Wednesday last week all of our possessions were packed up in boxes and scattered around the house. It always feels so weird in the middle of a move when you go to get something in a familiar spot and it's not there. Everything seems unfamiliar and dislodged, like you don't belong anywhere anymore. On Thursday the movers loaded everything and we arranged to meet them on Friday morning in St Robert, MO. We finally found a house out there which is good, and it also allowed us to arrange this direct delivery, which is almost unheard of in terms of Army moves. Usually everything gets shipped and put into storage at the destination and then you have to contact transportation and set up an appointment to get it all delivered and sometimes that can take a while. Another downside to that is that your stuff gets a lot of extra handling in between when they offload it into storage and load it back up to deliver it...and in my experience extra handling of furniture especially out of sight of the owners is never a good thing.

So, after they left with our stuff, we decided to sleep a bit that night and leave super early the next morning to meet them out in MO which was supposed to work out just fine because they were supposed to have another load to deliver before ours and told us that it would be around noon before they got around to our place. This was good because we still had to go to the realtors and sign the lease on the house we had gotten and get the keys and smooth all that stuff out. We left at around 2am and made pretty decent time arriving in MO at about 8:30 for our appointment with the realtor at 8:45. Well turns out the movers called and were en route to our place and we still had all this stuff to take care of with the house before they were supposed to get there...what a morning it was. First we flew through the details with the realtor all the while receiving calls from transpo saying if we weren't at the house by 10 they would have to have everything stored, which would have totally screwed up our entire plan. Then we sped out to the house which we still had to do a walk through inspection on preferably before it was filled with all of our furniture. Then the movers came and started moving our stuff in, papers that we needed had been misplaced, Nathan was demanding constant attention, Mike and I were struggling to complete the move-in inspection on the house AND take inventory of our stuff as they were moving it in...in short, it was crazy. We managed to make it through alive, though we were thoroughly exhausted by the end. Everything was moved in on Friday, we set up all of the utilities that afternoon and started to unpack stuff. We unpacked some more things on Saturday, and then left to come back to Kentucky on Sunday morning because Mike still had to finish out this week of work and we still had to clear the old house and turn it over to the realtor.

Sunday night we cleaned the bathroom and Monday morning we had the carpets cleaned and we cleaned the kitchen and dining room in the old house, then we arranged to have it inspected on Monday night. Originally it was supposed to be Tuesday morning, but we were happy to have it out of our hands and turn the keys over on Monday night. And, we've been living in a hotel this whole week...so life has been a giant ball of nonstop fun recently hahah. So it is finally Friday, and tomorrow we head up north for Christmas and New Years and all of that fun family filled stuff. Wow, just recounting all of the past week's happenings has exhausted me! I did want to get a blog in though because I am once again falling behind on my promise...maybe it won't be so hard when life settles back down into some sort of routine. We shall see.

Wow
So I haven't been on here for a long time. So much for writing a blog every week like I intended. Now I have to sum up a whole half a year in one blog so I can get on track...well let me see...

Nathan Alexander Henriques arrived on May 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm. He was 9lbs 14oz and 22in long. I was induced at 7:00 am and the whole thing pretty much sucked until I saw him. I am not sure how to describe how it felt to hear him stop crying at the sound of my voice. He is so precious and his parents adore him ;)

Finally moved down to Kentucky in early June about a week after he was born...that was tough. Mike didn't end up getting sent to West Point after all, and my gratitude goes out to his commanders for their understanding of our situation. Summer was a whir of taking care of Nathan. It was wonderful really, lonely at times because I don't really know anyone down here and Mike is at work a lot, but still wonderful. We went to concerts on post, we spent the fourth of July with my mom who came down to visit. We went camping out at Land Between the Lakes with Nathan. My only compaint...it took me a lot longer to heal from the birth than I think it takes most women, and it was very painful for a long time.

Fall came without me even knowing it. I realized how much I gauged my seasons off when I started school and when breaks occurred, and since there was no school to start it has all blurred into one big mass of not-feeling-like-it-should-be's. By this I mean I keep thinking to myself "it doesn't feel like it should already be (fill in the blank)!" For instance, it doesn't feel like it should already be December! We spent our 2 year Anniversary in Chattanooga at a cabin in the mountains. It was wonderful! We spent Halloween at home and I was very sad because I did not get to the pumpkin place on time so I didn't get to carve a pumpkin. We spent Thanksgiving together here in our home with lots of turkey and the whole deal. Nathan has been growing like a weed the whole time. He is now 6 months old and he fits 12 month old clothes. He's a giant. He has a personality and a temper to match his size, too.

Now I come to the present. We are getting ready to move, again. Mike got a branch transfer to MP and he will be attending the MP Captains Career Course at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. It is out in the middle of nowhere in the Ozarks. It will only be around 6 months though...probably. Bad thing about that, we will have to move AGAIN in 6 months. Good thing about that, we don't have to spend forever at Ft Lost in the Woods. So we leave Oak Grove, KY and Clarksville, TN and Fort Campbell and Nashville behind in the next week or so...and I can't say I am not a little sad. A lot of our life has happened here and to top that off I have the curse of being a very sentimental person...GARRR.

Ok, so I skipped a lot of stuff for the sake of making this as short as possible, but now I think I can start off anew and I will truly try to keep a weekly blog posted. I'm already angry at myself as it is for having slacked off and not kept record of all the things that have happened in the past 6 months. It would have been precious to me later, I'm sure.