My husband Staff Sergeant Micah Stott will coming home on leave from Iraq for 18 days.  He is set to arrive this coming Easter Sunday.  I am so very excited and thought I would share it with everyone on here.  

Also the VFW of Tehachapi will be hosting a Community Pot Luck for him on Sunday March 30^th from 3:00pm-6:00pm.  There will be live music, good food and real hometown hero.  All are invited!    (children included)

I just wanted to tell everyone THANKS for all the nice comments from a previous blog.  I don't think any of you realize just how much those kind words mean to me.  I am holding up okay I am hoping that things will get a little easier.  My husband has only been gone for a about two weeks.  I am actually in Texas on my way to Tehachapi, the kids and I are moving back home for the duration of the deployment.  I figure it will make things easier.  Well, I will pass along the words of encouragement to my husband and once again thank you. 

I was wondering if anyone could give me some information about the schools in Tehachapi.  I grew up in Tehachapi but it has been a while since I was in elementary school.  I am moving back there next month and I have a kindergartner.  I went to Tompkins and that is the school she would go to if she went to public school but I am not sure if I want her to go there.  I have been looking into Carden and Heritage Oak.  We are not religious so I am not sure if Heritage Oak would work for us, but it does look like a great school.  If anyone can tell me about Carden or what Tompkins is like now I would appreciate it. 

I was told that my husbands picture was in the paper over 4th of July  under Home Town Heroes.  I looked for it on-line and was never able to find it.  I want to know if it is possible to get a copy of it still and if so, how?

I found this video and I was disgusted!  I actually wish I would run into  one of their picket lines so that I could swerve and take them all out.  Now I understand how hate is bred in America.   Watch the following video about the Westboro Baptist Church.  The last part is what really upset me.  Warning this video has STRONG language and lots of hate.  I also wonder if these people realize that soldiers fight to protect their right to freedom of speech and they do not deserve this.

http://vids.myspace.com/ind...

Well, as some of you may know my husband and I live in Fayetteville, NC where he is stationed at Fort Bragg.  This is the base where the 82 airborne soldiers that were killed this week are from.  This is a sad time for our community and has really hit too close to home.  My next door neighbor's husband is deployed and she had not heard from him since the attacks and was very worried but she was pleasantly surprised to wake up to a call from him this morning.  I hope every is praying for all of these families that have just lost their dads, brother, sons, ect...  Around here you never know anyone's situation the woman with three kids in the grocery store could be the woman who just lost her husband.  The community is really coming together but nothing can ever replace these men!  Here is a link to an article about all of the men.

http://fayobserver.com/arti...

I am getting ready to write my research paper for my Economics class and I have not yet chosen a topic.  So, I am asking you all to help me.  I can do it on any economic issue.  I want to write a paper on something important and something that I feel my classmates should be aware of.  Any ideas or input would be appreciated.  Thanks!

I just wanted everyone to check out The $20,000 Fish Story in the spirit section. The story is about my big brother Leon. He has been fishing for about 4 1/2 years and has finally broken into the pro circuit and is doing a great job! It was a nerve racking few days for me I was holding my breath everynight until I would get a phone call from him to let me know if he made it through or not. Well hope you enjoy the story and Leon we are so proud of Good Job!

