Downsizing

I've decided that preparing for this move is a little bit like a pregnancy.  We have a rough "due date" but we really have no idea when we'll actually be moving out of our house.  For the past several weeks I've been thinking of September 15 as when we might be moving.  But now it's looking like we might be here a little bit longer - perhaps until the end of September.  

We really don't know at all though because this all depends on how fast Brandon's Chain of Command signs off on his paperwork.  It could be a week it could be two months.  It could end up needing to go a whole different direction and take 6 months.  What really happens is anyone's guess.  It kind of makes me wish for a pregnancy where you know the baby isn't going to decide to wait an extra 6 months.

There are a few other semi-similarities to pregnancy going on right now.  During pregnancy a mother will go through a "nesting" phase where she starts getting the home ready for the baby. She'll spent her time setting up furniture, buying new clothes and accessories, and cleaning.

Well, with this move we seem to be going through a de-nesting phase.  We are slowly getting rid of a lot of our stuff.  I want to make sure we get rid of all the superfluous stuff now before it gets packed, shipped across the country, stored for several months, and then shipped somewhere else. Even things that have survived our two other interstate moves aren't making the cut this time.   

It's actually been really liberating.  And it's all signaling that things are about the change a lot in the very near future. So let's take a look at many of the changes that have been going on in my home during the past few weeks. 

 This first picture is from Charlotte and Lydia's first day of school.  I took Derrick and Veronica to Enterprise to run an errand and we ended up at one of the parks there.  Derrick remembered other visits to that park and so he asked to "go see ducks and fish" So we went on a walk down to the little lake so he could see the geese and the fish.  It was really cute to see him jabber on about everything. 

Veronica LOVES our neighbor's Labrador dog, Lexi.  Every morning they bring the dog to the bus stop and every morning Veronica insists on holding Lexi's leash and walking back to our house with her.  Usually our neighbor holds onto the leash too, but I took the picture right after she dropped it on accident.  Every time I say, "okay it's time to get the bus" Veronica yells, "Go see LEXI!"

The girls go to a little Spanish class a few times a week during school hours.  They can count to ten in Spanish and are learning other things.  One day Lydia wrote this out for me and proudly announced that she could spell red in Spanish.  What's even more impressive / slightly funny is that she can't spell red in English.

One thing I wanted to make sure I did before we moved was to finish my scrapbooks.  Years earlier I finished everything up to about 2009.  With a few things done up to 2013.  But I still had a huge box full of loose papers. I didn't want to move with all those loose papers again. I wanted everything either in binders, or thrown away.

So every night during the Olympics I pulled out my giant box full of memorabilia, and worked on getting all the papers organized into my scrapbooks.  I spent about 10 nights getting ALL the stuff from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and so far in 2016 put into binders. I discovered that I still had stuff from 2007, 2008 and 2009 that I hadn't ever put in binders.  So I had go back and do those years.  I threw away a ton of unimportant stuff and so the stuff I did keep represents the very best things that I want to remember.

Then I got all the binders in one place and spent several nights just making sure everything was where I wanted it to be.  It was a big project.  This disorganized looking mess was actually the most organised everything had been in years because for once I didn't have a ton of papers in a pile in a box.

My sister Lindsey loves hearing about Antler's adventures so I made sure to send her this picture of when Charlotte wanted to take Antler to school.

I've wanted to clean our carpets forever, but I kept coming up with reasons to put it off.  But I decided that no matter what I would do it when Derrick started school.  So I borrowed my friend's carpet cleaner and spent a week cleaning the carpets.  I did about two rooms a day.  The kids thought it was great when I cleaned the living room carpet.  They loved having the couches in the kitchen.

I cleaned the carpet after they went to bed, but they had fun running around on the empty floor before bedtime.

And of course they had fun jumping off the couches.

Last year Derrick got really attached to a little stuffed cat that he called Baby.  It was super cute, but I never got a picture of it.  He found Baby again a few days ago and so I tried to get a picture of him cuddling Baby, but he didn't seem to want any photographic evidence of his affection.

Remember how I gave Charlotte a ballerina costume for her birthday/Halloween.? Well, that costume has been missing for months.  (I'm beginning to think I gave it away because it was too small.) And she has been so sad about it.  Well I found her a new one and she immediately put it on and danced around the room.  She says she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.  Her plan is to be a therapist in the day time and a ballerina at night.

