The Wilson Family

It is amazing how much can really happen in one year.

Rusty and I were listening to the Brad Paisley Christmas album and we hear the song, “Only 364 days left.”  We started talking about all of the things that have changed in our lives since last Christmas, allow me to run through the list:

1. We cut up all of our credit cards and started using only cash/debit.
2. We went to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and decided that we will do whatever we have to do to get out of debt.
3. We both quit smoking.
4. We both got laser eye surgery.
5. We sold our house.
6. We moved to Germany.
7. We got new jobs.
8. The kids changed schools, Gabrielle changed twice!
9. We got our new home.
10. Rusty has rededicated himself to learning to play the guitar like the pros.

I think it’s funny how most people, even me, stress out about change.  I will tell you from first hand experience that change is much better and much more fun if you sit back and accept it rather than try to fight it.  Change is going to happen, the hardest part is deciding what you will do about it.

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Hey everyone, I am sorry that we have not been posting recently. We have our house now, it is great! We just got our high speed internet and things are really going well. We have posted our pictures from the Paris trip, take a look!

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My baby girl turned 6 this week, 6. That means that Rusty and I have been parents for 6 years. Wow, we really are grown ups aren’t we? It is so strange to think about it. I guess its lucky for the girls that we don’t always think of ourselves as “the adults” because we have a lot of fun together. Especially now that we are here. We have done and are planning to do so many fun and adventurous things that most “adults” would not bother with. You know, climbing mountains, going to mega play, going to Disneyland, those sorts of things.

Do you want to know the best part? We have found another couple who has two boys who are also children in disguise. We wento mega play with them yesterday and we had a blast, our kids played all day and we sat and talked for five hours. Guess who we’re going to Disney with? Yep, you guessed it. I love that we have found people who are like us and p

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Hey everyone,

This is just a quick note to tell you that we got the house.  We are very excited and very busy!  We got all of our furniture and clothes so we are unpacking like crazy!  We will not have internet for up to two weeks so we will not be making any phone calls. 

I have so much to tell y’all and I will be calling as soon as we get our internet.  Take care and we will get with you asap.

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This was always the philosophy of all the adventurers and authors I have read and seen since I was a child.  I have always wished I was that person.  I always wanted to be one who could honestly quote Robert Frost’s famous poem…

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Well, now I can!  Ever since we have been here we have looked off into the distance and saw this peak.  This amazing pointed peak in the vast horizon of rolling hills.  Rusty and I wondered many times what it must be, on that peak.  A monastery?  A castle?  I don’t know, do you?  Turns out it is neither, and it is not simply a peak among foothills.  It was an observation tower atop a cold volcano!

We took the road less traveled today, we climbed a volcano.  WOW!  What a feeling.  I felt as if this place were made to show us simple humans just how much we need to respect nature in all of her glory.  I saw the most beautiful trees afire with fall colors, moss oozing from crevices in rocks, fields of fluorescent yellow flowers, and rocks that had been spewed from beneath the volcano thousands of years ago.

Now that I have finally taken the road less traveled by… I think I’ll do it more often.  We already have plans to buy serious hiking shoes and walking sticks.  What a wonderful family weekend activity.

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I want to thank all of my friends and family that kept me in their thoughts and prayers as I was on my job hunt. It worked! I got a job at the middle school teaching Language Arts. Apparently I am extremely either lucky or blessed because there was recently several base closings and a bunch of teachers lost their jobs because teachers from other bases took priority. The catch is that none of these teachers are certified in Language Arts, but I am so I got in!

I feel terrible for the teachers who lost their jobs but they, like me were the local hires. So they at least have one working family member. The ones who took priority are the “main” bread winners in their families.

Also, although most local hire positions are for 6 months to one year, my position is a two year position. Which means after I am in the DODDS system for two years (and I meet some other criteria) I will be tenured. Which means that I can travel the world teaching at DOD schools.

So again, Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, It really worked!!

