First of all, let me apologize for not posting sooner - I should have posted last week.  But since I have been busy enjoying having my son under the same roof as the rest of the family, I think I have a legit excuse.

Dan’s flight home was scheduled for 05 May 2008, from Raleigh, NC to Detroit, MI.  We had reserved a rental car for the drive down so we would be more comfortable for the drive than we would have been in our Honda.  Once we had word about Dan’s return date - the wheels were set in motion for a welcome home committee by our very own 8404 (Tony) and Da-Chief(Darrell) who took it upon themselves to contact the PGR in Michigan and arrange for a welcome home.  I received a call from the Ride Captain, Mags, who told me that while Tony was behind the call, they would not come out unless we approved of it.  I was hesitant about letting them come out since Dan is one of those people who says, I’m not in it for the recognition - I’m just doing my job.  But Tony and Darrell explained to me that this was just their way of making sure that Dan knew that his service is appreciated and to let them do this for him. So I told Mags to go ahead and get the ball rolling.

The PGR members were meeting us in the baggage claim area of the terminal an hour prior to Dan’s arrival time so they could meet us and get their flag line set up.

Then mother nature took over, I got the call from Dan moments after taking delivery of the rental car.  His flight out of Raleigh has been delayed 45 minutes and isn’t going to make Cleveland for his connection until about 15 min before the connector flight to Detroit is scheduled to depart.  Not a problem I told him - that is plenty of time to get from one terminal to another.  We will see you in Detroit in a few hours…….  well, in actuality, his flight was delayed almost an hour and a half.  Off we head for Detroit Metro Airport to meet up with Mags and the rest of the PGR members coming out to greet Dan.  I called Mags to give her a heads up just in case he doesn’t make the connection, we decide not to cancel the welcome home until we know for sure he didn’t make the flight.

Dan’s best buds are coming to the house to wait for us to get home from the airport so they can see Dan for the first time since he left.  So, off we head for the airport, knowing that the guys are hanging out at the house and will be there when we get home.

9:07pm - cell phone rings, we are just outside of Detroit, almost to the airport.  It’s Dan, his plane just landed in Cleveland (the connecting flight left at 8:55pm) so needless to say, he wasn’t on the plane to Detroit.  OK. let mom make a couple calls, we are now heading to Cleveland because the next flight to Detroit isn’t until 7:30am the next day.  Call Mags to let her know that we aren’t going to make it and thank her for all her hard work getting this all set up and apologize for not being able to be there.  She promises pictures of everyone who came out will be emailed the next morning.  (She did, too)
Thanks to these wonderful PGR members who came out for a late evening welcome home for our son.  You are really incredible - THANKS from all of us

Now for the rest of the story - called the guys at the house  and let them know we are going to Cleveland to get Dan and bring him home.  You can wait for us there (we will be back around 4am OR you can go home and come back later) Of course they aren’t going anywhere. I knew that was what they would do but wanted to give them the option anyway.

So, we keep heading South into Ohio, I had looked online earlier to see how far it was to Cleveland from home (just in case) we were already an hour closer since we were in Detroit and not Lansing, so, south to the Ohio Turnpike and head East toward Cleveland.  I had already called Darrell to let him know that we were going to get Dan.  He & I sent text messages back and forth the entire drive from Detroit to Cleveland.  I even asked him to google me a map to the airport since all I knew was that we needed to get to the airport but not which exit we needed.  THANKS DARRELL

Dan & I talked several times during the drive, mostly because he was bored sitting around the airport doing nothing.  Though it did come out later that he had been rolling around in a wheelchair on one of the upper levels for a little while and that he had met up with an undesignated sailor fresh from boot and helped him find his ride.

We arrived at Cleveland airport around midnight - no fanfare to welcome Dan back, just me getting out of the car as fast as possible and hugging my son (trying not to cry - but failing just a little) no pictures, just memories.  I had made a really nice sign too. Didn’t get to hold it up for him to see when he came home but have a nice pic of him and Rob with it when we pulled it out of the trunk for him to see it. If my camera had been faster I would have gotten a GREAT picture of Johnathan and Dan.  But, alas, it was not to be (just another great memory for mom).