I decided that I didn't want to keep my aging collection of wedding decorations anymore.  But I wanted to give them one last hurrah before I got rid of them.  So I did the centerpieces for the First Relief Society Activity for our brand new ward.  I was trying to represent how women in different seasons of their lives can all come together in Relief Society.  I wasn't super happy with the end result, but other people liked them.

Brandon went to Louisiana to help clean out houses.  His group was assigned to two houses that needed all the junk removed and all the floors and part of the walls ripped up.  They left Friday evening, and then camped overnight outside an LDS Stake Center.  They worked all day on Saturday, and camped in the same place that night. On Sunday they had a short sacrament meeting, did a little bit more work, and then came home.  He came home with an added sense of disdain for junk.  That's come in handy as we have gone through all our stuff.  

While he was gone I set about going through more of our stuff.  I decided that we should have a big painting party and use up the bottles of finger paint we've had for over three years.  The kids thought that was fun.

I cleaned out our storage shelves in the toy room.  Charlotte and Lydia had fun posing in different positions on them. 

Here's Charlotte, no wait, that's Lydia.

Here's another funny pose. I'm hoping to sell these shelves, but so far we haven't had any takers.  This unit is really hard to move if we do take it with us Brandon is going to cut it apart and make two separate book cases/shelves.

On Saturday night we skpyed with my parents in Brazil.  Lydia drew this picture of my dad.

Charlotte and Lydia noticed a lot of dead grass on the hill behind our house.  So they started cleaning it up into garbage bags.

That turned into bringing it home and making a giant nest for themselves.  Oh well, at least they were outside.

On Sunday the kids and I had to go to church without Brandon.  We weren't the only family there without their dad though. Actually the vast majority of the men and young men in our ward were gone.  It's a good thing our Bishop didn't go to Louisiana or else there might have been a bit of a problem over who was actually presiding in Sacrament Meeting.

Several months ago I wanted to figure out the exact date that Veronica would be the same age that Charlotte and Lydia were when she was born.  So I counted the back on the calendar and figured out that would happen on August 28th.  But on August 28th I rechecked my counting and realized that we'd actually hit that milestone on August 18th.  Oh well.  We took this picture anyway to commemorate the end of the baby years. THANK GOODNESS!

My friend Melissa's family moved to Hawaii in June.  Her daughter misses Charlotte and Lydia so she sent them a letter with some things that she drew for them. They thought that was so fun so Lydia wrote back with her own drawings.

Here's Charlotte being silly with Antler's old house.

And here is Antler's new house.  Antler's bed is in the basket.  Her TV is the blue blocks and her couch is the yellow blocks.  Her food and water dish is an old contact case.  And her play area  is on a washcloth.

I finally got my scrapbooks all together and completely organized last week!  There are 13 binders here that hold things from the 31 years of my life.  One binder has a large amount of my school work - mostly the papers and essays I wrote in high school and college. Another binder has all the letters Brandon and I wrote back and forth when he was in Basic Training. The rest of the binders have pictures, awards, vacation memorabilia, stuff from the kids, etc.  I am so glad this is done!

My next project was to put together some little books for the kids.  They all made soooooooooo much art work last year that it was hard to know how to save it.  The last thing I wanted to do was save it all and have to move with stacks and stacks of papers.  But I also couldn't bring myself to get rid of all of it either.  I wanted an easy, organized way for us to be able to look back at the things they had created.

What I ended up doing was going through all the papers and sorting them into a pile for each kid.  Then I saved about 30 papers that represented each kids' best work or something I knew they were very proud of.  I threw away A TON more paper than I kept.

After that I put the papers that I saved into a binder for each kid.  Each paper is in a sheet protector.  It's really easy for the kids to flip through the binders and look at their work.  And they all LOVE to do it.  I made Lydia's first and she was so proud of everything that she saw.  Charlotte waited eagerly for me to finish her's and she was so excited to see everything.  And even Derrick was happy to look through his book.

I totally forgot to take a picture of the kids' art books so I'll have to make sure to include that in my next post.

There are two other Pre-k kids that use our bus stop. Each of them has a little sister about Veronica's age.  It's so cute to see the three little sisters all waiting for their older siblings and they all give each other such big hugs when they are reunited.

