Life: Happy New Year!

Ok, so this isn't the normal New Year's blog.  This is the long over due blog.  The, I haven't blogged since before Thanksgiving, which means I have a lot to update blog. So, I think the fastest and easiest way to provide you with a proper update is through pictures.  Since I have last updated....

We finished the kitchen....

My family came to visit. So we went skiing...

And visited Pike's Peak and had dinner at P.F. Changs....

Then I hosted Thanksgiving dinner...

I sliced open my finger trying to julien carrots (whoops!)...

I had my wisdom teeth pulled (with no swelling woo hoo!)...

I got glasses...

A pipe burst in our crawl space...

We saw a play starring a friend (bet you can't guess what it was)...

We went skiing with friends (and my husband was not happy about stopping to take a picture)...

I got a hair cut...

We traveled to Illinois...

...where I got to see my friend Sam and her family...

...and meet my sweet niece for the first time which was my favorite Christmas present this year...

...and Kevin and I took our puppies for a two mile run and wore them out...

...and played killer bunnies (twice)...

...and then we drove home, and Hoeffer couldn't get comfortable...

...where we picked up a friend's dogs while she is out of town with her husband who is on R&R...

... and I got to plant my aero garden (countertop, self-sustaining herb garden) that I am really excited about.

Also, without pictures, I set up my Christmas tree and Kevin has started working on building a server in our house.  Our media server is up and running and now he is working on our NAS.  I have also mostly packed for Mexico (we leave in a couple of days).  And my stocks are doing great (I passed a 75% gain on my initial investing today!).  I have no New Year's resolutions, but I am excited to start the year.  Once we get back from Mexico, we plan on trying 30 days of Paleo eating, so you all can expect that our favorite recipes will definitely be shared).  I am also looking forward to a slower pace that allows for more workouts and blogging. But this year is also bringing a new job in a new unit and I have to say, I am excited about the change.  

Life: Glad to be home

New patio

So, I have been home for a few weeks now and really haven't stopped since I arrived.  Last week Kevin and I started renovating our kitchen and should be done late tonight.  We also had a patio put in in our backyard.  It's been a little crazy, but in a good way.  And it isn't stopping as this week my family (Mom, stepdad, brother, aunt and two cousins) are coming into town to visit.  We will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house and that brings the total to at least 11 for dinner.  So we have a busy schedule coming up for the next week and then a couple of (hopefully) more relaxing weeks before heading back to Illinois for Christmas and then on to Mexico for a romantic week away with my husband!

The current state of my kitchen

So a few quick updates...
Patio's done
Kitchen's done (almost)
Looks like I have a new job at a new unit lined up (more to follow once it is official).
I am getting my wisdom teeth pulled after Thanksgiving and will start the process of seeing if I am eligible for Lasik.
My stocks are doing really well (at on point this week I checked and saw that I had a 60% gain off my initial investment).
I finished reading through the whole bible this year (after about 9 months of reading) and am going to start a doing a new study on love.
Kevin and I are creating life goals for our family and things we want to do and achieve (we are doing this over several weeks, so once that's done, it will probably be it's own blog post).
I haven't been working out hardly at all and need to get back in the swing of things, especially before going home.  But we are planning on getting some skiing and hiking next week, so that will be good.

Ok, for now, I need to get back to putting my kitchen together and cleaning my house so I can drive to Denver tomorrow and pick up my beautiful Aunt and wonderful cousins.

Afghanistan: Number 25 (My last post from Afghanistan!)

Our transfer of authority ceremony

Alright everyone.  This is it.  I am going home.  Many of you have asked if I know when.  The answer to that is yes, but I cannot share it.  I can share after we have moved, but will not be able to tell you our next movement dates or times of anything like that.  Once I get back into the U.S. will be a different story, but for now, just know that within the next week or so, I will be home!  So here it is, my last post and the end of this part of my journey.

Playing volleyball in our free time...

Mental: I am having some frustrations in this department honestly.  I have not completed my second black belt project because I am still waiting to receive my data.  This is through no fault of my own and I can honestly say that I have no grand appreciation for the speed at which contractors move.  However, I did have an interview last Friday with a Brigadier General and have been officially endorsed to go to school and certify as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.  Unfortunately, we are still awaiting the exam results to go with it, so once we get the score key (a huge debacle because of the furlough), my qualifying exam will be scored and I will submit my packet.  Then there are about 5,000 more hurdles to go, but I plan on just taking them as they come.  Lord willing, I have a tremendous amount of potential in this area.

