Bid List!!

Let’s see…Justan is really liking work.  They keep him busy from the beginning of the day all the way through to 5.  He even has meetings and presentations during lunch most days.  During the first 3 weeks there is A LOT of information being thrown at him so he is pretty mentally drained when he gets home.  Last Tuesday we got our bid list(the list with all the possible locations we could go)!!  We were both super happy with the list.  I can’t really go into what’s on the list but there were only 3 places we really didn’t want to go out of a list of 11 and 6 locations we REALLY want to go to!  We had a week to do research on the locations and rank them 1-11.  We turned in our rankings yesterday!! Tuesday Feb. 12 is flag day…which is the day we find out where we are going!!  They have a ceremony where they call everyone up one by one and give them the flag of the country they will be going to.  From what I’ve heard it’s a pretty fun day.  Justan’s parents will be here Monday so they’ll get to be there for flag day!  Then Friday Feb 15th there will be a ceremony where all the new hires will be sworn in.  This is pretty much so family and friends can see….Justan was actually sworn in his first day reporting to work.  My Mom flies in Thursday so the kids and I, Justan’s parents and my mom will all be there for the ceremony.  After next week things should slow down some for Justan.  He will start classes at that point and his days should be quite a bit shorter but he will have a lot of studying to do.  They are telling us that we’ll be leaving the U.S. June or July of this year.  So that puts us in D.C. a total of 5-6 months.  I’ll be taking some classes during our time here as well.  Everyone one here is so helpful and they really give you everything you need to know to live and communicate in other cultures.  We absolutely love Oakwood(our apartments)!!  The kids are having a great time here.  There are a lot of families with children staying here so Mark and Grace have kids to play with!  They have a big playground, tennis courts, sand volley ball courts and a pool.  Not that we use the pool right now but I’m sure we’ll get at least a month use out of it before we leave.  I’m signing Mark up to tennis lessons(Grace is too young to be in lessons).  I’ve been taking the kids to music class once a week here in the activity center at the apartments.  Today Mark  played soccer with the big boys while Grace played on the playground.  I’m loving being a stay at home Mom and wife:)  I’ve been cooking a lot!  Now that I have the time I want us all to start eating better.  I’ve also been working with Mark and Grace on school stuff.  I found a really cool website that has a ton of educational activities and games with individual learning plans(abcmouse.com).  Mark and Grace are both using the laptop by themselves now and working through their lesson plans!!  I’m really enjoying being home with them during the day!  Wow this is a long one…I’ll stop rambling!!  I’ll be sure to let you all know when we find out where we are going!!