We've been hiding inside for the past several months because its either too hot, too humid, or too rainy to go anywhere in the evening. But one day a rain storm went past before dinner and so we went on a walk after dinner.  It was actually pretty nice outside.  Charlotte looked so cute running around and dancing in the grass that I just had to take this picture.

Last week the school had an open house night where we could have a chance to visit the school and learn about the kids' daily routine.  I was planning on all of us going, but Charlotte and Lydia told me that it was going to be boring and they just wanted to stay home.  So I went by myself.  It was fun to see the work they have been doing.  Here is a picture Lydia did.

And here is Charlotte's.

I stopped by the Pre-K pod to talk to Derrick's teachers  He is going great and is so attentive. His teacher remarked about how much Derrick has improved in the last year.  This time last year he'd hardly let any of them touch him and now he is so comfortable in the class and is willing to try so many new things.  I think my biggest regret with this move is that we will have to take Derrick away from this program.  I'm hoping the program at the elementary school where we are moving will be just as good.

I've had a lot of success selling stuff on the various Facebook groups for Fort Rucker, but I had some smaller things that I knew would take forever to sell on Facebook so I decided that we should try our luck with a yard sale. I also decided it would be a good time to try to sell some of the larger things. So on Saturday we had a yard sale.  

We did okay considering it was Labor Day weekend and so half of Fort Rucker was off enjoying a 4 day weekend. Many of the small things did sell.  However, I was shocked that no one even even seemed interested in the furniture. That's usually what I'm out hunting for when I'm out looking for yard sales.  It ended up being a valuable educational experience for me. Usually I'm afraid to make low offers on large furniture because I don't want to offend the people selling it. But being on the selling side taught be that the people just want to get rid of their stuff at that point.  Seriously if someone had offered me even $10 for any of our large stuff I probably would have taken them up on it.

Instead its all back in our garage waiting to sell on Facebook or get picked up by the thrift store.

One of the things we got rid of was our giant TV.  This TV was obsolete when we got it for free 10 years ago.  Every time we've moved we vowed that this was the last time we'd move with that heavy TV, but we've always hung on to it.  We've really liked that the kids could touch the monitor without messing it up.  But it was time to get rid of it.  We put a "FREE TV" sign on the tv for the yard sale, but no one wanted it.  Later when I went to take some small things to the thrift store I found out why.  There were four medium TV's and one large TV sitting by the donation shed.  There was an even larger one inside the shed.  Clearly the era of heavy TV's is over.

So we put the TV on the curb and the trash guys picked it up and smashed it in the truck today.  It was kind of a sad end to something that has served us so well for so long. But it was time.

Not only did we get rid of the TV, but we also decided the entertainment center was past it's prime.  It's still in great shape, but I'm not sure it would survive another interstate move.  So I'm trying to sell it. (Seriously, make me an offer. At this point I'll give it to you for $5.)  And we also decided to get rid of the couch. I'm still a little sad about this one.  I spent a lot of time nursing on that couch.  But like many of the other things we are getting rid of - it just too heavy and old to justify hanging onto.  The futon won out because it can pull double duty as a guest bed.

I thought we'd all be a little traumatized by the drastic change to our living room.  But we adjusted really well.  A computer has taken over for the TV and everyone is just fine with that.  In fact, it's kind of liberating to have so many things gone.  I have to keep reminding myself that we can't get rid of EVERYTHING.  That we do actually want to have some furniture when we get to wherever we are going.

Charlotte decided that we needed to spend some of our yard sale money at the dollar store.  And she was so helpful with everything that I decided she was right.  So Brandon took her and Lydia to the dollar store.  They each picked out some costume jewelry.  Charlotte came home and dressed up real fancy.

Lydia also got to pick out an extra toy (she'd cleaned their room all by herself) and she picked out this coloring paper.  She spent a lot of time carefully coloring the whole design.  I think I need to get her one of those adult coloring books.

On Sunday she wore her Wedding Dress Halloween costume with all her jewelry.  She was so happy with her outfit that I let her wear it to church.

Here are all the girls with their white shoes on the way to church.

And for some reason Veronica decided to start sucking her thumb so we had to get a picture of that.