Physical: As you already now, I received the highest score possible on my Army Physical Fitness Exam just a couple of weeks ago (a 300).  My other goal of the six pack... well... I guess I will call it success.  I don't need to flex for it to be visible, but I am not seeing a lot of definition.  It's probably from all the ice cream I eat.  Regardless, I am at the lowest weight I have been in the last four years or so and am overall happy with the way I look and feel (even though I was also happy before).  I still intend to try to keep up the momentum when I get back and keep my run time down.

Can you tell I am not very good?

Financial: Well, my stocks have been up and down this week.  Both of my stocks have been near or surpassed their 52 week highs this week and then have dropped back down into a respectable range.  I am still planning on holding onto them.  I'm not the most financially savvy person I know, but both stocks are looking pretty strong and are significantly higher than what I bought them at.  Hopefully I don't forget about the too much once I am back stateside.

Seriously though, I had no idea  what I was doing.

Emotional:  This is a weird one in preparation for coming home.  People don't seem to understand that going home for a Soldier is in some ways, more difficult than leaving.  We train and prepare to leave but don't do much for coming back.  I haven't been alone or had a day off since I got here.  Going home, living with my husband, having to cook for myself and grocery shop and pick out clothes and drive myself around are all going to be transitions for me to get back into the hang of things.  I might never be alone here, but I haven't had to share my life with anybody either.  There is no one I had to talk to and take care of at the end of the day.  This is not to say at all that I am not completely excited to come home, because I really am, but it is a forewarning that this is a transition for me.  Getting back into a schedule will take time and patience.  On a somewhat similar note, I have been praying recently that God would help me fall more in love with my husband than I have ever been before.  This has been my constant pray over the last week and I can already feel it being answered.  I cannot wait to get back to my love, my groom, my companion, my husband.  To see him, to touch him, to be touched by him, to speak with him freely, to sleep next to him, to be with him... I cannot wait.

Spiritual: How good are you at being still? As in Psalm 46:10 "'Be still and know that I am God'..."  I am not very good at being still.  I have had issues being still my whole life.  Call it ADHD, call it hyperactive, call it over-thinking, over-analytical... Whatever name you want to give it. I don't think I have ever truly been still.  And honestly, I am not sure I know any women (or even men) who have told me they figured this one out.  We seem hard-wired for multi-tasking and calming chaos in our homes.  Our jobs and our lives seem to never demand stillness.  I used to even confuse stillness with laziness, but have since realized that it is actually the opposite.  But I digress.  Let me first say that my to do list for getting home is a mile long.  I am trying to get into school for my Lean Six Sigma Master Black belt, I am running against the clock to get a new job, the cabinets in our kitchen need redone, I want to build a green house and start a garden (some day down the road I want to have chickens and some day further after that, I want to try bee keeping), I want to do some minor landscaping in the back yard, plant some trees and bushes, buy a gun, get my concealed carry license, build new shelves in our closet, continue building a multi-media server for our house, create a planter outside my bay window, create cushions to sit in the bay window, potentially add a shower to our downstairs bathroom, build a fire pit, go to Illinois, go on vacation to Mexico, learn French and get LASIK.  Now, these are things I am thinking about for my next year home, but you can see that I have a lot of plans in front of me.  And I was nearly giddy trying to pick which one I wanted to tackle first (and when I say one, I mean a minimum of 3 because that's how I operate). I haven't had a day off on this deployment and if I am not running around doing something, I am sleeping or talking about the next thing I am working on.

So you can probably see now where the Holy Spirit intervened as a blessing to my dear husband (who was probably overwhelmed by my planning).  Still is not my forte.  Still is not watching t.v. or going for a walk.  It is literally still.  It is stopping the mind from wandering and planning, stopping my mouth from moving and just living at peace.  Others might call it meditation or clearing the mind, but really it's stillness.  And we don't really get any of this as a culture.  Stillness is most clear to me in my understanding of God's command to take a Sabbath.  Rest. Be still.  Remember God's still got this.  I used to think that still was passive, mostly because that helped justify my lack of being still.  Then I realized how active a task it is.  Ask a five year old (or me for that matter) to sit still.  See how long that lasts.  It is a rather arduous chore.  Better yet, I can't seem to truly clear my mind for more than a minute at a time.  But I bet if I worked on stillness that time would get longer.  If you read Psalm 46, you see that our God is very active.  It is in our stillness that we can see that it not us, but He who is running it all.  It is in our stillness that we come to know God.  Knowing God is being able to see Him, His heart, and His movement in our lives.  If I am always moving, I confuse myself into thinking that everything is my doing.  It's my "thanks God, but clearly I've got this one," kind of moments.  My activity causes me to get distracted by MY thoughts and MY actions and MY works in MY time.  Stillness is a time to reflect on GOD's thoughts and GOD's actions and GOD's works in GOD's time.  I am my own biggest distraction from God.  I create a whole world of distractions that I call "productive" "necessary" "useful" "important" etc.  So instead, when I get home, I am going to focus my time on learning to be still first and incorporating that into my Sabbath's and my every day life.  One thing I do know, if I can't figure out how to be still as a wife, I am really going to struggle to figure it out once we have kids.  I am ready to be still and know that He is God.

