We Be Travelin'

(instead of we be jammin' haha)

April 11 - 15

Marlin... College Station and Dallas, Texas

April 12

Nolan will speak to ROTC Cadets at A&M about TBS at leadership lab

TBS = The Basic School

ie - the first 6 months of training for all Marine Officers

April 13 - 14

Wedding weekend for Rand and Joni!

Nolan is Rand's Best Man

Congratulations!

April 29 - May 3
To celebrate "Happy 1 Year to Us..."

A little early because we wanted to take this trip before I start classes for grad school

and before Nolan starts flight training!
(We will also be more tied down to home when we get our puppy!)

Thanks to the military discounts we are paying about 1/3 the normal cost for everything!

end of May/June
I will travel to Texas to get our new lab puppy!
It should be born in the next few weeks!

Hopefully, sometime in the next two years,
we will see a space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral!


Our Latest Projects

Here is what Nolan has been working on the past few weekends...
Sword/Saber mounts for the 3 that he has...

A Marine Corps Officer's Sword
A Texas A&M University Saber
A Navy Officer's Sword
(given to Nolan by Dr. Andrews when Nolan graduated from TBS)

One in our otherwise empty formal dining room
One in the living room and one in the guest bedroom

Nolan also now makes his own Bruchetta!

I, on the other hand, picked a much more slow-"growing" project...
Grass and tomatoes
(Grass for the puppy and tomatoes for Nolan)

Backyard before

After... in progress
I only have a small patch so far...
Mother nature is working against me, notice all of the leaves...
and that's after lightly raking!

Our 6 Tomato Plants



Disclaimer:
I thought I posted this a week or so ago? O well... :-)

The Rest of the House...

I think!?

Spring is Here!
That's out our front porch...

As you walk in the front door...
the empty room with only a rug is our formal dining room...
We hope to get a table soon...
The door in the background goes into the kitchen

down the hallway... to our bedroom..
this is to the right of the door to go into the kitchen..
(notice there is a door between EVERY room.. except the living and formal dining)

the door into the kitchen...
if you are standing in the empty formal dining room...


table for two :-)
huge pantry behind door numero uno...

Kitchen!
(in the middle left you can see into the laundry room)

more kitchen
Nolan grills right outside those sink windows...

the door to the back yard...
I'm standing near the pantry door

Last, the guest bedroom...
no promises of when... ;-)

Just thought I'd share my fascinating experience this afternoon, as I sit in the office...

Hopefully you can see thru the screen to see the plane (4 props - kinda looks like a C-130? )
on the left side of the picture, above the tree... the tree is in our front yard...

that is the 7th, so far, that has flown over in the past 15 minutes or so!

Here comes another one!!!

AND ANOTHER!

(I had to go back up to write that in)

The crazy part about it really is that I hear it coming, then I see a quick shadow go over the house; which makes me want to duck! haha, and THEN I see the plane fly over!! Wild!

I suppose, because of the direction of the wind today, our house is at the end of the runway...
I can only wonder where they are all going... and why all at the same time! :-)

WHOOP!

Admission Decision
Congratulations! You have been offered admission to Florida State University for the Summer Term, 2007. Please refer to the letter of acceptance being mailed to you for additional information.

Looks like I will be starting my Master's this summer in Special Education! So excited!

Pictures!

Everyone loves pictures, right?!

This one is for my brother, Grant!
I have no idea what state we were in, maybe Georgia? and as you can see it was raining...
and I cut off the "e" in Grantville!

The historical marker for our housing area...

Old Hospital Compound
Formed in 1850

The front of Old Hospital Area
Talk about your "gated community" haha
The wall is rumored to have been built to keep out mosquitoes carrying malaria, but they know that can't be true since the wall was built WAY before they found out about malaria!
Still funny to think they thought mosquitoes wouldn't be able to fly high enough to get over the wall!

The steps up to the higher ground where we live...
If you look back up to the picture above, you can see the steps...

