Work?

So for some reason (hey, I'm not complaining), Nick's brigade has a whoooolllleeee bunch of time off in the next 2 months! There are 2 normal weekends, 5 4-day weekends, and one 3-day weekend (this weekend). I'm wondering when he's actually going to be working! A lot of these 4-day weekends are back to back, so some weeks, he'll only be working 3 days. Love it! So, if I'm not around for awhile, you know why. We have a few things planned, like camping, a concert in Dallas, a brigade ball and potentially a little trip with my parents for my birthday. But, for the most part, we'll probably just be hanging out with the boys at home. Sounds good to me! Oh, and yay again for me not working!

Calling Part 2

For those of you who receive my blog by E-mail, sorry about that last post (with the same title). I prematurely pressed enter...before I even wrote anything.

Anyway, to follow up to my post yesterday, and mostly address the "calling" part, I think the part time job I have right now at church is absolutely from God. And, because I was able to quit my previous job, I have the time and ability to do it. For those of you who don't know, I work once a week doing childcare for a women's bible study at my church. I initially applied for the job thinking it was a volunteer position, and then wound up getting the *paid* supervisor position. Works for me!

Not only is it fabulous because it's around the corner and paid, I know I'm helping women with children get some quality, uninterrupted time learning about Jesus and spending time in fellowship with other believing women. Not too shabby. And obviously, I would never have had that opportunity if I was still working, as it is during the morning on Thursdays. Granted, I am getting paid, but I would've done it either way. And it's great to have yet another opportunity to do something for other people.

Oh, and as a result of not working, I'm also able to volunteer in my friend Rachel's classroom once a week when she doesn't have an aide in her room. Because I know I wouldn't want to be alone in a room with 15 Pre-K kids.

Calling

Our pastor at church talked about your "calling" on Sunday. It was a really good message & I've been thinking a lot about it lately.

This summer, I decided to quit my job as a special ed aide. I knew Nick would be getting a lot of time off when he came home, plus his 2 weeks of leave during the deployment. But also, I knew that I was really stressed out last year, both when he was home and when he wasn't.

Obviously, when Nick was deployed, I was the one who took care of the dogs and the house and everything else. I didn't have a choice, and I was so incredibly stressed out. I honestly don't know how I took care of anything around the house. I was completely exhausted every day when I would get home from work.

I can't say it was too much better before Nick left either. Not that he didn't do anything, but the burden of taking care of the house still fell primarily on me, despite the fact that I was working full time as well. Little things would drive me crazy, like dishes in the sink, or having to tidy up. And I think I resented Nick a little bit for putting the burden on me so much.

So, needless to say, I am still confident that quitting my job and becoming a "homemaker" was totally the right decision. My house is actually clean (it must've been a pit before), I don't mind taking care of all of the little tasks around the house, and picking up after my husband doesn't drive me (that) crazy. I feel like I have the ability to be more selfless towards him, even if it's little things like making his lunch, or doing the dishes after dinner. I can take pride in my "job" of keeping the house in order and Nick doesn't have to worry about a thing.

Obviously being a homemaker isn't the most riveting job, and can get a little bit monotonous. But I take pleasure in making good meals, a clean house, and a happy husband. That is definitely enough purpose for me. And we're both happier, less stressed out people as a result. Oh, and the dogs like me being home more too and as a result, drive me crazy a little less often.

Philippians 2:13- "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." NIV

Fraud Alert

So we had a fun afternoon/evening yesterday. We had gotten a call from our bank asking us to check on some charges. After 3 phone calls trying to get more information about one charge in particular, we realized we definitely didn't make the charge. Thankfully, the charge was really small (less than $10), but was to some random advertising agency. Weird.

So then, just to make sure nothing else sketchy was going on, I checked Nick's credit report. Surprisingly, he had 2 "potentially negative" alerts. After about a million phone calls, we figured out that there was some debt with AT&T, which was very confusing, since I know we've paid every bill ever.

Well, long story short, apparently when we started a joint AT&T account in July of 2007, in order to get our current area code, the lovely AT&T representative put our address as a random address (actually, a McDonalds) in our current town. Not a problem, until they closed Nick's old account and didn't change said address, or have us pay off the balance of that account. So, AT&T sent bills and past due notices to McDonalds for months, and then when we didn't pay, sent it to a collection agency. Somehow, it took the collection agency almost 3 years to track us down, and AT&T didn't figure it out either.

