Three days to go...

Alas, the summer is over.  Three days to go.  I doubt I will get a chance to make another post before we depart from Fort Lost-in-the woods.  I am not sure I stand so strongly behind my previous conviction that Ft Leonard Wood is not lost in the woods.  After spending four months on base, every time we get off to go somewhere feels like my birthday.

Last weekend we had the ball/banquet to wrap up the class and congratulate the class for their accomplishments.  I am so proud of my husband.  This was no easy feat. He got to share many of the photos he'd been taking all summer at the banquet and they turned out so nice! A lot of them looked like they belonged on an Army brochure!

In preparation for the banquet I had to get a dress because I packed mine away :'(  We had to drive all the way to Springfield to find dresses, because there is nothing remotely close to base that sells decent long formal dresses.  Springfield is really only about an hour and a half away...but it took us quite some time to get there.  Our truck broke down almost exactly in the middle between FLW and Springfield.  We had to call AAA and get a tow truck to take us to Springfield.  But no auto repair shops are open on the weekends in Springfield.  Luckily we had very gracious friends that needed to make a trip to Springfield anyway that came and picked us up, brought us to the mall, and back to FLW.  As luck would have it, when our truck was ready to be picked up last wednesday they needed to go back to Springfield again, so we were able to hitch a ride there.

On our way back from Springfield we made a few stops.  First we went to Target, my home away from home...I could have spent hours just walking up and down the aisles.  That's how much I missed Target.  Then, we stopped at Bass Pro.  It's the first Bass Pro, and neither of us had been to one before.  What a treat! So cool to see all the fish and ducks and turtles (ALIVE)! They also had a firearms hall of fame, so of course we spent a good half hour up there chatting with people about guns and the army.  On our ride home, we had no problems.  How nice that was.

On a side note, we couldn't have been more prepared for the truck to break down on our way to Springfield the first time.  We had given a friend our room key, just in case something happened and we didn't come back as soon as we planned so that they could let our dog out.  E had taken out all of his Army gear that needed to be turned in the following week, just for good measure, and we just so happened to have a cooler full of cold water when we were sitting for hours in the heat waiting for the tow truck!

Anyway, it feels pretty surreal that four months is up.  Tomorrow will actually mark our four month point I believe.  To me it feels like it has been just a couple of weeks.  E says it feels like at least a year.

There is not much I will miss about FLW.  I will miss our friends.  We made so many good friends that I hope to stay in contact with as the years go by (maybe we can make a trip to Italy to visit some of them??).  I also think I will miss living on post to hear Taps play at 2100 every night.  It is so pretty.  Oh, and maybe I'll miss having maids.

I am ready to go back to Minnesota, even if it's just for a short while.  I'm excited to see family and friends and I am excited for something new (and I'm a little nervous).

I haven't quite decided if I'm going to keep up this blog, or start a new one when we move to Washington.  I think I might start a new one, so stay tuned for more adventures!