Unrelated (but Equally Important) Things

I’ll make this short and sweet because I have no pictures or long stories to accompany these, but they are very important nonetheless:

1. One of my very best friends from middle and high school had a BABY last week! Diana Correa (formally Hufziger) and her husband are now the proud parents of baby Natalie Paige Correa. I am SO incredibly happy for them. Diana and I were best friends in middle and high school and we lived in the same neighborhood. She and I got engaged the same day and she and Aaron got married about a year before us. What a wonderful couple and I am SO thrilled that they are parents. That being said, I cannot believe we are growing up! It seems like just yesterday that we were playing in trees in Grier’s backyard and having sleepovers on snow days (I’m sure my mom thought the same thing the day I got married, but still). Mom and baby are healthy and beautiful!

2. 6 months after packing up our little Civic and driving the 3,000-some miles from Jacksonville, FL to San Diego, CA, the Navy FINALLY paid me the thousands of dollars that they owed me from our PCS move. from gas and mileage and per diem and temporary lodging expenditures and dislocation allowance and hotels in Bahrain while I waited to go to ABOT, the Navy has taken its sweet old time (and requiring me to fill out excessive amounts of paper work AND audited me) but they have finally paid up. It is SO exciting because we practically forgot about all of this money they owed us, Dan said if only we could have charged interest :)

3. as of today, there are only SEVEN weeks of deployment left. When you think that I’ve already done EIGHTEEN, it doesn’t seem so bad, does it? I’m sure I’ll have some bad days around the end of February to the middle of March, but for now it sounds pretty good and I’m going to keep counting down the weeks for awhile.

4. Gold star of the week goes out to the amazing Dan who has so expeditiously posted all of these blogs and accompanying pictures with only minor grumbling about how annoying blogger is to upload pictures. You are the BEST Dan- thanks for doing this for me. (But I figure if he ever does quit the “Molly Blog Posting Job”, I have multiple blog-savvy friends- Bridgee, Lizzy, Molly V, etc who would probably volunteer to step up and help). I love you!!!