Monday was Labor Day and we had plans to go to a spring, or maybe Providence Canyon, but we never got very far with those plans because Lydia was diagnosed with strep throat on Friday.  She got the penicillin shot and I thought we were in the clear, but she still wasn't feeling that great on Monday.  And Veronica and Derrick woke up at 5:20 and were way to cranky to take anywhere.  You may remember that we celebrated Memorial Day with Derrick having strep throat.  He ended up in the ER when his throat and mouth started swelling too much.  So when Lydia's throat seemed extra swollen I decided it would be a good idea to go to Instacare during business hours. The doctor acted like I was over reacting, but he did prescribe a steroid for her throat which was what I wanted.  And we avoided a trip to the hospital in Dothan.

The other most eventful part of labor day was when we cleaned a lot of the walls.  I'm actually pretty proud of my stain removing skills.  Check out my cleaning board on pinterest for some of my tricks.  I've learned  how to get ink off walls with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls.  (warning the paint comes off too) and crayon comes off with WD40 like it's nothing.  The only thing I haven't got off yet is dry erase marker and purple ink.  So housing provided touch up paint and told us to cover everything with a thin layer of spackle before we apply the paint.  I went around the house removing stains while Brandon came behind me putting spackle on the ones we couldn't get off.   You can see all the white spots on the wall in this picture.

Well that's us lately.  At some point in the near future we should (hopefully) get word about when this move is going to be happening.  No matter when it happens we will be ready.

First few weeks of school, last few weeks in Alabama

At some point during the past few weeks I had a little bit of a spiritual revelation.  I was feeling pretty sad about the fact that we are moving away from all of our friends here in Alabama.  I was even starting to think that maybe it was time to start distancing myself from everyone and everything here.  I didn't want to get hurt by getting close to anyone new and then moving away. I was thinking that since our time is almost up here there is really nothing else that I can accomplish.

As I was pondering on this I had this STRONG feeling that there are still plenty of things that I can do here.  Even though we aren't staying as long as I thought we were there are still people that I can help, and programs that I can have an impact on. 

So for the past few weeks I've been seeking out things I can do while I am still here. And I've been happy to find several places where I could make a difference.  It's nice to know I'm needed.     

The three older kids have all started school.  The night before school started was "sneak a peek" night.  We were able to go meet the kids' teachers, see the classrooms, and find their seats and their cubbies.  We also got to walk around the school and see places like the library and the lunch room.  The lunch room had this cool mural that the kids wanted to get a picture with

Charlotte wanted to be by the tiger picture.

Derrick was so happy to see his classroom.  He's officially in Pre-K this year, but it's the same classroom as last year.  He sat right down at his table and looked at me and said, "bye."  He wanted to get to work.  He was pretty sad when he had to leave with me.  

Charlotte and Lydia had their first day of Kindergarten on August 4th. That's super early for school, but I don't mind.  The kids get a week off for Thanksgiving, Three weeks for Christmas, another week for Easter and are out of school before Memorial Day so it's worth starting early.  Plus it's so hot that we haven't really done anything outside anyway.

 They were both nervous, but also really excited.   Here's Charlotte with her sign and outfit. Charlotte loves dresses and has worn a different dress to school every day so far.

And Lydia with her sign.  She has started wearing shirts and leggings.  She says she's dressing like  a real kindergartner.

Derrick wanted a picture too, but he didn't have his first day of school until two weeks later.

And here is Veronica.  She is holding a stack of puzzle pieces. 

And here are all four kids together.

Our bus stop was pretty busy this year.  There were three neighbor boys at our bus stop.  Two more boys (including Derrick) would start pre-k two weeks later.  I was hoping that we'd be able to get a picture of all 7 kids lining up together, but two of the boys moved out of their house the day before the pre-k boys started school.  So nevermind on that picture.

Kindergarten is an all day thing here so the girls are gone until 3:00 pm.  That's a long day.  Sometimes I'll look at the clock and think, "the girls are still in school."  But we've all adjusted to the long day really well. I just keep telling myself that if they'd been born 2 months earlier they would be in 1st grade and going all day this year anyway. 

While the kids were in school I kept busy with some decluttering.  Over the next few days I sold off several of our larger items that we don't want to take back to Utah just to put into storage for a few months.  One of the things was our slide.  As far as I know the girls still haven't noticed this is gone.

Another thing I sold was our guest bed.  I've wanted to sell this for a while so we could have room in our toy room again, but I was hanging onto it in case we had any family come visit us for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Now that we know we'll have moved by then I was just fine with selling the bed.

