Winter Activities

After this one, I think I'll be pretty much caught up for the year. Finally!

I did quite a bit of traveling during the winter. I'm glad I did, because the weather here was MISERABLE. Here's a picture I snapped with my phone one day. Yes, that is snow halfway up the garage. And yes, it is starting to cover the living room windows - and this wasn't even at the worst of it. Miserable.

So like I said, I got out of here as much as possible during winter. My bosses were very understanding about Nathan being gone and my having zero family around. I was basically off work for three straight weeks.

Now cut me some slack on all this, because it's been a while and the details are a little fuzzy...

I went home on Monday before Thanksgiving and spent it with my family. It was so nice to just relax and be home with them. Nathan was flying into Columbus (Mississippi, near Starkville where his parents live) possibly on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, so I went down to Starkville ahead of him and checked into a hotel, got all the stuff Nathan wanted to have for R&R, and waited. The waiting is awful. He ended up flying in Saturday afternoon. I'm not usually an overly emotional person, but I cried for at least five straight minutes when he walked in the gate. Deployment messes with your head.

We spent the evening with his parents, brothers, and sisters having a slightly delayed Thanksgiving dinner. They had waited for him to get home to have the big dinner. We also spent a lot of time that week just sort of hanging out around Starkville/Mississippi State, going to all of our favorite restaurants (I really miss the barbecue!). We even got to watch the seventh Harry Potter movie while we were there :-)

Over the weekend, we went to visit some of our very good friends Brian and Becca Page, who were living at Fort Benning, Georgia while Brian finished up his infantry training. Some other good friends came while we were there - Allen and Lindsay Arant came from Fort Rucker, Alabama, and Jeff Cummings came up from EOD school (explosive ordnance disposal) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It was a Mississippi State ROTC reunion! We had a great time watching the SEC football championship game. I really miss getting to watch SEC football. Here, all they like to show is NFL (lame) and hockey (even worse). But anyway, absolutely awesome weekend. Saying goodbye to everyone was sad because with PCSes (army moves) coming up and the possibility of deployments, we were just guessing at when we might see each other again. I am so glad we got to see them for the weekend though!

We squeezed in a quick visit to Tennessee so Nathan could see my family, and then (sadly) it was back to Mississippi to say goodbye. If I thought saying goodbye the first time was hard, this was so much worse. I think because after eight months, I got only two weeks and I just felt cheated. Two weeks in eight months is just. not. enough. Not even close to enough.

Nathan just missed Thanksgiving, and wasn't home quite long enough to spend Christmas with me, but I'm still grateful I got to spend some of the holiday season with him.

After his R&R, I still lucked out and got to go home for Christmas. I flew home Christmas Eve, miraculously making all my flights on time, and so I got to see my family a third time for the winter.

Basically, I was all over the place this winter. Now that Nathan is home and spring is nearly here, I'm hoping to spend some time with him enjoying all the local (or relatively local) things - the walking trails along the Black River, Lake Placid and the Adirondacks, boat tours along the St. Lawrence River. Or maybe just sit around the house together watching movies :-)