Still No Good Pictures

OK, I did not take the camera with me today. Inprocessing doesn't really provide anything photo worthy anyway. I was able to meet a number of people in the battalion this afternoon as well as the garrison chaplain. My office area is extremely nice. The weather was excellent, which I've been told is not the norm. Dreary weather is supposed to be a little more common. The area we're in is definitely farm country, which is nice. We passed hay fields being fluffed and baled today.

Since I seem to be unable to remember my camera, I am posting a few pictures of our hotel room and the view from the balcony. The army lodging facility was at capacity, so we're in a local hotel, which is nice. The restaurant in the lobby is really good. Since we don't have a vehicle or drivers' licenses yet, we're stuck spending a lot of time at the hotel after work hours. We are going over to our sponsers' home for dinner last night. They've been great. Otherwise, there's not much to tell about.

Arrival

We made it to Belgium around 0900 this morning (local time). We did a few of the necessary steps to begin inprocessing, mainly getting IDs made. Tomorrow we'll actually start doing the inprocessing.

Our hotel is nice. The room is pretty large by Belgium standards (I think). The area is beautiful. I'm just getting ready to move forward with getting settled and plugged back into ministry.

Isaac handled most of the trip well. His stomach got upset a little before we landed. We think that he'll be back to normal in another day or two. We didn't even take the camera out of the briefcase today. Between wrestling with Isaac and our own exhaustion, it just didn't happen. Maybe that will happen tomorrow.

Kids

I know the last several posts have basically been anecdotes about what Isaac is doing. A lot of that is because everything else seems to be a massive to-do list. Clearing Ft Hood is largely over. My last couple of places to clear will take forever, but I have the required paperwork, so it's just waiting in line. Most of our free time is spent tying up loose ends like getting the house ready for the move out inspection or closing out utilities. It's pretty mundane.

This leaves Isaac providing a massive amount of entertainment. The second picture you see is when he pulled the pack-n-play down for the
second or third time this week. He learned that if he threw the mat out of it, he could pull on a tab until it collapsed. He didn't really need to collapse it. He can crawl out of it any time he wants. I took this picture b/c we basically have no idea where he'll be sleeping when we check in on him at night. He seems to sleep on the floor, lay on the ruins of the pack-n-play or lay on the mattress we had once put in the pack-n-play. He generally throws that to the floor.


The last picture is obviously Emily's stomach. This child has been extremely sedate compared to Isaac. He constantly pushed and kicked.

This child moves a lot, but doesn't push against a lot of people or really do anything that anyone other than Emily notices. These pictures are the obvious exception to that. I kept waiting for an alien to burst from her abdomen and commence a killing rampage. (For those who are too old or young to know, I"m referencing a movie from the 80s).

Hopefully, this week will provide something of greater interest.

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.