I was planning on keeping the wagon, but Charlotte and Lydia told me that they'd outgrown it and I could sell it. I tried to tell them that we still needed it, but I realized they were right.  We haven't used it since the 4th of July and whenever we used it before then the kids just fought over who got to ride in it.  I suspect that by the time we get it out of storage the kids will have completely outgrown it.  So I said good bye and sold it.

Brandon cleaned out our garage and we said goodbye to a large dresser that he's been storing things in.  The garage was getting pretty clean, but I still had a lot of clothes in there left over from my clothing swap.  I was saving them for the next one.  My pile of clothes got even bigger when a lady in our ward donated 12 garbage bags full of girl clothes for the swap.

I was going to sell this dresser that we no longer use, but when I went to take a picture of it for the classifieds page I noticed that Charlotte had it set up like a little desk.  So we are hanging on to it for a little bit longer. (But it's not going on the moving truck.  If anyone wants to put dibs on it I'm selling it for $10.)

Brandon has quite a bit of free time these days so when I casually mentioned that I wanted a nice travel bag for my make up he decided to MAKE me one. He designed, cut out, and sewed this bag together all by himself.  I am super impressed and super excited to use the bag.

The Olympics started the day after school started. I've really wanted to watch the Olympics this year because they are in Brazil which is where my parents are on their mission.  I wasn't sure if we'd be able to watch them since I didn't know what channels we get with our regular antenna here.  It certainly says something about our TV habits when we've lived here a year, but this was the first time we've bothered to find out what broadcast TV channels we get. I was pretty happy when NBC was one of the three channels that we could pick up.  

We did some kid swapping with my friend Becca's family so her kids came and hung out while Becca and Shawn went on a date.  We had fun watching the Opening Ceremonies, but WOW the Parade of Athletes was long.

Brandon was at an overnight scout camp so after the other kids went home I let Charlotte and Lydia sleep out in the living room with me.  They slept on the futon and I slept on the couch.  I planned to stay up and watch the torch lighting, but I ended up falling asleep.  I woke up hours later and some sitcom was playing on TV.

Brandon came home from camping on Saturday afternoon and we dropped the kids off at Becca's house for our turn for a date.  We went to Enterprise and window shopped at a ton of stores there.  We also made sure to get some ice cream at Milky Moos.  We've been trying to get ice cream together since our anniversary in May, but we've kept putting it off.  So it was nice to finally do that.

On Sunday I got all dolled up because we have 1:00 church so I actually have time to do things like curl my hair.  It also worked out because I needed some nice pictures of myself for my linkedin profile.  I was super happy with how I looked in this dress.  I actually got this dress from the clothing swap that I put together in July.

Derrick and Veronica like to wake up between 5:45 and 6:30.  And once they are up they are UP.  They both usually are asking to get dressed and eat breakfast.  Here they are at 5:55.  

Antler's bead nose fell off and Charlotte decided to change the nose to a heart shaped bead.  Lydia decided that Nose needed a black bead.  So I spent some time sewing on the noses and sewing up some little rips.  Charlotte found a lacy sock that doesn't have a mate and turned it into a dress for Antler.  Both reindeer were very happy with their changes.

I had my second (and final) clothing swap on August 10th.  I actually remembered to take pictures of this one.  

About 10 women came (none wanted to be photographed) and were able to find many many clothes for their children.

I was so excited by how many clothes we had. When it was all over I still had probably 12 bags/boxes of clothes left over. But they were different than the ones I had earlier in the day. If we weren't planning on moving so soon I'd have hung onto everything and done another swap in about three months.  But I didn't want these things taking up any more room in my garage any longer.  So I donated everything to a local thrift store that provides free back to school outfits for families in need.

Charlotte set up a whole "house" in the toy room.  She wanted me to take pictures of it when it was done.  Here is her office.

Here bedroom.

Anter's area.

The babies room.

The kitchen.  Complete with a garbage can and liner, empty sprinkle bottles, and a cook book.

The bathroom.  The bucket is the bath tub.  The wrench on the box is her tooth brush on the counter.

For about two weeks straight it rained every afternoon.  Derrick and Veronica were starting to get a little stir crazy so Brandon took them on some errands.  Charlotte and Lydia stayed home and set up a fancy tea party.  I made them hot chocolate to drink out of their cups.