Inside the House!
(it's a start)

Our new Ikea TV stand, book cases, coffee table, and 2 end tables you can't see in this picture
Nolan put them together THE night we moved into the house! :-)
(this view is as you walk in the front door)

to the right...

couch and more windows!

front door and flag that we will soon put outside
(the bracket is too low right now)

Our Bedroom

starting on the right side of the room

our bed in the middle
the trunk I took to camp when I was a kid

to the left side of the room
(the door goes out to the enclosed porch that takes up 1/2 of the front of the house)
We made the enclosed porch area "the office"

more to the left side of the bedroom
(the door handle goes into our huge closet)

"the office" / enclosed porch
this was taken from the guest room's doorway out to the office
(it's a work in progress)

Our bathroom

More pictures soon! :-)

Howdy All!

We have been here a week now and are absolutely LOVING the change of scenery! :-)
The weather and beautiful beach that is a football field or two from our house is just too cool!

We still don't have internet at the house yet... waiting for the DSL box to come via UPS, so no pictures today.... :-(

Going back a little...

We met all of our neighbors throughout the day last Friday... one offered beer or a bottle of wine while we unloaded the UHaul!
Across the road is another Marine Corps family... they have two grade school kids, but they are very friendly! The wife, Jenny, invited me to play Bunco at the Officer's Club this coming Wednesday, so I am excited about that! I'll be taking a few of my girl friends that I met at Quantico, so that'll be fun!

The front loading washer and dryer that we bought last week are working GREAT! We are so proud that we saved about $1000 by buying them at the Navy Exchange's Scratch and Dent store!

Our house is about 1300 sq ft - a mansion to us - since we had about 950 sq ft at our apartment in Virginia! It is 2 bedroom 2 bath - the second bath has a stand up shower and is in with the laundry room... The house has wood floors in the formal dining room and living room and a humongous kitchen! We have been grilling a lot for our friends - so happy to have the grill back in use! I meant to count the windows before I came to the library, but I'm going to guess we have atleast 25! They all have nice blinds on them too, which we mostly keep open!
Since we live so close to the air field it's like having a private air show everyday between the hours of 7 am and 10 pm! I am personally loving it!!! :-)

We will post pictures of the inside once we get internet at home!

We now have DVR and think it's the coolest thing! We recorded "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" and were SO happy to be able to fast forward through all of the hemming and hawing that the player goes through before they answer... sorry if you like the show... we found it to be tooooo much like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire... and way to slow! YaY for DVR!

I haven't heard anything yet a about being accepted to the Master's in Special Education at FSU, but I'm hoping it's in the mail that is being forwarded from Virginia... I am considered a temporary Florida resident, so I won't have to pay $600 more per credit hour for being an out of stater! WHOOP!

GREAT NEWS!
Florida has reciprocity with Texas, so after sending the state my certificate, all I have to do now is get a teaching position in Florida and they will issue me a Florida Professional Certificate for Math grades 5 - 9 - WHOOP! No tests! The county we live in has a job fair on May 5th, so hopefully I will have good luck there and snag myself a math teaching position! :-)

It looks like Nolan will start flight school in August or so, but we don't know that for certain really. Time will tell... for the time being he will have a temporary job working with Enlisted Marines, when they check in to Pensacola... He's also hoping to work on some other Marine related classes/training while he's waiting to start flight school... more on that when we know more.

Well, more news and pictures soon! Have a great weekend!
We will be dog sitting the Ladwig's dog, Puddles, and checking out more of the beaches and such! Yay fun!

~ Peace ~

We Are Home!

yes... ALL of that is ours! :-)

It was built in the 1900's

front yard...

back yard... :-)

new washer and dryer!
from the Navy Exchange's Scratch and Dent Store

behind the back yard...

HUGE 100+ yr old trees

playground
to the right of our driveway...

More pictures soon!!! :-)

Thank you Stephenie and Kyle for letting us use your computer/internet!