We're really glad that's all that it was, but it sucks that we're paying for someone's stupid mistake, and our credit score now gets to suffer. Good times.

Back to Work

So I had my first day back at work yesterday. Despite one of the teen helpers not showing up (lovely), it went really well, considering there were only 2 of us working. Obviously it would have been a lot smoother with another set of hands, but the kids were really good. There were no major crises or time outs, which is always a good day. It was a good mix of new kids and old kids too. It's amazing how much they've grown in the 2 months since I last saw them!

There was one pretty funny moment when I took 3 kids to go potty though. One of the 3 year old boys (shocking) stripped down completely below the waist- including his shoes- and ended up making a huge mess in the bathroom. Good times. I somehow managed to get his pull-up back on, get all 3 kids to wash their hands, and make it back to the daycare room. Phew! Then, of course I helped him put his pants and shoes back on. Training for kids much?

And can I just say how excited I am that it is the weekend?! Nick and I were asleep by 10pm last night, we were so exhausted. Yay for sleeping in tomorrow!

Pictures from Yosemite!!!

Yosemite Valley




Hiking





Mirror Lake



Half Dome





Half Dome reflected in Mirror Lake


More hiking

Badger Pass

Getting ready to go snowboarding!!!


All bundled up

Lots of snow!

Yay for snow!

Snowball fight

Yosemite Falls




Lower Yosemite Falls



Us in front of the falls

Half Dome again

The other side of the valley

El Capitan

We Survived

Well, we survived our first day back to real life. I must say though, we are both completely exhausted. Of course, the dogs were hyper in response. Thanks boys!

We definitely started getting ready for bed at 8:30pm tonight. We were both just really busy all day and probably should've gone to bed earlier last night. Thank goodness this is a short week! We'll be alright after a good, long night of sleep tonight.

So one if my "goals" this year (I guess you could call it a New Years resolution) is to memorize Bible verses. One of my favorite verses from high school, and one that was recited at our wedding was Isaiah 40:28-31. Although I definitely need to rememorize the chapter and verse number. I think it's pretty applicable for today though:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall be faint and weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but he who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint.
English Standard Version

And with that, I bid you goodnight. To another busy, yet hopefully not exhausting day tomorrow, God willing.


- Posted from Court's iPhone

Day Off

Man, I think it's going to be a rough transition getting back to "normal" tomorrow. It has been so amazing having Nick home for this last month and neither of us want it to end. We were really spoiled getting so much time off and away from normal life.

Last night, we had a ton of fun cooking his dad's Baked Ziti for dinner. I think we had all 4 burners on the stove going at one point as well as the Cuisinart. And it turned out delicious! Today, we took the dogs to the park and walked/ran them. Then we took down all the Christmas decorations, put away all of our stuff from vacation (we came home with an extra box of my stuff from my old room at my parent's), and attacked our extremely messy office. Oh, and we looked at our budget, which was really useful. Exciting, huh?! I swear, we did do some fun stuff too. It was a really productive and fun weekend though. One I wouldn't trade for anything.

But alas, it's back to normal again tomorrow. We really were spoiled. Nick's back to work tomorrow & I'm off to Rachel's classroom and the million other errands I really should run. But it's all good because we got this month together.

Home Again

We made it home on Friday night after a reallllly long 2-day drive from California. Even though Texas welcomed us home with lots and lots of rain, it is good to be back! Our month at home was wonderful. In the last week of our trip, we went on a little family trip with my family, ate dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant with old church friends, had dinner with my gramma, and played with our niece and nephews. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful vacation.

It's going to be rough having to get back to "normal life" after so much time off. Thankfully, Nick doesn't start back to work until Tuesday. So we have a little time to get organized and transition back to that. The boys were excellent on the drive back, and are enjoying reclaiming the backyard and the neighborhood.

Yesterday, we started attempting to get back in shape after the holidays and played a bunch of fitness Wii games. Soooo fun! My new favorite workout game is EA Sports Active. It kicked my butt a little bit and I'm a bit sore this morning, but it was fun and I think it'll be something I'll stick with. They have a sweet 30 day workout that I'm going to try to do, although maybe not necessarily sequentially since I want to go back to Yoga and stuff.