On Saturday morning I went over to the community garden to take care of my poor neglected plot.  I haven't been there since around the 4th of July.  It's just been either too hot or too rainy to go. I was sad to see that all the weeds had taken over and all the food plants were dead.

I spent about two hours pulling weeds and clearing out the plot.  If we were staying I would be getting ready to plant things in the fall.  Instead I let the guy in charge know that he can find a new owner for plot 6.  I'm going to miss this bit of earth.  It's taught me a lot and I'm looking forward to one day having my own yard where I can have a massive garden.

The air conditioner in the Honda started acting weird so Brandon went to investigate.  That yielded this awesome pose.

One nice thing about the rain is that it makes the air a lot cooler after it passes.  So sometimes - if it's not raining- we go out in the front yard in the evening. Derrick has rediscovered bubbles and he loves to watch them blow away when we are outside. 

The girls love to get their bikes and ride them around in the drive way.

Last Sunday Veronica fell asleep on the way home from church and stayed asleep when we got home.  That never happens.  Lydia fell asleep too and so it was just Derrick and Charlotte away.  Charlotte wanted to take our picture.

Then she wanted to be in the picture.

I knew it was raining a lot here, but I wasn't really paying attention to the rain until my friend Morgan started posting stories about the flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Morgan is from Baton Rouge, but she's here while her husband is in flight school.  She and her husband both have family members that were affected by the massive amounts of rain that were falling in Louisiana.  

If you haven't heard, Louisiana had an insane amount of rain fall within about 2 days. I read somewhere that it was the equivalent of all of Seattle rainy season falling in 48 hours.  In some areas the odds of this type of flooding were once every 1000 years.  Entire neighborhoods that had never seen flood waters were being evacuated by boat.  It was crazy. 

I spent a lot of time reading the things Morgan posted about the floods.  Two articles in particular stood out to me.  Both were written by Rod Dreher. The first one is What you lose, What you gain. The second one is Flood of Misery Flood of Grace. I highly recommend you take some time and read these yourself.  

Soon Morgan was posting about a friend who was renting a U-haul and taking a load of supplies from Fort Rucker to Louisiana.  At first I was kicking myself for being so quick to donate all those clothes to the thrift store.  I didn't think I had anything to donate.  But then I realized that I had a few things that I'd posted on the classifieds pages, but that hadn't sold yet.  And so I did have things to donate afterall.  

These burp clothes, bibs, and blankets are now probably being put to good use.  

As well as our pack n play that formerly was just used on camping trips.  

And the last of four high chairs is now holding another baby.  I was a little sad to think about saying goodbye to these things, but knowing that they were going to people that NEEDED them made it super easy to let go.

Our involvement in this flood is going to get a lot more personal.  Next weekend Brandon is going with other people from our church to help with the clean up.  Part of me keeps thinking, "why are they waiting until two weeks after the flood to help? They need to be there now!"  But there are still many places where the water still needs to recede before people can start cleaning.  That's where our group of volunteers will be able to help.

This whole thing is terrible, but part of me is very grateful for the timing. About a week before the flooding happened Brandon and I started to get little promptings that maybe he should look into applying for a job with FEMA. (Federal Emergency Management Administration.) Brandon LOVES emergency preparedness and so working for FEMA would be a great career for him.  So going to Louisiana to help clean up is kind of a nice way for him to see if this is something he'd like to do for a living.

Anyway, meanwhile back in our non-flooded home we continued to enjoy our front yard in the evenings.  Charlotte and Lydia have been pretending the Peaches from the Ice Age Movies is their imaginary pet.  They set up a whole area for her under the tree.

And they brought out some of their farm toys and played for a long time.

On another night all the kids got out their bikes.  Even Derrick sat on his bike for the first time in pretty much ever.

Another night Brandon took Charlotte and Lydia on a bike ride around the block.  Veronica was so mad when they left her.  She screamed about it for about 10 minutes.  When Brandon came back Veronica hopped in her trike and started scooting down the street.  She made sure Brandon came with her.  Every time he asked her if she wanted to stop she would point ahead and say, "I go this way."  So they went on an extremely slow walk down the road.  They finally made it to a park and Veronica got of the trike and went to play on the park.  Brandon was pretty sure she'd had that in mind the whole time.

