36 days left...

and this year will FINALLY be over.

Last week an entire glass of water poured onto my Macbook laptop.

A few weeks prior to that I got a speeding ticket, ON FORT BRAGG.

*deep sigh*

Now I've got a letter informing me of my mandatory court appearance for the "United States of America vs. K. Hoyt " where, I have since learned, my license will be suspended.

Worst. Year. Ever.

At yesterdays Thanksgiving dinner, hosted by a close friend of ours, I reflected on what I could possibly be thankful for. In an effort to cheer myself up I will think about the things I am thankful for this year....

1. Nathan made it home safe from another deployment.

2. Our awesome house and a safe, friendly community.

3. Friends. So many friends from all of the places we've lived.

4. Forgiveness. Our closest friends have supported me through the worst tragedy and humbled me with their grace.

5. Nathan. His perpetual happiness is infectious. He is always up to something. I should go check on him.....

Looking forward, I have an appointment at the local Apple store tomorrow to have my laptop examined and a newly hired lawyer to go with me to federal court in December. My laptop seems to be fine aside from the screen being black, I've hooked it up to the TV set and all of our files seem to be there. My lawyer seems cautiously optimistic that he can have my ticket lowered to avoid suspension since I have no points on my license.

Even though I am trying to look at the bright side, I'm still counting the days.

The elusive garage

Most of Nathan's time at home is spent in the garage working on the boat. One coat of epoxy may take a day or more to set depending on the temperature (warmer is better) so to speed up the process the garage is made as warm as possible.

How does he do it?

Initially he purchased two space heaters but plugging both of them in blows the breaker. They also do not run on extension cords so he could only use one in the garage and that has not proved powerful enough to battle the dropping temperatures from outside.

The solution he found is two heat lamps at either end of the garage shinning onto the boat in addition to the space heater. Now the garage is the warmest place in the house and his epoxy dries fast enough that he can get a coat down and have it sanded before the weekend is over.

With all of this going on he was running out of plugs in the garage so he has one extension cord running back into the house from the garage through a cat door our landlord had previously installed.

This way the garage door can stay closed, containing as much heat as possible. Of course, this means that there is now an extension cord running through the door to the garage and into my kitchen. This is something new and interesting for the dogs and upon investigation they have discovered that...

there is a cat door going into the garage.

When Nate is in the garage the dogs lay crowded around the door waiting and listening to all of the noises coming from the other side of the door. Normally Nate would have a dog or two outside with him but the boat involves too much epoxy and it wouldn't be safe.

The solution?

Goose is the first dog I saw to figure out that the cat door was a little window into Nathan's world and the garage. She lays down and snuggles up to the door, pushes her head through and watches Nate work.

Not to be outdone, Stoli took it a step further....

We had an early morning today, 7am start time for the Joint Special Operations 10k here at Ft. Bragg.

Here comes Nate!






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Another Deployment

As most of you know by now, Nathan's deployment schedule has been fairly regular.

6 months there, 6 months here, 6 months there, 6 months here....

It has recently been made public that the new deployment cycle for his unit will be extending to a year long tour. With Nathan's residency beginning next Fall this will require him to leave in the middle of the deployment. He has been trying to secure another Vet to go in his stead to avoid the shift in positions but that has fallen through.

He will be deploying again in January.

His acceptance into the residency program is guaranteed so he will not be deployed the entire year, just until his residency begins which will be around July 2011. Hopefully they will send him home in time to help with the move to D.C.

I was preparing for deployment (I'm a pessimist) and have already sold off most of the furniture and items that will not be moving with us. Everything has to be ready for the move prior to Nate's departure. The last thing to go will be the motorcycle which has been perfect for the commute to work here but not for D.C.

I'm not sure what I'll do for the 6 months he is gone now that I've stepped down with the FRG. I've been looking around for some part time work to earn some extra money but nothing has panned out. Nathan is adamant that I brush up on my riding during the deployment since we plan on moving our horse Katie to D.C. with us. I've found a nice dressage barn not too far from the house that I plan on taking lessons at once Nate is gone. Until then I've kept busy reorganizing every nook and cranny in the house. I've been brutal, selling, donating, and throwing out anything we agree takes up space. It's been irritating at times since our neighborhood does not allow garage sales. Craigslist has been a life saver.

