New job

For those of you who are on my Facebook you know that I got THE job I was hoping for a while back. You all may not know all the details and how much God blessed me with this job. So here is the whole story.

When Aaron was going through "inprocessing" when he first started work here he picked up a number for me to call about a job. From the moment we found out we were moving I said that I wanted to work on post for multiple reason. The main one being that I would have a lot of the same off days as Aaron. I put the number away and planned to call them when things were settled and I was ready to get back to work. Well on January 15 I was working on sorting through our stuff and started thinking about that number and wondering where I had put it. I dropped what I was doing and took off to find it. To this day I don't know why this crossed my mind but it did...and can only say it was God because when I found the number I called it. That lady gave me another number so I called that one. The lady that I talked to there told me to email her a resume. Well I had not even updated mine. I had one because we had done one for one of my school classes but I had to go update my last job. I did that and emailed it on. Only about 45 mins had lapsed during all this. Then the shock came. It had only been 10 minutes since I hit the send button and my phone started ringing. Since no one else had our house number I knew it was related but thought they were calling to say they couldn't open the file or something. To my surprise it was a man...not the lady I had talked to before...who said he would like to offer me a job. All I had to do was fill out the online app over the weekend and he would call me first thing on Tuesday (that Monday was a holiday) to give me the official offer! I was about to scream!!!! Aaron and the boys were outside so I took off running to tell him. I was in total shock!

On Tuesday I got the call and the official offer. From there I started getting email after email telling me everything I had to have to get my "credentialing" done. I have to say this was the oddest hiring technique I've heard of but I am working with he government now so I should have expected it. I had to have everything you can think of. Security clearance, fingerprints, shots, labs, physical, tons of signatures, letters of reference. All of this was done over emails and faxes! I have yet to speak face to face with anyone! Weird I know!!!! After I started to get everything done we started working on getting the kids in daycare. I had a long wait when getting the boys in daycare when we were in Alaska. Two months for Logan and over a year for Lane. So you can imagine my shock when they accepted Logan right away and then told me Lane was first on the list!!! Logan started the end of January and then Lane started a week and half ago. Huge blessing!

Since January though I've just been gathering info and waiting. All my stuff has been turned in since February 5 but I had still not been giving an official start date. Granted the snow has closed post and then Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was a DONSA (Day Of No Scheduled Activities) so that pushed things back since the people in charge of me now are military people. One of Aaron's friends said..."your in our world now!" Meaning I will understand just how the Army moves...and how "hurry up and wait" applies to everything military!!!! But finally yesterday I got the call that everyone who needed to approve me had approved me and I was finally ready to start. So Monday morning I will report at 0730 to start "inprocessing" (another military term) and training for my new job. Also on Monday I will find out what clinic I will be at. I was hired as a "dental assistant" and that job title could put me at any dental clinic. There are 5 on post and all treat only military member. No spouses or dependents. Even though my schooling was mostly "general dentistry" I have never worked general and haven't trained in general for almost two years. I will be grateful where ever they put me but my prayer is that they will put me in oral surgery which is what I love and where I would be the most comfortable. I have no doubt that I would pick the general dentistry stuff up quickly but it would just make my first day a lot better if I was completely confident in what I was doing and the instruments I was using. So if I can get you to pray with me that would be wonderful. But no matter where I end up I just want to thank God for putting this opportunity in my hands. God has been blessing my family over and over and I just can't thank him enough!!!!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's day has been a day that Aaron and I have always missed out on spending together. The Army always keeps us apart!!! Our first Valentine's day together the Army sent him off for training, the next year he was deployed, in 07 he was home but on last minute notice and after I had already started cooking a special dinner he got put on CQ (a 24 hour duty where he has to stay up all night at work) so I carried him dinner at work. Talk about romance huh!!! Then in 08 we were finally together but I was enormously huge and about to pop with Lane that there was no romance going to happen! I was doing good to waddle around. He did surprise me with beautiful flowers though and let me pick where I wanted to go for dinner...I was craving Taco Bell!!! Then in 09 he was deployed again...so this year was really only our second (in 6 years) uninterrupted Valentine's day together!