Afghanistan: Number 24

Clearer view of mountains after rain

Alright, so I am a few days late.  This was kind of intentional, as I didn't want to post on my birthday, which was Sunday.  I turned 25 and as you might imagine, it was really just another day in Bagram.  It was a normal Sunday, in that I got up, video chatted with Kevin, had the morning off, went to lunch, then work then church after dinner.  Unfortunately, we had a rocket attack that night that was probably the first one that actually scared me, but at least it happened after midnight and not technically on my birthday.  Aside from that, it rained on my birthday, which is the first time I have seen rain since June (it technically rained for a few minutes last week, but I didn't know it was happening, so I didn't see it). But all in all, it was a regular day in Afghanistan.  So here goes another post for Afghanistan, knowing I should be home in just a few weeks.

Physical:  No new updates on this one, and there probably won't be much the rest of my time here.  Now that I have maxed my APFT, my fitness goals are pretty much complete.  I am probably in better shape than I have been in a long time, but I have never really been out of shape so that isn't saying much.  The goal now is to maintain when I get back, and that will be very difficult when I am back to the land of good food.

Financial: So there isn't a ton new to report here.  I did learn something new the other day though.  Basically I learned that if I hold onto my stocks for under a year, I am taxed on my gains in my current bracket (25%) but if I hold onto them more than a year, they will be taxed at 15%.  So I think I am going to try to hold onto both my stocks for the next year if I can.  And since I am getting so close to going home, I think I will even share what those stocks are.  One of them is Home Inns & Hotel Management Inc (HMIN) and Yandex (YNDX) which is basically the Russian version of Google.  Both are doing well for me and looking pretty strong.

Mental: So Lean Six Sigma is going well.  I am working on a second black belt project right now that basically covers proper planning within the Army.  Overall, I am showing that proper use of Army planning and design models paired with Lean Six Sigma can save the Army a lot of money compared to just picking projects not aligned with already set planning efforts.  My second project is going to help me get certified in Lean Six Sigma on the civilian side, since I already have my certification all settled on the military side.  This is also going to help me pursue my Master black belt.  Really, in the next week or so, I need to brief a General Officer from our division my path and plan for certification.  If he approves it, then I will be going to school for it next year, most likely.  If not, then it is dead in the water and I will just maintain my black belt.

Emotional:  So this one has been pretty good.  Life has been pretty easy going recently and I am very thankful for that.  I am also very happy that my replacement is here and we are officially starting our change over training.  She is catching on quickly and I think that change over process should be pretty seamless.  Once the new unit officially takes over in a couple of weeks, we will start heading home.  I think during that time of travel, I will be doing some automatic blog posts.  I am planning on doing a "stuff I learned on this deployment" post.  I am working on it now and am just debating whether I should break it up into a miniseries, or keep it all together.  Once I have everything written out, I will probably decide which to go with.  Honesty, I have learned a lot while I have been here.  Things haven't been easy, but I know that I have learned a lot from the experience.

Spiritual:  So I have been continuing in prayer and reading.  In my prayer life, I have been praying very consistently for certain individuals throughout the deployment. I am not seeing any sort of answer to that prayer, but I am glad to have stuck by a spiritual discipline for over 200 days.  In my reading, Kevin and I caught up to where we intended to be.  We started reading through the bible chronologically in March and it is broken up over a year period.  So back in July, we decided to read two passages a day until we got caught up to the right day.  Oddly enough, it just so happened to work out that we were caught up on my birthday.  We enjoyed reading so much, we decided to continue doing two-a-days.  Which should have us done before the end of November.  

Afghanistan: Number 23

Picture of my puppies at bed time. Can't wait to get home.

Alright everyone, so here is my 23rd post from Afghanistan and I should be back home in the next 4-5 weeks or so! It's very exciting to know that I have less than a month left in country.  I cannot believe that it is already here and I cannot wait to get home to my wonderful husband and cute puppies.  The closer I get to coming home, the more Kevin and I have started planning and preparing for what the next year or so might look like.  It is getting me very excited to come home!  So here is my 23rd update, per my usual style.


