After much discussion and prayer Derek and I have decided to have Victoria graduate high school this year. My teaching/curriculum planning method has always been to review what has been mastered and teach the next thing–something that has been getting more and more difficult with her since, except for math, she has already mastered high school level material. As the math should be completed this spring we couldn’t come up with any good reasons not to let her graduate. She’ll still be home next year doing on-line college coursework and will likely go off to college the following year. She’s going to take the SAT in March and will march in the HEAV high school graduation ceremony in June. (She wanted to get out of the whole cap and gown thing, but we wouldn’t let her.)

In other Victoria related news, she finally got her tattoo today. I say finally because this was supposed to be for her 16th birthday last year–couldn’t do it in NY even with parental consent so it got delayed. Which is just as well, really, since it gave her extra time to be sure she wanted it. I’ll post a picture soon–I took one, but don’t have the camera cable handy. It’s a bunch of little birds on the back of her shoulder and turned out very well.

The rest of us are doing well–things are crazy busy of course, especially for Derek with the ramp-up to Christmas concerts, etc. Lizzy’s doing a lot of writing and drawing, and is currently working on a comic book for Merrie. I’m trying to get as much done as I can (including Christmas shopping and roasting the Thanksgiving turkey!) before my next-and-had-better-be-the-last surgery, which is scheduled for the 20th. I’ll be so glad when it’s over and I can start feeling better! I’m getting ready to remove things myself…well, not really, but I talk about it sometimes.

Hope you all are doing well, and we promise to try to post more frequently!

~Amy~

 

We’ve been in the new house in Virginia for a little over a month now, and are finally mostly settled in now.  Wanna see the house?  Okay!  Here are some pictures:

Front of the house. Ain't it sweet?

The house is set way way off the road, at the end of a 50-yard driveway.  The owner’s cousin lives behind us, but it’s a parcel of land over 4 acres in size, so there’s plenty of room.  We found this house on the last day of house-hunting, after having zero luck finding anything acceptable.  Ironic that that was when THIS place dropped into our laps!  Thank you, Lord!

Some more pics:

Shot of the driveway next to the house

Florida room on the back of the house

Relaxing and nice in here!!

If we were actually staying in this area and bought this house, I’d put a couple of couches, tables and rugs in there, but it’s nice as it is.  This is one of my favorite features of the house.  The kitties agree!  They’re always in there laying in front of the open screen doors.  Spoiled kitties!

Boxes...and boxes...and boxes...

…and this is after someone responded to our Craigslist ad and picked some up!  They’re finally gone, and no longer block half of the earth’s solar energy. 

Oh, and there’s a POOL!!!  Well, not yet, but next summer, watch out!!!

Can't wait to get this thing going next year!!

Ok, so that perspective is coming in from the driveway, and as you come up those side steps into the Florida room.  Here’s a perspective going in the front.

Front room/library

This room is immediately to your right as you enter the front door.  We have all the bookcases in there (thanks, Dr. Obvious), the piano, and the secretary.  Still working on getting all the pictures and wall art up, but we’re getting there!

View from the front door...

…as you walk past the front room and through the small foyer, you walk into the dining room/kitchen.  Unfortunately, the fireplace no longer works- it used to be gas, and the rental agency talked the owner into removing all gas appliances.  Bummer.  To your left is the hallway to the bedrooms.  To the left, behind the buffet, is the staircase leading to the basement.  The door to the left in the picture goes out to the Florida room.

Buffet to the left...

… stairs to the basement behind.

Dining room, kitchen...

…and a bad kitty on the counter that’s about to get squirted.

A better view of the kitchen. And a better behaved cat by now...

Guess he learned his lesson.  Won’t be long before he’s back up there, though!

Down the hallway is Lizzy’s room.  She got to pick her own room this time, as the girls take turns getting dibs when we move.  Her room faces the back of the house, toward the pool.

She had this done and set up within a week of moving in!!!

Across the hall is our room.  It has a nice bay window that we really enjoy.

Master Bedroom

Whew.  Okay.  Now for the BASEMENT!!

View as you get to the bottom of the stairs- fireplace to the left

Left of the previous view. The owner's self-made entertainment center is still up. Not for long! Door up the stairs is just out of view to the left

Computers on the back wall

Holy wood paneling Batman!!  Still, it’s nice to have the finished basement.  There’s more!

Turning around as you're standing by the computers

I have NO idea where that wood paneling came from, but it sure is rustic.  He may have recovered those planks from an old building on Fort Lee.  Danny, the owner, built this himself over a period of two years from 1971-73.  He used recovered wood from old buildings on Fort Lee that were being demolished.  He removed them plank by plank and reused the wood on the house.  There is a detached garage that is similar;  Danny and his cousin took one of the old hospital buildings plank by plank, and then reassembled it in the same layout.  I don’t think the house was built the same way, though.

Oh, here’s the best part:

No longer suffering in their cases, never to see the light of day! They're FREE!!!

My own cool room!

The music room is the former office.  There were two desks left in there as well, as half of the room is behind this view.  It’s really nice to have a space for all my musical stuff, and have some elbow room to actually USE it!!