But ya, things are good and it's good to be back home again, and do things like go to our church. Not too much to report otherwise. I'll try to put pictures from Yosemite up this week when Nick's at work. They're really pretty!

On the Road Again

We're entering our 5th of around 8 hours on the road today. Nick's driving for the moment, and the dogs are passed out in the back, so I thought I'd update.

Nick and I took a "mini vacation" to Yosemite (within our overall trip to California) for a few days, and it was awesome! There was a bunch of snow on the ground and it was absolutely gorgeous! Plus, we got a really sweet package that included a whole bunch of free stuff:
-lift tickets
-ski and snowboard equipment rental
-ice skating
-tubing
-tour if the valley

We didn't use all of it, seeing as we were only there 2 full days, but we did take advantage of a lot of it! Yay for being able to go somewhere mid week in early January!

The first day, we went hiking around a "lake" (it's actually like a pond) and a waterfall and went ice skating. I think I've only ice skated like twice in my life, and am notoriously horrible at skating, but it ended up being really fun! And we didn't fall once, woohoo!

The next day, we went snowboarding and I did pretty well, considering I've only done it once! The first few runs were a little rough, but then I remembered what I was doing and stopped falling quite as much. And eventually, I didn't totally crash off of the chair lifts, ha ha. Pretty much every muscle in my body hurts today, but it was really fun and worth it. Nick took a snowboarding class his last year at West Point, so of course, he was really good and had lots of fun too! That night, we also went out to dinner at the fancy restaurant in Yosemite valley, and boy, was it tasty! We also capped off the night making s'mores over an indoor fire. So romantic and fun!

We took another short hike this morning and got some souveniers -a vintage poster, black and white Ansel Adams postcards, and a couple ornaments. Then we took a whole bunch of pictures and started our drive back to the in-law's. We picked up the dogs and said our goodbyes.

And now we're on the way to my parent's house and then another mini vacation tomorrow. Phew! Not too shabby. It's obviously been a pretty awesome trip and we still have a week left! The In-n-Out Burger count is now to 7, by the way.

Oh, and we're pretty happy that we're missing the freezing temperatures is Texas right now! It was kind of sad that it was warmer in Yosemite (a place with snow) than in Texas right now. I don't think that happens too often.

I'll try to post pictures of the gorgeousness of Yosemite soon!

- Posted from Court's iPhone

Mmm, Chicken

So we've been up at Nick's parents house for a week or so now & they have 11 acres of land. They recently fenced off a few acres and we've been running the dogs in there- which they absolutely LOVE! We call it the pasture, and it was originally built so that they could bring their cows here to give birth.

Anyway, today I took the dogs into the pasture while Nick was helping his dad with the horse. I looked down at my phone for all of 2 minutes and Rufus crawled under the fence into one of the loading pens (2 sides fence, 2 sides gates). I was worried Rufus would run over to Nick near the horse and the chickens, so I called to Nick for help. In the meantime, Scout squeaked under the fence. Well, Nick came over & helped me open the gates & we got Scout back into the main pasture. But, when Nick turned around to get Rufus, all he saw was his butt sliding under the outside fence. He jumped over the fence and ran after him, jumping over hay bales and the like. But it was too late. He took off right for the chickens and managed to get one of the favorite chickens in his mouth. Thankfully, they managed to extract her from his mouth without any damage.

But she made quite the racket, which then made Scout take off inside the pasture. And then he went back into the darn loading pen, whose gate I had just shut. I yelled to Nick again, but he didn't hear me, and Scout squeaked under the fence too. I realized it would just be faster for me (rather than jumping over fences) to just grab the leashes and run out the normal gate. Thankfully, the chickens were already scared off & Nick was able to catch Scout without incident.

Man, do they like to keep things interesting!

Oh Boys...

So Nick went out hunting with his dad today. Literally 2 hours after he left (bright and early, of course) Scout threw up in his crate. I cleaned it up and went back to sleep, put him back in his crate and we were good. Well, then I took them out to go potty this morning and Scout came running over with something stuck to his nose and something crunching in his mouth. It took me a second to realize they were feathers on his nose and that there were more sticking out of his mouth. As soon as I tried to make him drop the dead bird he was eating, he swallowed it whole.