So, here we are again, it's late Fall and we're preparing for another deployment. Someone remind me again why we're over there?

Catching up

So, I know it's been a while and lots of things have happened :)

Here are some Fall tidbits to get you all caught up on all things Hoyt..

It's official, we have a FOURTH dog. I was determined to find her a home and even got Nate to agree to it but alas, no home was good enough. She has an amusing personality and fits into our little herd perfectly.

For some reason, she is frequently found rolled over on her back playing with the other dogs or chewing on toys. Sometimes we find her upside down while she sleeps, who knows why, none of the other dogs do this just her. She's one of a kind. Here I've caught her on video upside down and chewing on a bone.

I was asked to make a cake for our friends wedding in Charleston last month. It was for their rehearsal dinner and a topper of their two dogs was requested. The first dog, Batto (for her HUGE ears), is more of a shepherd. The second dog, Roxie, is a pit bull.

Roxie

Batto

The cake turned out great, it was half carrot cake, half red velvet and all cream cheese frosting.The dinner was outside and about 100 yards from the ocean so the humidity was impressive. My flowers were a bit droopy (I was trying to tie in the sunflower theme from the wedding) but it tasted great :)

I was challenged with sculpting the dogs, this is not something I am skilled at in ANY way. Everyone loved the way they turned out and I was just as surprised. Below are photos of the unpainted dogs, Batto is older so I sculpted her laying down and kinda slouching down on one hip. Roxie was difficult, I wanted her sitting up to contrast Batto laying down. Pit bull heads are so big that the clay couldn't support it's own weight so I had to hunt down a super light weight clay and use that for her head.

Batto

Roxie

And the finished cake!

Nathan's boat is coming along quickly. It would take forever to explain every photo so I'll just put up a few, it's pretty self explanatory. Once the pieces were put together it was day after day of layering epoxy, sanding it all down, another layer of epoxy, sanding, epoxy... you get the point.

So far it's going great, he is loving the whole boat building process. It is still a few months out from being finished but it's mostly a lot of detail work from here on out now that the base is done.

In other news Nate and I made a promise to start running together, actually it was more ME promising to start running in hopes that I could someday keep up with Nate :)

Nate began coaching me along in September. It was interesting, he really thought it through. He started me off jogging lightly for one minute then walking for 4. Slowly each week we progressed to running longer and walking shorter. It happened so quickly, all of the sudden I was running for miles!

Our neighborhood hosted a 5k a few weeks ago and it was the perfect goal to work toward. The 5k went great :) Nate ran his own pace and I ran my own, much slower, pace. Once Nate finished he turned around and ran back to me so we could finish together. It was a pretty awesome day :) I even managed to get him to put his medal back on to take a photo!

Other tidbits from the Hoyt household?

A trip to the Zoo!

Halloween!

I made yummy cupcakes for our friends pumpkin carving party

A quick shot of some of our decorations on the porch

WHEW!

and now you are all caught up! :)

Nate is finally building his boat!

Follow this link to check out his progress on the message boards at microskiff.com ....

http://www.microskiff.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1282368735

I will add the link to our favorite blogs listed to the right or add it to your bookmarks :)

Back to work

Nathan arrived back to his first day of work and found this little guy sitting on his desk waiting for him. The note read "I've been keeping an eye on things since you've been gone."

The backstory involves me asking one of our friends who was deployed with Nate to get the necessary pictures for me to order this bobble head. I lied and told Nate I needed his head shots to learn how to cut his hair. As you can see below, he was not impressed with having to take the posed photos.

Poor Rob, our friend who took the photos, it looks like he got a mouthful after those shots were taken, he got a care package of girl scout cookies for all of his trouble :)

A week or so later Nate was in the drop zone getting ready to go on his first Blackhawk jump. I'm stuck at EVERY jump for the FRG so I got photos of the whole day!

Walking out to the chopper...

Waiting for liftoff (Nate is seated on the right)...

and away they go!

Nate floating through the air...

and walking back after a safe landing.

Shaking the chute out, I'm sure my Dad remembers this :)