I spent two weeks over Thanksgiving with Wayne's folks. It was wonderful to see them and we drove up to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with Wayne's brother Doug and family. Also included in the 2 weeks were a trip to Bernheim Forest where Marti had some of her art quilts in a show, going to her stitchery group and getting to share my BJP pages, meeting one of her friends who beads and time spent working on my November BJP page. I hadn't started it when I got there but managed to finish it before I left. I borrowed a few goodies to help with the page and got some good advice and feedback. It is fun having another artist around to bounce ideas off of. I think we are going to try to work on some collaborative pieces once things settle down a little bit and I catch up.
It seems that every time I go to Iowa for very long in December they have lots of bad weather. OK it is December in Iowa, what am I expecting? I managed to sneak into Iowa between and ice storm and some snow. Still not sure how I managed to time it so well but got lucky. wintry weather not withstanding we managed to be on the go a fair amount. Mom and I did lots of Christmas shopping, made 4 trips to visit my Grandmother (at 104 I try to see her anytime I get near home), went to see the Rockettes' Christmas show in Des Moines, saw 2 other musical programs, picked up (and return) my sister Betsy and David for Christmas with them, a trip to Lincoln, NE to switch out dining room tables with Aunt Barb and Uncle Rog, and have 4 Christmas celebrations (I still had one to go here with Wayne.) We managed to pull all of this off around the weather which included an unusual amount of fog (some that last all day long). While the fog made for some beautiful scenery full of everything covered in hoarfrost (see photo above) it made driving especially after dark unwise. I had a great time at home with my family and managed to get my December BJP page finished and a start on my January page.
The beginning of January was a bit crazy. I left Iowa on Jan 2nd and got home late that night and had a couple of days to get the house straightened up, pick up and go through 6 weeks of mail, pick up boxes of stuff that I had shipped from Iowa as well as boxes Wayne had shipped from Iraq, and get groceries. On Jan 5th I headed back up to the airport and was there for the Welcome home, Wow! Definitely the biggest welcome I had been there for, Baltimore has a large group of volunteers that come to welcome the troops back from Iraq and Afghanistan and it was pretty darned crazy. It would have been more fun if I hadn't come down with a cold the day before and felt a bit tense with end of deployment nerves, I just wanted to go home.
The month of January has been happy and busy, having Wayne home has been wonderful and after a week at home with a couple of days of him going in to work to do some paperwork, we took a week to go up to visit DC. We got lots of exercise walking around DC. We visited the zoo, spent a day walking around the Mall visiting monuments and memorials, visited several museums, went to a couple of free shows at the Kennedy Art center as well as a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra and visited the National Cathedral. Wayne even let me go to a bead store. We had good food lots of fun things to do and just enjoyed being together.
Since then we have both been busy trying to catch up on life. I still have paperwork that I need to do, I am behind on my January BJP page and my blogs are seriously behind. I think that it will take awhile for me to catch up on all of the things that I am behind on or just need doing.Wayne needs to find a temporary Navy job since his squadron is getting decommissioned this summer. After that it is time to concentrate on what he wants to do after the Navy. We have bought him 2 suits as well as shirts, ties etc so that he will be ready once he gets to the interview stage. First it is time to figure out how to convert a Navy onto a resume. I have no idea where we will end up next but hopefully this time next year he will be working for someone and we will be settled in a new place. We could end up staying here or end up somewhere totally different. Should be a very interesting year.
