Time Flies

Holy Smokes! How did we get to Valentine's Day already?? The time since I last blogged has been pretty eventful, and I'll try to catch up here... and I'll try to be better at blogging more often!

July and August were pretty quiet around the condo, since Darrin was off to Germany and Hawaii for work. I know I know - enter sob story here explaining why *I* couldn't go!

In August, I went with Mom to WV to do a little more genealogy hunting -- and we went to Charleston to the Cultural Center. Wow, did they have some good stuff! I just wish I knew everything I was looking for!

The Virginia DAR Board of Management was held in Lynchburg, so Darrin and I had a quick overnight jaunt down there for that.

In September, I was only able to attend District V's Fall Muster -- Work started kicking my butt with a new, yet slightly awesome, assignment. I'm still on that assignment, but the awesomeness has started to wane...

September brought a very exciting prospect... We signed a contract on a house on September 9th, and it was ratified the next week! We decided on closing October 9th, since I just couldn't BEAR to spend that much money on our birthday! Happy Birthday to us! Four days after we settled on the house, we were knocking holes in the walls! We added cable outlets to the house, and patched up the walls pretty well - if you ask us!




October brought our Birthday and Yorktown Day celebrations, as well as the SAR Public Safety awards banquet. Nothing overly eventful, but we did get to spend part of the weekend in Newport News visiting Fred and Sandi. We had our wedding album back by then, and were able to take it down to show it off.

November brought our actual move-in to the house on November 9th. We hired movers to handle the piano and other big things. Things started out late, the estimate was so off, and the movers were so frustratingly slow that Darrin and I finally told them to leave.

Two weeks after moving in, we hosted Thanksgiving... and invited Margretta and Daniel over. We joked that the Pilgrims weren't unpacked either! We thoroughly enjoyed the company and the food, but there's an eventful story from our "First Thanksgiving". Darrin tried a yummy apple dumpling recipe - that was super easy to make! He put it in a square pan, and filled the sugar sauce to the brim of the pan. As the dumplings puffed up, they pushed some of the sauce onto the oven coils, starting a billow of smoke to come out of the oven. Darrin came to the rescue by throwing salt at the fire. While it worked, I'll admit I was standing there thinking "and what is THAT going to do?"... So the apple dumplings were saved, and we all enjoyed the rest of the events of the evening.

So then came Christmas. We had a great time when Fred and Sandi came to visit us -- though we hadn't really gotten the guest room entirely together. The Lessons and Carols service went well (I'm even the reader on the recording!!). Christmas was a bugger though -- Darrin doesn't want to take Christmas vacations, and I'm all about spending it with family. OK, so here's the thing -- I hated leaving, but I'd already taken the time off of work. So I left with Mom and Dad to WV for a couple days, but then the rest of the week, I stayed home working on house stuff. Darrin was supposed to come home early those days, but that didn't quite happen.

The call came that Saturday that we needed to be in Ohio - pronto. Darrin's mom was in the hospital, and the outlook was bleak. I tried to do what I could, helping out, shopping, distracting the girls, whatever I could to give Darrin time with his mom. I thought things were going well, but was totally upset when Darrin's sister directed a backhanded comment at me. I was bummed to because James, his mom, Darrin and I were supposed to do something for New Years -- and I had to cancel because of the trip. *sigh* Best laid plans...

On January 10th, we got the call that his mom had passed away. While everyone was sad, we all know it's a relief from pain for her. Cancer in any form is devastating, but this was just awful.

Since then, we've been working on more house stuff. My goal right now is to get pictures on the walls so we can sit on the chairs that are currently hosting the pictures. Diplomas went up last weekend, so I can open the closets without clunking the corner of one. We also have all of the Christmas Trees down, and can finally move in our house without running into a box or three!

So that gets us to today rather quickly.

xoxox

hlms