Derrick finally started Pre-K on Thursday August 18th.  I was planning to get a picture, but I didn't because Derrick was super upset the whole morning.  He didn't want to get dressed, he didn't want to put on his back pack, he didn't want to put on his shoes, he didn't want to go to the bus stop, he didn't want to do any of it.  This was so out of character for him.  I figured he was just nervous, and I hoped he would calm down when he realized it was the exact same as last year.

My friend Deb works in Derrick's class and she said he was just fine when he got to school.  She loves Derrick because he is always so happy and excited.  She said that he seemed to be looking for Charlotte and Lydia when it was time to get on the bus.  That sounds about right because he always gives them long hugs when they come home from school.

I celebrated having all three kids back in school by going to the Employment Readiness Class here on post. It was great to get lots of up to date info about job hunting.  (Did you know that resumes can be two pages now.)  I'm super excited to dust off my resume, get it polished, and start looking for a great company to work for.

We still don't really know when we are moving back to Utah, but it is soon.  Brandon ran around to many different appointments last week.  Basically the only thing he accomplished was to make more appointments for this week. But all those appointments should actually get things moving.

In the meantime I just keep looking for things that I can do to help out while I am here in Alabama.  I don't know how much time I have left, but I'm going to make it count.

So, here's the deal

Okay, it's time to update you all on what's going on with us career-wise. I've been dancing around this  topic all summer. I've gradually started telling people what's up, and now I'm starting to lose track of who I've told what.  So that means it's time to update everyone with a blog post.

Let's just rip the band-aid off quickly:

Brandon is not returning to flight school, and he's leaving the Army.

And we are moving within the next two months.

Crazy huh?

I'm sure you have a ton of questions so let's do a little Q and A.  Starting with the obvious one:

Why is Brandon not in flight school?

There are a lot of reasons.  Basically the simplest answer is that Brandon is good at learning, and he's good at handling stress, but he can't learn under stressful circumstances.  And Army Flight School is just one long stress-fest.  Plus Brandon doesn't sleep well anyway, and the stress was making it so he wasn't sleeping well at all.  The lack of sleep made it so he couldn't remember what he was supposed to learn so that led to more stress, and more sleep loss, and the whole thing spiraled down from there.
Even with all the stress and sleep problems Brandon was willing to just put his head down and keep pushing through it. However, after talking to several of the higher ups, he realized that this probably wasn't the best course of action.  According to the higher ups, things didn't get less stressful after graduation.  Brandon wasn't looking forward to years of stress as an Army Pilot.

Brandon had pretty much made up his mind about leaving the flight program when we got a visit from our home teachers (for my non-LDS friends, home teachers are men from church who are assigned to check in on several families once a month).  One of our home teachers is also a flight student who is a few months ahead of Brandon.  We told them some of what was going on and our home teacher talked about how he thinks of Flight School as downhill skiing.  He talked about how he fells like he always has to be on the lookout for obstacles to avoid as he's speeding down the hill toward graduation. This metaphor was helpful, but probably not in the way that our home teacher intended.  

After he left I turned to Brandon and said something like, "yes, you need to leave flight school because we have never ONCE thought of this as downhill."

For us flight school has always seemed like an uphill climb. Think back over the past few years.  SERE, HOST, and WOCS were all extremely difficult for Brandon to complete, heck even putting in his Warrant Officer Packet was like pulling teeth.  And honestly the only reason he made it through the Primary Phase of flight school was that he was already a private pilot with an instrument rating.  He was already very familiar with a lot of the flight concepts they were learning.  

As we considered whether or not Brandon should complete Advanced Training we realized that yes, he could keep climbing this mountain.  And he might make it to the top. But we started to question whether or not this was even the mountain that he should be climbing.  Brandon and I both admitted that finishing flight school wasn't something he should do.

So why is Brandon leaving the Army?

Brandon has never felt at home in the Army. All the saluting, and the rank system, and the bureaucracy have annoyed him to say the least. He's put up with it all in order to fly. Now that he can't fly he doesn't want to be in the Army anymore.

Can't he transfer to a different job in the Army?

He could, but most of them would require him to go back to being an enlisted soldier until he meets the requirements to be a Warrant Officer again.  That would mean a pay cut in $1000 a month, and we just don't want to do that.  Plus there's that who thing of not actually liking being a soldier unless he gets to fly.