When I woke up Valentine's morning all my boys were sitting on my bed and they had this huge card that they had made for me. Aaron doesn't like Valentine's day at all. He says "shouldn't we treat everyday as Valentine's day!" Granted he is right but we all get caught up in our busy crazy schedules and we don't always do something special for our loved ones EVERY DAY. So to me V'day is a day to really express your love and spend the day showing the other how much you care for them. So the fact that Aaron made the card meant sooooooo much to me. I had already instructed him that I didn't want flowers...too easy!!! Right ladies??? I didn't want a bunch of money spent on me. I wanted something from the heart. He did it up just right. This was everything I wanted and it couldn't have been more perfect!!!

Here's the front...

And when you open it...
My parents always got me something for V'day. Sometimes candy, sometimes a stuffed animal but either way I always got something special too. My real dad would send me roses on V'day. That always made me feel extra special! So I picked up a little stuffed animal for the boys and the movie Wall E that Logan had been begging for. They were so excited and carried their doggies around all day. (I did get them each one but when I went to grab them to take a picture one was MIA!!!)I got Aaron an iTunes card for his new iPod touch that I got him for Christmas and some chocolates. No pictures of that though. After our gift exchanges Aaron headed downstairs to work on his honey do list. He hung the last of our blinds and worked on getting things ready to hang my chair rail. That was really the greatest gift he could have come up with!!!! Later that night we headed out to eat and then rented some movies. In all it was a great day and what made it perfect was just having Aaron here to share the day with!!!!

The Dining Room...A Work in Progress!

One thing I have hated about living in rentals is that all the walls are the same ole boring white or ivory color. No matter how much decorating you do there is just nothing that compares to the way a new paint job can change a room. The builders would have gladly painted every color I wanted but of course they wanted extra money for that. So either spend $40 on paint and do it myself or spend about $300 per extra paint color! Needless to say we decided to paint ourselves! The befores! Even though we had plans to paint we not planning to paint right away but Lane changed that plan for us. Little stinker banged the wall with a toy gun and left black marks on it. No problem right? Wrong! The builders used flat paint on our walls and for anyone who knows anything about paint...flat paint is almost impossible to clean. I grabbed the magic eraser which has worked wonders for me in the past but this time it just scrubbed the paint off my walls. So one wall in my dining room had a huge white spot. Well we could have just grabbed the extra paint that the builders had left but my amazing hubby said we would just go ahead and paint the dining room!!!! I was so excited I couldn't get dressed for Lowes fast enough!!!!!! I already knew what color I wanted I just had to find a sample of the color in my head. Once that was done the paint was mixed, chair rail molding was bought, and home we went. The next day I taped everything off and when Lane went down for his afternoon nap Logan, Aaron, and I got busy. After the first coat I was pretty nervous. It looked horrible. After the boys headed to bed that night Aaron and I stayed up til about 2 in the morning and put the second coat on. The next morning I was still worried. We were out of paint and the walls were not looking the way they should. One small wall was ok but the rest...well they were far from ok. So out to buy another can of paint. I was determined and decided to stay up late another night and finish. As I started the 3rd coat the worry began to fade. Things started to come together and the walls started looking good. I was overjoyed!!!! My walls were finally the same color that I saw in my head!!!! Merlot!!!!

(Looks like I might be doing a 4th coat of paint...do you see those roller marks!!!! Red paint is sooooo hard to get perfect!)

I still have a lot I want to do in this room. If you will notice there is a curtain rod with no curtains...well I bought some, came home and hung them, only to hate them! So I took them back and now I'm just waiting to find some more that I like. Also we found that huge bowl on the table and for some reason I fell in love with it. In person it's the same color as the walls but these pics give the walls a pinker tone than what they really are. Now I just have to find something to fill that giant thing with. I put these balls in it but I'm not happy with them. I keep telling myself that whatever is meant to be in it will just jump out at me one day! So far nothing is jumping. I just have to be patient...something I'm not good at at all!!!!

Logan's 5th Birthday

That's right...my sweet little handsome baby turned 5 on January 18th. We had a birthday party for him at Chuck E Cheese the Saturday before but since I was running around that day like a mad woman I forgot my camera. Of all days to forget your camera huh! Thankfully my friend Melissa had hers so at least I do have pictures...they are just on her memory card at the moment. So once I get those I'll post about the party.

On Monday, the 18th, we had made big plans to surprise Logan with a full day of birthday fun. Daddy was off of work since it was a holiday and since we are no longer confined to one small town we headed off to Nashville. We took him to the Adventure Science Museum.

