Love Always Hopes: The Adventures of Mr. Superman and Mrs. S.: Giveaway Winner

I'm terribly sorry that I didn't get around to announcing the winner of Mrs. Muffins generously donated giveaway but with a new job, my deployment brain, and a whole lot of other alshfkjahfd I have going on, it just slipped down my to do list.

There was a whopping 81 comments and so many fabulous Lovelies who entered. Thank you for making it such a huge success!

Congratulations Seana! You have 48 hours to email me (my icon is at the top of my page) to claim your winnings. If I don't hear from you, I'll randomly generate a new winner.

Thank you again to Mrs. Muffins. Girl, you are the best! So many of you expressed how badly you wanted/needed new layouts and in all seriousness, Mrs. Muffins is the best and very reasonably priced. So what are you waiting for? Go get started on a new fantastic layout!!

*Edited* Hello!! In the last two weeks or so I have gained nearly forty new followers!! FORTY! Just a handful of you have actually come out from behind your comfortable lurker status to say hey but for the most part, I don't know who you are. I want that to change! Why?

That's why. So don't be shy, and if you haven't already, tell me you're a new follower, leave me your link and I will be sure to come stop by your place and say hey too :) I try to keep up and follow all my Lovelies in return but I can't do that if I don't know who you are.

If you have a military blog be sure to check out my post about Linking the Lovelies to get in on that action as well. Also, just to get some more background on me and Mr. Superman, feel free to read the Dear Mrs. S. page and Our Angel Babies page as well.

On a completely unrelated tangent, thank you to everyone who has become a fan on Facebook of our blog page! It is greatly appreciated. For those who are still a little lost and confused about what some of the things in my right sidebar are, there are all the buttons you can click to come visit me on other social networks. You can go become a part of my community on BlogFrog, Like our Facebook Page, Add the real me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter, and coming soon, I will be unveiling my Etsy shop! Just be sure to let me know who you are in the blogging world so I don't feel like an idiot.

Also, to the few people who have messaged me about my blog layout being messed up... its not me its you. Ha ha, really though, I know there are a few of you that the layout won't load completely and that's because your server just isn't able to load all the html and java as quickly as it should. I did consult a few people and I think I may have it fixed. I'm not a dumdum and I did not select a striped layout to have behind my posts. If it loads correctly on your computer, the posts background is solid white. If you're still having issues, all I can say is sorry Charlie!

I want to give major, super, ginormous THANKS to all of my wonderful, glorious, and fabulous Guest Bloggers who have been an incredible help and stress reliever to me in the last couple weeks. They will continue to be the main attraction on here for a while until my ~~husband is gone to Afghanistan, my house is packed, and I am back and settled in in Arizona~~ life gets a little less stressful and crazy. I am also in need of more people willing to become a part of the elite Mrs. S. Guest Blogger Society. ~~I won't be calling anybody out but I had a good 57 people actually volunteer and accept my invitation to be a guest and more than half of those people have flaked.~~ So if you wanna be a doll and have me love you forever, feel free to email me and let me know!

Between this very unexpected and disorganized deployment, the cysts that have decided that now would be a good time to take up residence on my ovaries, the very short amount of time to pack everything up, and tie up the millions of loose ends a deployment requires, I want to apologize for for being a bit MIA in the comment arena. I know most of ya'll understand and for that I thank you. When life decides to give me a bit of a break, I'll be back, I promise. Probably with lots of pictures and stories of this little ~~guy~~ vampire since I'm moving in with my sister and her husband and four kids. Its going to be an adventure.

Until then though. here's a rather long (but it just so happens to be the short version) rundown of what's been going on in the Superman Household.

Some of you may remember my Twitter and Facebook posts about being held prisoner by bugs in my own house. About how I found a giant cockroach so I went out back to get our bug spray and in the middle of me opening my back door, the world's largest spider proceeded to attempt to run inside. I screamed and slammed the door and went and curled up on the couch until a few hours later Mr. Superman came home. He just kind of nodded and smiled when I told him about said world's largest spider and went to go take a peek. He hollered and came back inside and Lovelies, I kid you not, grabbed one of his iron golf clubs. It ended up not being necessary because I had actually killed it when I slammed the door but nonetheless, Mr. Superman learned not to doubt me.

Mr. Superman also surprised me and planned a date. It was the first date in so long I can't even remember and it was a fabulous time. We went and watched The Other Guys and stumbled upon this fabulous restaurant nestled in the woods on the way to our pre-destined dinner place. Its called Creekside Tavern. If you are ever in Valdosta, be sure to go eat there.

