8/14/06 - 8th Letter

8th letter
Mon. 8/14/06

It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