Social Butterfly-ing and Bellydancing

This has been such a full week! I spent Monday with the Home Depot delivery people...they brought our washer and dryer-hooray! I then proceeded to do about 8.5 hours of laundry. It only got put away yesterday...Laundry is about my least favorite chore.

The rest of the week I spent running around doing errands and being a little social butterfly. Wednesday I trekked over to Auburn to get registered for my last graduate course. MSU messed up my scheduling, so I'm taking my last Masters course at Auburn in the fall. What I was told was a 30 minute drive to Auburn took me over an hour. The "over an hour" part consisted of me being lost on Auburn's campus. It didn't help that Camp War Eagle (their orientation for freshmen) was going on...lots of hyped parents and lost drivers! After being told I was going to have to get a visitor's pass to park (which who knows where THAT office is), I decided to be illegal and park by the football stadium. My car was still there after about 45 minutes, so they didn't catch me :) Meanwhile I walked around campus, asking about 10 people where certain buildings were. I finally decided to ask an Orientation leader where something was (they're the ones with all the info anyways...) and as she turned around, I realized it was the one Orientation leader I actually KNEW-Lauren Ketron! We went to high school/ran cross country together! After a fun little reunion she sent me in the correct direction.

The other days this week my friend Dana and I spent going to various exercise classes at the gym as well as laying out at the pool in the afternoon. We did "Cardio Core" on Tuesday (which worked everything but core...strange, I know), and today (Saturday) I actually am not sore. It was probably the hardest workout I have done in a really long time. You know when the instructor tells you to get about 7 different exercise "tools", you're in trouble. But it was a great workout and I plan on returning to kill myself week after week. Dana and I then took about a 45 minute "tour" of post as we tried to find a swimming pool...Ok, there are probably 10 swimming pools on post, but the one closest to us was closed, so we set out in search of one in a really nice neighborhood....that took awhile! Mainly because we only knew the general DIRECTION of the subdivision...we eventually found it...

Thursday we spent a good amount of time at the gym, pool, and a friend's house. The boys were in the field Thursday night, so we decided to hang out (the wives, that is). We had planned on watching a movie, but we ended up talking instead! We're coming to learn quickly that the way you figure out things in the Army is that you have to talk to people. And more people. I have said more than once "It would be so much easier if they just had a handout for this!"...heralding back to my days at the Center for Teaching and Learning...Tina (boss, not roommate...), I should've learned to make those while I was there! :)

Friday morning me, Dana, and Dana's mother-in-law (who's in town) went to a Ranger demonstration/graduation...it was AWESOME! They did rappeling demos, explosives, combatives (yes, fighting), as well as a bunch of other stuff. They'll do it again for each Ranger graduation, so I'll get to see it when Brian finishes Ranger School (hopefully the end of January!). It kind of gave us a glimpse of what the boys will be up to in their jobs! We also saw "Restrepo" last night-it's a documentary film about a outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. If you want a very realistic idea of what's going on over there...watch it. It's all actual footage from the time the documenters spent with the squads.

This next week I'm headed down to Florida to chaperone a youth trip with my old youth group from Starkville. I'm really excited about it!

Oh my goodness I almost forgot to tell you about bellydancing! Yes, bellydancing is one of the "aerobics" classes they offer at Smith Gym...hilarious. But it was packed! I would've felt much cooler if I had one of those jingle-y, sequin-y sarongs they wear...because about 10 people there whipped them out before class started! The teacher was intense but adorable-at the end we learned a dance, which I loved! I got corrected on how to properly hold my hands...hilarious. I also realized that I do not like to watch myself bellydance in front of a mirror...I decided to hide behind the girl in front of me and just watch the instructor-she looked way better than I did! And yes, people actually whip off their shirts as well. But not this girl!

As far as Brian goes, he's really enjoying his training. They spend this week getting CLS certified (Combat Life Saver). Basically, combat first aid. This next week they get to spend a lot of time doing BRM (Basic Rifle Markmanship) which means shooting! Brian's pretty excited about it!

Welcome to Lumpkin Street!

So my promise of having pictures of the new house up by the middle of last week did not come to fruition...as it turns out, last week got a little crazy! More details on that as you scroll down. Here are about 3/4 of the pictures of the interior of our house. Today our washer and dryer got delivered, so our bedroom is covered in dirty clothes piles-didn't think you really wanted to see (or smell...) that. As it turns out, PT uniforms really stink after waiting on a washer and dryer to be delivered! Needless to say, I've been cranking out laundry since about 8:45, and I've got two more loads to go!

But laundry is boring-pictures are not! So if you were to walk up the front stairs in our house you would be greeted by...our living room! Welcome.


