Kansas Trip

Last Sunday morning, Shane and I flew to Kansas for his grandmother's funeral. We hated to be heading back there under those circumstances, but it was nice to see family after not having made the trip since last May. Our flights out to Kansas were very quick and uneventful (my favorite kind) and we ended up in Pittsburg around 1PM central time. That afternoon we spent the time visiting with family over dinner and settling in to our "accomodations" at Chateau de Wiseman (cousin Scott and Judy's house--who we will never be able to thank enough for letting us stay with them) After dinner we headed back out to Brian and Tiff's to play games and hang out.
Monday was spent running around town taking care of business and getting ready things for that evening. Monday evening was the wake, which as Shane says Grandma would have wanted, was spent with friends and family visiting with each other and celebrating all of the memories that people had of her.
Tuesday morning Shane and Brian got up at the crack of dawn to go fishing (literally, the crack of dawn) and I stayed at Judy and Scott's to get some more rest and eventually spent the rest of the morning (once it was a decent hour to leave the house) with Tiff. That afternoon was the funeral, which was very nice and a dinner put on by the ladies at the church that Grandma used to volunteer with. After getting out of our dress clothes, we made our rounds through the town saying goodbye to Shane's parents and Brian and Tiff. On our way back from Brian and Tiff's we got a phone call from Sgt. Wiseman (aka Scott) letting us know that we were out past our curfew so we rushed home to have both him and Judy waiting us on the front porch (we thought we had outgrown those days--we were wrong HAHA) The four of us had some good laughs while Shane and I packed and then it was off to bed to get ready for an early morning of getting back up to Kansas City to catch our plane home. Back to Virginia..... Here are a few pictures of our trip
Brian and Tiff's pet pig, Petunia
Shane and I before leaving Judy's for the wake
Us with Aunt Francis and Uncle Jim
All of the Grandchildren

Shane's Family
Shane and I with Brian and Tiff (Shane and I have decided that Tiff and I look more alike in this photo than Brian and he do)
Back at Scott and Judy's house after a very long day

Weekly Update

So, I know that after my massive update last Friday, I haven't gotten anything up here. I am a slacker, I own that.

Last weekend was a whirlwind of activity. Friday night I was able to head to Norfolk to meet one of my sisters, Jannah and her adorable daughter for dinner and then we headed to support the ODU Zetas as they recruited new women for the year. Saturday my parents came down from DC to meet Shane and I "halfway" in Williamsburg. We walked around the Colonial Williamsburg area all afternoon and had a great time. It was so nice to see my mom. Here is a picture of Shane and I in front of the Governor's Palace. Sunday morning I headed to Norfolk again to attend another round of ODU's recruitment. The girls did amazing--Congrats ladies! Then it was back to work for the rest of the day....Children's Church in the morning and then the parish Gathering at the Table event that night. Very very busy. Shane and I have come to learn that with me working for the church, Sundays and a traditional "weekend" are in no way our own anymore. That is fine though, I love my job more than I ever would have loved being in some cubicle at an accounting firm and the parish we belong to is a great community that we find so rewarding to be a part of.

Looking forward the next few days, today I have an appointment at the hospital to make sure that everything is on track with the baby...I have no worries though with the way I have been feeling. Wonderful! We just need to make sure that we have the 100% go ahead to fly this weekend. Why are we flying, you ask? Well, the question should be, "what could possibly get Kim on a plane?" Sadly, Shane's grandmother passed away Thursday morning, so we will be heading out to Kansas on Sunday morning and will be returning home to Norfolk on Wednesday. It is not the best reason to be heading out to Shane's hometown, but we are looking forward to seeing everyone once we get out there.

What comes after homecoming???.......

A HOMECOMING BABY!!!!

Four weeks after Shane got home from the deployment, we found out that I was about four weeks pregnant with our first child. Our little Chief's fan is due on March 12, 2009. On August 13th, we had our first doctor's appointment, saw the heartbeat and got some of baby's first pictures.



To bring the massive update of the past year and a half to an end, Shane and I are both doing well. I am right now, 14 weeks pregnant and things are going just fine. Shane is attending c-school here in Portsmouth and is set to report to his shore duty post in December. I have gotten a job as the Religious Education Leader at our church. I coordinate the children's church, preschool and K-5 religious education programs. I love my job and couldn't be happier.

Homecoming!!!

The countdown was finally over. Seven months to the day, Shane finally came home. My parents and brother came down from DC and Shane's Mom and Dad flew in from Kansas to help welcome Shane home. That morning we all got up obnoxiously early to head to Norfolk to be on the pier. I can honestly say that this morning was the first and only time in my life that I did not mind waiting in rush hour traffic for the Midtown Tunnel. Traffic or no traffic, I knew that within 4 hours I was going to be back together with my husband and that is all that mattered to me. We timed our trip to Norfolk perfectly, because about 15 minutes after we got to the pier and met up with my friend Amy (also waiting for her husband) and my sister Liz (surprise surprise, waiting for her special someone) we saw the ship. I have never been fond of the Truman, but again, today seeing that boat was the best sight in the entire world.
After seeing the ship come around the point we waited for about an hour and a half for it to be pierside.
That began the even longer wait for all the first time fathers to get off the ship and see their children for the first time and for the officers and all them to get off of the ship. After much searching in the crowd and hysterical phone calls trying to find each other, Shane was finally home.

The Long Seven Months

So I will be the first to tell you that deployments are the worst. But for Shane and I, we just tried to make the best of the situation. The first big thing to happen while Shane was gone was that he was promoted to Second Class Petty Officer.




Then Shane got to go and visit the Vatican when the ship made a port call in Naples, Italy.

While Shane was off having a wonderful time seeing the world, I was back here working very hard to graduate....which I did, on May 10, 2008.

Shane was due home 3 weeks after graduation so the cap was wonderful for him to try and find me when he was watching the ceremony on the internet from the ship.

I was so lucky that even though Shane couldn't be there for my big day I had great friends who made the trip to see me. Mandy and Paul (right) came down from Richmond and Ben and Heather (left) came all the way from Hagerstown, Maryland. I still owe them for sitting through that ceremony. Of course, my parents and younger brother came down for the weekend as well.
So once all the graduation festivities are over I settled in for what was the longest three weeks of my life and Shane made one final stop in Marsailles, Frace before heading back across the Atlantic.

Most of 2007....

So to start off our year, we moved from our apartment in Norfolk to our townhouse in Portsmouth. It isn't much, but it is nice to be in an actual neighborhood, especially with Shane getting ready to go out to sea again. At the beginning of August we finally went on our honeymoon to Negril, Jamaica.



We had the time of our lives at the Sandals resort and can't wait to make another trip. Once we got back from our vacation it was back to the real world. I jumped head first into my senior year of college at ODU and Shane began his final preparation for his upcoming deployment To round out the year, Shane deployed for seven months on November 4th, 2007.

The Wedding

Shane and I got married after a year of planning on December 30th, 2006. Christmas is our favorite time of the year and was conveniently the only time that we were 100% guaranteed that Shane would be here for the wedding (the groom is somewhat essential) so everything came together perfectly. Here are some of the pages from our album just to give an overview of the big day.

Finally...

So after much input from friends (...you know who you are...) and much procrastination on my part, I have decided to jump on the blog bandwagon. It is probably for the best with everything Shane and I have going on right now :) and seeing as most of our family is up in CT or out in KS we will be able to keep them updated on everything going on out here. Once I get pictures and stuff together I will try to get some up on here and try to give everyone the ten second version of the past year and a half...probably tomorrow.