Back again!

Hello all!
Sorry it's taken me FOREVER to post...again! I got a new computer and had trouble recovering my password to get into the blog. Anyways, I have reset the password and I have it written down. Now, enough excuses and time for a HUGE update. 

We spent our Christmas and New Year's on island however we had guests. My mom and sister were able to fly out during their winter break. After not seeing my family for a year, it was definitely nice to see them for two weeks- although it would have been nice if everyone from back home could come visit. While they were here, we spent a lot of time at the beach, explored the island, and went to many of the restaurants and local attractions. We even spent New Year's with all of our friends that we have met out here. As strange as it was to have my mom staying in MY house, it was still awesome.

Nothing too exciting happened between January and March. Micah and I basically spent the majority of that time working and hanging out with friends in our free time. In March, Micah went to Malaysia with the USS Emory S. Land. The Land is the sister ship of the USS Frank Cable and it is taking over for the Frank Cable while it is on the West Coast for repairs. I spent those three weeks picking up more hours at work and hanging out with friends. I also attended my first DAR meeting in Guam! There are a few ladies who's husbands were in the service and retired on Guam who started a DAR chapter. My mom, of course, told me about it so I decided to check it out. We have one meeting every month at the Mermaid Brewpub and Grill (a local restaurant out in town). Right now, we’re still trying to get all of the legal kinks worked out but we are slowly moving forward. My mom even represented us at Continental Congress in Washington DC in June (the DAR’s national convention).

We got lucky, yet again, to have Micah home before his birthday. We kept it pretty subtle again this year and I made him his favorite meal-meatballs and rice pudding (of course!)- and spend the night in.

In June, we celebrated my birthday and our 2^nd wedding anniversary. Micah totally surprised me by getting off of work at 9 am on my birthday. We spent the majority of the day just lying on the couch and watching TV. Little did I know that he had the entire night planned out. We went to dinner, a movie, and he surprised me with a stay at a hotel. In the hotel room he had my gifts and a birthday cake waiting for me. Since our anniversary fell on a Monday this year, he also surprised me with a bottle of champagne after he gave me my birthday presents. It was so nice to get out of the house for an entire night since we had both been working so much. On the night of our actual anniversary we went out to dinner.  

The following day, our neighbors invited us over for a small, surprise birthday party for me. We had margaritas and a barbecue. Then, the following weekend we threw a party for my birthday with all of our friends at our house.  All in all, I have to say I definitely had a fantastic birthday this year and to top it all off, I’M NOT A TEENAGER ANYMORE!

Another exciting thing that happened in the beginning of June was that I started taking college courses. There is a college office on base with representatives from various universities and colleges in America. Each one offers different distant learning courses that are done either entirely online or a combination of online and face to face in a classroom setting. I had been thinking about starting school for some time but never actually went through with it. Finally one day I just walked in to the office and filled out an application for one of the schools. The representative was very helpful with everything and also very encouraging. I ended up enrolling in two classes for a summer term. I took US History I and General Psychology. I’m still not completely sure what I want to do career wise so for right now I am just working on a general studies associates degree. I actually just finished my last assignments for the summer term this past week and now I am just waiting to hear what my final grades were. I am going to start classes again in a few weeks when the fall term starts and I will be taking US History II and either Ethics in Criminal Justice or a business class.

Now it’s July. In case some of you lost count; we have been here for 2 years and 4 days. Although we aren’t 100% sure when we will back on the mainland, we know it will be late July- early August 2013. We still aren’t sure if Micah will be reenlisting- there is a new process they have to go through at the end of their contracts where they have to basically fill out an “application” to stay in the navy. Micah turned in his first “application” about a month ago and we should be finding out the results in the next few weeks. If he isn’t accepted this time around, he will have 5 more tries. We are both praying that he is able to reenlist. He likes his job and I really can’t complain about my end of the deal either- except for the distance between us and our families. Regardless if we are able to stay in the navy or not, we will be going back to the Chicagoland area for about 30 days next summer.

The next few months should prove to be pretty exciting and now that I have my password to the blog written down, I will be able to keep it up to date!

Check out Facebook for pictures (there are just too many to post on here).

https://www.facebook.com/donna.simonson4