From the TV's perspective:
Again from the entryway. Yes, I took these while watching the World Cup. Viva Espana!

Like the rug? The day Brian and I moved in there was a tent rug sale at Ft. Benning, so we purchased one! Quite serendipitous. Think I spelled that right...

From the living room you walk into our dining room. One thing I love about this house is all of the windows! There are on average two on each wall in each room! In the mornings, I don't even have to turn the light to take a shower because it's so bright!

From the dining room you head into the kitchen. The door you can barely see is our back door. It takes you up or downstairs to the attic/basement/patio.

The kitchen!

Kitchen again--if you look through the doorway, you'll see the living room/entry area.

If you take a left out of the kitchen, you come to this hallway! Brian hung the candle scones on the wall the other day-he was quite proud of his handiwork. And I agree-they look good and they're level! The room you're looking into is the guest bedroom (aka, your room).

If you were to stand right in front of the guestroom door and look to your right, you'd see the office. If you looked to your left, you'd see the guest bathroom.

The office. One of those rooms that got set up last...better pictures to come of this.

Here's the guest bathroom! The tile is a grayish-blue, so thankfully all of my college gear looks good in here!

Bathroom again.

Ok that's all for the house tour right now. To come: guest bedroom, and our "master suite" as I like to call it! Ok it's not that fancy, but it's got a set-up I've never seen before!

And here's Brian! I made him take this picture. It was his first day of IBOLC! This one is to show the grandkids what a strapping young lad their grandfather was back in his early years. Yes, I am undyingly nostalgic. Some of my favorite pictures are old ones...my favorite picture of my grandfather is one of him next to a very sweet car-he seems very proud in the picture!

So now onto the reason I've kept you in the dark until now...it's been crazy around here! Last week I spent most of my time unpacking, cleaning, and running errands around town. Bought my first washer and dryer, explored (got lost in...) Columbus, and had three social events to attend! The first was a wives meeting for IBOLC, the school Brian is in right now. Out of about 170-180 guys, there are 10 wives! Some of them are married/engaged but their wife/fiancee is still in school/working, so they're not able to be here. In fact, we're losing about 3 of our wives in the fall because they're going back to finish up school! Thankfully, the group is amazing. I've made some friends already and it seems like a very easy-going group. We're going to get to be quite the friends this year mostly due to the fact that our husbands aren't going to be around much! At the IBOLC wives meeting, we were briefed (yes, briefed...) on the going-ons of our dear husbands. The commanding officer told us that out of the 16 week course, they'll be in the field (AKA, not coming home) for 10 of those weeks! This week is a classroom week, so they're around, but next week starts a 2 week field time. They do get to come home on the weekends-hooray! After IBOLC, the boys go to Ranger School, which is 2 months long. During Ranger School, we won't see them at all...Except, our boys have the slot that goes over Christmas, so they get 2 weeks leave! Praise God. So as you can see, this little group of girls and I are going to be spending a lot of time together so that we don't go crazy!

After our wives brief, they had a social for all of the wives and the IBOLC guys. I got to meet some of Brian's friends and cadre (the officers/NCOs (non-commissioned officers) that are in charge of IBOLC) at this, which was really fun! Brian and I ended up being some of the last to leave...meaning, I only saw 3 other lieutenants there as we exited. We started talking about SEC football--let's be honest, that's never a short conversation.

The next day, one of the wives hosted an informal lunch/craft party at her house. We painted faux stained glass (mine is awful...I wish I was good at art!) and ate sloppy joes, which was hilarious to me. I have a long history with sloppy joes! After the lunch party, I rushed around to get the oil changed and get packed up because Brian and I had to go to Starkville this weekend for a wedding that Brian was in. The wedding was another one of Brian's ROTC friends-Patrick Franks. The wedding was beautiful and we had a really good but short trip! All told, I think we were only in Starkville for about 18 hours! We decided to drive back Saturday after the wedding so that we would have all day Sunday to get chores/errands done. And of course, watch the World Cup. Yes, I am a bandwagon fan, but I do not care. Probably because I cheer for about 10 teams...the USA always being first, but if they're not in the game, I always go for the country that speaks Spanish, if applicable. I see teaching moments through those games...Yes, I am a certified dork. So naturally I was cheering for Espana! I jumped throughout the game because they came so close to scoring about 10 times...and so did the Netherlands! If you didn't watch, they did a snippet on the Netherlands fans-some of them had been gone from their home country since April 3 and had DRIVEN all the way from Holland to South Africa--one of them said it was about 17,000 miles! Now that's a roadtrip. And through Africa, no less.

