January has been my favorite month for a while.  It’s the start of a new semester, the start of a new year, sometimes it snows and most importantly it’s my birth month!! However this January has to be one of my favorites because my Christmas present from Tim arrived last week and I love it!

I love, love, love the middle piece!

Chauncey appears happy.

December

December for us has been pleasant. Nothing extraordinary happened on our side of the US, but nothing bad happened either, so we a loving the happy middle. Tim continues to do well at his job. I continue to be a stay at home wife (for the record I have a new found serious amount of respect for stay at home mothers/wives). I begin school again in January (thankfully I am almost done); I am also continuing to look for a part time job with no luck. I am not sure why I have not found a job, if it’s that I will be in school or that I do not want to work Sundays or they feel I am overqualified to work there. Maybe a little bit of all or maybe none, who knows? I am grateful to not have to stress too much about not having a job and husband who says not to worry.

I missed everybody back home this year, especially all my nieces and nephews. I loved the calls that I got from family, the Christmas cards, emails and presents. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts, you were all in ours as well.

Our Christmas was quiet. Tim had to work, but after he got off work we went to a friend’s house and had Christmas dinner. I made sweet potato casserole for the first time and it was really good. We already gave our gifts to each other weeks ago. Tim got a new television for the living room and I got a new couch that will be arriving Wednesday. We got wonderful gifts from Mom J (a blanket and a movie: both were really appreciated, it’s cold here) and Iris and Tim sent us a game (Qwirkle is the best game ever, but I have still yet to beat Tim at it) and a book about a physicist except it’s written like a comic book.

Our calling at church remains fun. Our kids have a lot of personality and were excited about Christmas last week. Hopefully they are a little calmer this week. We are enjoying being in primary together. On Sunday both Tim and I have talks to give. Neither one of us has written them yet. I was not given a topic and inspiration has yet to strike on what I should write about.

Tomorrow we are going with our friends and their son to Washington, D.C. and we are excited. We have never been before. Hopefully I get lots of pictures. I am sure it will be fun.

Love,

Jessica

Dogs

I know that Tim secretly loves the dogs.

 

Or maybe it’s not so secret.

How can Chauncey sit like that without breaking her back?

Poor Dwight he is always so tired.

Love that face, he looks so wise.

I love my dogs.

November

This month on Facebook I have been writing one thing that I am thankful for each day. Now I am far from perfect with the task some days I forget and have to add a couple of extra “what I am thankful for” on the next day. I have a couple of friends who do not like the tradition. I can see their point. It does feel a bit like jumping on the bandwagon, something being done because everybody is doing it or we should be grateful every month. I agree. However, and maybe it’s just me, I find it hard to always be giving thanks, to always be grateful and to always remember how blessed I am. It has been interesting to see just how much I have to give thanks for. I have particularly noticed it on the bad days. There was one day where I was quite sad. I was missing my family (both Az and Ky), I was worried about work and school and just not feeling happy. That night when I was trying to think of something to post I had the thought that I had nothing to be grateful for that day and was going to post something silly and be done. But then the thought came to me that I have my health, I am young and healthy and what a great joy and blessing that is. Hopefully when the month is over I can remember to give thanks. To be honest I doubt I will everyday being the flawed human that I am, but maybe on the days when I am prone to grumbling and unhappiness I will be able to find a blessing or to remember just how lucky I am.

 

This month I am thankful for:

Tim-he works so hard and I am so happy that we are together again.

Making new friends-we are not very social people, but we are trying. I really like Tim’s supervisors’ wife, she is a really nice person.

Church callings-Tim and I just got called to CTR 6 and it will be our first time teaching together.

A car-that does not break down every other week. It really is nice to be able to drive somewhere and not worry about the car stopping.

Family (Az)-Mom J, Beth, Iris, Tim B., Eddie, Tecia, Will, Anja, Mike, Christie, Robert, Alicia, David, Steven, Mary, Hannah, Lydia, Aunt Karen, Cammy and Mac, Heidi and Holly. The list could go on and on but I miss seeing everybody and the kids. I am thankful for technology allowing me to see how everybody is doing and allowing me to stay connected.

Family (Ky and Ma) Granny L. William, Lisa, Taylor, Justin and my friends-Even though I have not lived close to them in a long time I still feel as if I am a part of their lives and that makes me happy.

Cooler Weather

The ability to read

Cereal

Water

Blankets

Socks

Green Grass

Rain

Leaves Changing Colors

Really the list could go on, but these things were in my thought. I hope that everybody has a Happy Thanksgiving.

