were able to go and see them and got a tour of the whole temple. After that we picked some holy citrus fruit from the temple grounds. It was my first time picking grapefruits from a tree and you know they tasted better because they were grown on holy ground.

Friday we went and wandered downtown Prescott. It was so fun and I LOVE Prescott! It seems like a fun town to live in. We went to a rehearsal dinner even though we had nothing to do with the wedding so it was just yummy food for us.

Today we have just had crazy fun. We shopped, learned more about the Calvary, went to the wedding, danced, ate, shopped, and went to a movie. Stewart twisted and twirled me as usual and I was so kind as so loan him out to some other gals so they could have fun too. I know, I know I'm so wonderfully selfless...and humble.

After the wedding we went to a movie. We saw Taken. SO GOOD! It was mine and Stewart's second time seeing it and it was just as good as the first time. We were a little nervous that no one else would like it since we were seeing it based on our recommendation. It made us happy when during a car chase a bad guy runs his car into a bulldozer scoop and gets killed and Stewart's mom leaned over and said, "he deserved that."

So as you can see we are having fun and are glad that we have 2 more days away from responsibility. We are going to church tomorrow and then to go see a ghost town! spooky! Don't worry about Eli either. When I called him today I was in the middle of a sentence and he said "bye" and hung up on me. He was too busy having fun with cousins.

Sea World

Here is the conclusion to our wonderful trip! I know, I'm as sad as you that it came to an end. :)

On Friday we went to Sea World. It was really really fun. We did all the usual Sea World stuff. Eli is into sea creatures lately so he enjoyed himself. He really liked the Atlantis ride because he could wear his poncho and not get wet and there was not a line so we went about 5 times in a row.

In the picture below I gave the boys bunny ears. And the one where Eli is shrinking in fear is because he was a little too nervous to turn his back on the flamingos.

We had such a great time. I don't think that I would change anything! Well except for getting soaked on the cars ride.

I'm hoping that these fun memories will help Eli and me when we are missing Stewart. Boo hoo.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We headed to Ohio where Stewart's aunt lives.  We were welcomed with open arms and were treated like royalty!  Eli now thinks that he should get special treatment because "he's the guest." I had to tell him that he still has to share and doesn't get everything he ever wanted because at one point in his life he was the guest somewhere. I don't know if he totally understands the word "guest" but he knows he likes it!

The little kid table.

Stewart was in charge of mashing the potatoes. He is proud of the piling technique that he used.

The spread! It was all SO good.

We went to the zoo. it was so much fun. Here is Noah and Eli with the gingerbread people. Is that PC?
We had SO much fun on our little trip. There is nothing like being with family.  I can't wait to get back to Utah where we will be surrounded by family!

The Truth

Stewart, being the sucker that he is, recently bought Eli cereal straws. They are, of course, ridiculously unhealthy and the worst thing that you could eat after finishing off a bowl full of frosted flakes. Anyway, Eli had had about 4 of them out of one of the two packages that comes in a box. When Stewart got back from the field yesterday Eli was so excited to "share" them with Stewart. He really knew that if he shared with Stewart he'd get to have some himself. 

This morning when I woke up I noticed that the package was empty. I went to throw it away and saw another empty package in the garbage. Stewart had stayed up late so I figured that he had finished off the cereal straws and was happy that they were gone! Eli came in and asked who ate all his cereal straws. I said that dad must have and Eli said that he was going to spank him when he got home.  So tonight before bed I was giving Stewart a hard time about eating a WHOLE package of the cereal straws. Stewart said that he didn't think that he did and I told him to tell the truth. We were teasing of course. I thought that Stewart was joking when he said he couldn't remember. Eli started saying "Dad you have to tell the truth." Finally Stewart said, "I probably did eat your cereal straws. I'm sorry." At this point Eli said, "Mom I have to tell you something. When I was playing star wars I snuck over here and I cut the open the package and I snuck some straws." He had eaten them himself!  Of course he said, "Dad and I did it Mom!"

So that was a really long blog post for a story that probably doesn't read as funny as it was. I was crying I was laughing so hard! Poor Stewart began to think that he really had opened the package and eaten all the cereal straws.

Mammoth Cave

We have had a fun day today!  Stewart has been home yesterday, today, and he will be home tomorrow!  We went to Mammoth Cave and had so much fun. The bonus was that it was free because it was veterans day. We didn't know they were running a special so it was a nice surprise. Eli had fun in the cave and he was extra good because we told him that we'd buy him a deer stuffed animal. Stewart and I got hugs, cuddles, and kisses the whole tour!  I was told many times that I was the best mom ever and he loved me so much.  He probably was working on me because he knows that Stewart was for sure in the bag.  Stewart is the biggest sucker alive.  What Eli didn't know was that we already had bought the stuffed animal and had it in the car! :)

Once we got home Eli was so tired! We knew that he had had  a long fun day because he was manic. Laughing and crying at the same time. The crying was from my noisy typing because he couldn't "take it anymore." The laughing was because I had said something "funny." Poor little guy. I cuddled him for a few minutes and he calmed down, ate dinner, and went right to bed. 

Fun Times In Kentucky

It might seem like we haven't been doing any fun things lately but we have! Right after I got back from Utah we had a 4 day weekend and this past weekend we had a great Saturday out and about.

We have been to the Kentucky Derby Museum, the Louisville Slugger Museum (SO FUN), we went on a boat ride on the Ohio River, and we went to a farm and did a corn maze.  It's been SO fun when Stewart's home and we can go do fun stuff. Unfortunately, he's going to be out in the field this whole week! BOO. I think I will have to go do some fun things without Stewart other wise the week is going to drag.  

Another new development is that I am now Primary Chorister in my ward. I'm really happy about it because it's my favorite calling and now I don't have to go to boring sunday school. :)

Oh! the red car that it looks like Eli is going to smash was hilarious.  It had red glass stones plastered onto it. It was crazy! I don't know why anyone would think that it is classy.