Our Family Christmas Letter...I will email it too!

December 13, 2008


Season’s Greetings From Virginia!


From Allison (and Cleo!)-


I wanted to do something a bit different with the Christmas letter this year, so I chose to write it from another state than Texas. It helped a ton that I moved here in August, but technicalities…technicalities. As I am writing you I am sitting in a classroom at Ferrum College giving my Cognition Final Exam. Don’t worry, no one is cheating that I know of. Ferrum has been a bit different than any other school I have been at, mainly because of the size. BYU was around 30,000 students, TTU was around 27,000 students, and Ferrum is under 2,000. I guess you could think of it as a big high school with college kids. There are good things about it, and “different” things. The good things include getting to know your students very well. Some of them you even get to know too well, like all about their weekend habits. Other good things include a pretty laid back faculty and a very nice set of staff. Some of the “different” things include students knowing you so well they have no trouble calling you at just about any time of the day, or complaining about you. Parents will call the Provost up if they do think that that you should be giving an exam the day before Thanksgiving Break.

Alas, I like my new job. This semester I was teaching Introductory Psychology and Cognition. In the Spring I will be teaching Introductory Psychology again, as well as Learning and Psychopharmacology. My classes are pretty full (which for here is like 40 students!) so I guess my reputation does not precede me. For those of you who may be wondering how my dissertation is coming…well, I still need to defend. My plan was to either defend before I left Lubbock (say in August) or come back in October – but we all know what happens when you make plans, someone else helps change them for you. The good news is that there should be no problem with getting this small amount of paperwork done next semester before the graduation deadline. I am practically done, just one more small step to take. At this point it is really just costing me tuition to stay in school longer.

So school is going good, work is going good, and yes – I like the area. It is not that big, and basically living by myself is no fun, but the people here are friendly and the neighborhood we built the house in is nice. For those of you that may have missed it, we decided to build a house that we liked since we could not really find one. We started this in May and I moved in around the first of August. I will include some pictures that we took on the picture pages of this letter, or you can find them archived on our blog at http://www.demingden.blogspot.com/ . It is a big house for just me and Cleo, but the last three weeks Justin has been home which made it a bit better (I will let him tell you about what he has been doing though!). He left for Iraq from Oklahoma in May, and right now is scheduled to be back on a more permanent basis in August. He is not going to be re-enlisting where we can actually try living together on a regular basis. Right before he came home I think it was Madeline who asked me “Isn’t this going to be the longest that you guys have actually lived together at once?” – and she was correct. We lived together for two weeks once, but never actually for three! Here is what I can tell you so far…he moves my stuff, leaves lights on, forgets to turn off the bathroom fan, leaves things out for the cat to eat that are non-food items, and last but not least…he never puts the seat in my SUV back in the right place! I know this may seem picky, but for someone with back problems slamming your knees into the dash column every time you get into the car is annoying, and painful.

Now, back to what has gone on this year. I think that aside from moving the only really interesting thing that I did was go to a New Kids on the Block (Yes, I am serious) concert in Washington DC. I had never been to DC and I had not been to a NKOTB concert since around 1990. There were four of us that went, Madeline and Caroline flew in from Utah, and Melissa lives near DC so she met us there. Caroline actually flew into Roanoke and stayed with me and Cleo for a few days too. Then it was time to skip school and head to DC. Well, the show was great. My back killed me afterwards, probably because a girl who was drunk, wearing high heels, and standing on a folding chair fell on me – or maybe because I stood up way longer than I should have. Either way, it was really fun to be 12 again. No worries though, per Justin’s request I did not keep any of the band members (just remember though – before Justin there was Jordan, but before Jordan there was JONATHAN!). Please feel free to see the attached pictures.

My birthday is right around the corner and it looks as if I am going to be here alone for it. That is ok, I am sure that Cleo and I will have a great time – maybe pick up some food and watch a movie. J I can’t really think of a better birthday than that anyway. This year I will be 29 years old. I used to think that was very, very old – but in the grand scheme of things I think that I am still very young. Especially when I can go to a concert with a bunch of other 25-35’s and act like I am 10 for two hours. Nothing like that to make you feel alive – so alive even that you find arthritis in places you did not know you had it. My parents and brother (and his family of course!) will be coming down to visit between the 22nd to 30th of December. When they leave it will be just about time for people around here to be returning. Then will come another year of meetings, students, and chasing Cleo around. Cleo is well, and says “MMMooooooOOOOWWW”. She would like you to all know that she was subjected to horrible things this year such as “moving”, “riding in a car for hours” and “having her fur removed from furniture”. She can only hope that someone reading this letter will be kind enough to contact PETA on her behalf, and maybe mail her some treats. That may make her days of torture not quite as severe…

From Justin –

Being home for the last few weeks has been great. I spent most of the time at the house, with the occasional excursion to the grocery store for food, the hardware store for Christmas decorations, or going with Allison to the school to see her work. I took over a few jobs around the house like cooking dinner, and a bit of cleaning up. We had no Christmas tree, so we picked one out from Lowes, and I set it up. The tree came pre lit with 600 white lights on it, but I wanted some colored lights too. So I set myself to the task of running strings of lights up & down each branch like the white ones. It took 14 100 light strings before it was done, but man does it look good. Allison jokes that it can be seen from space, well would that be a bad thing? I was not sure how I would like Virginia, having never seen the area, it turns out it’s a very beautiful area. Our house is at the end of the street, and behind us the land slopes off down a hill with a stream at the bottom. It’s awesome to have a forest in my back yard, even if that means the town is small. Plus Rocky Mount is big enough; it has a Lowes, a Wal-Mart, and most of the regular fast food chains, everything we need.

I will be going back to Iraq in a few more days, something I am not looking forward to. It’s not that the work is so bad there; it’s mostly that I miss my friends & family while I’m there. We work so much, there is very little time left for keeping up with the real world. Our job has changed some, before our unit was running 2 compounds full of detainees. Now instead we are in charge of supporting the units that run the compounds, things like doing searches for them and just being ready in case things get out of hand. I like the new job better; we have more un-occupied time to do things like read, or just talk to each other. There is even a phone we can use to call home. It’s just one phone though, so we have to keep the calls short so everyone can use it. When we changed missions, I ended up being switched to a different platoon, and working the opposite shift. Now I work basically from midnight to noon, with the occasional day off.
Next summer I will be done with this deployment, and as Allison already mentioned I will not be re-enlisting. Instead I’m going to pack up all the stuff I have in storage in Lawton, drive to Colorado, Visit Family, Pack my stuff there, and move it all to Virginia. OK, in the process I have to get rid of some things, it’s just too much to haul across the country, and the new house is already furnished, so lots of it just isn’t needed. I will begin taking classes at Ferrum College, as soon as I can, hopefully in August, if not, in the next semester. It will be nice to go back to school. I actually look forward to taking classes again, probably because for the last 4 years, my mind has been feeling deprived of intellectual activity.

I have a great love for Christmas Day, and the entire season. The decorations, music, and gift giving have a way of lifting spirits in a way nothing else can do. One of my favorite things do each year is to spend time staring at the Christmas tree, and reflect on my childhood Christmases. I used to always end up sneaking out in the middle of the night to stare at the packages under the tree trying to imagine what could be under the wrapping. I had a great imagination, but even I could not imagine the depth of the miracle that brought about this yearly celebration. This season gives us all a chance to follow the example of our older brother by focusing on others instead of ourselves.

May you all have a great Christmas, and make the time to slow down long enough remember what this is all about.

Love,

Justin, Allison, Cleo & Squishy Deming