Garett's First Day of School

It is official!!! Garett is a medical student. I am really proud of him, he has worked hard to get here (we were very blessed too). We are really excited to finally be at this point. We are grateful for everybody's help.

Male Bonding

Nothing says male bonding like a 4 day 3 night backpacking trip.

Garett's best friend Cameron flew in and they went for a 21 mile hike in the Appalachian Mtns.

They saw birds, butterflies and bears; ate MREs and slept while completely wet (rain and sweat) and surprisingly came home in one piece and without any bites. They are already planning next years hike!

Garett was excited as a 12 year old boyscout
Cameron is in really good shape, therefore the hike was not much of a challenge
Lovely!!
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From Beast to Man

Every army guy does it, so I wasn't at all surprised when Garett started growing his facial hair and head hair out while on Vacation. The only difference between him and almost every other army guy is it took him 6 weeks to get it this long.

Before and After

5k

I want to be a runner so bad and for so many reasons. First, I've never seen a fat runner and second, it is a great way to relieve stress. A bonus is it is something I can do with my kids. This weekend my friend Julie and I ran a 5k. I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to run the whole thing because I haven't been running regularly since we moved. But we ran the whole thing in 36 min. Not a record but I am very proud of it.

This is us at mile marker one. We still have energy.
Not a great picture but that is us on the last stretch.
That is us finishing, Preston was such a good support, he was cheering and jumping and then as I got near to him he ran out as asked to run with me, so we ran the rest of the way together and the whole time he just kept saying "Good job, mommy". How can I not have success. Preston and I are right in front of Julie, you can see him in the yellow shirt.
To the Victors!!!! Not the best picture of me cause I am standing funny but it totally doesn't matter because I just finished a 5k

The great outdoors

We have a fence!!! After much thought we decided it was best to pay for a fence instead of trying to do it ourselves. Two guys showed up on the first day and dug the holes and put the post in and then the next day three guys nailed in the boards. It was so fast and it looks amazing. It is by far our favorite part of our house. Oh and our yard really is huge.

The fence builders custom make the fence. It has a really nice latch system. We love it.Looking from the street towards the back of our house.One of the really pretty plants that we have in our backyard, to bad we don't know what it is so we don't know how to take care of it. Water and Sun, that's it.

Blueberries

One of our favorite thing about living in North Carolina is Blueberry picking!! Last year we didn't get to go because of the drought. We plan on making up for it this year. The best news of all is that there are tons blueberry farms really near to our house, including one only 3 miles away.

Spencer really liked the first farm we went to because all the ripe Blueberries were at his height. He ate a lot of Blueberries that day.

This weekend our friends from Ft. Bragg and some friends we've made here went Blueberry picking. We went to the farm that is 3 miles from our house. The berries were a little harder to reach but they were cheaper and organic. Spencer couldn't pick the berries from the tree but he found plenty from buckets put on the ground that had berries in them(including buckets of strangers). He ate a lot of blueberries again.

Caleb and Spencer soon realized that some of the best berries had already fallen on the ground, they decided they were the easiest to reach and eat.

Garett has plans to go again next week with his friend that is visiting from Az. We just can't get enough berries, yummy!!

We've Arrived

24 Hours of Driving
4 Different Hotel rooms
3 Different MacDonald's Play lands
Way to much money on Gas!!!
But Finally......
One new House!

We arrived at our new house just in time to do the final walk-through and then off to the lawyers to close. After the closing we felt like we should spend some more money (because buying a house just isn't enough), so we went to Sam's club and Homedepot. We spent that night in our very empty house. The next day we did some cleaning ( the house was really dirty,we didn't know to negotiate a cleaning service), and then we went down to Fort Bragg to pick up our second car and to see some friends and to celebrate the 4th. We spent two more nights in our empty house until our stuff arrived on Monday. We still have boxes stacked to the ceiling. We are slowly getting everything in place. Our fence goes in tomorrow, yeah!! We love our house and we are very grateful to have it. We welcome any and all visitors, just call first so we can move boxes out of way.

We don't know where we put our camera so you all will have to wait for pictures, I am sure it is under a box.