Dan & Rob with the sign

Brothers - nuff said

Yeah - can you tell I am happy he’s home????? 

Dan is home now - until he has to return to Camp Lejeune in a couple weeks. We are really enjoying having him home.  Paintball is a weekend event - they played on Mother’s Day in the pouring rain and still had a great time, playing this weekend in a scenario game at Hell Survivor’s field in Pickney; then a batchelor party playing next weekend too.
He is spending a lot of time with his friends - who have missed him A LOT (the feeling is mutual too)

Until next time.
Respectfully,
DeeDee

I wanted to say thank you to everyone on Corpsman.com who has been so supportive of me and my family while Dan has been on his deployment with the 1/10 from Camp Lejeune.              

Dan left for Iraq in September 2007 and returned to Camp Lejeune on Saturday April 26th.  If you have been following my blogs and posts in the forums you know that we had planned to be there when he arrived. Sadly, this was not to be.  Travel arrangements to move the troops back to Camp Lejeune were changed and rather than arriving 21 or 22 April they were delayed until 26 April - Unfortunately this meant that we would not be able to make the trip to North Carolina.  When Dan first notified me that their units travel dates had been changed and that he really had no information to give me other than to contact someone at a phone number he had been provided I was devastated.  I had everything set - I mean EVERYTHING - the rental car, reservations at the Hospitality Lodge on base; but anyone who has dealt with the military knows that plans are always subject to change.  And this trip was no different. 

I cancelled all our reservations and called the phone number that Dan had given me - it was definitely a bad number as it rang into a police recruiting office. So back to the drawing board - search the internet and locate the home page for his unit and call the number for the FRO - well of course, there is no answer there. Tried the OD, no answer.  NCOD? Same, no real people answering any phones. 

So, I did the next best thing, contact my Corpsman.com family and see if anyone can help me out.  Well, CrazyCajun is a really awesome individual - I’m not going to ask who’s arm he had to twist but he called me the next day with a phone number to call for information about Dan and his return from Iraq - HOLY COW it was the number to Dan’s Lieutenant - and what a nice guy he is.  He helped me find out what was going on and when the date/time were set he called me.  I had to laugh when I answered the phone to “May I please speak to Doc Reno’s Mom.” that was too funny but so appreciated. 

When we didn’t hear from Dan for a couple days we knew his unit was in the pipeline coming home. He called at 0400 EST  Saturday morning - usually early morning calls make me grumpy but not this time - It was GREAT to hear his voice and know he was in Germany getting ready to start the last leg of his trip back to Camp Lejeune.

Dan’s group arrived on Saturday afternoon (just like his Lt. told me) - when he called, he told me that as he was putting a box on a bus after their arrival that his Lt. came up to him and said; “Doc Reno, call your mother.” Dan likes to tease me about knowing so many people in the Navy even though I am an Air Force veteran but this time he didn’t say anything - just called his Mom to let her know that he was back in North Carolina and safe.  

Thank you again for all you have done your words of encouragement and support have meant so much.DeeDee (editor Scuttlebutt news)  

Due to circumstances beyond ANYONE’S control our trip to North Carolina for the return of Dan’s unit from it’s deployment was CANCELLED on VERY short notice.

I received an IM from Dan on Thursday afternoon, mind you we were scheduled to leave on SATURDAY, letting us know that his group MIGHT be back on Friday - not tomorrow FRIDAY (4/18) but NEXT Friday (4/25) which was the day we were scheduled to LEAVE North Carolina to head back to Michigan.  Absolutely shot our plans down.  No trip to North Carolina.  Had been thinking about trying to make the drive down on Thursday this week and being there on Friday sometime - but there is absolutely no way I could do 18 hours drive all by myself in one shot.  So, trip cancelled.  Probably better off since I got an IM from him today saying that the group that is due in on Friday left today and that he and his group weren’t part of it.  GOOD GRIEF!!!!

