Flight School Update

There's really not much to update you on.

Nick finished IFS on November 20th.  And since then he's been doing nothing.

Well, not NOTHING.
Every morning he has to go muster (essentially check-in).
He walks in, signs his name on a piece of paper, turns around and comes home.
He's home every morning by about 7:40am. 
SOME days he will have to stay for urinalysis and other days he has to stay for briefs or various things but they aren't even once a week occurrences. 

Yes ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars hard at work.

It's not his fault though.  Primary at NAS Whiting Field is so ridiculously backed up. 
So right now, Nick is in what they call A-Pool which just means he's waiting to class up for API.
There are spots available in API but the issue is Primary.
If Nick starts API, he'll be finished in 6 weeks and again, have to sit around and wait to class up for Primary.

My question was, "Okay, so go through API and get that out of the way.  Why don't they want to do that??  Do as much as they can while they can?"
Rumor has it they don't want to do this because the moment they graduate from API, they start getting "flight pay" (additional money each month).  So, this way, the are saving money by not paying them.
Makes sense.  Although, it sucks for us!  We'd LOVE that extra money each month.

So what does Nick do all day? (I get asked this a lot).
He plays Call of Duty.  Yep.  He's getting paid to play video games all day lol.
I will admit it's nice for me. I have not slept in in YEARS!  But now, Nick gets up and leaves for work.  The dogs have FINALLY learned to sleep in past 6am so when he leaves, we get up, they go potty and we head back into the bedroom.  They curl up and go back to sleep as do I. 
When Nick gets home, he changes out of his uniform and he takes the dogs into the living room with him, enjoys his video game time, and I get to sleep in.  It's amazing!!!  I forgot how great sleeping in feels!

When I get up, I'll job search, apply for what little jobs I find, play on the internet, read a book, go grocery shopping, prepare dinner, take the dogs to the park, play with them in the yard, clean the house, organize something, watch a movie, plan out the week's menu, etc.  Some days are much lazier than others.  But it's hard to have the motivation to do anything when your husband is right next to you on the couch. (Nick doesn't play video games ALL day.  When I wake up he turns them off (most days) and helps me do something around the house or we go somewhere with the dogs, watch a move, etc).

We feel really lazy sometimes but at the same time, I'm trying to take advantage of this time.  While I LOATHE not having a job, it is nice to have all this time with Nick.  Soon he'll be swamped with school, and I'll have a job or be in my nursing program.  From then on, he'll be in training and schooling and before I know it, deployments will start.  (I feel as I get older, times goes by more quickly...and I do not like it.)  So while we are bums a lot of the time, it's these times I will need to look back on during his long work days and/or deployments and think "Remember all those weeks of quality time you got?  Remember how much "nothing" you got to do together?  You got him 22 hours of the day all to yourself.  Just dwell on those memories.  A lot of military couples aren't that lucky."

So here's to making each of these days together really count.  Embracing every second of time we get...and making it quality time.  Because there will be days I KNOW I wish I hadn't taken these days for granted or had done more to make these days really count.  (Now it's getting Nick to see this.  I don't know if it's because he's a guy, or being the one in the military he doesn't get it...either way, I need to beat this concept into his head.)

So, that's our update.  We're just sitting and waiting for him to class up for API.
And I'm working hard at trying to find a job.

Decorating the Tree

Decorating the Christmas Tree is always one of my favorite Christmas time activities.  Actually, it's probably my absolute favorite. 

In the Dickens household, we have a "personal" tree.  From now on, it will be referred to as "The Dickens Tree". 
It's full of 100% unique ornaments.  No balls.  No colored theme. 
Every year Saint Nick brings us a new ornament.  And it's personal to each of us.  Whether it be a hobby we love, a character we love, or something relating to our life or an experience.  I have an ornament from just about every year since I was born.

While I was home over Thanksgiving, we decorated The Dickens Tree with all our personal ornaments.  Before heading back to Florida, my mother asked if I wanted to take some of my ornaments back home with me.  My answer was a firm "hell no!"
This tree has so much meaning to me.  To my family.  It would not be the same without my ornaments on it.  Plus, I WILL continue to decorate this tree with my family every year.  It might not always get to be on the tradition of Thanksgiving night, but it WILL happen!  I refuse to let this lifestyle end those things that mean so much to me.

I want Nick and I have to this same type of tree.  And he agrees.  Sure, we don't really have many ornaments but I was surprised by how many we do have!  We have a few from the year 2009 (our engagement year) and quite a few "Our First Christmas" ornaments.  We've already received a few from family members over the years of dating.
 
We set the tree up before we left for Thanksgiving in St. Louis.  We did so so that when we returned, we could get right to decorating it!!!!  I was so excited!  I LOVE Christmas time and refused to let one day go by beyond Thanksgiving without our house being Christmas-fied! Here are just a few pictures of us setting up the tree:

Vino inspecting the tree

Spreading out the branches

Ta-Da!

Our First Tree, all set up!

Tonight, we decorated our tree.  It was fun to go through all the ornaments we collected over the years and talk about who gave it to us and for what reason. 
We had to add in some boring ball ornaments to our sentimental tree to fill in the spaces since we do not have many yet.  But in a few years, those balls with be gone!  If you refer to THIS post, you'll see it won't take long before we have tons of ornaments!!!

Nick putting his Weimaraner 'First Fur Baby' ornament from "St. Nick" on the tree

I'm putting my Belle ornament from "St. Nick" on the tree

Star topper!

