The last couple of weeks

Well, we have had a whirlwind of activity here at the house these last weeks. Over the last month we have had 4 different shipments of our stuff come in, well, 5 if you include the car. And each of those shipments came once a week. I guess that is good for spreading out the work, BUT it also has made the unpacking process feel like it's been going on FOREVER. And we're still not all the way done, the office remains a mess and pictures still need to be hung. I've kind of mentally checked out of this process too, which is of no help in this situation.

In the midst of settling in though we have had some fun times. Last week Ray (my sister's boyfriend) was in town on TDY (for work) and we were able to have him over for dinner. We had fish taco's and I was beyond elated to get the chance to finally use my ceramic fish (the fish was fin-less though, they got lost somewhere in the move). I'd like to take this moment to publicly thank Christina for the fish taco/ceramic fish idea. My creativity is so limited that I never would have thought of an appropriate use for the fish!




We had the chance this past weekend to go up to "The Lake". Osage Beach to be more precise. It was a ton of fun and a gorgeous day! While we didn't participate in the water activities (other than driving across the dam), we did fully emerge ourselves in the outlet mall! We stopped along the side of the road to take a picture of the lake, and of the new car! We have had so much fun with this new car, and it has proven to be very useful!


Most importantly we celebrated Matt's birthday last Friday! Even though Matt was working we got to spend some fun time with each other throughout the day. I made him Cinnamon rolls at breakfast, brought in sushi and birthday cake to him at work during lunch, and we had dinner at a local restaurant called "Matt's Steakhouse" (I think the reason is obvious). Matt enjoyed hearing from his friends and family throughout the day, and this year he got a membership to the "German Beer of the Month Club" for is birthday gift. How fun is it to get a gift that just keeps on giving month after month!

We've got a couple of things coming up for us this month. Matt will be heading out of town for a couple of weeks to go to some different conferences/trainings. He'll be in Orlando, Minneapolis, and Richmond. I'm thinking about heading out to Virginia, to visit with my Mom, and sister, and the kiddo's, during the time he is away. If I head out there I'll also get the chance to drive up to Canada with Mom and spend about a week there, it's very tempting.

I'm also excited about training for and running in an upcoming 1/2 marathon! A college friend/teammate of mine lives fairly close (St. Louis) and we've decided to train for the race together, well, not really together-together since she is about two hours away, but we will be training together in spirit; plus try and meet up for a couple of the longer runs. I'm excited! Of course we only decided to do it this week (6 weeks out), but I think we will be fine with the training, we are both fairly regular runners so hopefully we will be on track to pick right up on a running schedule.

In our new home

This pic wasn't taken by us! It's fall and the date reads 2006, it was taken by the landlord, it looks exactly the same though, so I thought it would suffice!

It's a duplex (obviously) and we are on the left side of it. While it doesn't look like it from the front it is actually a pretty big home as a duplex, it goes a good distance out to the back and is situated on a hill, so it has two levels to it. It is perfect, a bigger single family home would have just meant more money for wasted space, which didn't make much sense with just the two of us.

We are about halfway settled, we had movers come with my stuff that was in a storage unit in Virgina. Some of my stuff had been in storage for the last three years, it was like Christmas when all the boxes came and I was able sort through everything! We also had movers come with some of Matt's stuff from California, his parents also had some things they were wanting to give us, so that was able to be moved with that shipment as well.

We are now waiting on everything from Germany, and that should arrive here at the end of the month. Which will be great, because our home is kind of humorous right now, we have a dining room table-but no chairs, we have a sitting room with end tables, sofa table, coffee table-but nothing to actually sit on, we are using my camping chairs downstairs in the family room, and I don't even want to talk about the office...our bedroom is set up though (as far as the big furniture pieces go). So that is nice.

We have had some beautiful days the last week, which has been much more reasonable than that crazy hot and humid weather we were greeted with! Matt's job is going well and he is enjoying it. I just recently turned in some resumes to a few positions opening up on post. Two openings are in fitness/recreation, and one is with youth services. Hopefully something comes up, otherwise I will just keep looking!