Author: Jen

Today, for the first time, we got to see the little peanut we’re calling a baby! We’re officially PREGNANT! Ten weeks and three days. So only another 208 days to go! Haha. Nick was so funny at the ultrasound…I think he cried, it was cute. I’m pretty sure some of the symptoms of pregnancy might be contagious though because I cry really easily…and lately so has he. The other day he hit a squirrel and he felt so bad he cried, which of course made me cry. I’m telling you all this because Nick laughs at me every time I cry!
So…if you look at the ultrasound the baby is surrounded by the blackness in the middle. This is a side view of it lying on it’s back and it’s head is on the left. You can see it’s little feet sticking up on the right. If you look really close you can even see little arms coming out right below the head.
It’s a baby alright!!!

Thank you Columbus for the long weekend! We decided to head down to Virginia to check out the historic living museum of Colonial Williamsburg.

In all the rush to get ready to go to Oregon I forgot to post about the weekend before I left. Nick and I met up with an old friend of mine…the wonderful Betsy Brown…in D.C. at the national book fest. I love seeing friends I haven’t seen in awhile, it’s always fun to catch up! Betsy and I met at BYU and went study abroad to NEW ZEALAND together. So of course we reminisced about New Zealand, which made me miss it and everyone who went with us. One of these days I’m going to have to get out of the country again!
(Check out our frizzy hair in this pic, well, mostly mine. The humidity was KILLER that day!)

I spent this last week in Oregon staying at a cute little cabin on the beach in Lincoln City with my family (minus my hubby). Seeing as how I still have not replaced the job I lost over a month ago, I figured I had the time. Actually, my wonderful husband convinced me that I needed to get out of the house, which was true. Oregon was cold and rainy but still fun.
It was my first time seeing my new niece, Mersadie, who is now 5 months old. She’s a cutie!

My Mom, Dad, little brother Taylor, Sister Nicole, Her husband Dustin and two kids and my grandparents were all there. We went to the aquarium, the Tillamook cheese factory and walked around on the beach. Thanks for a fun weekend everybody! And thank you Nick for making me go and the wonderful welcome home!

One of the many benefits of living on a military base is access to the commissary and post exchange which provide tax free shopping. But, there is a catch. After a few visits to the commissary to pick up my weekly groceries, I realized that at the bottom of the receipt where it normally says “tax” and an amount, it says “surcharge” and an amount. I asked the cashier what this “surcharge” meant and her response was “it’s like a tax”. HA! I couldn’t help but laugh out loud right there. Tax free my eye! Sure…the money probably doesn’t go to the same place as normal grocery store tax, and it is definitely a smaller amount, but still!

AND THEN….there are the “baggers”. You know the person that bags your groceries for you at the checkout? Here on post, they work for tips. I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but it really bothers me. The thing is, they have a different kind of cart than the normal shopping cart so if you want them to bring your groceries out then they put it on their little cart and walk out with you, at which point you are supposed to tip them a few dollars. So, in order to avoid this, you have to tell them as they start bagging your stuff that you want it back in YOUR cart. At which point they realize that you don’t want to tip them, but they still have to bag your stuff. So they turn on you, instead of being overly friendly to get the best tip, they bag your stuff however it suits them. That’s right, canned goods on top of your chips. It always makes me feel kind of bad, but truthfully I don’t carry cash on me anyhow, so I wouldn’t be able to tip really. I just wish that their boss would pay them enough that I wouldn’t have to tip them to do their job! I hate even tipping waiters…that’s why I love Australia/New Zealand. They consider it rude if you tip a waiter because it’s like saying that you don’t think the restaraunt pays enough. Just pay your employees what they’re worth here people!

Yesterday we had a special delivery at our house. My Mom bought us a brand new washer and dryer! We are soooo excited to be able to do our laundry from the comfort of our home and not at the scary laundromat. THANKS MOM!

For Labor Day weekend we decided to find the nearest national park and go camping. Seeing as how we live on the East Coast, we figured the woods would be the least crowded place to be on this three day weekend! So we headed down to Virginia to the Shenandoah national park which overlooks the historic Shenandoah valley and river. We discovered though that even the woods are crowded here on the east coast. The campgrounds we went to were cramped…tent sites no more than 20 ft. apart and the place was FULL! We made tin foil dinners and s’mores and then as it began to get dark we realized we’d forgotten a flashlight, so we went to bed.

