Life in Ohio

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here. I've got to get back in the grove of keeping this site updated. We've been in Dayton just over 3 weeks now and really are enjoying it. I just thought I would share a little bit about what life is like for us here.
HOME: We moved into a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath townhouse. It has a garage and a small yard, both of which are firsts for us. The walls are cream, the carpet is a little darker cream and my tile is cream. But the big excitement comes in the bathrooms...they really got crazy there and put in white tile! Yes, it's military housing so everything is pretty blah. However, we love the space - it's bigger than anywhere we have lived so far. We hung pictures on the walls this past week and that has made it feel more like home. I also got my "graduation" gift (you know for putting John through school). New living room furniture! Our yard was a mess when we got here. So we've spent several hours outside trying to get it looking nice. It's already come a long way. Our grass is infested with weeds and is really splotchy. There are just chunks of grass growing amongst all the weeds. It's ugly. So we've put down a bunch of grass seed to help fill in the holes and it's helping. Once the new grass matures a little will hit the entire yard hard with Weed & Feed and hopefully that will get it looking nice. I think you should be able to walk on grass without your shoes on, and this is definately not barefoot grasss yet, but hopefully we're getting there. Oh, we also water our grass! What a concept. People out here don't water there grass and water is free! I know we get more rain than most of the country, but still watering has done wonders for greening up the grass. We found that really interesting... There is also quite a bit of wildlife in our yard. We love watching fire flys in the evenings, as well as the bats that come out of the trees. During the day we often see cardinals in our yard, as well as a few other really neat birds, but I don't know what they are. We also have a rock chuck that lives in the backyard and we occasionally have jack rabbits too.

CHURCH: Funny story about church... We logged onto LDS.org to find out where we met for church. The site listed a whole bunch of wards, and by looking at the map it looked like we would attend a branch in downtown Dayton since it was the closest one to our house. So John went to the branch the first Sunday we were here (yes, I was home in bed) anyway, he went downtown, hard a very hard time finding the building since it wasn't a regular LDS building...just a door on the street. He finally finds the door and it's locked! He could see people inside, but he couldn't get in. So he knocks on the door and someone lets him in and he asks why the door is locked? Oh, you know...it keeps people from coming in off the streets and stealing things... Right. Did I mention that downtown Dayton is scary? Ya, pretty much it's not a place you feel real warm and fuzzy inside when you are driving around. This branch downtown has hired a security guard to stand in the parking lot to watch over peoples cars while they are in church. Crazy, huh. Anyway, we come to find out that we don't go to the branch! Thank goodness!!! What a relief. We drive about 20 minutes out to a rather large ward in a town called Beaver Creek. It's a beautiful area, nice houses, nice people, warm fuzzies... Our ward has been so friendly and welcoming! We've had dinner with a couple of the families that live just around the corner from us, and there are two other families who we knew from Logan since they were in the ROTC with John.

WORK: John is working in the Propulsion directorate of the AFRL (Air Force Research Labratory). He will be working with scram jets once he actually starts working. Right now he is still doing in-processing and has a lot of training ahead of him. We just found out that six weeks of his training will be in Montgomery, Alabama from Novemeber 1 - December 14. He will be gone for Gabe's 1st birthday, Thanksgiving and his own birthday. I am thinking about going with him since he'll miss so much while he's gone, but I'm dreading spending six weeks cooped up in a hotel room. Anyway, work for me consists of taking care of Gabe and continuing the ongoing project of making our new house feel like home. I've also started going to a "Mommy Bootcamp" class at the gym on base. It's great being able to workout and have Gabe with me. I thought it would be kind of a push over class, but the guy teaching it is tough on us! It's been good for me to get up and go in the mornings!
Okay, this is long, so I'll wrap it up now. Love ya'll and we'll do better at keeping everyone up to date on what's going on.