Overwhelmed by Grace

We made a huge move. Not only did we move across the world, but as James' first duty assignment it was a whole other level of craziness. And for some reason it has gone very smoothly. Something I had to continue to remind myself of before we moved was that God provided for us in Georgia, so he will provide for us in Italy. By reminding myself of the past faithfulness, then my present day doubt and worry seems to subside. We have been here for 2 weeks today and I don't think that I could complete the list of blessings that we have been given, but I will try to explain.

My sister introduced me to this girl. One day her and her friend were chattin' it up and they both realized that they had sisters, who married military boys, and who would be in Italy at the same time. So of course they put us in touch. Kaitlin and I started emailing this past summer about random stuff, but random stuff that helped make the transition a lot easier. Not only did our communication make the jump less frightening, but we found out that her husband is the Chosen Company CO*. Perfect and hysterical. THEN we find out that James good friend from college, Quinn, was the XO* for his company. On our first day we were picked up by Kaitlin, ate Popeye's Chicken :), got James a working cell phone, given a welcome bag with wine and cheese, got settled in the hotel, and then picked up by Kaitlin again and taken to a dinner with all of the other platoon leaders wives and Quinn. We laid in bed that night and literally said, "Did this really just happen?" The next day I got an email from the Battalion Commander's* wife....which meant that she got my email address within 24hrs and already had me on the listserv for the FRG and invited me to an ornament exchange. No big deal. Quinn proceed to walk around with James to introduce him to people and help him get signed in to everything on post. Quinn and his wife Archimedes feed us for the next couple of nights as well- which was much, much better than anything I could make in my hotel "kitchen". We have gotten to spend so much time with James' goddaughter and her siblings, and lets be real, being with kids in general is always good for the soul. It took them a little time to warm up, but now the little one calls Uncle Jimmy her boyfriend, so I think he is in pretty good standings. Me on the other hand, well, I just light up at being called Auntie Anna. It is precious. I have made friends with the other platoon leaders wives. They have invited us to church, picked us up for church, gone to eat dinner with us, and best of all randomly driven around Vicenza looking for this house that we are interested in.

This list barely touches everything that we have been given and probably sounds more like mumbled jargon. Everyone has gone over and beyond to make us feel welcome, comfortable, and as at home as we could feel. They made it possible for us to not be locked away in the little inn and confined to post, which has done a lot for my mental status. The community here is so tight knit, which is awesome, but intimidating- it can be hard to let people into your close circles. Therefore my mindset is to just dive in head first which has more than likely made me look slightly ridiculous, but at this point I can still blame that on jet lag :)

God is great. God is good. And I write this so that on days where I am overwhelmed, homesick, or just want to know how we got in the situation we are in, I can look back and remember that God does have his hand in everything and he does provide, which means that he will provide for the future. Let's hope I can remember that :)

Here is our first bottle of wine!

A military review:
CO= Commanding Officer, or company commander. This guy in charge of all of the platoons in a company. James in charge of 1 platoon.
XO=Executive Officer, or basically the logistic guy for the whole company...very difficult.
Battalion Commander= Usually a Colonel. He is in charge of 3-4 company's. The CO's direct boss.

My first encounter with Italians....

After we landed, I had to go to the bathroom. So I follow the signs with the stick figure with the dress on. It leads me to these 2 entryways. The left had the boy stick figure. The right had the girl. I watched a boy walk into the left entryway, and as I went to the right, there were a group of men standing in the entryway. So I back up. Look at the sign again. Girls check. Look at the men. Watch a gender neutral person walk out of the “girls” bathroom and right as I decide to just hold it and walk away, this man looks at me with an annoyed look on his face and says, “Prego”. It was seriously with the attitude of a 13 year old teenage girl. So I awkwardly walk through the group of men into the ladies restroom. It was awkward.

Travel Days.

Yes days, the plural. We left North Carolina at 1045. Got to the airport a couple hours early- traveling the Monday after Thanksgiving, was crowded but not that bad. Only a few tears were shed as I said goodbye to mom, which I should say was MUCH better than the nightmares that I had been dreaming in my head. It also helped that mom proceeded to take pictures of us in the security line… definitely not allowed to do that at an airport.