This place was packed with hands on learning and fun. We all had a blast. The first thing the boys wanted to check out was the solar system area. There were tons of exhibits that showed how the earth orbited the sun and one large one to show the different sizes of the plants. Just look how small earth is compared to Jupiter!

This little things was just the neatest and we stood there looking up everyone we knew. It was a Google Earth map but you would spin the thing to zoom in and out and then tilt the table to turn east/west/north/south. Our house was too new so we couldn't find our house...but found just about everyone else's except where Aaron grew up! That place was just blank.

After roaming the first floor for a while we headed upstairs and got off the elevator to see two huge dinosaurs and one baby dino. The boys were terrified they were going to be eaten! They are scaredy cats! We were trying to convince them to stand next to them so we could get a picture but they were not having it. There was even this cute little tunnel to crawl in but nope...not having it. So Daddy crawled in to show them everything was ok...not sure he helped much!!!!

Next we checked out our inner workings on the pretend x-rays. The piece would be blank but once you stood behind it different parts would light up. If you look close you can see Logan's eyes in the eye holes...Then on to the respiratory system. There were tons of little areas set up like this. Inside would be different activities to learn about whatever part of the body it was.

Both of my boys are obsessed with emergency vehicles. So they could not contain themselves...especially Logan...when there was a full size ambulance in the middle of the room. They checked out every compartment and then Logan made his way to the drivers seat.This little gadget was pretty neat especially for children who don't understand exactly how are body works. With this they would move the lever up and down or side to side and it would move the bone that way. It was to help them understand how we make our bones move.

This little gadget was pretty neat and I wanted to try it so bad...but all the young kids were in line so I passed so they could have a turn...sometimes it stinks being older!!! Logan and Lane got a try though. Logan was really good at it. He beat a kid that was twice his age. It says that it uses your mind power to move the ball. I'm not sure exactly how that works but Logan put this strap on his head and I told him to think really hard about moving the ball to the other side...and he did! Lane however did not win but he was so excited that he got to try. He felt so big!Lane was the first to find this contraption. He was dancing around like crazy and watching himself on the screen. Once Logan noticed it they danced forever...to no music!!! What we didn't know is that if you walk about to the other side of the screen you can watch all the people doing all kinds of crazy things and they can't see you!!!!

In the middle of this museum is the this large tower...that's loaded with all kinds of things to play on...that goes the full 3 floors of the building and then continues on up. You can climb to the top and see the Nashville skyline. It was super hot at the top but we had to check it out!We headed back down to the first floor to check out a few exhibits that we had missed before. Since Logan is super shy and very reserved it takes him a bit to come out of his shell and really start checking things out. One thing he really wanted to see was the car lift. Here he is trying to lift the car by himself.Just not quiet big enough yet! So with a little help from Daddy and Lane the car was up!!! Now they can say they lifted a car!!!!

After a little more play time we headed out and off to the mall. We walked through the Aquarium restaurant. We had eaten there before when Logan was really little but the boys were fascinated with the "fishees" so the people were nice enough to let us look. There was a huge shark laying on the bottom. He didn't move and I couldn't get a good picture of him. But there was this giant eel that was neon green who was just kind of weird looking. He was just hanging out on a rock and kept opening and closing his mouth like he was yelling at the other fish. I found it funny!We decided to have dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. If you have never eaten there...you should. Not only is the atmosphere amazing the food was wonderful. I had the best Tuscan Chicken ever...it makes my mouth water just thinking about it! We sat right beside the elephants and every few minutes they would make noise and move. There was a thunderstorm with lightening. The place is just beautiful and the boys enjoyed every second. Aaron walked them around to see the monkeys and the water fall. I could eat there everyday and not get tired of it! It is by far my new favorite restaurant! They brought Logan a birthday ice cream and sang to him. He had such a good time. After dinner the boys and I jumped on the little mall train for a ride. They love "chu chus" so we couldn't pass it up. Here they are ready for their ride!The whole purpose of our mall trip was to find Logan the shoes he had been wanting. I had felt awful because those shoes were the only thing he had asked for his birthday but I had looked all over for them and could not find his size. Thankfully we found them on our way out of the mall. Now his shoes can light the way where ever he goes. He loves these things!

Both boys were fast asleep before we even made it out of the mall parking lot. When we got home we asked Logan if he had a good birthday and he smiled so big and said it was the "best birthday ever!"