Finally a 2010 post

I started my 2010 in review post but SO MUCH happened in 2010 that I just couldn't sit down and wrap my brain around the whole thing.  I remember there were LOTS of smiles and some tears.  2010 was without a doubt the best year of my life to date... and I only hope that the years to come will do it justice. So, without further adieu... here's MY 2010.

January:

  

    

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Still on cloud 9 from my mid December engagement.  We set a date for the wedding... and I bought every Martha Stewart Wedding, The Knot, and Brides magazine that I could get my hands on.  This trend continued through 2010.

February:

 


 

In February I was promoted and moved to a new center!  We also attended the ROTC formal... please excuse my husbands depressed and distant look... we couldn't seem to get one good picture both looking at one camera... and this is the best one from the night with both of us in it.  We also celebrated Valentines day the same way we always do - wings and a movie at home! 

March:

         

In March I took my first road trip to Memphis TN and met up with some of my best friends from college!  It was a great girls weekend.  The kitties also discovered a new lounge spot.

April:

In April Sgt. and I finished RCIA and became Catholics!

May:

May was such a BIG month!  We had our amazing engagement session (photos taken by Lindsay Gray Photography) 

   

We also survived the Nashville flood in 2010... my poor car however, was not so lucky. Small price to pay compared to many others in the area, and it turned out a huge blessing when we found out that my husband had added flood insurance to my car policy just a few months before!




May was also the month that I went dress shopping!  First store and last dress I had pulled... and I found the one. :) I still love my dress! It was so beautiful, and yes, I cried.

June and July:

Were both blurs.  I don't even have any photos from June and July!  All I remember is that I was incredibly busy at work and I was planning the wedding.

August:

  

(Sierra Kristen Photography)

August was lots to look forward to!  One of my best friends Regan (check out her blog too!) married her handsome hubby in a gorgeous ceremony near the bay in Camden, Maine.  It was such an honor to be a bridesmaid and I don't know a more perfect and gorgeous couple!

After the wedding I got to celebrate my birthday with the Husband!  Like many military couples, we've had the displeasure of celebrating lots of holidays apart. One of those being my birthday.  This was the first year we were able to celebrate together!



He made all the cupcakes himself! :) Please ignore the poor decorations and clutter.  I promise the apartment looks better now.

September:

Was spent saying _____ days until we're married!! I was also wrapping up things at work preparing for my two weeks of vacation.  And buying mason jars... LOTS of mason jars.

October:

 

 

Pre-Wedding events were a blast.  I had an awesome bachelorette party, fabulous rehearsal dinner, and our bridal party worked LONG hours putting together decorations at the wedding site.

Then came the big day. The best day ever! 

 

     

 

It was the most AMAZING day! (all images captured by Lindsay Gray Photography)

November:

Still blissfully newly married, we decided to host our own Thanksgiving dinner.  We weren't able to go home this year for the holidays but it was nice to have our first married holiday season together, in our home.




November was also the time of the abscess tooth and root canal. Fun.

December:

The air got colder and the tree went up!  We decorated our home and celebrated Christmas, just the four of us... The husband and I and our kitties.

and finally... for December 31st... we rang in the new year with a kiss, a glass of wine, and his wonderful grandparents!

 Here's to 2010!

Green to Gold & GI Bill Finances

Two posts in one day?  I know... what has gotten into me?

The VA

This isn't so much a rant, just a stomp-your-foot kind of frustration.  You see... this Green to Gold thing, while wonderful and a huge blessing, can come with it's fair share of decisions.  At first glance, it's great! (ok... it really is GREAT... but like I said, I'm stomping my foot) Full scholarship, get your degree, become an officer. Well the full scholarship is really more of a this or that.  You can get it for your tuition, or you can choose to get it for your room and board.  The great thing about Green to Gold though, is that most G2G-ers also have the option to use their GI Bill, so whatever you choose to use the G2G scholarship for, you can use your GI Bill for the other.**

This works out to be a pretty decent income for us while Sgt. is off taking 18 hours of classes called things like "Numerical Analysis and Theory" (Have I mentioned my husband is a Math major... with a Physics and Military Science minor? Have I mentioned that my favorite class in college was Children's Movement... where we learned how to juggle?)

Well... with his major and minor requiring lots of hours, he's had to take summer classes.  Luckily, the GI Bill will cover summer classes if you choose, or even break pay... like Christmas break for example... if you choose. Sgt. has opted for both at one time or another.

Now... if you're still following along here, this is where it gets fuzzy, so be careful.  We are nearing the end of our in-between Army world journey (YAY!) and we are also nearing the end of our GI Bill earning... (Oh No!) So, in an effort to extend the GI Bill through his senior spring semester... we stopped break pay this summer (basically turned it off for the 2010-2011 school year).  Then, this fall, Sgt. dropped one of his classes after the deadline so we had to pay back a little bit of money for the class and book allowance. That's fine, no big deal.

Well, the VA (The GI Bill issuers... and many other veteran services) decided to audit his file.  Fine, we have nothing to hide. Then they decided to send us a bill. Now, again, the VA is a great organization who has been pretty decent to us - except that they're crazy.  They decided that since he stopped break pay... they would charge him for every weekend throughout the summer as break pay that he received and needed to pay back.  Even though he was taking classes and receiving tuition pay.