I read this and wanted to share it. I thought it was sad and touching. It is from the Fayetteville Observer out here in Fayetteville, NC. This is the town where Fort Bragg is located. Four months ago, when I interviewed for my job at the Observer, the assistant managing editor told me one story in particular had been eluding him:How the war in Iraq affected this city and its people on a personal, emotional level.He told me to think about how I would tell it.But when I arrived in Fayetteville in September, I realized how removed I was from military life.Living near Fort Bragg, to me, meant that I could eat at the chain restaurant of my choice and that men were sure to outnumber women at the bar.I really knew just one person serving in Iraq: Sgt. Thomas Edward Vandling Jr. of the 303rd Psychological Operations Company.But, somehow — maybe in ignorance, maybe for my own selfish protection — I had separated Tommy the soldier from Tommy the lifelong friend.Until New Year’s Day.I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen when the phone rang. It was 1:43. We had just finished lunch. My parents were getting ready to drive me to the airport, ending my five-day visit to Pittsburgh. My brother was watching the second half of the Texas Tech-New Mexico basketball game.He never saw the end, because my mom screamed.“Oh God, Tom! No!”Tom — Tommy’s father and my dad’s friend since grade school — called to tell us Tommy was dead.He was driving a Humvee just south of Baghdad when he noticed fresh asphalt, a telltale sign of a roadside bomb. He swerved. The explosion killed him anyway.“Mother of Christ,” my dad yelled over and over, standing in the middle of the kitchen, his hands balled into angry fists.My youngest brother locked himself in his room to cry.My other brother, one of Tommy’s best friends, collapsed to the floor in a shoulder-shaking sob.I couldn’t find words. All I could do was stand with my hand over my mouth, feeling something horrible growing like a tumor in my chest: anger, anguish and total, utter helplessness.“No,” I said to myself again and again. “It can’t be true.”When we were small, we played cars on the kitchen floor in his parents’ house. We swam in the ocean together every summer. And every summer his fair skin burned.He was the one who told me, in a whisper, that Santa Claus wasn’t real. When I was 7, I wanted to marry him. When we were teenagers, I dated his friends instead.I was there when he earned his black belt in tae kwon do. He was there when I saw my first shooting star.He picked me up in his 35th anniversary Mustang convertible — a car he paid for with the money he won from the first lottery ticket he ever bought — to take me for ice cream. I picked him up in my 1997 Nissan Sentra to go gambling in Canada.Our phone conversations could last for hours and it felt as if we hadn’t talked for more than 10 minutes.I loved his laugh. He loved the look I gave him when I pretended to be angry.Tommy adored children. He read Nostradamus. He talked about himself in the third person. His tongue was so long he liked to say he could pick his nose with it, if he wanted to. He didn’t.Before Tommy went to boot camp four years ago he gave me his favorite baseball cap, the red one with the dragon on it that he never washed and that I always loved. He told me to keep it safe until he got back.I put it in my refrigerator next to a bottle of beer, took a picture of it and mailed it to him.He thought that was hysterical. He told me to keep the hat. It obviously had more fun with me than with him.I saw him last in September, at my grandfather’s funeral, just days before he returned to Iraq for another tour.“Be safe,” I told him.He laughed at me, palmed my head like a basketball and said:“April, it doesn’t matter how safe I am.”I hated those words then, because I knew they were true.I hate them now, because they are reality.It still smelled like him.I thought about his mom, Dee, who, the first time Tommy returned from Iraq, bought the biggest yellow ribbon I’ve ever seen to tie around their house.I thought about his dad, Tom, who had to drag that ribbon outside and find a way to keep it attached to the bricks.I thought about his brother, Jimmy, who simultaneously acted as Tommy’s teasing target and sidekick.I thought about his little brother, Mike, who wanted nothing more than to be just like Tommy.I thought about his sister, Elizabeth, who hollered every time Tommy flicked her on the forehead — which was all the time — but who couldn’t stop crying when he left.And I thought about Fayetteville and all of the military families living in it.I still don’t understand the sacrifices they make and the fears they have.But I get the pain.I get that one more soldier dying means a hundred more people are hurting.I get the questions you ask yourself, even though you know what your soldier’s answer would be: was his death worth it?Because Tommy’s death comes at a time when the war seems endless and the support for it lean, it somehow seems all the more unfair.Because our parents were friends before Tommy and I were even ideas, losing him hurts as much as if I were losing my own brother.Because I was born just two months before him, I have no memories of life without Tommy.And more than anything in the world, I hate that I have to make them now.