Hello! Is it me you're looking for?

I'm back after a long, news-packed hiatus. I've been leaking updates here and there on Facebook and Twitter since those mediums allow for the hurried, half-thoughts, but because Violet is FINALLY taking a decent morning nap, I feel the urge to blog away my thoughts of the last couple of months. There are certain subjects I'll expand on in another entries, but here are the basics.

I posted two months ago that Scott will be in Greenland without family for a year, starting Jan/February-ish of next year. There are lots of cons and only a few significant pros to this, but overall, we are happy with the timing and location. It's better for him to volunteer to go now to this location, rather than being told at a later time to go to some place like South Korea. I'll be ok with the separation for the most part, and I am thankful that Violet is too young to realize all that's going on. If she were older and all of a sudden Scott wasn't around, I would constantly feel my heart breaking anytime she asked where Daddy went. So, instead, she'll be having fun with her cousins and her Aunt Heather and Uncle Jason, as well as visits to her overjoyed Grandparents.

Which leads me to the next bit of news. After considering a lot of different aspects, mostly financial, of the two possible areas of where to live in Colorado, I think I have finally decided on going to live in my sister's town of Pagosa Springs, CO. It's partially because of the cost of living would be cheaper down there as compared to the suburbs of Denver, but mostly it is so Violet can have a lot of children close to her age to run around with, including her very excited cousins. My sister has already checked out a possible house for me to rent and going by her description, it sounds wonderful. I'm looking forward to this location because this would be the first time Heather and I have lived anywhere near each other since she moved away for college back in 1998.

And after the year(ish) in Colorado, Violet and I will be packing up to go to Yokota AFB in Japan for Scott's next assignment. This was our top choice and we were pleasantly surprised we got it, considering that Scott didn't turn in his list of preferred orders until a couple weeks past the deadline (it was a misunderstanding of when we were supposed to do it. Who would have thought that some details of the military are confusing? haha.)

So far, the only things I know about Yokota is that it's about three hours away from where I lived outside of Tokyo, I've visited the base as a young child because my parents were friends with the base chaplain at the time and we already know one of the captains for the air traffic control. I will be spending a chunk of my time in Colorado trying to regain my Japanese with the help of my Dad (and a computer program or two.) There are so many details of how to move our stuff, what we can take, about our cars which we cannot take with us, and so many other things, that I decided having a separate notebook to jot down questions and answers would be necessary. Yes, an old school spiral notebook with pages and pens! I remember more when I write things down, rather than just reading it on a screen. Call me old fashioned ;p

With Greenland and Japan on our horizon, Scott and I are still trying to figure out if we can have a wedding celebration like we wanted. It'll be tricky to try to plan this. It may happen sooner than I think or not at all, and there are a couple of families I'd like to give as much heads up time as possible to ensure their presence. But at this point, I just don't know. This does bum/stress me out because I wanted to have as 'normal' of a celebration with friends and family, as belated as it is, but it may not be in the cards for us. I know there are more important things to concentrate on, but it's still something I wish and will try my darndest to make happen, within reason.

Violet is growing like a weed and is starting to show lots of personality. I've been trying to be diligent in updating her own FB page with pictures of her cuteness, but I've been neglectful of posting written updates of what's she's been doing. She's doing her army-crawl at a pretty fast clip now, but has yet to master the hands-and-knees crawl. She's got two bottom teeth, front and center, and I thought it was because of those (and possibly others trying to break the gumline) that was making her thoroughly impossible to deal with several days this past week. Now I think it was because she had a scratchy throat and was fussing big-time during her bottles because she was having difficulty swallowing. Why do I think this? Because couple days since she started fussing like mad, I woke up with a scratchy throat, and this was the morning after she was finally in better spirits to try to give me kisses. However, her version of 'kisses' is to just lick my mouth and nose. (She's still learning.) So, I think I got her scratchy throat germs from that and after a couple days, we are both doing better and are a lot less cranky for Scott. More specifics on Violet in future posts.

Well, I think that's a lengthy, but good first step back from the non-communication. I'm hoping to have more time for more detailed updates soon. It all depends on Lady Violet! ;p

Happy Clocks-Fall-Back weekend, everyone!