Daniel's Return is very soon!!!

Daniel is coming home soon and I can't believe it. Soon we will be celebrating the holidays with family and friends. We are both eager to see everyone!

Thank you so much for your love and prayers. His team had a very successful time while they were deployed to Fallujah.

I will post more details on Homecoming soon.

Much Love!!!

It Really Happened...

I know I have been terrible with keeping up with this page. I do know that I have neglected to share some wonderful pictures and stories with you all about Daniel and my year apart. Thank the Lord is it coming to an end and Daniel is still safe and healthy. Thank you for your prayers and support. They have been heard by the Lord and appreciated by us.

We really did meet up in New Zealand and it was a wonderful time. I have been bad about posting these pictures for multiple reasons. When I first got back, thinking about our time together was hard. I just wanted to be with him. I didn't like looking through them and remembering just seeing with him. Thankfully that time has passed because he will soon be home. I can look forward to him being here with me. I love seeing all the places we were so blessed to see and experience.


I am not going to write as much commentary. I will mostly post pictures.

We spent the first few days in Wellington, the capital city, and then took a ferry to the South Island where we spent a week touring the island by train. It is an amazingly beautiful country and being there in the winter made it even more special...all the mountains we snow-capped.

We then spent a few days in Nelson, a city on the north part of the South Island before we returned to Wellington to fly out. We stayed in several hotels and traveled by several different modes of transportation. Daniel loved that part. It was a true adventure and such a joy to have Daniel by my side the entire time. We were spoiled rotten!

Enjoy!


First Day together!



So happy together!






Blustery Wellington Day.













Loving the sheep, even the fake ones!


















To see more please click on my flickr page on the top left. Blogger was taking entirely too long to upload all the pictures and I wanted to share several. Let me know if there is a problem with uploading the link. I plan on using flickr more often now.

Love ya'll.

Pictures of Daniel

Daniel and his team. These were taken in the first month they were there so the picture is now about 3 months old. I am sorry I am just posting these.

This is Daniel and a friend of ours. We met Rob (right) and his wife Stephanie through Jo and Jeremy in Hawaii. They knew this couple and got us connected long distance. Rob ended up deploying a month after Daniel and his office is a short distance away from Daniel's on the same base. What a great blessing to have that familiar face nearby!

I will try to get Daniel to send more photos. I know I enjoy seeing images of the world he is living in right now. I know you all would enjoy it as well.

Daniel's Team Webpage

Check out the webpage that a team member of Daniel's made. It is going to be all about the MiTT and it already has several pictures up and a few videos. I am looking forward to keeping up with it.

www.fallujahmitt.com

My Babies

They cuddled up together on their own. They are so entertaining. They wrestle all through the night. I only get to cuddle with them during the day now. Too cute!

Saying Goodbye, for Now and Christmas in MD

Here is a quick picture of the family. The cats didn't seem so excited to be scooped up and forced to be still for a few moments. We didn't prepare them for the photo... :)


Well, Daniel and I had to part on December 9th. It was and will probably always be one of my least favorite parts of the deployment for obvious reasons. When I dropped him off, of course all his team and several other teams were in the same parking lot saying goodbye to families and just passing time before orders were given to move on out. It can be awkward staying there too long, as a wife, but every part of you wants to stay. I had to force myself into the car and drive away. It was no good.

Here we are with another couplef rom his team giving a smile for the camera. I had to stay as positive as I could that day. It was important to be strong for Daniel, the other wives, and for me...

Thankfully, Daniel and his team arrived safely to their final destination and they are adjusting accordingly. He has good things to say. He has a general good spirit about the year's work so he has been encouraging to me already. He enjoys the team and now that the team that was there prior to their arriving is coming back to the US, they can really get into the groove of what they need to accomplish.

I was able to travel up to Maryland to spend Christmas and New Year's with my family. It was a quick drive up there with both cats. They kept me company by constantly letting me know when they needed something or by just sitting in the passenger seat and looking out the window. They really are good companions while Daniel is away.

