On Saturday, we had a lot of cleaning/errands to run in the morning and then Andy invited a new co-worker over to check out our little town in the afternoon and have dinner with us.  I also ended up inviting another friend of mine over for dinner when I found out she was stuck at home with a bad knee injury while her husband was out of town.  We went and picked her up since we had tons of food and knew the co-worker wouldn’t mind.  We had a good time visiting with them and Andy was happy to see how well our new dog, Maggie, did with company.

Sunday we just did church and chilled the rest of the day….I have been feeling a little out of it lately – nothing serious, just some bad headaches/migraines.  Which has probably contributed to my being a little discouraged about things….I want to be working in a more creative/interesting to me field and getting to do what I enjoy during the day and not just try and and squeeze it in around the day job (because that rarely happens….just not as creative when I’m exhausted at the end of the day or have cleaning to do on the weekends).  I’m thankful for the job that I do have though and glad my boss is back from an extended sick leave – meaning I don’t have to do as much of her work as well as mine now!  And I’m working on figuring out a way work something artistic into my life…it’s just going slowly…..

And then we came home and Andy poured me a glass of wine.

(what do you think of the new blog layout?  I’m making some big changes and switching to being self-hosted and trying to do more of the coding….I’ll probably keep playing around with it and add a new header sometime soon)

We are both definitely excited, just have a lot running through our minds constantly right now.  I’ve started a running list of all the things I need to remind myself to do in the next few weeks.  And our remaining weeks are filling up fast – we are going to try and spend a lot of good time with our families and friends and we’ve still got some of Andy’s work stuff to finish up with the youth.

Now that we have all orders/paperwork we need and have a fairly good idea of when we’ll need to be travelling/packing, I let my job know when my final day would be.  My managers and co-workers are sad I’m leaving, but they’re excited for us too.  I am going to quit a few weeks early so that I can go visit my family and friends and then come back and get everything ready to go.

It still seems surreal…

But we are moving on.  The American Red Cross has asked me if I would take a new assignment….at a US Air Force base in England for 3 years.  We said yes!  Abi and I will be moving to RAF Mildenhall, England this July.  My job title and most of my responsibilities will be very similar to what I am doing now.  We still have a lot of unknowns, but we are very excited.

We’ll be living in housing provided by the military.  The base is where the red star is on the map above.  We’ll be about 75 mi. north of London.

We will definitely miss our family and friends, but we will keep everyone up to date on our lives and travels on the blog.  And we would love having anyone and everyone come visit while we are over there!

- Andy & Abi

We made it to our site in Fayetteville and gathered up our group of Red Cross teen volunteers. We had a really good turnout – about 15 teens and one parent came out to help clean up the streets of Fayetteville for a citywide project called “Fayetteville Beautiful”.  It was a great day weather-wise – not too hot but plenty sunny.  I took a group of teens on one side of the road and the parent volunteer took the rest of the teens on the other side of the road.  Andy drove the car with water and extra supplies and met up with us at various points along the way (he’s doing a lot better walking, but I knew this would be way too much for him).  The teens did a great job…for the first 2 hours…the last hour got rough…everyone was getting tired and hungry.  We finished up right at about 3 hours and all went to CiCi’s for lunch.  They did a great job and it was a great community activity for us to do.

After we got all the teens back to their parents and cars, Andy and I went and did a little exploring in Fayetteville.  We checked out the Special Ops museum and an antique store in the downtown area.  Then, for some crazy reason, we decided to check out one of the many pawn shops on Bragg Blvd.  Andy took this picture of the pawn shop because he said I had to blog about it.

We weren’t really planning on buying anything.  But then I saw this:

A beautiful Canon DSLR camera.  Which is exactly what I had just been talking to Andy about wanting that morning.  And it was a crazy low price.  Less than half what this camera is currently selling for on Amazon.  I know because I’ve been stalking DSLRs online for the past couple of weeks.  This is a one of the lower end DSLRs and several years old, but it is still a very good camera and used by many photographers.  It was perfect since that is just what I had been saying I wanted…a good deal on a used one to learn on and figure out things….then if I get halfway decent at it and outgrow it, maybe I could earn enough money with it to buy a better one.

So….we got a camera….at a pawn shop….I really hope its not stolen or going to pay for someone’s drug habit.  But it was a bigger, more legit looking pawn shop than most – so we decided that it was probably legit and fine.  Don’t tell anyone.  I know, we’re absolutely crazy.  But I also love my new camera!  This is the first picture I took with it while playing with all the settings on the way home:

Doesn’t he look thrilled?

I did stop by the Red Cross office yesterday and helped out a little and met Andy’s new boss.  I was on my way to a meeting in Fayetteville for my job and took a late lunch, ate on the way, and then had a little time before I had to be there.  The meeting was ok – the company is trying to move in a good direction and the meeting was interactive and not boring….I just mentally wasn’t too into it yesterday.  I thought Andy might want have dinner in Fayetteville after I was done my meeting and after he had a long day working on last minute recognition stuff.  But he was too tired and wanted to head home.  I stayed in Fayetteville and did a little shopping, then got a little lost coming home since I never drive home from Fayetteville by myself and never without going through the base.  I did finally make it home and crashed into bed shortly thereafter.

Youth help people of Haiti

By Paula M. Fitzgerald
Paraglide

	Photo by Paula M. Fitzgerald/Paraglide Two-year-old Jacob Itzin gets some help from his mom, Anne-Marie, as he puts some pennies into a donation jar at Fort Bragg’s Cook Child Development Center. About two weeks ago, the childcare facility began collecting money which was donated to the Red Cross Haiti relief effort Friday.

Sometimes, making change in the world means you have to make change — the cold, hard kind to be exact.

That’s what the children at the Cook Child Development Center have done. For the past few weeks, the children here have been collecting money to donate to the Red Cross’ Haiti relief efforts.

The effort was dubbed “Pennies for Haiti” and concluded Friday. It was on that day that Andy Adams, the Fort Bragg Red Cross assistant station manager, picked up the donation during a ceremony attended by the center’s children. The grand total given to the Red Cross was $317.56, an amount that exceeded most expectations.
“The idea came after the earthquake hit Haiti,” said Priscilla Lord, the center’s assistant director. “One of our staff wanted us to give something to the people, so I called the Red Cross to see what we could donate. They told me that the best thing to give was money, so we came up with ‘Pennies for Haiti.’”

Lord explained that she wanted to make sure each of the facility’s children could participate.
“When we told the kids what we wanted to do, they were really excited,” she said. “Some of them understood that there were people who needed help, and others didn’t quite understand. But they all seemed very excited to put the pennies in the jar.”

When Adams asked Lord about how much money was in the big, plastic jug, Lord said, “You know, I have no clue, but I do know that this thing is very heavy.”

Luckily, Adams didn’t have to lug the heavy jug all the way to his car. Lord took the change to the bank and had it converted to paper money.

“The Red Cross slogan is ‘Change a life,’ and that’s exactly what we do and you are helping to do,” Adams said to the center’s staff and children during the ceremony. “The great thing about the Red Cross is that every penny you donate for the people of Haiti goes directly to the relief efforts.”

Pretty good article even if they slightly misquoted him – about 93% of the money donated goes directly to Haiti.