Camera Magically Working Again

We got our camera working. I got some pictures of the blossoms before they all fell off.

This is our new truck.
This is our amazingly adorable, extremely enthusiastic little trick-or-treater.
This is the first time I have ever gotten Brent to "Dress Up". He was E-Male and I was his Attachment.
I know the shadows are bad, but this is our apartment.
Our Balcony.
Coming in the front door.
Looking back on the living room.
The Kitchen.
Bathroom.
Other side of the bathroom and laundry closet.
Z's room.

That's all I've got for now. The only room that isn't really in there is our room because it is still not entirely unpacked and not much to see anyway. I've had a lot of requests for pictures, so I hope you've enjoyed them.

Blossoms in October?

I am so bummed that we don't have a camera right now. When we arrived at the beginning of the month, the bushes that line our apartments were green. In the past week or so they have transformed. Not in the typical autumn way; losing their leaves or changing colors, but they are now covered in lovely purple blossoms! Don't things normally bloom in spring? Maybe this particular bush blossoms multiple times throughout the year. I'm not sure, and I don't care, I LOVE seeing blossoms in October!

There are so many things I would take pictures of if I had a camera, but I don't so here are some pictures of what we've been up to over the last while.

These two were taken on Z's special day/swim day at her pre-school.

Brenda came to town just a few days before Brent left. We hung out a lot, it took the edge off of the initial sting of having Brent gone.Allie came down to visit and Mish came out too.

Z and I got to meet Milo for the first time. If you can't tell, Z loved him.
Seriously? You did this with a tootsie roll?I used to go camping and backpacking all the time, but Z put a little kink in the works when she constantly tried to drown herself in lakes and rivers or give me regular heart attacks by getting lost in the slightest mili-second. She was finally old enough to take camping, so we had fun with that this summer.

We drove out to Georgia for a month to see Brent, spend time with family out there, and be there for Brent's graduation. We stayed with my Aunt Cynthia. She pulled out some old Playmobil's and completely sold me on them. Playmobil's are so awesome, even I had fun playing with them and Z loved them too of course.
Cynthia has one dog, two cats and was babysitting her son's kitten. Z fell in love with all the animals. I think the best part for her was no longer being at the bottom of the totem pole. She had so much fun taking responsibility for feeding, walking, or letting them outside to go to the bathroom. It really made me want to get some sort of a pet for her, but not enough to actually do it...yet.

She wanted to go to sleep in her make-shift "Cat house".

Playing "Bears" with Aunt Cynthia in their cave.

Brent in his ACU's (Army Combat Uniform).
We had just pinned Brent's officer bars on his uniform following his graduation.

Aunt Cynthia is on the left, I don't know what I would have done without her. I couldn't even begin to name the things she has done for me, and how much I love and appreciate her for it.

Arizona

Have you ever had a song that you just LOVED? You loved it so much that you could just not stop listening to it. Sometimes 3, 4, 5 times in a row. You listen to it often, in fact, so often that suddenly you find yourself sick of it and you don't want to listen to it anymore.

I think that is what happened to me and blogging. I think. I don't know, I just suddenly didn't want to write anymore. Maybe it was that. It might have been some other things too. I have wondered if it was the emotional difficulty of Brent being gone. It also might have been (I think I mentioned something like this before) the feeling of stagnation that I unfortunately allowed to penetrate other area's of my life. I don't know what it was, but I'm not over it yet. Although, I did want to write a little catch up.

Brent left for Basic Training in April. In June I had a wonderful, yet entirely too short weekend with him where I was able to see his Basic graduation and then drive him from Ft. Jackson, S.C. to Ft. Benning, Georgia.

In August, I packed up my daughter and spent 6 days on the road with her out to Georgia to stay with my Wonderful Aunt Cynthia who lives near Ft. Benning for the last three weeks of Brent's Officer Candidate School (OCS). I was able to go to a few social events with Brent and attend his graduation which was very nice. Much more like an actual graduation than his Basic graduation. Then we drove back to Utah just in the nick of time (we left one day before all the flooding and closed freeways).

We have been spending time with family and friends around Utah and taking care of business and preparing for our move to Arizona.

The news of Arizona was somewhat anti-climatic. We were pretty sure that we would be in Arizona for Brent's training, but we were anxiously awaiting Brent's Orders to see where we would be after his training. Most of the other soldiers in Brent's class had their permanent station on their orders, but we got zilch. All we know is that we will be in Arizona for Brent's training until August of next year. 10 months ahead of time is pretty good, and it normally wouldn't bother me, it's just that we were expecting to discover where our permanent station will be and were severly disappointed.

Part of the problem is that although I have desperately tried not to get my hopes up, it has been in vain, because I cannot stop thinking that we will go somewhere overseas. I keep trying to get myself pumped up for some miserable Fort in Middle of Nowhere, USA, but it's just not working. I was hoping that getting Brent's orders would put me out of my misery as I wait to see if it's going to happen, but they didn't.

Oh well, I am focusing on contenting myself with the present and I really am looking forward to our time in Arizona.