Troop Recall?

Makes me just a little bit nervous, but Eric, who was just hired last week to do my old job in personnel was recalled to active duty effective 4 Jan 09. He got to work 2 weeks. He is a retiree with 22 years of active duty and has been retired for 9 years. This just doesn't make any sense. That's 31 years including retired reserve service. I did 20 years and have been retired for 13....wonder if Donald and I are on their radar too?
By the way...he's not going to the middle east. They are sending him to Ft. Sill, OK to work in Military Personnel. THAT is even crazier!

Nathan-sitting and other eventful issues

Well, one thing is for sure...Nathan-sitting has it's own brand of excitement. While Helen and Vic were at church last night, Nathan and I spent some quality time together....In the ditch in front of our house!

After our dinner of chili-dogs, he begged to go see the Christmas lights next door and I'm just not able to say no too often....YET. I did make him take one more bite of his dinner before we headed out the door and into the ditch..

Honestly, I know better, but he loves to sit on my lap as we go through the Christmas lights, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem as it's only another couple hundred yards with him sitting there. He sat on my knee as we began backing the truck. I was checking to make sure there was no traffic when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him toying with the mirror (among with other knobs and buttons) and glanced to see what he was doing....without stopping! It was a very slow decent into a very slick ditch. After finally giving up and calling AAA, we waited on "Mater," talked about the stars, and had half a dozen offers to help pull it out (I'd already called for "Mater and didn't want unnecessary vehicle damage). When I got into the truck this morning, my mirror was upside down and, the fan was blowing on high with defroster set...not to mention right side is completely covered in mud.

One other thing of note, I got a notice at work that a new intern position is coming up soon (the interviews are Jan 14). Requirements are firm ....30% disabled vet, BA, and at least 24 hours in Finance or Accounting. I'm really excited about it because they have a very small qualifying group and the starting pay grade is well above what I make now. After completeing the internship, the salary significantly increases. Oh...I forgot to mention, the position is in Contracting....which I've been trying to get into even before I started working on my degree. I've already informed my boss and though I really enjoy the position in personnel, she had to agree that this is a great opporunity and I shouldn't ignore it for the sake of job loyalty.

A hunting we will go

We went on our annual tree killing adventure today with Helen and the kids, hunting for the perfect tree. Helen found her's but alas I could not. You could either see thru them or they were some weird color, they actually looked like they spray painted some of them. Others were very pretty but the type of tree they were they don't hold the ornaments very well. We had a great time running after the kids . Papa, Nathan and even Sam were able to chop down and bring home the perfect tree for them . I found ours at a "lot", it is alot smaller than we have ever had, not quite a "charlie brown" tree but maybe this year the cats will stay out of it. In case anyone is wondering Sam's shirt say's "who needs Santa when you have grandparents" hmmm wonder where that came from ?

Who does this look like

Nathan loves getting my glasses and putting them on, this one cracks me up. Who do ya'll think he looks like in this photo ?

Thanksgiving and Other stuff

We had a very laid back and quiet (mostly) Thanksgiving this year. I was able to NOT spend the whole day in the kitchen which as wives/moms and grandmoms you know how hard that can be. We did and do have lots of things to be thankful for. I am just glad we don't only take one day out a year to acknowledge that but sure am grateful I only have to cook a big ole meal for it once a year ! We ate and were back to the couch in no time. We WII'd and waited patiently for darkthirty so we could go see the Missmuss (Christmas lights) at Uncle Horace's, sorry but last year Nathan couldn't say Christmas, it came out Missmuss and is one of those things I don't want to let go of yet. So at darkthirty the Seaman/Sauls/Vicars/Cox/Cattell clan met at our place and we all piled in the vans,pickups and/or cars with our blankets and quilts to make the annual trek thru the lights. It is so fun to watch the kids (big&little) ooohh and awww over the lights, Sam was even watching them this year, I am sure Gretchen enjoyed them to but she was in another truck, it was a bit cold so the little little ones mostly stayed inside the vehicles, of course we have to go thru twice as you can't see it all in one trip, we got to go three times this year since RJ and Gene were a bit late in making the first drive thru. Oh I almost forgot the "lighting" ceremony at Helen and Ryans, she was most excited as she put the lights up herself. We are sorry that Ryan missed out on it but he was on his great adventure to Wy. I am sure there will be blogging on that trip when he gets home. Well thats about all I have for now, have been a bit lazy in posting so wanted to share something . Again I want to say Rich and I have alot to be thankful for and if you are reading this you are one of them

Busy Busy Busy

I wanted to post so everyone would know we are still here. Isn't it crazy how caught up in life we can get ? But who am I to fuss ? Look at Aunt Carol and Joe...packing up and moving away, Eileen with 3 kids, Hel with 2 little ones, Ryan with 2 jobs, Nance with her big family and teaching Seminary, the list is endless BUT I still seem to run out of time to sit here and post. I have been working at one of our DC's in Fla the past 2 weeks so feel very out of touch with everyone. I must admit it was kind of nice to go off sort of like a working vacation, I worked the evening shift, which means from 4:00 pm to when we were done which might be 1200a or as in a few mornings until 6:30 am, it wasn't as hard as I thought to stay awake all night the problem came with sleeping during the day. I usually managed a few hrs and then up and exploring Lake City, and to anyone who knows that area I was done in an hr or so !!! No really they had a great little downtown area with little shops and a couple quaint cafe's and of course I found several second hand stores. Although much to my disappointment their mall was just like ours--sucky but I still found some Christmas gifts. Rich and I are almost done with our shopping for the season. We are waiting breathlessly to see whose name we get from the annual "name drawing exchange " with the CMAN clan. Papa Rich is so funny about that, he thinks very hard and trys to get a great gift for whosever name he has and I bet if we asked any of the little ones they would agree he has done GREAT, makes me hope he draws my name this year. I don't have any new pictures to post now, but will be putting up the Halloween ones soon.
Last but certainly not least I will be posting some of the Wall, Kudos to Aunt Susie for an awesome job.

The Thomas Train Affair

A picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few thousand words. More to come later.