I'm the Dad.....don't scold!!

I thought I was posting to the family tree dear........let's remember, I'm old!

A Mom Here!

I had one of my aides at work pull books for the Read Across America display and he pulled out my Mom's book to use! So, here it is in the case we have in the middle of the library! Talked to Sonya tonight - I will hopefully get to visit this summer. Den has the possibility of starting work (!) big yeah! Derek should have gotten cookies in the mail today awaiting his arrival to pick them up. We have Bible Study tonight, I have an OASL (Oregon Association of School Librarians) meeting tomorrow afternoon and Saturday is the Oregon Christian Writers conference here in Salem. So, off to eat dinner (a chili-ish concoction of meats and beans, corn and pasta) and for snack tonight I made the cinnamon muffins with streusal topping but more like a coffee cake format - they smell awesome! Love you all!

"First out of the gate!"

Hi there! Melanie here. ;-)

So I'm going to be lazy and paste some of my last posts here as my "official update". I'm pregnant, I can cheat!

Derek came home for the month of December and for that seemingly eternal yet short amount of time the gravitational forces of the moon were in balance once more. It was wonderful to visit with family and spend time with everyone. A more perfect existence could never be created when we are side by side, as two soul-friends could never contain more happiness than that.
And whether it was expected by everyone or not, we now get to share the joy of having a baby on the way! (September 2nd is the "due date")

Sometime towards the end of March or April, once Derek finish his selection for Special Forces, I finally get to join him in North Carolina! By that time I should be over my extreme morning sickness that seems to be the bane of my life right now.

****

Sometime in March I will have another ultrasound and find out if I'm having a boy or a girl! A friend of mine says she wants to give me a baby shower before I leave for North Carolina(The shower would be around the first week in April or so). So I've decided until I know for sure, to create 2 different registries. You'll find they are pretty similiar.



It's a Girl! Registry:

http://www.target.com/registry/baby/3HN1PASMWKEEJ


It's a Boy! Registry:

http://www.target.com/registry/baby/3DQ8ISZLJ1QKF

And for the most recent. Today I turned in my application for admission to Fayetteville State University! I obviously wont be going until the Spring Term seeing as though I'll be popping out a baby during the Fall. But after a good 4-5 months of getting used to all the changes, I don't see why I can't continue my education and bring baby to class! It will be fun! Stressful! And when the baby cries I will probably miss some of the lecture as I quickly retreat out of the classroom! But hey, why not? It's like when you were a kid and wanted to bring your pet frog or new kitten to school and your mom always said no. But this time I get to and nobody can say no! And if the school has any problems I'll just tell them straight up that the baby is simply "auditing the class". =P

Also in September, a friend of mine is moving to NC! She currently has 3 jobs and is trying to finish her education at Chemeketa here in Salem. So call me crazy again. But I told her she has a place to stay rent-free with us! It will give her a financial break and she has already offered to be nanny whenever I need it! Life is so much more exciting when your living to help people out. I always want my home to be open to the world in need, and that will always be the way my household rolls. ;-)




Vso. Da Svedanya!

Family Tree Blog Introduction!!!

Welcome to our new family blog!
The idea of this blog is to keep the family close and updated on each others lives! No matter how far away we go in the world, this is the place where we can all come together and post what is happening in our lives. Post pictures! Events! Anything you would love to share with family!
If you are a mother, father, brother, or sister of Derek and I(Melanie) we would love for you to join the family blog! Grandparent? Aunt? Uncle? We would love to have you!
Even if your not interested in posting, you are invited to follow along with the lives of the family members that do!





If you've been invited to be an author via e-mail, simply sign up for a blogger username and password through google. Then once you've explored and learned how to post, go ahead and post a blog to introduce yourself to everyone! That way we know all the family members that are here to share their lives!

Baby Registry

Sometime in March I will have another ultrasound and find out if I'm having a boy or a girl! A friend of mine says she wants to give me a baby shower before I leave for North Carolina(The shower would be around the first week in April or so). So I've decided until I know for sure, to create 2 different registries. You'll find they are pretty similiar. But the few clothing items are obviously different.