Financial: So, I still haven't sold either of my stocks, but that is because they are both doing very well from what I originally bought them at.  I actually surpassed a rather big land mark this week with them as I have officially made more than 50% on my original investment.  Right now, I am hovering around 55% and intend to hold both stocks for awhile.  The one's next earnings report comes out late in October and the other one's will come out in early November.  I plan on paying closer attention to them around that time, but both are looking like they will continue to go up over time.  And thankfully, with both of them, they are high enough that it is very doubtful they will fall so fast that I cannot sell off quickly.  I have alerts set up through my bank to let me know whenever they drop or gain significantly, so it makes it easier and I don't have to watch them.

Physical: Today I took my PT test and I scored a perfect 300. So that is another goal achieved.  Unfortunately, my run time wasn't what I wanted, but I screwed up my routine and threw myself off.  I decided to do one of my protein and green drinks. The protein was a great call, but the green stuff was a terrible idea.  Even though I took it nearly two hours before my run, it didn't feel like it digested at all.  I got to the turn around making great time, but on the way back (about the 1.5 mile mark) I started to feel like I was going to throw up. So I slowed down a little bit and told myself to hold it in until I crossed the finish line.  Which I did, but I added about 20 seconds to my time from the previous.  I need to continue working on my run time's because Colorado's elevation is about 2,000 ft higher than here.  I think working on the incline as well as working out during lunch times once I get back should help with that.  I did manage to get my 46 push ups and 100 sit ups though.  So, all in all, I can't complain.  Plus, I fired expert at the M16 range yesterday, so I guess it has been a good couple of days.

Mental:  So, I have some somewhat exciting news on this front.  First of all, they signed my DA 4187 and my certificate of completion for my Lean Six Sigma black belt.  So that is very exciting.  It should be added to my records soon, which will be the last step in this process.  But the second thing is that I might have a chance to get a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma.  Basically, Master Black Belt's are instructors in Lean Six Sigma.  My instructor sent one of my products to his boss (who is a big deal with Lean Six Sigma in the Army) and he sent a response asking if I would be interested in potentially getting a Master Black Belt.  Now, this is definitely not for certain and there is a lot left to figure out.  To put it lightly, the training would come at a pretty penny and and they have to be very convinced that I am going to be successful and it will add value to the Army.  So, I am actually trying to knock out a second black belt project while I am still here.  This will not only help me to potentially become a Master Black Belt  candidate but it is also going to help me get a civilian certification as well (I want to take the ASQ when I get back, which gives me my civilian certification as well as my military).  I also need to take a qualifying exam and go through an interview process, so that will be a thing.  I have about three weeks to figure all this new craziness out.

Emotional: It has been a roller coaster of a week honestly, and it doesn't look to be stopping.  There is a lot going on with my unit right now, but also a lot going on in my life.  Honestly, Kevin and I are probably in the best place we have been this whole deployment, which is really encouraging given that I am just getting ever closer to going home. But there have been some difficult times too, but I think we are in a much better place now for it.  As for now, I am more excited than ever to get home to my husband and get back to my life with him.  We are so excited for the future and I think both of us are just really ready for me to get home.

Spiritual: So I had one of those moments this week where a verse in my reading just hit me like a ton of bricks.  The verse was Psalm 118:5 "In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free."  Sometimes it is just comforting to remember that we are free.  It's so easy to think I am burdened by God's commands, when the reality is, I am set free.  After all, Romans 8:1 says "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  The reality is, the judgment that should be reserved for me has already been paid at the cross.  It gives me the freedom to move and to love.  The freedom to love the Lord and love others without having to be afraid of screwing up.  Because the great thing is, God already knew my every failure prior to my birth, and He sent His son to die for me anyways.  I am free because the debt I owed has been paid.  

Afghanistan: Number 22

Me covered in filth at Sharana last month

Hey everybody.  Time for my twenty second post from this lovely country with less than six weeks until I am home!!  It's been a pretty awesome week and  am excited to share some updates.  The first of which is that I have pretty much packed everything up!  At least, kind of.  I have basically gone through and packed in such a way that I am sure all my stuff is going to fit.  Tomorrow, I will finish my Christmas shopping, load up the last bit of stuff, and then create my packing list.  Later this week, I will be loading two tuff boxes and a duffle bag into our containers.  After they get approved by customs, then our stuff will get shipped home.  My room will feel pretty empty once I load my stuff in the container, but I think I am good with that!

Mental: Lean Six Sigma is almost completely closed out for me!  The last bit is just getting my 4187 signed (saying that I officially completed the course) and then having it put on my records.  I don't know how long this will take, but it's not really in my hands. My part is done.  All in all, I saved the army over $10.7 mil in direct savings and over another $34 mil in cost avoidance.  It feels good to be done.  Plus, I have helped another black belt candidate finish his project, my section NCOIC finish his green belt project, my NCO finish his green belt project and then as needed helped three other NCOs with their green belt projects (two of which I am pretty sure are complete).  So, not only am I glad to be done, I am also glad to be able to help others reach that finish line as well.

