{"id":11235,"date":"2012-01-15T06:30:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/?p=11235"},"modified":"2012-01-13T13:13:53","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T18:13:53","slug":"here-we-go-again-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/here-we-go-again-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Here We Go Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey Sweet Shoppers! This is Nikki here today.<\/p>\n

Most of you probably are aware that we are a military family. My husband Brian is Active Duty Army National Guard, which basically means that’s his full time job. Over the course of our marriage we’ve been through two 13 month deployments and as of the end of this month we will be starting our 3rd.<\/p>\n

I could ramble on about all the emotional stuff that goes along with a deployment, but my goal this time is to try to stay upbeat and positive as much as possible, for myself, for my kids and especially for my husband. I’m trying to get organized and come up with activities and things that I can do with my kids while their Daddy is gone. This is the first deployment when the kids are really old enough to kind of understand what is going on and it affects them. My son Avery especially who is 6 1\/2 is having a hard time dealing with his emotions. Here are a few of the fun ideas I’m going to try and keep up with:<\/p>\n

Care Packages<\/strong>: while these are mostly for Brian, the kids will help me with them..I’ve got tons of ideas of fun things we can include and they can help me decorate the boxes for Daddy.<\/p>\n

Family Fun Nights<\/strong>: pizza and movie once a week which will hopefully include a phone call or skype time with Daddy<\/p>\n

Kisses from Daddy: <\/strong>I found this cute idea on Pinterest, although I’ll probably have to make a jar for each kid \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Countdown Board: <\/strong>Avery is very “visual”. He understands things much better when he can see it so I think one of these hanging in his room will be good for him. He’ll enjoy watching the number decrease every day.<\/p>\n

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Hallmark Recordable Storybook<\/a>: We’ve got two books, one for each kid recorded with Daddy’s voice.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Lots of Books about Deployment: <\/strong>We read a lot in this family..so I’ve already started gathering some books that I think will be good for the kids while Daddy’s gone..a few I like already…<\/p>\n

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Daddy Box: <\/strong>I haven’t gotten this one all sorted out yet but basically we’ll decorate a box and every week they can put things in it for Daddy that he can look through when he gets home.<\/p>\n

So that’s just a few ideas for while he’s away. And of course I plan to just keep them busy…a year for grown-ups is a long time..when you’re 6 and 3 a year is a lifetime.<\/p>\n

And as for me, I’ll just take it one day at time again. I’ll have good days and bad days and a few really bad days. But I’ll keep it together. I’ll scrap. A LOT. And I’ll lean on my friends here at Sweet Shoppe…the Sweetest place online!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey Sweet Shoppers! This is Nikki here today. Most of you probably are aware that we are a military family. My husband Brian is Active Duty Army National Guard, which basically means that’s his full time job. Over the course of our marriage we’ve been through two 13 month deployments and as of the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":11259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11235"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11278,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions\/11278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}