So... a two hour phone call later my poor husband has to submit a written request to see his file and go through each number himself (because that's what he does... ) to find out exactly where they got this ridiculous number that we owe them.  The sad part... even THEY couldn't tell us.

Slow to pay you, quick to take it back.

Please VA... no more crazy bills for crazy things you can't explain... I already work too much, and I'm only on salary!

Christmas Recap

Hello all!  I'm hiding out under behind my desk.. if you see them... you know... my employees... tell them I left.  No, better yet, tell them I am EVERYWHERE.... watching...

Ugh... I wish I could have put a pause button on the Christmas vacation and continued sitting there in my underwear on the couch wrapped up with my husband watching movies.  And no judgement about the underwear...  wearing anything more than boy shorts and a t-shirt around the house on the weekends calls for a very special occasion.  Coming back to work after my four day weekend has been non-stop.  It began yesterday with an eye-rolling-poor-attitude-yelling-in-the-lobby-and-calling-me-a-racist employee (who's still here today.. I know. I know.) and hasn't stopped.  Yesterday ended with me leaving the office at 8:00pm (after arriving at 7:30am) after painting 8 life size stick figures doing physical activities (think, jumping, dancing, climbing, etc..)

No, that's wrong, it ended with a big glass of wine. Maybe two.

Oh yeah, I was talking about Christmas.  It was WONDERFUL!  Just the two of us.  We stayed home this year again and loved our first married Christmas :).  I got a new bedding set (!!!) that I have been dreaming of, a cute scarf-glove-hat set, some pretty picture frames with TBD wedding photos to put in them, a board game, and some other fun stuff.  Sgt.'s big gift was a blu-ray player so we sat around and watched movies the rest of the day/weekend. We drove around on Christmas night to find the one burger place that was open and indulged in some cheeseburgers. Laziness at it's best folks.  I also treated myself to a manicure and a pedicure since I never have time because I work 45 minutes away from home at least 10 but sometimes 12 hours a day

I've realized that I HAVE to get better at taking pictures of the two of us.  Honestly, I am a ham and really like being in front of a camera... but the down side is I never think to actually get OUT the camera... I just assume someone will want to take pictures. Except it's just the two of us and there is no family around... So, I have no photographic evidence of our first married Christmas.  Kind of sad. The memories were good though, and I promise myself that 2011 will be the year of picture taking!  Maybe I can take a picture a day?  That might be a little much. Picture a week?  Eh, I'll think about it.

Not really much else to report.  I work, he goes to school and works out, we eat dinner, and go to sleep.  Life as usual.  We are supposed to be driving up to Indiana this weekend.  Throwing a wrench in the mix!  I promise to put pants on for this occasion (mostly because it's about 30 degrees here, and we're visiting his grandparents) - but we also always make a mix CD of driving tunes for road trips.  We like almost every genre (between the two of us), so do you have any suggestions?!

Hope all is well in blog land my friends... I apologize for the random ramblings.  Well I suppose I have stick figures to hang up so I better get to it. It's times like these where I wish I had an invisibility cloak.

One year

(Photo taken by Lindsay Gray Photograhy)

A year ago today my sweet, handsome, amazing husband took me to the very top of a hill in middle Tennessee. We talked over a glass of wine about how wonderful life has been since moving to Tennessee.  He told me how much he loved me and how beautiful I looked.

Then he did it - he proposed and my world was forever changed in that moment because I knew for certain that the rest of my life included him.  That there would never be a time when we got back to the Army and they considered me "just a girlfriend." That I would be his wife, and that he saw all the things in me, that I saw in him - the other part of ourselves. 

Now, this doesn't mean that before December 13, 2009 I wasn't sure... I was pretty sure.  I knew that I loved him with reckless abandon.  I knew that every day when he woke up, he would do anything he could to make me happy.  There was just something about the officiality of it for me though... it mattered. 

I was so excited I must have asked him at least 3 times if he was REALLY proposing.  He was so excited he even has REAL smiles in our pictures from that day... not just that closed lip smile. 

This past year we have shared so much.  Planning a wedding, quiet moments where the world has disappeared around us leaving only each other, arguments over silly things like invitation envelopes, making up after realizing how stupid it is to argue over envelopes, surprise candlelight dinners just because he loves me, road trips, prayers, compromises, and much much more.  We continue to learn about each other every day and continue to set each other on fire with our love. 

During our wedding ceremony the pastor told us about the original translation of how woman came to be.  He said that what has been translated as "from the side" was meant to be the entire side... created from the half - the other half.  That when two souls come together it's more about finding the other half of you that has been wandering around.  It fit perfectly with the way that we fit into each others lives.  We are opposites in many ways, though we have the same values and passion for life. 

He is exactly what was missing from me... he is my analytical and "think it through" side.  He is the part of me who is certain and proud.  I could go on and on...

Thank you husband for the most amazing year since our engagement.  Thank you for wanting me to be your wife.  Thank you for the way that you love me every day - without hesitation and without judgement.  I am so excited for every day that is ahead of us! I love you more than words could say.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;  So I love you because I know no other way than this:  Where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. - XVII ~ Pablo Neruda