The incline

Physical: So, I got a chance to do a sort of practice PT test while I was traveling this past week.  I thought about fully taking my PT test there because the altitude is much lower, but I am glad I didn't.  I did do push ups and the run route though I didn't do sit ups because doing that seemed like a poor choice on the road.  I managed to max both, but I was sucking on the run.  I think the fact that it was much hotter and there was a lot of sand and dust in the air, coupled with the fact that I was running a route I never had before in the dark made me run about 30 seconds slower than I have been in Bagram.  But even still, I think if I had run it in the morning during day light, I still would have been struggling to breathe.  So I will take my APFT next week with everyone else.  I am pretty confident I will get a 300 again and am really happy with that.  The goal though is to make sure it sticks when I get back.  I have already been thinking about my workouts and I think I am going to make sure I incorporate the incline ( which I have never done before and my goal is to be able to walk straight up it without stopping, and once I can do that, then run it) and also yoga into my workouts.  I will be doing PT in the mornings with my unit, but I want to make sure I am hitting the gym during lunch.  But the other part is making sure I don't eat a bunch of crap.  Unfortunately, we are coming back at pretty much the best food time of the year and after eating DFAC food all the time (I had steak the other night and I know that wasn't cow meat), it will be all to easy to gorge myself.  So a strict workout routine will have to be on the menu as well.

Financial: I don't have any real new updates here except that I am sitting at about a 50% gain on my initial investment.  I have two stocks that are doing quite well and I intend to hold on to them awhile longer.  Part of me is debating holding on to them longer term since I have already had them a month and a half and they have only been doing well for me.  I don't think either of them has dipped below my original buy price since I first picked them up.  But we shall see what they do in the next couple of weeks.  I might just hold them through their next earnings reports if they are looking promising.  Kevin and I are also about to hit that fun time of year where we discuss next years budget and savings plan.  It'll be nice to start figuring out what we want to do over the next year or so and set some solid goals with regards to our house, car and family.

Emotional:  I am not really sure how to categorize this next part, so I am going to put it here.  Right now, it is looking very likely that I will be going to a new unit when I get back to Fort Carson.  I don't have a specific job locked in at this point, but there are a few possibilities and all of them would be very good for me.  I got my first look at my annual review yesterday (even though it isn't due until November) and things are looking very promising.  I have been performing very well and because of that, my leadership is looking at giving me the opportunity to change units when I get back.  I am excited to take on a new job and am really ready for the change. I look forward to experiencing something brand new.  But there is a lot of unknowns that come with that.  I obviously don't have the job position taken yet, and nothing is really a guarantee until you have it in hand (and with the Army, even that may not mean much).  So with that, I also don't know what the hours will be like.  But the unknown makes it exciting for me.  It's one of the things I love about the Army, I can never really get bored.  I get to change jobs every year or so, change locations every few years and get a lot of unique opportunities.  I am slowly realizing that I actually really enjoy being in the Army, and I am surprisingly good at it.  It seems odd that this job that I picked when I was twelve really has ended up being such a good fit for me.  And though I do not know what the future holds (I have already been offered a job on the civilian side that looks potentially very appealing), I can say that I hope that whatever I end up doing, I bring God glory.

Spiritual: So, to be honest, I have been lacking a bit here.  I have been struggling to motivate myself to read my bible.  Right now, I am in Ezekiel, where he talks about the temple.  And just like reading Numbers or Leviticus, I just struggle to stay motivated and keep reading.  And that is not good, because I am actually supposed to be reading twice a day and recently, I have only been reading once.  So, now that I am nearly packed and don't have a lot of work on my plate, I am going to buckle down and get myself caught back up to where I am supposed to be.  Thankfully, I have not been struggling in my prayer life the way I have in my reading.  I have still been praying nightly and as a quick update, am still praying for my friend who doesn't know the Lord.  It has been nearly 200 nights of praying for him and it doesn't seem like any progress has been made.  But, I am starting to wonder if this prayer is not for him, but for me.  Maybe this is one of those things God has called me to just to teach me diligence and self control.  I will continue to pray for him as this deployment nears its end, but I have come to terms with the fact that this, like many of my other prayers, is not mine to demand an answer to.  Like so many other times, I am learning that patience is precious and that demanding answers doesn't make them come any sooner, and most frequently, just makes me look foolish.  So I will just have to learn some patience and love.