Been talking to one of the other corpsman moms - her son is with Dan too - mostly about whether or not our sons will be able to use the airline tickets that they have already purchased to get back to their home states for their leave.  I have been told by a reliable source that if for some reason they can’t make their trips out on time they should contact their airlines and let them know that the reason is military transport back from Iraq delayed their departure.  And that the airline should change their ticket at no additional cost to them.  I hope it is true but not going to hold my breath as we are counting on an airline to do the right thing and with all the people who got hosed when airlines cancelled flights for inspections I am not real optimistic about it.

Guess that is all the news that is fit to share - will let you all know when Dan is home on leave so you can stop in and say hi or catch up with him while he is home.

Yep, you guessed it - time is coming for Dan to return from his deployment - OMG I am so excited I can hardly contain myself :)   It’s hard to believe that the deployment is almost over and that his unit will be coming back to Camp Lejeune soon.

We were all supposed to make the trip down to be there when they arrive but due to circumstances beyond our control Rob will not be making the trip with us.  Johnathan, Morgan(my neice) and myself will be making the trip on our own.  Which is going to be strange to drive all that way with only one driver.  I know I didn’t do the majority of the driving on past trips, so this will be a totally new experience for me.  But rather than drive it all in one day we are going to split it up a little - go 6-8 hours the first day since we won’t be leaving until late afternoon and then do the rest the next day.

Dan has requested that I bring all things paintball with us so that he can get a much needed paintball fix when they get back.  So in addition to all the uniforms that have been stored here for the duration of the deployment I also have to bring a selection of civilian clothes and the paintball gear.  Which means the trunk of the rental car will be FULL.

We have reserved a room at the hospitality lodge on Camp Lejeune which is really a nice place to stay and since the rooms all have kitchenettes we won’t go broke eating out while we are there. Definitely a plus in my book. 

We are planning to get together with Mr. & Mrs. Crazycajun while we are in the area - something we have not been able to accomplish on any of our previous trips down to the area.  Don’t worry - pics will be posted for all to see

I am still working on the Adopt-A-Doc project for the corpsman.com website - but I am low on docs and people who want to adopt them.  If you are deployed and would like to be on the receiving end of care packages and letters please email me deedee@corpsman.com and get me your name, rank and mailing address.  If you would like to send out packages please email your name and address to me at the above address and I will happily get you a name.

Okay, so that may be true but it is really hard to remain patient when you are waiting to hear from someone who is far away and doesn’t get the opportunity to actually call home very often.

Dan got to go on 5 days R&R last week to Qatar.  He sounded great when he called home from there.  You could just hear that he was more relaxed than other times we have talked.  He said they went on a tour of the city where the base is that he was at and that the buildings are really interesting and took lots of pictures.  He also said they drive like maniacs.   I can’t wait for him to upload them for us to see.  I got the impression that he didn’t go do much while he was there just basically relaxed and enjoyed being away from life in Iraq.

We are on the downhill slide now - less than 2 months before they should be coming home.  Can’t wait til we know more details so we can plan our road trip down to be there when they get back.  Count on pictures being uploaded for your viewing pleasure

I know I haven’t been great about getting entries done as often as I would like.  Usually this is due to nothing spectacular happening that would warrant a post.  I should have gotten on here on Feb 3rd when the NY Giants won the SuperBowl - specially since Rob and the boys are HUGE fans.  For that I apologize.

I will try to get on more often to keep you up to date on the mundane comings and goings of my life.

Cheers and talk to you soon

Well, the holidays have come and gone. I wish I could say that I was sad to see them go but quite frankly the holidays just weren’t the same without Dan at home. I know I am not the only parent who spent the holidays wishing their son or daughter was at home with the family.

Spent Christmas Day pretending that I wasn’t waiting for the phone to ring. You know I was. Finally around 2:45pm the phone rang with a rather strange phone number on the caller id. I knew it was Dan. Apparently the internet was down (not surprising since it was a holiday) but for some reason Vonage phones were working so one of the guys with Dan was letting people make calls home (bless him). The connection wasn’t great but just hearing his voice was worth the snaps and crackles on the line.