I also have gotten some surprises in the mail. I got this cute little sign that I won in Nicole's Giveaway.

My BFF Brighteyes surprised me and sent me this beauty that I have been admiring at Hobby Lobby for no less than two years. Mr. Superman thought I was losing it because well... I lost it. I blame it on my medicine. Seriously.

I got the beautiful paper flower boutonniere's from Katie which I don't have a picture of but here they are.

Yesterday found us in the middle of an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. Seriously. Let me divert for a minute. We're from Arizona. Well I really am from there and Mr. Superman claims to be because its just easier that way. Anyways, we are from The Valley of the Sun and we are accustomed to the stuff that that entails. You know, 117 degree weather, no seasons, tumble weeds, corn fields, monsoons, ASU vs U of A rivalry and scorpions. Lots and lots of scorpions. I actually had the misfortune to get stung 7 times by one of these nasty little buggers in my right leg. It was my senior year and I was sitting on the floor with newspapers spread out everywhere. I was searching for the perfect article to do my latest current event project for my Government class. I was in some baggy comfy pants and I felt a tickle. I scratched. More tickles so I kind of pinched. It pinched back. HARD. It started to pinch more and it was moving from my shin and calf area and heading much farther north. I was freaking out and I tore from my room, screaming, jumping and continuing to get pinched. By the time I got to the family room where my mom was, I had ripped my comfy pants off and was still jumping up and down. Now keep in mid it was nearly midnight and my dad and brother had headed to bed a good three hours previously. My mom goes and gets me bag of frozen peas while she goes and wakes my Pops. It took about a half hour but my daddy ended up finding the tiny little culprit and killing it. My parents debated taking me to the ER but I said I just wanted to go to sleep. Fast forward to about 5 AM. I wake up suddenly and see a huge dark shape above me. I nearly scream. It was my dad, with his ear to my face. His response? "I was trying to make sure you were still breathing." Awe, how sweet. I get up about an hour later and stump to the bathroom. I say stump because that was what my right leg felt like. It hurt but it was numb. It was HUGE. My little brother Butch came in there and his first reaction... "What the heck happend to your leg!?" I swear ya'll, it looked like I had elephantiasis. Ever since then, I was super careful about laying on the floor.

Now back to our Indiana Jones adventure. We decided yesterday to try and finish packing up our office. There were some boxes in there that had been packed back in November of 2008 and had been permanently sealed up since January of 2009. From then on those boxes just sat in closets, still sealed, in both Utah and then Georgia. We opened our electronics box to sort through all the old charges, cords, wires, micro-chips, memory cards, etc. so it could be re-sealed and added to our storage pile. We get nearly down to the bottom and I FREAK THE HECK OUT. Dude, there was an effing scorpion in there and I had almost effing grabbed it!! Mr. Superman starts laughing and I nearly passed out. No joke. We slowly pick up and shake out the remainder of stuff and throw it aside. Mr. Superman then attempted to be smooth and failed. He had a glass bowl and tipped the box upside down thinking the scorpion would go in the glass bowl. WRONG. It hit the ground and RAN. I could almost hear it screaming, "FREEEEEDOOOMMMM!" a la Braveheart. Something that should have taken about two seconds, ended up taking twenty minutes because he then had to empty the entire office.

After it was killed we did some research, just still in awe that this scorpion had lived for so long without food or water. Well did you know that they can live without food or water for nearly two years? Yeah. Makes them even worse. Blech.

While putting the office back together, I was sorting and folding and stacking all of Mr. Superman's deployment stuff he's been issued so far.

I've also asked him a few times if its irony that him going off to war makes our house look like a war zone. Our office looks like it vomited camo. Oh the car too, since half his stuff is still in ther

I've been doing a whole lot of snuggle loving with my cuddle bug.

I also want to give a massive, gratitude filled THANK YOU to the beautiful Mrs. Muffins. Because of her kindness, we have a photographer who will be doing our pre-deployment pictures for us tomorrow! I had a horrible experience trying to find an OpLove photographer willing to do our pictures, nearly had a breakdown witnessed by many via Twitter and Facebook when the heaven sent Mrs. Muffins took it upon herself to locate a photographer in our are and plead our case. I meant what I said woman, I'm gonna do something fabulous for you. Many thanks to everyone else who has been so kind, concerned, understanding, loving, and for expressing it all to us. All of your advice and kind words have been extraordinarily helpful and mean the world to us.

Now I'm off to get me some cuddle time with Mr. Superman. Happy Weekend :)