Our final goodbyes came at the Atlanta airport. BaaBee, DanDan, and Vivian came to eat with us and say goodbye. It was more than we could ask for. The 2 hours that we had before we could check back in flew by, we got to catch up on life, and I was definitely distracted from getting onto the next airplane. It was the best.

So we checked in with ease. Literally easier than checking in to fly to Atlanta. Go figure. Went and got a cup of coffee. Sat down and watched a movie. Boarded the plane. I expected the 5hours in Atlanta to drag by, but I ended up panicking thinking that I hadn’t gotten to talk to enough people during the wait. Time went by in the blink of an eye. On the plane we sat by a really nice man, who didn’t laugh at me while I was  crying on the phone saying goodbye to my brother. This leg of the trip was a little rougher. We watched 2 movies, at dinner, and then it felt like the plane was literally going to fall out of the sky. It was awful. So I forced myself to sleep, in hopes that if the plane really did crash I’d sleep right to my death. Thank goodness we landed.

The Amsterdam airport. This is going to sound stupid, because I have no idea what I expected it to look like, but it looked just like any other airport in America, with really uncreative store names- The Jacket Store. This is when we encountered our first language barrier. After we found our departing gate, that had had changed 2 times, this lady came up to us frantically trying to seek our help. My eyes just got really big and I shrugged my shoulders. James was trying really hard to tell her that we only speak English- she clearly didn’t understand. So he quickly reverted into big hand gestures and body movements to try communicate to her where her gate was… we have gotten really good at getting what we want via ridiculous hand gestures.

The final leg of the trip! Got on a TINY plane for the 2 hour trip to Italy. Luckily, our bodies thought it was 3am so we fell asleep immediately and woke up in Italy. We made it. Safe and sound, and extremely out of place. 

 Luckily, Kaitlin- the Company Commander's wife, was able to come pick us up. Even though we have never met in person, it was such a relief to see a familiar face (thank you Facebook)! 

More on the first few days to come.

And I'm back

This is what we have been doing the past 2 weekends:

Cooked out! We have definitely been taking the time that we have left here in Columbus to spend time with the neighbors and friends. So what better way of doing that than around food. So we take up a parking space right by the Shear's home, sit all of the camp chairs that we have and steal some of the inside chairs of the Shear's, and put the charcoal grill in the center and gather around. It is awesome. It's great to sit and reminisce about when we first moved here and all of the crazy, fun memories that we have created here.

The best part was the smore's! Even though I made cookies and Meredith made pumpkin pie, and we had a HUGE pot of candy (because there were no trick or treaters), smore's always win out.

Friends are awesome. We have been so blessed having the friends that we do have here...I'm just praying for the ones that we hope to have in Italy!

 Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of the night:

 "Why are you making all of those funny faces mister?"

"What are you drinking?"

How Balanced are you?

My brother came into town this weekend. It was his fall break at Appalachian State and he wanted to spend it with his sister! Woohoo!! I felt very special. We had a wonderful weekend and I didn't take as single picture. Not smart, because now I am sitting here thinking that I will probably never get a picture of my brother here in my apartment ever. Bummer.

BUT we did play this game. Well, not a game- James bought a magazine and inside there was whole section about a balanced body. Flexibility, muscle, blah blah blah. So of course James and Luke want to do all of these "Tests"

Let's just say that neither one of the boys could do ANY of these. I could do 2 out of 3. Girls rule. Lesson of the weekend, we all need to work on our flexibility.

Oh, Fall

I'll be honest with you, I am a summer girl. I like the heat, and while it definitely got hot and humid here in south Georgia, I honestly didn't mind it. People have called Columbus, Ga the "armpit" of the South because of the humidity and heat- but I would have to disagree with that statement. It definitely gets hot and sometimes hard to breathe due to the 100% humidity, but you get use to it. James, on the other hand- loves fall. It is his favorite time of year. He loves wearing sweatshirts and long pants with this boots. So this household LOVES 2 out of the 4 seasons. Perfect.

