All The Pieces...

Well, I have all the pieces to enroll Jackson in a preschool...except, somewhere in all of the gathering I lost some of my stomach!! I know he will have a blast and that where we are placing him is exactly where he needs to be (short story: never any spots in the preschool I called, someone gave notice on Monday that they were leaving the 3-year-old T/Th morning class, I called Tuesday looking for a T/Th morning class, visited Thursday, they'll start him on this next Tuesday...did God have a hand in this or what??!!!!??), so why am I so nervous for him? Bottom line, I think I'm just a Mommy, sending her kid off to a school for the first time...where did my little boy go???? Pray for me, that I can hold it together on Tuesday...and that Jackson does not have difficulty separating from me.

Thought I'd attach one of my favorite pictures of Jackson and me here...seemed appropriate!

Dejavu

So I mentioned in the last post that our household goods were missing...and they still are. For those of you who have know us for at least the last 3 years, you are aware that we apparently have a "moving curse" on us, as our move to Scotland was horrible and included our household goods getting lost (and then found in Germany and England...while we had moved to Scotland!). The update on our stuff this time...12 crates arrived into the port in Virginia in December and 6 of those crates are in the warehouse here in Vegas. The warehouse staff has physically walked through the warehouse (however big it is) to make sure that the other 6 are not there. The prognosis...they are not there. So somewhere between Virginia and Nevada are 6 ten foot high 9 foot wide crates...LOST! Once again I have this lingering question...how could 6 ten foot crates be lost??? I can think of only 3 encouraging thoughts about this situation:
1. These crates are somewhere in the United States.
2. The military calls Cody on a regular basis to update him...so the situation is continuing to be worked on.
3. Our name is "known" again by a select few in a chain of command.

Sigh...

Christmas and Beyond!

Christmas was a fun time for us! Although we had no tree of our own in Florida for the "Christmas Season," Jackson and I were creative and made our own out of green posterboard, sparkly foam sticker ornaments, and a string of 20 lights. We cut out stockings and a fireplace from brown paper bags from the commissary (grocery store) and watched "Frosty the Snowman" over and over and over again!

Jackson and I went to see Santa at the Panama City Mall. Although he was not too fond of sitting on his lap, he would wave at him from a distance and smile. He asked for a train and a kite from Santa, and Santa got him a just that. We spent Christmas with Cody's parents in Cleburne, Texas. Jackson and I drove with Cody's brother, sister-in-law and our two nephews along with their dog (if you're a Facebook Fan, you read as we traveled)to Texas. We made good time, taking only 15 hours in one day! Cody came 3 days later after he had finished up his training in Florida. It was a fun, White Christmas!

We met up with our friends, The Campbells a few days after Christmas to catch up over some breakfast at La Madeleine and then hang out at The Gaylord Hotel in Dallas.


We then met our other great friends, The Lamberts, in the afternoon at The Gaylord Hotel and enjoyed even more walking around to view the "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" scene that they had! We followed that up with good ol' Texas Barbeque at Riskey's Barbeque at the Fort Worth Stockyards.


On Dec. 30, 2009, Jackson and I headed back to Las Vegas and Cody back to Las Vegas by way of San Diego to pick up our car that had arrived from the UK (and, no, not a new car we bought there, but our trusty 1995 Ford Explorer). We enjoyed the New Year back here.

So, now, we are living in temporary housing until we can move into our own home...which, yes, we are in the process of closing on a home. Barring any large discrepancy between the appraisal and price of the house, we should be closing on the 5th of Feb.!! Happy Valentine's Day to us!!

If you're not a facebook fan, half of our stuff from Scotland is lost and cannot be tracked at the current time. So, hopefully, it will be located and with us shortly after we close on the house. We are anxious, at this point, to get moved into and settled here in Las Vegas before we have to move again!!

And, so now, I do believe you are all caught up. Sorry it's taken me forever to do that. Hope all is well with everyone!!

Rewind the Time...Again...Please

Alright, so we may have been a little bit out of our minds, but we will never regret doing what we did a week before our movers came to Scotland...and that is, take one last European trip that entailed 3 days in Paris, France and 3 days in Prague, Czech Republic. It was an AWESOME trip (granted, we seem to have forgotten to pack some things in our first shipment (as we were pressed for time when we got back) that maybe we needed, like maybe blankets and comforters, but, that's what Wal-Mart is for...right?!?)!!
(Sorry it's taken me so long to get this posted...my wonderful husband erased the pictures from our camera after loading the pictures onto the desktop that was in our first air freight shipment from Scotland (which we have now...the rest of our stuff has yet to be completely located, but that is another post all to itself!!). It's also taken me a week to get all of the pictures posted!)

We started out in Paris...knowing we only had 3 days to see ALL of Paris, we hit the ground running and saw everything we wanted to see, and more, in Paris!
17 September:
We saw Arc de Triumph, Champs Elysses, Grand Palace/Petite Palace, Museum Rodin and even made a trip to the park before viewing the Eiffel Tower.