It's a Girl! Registry:

http://www.target.com/registry/baby/3HN1PASMWKEEJ


It's a Boy! Registry:

http://www.target.com/registry/baby/3DQ8ISZLJ1QKF

*Dusting off the collected silence*

Unfortunately this is just what happens when you live in apartment with no internets. And of course I'm likely to spill out a hearty blog on a short visit to friends and family who have internet(Not!).

So now I resort to spilling out information in a most regular way. Updates:

Derek came home for the month of December and for that seemingly eternal yet short amount of time the gravitational forces of the moon were in balance once more. It was wonderful to visit with family and spend time with everyone. A more perfect existence could never be created when we are side by side, as two soul-friends could never contain more happiness than that.
And whether it was expected by everyone or not, we now get to share the joy of having a baby on the way! (September 2nd is the "due date")

Sometime towards the end of March or April, once Derek finish his selection for Special Forces, I finally get to join him in North Carolina! By that time I should be over my extreme morning sickness that seems to be the bane of my life right now. You ever hear about those women who are SO sick during pregnancy they cant do anything and feel like passing out ever moment of the day? yeah... I'm so lucky! That's me! Guh...
Also, quite recently, Derek finally got a cell phone! It is inexpressible how wonderful it is to be connected with him in some way again.

Well I'm going to go. This is starting to sound too much like an annual "Update Letter". =P

Annotations of a Soldier #5

November 4th 2008

"...Lets see... Sunday was a fairly slow day. Lots of being sad at being back here, then happy about the weekend, then happy about Exodus. Church was pretty nice, and chow was hard to get down. Yesterday as the ten (actually 11) mile ruck march, which hurt. Not sure how much weight we had, but estimates are around 60-70, plus the heavy weapons( one of which I had) Talk about rough. y calves are still sore, haha. Once we got to the area, we ate breakfast(it was about 7:30) and then went to set up our camp (or "hooch" as it is called) I made a nice little lean-to, with Tobin sharing some space, but then we got moved, so I broke it down and moved to a new space and set it up again. There were MREs in there somewhere, and at around 1300-1400 we started training in squad tactics. Mainly in crossing roads and ambushing, kinda fun. Did that until dinner, then we went back to camp and basically hung out until 8 and went to bed. Woke up around 5, broke down my hooch, and hung around until breakfast, finally moved on to more training. That ended around 1400 and we came back.

And now I'm on fireguard, bleh. It's 4 right now, and the shift after mine is only 30 minutes, so its hardly worth it to even try to sleep some more. Oh well. Today we do the confidence course again and the obstacle course..."

November 6th-9th 2008

"...And for this past few days events: Wednesday saw Hepatitis A/B shots and a flu nasal spray thing. Good stuff. Then we went and did the obstacle course the rest of the day. Today consisted of a nice morning run, some fabulous chow, and then a land navigation paper test and field test. Was pretty easy and made for a relaxing day. Tomorrow we have testing on weapons and medical stuff..."

November 10th 2008


"...We packed for the FTX today and we also got the awesome surprise of our Class A jackets! They are fitted and fabulous and I love them. We're also getting our Class A pictures taken today, so I'm super excited for that, too. I can't wait to get some ribbons to put on it, infantry cord, airborne tab...Mmmm...

The drill sergeants have been saying that the FTX goes until next Wednesday, but the PNN continues to get reports of the big schedule in the command station saying Sunday. So we'll see if they're just messing with us or not. We also had the final PT test this morning and I"m so happy to say that the Lord helped me achieve a 274/300! A respectable score that I of course wish I had pushed beyond, but I am exceptionally grateful to have passed(a 180 is all you need to pass) and with a good score. Now just one week and all the training portion is done and no more stressful worrying.

And back after chow and pictures. So the pictures look awesome and you should be getting a little postcard with info to find it on the website. The site is: prophototogo.com, go to Ft. Benning, then find my graduating class, which will be something like FC, 2-58, 2008 DEC 5 or something. They might just be sorted by number or name or something.

It's Tuesday morning now and we do indeed have another day of preparation. For PT this morning we had Battalion PT, which is a competition between all the companies, and each platoon competes in a different event. Today we had the deuce push wich is pushing a big truck around the mile track, and we won by like, a 30 second lead. Good stuff, first time we had heard Drill Sergeant Wedoski say "Good job, second." and we was grinning quite a bit. He even ran alongside us, very cool to see him involved with something like that...."