We talked to a very strange park ranger…we were asking him about another campground further down the road to see if it was less crowded and his response was “that one has a lot of history, you should read up about it. This country used to be a lot more segregated you know.” I thought this was a very strange comment. I looked it up and here is what I found out:

In the early 1930s, the National Park Service began planning the park facilities and envisioned separate provisions for “colored guests,” as African Americans were described in contemporaneous government documents. At that time, in Jim Crow Virginia, racial segregation was the order of the day. In its transfer of the parkland to the federal government, Virginia initially attempted to ban African Americans entirely from the park, but settled for enforcing its segregation laws in the park’s facilities. By the Thirties, there were several concessions operated by private firms within the park, some going back to the late 19th Century. These early private facilities at Skyland Resort, Panorama Resort, and Swift Run Gap, of course, were operated only for whites. By 1937, the Park Service accepted a bid from Virginia Sky-Line Company to take over the existing facilities and add new lodges, cabins, and other amenities, including Big Meadows Lodge. Under their plan, all the sites in the parks, save one, were for “Whites Only.” Their plan included a separate facility for African Americans at Lewis Mountain — a picnic ground, a smaller lodge, cabins and a campground. The site opened in 1939, and it was substantially inferior to the other park facilities. By then, however, the Interior Department was increasingly anxious to eliminate segregation from all parks. Pinnacles picnic ground was selected to be the initial integrated site in the Shenandoah, but Sky-Line continued to balk, and distributed maps showing Lewis Mountain as the only site for African Americans. During World War II, concessions closed and park usage plunged. But once the War ended, in December 1945, the NPS mandated that all concessions in all national parks were to be desegregated. In October 1947 the dining rooms of Lewis Mountain and Panorama were integrated and by early 1950, the mandate was fully accomplished. (Wikipedia)

In the morning we took Zoey on her first hike up whiteoak canyon to some beautiful waterfalls (see the picture above, can you find Nick in it??? They were HUGE!) She did amazingly well being so little. She made it almost the whole 5 miles. The hike probably took us twice as long as it should have due to the fact that people simply cannot resist stopping us to tell us how cute Zoey is. And of course, Zoey knows she is cute. When they stop to pet her and talk to her she wimpers and whines. We’ve had more social interaction with strangers in the last week than we have in the past year combined I’m pretty sure.

The past week of our lives has been completely filled with our new long eared, pooping cutie. She is an 8 wk old beagle puppy and we absolutely couldn’t resist when we saw her at the puppy store. We’ve been looking for a puppy/dog for awhile so we had become all too eager and this was the cutest face we’d seen in awhile!

To update on last weekend, Saturday we went to Colonial Beach in VA with some of Nick’s army buds. The beach wasn’t anything to rave about but the town was so cute. They call it the “golf cart town” because everyone there drives golf carts. They have some tricked out golf carts with lift kits and sweet paint jobs. It was an unexpected quirkiness of this historic little town.

Sunday we used the free ticket I got from work for the “governor’s volunteer appreciation day at the MD state fair”. We watched a really funny pig race where the last round of the race was the pot belly pigs and they ran soooo slow it was hilarious. Then we looked at all the 4-H animals, saw the baby animals display, watched a few horse races, ate a funnel cake and a huge turkey leg drumstick and watched all the crazy people that only come out at the state fair. On our way home we made that fateful stop at the puppy store and our lives have been filled with Zoey ever since.

While we did pay a bit much for our purebred baby, Nick has decided that “you get what you paid for” certainly applies with her. She does not bark when we are gone, she is practically potty trained and follows us without even needing a leash. It’s almost like someone already trained her. Of course, her beagle instinct kicks in and when she is on the “smell trail” she hardly hears a word we say, so we’ll have to work on that. We’re hoping to train her well enough that she can certify as a therapy dog so that I can bring her into wherever I work. That’s one of the perks of being a recreational therapist, I use therapy animals sometimes so if my dog is one of them, I can take her to work. It’ll be awhile, but that’s my ideal outcome for Zoey.

Today is Nick and I’s 6 month anniversary! It does not feel like we’ve been married that long! I guess that could be due to the fact that we’ve only been together for three months of it. Sometimes I feel like I never really got married, due to the lack of a wedding. But just to let everyone know, we will be making up for that. I have officially booked a reception center in Provo UT for January 3rd. We may also try to do a house party in Moscow when we’re there for Christmas. We’re excited to get our chance to celebrate with family and friends…even if it is almost a year after the fact!