Wedding Ornament from the Melissa & Aunt Janet at my Bridal Shower
Complete with our names and wedding date

Penguins are our thing =) 
"Our First Christmas"
This one is from my mother

"Year of Remembrance" from Nick's Family
2009: Engagement Year

Ornament from our Honeymoon
(can we go back, yet?)

Kelli & Susi got us this one as a gift for our Engagement Party

Ornament from my wonderful sister

"First Christmas in Our New Home"
Perfect ornament from Brooke for our USNA Ornament Exchange

"Our First Christmas"
"St. Nick" (Nicholas) picked up an extra ornament for us for St. Nick's Day
Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my husband?!

In the future, I would LOVE to have more than one tree.  It's not that I don't like the "boring ball" ornaments.  But on a sentimental tree, they are definitely the boring ones.
But I do want a few trees in the house and each have a theme.  Nick would love a ice blue tree and I would love a maroon and deep gold tree.  I love the elegant looking trees with ribbons and gorgeous ball ornaments.  [I also wouldn't mind adding a black and gold tree....repping my Alam mater compelte with lots of Mizzou ornaments!]
One day....hopefully soon we can start adding more trees to our Christmas Decor. 

But for now, it's our sentimental tree...this tree that will ALWAYS be my favorite tree in our household no matter how many we add to the bunch.

Finished product with the lights on

Finished product with the lights off

standing beside our beautifully decorated First Christmas Tree

To see many more pictures of setting up the tree and decorating it, please click HERE.

St. Nick's Day 2011

Nick and I have discussed what traditions we grew up with and what ones we would like to continue within our family (which were all of them lol).

One of my favorite traditions is celebrating St. Nick's Day.  This is not something Nick celebrated but he was totally on board with starting it in our family just amongst each other and eventually for when we have children. 

For as long as I can remember, on the eve of December 6th, St. Nick visits the house.  He always fills our stockings with candy, and fruit (when we were younger).  He also leaves an ornament (when we were younger he also left a small toy but apparently we're too old for that now). 
Each year the ornament had a special meaning.  It would relate to us personally.  It could be something we loved, a hobby we enjoyed, a character we like, a milestone in our life, etc.  For example, some of mine consisted of:
- Baby's First Christmas
- a cute little scrapbooking marshmallow (yes, I'm a scrapbook nerd)
- Belle from Beauty and the Beast (my favorite Disney princess)
- a few different Cardinals ornaments
- a few different Mizzou ornaments
- Sylvester (from Looney Toons...my fav one) playing soccer (my favorite sport and the sport I played my entire life.)
- a wine glass
- a Navy ornament

So you get the idea.  I am not taking these ornaments to Florida with me because those are my childhood memories and should stay put on that tree.  (Please see next entry).

Nick and I want to build our ornament collection and start our own sentimental tree.  We have a few ornaments already but with each passing year, we'll add two new ones as St. Nick will visit us each year.

My mother was always "St. Nick" and she got an ornament for each of us kids.
Seeing as we don't have kids, Nick and I are going to play St. Nick to each other.  (Once we have kids, I will assume the St. Nick role as my mother did.  I'm still undecided if Nick and I will stop getting each other ornaments at that point.)

Prior to St. Nick's Day, Nicholas and I each separately went out and bought each other candy and an ornament.  It was kind of a difficult task because I'm used to visiting Kimmswick back home where they have any and every ornament you could think of.  I was pretty much limited to the mall here.  Plus we had a budget so I didn't want to order any online.
But I ended up finding the perfect one!
If you know Nick, then you KNOW he's obsessed with Weimaraners, especially our little monster, Yadi.  He had been looking online and in ANY store we went in to see if they had a Weim ornament.  No one did.  (It's not a very common breed.) 
But while I was at the mall, I found one!!!!!  I was so excited I almost didn't want to wait until the morning of the 6th for him to look in his stocking!

The morning of December 6th, I woke up and Nick was already at work.  I noticed he had stuffed my stocking so I took this opportunity to stuff his (I wanted to stuff it in the middle of the night but he went to bed MUCH later than me and I never woke up that night).  When he arrived home from work around 8am (rough life ;) which I'll get into in another post), we took down our stockings and emptied them out.

Nick's is far left and mine is the far right

I wish I would have had the camera but sadly I didn't think to take any pictures of this event (major =( sad face).  But he absolutely LOVED his ornament!!!!  (and his candy).  Here is a picture of it hung on our tree:

Then I opened mine.  I loved it!  My husband knows me too well.  He got me Belle from Beauty and the Beast (along with my fav candy).  I was secretly hoping he would get her! I saw it while I was at the mall and was sad I had one on our family tree back home and desperately wanted a Belle on our tree.  And now I have one!  Again, no read great pictures but here is a picture of it on the tree:

I love that we are starting this tradition and can't wait to see the different ornaments we collect over the years.  I need to start ornament shopping early next year, just in case the mall and stores around me don't have anything I like, I will have time to order something or have my family find one for me in Kimmswick.  (Hopefully every year we go home for Thanksgiving I can get one from the many, MANY Christmas shops around St. Louis.)

So there you have it....Our First Married Tradition =)  Our First St. Nick's Day together.  It was a huge success!!!!  I love this day.  It's just something small and simple but it brings me so much joy!

Happy St. Nick's Day everyone!!!