The Thursday after Christmas we awoke to find the inflatable snowmen lying on the ground. Further inspection of them showed that they had been viciously attacked in the night and both of them sported 2ft slashes down them, rendering them uninflatable. I cried. Here we hadn’t even planned to put up ANYTHING and when we finally do it we get vandalized. Of course, we know that it was kids with nothing else better to do.

New Year’s Eve we were invited to a party in Williamston about 20 minutes from home. Since I don’t drink when people around me are; I offered to drive the four of us to the party so that no one had to worry about having too much to drink. It started snowing around 5:30pm and kept on until well into New Year’s Day. By the time we departed from the party (around 2am) the snow was pretty deep and the roads were pretty much drive where ever you want since you can’t see where the lanes are anyway. Good thing we had driven the Tahoe and not the Honda. I managed to not need the 4WD until we hit Okemos (which was when we finally started seeing other traffic and they were slippin and slidin all over the place) - Well it took us an hour to get from Williamston back home. We certainly got plenty of snow that night.

And that was the extent of our “holiday season”. Am I glad it’s over??? YEAH I am.

We talk to Dan on Instant Messenger every chance we get, usually atleast once a week. Of course, sometimes he is playing WoW (World of Warcraft) and Johnathan will see him on there and they get to talk for a little while which is nice for the brothers to get a chance to talk. Dan will be pinning on his FMF badge soon (needless to say we are pretty dang proud of him). He has talked about getting the paperwork started to stay active duty with the unit he is with once his deployment is over and if his IDCs seem to like him as much as he alludes to they will be working HARD to make sure that happens. I sure hope so, because I know how much he enjoys his job.

Work is work as usual. Nothing special to report there. Trying to do too much in too little hours.

I have been spending my Sunday afternoons making candles. I find it relaxing and enjoyable.
I am spending a lot of time on the Corpsman.com website, answering questions, promoting the newsletter, clicking ads and in general being “visible” to other members.
When I can work in the “spare time” I have been working on my cross stitch project and doing my online Wicca classes, both of which I enjoy.

Guess that is all from this Corpsman Mom. Hope you have enjoyed my blathering.
DeeDee

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=24255548

definitely not going to win any awards but hey - that isn’t what we were going for anyway

Okay, so we decided not to get a tree this year. Probably not a bad idea since I doubt we would have remembered to water it anyway.  Did put up the yard decorations last weekend.  Hung the lights on the front porch yesterday (yeah I know, talk about waiting til the last minute) and then today we got a real pine garland and I put it around on the top of the entertainment center and added some lights to it - and well, it looks pretty festive even if we really aren’t feeling it this year.

The stockings we sent to Dan and the other corpsman were a hit! Dan also liked the small gifts we put in there for him - of course he didnt’ wait until Christmas to open them (as if I really expected him to) HA HA - I hope he calls or IM’s tomorrow (that would make my day)

It doesn’t feel very holiday-ish around here.  Lots of things have been going on in our family and quite frankly I would rather just skip it this year.  Dan is gone on deployment which really makes this time of year crappy.  Mom and Dad (step) are divorced AGAIN and this time it is for keeps.  Mom is leaving the state next month and isn’t planning on moving back.   Needless to say I can feel my family falling apart at the seams and it just plain SUCKS!!!!!   My youngest sister and I are determined that we aren’t going to let the family drift apart but we both know it is going to be hard work on us all to keep that from happening.  Everyone is so busy in their own lives that “family time” is hard to schedule.

I think next year - if Dan can’t be home with us, we will go to where he is or if he is deployed again (let’s hope not) but if he is, maybe we will just take a trip and  get away for a few days rather than sitting at home.