 Love,

Jessica

 

Hurricane Sandy

We survived our first hurricane! I have to admit I was a little nervous about what to expect. People who were here for last year’s hurricane were a little panicky. But we escaped unscathed. In fact it really was not that bad for us. Part of the base was evacuated due to concerns about possible flooding, but not our part. We kept thinking that the power was going to go out, however we were spared that. Tim was off work on Monday and Tuesday so it was like a mini-can’t go outside-because of violent wind and rain vacation. We watched television and played Mario Party on the Wii. We are blessed that so many people checked on us: my mother-in-law, my sister-in-laws, one of my brother-in-laws, various friends. It’s great to be loved.

Do you see that piece of land next to the letter A? That is Delaware.

Scary

But thankfully all we got was this.....

and lots of this.

 Thanks to Sandy it's now cold......

The epic conclusion of our moving tale.......

Upon arriving you would think that we would have earned a nap. But alas there was work to be done and arraignments to be made. We found out the day before we arrived that due to a clerical error we were not scheduled to get our house until Tuesday-so we would need somewhere to stay for 5 days. We were discovering all of this with Tim’s sponsor. A man who has served at this base for 15 years who is responsible for helping Tim get adjusted here. He was a really nice guy who after helping us get to where we needed to be took Tim on a little tour and then gave him the rest of the day off to get some rest.

Thursday-Saturday morning we stayed in temporary housing on base. It was wonderful. Those places are like apartments with everything you need i.e.: washer/dryers, dishwasher, fridge, stove, multiple televisions and best of all the dogs were allowed to stay with us. But alas all good things must end and that weekend happened to be a NASCAR race weekend here, which meant that lots of people were coming to town and somebody with a higher rank had already reserved that room.

Saturday-Tuesday morning we stayed at the base hotel. It was kind of annoying because being a hotel it was just one room. But it was a nice room. Sadly the dogs were not allowed to be with us there. Tim’s sponsor and family agreed to watch them for those days. Tim was given Tuesday off to help me unpack.

That’s pretty much all of our moving excitement. We loved it and hated it. It was lots of fun seeing new places, but exhausting as well. We are glad to be settled for the moment.

The Journey Part 1

No pictures…yet. Please forgive; I want to post pictures of the house….but it is not exactly put together yet. Meaning our garage still has most of our stuff in it and the living room still has bags from basic training that Tim has yet to unpack. On the bright side the bedroom is done and organized so we are making some progress. Pictures soon…I want to say in the next week or so.

 

The trip across country was not too bad. We made really good time and once we got the dogs settled down it was fine. We went through AZ (of course), New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and finally into Delaware. It rained from Kentucky until we got to Maryland. I took 2 pictures and they were of the dog. I had every intention of taking pictures…..but then I didn’t.

 

The only trouble came when we got to Maryland. The night before we decided it was getting late and we should stop. We were only 4 hours from Delaware, but it was 8pm and the roads nestled between the mountains were getting dangerous. The first problems came when we got off the interstate. In every other state when night approached we simply pulled off the road and picked one of the many places to stay. Maryland proved tricky…..we had to travel about 7-8 miles off the main highway to find a place and they….didn’t accept pets! So we traveled another 3 miles to a Best Western. More expensive, but pet friendly. Exhausted from the 12 hours of driving and the being lost, we went to bed expecting to get up early and be in Delaware by 10 am the following day. We awoke at dawn, actually before dawn at 5:30am. Ate a quick breakfast, packed our stuff, took the dogs on a walk and packed the dogs. We were on the road by 6:45. We went to turn down a side road so that we could turn around (we missed the road that would take us back to the highway) when the tongue connecting the trailer to the moving truck broke. Completely broke. Lucky for us we had pulled onto a side road. We called budget who stated they had to send somebody out to verify that it was actually broken and that we did not break it (even with Tim telling them they should bring another trailer because it was indeed broken) their policy however is to look first and then go get the stuff to fix it. So we waited 2 hours and 15 minutes for a guy to come out and say the following :”It’s broke and you didn’t break it.” Seriously? I was so mad. So the guy unhooked the trailer called budget and then said his goodbyes to us telling us that budget would be in touch. After about 45 min of silence we called budget…who stated they were working on finding us a trailer. While waiting we decided to take the dogs on a walk when a really nice older couple came outside to talk to us. They invited us into their home. The wife gave us lunch and then dessert and then keep trying to get us to eat snacks. The husband loved our dogs. They sat with us for several hours talking and when they had to run errands we got up to leave, they insisted that we stay there and watch television. We protested, I mean we are strangers and they wanted to leave us alone in their house? But they insisted and we relented. At noon I called budget and they stated that a trailer would arrive in 2 hours. At 2 we still did not have one. Tim called and found out one had never been sent. They said one would arrive in an 1 and 45 min. We were furious. Finally after waiting all day we got our trailer at 3:45pm. We were able to leave by 4:15 and were on the road again. We stopped another night. We made it to Dover by 11ish that Thursday.

You’re amazing if you read all this. Our first week will be written about in another post.