Suburbia

I like to think of myself as a city girl. But put me in the middle of corn fields and farmland, and I guess I'm kind of fond of the small town life, too. Who knew!? Knowing we have a big city 20 minutes west of us helps a little. But really, we're loving it here, and anytime I tell someone that, they seemed shocked. Really?! Said in a sort of confused, shocked, are you sure you heard my question, kind of way.

What's not to love? We're surrounded by cornfields, and baseball diamonds. Our Monday, Wednesday, Friday night entertainment is right out our back door, and no one loves it more than Preston, who emphatically yells "baseball!" every morning when we open the blinds and he sees right onto the field.  At night when the games are being played, there's squealing and major leg kicking going on. He wants to run right out there and join them. My dad would be so proud.

August's Goal

    

I thought I posted this way back at the beginning of August, you know, when I was in the midst of moving and didn't even have a real internet connection. Turns out, not having a real internet connection makes posting hard.  Now, nearly three weeks of being in our new home later, we finally have internet. What a nightmare that turned out to be. I semi-hate AT&T right now. After I told them that, they gladly offered us free service and dropped all fees for a few months. The things people do to win you over. It only slightly worked.

This month I set the goal to be more serviceable. Big or small, it didn't matter, just something to help brighten someones day a little bit more. So, you would have thought that this afternoon, on my drive home from lunch with John, when I witnessed bags of clothing thrown all over the highway after having fallen out of someones car, I would have kindly pulled over and offered to help clean up. Instead, I witnessed other cars pulling over, people jumping out to help quickly clean up the road, and the car in front of me pull over with his flashers on to deter oncoming traffic. What kind people I thought, as I watched this all unfold in my review mirror. 

Needless to say, this months goal isn't going so well. And we're far closer to the end of the month than we are to the beginning. Major fail. I have nine days to make up for it. Nine is better than nothing at all. Right? Sure.

Here's to thinking about others far more than I think about myself, and clearly that's a hard concept for me to grasp.

Cornfields and farmland

Life has been nothing short of crazy the last few weeks. And I mean that quite literally. I think I've gone a little crazy even, which would explain why I drove off without buckling P into his carseat today. I've lost my mind. But it's ok, because hopefully sanity will find me again after we get all settle into our new life. Our new life for the next 12 months. Our new life in Illinois...or, as I like to say, St. Louis, because no one would have a clue where I was talking about if I said we were living in Shiloh, Illinois. Google it. It's small. It's ruralish. And it's going to be amazing. 

We're here. We're back together as a family. And we're beyond happy about that. Seriously, life is good. John started his program today, which really means he started a whole lot of paperwork. So, fun times for sure. We're quickly realizing there's a lot of inefficiencies in the AF. Who are we kidding though, that's the government for you, so really, there are so surprises there. 

We're currently living in temporary housing on base. Which has been interesting. Mostly I just wasn't prepared for the wakeup call at 6am over the loudspeaker this morning. That and the garbage man coming by at 5:40am. I mean, whose working that early anyway? More importantly, WHY?

We're moving into our new place tomorrow, and despite some major setbacks/turnoffs to our soon to be living conditions, we're really excited. We met half the street tonight unexpectedly, and that was enough right there to make us feel like its really where we're supposed to be. They were all so friendly and beyond helpful, it was comforting. 

So, tomorrow begins more craziness, and then, I hope we return to our settled down, normal life. Crazy's always good thorough. Spicing things up is important. 

Oh, and did I mention John is back? How I missed that man of mine. Love him a million times over.