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Going Stir crazy

How?  How do these military wives deal with the transition between homes?  I am wondering especially about the stay at home moms.  How do they stand it?

UGH!!! I am so incredibly bored!!! I really do not know what to do with myself. I joked a lot before we left about how I wanted to stay at home and not work anymore. To be honest, I was half serious. I was pretty hopeful that I could stay home because Rusty’s raise in pay almost replaces my income. What I didn’t count on was my inability to stay home and not go completely stir crazy! I have worked pretty much continuously since I was 15. The only time I didn’t work was when I was going to school and even then, most of the time on was on a work/study program.

I imagine this would not be so bad if we had a house and I could find things to do with myself, do a load of laundry, clean the toilets, etc. But sitting here in this hotel room waiting for the phone to ring or for the girls to get out of school, I am going INSANE!! Ya know staying home for the summer as a teacher is a welcome break after a hectic school year, but staying home indefinitely is just UGH!

I am sitting here staring at my cell phone thinking, “ring, ring, ring!” I am waiting for the school board to call with my job offer. The principal at the middle school assures me that they will be calling today, of course she said that on Thursday and Friday as well. Well, just keep your fingers crossed for me, I need a job! It’s not about the money (although the money is nice), it’s about my sanity. I just don’t have the patience to sit around and wait for a house so that I will have something to do.

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Today as I drove Rusty to work AFN radio played old news recordings of September 11th 2001.  I was annoyed, why do they have to remind us of that horrible day?  Why do we have to re-live that terror every year?  I was saying this to Rusty when he looked at me and said “We should NOT forget.”

I have been thinking about that ever since and he is right, we should be forced to re-live it every year if for nothing else than to remember those who cannot re-live it.

Living here overseas on a military installation for the first time since September 11th, I have had some realizations about the staus of our military.  When I was in the military it was a terrible experience, the Army treated us like just another piece of equipment.  Over the past few days I have been expressing some jealousy over the great things they have available to the soldiers now.  Where I lived in roach infested barracks that had been around since the Korean war, the single soldiers today have beautiful, brand new buildings where they live in suites; and young married soldiers have homes nicer than anything Rusty and I have been able to find.  The dining facility where I went in Korea was disgusting, I rarely ate there because it was so dirty.  The dining facility here is like eating at Picadilly, but nicer.  Rusty and I actually brought the girls there for supper yesterday.  I sat there yesterday thinking, “ya know its a shame that we had to go to war for the Army to start treating soldiers as they should be treated.”  But now, on this day, remembering what happened and knowing that most of the soldiers that are in the military now actually joined knowing that they would go to war; I cannot be jealous.  I am thankful, thankful that we have young Americans who are willing to sacrifice themselves for us.  Think about it, most of the people who joined the Army after September 11th knew no one who was hurt or killed, they only knew that our people were attacked and needed to be protected, they heard the call and they answered it. 

Today, September 11th 2008, seven years after; every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine joined or re-enlisted because of that day seven years ago.  So here from this different perspective I have, I want all of my family and friends to do something for me and for yourselves… If you love your freedom, Thank a soldier!

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We have done it.  We have gone to a place where anyone who was around in the 70’s and 80’s would never think they would go, the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia).  I wish I could explain the feeling of going through the former communist (and probably a former Nazi) checkpoint. 
Here is something our American friends and family may not know, the European union no longer has border checkpoints, so no stamp in my passport (oh well).  We went to a town called Cheb right on the border.

The people were kind and tried very hard to understand our broken German because only a very few speak English.  It was an amazing feeling being in this place that was so clearly verboten (forbidden) for so long.  The buildings were extremely old because this area made it through WWII relatively unscathed.    The food was good, the beer was strong. 

We saw our first European Castle, the Chebsky Hrad.  Abby did not like the tower it was dark and scary!  Rusty, Gabby and I loved it!  We did a little shopping at the Asian Bazaar where they are offended if you don’t haggle with them.  I know where I’ll be going for clothes from now on because it was only 40 minutes away!

Check out the pictures!!

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