The best conversation of the trip happened at the Museum Rodin. For those of you that don't know, the gardens there house Rodin's famous "The Thinker" sculpture/statue. As we walked out into the garden, Jackson is ahead of us slightly. As he turns the corner to view "The Thinker", he spontaneously says to Cody, who is now right behind him, "Daddy, what is he thinking?" PERFECT!! It's the question the world has been asking forever!! Jackson had a fun time "thinking" in front of "The Thinker" and posing in front of many of Rodin's other sculptures in the gardens.



18 September:
We conquered the Concorde Square, Garden of Statues, the Louvre (ok, not the whole Louvre...just the highlights, remember we had a 2 year old with us!), Ile de la Cite, Lunch on Ile St. Louis, Notre Dame, Place des Voges, Place de las Bastille, up the Eiffel Tower, and Dinner on the River with a finale of watching the Eiffel Tower light up. Jackson told us it was "sparkley!"








19 September:
This day, we went out to see Versailles, then saw Montemorte (French Village) and then traveled down to see the Moulin Rouge area, had dinner at "Buffalo Grill" and then viewed Moulin Rouge at night.









20 September:
We took our flight to Prague, Czech Republic later in the morning. Upon arriving, ALIVE (our taxi driver was a maniac driving!!), we checked into our 3 bedroom hotel room (which was awesome!) and then began exploring! We visited the Old Town Square where the famous Astronomical Clock is, the Our Lady of Tyn Church and then we enjoyed a dinner at a restaurant in the Square.




21 September:
This day, we saw the Jewish Quarter which included the Old and New Synagogue, the Charles Bridge, Nerudva Road, and then rode the Funicular railway up to Petrin Hill. That night, we had dinner again in the Old Town Square (which, by the way, I loved being in!).





22 September:
This was our last day of vacation. We went and saw Prague Castle and the surroundings (which included a Cathedral and an old village that I believe was called The Golden Lane) followed by a visit to Wesceslas Square. And then, guess what, the Old Town Square again!!











I loved both places. Paris was someplace I have always wanted to go, you know, just to see "all the stuff" that I had always heard about (Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Rodin's "The Thinker", Versaille, Notre Dame, Bastille, Moulin Rouge...) but Prague actually surprised me! Prague was a place Cody had really wanted to go, and it didn't matter to me one way or the other if I saw it. But, I'm tellin' ya, I'm really glad that we went! It was an absolutely beautiful city!! It was a wonderful vacation to end on ... and then a week later we headed to Vegas! I must admit, Vegas is a bit different than Europe!

And, with that, we'll "close the door" on our time in the United Kingdom and Europe (which makes me sniffle). We were truly blessed to have been there for the time that we were.

Time Has Flown

So I am realizing that Thanksgiving was the last time I posted. Figured I'd bring all my blog readers up to speed with what's been going on in our household...or at least try to! We've had a crazy 3 months since we moved and still have no house to live in to prove the craziness. The housing market here is...well...crazy!! It is a buyers' market, if you're willing to wait. We've had a few friends who have been blessed with their first offer being accepted, while we are working on getting a 4th accepted...we'll see. The jury's out on that one as we are in a multiple offer counter offer now...one we hadn't experienced yet, so we are at least seeing more progress with this one, but are not counting on anything working out, as THAT has proven not to work for the three before! We are currently living in temporary base housing, working on a month to month renting basis. We are truly thankful for this housing, as we can at least be a little more flexible with what we do from this point on.

In between all that house hunting, Jackson and I went on a cross country family visiting excursion (see previous posts) while Cody completed a month and a half training in Florida. We met up with him and stayed in Florida for a month while he was completing it, made a 10 day trip to TX to visit his parents for Christmas and arrived back in Las Vegas last Wednesday. On the way back, Cody went through San Diego and picked up our car, so we are a two car family now again (we've been a one car family since July!)...YAY!! We hit the ground running with house hunting and well, refer to the first paragraph again! Our lives have been consumed with learning the market and how it works here in Las Vegas, which our realtor now claims is a housing market all to itself! Yay for that?!?! Needless to say, we have learned a lot about buying a home...whether it works out or not. For example, did you know that if a house says "no FHA loan accepted" on the agent to agent details, that means that it is more than likely a "flip"?? And other such nonsense as that. It's been a blast, let me tell ya.

In the meantime, we are experiencing the same type of move we did before...half of our household goods have been lost. One shipment, which proved to be ours' and we now have in our possession, said it was arriving from South Carolina. Whatever, at least it was located and it was ours' and Jackson now has toys to play with. The other stuff (you know, the 13,000 more pounds worth of stuff) is somewhere in the world. We believe that half of it is here in Vegas but not sure about the other half. I can only laugh this time around and remember that it is just stuff and none of it of great importance. God is good to us and continues to bless us, as we are all three together and He is our God and that is all that really matters. All in all, it's teaching us to trust him more with the housing situation and the location of our things.

Now, we do not truly have internet connection but have discovered that someone around us does, so alas, I can blog again. I will rewind a bit in later posts to share about our last European adventure. I was going to post some Christmas pictures, but since we have been working off of our laptop lately, they are on there, and I am posting from the desktop, so I'll have to post those later too.

Hope that everyone had a blessed Christmas and are looking forward to what God has in store for them in the New Year...we definitely DID and ARE!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!