Lesson Learned

After living for 6 months with the bare necessities, we have realized what all you really DON"T need! As I unpack all our stuff, I think why do I need 12 mixing bowls of various sizes?? Really? In the hotel, and for the past week without our stuff, one plastic bowl was sufficient!

Jason and I have never been pack-rats before. In fact, I (not Jason) am one of the few people who actually loves having a garage sale so I can get rid of stuff. I definitely wouldn't say we have a lot of things, although the packers would probably disagree, but I do realize that we have excess.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to give everything away and live on the bare necessities - the extras are nice to have - but I may rethink the "wants" and simplify the "needs." And in the meantime, I may be making a few trips to the Salvation Army donation station!

The Goods Arrive

After about 6 months without our things, the movers arrived on Monday morning! It was basically birthday and Christmas all wrapped into one as we all opened boxes and were excited about the contents. So many things we had forgotten about!!

Normally, we wouldn't have had to wait so long to get our stuff, but we had some unusual circumstances. We sold our house in New Mexico back in April, so the Army came then and went ahead and shipped our HHG (house hold goods for you non-army speaking people) to NY. From there, we lived with my gracious in-laws for about 10 weeks, and then we moved to Fort Jackson for 2 months. Had this been a normal PCS (Permanent Change of Station), we most likely would have only been without our things for a few weeks. Although, the more I hear, there isn't really a "normal" in the Army!
The paper from one box of dishes!!! They used like 4 huge sheets of paper to wrap each item - including house shoes and toys!! Our goods weighed around 8,500 pounds - I'm pretty sure half of that was paper!!
Beginning to make progress....
Fewer and fewer boxes! Now is the fun part of trying to figure out ways to arrange the furniture!

To say the least, the task of unpacking and organizing is overwhelming, but completely worth it as it begins to help us all feel more settled. Tuesday morning, Mauryn walked down the stairs and said with a sigh," Ahhh, this looks like home."

Fall Fun

We spent the day at an apple orchard in Mexico, NY. It was a lot of fun!!

The kids got to go on a horse ride. Now of course this was not what they were used to, after taking horseback riding lessons for a couple of years - but it was just a little bit to satisfy their love of horses.

Picking out pumpkins was fun too!

But the apples were the best part!! They had all different kinds of apples, many that we had never even heard of. In fact, Jason asked a guy if they had brayburn apples, and he acted like he had never heard of them. I never thought that even types of apples would be different across the country! We chose some Shy, Rome, Yellow Delicous, Macoun, and Macintosh.

They were yummy! Now we need to bake some pies!
Of course, Daddy's shoulders were the best place to be to reach the top!
Sadie kept saying that she wanted to find a "honkin'" one! I think she did!
The mums were beautiful!! And I finally got to get a few since I now have a front porch to put them on!
HAPPY FALL, Y'ALL!!!

Views from Upstate NY

It is beautiful up here! Tons of trees and they are changing colors. There are a lot of rivers around here. The other day we got rain all day long! In fact, the kids got a delayed start at school.
Here are some pics of the rivers running pretty full with all the rain!




This river is about a mile from Sadie and Denver's school. We are so wanting to raft down it before we leave here!!

Sadie is Seven!

Time flies! Earlier this week, our sweet Sadie turned 7! We celebrated by bringing a cake to school. Her classmates were so sweet, we sang and they all wore party hats! That night she wanted to go to Red Lobster (she is a sea food lover!) Sadie loved the Lobster tail and crab legs the best!

We are also going to go apple and pumpkin picking to celebrate as a family!

Our First Great Lake: Lake Ontario

Our first weekend here, we went to Syracuse for a Chaplain marriage retreat training. It was a lot of fun! On our way back, we stopped at Lake Ontario. (Syracuse is about an hour from us, and the lake is maybe 20 miles.)
Notice we are in our fallish clothes, while the native New Yorkers in the background are in the bathing suits!!! LOL! We thought they were crazy!

The Bruce Boys

Mauryn looking for cool rocks. If you notice, the entire beach area is made up of river rock. It was beautiful! All the stones were so smooth!

Denver thought this was a cool.


Our Sadie-bug found ladybugs!

Lots of Ladybugs!

A view of the Lake...we were overwhelmed at the size of it!

We made it!

After nine months of knowing where we were headed, researching, and anticipating - we finally made it! Fort Drum is beautiful! Most of it is forested, so you see turkeys, deer, chipmunks, etc. all over the place! We arrived in the Fall, so the leaves on the trees have been breathtaking! It is pretty big and spread out, so I spent most of the first week getting lost - usually looking for a gate to get out of!

When we got here, we didn't have a home, so we stayed at a hotel for 17 days! That's right a hotel room with 2 queen beds, a chair that pulled out to a twin bed and that's it! So, we rented a storage unit for the little bit of our belongings that we had kept with us and lived in tight quarters! We were blessed that we only were there for 17 days! It wouldn't have been too bad, but it rained so much that the kids really couldn't go outside to play. So, we would usually go explore in Watertown and go out to dinner to pass the time in the evenings.

Well, after the longest summer of their lives (May 20 - Sept. 9) the kids had to start school!

Here are their first day of school pictures:

Denver going into Kindergarten!

Sadie going into First Grade!

Mauryn going into 4th grade!

Sadie and Denver go to a primary school (K - 3rd grade), and Mauryn has to go to an Intermediate School (4-5 grades). They have done well, but it has been an adjustment. We were used to Tucumcari Elementary, where I had taught for 3 years and we were all in the same building, and had a ton of familiar faces! But as the weeks go on (they've been in school for about 3 weeks now) they are feeling pretty comfortable with it. But I must say, many times a week our sweet Tucumcari Elementary is mentioned by one of us and how much we miss it and all our sweet friends. But what a blessing to have such great memories and a wonderful place to call "home."

And it has been fun to tell people we are from Tucumcari, New Mexico and hear their reactions..."You are from where????" or "How do you say that????"