Sharing Christmas with family was special this year because last year Daniel and I were in Hawaii having our own strange Christmas. We knew he had to deploy the day after Christmas so the day was difficult. I was thankful to be with my loving family during the holiday this year. We celebrated on Christmas Eve Day so we could all be together. It was a good time of reading the prophecies of Christ's birth in the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New Testament. Sarah and I sang a song for the Christmas Eve service at church. I always value the times I am able to worship side-by-side with my family. It is a true blessing on this earth!

Mom and Dad in DC in front of the Christmas Tree across from the White House. Daddy's big smile is too cute!

I was able to spend some valuable time with my old church family, the Life. New Year's Eve I celebrated with Katy and her family as well as a couple other Lifers. We were able to play some games, chit-chat and most importantly jam through the night. Robert, a wonderful guitarist and violinist, and Katy, a rockin drummer, are very talented musicians and they make it easy to just play for hours and celebrate with music. The night was made even more special when Daniel called me at 12:02 am. I was surprised and ecstatic to hear from him. He knows how to make his wife feel special!

I had an other excellent opportunity to spend time with some Lifers when we all piled onto the metro and visited the Sackler Museum in DC. The museum had a featured exhibit titled, In the Beginning, on ancient Bible manuscripts. I was amazed at what all the exhibit included. There were pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls and codex scraps from the Dark Ages in ancient manuscript. I was truly amazed at how vast the exihibit was. I was honored to be able to view it all. It is such a blessing to have a God who loves us enough to ensure that we have His Word to read daily. Through the ages the Bible has stayed the most important book to ever be written, copied and read. What a blessing! It was a truly great day!

Left to Right: Me, Katrina, Katy, Jenny

After the museum we crashed at Jonathan and Kartina's house for an evening of pizza, conversation, and a truly "illuminating" movie. (Thanks again you two for opening your home on such short notice to a full day event.)

Quick Picture of the Adorable Family: Katrina, Jonathan and precious Aliyah

I headed back to NC on the 2nd of January and have stayed busy since. I will continue on with another post soon.

Thank you for your prayers and support. We love ya'll.

Thanksgiving and New York, New York Continued...

The three MGs...

We had a wonderful time that day as a big family. Someday we will hopefully all be able to spend a holiday in Missouri!

Here is our adorable nephew. He is the oldest and too cute to handle!

To sum up our Thanksgiving holiday was very special with family.

Daniel started his leave the week of Thanksgiving so we planned a trip during the second week of leave. We ended up using free plane tickets to fly to New York City and stay in some friend's apartment in uptown Manhattan. We were so blessed!

Oscar, the newest addition to our family, is trying to be a stow-away. He looks like he doesn't want us to leave him behind. "Maybe I can fit in this suitcase with your clothes Momma."

We had an amazing time. We went to two shows, Phantom of the Opera and Chicago. We took a bus tour at night that showed us around the city and hit all the Christmas decorated sections. It was cold and windy but we loved every bit of it.

The apartment we stayed at was amazing and it was on the same street as Carnegie Hall so we were located close to many sites to explore and enjoy. We walked through Central Park, explored the Metropolitan Art Museum, paid our respects to the World Trade Center site and took the subway everywhere. I am proud of how well we did in manuevering the city. We felt pretty confident when we went out each day because we would look over maps and subway guides before we left. We had such a great time.

Here we are at the Majestic Theatre where Phantom of the Opera ran:

This is downtown during the Christmas Lights Tour . This was taken in a courtyard next to Central Park. Every tree had been wrapped with lights. It was beautiful.


This is the Rockfeller Center Christmas Tree. It is not all its cracked up to be unfortunately. When you get up close you can see that several if not most of the braches were cut off and reattached with tape and zipties. It is much better from afar. It is kinda sad, but I guess it is a large tree to move into a very busy city.

We were so thankful that it did not snow in NY and delay our return home. Everything went relatively smooth. We did have to run like mad through Dulles airport to get to our
flight to NC. That was not fun, but it was still part of memory making when you travel.

We were so blessed during Daniel's leave time in December!