The house is on a 4-acre parcel that we share with our neighbors Bill and Susie; Bill is the owner’s cousin.  It is very close to a business corridor about 3/4 of a mile down the road, and the I-295 ramps are there too.  Being so far off the road, and on such a large parcel of land, it’s like being in the country.  It’s very quiet (except when the rifle ranges on Fort Lee are going, or the bugle calls over the loudspeakers, or the students calling cadence during PT and during the day).  Sometimes the sounds waft over from the post and remind us that we’re still in the Army, but mostly it’s quiet, serene and sunny.  Lots of windows make it quite nice.  We are very, very blessed and thankful!  So if you’re ever down below Richmond on I-95 or 295, stop on by!

Hello everyone!  We’re still in the midst of preparations to move and haven’t been posting much lately.  Our packers arrive on Monday and will pack the house over two days.  The moving truck shows up to be loaded on Wednesday.  On Thursday we do our final out-processing from Fort Drum- housing and such.  On Friday, we’re ‘On the Road Again’ and will arrive in VA on Saturday.  We’re hoping to intercept the truck and do a ‘door-to-door’ move, instead of having our stuff unloaded into a warehouse, then reloaded onto a truck for delivery to us.  Our move to Fort Drum went into storage, and we had nine pieces of furniture damaged, our TV smashed, etc.  Not good.  Now that they are required to give us replacement cost (instead of the asinine former depreciation policy), I hear the movers are a lot more careful with our stuff now.  Hope that’s true!

Please also pray for Will Williams, the son of a couple of colleagues of mine in the Army.  Will is six and had a brain tumor removed, then cancer started invading his spinal column.  Pray for Jenny and Priestly, his parents and my friends, and Miles, his brother.  You can read about Will at www.caringbridge.org/visit/willwilliams

Victoria got her nose pierced this past Wednesday:

She didn't even shriek--I would have!

And Lizzy got her ears pierced on Thursday:

She was very brave!

Time is flying by as our move approaches so we may not be posting very often in the next few weeks. Not that we ever do post very often, but this time we actually have a valid excuse! We’ll get pics up of our house once we get down there. Derek gets his clearing papers on Monday morning, and someone from the moving company is coming out that afternoon to do the house walk-through. Sixteen days until the packers come!

~Amy~

Sorry about how long it’s taken to do this! Wrapping up this school year has kept me busy, and I still am not feeling 100% well. Anyway, without further ado:

Forgot to post this picture–we passed this building in Chinatown on our way back to the Metro on Saturday afternoon:

Not your usual graffiti!

The next day we visited Pointe-a-Calliere, which is the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. It’s a fascinating place located near the river, where the city was founded, and the museum buildings are actually built over the top of in situ archaeological digs. You can go down to the dig levels and see the remains of civilization from pre-history through the mid-1800s. Our pictures didn’t turn out well as it was dim and we couldn’t use a flash, but if you go to the website you can get the general idea.

After lunch we headed to the Redpath Museum, which is a natural history/anthropology museum on the campus of McGill University. It’s in a really cool Victorian building, and the neat thing is that Derek and I went there while on our honeymoon–it was fun to take the girls there all these years later. On our first visit Derek had taken a picture of me in front of a slice of a petrified tree, so of course he had to take another:

The girls had to stand there too.

Almost nineteen years later

All the little papers you see are telling what was happening in history when the tree ring was forming–it’s an interesting thing to see.  The museum is small (and free, bless them!) but has an incredibly diverse and fascinating collection:

From huge scary crabs...

to rocks and shells...

(I love the old identification card.)

to fossils and skeletons...

to stuffed animals...

to fragments of cunieform and ancient coins

to mummies...

to antique Japanese armor...

to old African instruments.

Truly an interesting place to visit! There was a Darwin exhibition going on also, who of course they believe was a demi-god at the very least, but it was small and not too annoying.

We had a not so fun adventure on the way back to the hotel, as there was a gas leak or something in one of the Metro stations  and we had to flee to the surface. And then we had to walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, and…you get the idea. We must have walked three or four miles by the time we found another Metro station that would take us where we needed to get to. It was really cold that day too–a lot colder than the day before. However, we made it back to the hotel safely and thawed out in the hot tub, so it all was fine in the end.

Monday was our last day in Montreal. After our Metro misadventure the day before, we decided to forgo public transport and drove to the other side of the city to visit the Biodome. This was the place that Lizzy most wanted to go–it has the flora and fauna of four different ecosystems: tropical forest,  Laurentian forest (apparently it’s a forest somewhere in Quebec province), St. Lawrence marine, and Arctic/Antarctic. In the tropical forest there were some of the cutest monkeys we’ve ever seen:

Look at the tiny little faces!

In the Laurentian forest and St. Lawrence marine environment there were more familiar creatures, like alligators, birds, ducks, and beavers. One neat thing was that you could see the beavers and their dam from above, but as you walked around and down, you could see them through an aquarium-type window swimming into the dam from below. There also were crazy little birds that would dive way down in the water:

Diving bird

Another crazy bird

I assume they were getting food, but I’m not sure what it was! The penguins were very funny to watch waddling, sliding, and swimming:

After they came out of the water they would walk around with their flippers/arms stretched out like that, I suppose so their arms didn’t freeze to their bodies.