I fear our pet “family” will be shrinking by a couple members soon.  Harley (dog) is totally blind now and having a difficult time getting around (we have to really watch him when he is outside) and Punky (cat) is getting hard to take care of (he has a tendancy to pee in shoes if they are left out) He has already come back from the edge atleast 3 times in the past year so we just don’t know how long he will be for this world.  But the rest of the zoo is doing fine and keeping us busy taking care of them.

We had our family dinner on the 15th at Old Country Buffet - I like going there since everyone can get what they want and they don’t complain when we are there for like 2 hours or more :)  I took my camera and set it up to record video clips for Dan - put them together into one “movie” and posted it for Dan to see on my MySpace page - the quality wasn’t great but the sentiment was still there.

 Well, tomorrow is Christmas Day and I would rather spend the day making candles or cross-stitching.  Oh well, that’s just the way it happens.  I would love to take an entire day off and spend it making candles.  That would be a great way to spent a day for me.

Here’s to wishing you and yours a very happy holiday.  Enjoy spending time with your loved ones, hold them close and make sure they know how much you love them.

DeeDee

I confess to having had a lot of fun putting together this care package - being mailed out tomorrow morning.  We decided to put do stockings for all the corpsman with Dan - BUT we wanted everything that went into the stocking to be something that would make them smile. So we got goofy stuff to put in them and I wrote their names on each stocking and carefully stitched them shut so that the contents wouldn’t fall out during transit.  I even found a camo santa hat and put that in the box too.  We put in a string of Christmas lights with a note attached saying “HANG US UP!!! - Mom said so ” Sure hope he listens to MOM

Dan asked what we wanted for Christmas here - frankly I want the same thing that all of the parents, families, friends and loved ones of every deployed Sailor, Marine, Soldier and Airman wants - all of them to be home.   But since we know that isn’t going to happen we are making the best of it. 

Haven’t gotten a tree yet - still haven’t decided if we are going to put one up or not - Leaving that decision to Johnathan, since he is the only kid at home.

The Adopt-A-Corpsman/Medic project got a HUGE boost this week.  Darrell sent out an email about it and my in-box was flooded with requests for addresses to send packages to.  Now if I could just get more of our deployed medical personnel to contact me, we could really get the ball rolling.  But we are just getting started and as long as there are medical personnel out on deployment we will keep sending packages out.

Happy Holidays to Everyone
Talk to you soon
DeeDee

Wow! Last year was our first Thanksgiving without Dan under our roof (but it wasn’t that hard because we were leaving the next day to spend the weekend with him at Great Lakes) THIS YEAR…. well, lets just say - I have spent the better portion of the day near the computer in hopes that he would atleast hop on his IM for a minute and talk to us - I know he has to work but DAMN SON, you are expected to contact your family on HOLIDAYS - that’s just the way it is

Today was rather uneventful as far as festivities go. The usual turkey breast (why cook the whole thing when it ends up going to waste), side dishes and pies. We all ate TOO much or atleast it felt that way. Watched football on one TV and Vertigo & The King and I on the other. Of Course the sound was turned down on the game so we had to provide our own commentary. Rob’s mom was here (which explains the OLD MOVIES) John spent most of the day on the computer playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and randomly catching glimpses of the games.

This morning I did manage to put together the November newsletter (Scuttlebutt) for the Corpsman.com site. It turned out pretty good I think. Trying to promote more interest in our Adopt-A-Corpsman/Medic project. Emailed it out to the members - IF YOU DIDN’T GET A COPY AND WANT ONE - EMAIL ME

Gotta work tomorrow - But atleast I’m not going out to fight for those DOORBUSTER SPECIALS that seem to come earlier and earlier each year. I think you gotta be NUTZ to go get in line at a store that is opening at 4am (yep 4 AM). Rob & I tried it several years ago - we got up and drove over to the local Target store because they had some little stereo on sale that we thought would be perfect for the boys’ bedroom - got over there and the line was INCREDIBLE - we looked at each other and said IT’S NOT WORTH IT and ended up at FlapJack Restaurant for breakfast

Here’s to wishing all of you a great Thanksgiving
Will talk to you again soon.
DeeDee