Getting things ready

I had to change the template of the blog back to something lighter. Something about the largely black background was annoying.

Anyway, we're a couple of weeks from leaving Ft Hood. I've finished most of the clearing process. I still have to get the Finance Office and the BN S1 to sign off on my paperwork. The Finance piece will involve a lot of waiting, and I'm still a little fuzzy about what that will accomplish for me. The unit I'm going to and the chaplains in the area have each provided me a great deal of information, which is making this move a little more comfortable.

I think I'd mentioned previously that all of the furniture and household stuff that is going with us has already left. That leaves our house largely empty. This is somewhat depressing for Emily and myself, but Isaac seems to be enjoying the empty house. The first picture is him climbing in and out of our empty cabinets.

The second is from his bedroom. His bed has shipped, so he's sleeping in a pack-n-play. I'm not sure if he flipped it crawling out or after he crawled out. The last picture used to be our den. It is now where Isaac has decided all of his toys not already shipped out should reside.

We actually have a son again.

Isaac has been in Mississippi with my parents for the last three weeks. Em & I met them in Shreveport today to get Isaac. Had a great time visiting with Allison and Jerry and their family (cousins living in Shreveport). Approximately eleven hours in a car whose air conditioning is out is not exactly a relaxing day. We're exhausted.

However, as promised, I have another selection of vacation pictures. The first is from our hotel room. We stayed in the Best Western Presidential just off Times Square. They went with the theme of presidents. The lamp shaped like George Washington's bust was interesting. I found it more than a little disturbing that it always looked like Kennedy and Washington were staring at my wife as she put on makeup. Kind of creepy. I thought about putting a towel over Washington's head, but Emily said she needed the light. The hotel was okay. The housekeeping left something to be desired. Each day, they left a different decorative pillow or throw blanket. This was not done intentionally, I asked the front desk. They also were very hit and miss on whether they left wash cloths. They just either didn't have enough to go around or just didn't care.

The second picture is me in front of the doors for St Peter's Cathedral. Absolutely the most beautiful church I have ever been into. Em thought I was crazy dragging her to three different churches to look around, but admitted this one was astounding.

Vacation Day One

If you can't tell, Em is standing in front of the sea lions display at the American Museum of Natural History. She did not appreciate the comparison I made while she looked at this particular exhibit.

We went to the Natural History Museum our first full day in NY. Much better than I really expected. I actually wish we'd scheduled another hour or so. After the Museum, we wandered around Central Park, had Mediterranean food for dinner, and went to see Wicked.

( I'm going to try to choose one picture from each day. These are basically what I find entertaining. Since this isn't what most people find more interesting, I encourage you to look in our web albums. I'll be updating those over the next day or two.)

Update

OK, so it's been five weeks since I posted anything. That is less to do with opportunity or things to post and more to do with blatant laziness. I'll give you the bullet points for the last five weeks. I think I have already posted that we are moving to Belgium. Here's the updates.

• We went to MS for July 4. It was great to see family, eat fried catfish, etc. We left Isaac there with Mom and Dad. I left Em there. She went to TN for her little brother's wedding (Congratulations Zack and Mallory). I came back to Ft Hood and went to work.
• I've done a married soldier class, single soldier class, and an ASIST training class since my last post. I have a Strong Bonds retreat next weekend. After that, I begin clearing Ft Hood. For those not in the military, that's the 2-3 weeks of administrative red tape that I have to go through in order to move.
• Em has already cleared all red tape for herself and Isaac. In addition, she managed to get my passport, which was mailed to the wrong place. It seems very few people are able to say "no" to a pregnant woman.
• The first load of our house has been picked up for shipment to Europe. There are three different shipments for this move. The first is the furniture and household goods we are taking to Europe. The second is a very small shipment of things that we'll need very soon after we arrive. These are shipped next week. The last are the things that will go into storage here in the States. This means we are living in a mostly empty house.
• The van has been dropped off for shipment. This means we are sharing the Mustang for the next few weeks. Not much fun. (Speaking of the Mustang, it's for sale.)
• Em and I spent last week in New York City for vacation. Excellent trip. I'm going to try to post about it tomorrow. Most of our pictures should be uploaded into our web album tonight. We'd already made our reservation and bought all of our tickets before we found out we were moving, so we went.

Race

Last night, I ran a half marathon over in Temple. It was very different starting at 9:30 PM instead of early in the morning. It was still muggy and hot throughout the race. I actually ran up on a guy who had collapsed with a half mile to go. He was unresponsive, but breathing. One of the people in my group ran on to get the ambulance. He was stable when they left. I didn't even check my time when I got to the finish line. It'll probably turn out to be around 2:30. Stopping was the right thing to do, but it still annoyed me to see people standing around the finish line that I had passed at mile seven. I was on track to finish in 2:05. I wanted to make it in under 2 hours, but I paced myself poorly.