How is he getting out of the Army so quickly? Doesn't he owe them more time?
If he'd finished advanced training he'd owe the Army 6 more years of service - whether in a cockpit or not.  But he didn't finish advanced training.  Perhaps in a different time they would have still wanted him to finish his initial 5 year enlisted contract, but the Army is currently downsizing the number of soldiers.  Every person they can get out voluntarily is one less person they have to cut involuntarily.   So it's not a big problem for him to get out.

Is he getting out with a Medical Discharge?
Brandon has met with some sleep specialists, but they couldn't find any medical causes for his sleep problems.  So they aren't classifying it as a medical problem.  If his sleep problems stemmed from PTSD or a traumatic brain injury he'd get a medical discharge.  But that's not the case.

So why are you moving so fast? Didn't you say you had 6 months to a year left in Alabama?
Well part of the reason is that we didn't realize that 3 months had gone by, and yet we were still saying we'd be here for 6 months to a year.  But even then we are still getting out sooner than expected.  Basically, the paperwork for Brandon to get out of the Army is progressing faster than originally anticipated.

So now what? What job does Brandon want to have now?
He still loves aviation, so he'd love a job in that field.  Right now his top job pick is with the FAA  (Federal Aviation Administration) as an electronic technician. Long time readers of this blog will remember that 5 years ago Brandon was trying to get that job with the FAA.  That plan ended when he was told that if he had military experience he would have a better chance of getting the job.  He joined the Army partly because of that.

He's interested in other aviation related jobs too so if you have any leads or suggestions please pass them on to us.

Where do you want to live?
We want to live in the Intermountain West.  Utah would be great, but he'd have to have a dang good job for us to be able to afford the house prices there.  Colorado is one place we'd be interested in living.  For some reason Boise keeps coming to mind. Really anywhere that we can have a good income with a low cost of living.

What are you going to do while Brandon looks for a job?
We are going to TEMPORARILY move in with his parents near Ogden, Utah.  We've always been really resistant to the idea of living with either set of parents.  But in this case it just makes the most sense.  Honestly, no matter how I run the scenario in my head we end up at his parents for a few weeks anyway.  See, Brandon hasn't been to Utah or seen most of his family in almost 3 years.  If he did have a job right out of the Army we'd probably try to plan an extended trip to Utah before he started the job.  Or if he gets a job with the FAA there is a three month training in Oklahoma that he'd have to attend, and I'd probably move in with his parents during that time. So it's really not a stretch to just plan on stopping over there no matter what.  

Everyone in the family is THRILLED about this idea.  The kids are excited to live with their grandparents.  The grandparents are excited to see the kids after so many years apart.  Brandon is excited to actually live in the house that his parents started designing when he was a teenager.  And I'm, well, I'm happy for everyone else.

Honestly, I'm not looking forward to the idea of being a stay at home mom in my in-laws house. I just feel like no matter how nice everyone is I'll always feel like my kids and I are doing something wrong or messing something up. And that's why we decided that the best thing to do while we are there is for me to be the working parent and Brandon to stay home.

Both of us are excited about this idea. This will give Brandon time to focus on his job hunt.  And I'd be able to get some recent job experience on my resume.  So if anyone knows of any temporary office type jobs in the Ogden area please let me know.  I'd even be fine with call center stuff.

So what was the point of joining the Army and going to Flight School if it was all going to end like this?
Ha, I've asked myself that plenty of times in the past several months.  

There is a story about a man whom God asked to push on a boulder.  The man pushed with all his strength for years and yet the boulder didn't move.  Many times he felt he was failing and thought about giving up.  Finally God appeared to the man and the man told him that he'd failed him because he wasn't able to move the boulder.  And God replied with, "I didn't ask you to move it, I just wanted you to push on it."  He explained that by pushing on the boulder the man had become stronger and proved his loyalty.  And then God moved the boulder.

I've thought about that story a lot during the past few months.  I think the Army and Flight School have been the boulder for Brandon and I.  We thought that Heavenly Father wanted Brandon to graduated from Flight School.  But now I think he just wanted to teach Brandon and I that we could do hard things.

So no matter how scary this next phase of life is, (and trust me I'm really scared about a lot of it) I know that we'll figure it out.

But please keep us in your thoughts and prayers because the next few months are going to be full of changes.