11/29/06 - 15th Letter

15th letter
Wed. 11/29/06

The irony (maybe not the best word to describe it?) of me being up right now…it’s only 11pm, we put Brock down at 8:30, he got fussy just a bit ago, I held him for a bit, he went back to sleep. So shouldn’t I be in bed? He kept me up til 3am last night, and 5am the night before (maybe I should be saying morning). So of course I’ve been tired. But now of course, I can’t sleep.
I’m not sure how I always seem to end up writing these letters on Wednesdays…it’s definitely not planned that way, it just happens. I’m not sure how our little babes got on such a weird sleeping schedule these last couple days. Good thing I didn’t have to be anywhere in the mornings. He’s pretty good about eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, into the afternoon. So we sleep half our day away it seems. Can you believe this kid is 2 months old??! Yep, Monday was the 27th. I guess since he was born on a Wednesday, that makes him 9 weeks old today. He got his 2-month-old shots (immunizations) today. Bryan took him to get them while I was taking my test on main base. I like that they’re free….I like how all of this medical stuff has been free….with 2 surgeries and all his antibiotics when he was born, that has been really nice!! We were meant to be in the Air Force when we had our first kid!
For the most part Bryan is back on his regular work schedule. Thank goodness. They were saying at work that when they have days with nothing to do, that they’ll take off and go snowboarding!! How nice for Bryan eh? Yeah. It has not snowed here yet. It’s always in the forecast…but it never comes. But it’s in the 40’s so it definitely should be soon. I’ve been sick the last couple weeks. We keep our room pretty cold and we didn’t have our comforter out yet, and I’d wake up cold in the middle of the night, so it was my own dang fault. But anyway, Bryan is going to sign up to be a snowboarding instructor – it actually costs $100, but you can go up every Saturday after he takes the class in January (a 5-day class on the slopes), teach for 2 hours, then have the other 6 hrs to do what you want. If you weren’t an instructor and you just went up with the rec center group, this is something that usually costs $375 and $25/month, so it’s a pretty good deal. It first caught his eye as a leadership position that he’d be able to add to his resume for his officer packet. I told him it would also be one of his Christmas presents!
Thanksgiving was fun. We went to Liz and Justin’s house with a bunch of other people. Mostly it was the people we eat dinner with almost every Sunday. So no turkey buying for us – we just provided the vegetable dish – Bryan cut up and arranged the veggies and he did an excellent job! The Sunday before Thanksgiving we had over 20 people at our house for dinner. Naomi we made your White Chili – it was most excellent as always. I multiplied the recipe by 5. We ended up having probably about a 2-recipe-amount left over but we had no problem eating it over the week. I actually made it again tonight. We love it. But we don’t have the beans in a can so I have to soak beans for it!
Bryan got our car working the Friday before Thanksgiving. Work gave him time to work on it during the day so that was really nice. Otherwise with him getting home at 5 at that time, it was already dark…making it a little more difficult and time consuming for sure. He ended up having to exchange the alternator he bought, and with the next one in, it worked. So had we gotten a good one the FIRST time, we would have had a car working much sooner. Sheesh. So he got it working minutes before it was time to take the borrowed car back. Perfect.
It is now actually Thursday, because I had to go feed my crying kid, and then he was fighting going back to bed. He hasn’t whined for a bit now, so maybe he finally fell asleep. The difference tonight compared to the last 2 is that when I go in there I can tell he’s tired; the other nights his eyes were wide open, wide awake….just not good signs when you’re wanting to go to bed. Because it’s not like he was happy just laying there awake…
Bryan took the AFOQT, like I was talking about in the last letters, and feels he did decent on it. He was expecting to be able to use a calculator and he couldn’t, though. I suspected he wasn’t going to be able to but he thought I was silly for thinking he should figure out some of the math problems without having to use a calculator. Oh well. Now we play the waiting game to get his scores back. It can take anywhere from 3-6 weeks they say. Tomorrow will be 2 weeks. Bryan checks the website several times a day. After he gets those back he will work out the details of getting down to the base near Tokyo to take the pilot TBAS test.
When my mom was here she cut my hair to hit right at my shoulders. I haven’t had her cut my hair for years because….well, you know, certain things you want done to your hair can’t just be done by anyone. So I’m not sure what we were thinking. It was a work in progress the whole last week she was here. But I went and got it straightened at a Japanese hair salon – apparently this isn’t just any straightening, but the one that people tell me costs $400 in the states? So it was expensive – not that expensive, but enough – but worth it!! My hair dries (on its own) so much nicer and it looks much healthier and makes everything much faster. It was my early Christmas present. Ever since my friend here told me she got it done and I saw her before and afters, I’ve wanted to do it. That was back in the summer months – it would have been nice to do it then what with the humidity. Anyways….who cares about my hair huh?
My scarred stomach is finally becoming just that - - scarred – without all the other crap. Hooray!
I think that Brock is growing more hair on top of his head – he’s got some fuzz up there. So maybe he won’t go bald on top after all. It’s so funny when he laughs, I love it! Bryan said my Christmas present should be me and Brock going home. I was like, yeah right, not without you! It’s not even possible – too expensive, too late in the game to schedule that amount of leave so that he could come, and we don’t have Brock’s passport yet. Wishful thinking. …So I stepped on the scale with Brock…and it looks like he might weigh about 15 pounds!! And that was a week ago I think. Next Tuesday he has his 2-month appt so we will get a precise measurement there. That will be interesting to see…but he’s still in 0-3 month clothes.
So we are SO excited, Bryan especially of course, because he really has only a week left of class work to be done…then THAT’S IT!!! The Bachelor’s Degree complete! Sooo awesome. We are proud if you can’t tell. We need to have a major celebration for that one. I’m just excited for this one class that I’m taking to be done. International Business – I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time on a class! The other one I was registered for got completely neglected – I just couldn’t find time to do that one as well. So I will have to retake it – I was going to next semester but Bryan says I shouldn’t…. after that class there’s maybe one more class I can take online from UVSC for my degree. So the remaining 25 credits I will either have to take somewhere else and then transfer them into UVSC, or they’ll just have to wait until we’re back in Utah at some point in the future. Hmm, but actually I think there’s a requirement that a certain amount of your last credits have to be from UVSC to graduate from there. And I’m certainly not going to transfer it all somewhere else when I have that many – unless there’s some miracle and I find somewhere that they all transfer straight across and I don’t lose anything. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s even possible either…cuz you have to have a certain amount of credits from the college in the first place to get a degree from them…so I’m just rambling now. Bryan’s mom asked, so I just thought I’d explain the situation.
There are some of you that I need to write back to personally – I will get to it! It’s a lot of writing. Really everything is in these letters…mostly anyway. You can see all of how we’re doing, just not in a personalized-to-you manner.
But anyway, it’s late, time for me to go to bed, while Brock is sleeping. I will send some pictures of Brock first, though.
But love you all! Can you believe Friday is December!!! I’m going to be 25! What an oldie!
Love, Us
Julie Bryan Brock

Here is a slideshow of a few pictures - again, just click on the link, then the picture, and the slideshow starts:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.4stpldzs&x=0&y=-kbvmqa&localeid=en_US