I have a feeling today is going to be one of those days...and, of course, it had to be the one day Nick is gone all day. Thanks boys (it's just a matter of time before Rufus gets "Rufusy")!


- Posted from Court's iPhone

Goodbye 2009!

Man, was it just me, or did 2009 seem like the longest year ever?! I'm sooo glad it's finally over! It was pretty much the ultimate Murphy's Law year- if it could have gone wrong, it seems like it did. It definitely had some highlights, but lots of low points as well. And Nick's deployment wasn't even the contributing factor really, although it didn't exactly help. Here's my year in review:

The year started off alright with New Years with the in-laws and a family trip to St. Thomas. February brought my 23rd birthday (woo!) and a little trip to San Antonio with my parents. The ladies in the brigade also started our awesome coffee group, which was guaranteed fun every month. February, unfortunately, also brought the first of the casualties in Nick's brigade, and one of way too many communication blackouts.

In March, I was able to visit the gorgeous San Juan Islands in Washington state over Spring Break. It was a much needed relaxing break from work and the dogs (as much as I love them). I also had to deal with my first major hit from Murphy- Nick's (old) truck completely dying as I was driving it off post. It ended up costing a pretty penny to fix and I had to deal with tow trucks and mechanics and all that fun stuff.

In April, I finally started getting into the groove of the deployment. I found more people to hang out with consistently and really got into my routine. Also, Nick and I celebrated our 6 year dating anniversary, which still blows my mind.

May brought about a new bible study with my "battle buddies", Alice & Rachel, and the start of my sister's 5-week long hospital visit. Also, Rufus had something stuck in his paw and had to be sedated at the vet to get it checked out.

June was pretty eventful and started out with Our 2 year wedding anniversary. Also, my father-in-law came to visit and took care of a whole bunch of chores around the house. Most notable was the broken patio cover which is now tin and sounds really cool when it rains. I also finally got done with work for the summer (I had been counting down for awhile) and drove home to California for a couple months. Unfortunately, my A/C broke a couple weeks before I left and didn't get fixed for way too long (at least a month after I left). I was very glad to leave my 90+ degree house for cool California!

We also welcomed my adorable nephew, Luke, into the world on June 13th (my sister's/his mom's birthday as well) and he got to come home from the NICU a week later.

The rest of June and July involved spending lots of time with family (both mine and Nick's), getting some training help with the dogs and eating lots of In-n-Out Burger. I also put in my notice for my job, deciding not to come back for the next school year. It was just too much working full time, especially with all the time I would have had to take off.

I spent a lot of time at the in-law's in August and went to the Mid-State Fair, a Fray concert and Hearst Castle. Also, my dad drove back to Texas with me and I got back into the groove. I also sold Nick's old truck, which was very exciting! The Chaplain's wife also started a bible study on the same series the guys were doing in Iraq, which was awesome. Finally, August brought the passing of my amazing 92 year old grandfather. I feel like my family is still somewhat recovering from that loss. I know I miss him terribly.

In September, I started the uber time consuming task of taking down all of the gross wallpaper in our house. I also got a job at our church as a supervisor for childcare at a weekly bible study. And, of course, Nick came home on R&R!!! We went to Austin for a few days, hung out with Nick's family and relaxed at home!

October was fairly uneventful, except for getting the walls in our bathroom textured, our toilet breaking and work.

November involved painting both of our bathrooms, which turned out really well. I also had a really fun impromptu Thanksgiving with my new friend Jennifer. Also, my community unfortunately went through a pretty horrific, tragic event.

Finally, the best part of this past month and probably the whole year, was Nick coming home!!! We had a few weeks of "normal" in Texas, and then we got to come home to California. My family has had a few unfortunate events in the last month as well though. My nephew Luke had to go into the hospital with a respiratory infection, but thankfully he is home and healthy again. However, in the past week, we found out that my uncle got into a terrible car wreck and he succumbed to his injuries. So, please pray for my aunt, mom and gramma especially. It has been a pretty rough holiday season and I know my entire family is more than ready for this new year. And also please pray for my great aunt, who also lost her husband right before the holidays.

I didn't do this update to complain about all the chaos of this past year. It was just kind of a reflection of what God has gotten my family and I through this year. Because there really was a lot of chaos and I'm praying that 2010 is a whole lot calmer. Here's to the new year!


- Posted from Court's iPhone