September

    It is 17 September. I have not had an opportunity to update in a while and don't have much time now. The movers are here packing but they won't be taking the computer till  Monday so I have some time. We are leaving Saturday the 5th of September We will have our cell phone and I will check my us.army.mil email account but the home phone and other email account shut down Monday. 

    We are moving to Georgia, Ft Stewart specifically. It is in the south about 40 miles from Savannah. We think we will probably retire there but will not make a decision until we live there. There are a lot of variables like is there work and can Linda take the weather. We are hoping to get into post housing right away and then wait a year before deciding. Land is a bit expensive but houses without land aren't to bad. We will see. 

    Ft Stewart has a lot of hunting and fishing it has 230,000 acres open to hunting including deer and hogs. It also has 28 fishable bodies of water. 10 of Georgia's all time biggest bass come from Ft Stewart. This is a big change from having to drive 125 miles to go fishing. Also the deer season is three months long with a limit of 12. The license is only nine dollars. Here I would have to get a nonresident New Mexico license for about $200 and then drive a couple of  hours for a short season and of course something would come up at work so that I couldn't go and the money would be wasted. 

    The boys are doing well they are excited about the move but Sean doesn't want to give up his school. He wants to go to another Christian school but we haven't found one yet besides it is a bit difficult to find a school before you have a house. He is having his standard year A's or F's and hard to get him to pay attention. In his Stanford tests last year he was above grade on everything but math procedures where he was at grade level. In four areas he was evaluated at Past High School. Those were the areas covered by Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Sean is particularly excited about the possibility of going to Disney World again. When we went last winter I told the boys that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that the next time they went they would probably be taking their own boys.  When Sean saw Georgia on the map he immediately noticed how close we would be to Florida and said "Dad, We could do a once in lifetime TWICE" my keyboard is broke and I haven't gotten around to it because it only affects things like the exclamation point and brackets Matt does well in school, Is a whiz with the computer and reads very well. He has begun taking medicine for ADD also which helps, sometimes he even sits down almost all the way though a meal. 

    Linda is doing very well she is still pretty skinny but the surgery went well and she is eating reasonably normally again. For those who don't know she had a surgery on her esophagus to stop the vomiting that has been going on since Christmas. She has been very busy getting us ready for the move. 

    I have been very busy. I spent 2 weeks in  Korea. It was 2 weeks after Linda's surgery and we got orders for Ft Stewart in that time period so there has been a lot to do. Sorry this is a bit thin but I want to put some pictures up in other parts of the page. 

    Got some pictures up They are in Summer  linked to the home page. I also got some of the old ones resized.  I want to do more but I am going to publish this just incase I don't get any farther. 

March April 

    I am going to try to do this monthly. That doesn't sound unreasonable considering all the daily reports I do at work. A lot has happened in the last two months I will try to summarize here. Linda's Mom is here and has been for about two months she plan's to stay until I get back from Korea in early September. 

    We have reservations for South Padre Island the last week of June and first week of July. We are planning to spend a day at Corpus Christi on the way since it is on our list of possible places to retire. We are planning to go to the Gila mountains for memorial day. We have some pictures from our last trip I should probably post some. A couple of weeks ago we went to Ruidoso. We didn't really get to do anything because we got snowed on we woke up to nine inches thought we were not going to get home for a while. It was beautiful but it would have been more fun if we had actually brought some winter cloths. 

    We have developed a new hobby, (since we didn't have enough) Geocaching. It is a lot of fun and we can do it in a couple of hours we have only done it locally so far but we plan to do some on our vacation. I'll write more about it later but now I want to get this done. 

Dad     I have moved jobs just down the hall though I am no longer an exercise officer. They call me Chief of Current Ops but since I am the only one in current ops that isn't much of a title. It means I work more but travel less. I asked for it so that I could stay home more. I still have to go to the exercises but not the planning conferences. As far as we know we will be here till retirement. That means we will be living in this house longer than I have lived in any house since I was 12.      I have not got to the range much. I went alone once and Sean and I went once I am going to try to go at lunch sometime this week. Since I started this I managed to get to the range at lunch it works. This weekend I am going to bring the boat home so I can work on it and get it ready for our vacation. I am jonesing bad for a little greenery.

Mom     Linda had a big couple of months she was selected as volunteer of the year for the 32d Army Air and Missile Command. There was a dinner with the unit and a lunch for Ft Bliss. Linda also got a new Jeep. It is a Liberty we got her all the bells and whistles since it is likely to be the last expensive car we buy. She has been healthier after a rather rough winter. She hasn't been riding in a long time and needs to get out. The friend she usually rides with is moving so she will have to find another place. One of here friends horses was inducted into the El Paso animal hall of fame this week. We went to the dinner, it was nice.

Sean     Well school is almost over. Sean's grades aren't to good this year and we are not really sure what to do with him he loves his school and the truth is the standards are a lot higher. He was always on the honor roll before but now he is getting occasional Cs and Ds. He Is growing like a weed and gets a long well in school. He has lots of friends here and is probably as happy and well adjusted as children get. The picture is him receiving the award for most unusual at the Cub Scout cake auction. I haven't got him to the range in a while but last time we went he impressed me quite soundly. We had bought some extra small clay pigeons about 2 inches across and he was hitting them about every time at 35 yards. He is an amazing shot better than most adults I know.

Matt     Matt is doing very well yesterday we finally got him to a neurologist. It took over six months. He had started weaning off his topomax and then his neurologist was sent to Afghanistan and it took this long to get him into another one between TRICARE and just the difficulties of getting in. Pediatric neurologists are kind of short in El Paso.      Matt probably had the most wonderful birthday of his life. We went to Mr Gatti's which is a chucky cheeses kind of place. I think the entire neighborhood showed up. I have never seen him enjoy himself more. When they played musical chairs he did pretty good for a couple of rounds then when he lost one of the older boys (older being about 10) gave him his seat so he could stay in. Then when he lost again another boy gave him his seat then the competition got fierce it was down to three about his age all of which really wanted to win. The 5 year old next door got everyone chanting "Matt, Matt, Matt" and he won!!! Dad was sitting there with tears in his eyes forgetting to take pictures.      Matt loves the geocaching and calls it going on missions and now home is headquarters and the jeep is the gecko mobile. We were going to be team gecko but someone already has that so I have to get the boys to think of another one. He has also decided it is his inalienable right to wrestle with dad every night so we do about 20 minutes of wrestling when I get home. I generally manage to slip in some exercises he needs while we are at it.

Well I am going to wrap this up it is 8 May and I would like to get it posted before June.

Jeff