Well I'm on to the 4th (or 5th? I've lost count) load of laundry. Just in case you ever order anything through Home Depot, know that they are very concerned about your opinion of their service! I've gotten quite a few "follow-up" phone calls to see how it all went...pretty impressive!

The Best Army Installation in the World !!

So I stole my title from the sign that greets you at one of the entrance gates at Ft. Benning. It exclaims that Ft. Benning is "The Best Army Installation in the World !!"; and yes, with two exclamation points and an inaccurate spacing job...but other than that minor grammatical error, I love it here! We've met some of our neighbors, all who are very nice, and we even made some friends last night! Hooray for friends!

Before I get into Ft. Benning life though I'll update you on the last fews days in Starkville. I managed to fill my last few days in beloved Starkville with all my favorite people at all my favorite places! I got to hang out a lot with the girls, my youth group, and Joey, Kate and the boys. Joseph and I managed to have a lot of fun on our last play date--the good news is, I've found him a reason to come visit-there's a very cute two year old girl who lives below us...maybe she can be his girlfriend :) ha!

The girls helped me visit all of my favorite places before I left town. On my last night, we headed to Bop's for ice cream, and that morning they saw me off after a delicious breakfast at City Bagel! I already miss them so much.


After breakfast with the girls last Thursday, I packed up the rest of the Starkville house and headed home! Here's a picture of the empty living room--it feels weird to know that we'll never go back to this house! The boys lived in it for 3 years before Brian and I got married and it's strange to think it won't always be there for us to come crash in!



The Starkville house--one last time!

My dad and Mr. Page both were in packing industries at one time; Dad worked for U-haul back in his younger days and Mr. Page put in 20 years in the freight industry. Needless to say, I just hauled the boxes...they packed them.

Our living room in Madison-an aerial view. We had furniture/boxes going into the dining room and they were stacked taller than me! No picture can really do it justice!

Packing away! The Pages came over Friday to help us pack up the U-Haul. Thank goodness for parents!

Some how I managed to not take any pictures of us unloading the truck. Probably because it was done in record time! Mom, Dad, Emily, Mr. Page, Mrs. Page, Brian Sells, and two MSU ROTC cadets who are at Ft. Benning in Airborne school came to help unload, so we pretty much had the massive U-haul empty in about an hour! It was awesome. Mom and Mrs. Cindy set up most of the kitchen and dining room while Emily and I worked on the bedrooms/bathrooms/linen closet. By the close of Saturday night, our house was functional!

Here's me and Em on our front porch-306 D!

Brian and I out front of our 1/4 of the building. I think the housing office at Benning must've read my mind...I've been in love with these houses/apartments ever since I saw them at Brian's Airborne graduation back in 2007. They're called the "White Elephants", and are white stucco with Mexican tile roofs. Hello, I fell in love at first sight! I can't believe we actually live here!

This is us--go in the bottom right door, up the stairs, and we inhabit the upper right hand side of the building! Three other families live in this building with us.

The whole 306 building. It's impossible to get into one picture--it's huge!

My neighborhood! We have this fun little half-circle in front of our house where we can park our cars.

There are also tons of tall trees and the landscaping here is also pretty good! There's some sparse-looking areas around, but for the most part the residential areas are full of old trees and crepe myrtles! The weather has been great here too--it's hot (90's and up) but the humidity has been about 0%...praying that sticks around! Another thing I love is that while we're now in Eastern time (still trying to get used to that...), we get sunlight for longer during the day! For example, it's 8:32 PM and we've still got almost an hour of sunlight left! It's awesome. You should visit. :)

Now I can't take you inside yet...still have a lot of cleaning left to do! I have about 3 boxes left to unpack and then I'm off to Swiffering and sweeping the floors! I should have another post up soon about the interior of the house--Brian has some really long days ahead so I'll be looking for something to do! He left this morning around 4 AM and just got back around 7 PM...looong day. But he says it was a good one and not too much happened!

One last note that doesn't really pertain to me...Clay got a dog. A super, duper, duper cute dog that I already miss and that needs to see Aunt Becca as soon as possible. His name is Eli, and he's half lab, half Rottweiler. And he's precious. Blue eyes, all black coat. I think I need one. And as it turns out, the weight limit on dogs for on-post is 100 lbs! That is super great news, considering I love big dogs! But that won't be happening for some time, so meanwhile, enjoy Clay's bundle of cuteness.

Miss you all already--it's weird having to figure out a new town again, but it's been fun so far! If you're bored during the day, feel free to call! I have my first official Army social gathering tomorrow morning--"Newcomers Orientation". Should be exciting. We're pretty sure they're putting us on a bus and giving us a driving tour. A herald back to RoadRunner days...I'll let you know how it goes!