Puppy Palooza

I am happy to report that since the last blog, I have been productive in meeting people and going to new events. It luckily seems to be getting easier with each thing, and after a while I have high hopes that going by myself to new places and events won't even be something to worry about. While I was at the newcomer's orientation, I met a wife of someone that Dereck went to school with and we decided to facebook each other. But you always have to be careful when facebooking a new potential friend. There is a delicate balancing game that has to occur for everything to go smoothly from being friendly and engaging to not tipping over to the eager-beaver side of things. It's a game that I have been playing since I got here, and quite frankly, it can be exhausting. This exchange however went well, and we decided to meet up at a meeting the next morning for PWOC, or Protestant Women of the Chapel (on post church). This is a group that I knew about through my mother and my past Army life, so I decided to give it a try, and I have to say that it was a fantastic bet. The group is huge with well over 100 women, and I just happen to come on a week where they had a speaker, comedian, and free lunch, and there is still something of a college kid in me that loves free lunches. Through meeting up with my new friend, I also got to meet people that she already knew on post, which is the beauty of Army communities, the webs of networks are super extensive and oftentimes take nothing more than knowing one person to open up a whole world of other people. The best part of PWOC had to be that Scarlett's friend was named Genevieve, and she had another friend with us named Scarlett, so there we were at the table: Genevieve, Genevieve, Scarlett, Scarlett. How many times can you say that in life? It was also a great springboard for meeting other people during the lunchtime, and I really liked meeting so many other Christian women with the same lifestyle. After lunch, I went with Scarlett and Genevieve to an area called Steilacoom which is right on a beautiful bay that makes me think more of the NE than NW and we had to go have coffee like any good Washington person. I am still working on the coffee thing since it seems to be a super important event in the life of someone living here, but I have only made it to drinking sweet coffee blends, nothing straight or black like Dereck enjoys. All in all, the day was great and I look forward to getting to know Scarlett and my doppelganger better.

Thursday night marked another important first in my Army life: the Battalion coffee. This is a social gathering for all the wives of the officers in the Battalion (roughly 20), where we can get to know each other and build community within the Battalion. This too was something that I remembered my mom doing when I was little, but my memories are moreso of the food that got leftover and being banished to my room while everyone sounded like they were having the times of their lives in the living room. (I actually tried to sneak out of my room a good bit when I was little since I was convinced no party could happen in my house without me, but it got less interesting the older I got). This was one of those things that I knew I needed to go to for Dereck and establishing ourselves in the unit, much like the Battalion ball, but I also knew I was going to be the baby of the group since we are the bottom rung of the officer ladder at the moment. However, Dereck came in at the same time as two other LTs with wives, so we got to be the newbies together, and despite the age gap of almost 20 years to some, and the mix of people with and without children, I had a good time getting to know the women. Really it was the chocolate fountain that sealed the deal for me, complete with bits of strawberries, angel food cake, and peanut butter balls. If I could have one of those running in my house I would be one happy and fat girl. The funny thing about this time in our married lives is that we are the utter definition of high school freshmen in the Army. You remember the feelings of anxiety, nervousness, excitement, trying to act cool, interesting, and on top of things while you are actually sprinting just to catch up with the status quo? That is the exact moment where we are, and I am here to report that those feelings can occur more than once in life. There is lots of sitting and observing others for social cues and conversation topics, so I have a ton to practice and learn still. The older wives in the Battalion immediately reached out to Stacey, Beth, and myself and offered their contact info, should we ever need it, and I can only assume that this is a trend that has been passed down by older women to younger women. The best part of the evening is when I came home and found Dereck asleep on the couch. I used to think that I was a sound sleeper, but this kid can put me to utter shame in that department. I spent three minutes trying to shake his arm and wake him up so he could move from the couch to bed, and this is when he finally opened his eyes and asked me how the tunafish was. I got the giggles so bad that I had to walk away for a minute, and only because he said it with such sincerity- he honestly wanted to know about the tunafish. A couple minutes later I got him to walk down the hallway and he promptly fell asleep sprawled across the entire bed, always the sharing husband. When I asked him the next morning about the tunafish, he looked at me super confused and then remembered watching some fishing show on Discovery before I came home. Apparently tunafish is the new code word for Battalion coffee, word to your mother.

The real highlight of the blog has to be our adventure to see a dog breeder on Saturday. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, we are looking at getting a dog, and now I can happily report that we are going to have a puppy at the end of April in the Kennedy house. We have been looking a breed named the Vizsla or Hungarian Pointer for the simple fact that it kept coming up in conversations and on tv, and it turned out to be a great fit for us. It is a medium-sized dog that likes to hunt, a deep red coat, and has lots of energy, something this house is not short of (and in my dreams when my gimp knee is better I will be able to go running with the dog). The drive alone to see the breeder was phenomenal. We drove from the rainforest of West Washington, into the mountains and past ski resorts, and over into the heart of the apple orchards so famous in the state, and finally into the hilly eastern side of the state with brush and sand. Tucked into the mountains is a town called Leavenworth which is, no lie, a complete Bavarian (Germany) style town from the buildings and architecture, to the street signs and shops. I had heard about the town while at ITT (the place to book trips on post with military discounts) and demanded that we stop there even though it was a little off our path on the puppy palooza. And to make Leavenworth even better, it was a dog day at the park in the middle of town. Everyone had their Huskies and rugged mountain dogs out for the day. We even saw a Entlebucher (traditional Swiss mtn dog with tri-color coat) that had a little barrel around his neck, just like in the pictures, and an old man with traditional mtn wool coat and hat. I asked Dereck at this point if our dog could wear a barrel of beer on his neck and run into his office whenever he needed sustenance, and the look I got in return was priceless. I have never in my life seen such a good reproduction of Germany in the US and I was in hog heaven as we visited the local stores and bakeries (I love my bread products!). Dereck even got to visit a specialty cheese store and buy some neat spiced and flavored cheeses for us to eat with a huge loaf of fresh bread from the Baeckerei (bakery) for lunch down by a stream. I want to get back there as soon as possible and explore more of Bavaria in Washington! Eventually we made it out to the breeder's house and got to visit with her and the dogs for over an hour. Sadly the dog pregnant with our puppy had not gone into labor yet, but she sat in the kitchen demanding petting from Dereck and me the entire time we sat there. It has to be a good dog when the mom about to be in labor with puppies is wagging her tail and pawing for attention from strangers. The breeder must have liked us also since she let us hold 2 week old puppies. I melted the moment I held the little puppy and secretly wanted to stash it in my coat and run away. She would never have noticed one pup missing from the big bed of them! Leaving the breeder's made me want a dog so badly, and the good news is that we 100% feel like this breed will be a good fit now. I hope the end of April gets here in record time!

Sunday we got a TV stand and now when I look around the house, it feels like home. Dereck and I both agreed yesterday that it is so weird to be married and making a home together. I feel like I am still playing pretend with my Little Tykes kitchen and soon some adult is going to arrive and tell me how everything is really done. Pictures of the house should be posted on facebook soon, and haven't been posted yet since I want to get curtains on more of the windows first. I have to make things look nice for when all my visitors come out this summer- cough, cough- did I mention we are getting a puppy- cough, cough. The last bit of good news is that I have befriended the spin teacher (stationary bike class at the gym) and she wants me to train with her and her friends- biking, running, swimming, the whole shebang. Now I just need to have my bike shipped from Alabama, get my gimp knee on the rebound, and find my Speedo swimsuit I stuck somewhere in the madness of unpacking- no problem, right?