The Biodome is in Olympic Parc, so before we left town we decided to go up the funicular to the Montreal Tower Observatory. Derek and I had also done this on our honeymoon, so we knew there was quite a view:

The Biodome from above as we were ascending.

Looking towards the city center.

Other Olympic Parc buildings in the foreground and the St. Lawrence river in the distance

We headed home after that–all in all it was a fun vacation!

~Amy

I promise I didn’t forget about part 2 of our Montreal trip! We’re preparing for a yard sale on Saturday, so this week has been a bit crazy–will get the next part up Sunday or Monday.

Hope you are all having a great week!

~Amy~

We arrived in Montreal late Friday night, at which point some people were a little too happy to be out of the car. There were lengths of fabric picturesquely draped across the foot of the beds which really served no purpose except to be picturesque…at least until we came along:

How do I get out of this thing?!

I was laughing so hard at this point I'm surprised I took a decent picture.

The next day was Victoria’s birthday, so at her request the first place we went was the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.

Museum of Contemporary Art

It was okay–Victoria liked it better than the rest of us, of course, but even she was a little disappointed. We saw a lot of Tousignant’s work and not much else–they were heavy on the temporary exhibit and light on the permanent.

When we were done there we got a snack lunch and then walked several blocks to Old City (which is not really that different from the more modern parts) to visit the Notre Dame Basilica, which was gorgeous.

You can see the Basilica at the end of the street.

Looking toward the altar

It was built in the 1820s and so was not nearly as old as the cathedrals we saw in Europe, and it had no dead people buried beneath its floors (the girls had a kind of disgusted fascination with that when they were little), but it still was beautiful. And it has a pipe organ!

Yay for pipe organs!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear it played, but I imagine it sounds wonderful–the acoustics must be great in there. There also was a  pulpit with the most convoluted staircase that I have ever seen:

Pulpit with crazy winding staircase

We wandered around a little after that–it was a little chilly, but not too bad, and we were having fun:

Made you look

Part two coming soon…

~Amy~

Wow, time is flying by! I can’t believe that spring is almost over. Of course, all the chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having lately isn’t really conducive to summery thoughts. I’m glad it’s supposed to warm up some by the weekend!

We’ve been doing well, though we’ve been very busy. Spring is always a hectic time for me as I wrap up one school year and prepare for the next. Less than three weeks left of this school year–I can’t wait! (I know the girls share, if not exceed,  my eagerness for the last day of school.) Derek has been busy at work,  and has been spending almost every spare hour at home detailing the van–after five years of nothing but washes it is a time-intensive task, but he’s getting it looking great.

We’re looking forward to Derek’s leave in July, when hopefully we will see some of you, and to August when we should be moving to Fort Lee, VA. Normally I wouldn’t be pleased to be moving after only two years, but I will happily make an exception in this case. I cannot wait to see Fort Drum in my rearview mirror for the last time–ha ha!

I’ve finally gotten our Montreal pictures off the camera, and will try to make a post about our trip this week. Imagine that–two posts in the same week! I hope you all survive the shock.

~Amy~

Ok, it’s been a LONG time since we’ve posted, and we’ve committed to keeping this up better.  I had to share this with all of you- V got her permit on Thursday!  Clear the roads!  Just kidding.  I actually took her to the PX parking lot last Saturday night and taught her how to drive stick as well!  She did pretty good- stalled the car a few times like we all do when we’re figuring that beast out, but she’ll be a good driver.  She has a good sense of space and where she is with the vehicle.  Of course, listening to us bad-mouth other drivers over the last 16 years is a form of education, too, isn’t it?!?  ;^D

In other news, we may be moving to Virginia later this summer.  Pray that it all goes according to plan.

Two more of my Army colleagues came home yesterday- welcome home Scotty and Curtis!  Just a couple more and then we can ‘put the band back together’ (a la the Blues Brothers).

I just read an interesting article (the entirety of which can be found at:  http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/01/its_time_to_pray_for_global_wa.htm It’s a short and easy read–take a look.).

At December’s U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world’s top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?”

Apparently, the earth’s temperature peaked in 1998 and has been falling ever since. As many of you know, I’ve never bought into the whole Global Warming thing, in part because I distrust anything that is marketed emotionally instead of logically, but mainly because I have read enough history to know that the earth has climatic cycles. A few years back I read an article in which a climatologist said we had to find a way to “get rid” of the Medieval Warm Period because people who knew about it were using it when arguing against Global Warming. What? How do you get rid of a historic event? As convenient as I am sure it would be for propagandists, you can’t just hit the delete button to get rid of troublesome facts. (How’s that for an inconvenient truth? )

So, now that more and more climatologists are standing up and refuting Global Warming are we finally going to be done with this climate change nonsense? Unfortunately not. Now we’re all supposed to live in terror of an Ice Age. An Ice Age that could last 10,000 years! WE’RE STILL ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!! *rolls eyes* Idiots. Can I keep my normal light bulbs now?

~Amy~