Even though I am a self proclaimed "summer girl," I LOVE pumpkin. I use to have pumpkin pies for my June birthday. So when fall comes around- I am really pumped because I get to stock up on the pumpkin. And Starbucks has a pumpkin spice latte- so that helps.

This past week, I went a little over board on the pumpkin. But I made a pumpkin spice latte in the crockpot- amazing- and made pumpkin scones.

Both of these recipes I found via pinterest...another obsession. The latte was to die for...sadly I accidentally left it out over night and the milk definitely went bad. So I am going to make it again...this week. Then James can have a cup of homemade pumpkin latte every morning before work.

The pumpkin scones on the other hand looked great....didn't quite taste like a scone- more like a muffin. I do have a theory for why they scones weren't really scones- I think the pumpkin made the dough way too moist. I think I can correct it by adding more flour to counter act for the moisture that the pumpkin adds...but I also think I could add more pumpkin to make the taste full of more flavor, but then that is even more flour to add. Oh well. I'll let you know if it actually works and makes the scones actually taste like a scone.

More to come about our trip to North Carolina!

Right Place at the Right Time

Yesterday was eventful. It started out as a lazy day...we slept in past church, so we gave up on that- whoops. James spent the morning/afternoon reading and playing on the internet, and I read and did some cleaning- the floors were DISGUSTING. Then we headed over pick up our friend Mike when witnessed the worst accident I have ever seen. It literally unfolded before our eyes...

As we were pulling onto 185, still on the ramp going about 55-60mph we see this red car swerve- and by swerve I mean go completely perpendicular to the road. The red car( 3 cars ahead of us) ended up spinning off the highway and into the grassy bank on the right side, but then promptly sped away. Then, the next thing we know this black tahoe (2 cars ahead of us) crashes into a white sedan and pushes is completely off the road. James and I pull over and I tell James to go see if anyone is hurt and I start calling 911. After I miss dial 911 and have to redial again, I look up and James is waving at me to come over and the lady (probably around our parents age or a little younger) from the tahoe is standing behind her car screaming. So I think that she has just a dog or deer....wrong. It was a man. So I immediately run up and this guy is laying on the ground unresponsive with a massive pool of blood around his head that keeps growing. I walk up on this guy, who happens to be the Command Sergeant Major of the Ranger Battalion, kneeling at his side...(CSM is the highest enlisted rank there is-I learned that after the situation). He is asking if anyone was a medical profession so I told him I was a nurse and we started working together. We started to check him out- still unresponsive, not even responding to a sternal rub. And his pupils were the pinpointed...not good. I told the CSM to go get a flash light. At this point another guy rolls up and bring his first aid bag as well. Thank God- because we needed A LOT of gauze. I was literally about to tell them take off their shirts he was bleeding so bad. This guy's head was completely cracked open- from about 5in above his temple all the way to the back. I didn't get to asses the wound on the back of his head because I wasn't going to move him, but that is where all the blood was coming from. About 10min in he starts coming around- he tells me his name and I check to see if he is oriented and ask him about pain and his health history. Since we were all covered in blood it was comforting to know that according him he didn't have any blood borne diseases. From initial assessment he wasn't hurt anywhere else- as in no other major bones were broken and his stomach was soft and he didn't have a pain response when pressing on it. So I'm still trying to hold his head still while he is trying to get up which ends up working to our advantage because we were able to slip more gauze underneath the back of his head.

It was UNREAL. The ambulance finally arrived about 20 min after I hopped out of the car. We told the police, who was being a not nice person, what we saw and then left to go pick up Mike. Strange day. James worked the scene helping calm down the man's children, who were in the car with him, and talking to the 911 operator. He kept people out of the way and calm- what a good solider :)

While it was an awful wreck, I think the man will ultimately end up being OK as long as they can keep his brain from swelling. On a personal positive note, at least I still have some nursing skills...although I didn't tell the man on the ground that I was thankful for someone to practice on.

While I am sure that everyone would have managed just fine if James and I had left 10min earlier and missed the entire thing, I was glad to be there- to feel like I could help. I am so thankful for my knowledge and background and that I actually knew what to do and didn't have to just stand there helpless.

I am going to go read up on brain injury now!