Since this blog serves as a scrapbook of sorts I thought it would be fun to include our Christmas letter from this year. It actually recaps our year quite well. I hope you can pick up on the sarcastic undertones. RC and I wrote it together, but he should get most of the credit. I love his sense of humor. Both the letter and Christmas card were his ideas and it was fun for us to collaborate on both even though we were miles apart!
Dear family &
friends,
I hope that this
holiday letter finds you well. Since we no longer reside in the Charleston area
we thought it would be appropriate to provide a quick synopsis of the past
year. Overall 2012 was quite uneventful for the Leigh family. In April Ross
went to school to learn how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. He jumped
not once, but five times. I guess it's a good thing he's not scared of heights.
In May, we traveled approximately 4,453 miles or 7,167 kilometers to the Land
of Schnitzel and Fascism. It was only a 9 hour flight. Ross did not jump out of
this airplane only because he spent most of the flight sprawled out over two
seats while Emma sat on the floor of the aircraft. We saw castles, paintings,
libraries, mountains and a bunch of old buildings. We learned that Germany has one of the strongest economy in the EU and Germans as a whole are pretty OCD about
everything. It’s been interesting exploring this country, but honestly you can
genuinely sum up most of Germany in two words ‘SECOND BEST’.
Emma got a job
as a teller at Community Bank after an extremely long job hunt of
four days. Her resume and people skills were weak; however, since most of the
other Army wives were going back to the states in preparation for their
husband's deployment the manager at the bank reluctantly gave Emma the
job. In June, the Army decided that life in Germany wasn't exciting
enough and sent Ross to Afghanistan. Ross spent the first half of his
deployment on an extremely large COP with a booming population of 25
soldiers. Emma spent the summer months drinking her sadness away. She could not
bare the thought that Ross would be home in the spring and she would not
have the house to herself anymore.
When Emma was not
morning the return of her husband she was out traveling with a few close friends she
had known for a very long time. Most of her traveling companions she had known
at least 5 days. Ross became a Platoon Leader in
September. His Platoon consists of 20 of the finest soldiers in all
of Afghanistan. He will remain the platoon leader throughout the remainder
of the deployment and for at least six months once he redeploys. (Unless he
gets fired of course.) Ross has learned a lot since becoming a Platoon
Leader. He learned that you should never place someone's mattress in the
snow and to never, under any circumstance, refer to your boss
as "your sidekick."
In late October,
Mrs. Dianna decided that Emma's drinking problem had become serious
and she needed an intervention. Seven days later, Emma and Dianna were in Poland
for Emma's rehab, which consisted of driving from Germany to Poland just
to purchase pottery. During Ross’ deployment Emma also perfected two German
phrases every American Army wife needs to know; "How much?" and
"Do you speak English?” .
Despite her severe
emotional bonding to H&M, pommes, and radlers (a delicious concoction of
beer and lemonade), Emma decided to move back to Charleston, South Carolina for
the rest of the deployment. She is now taking reservations for hour increments
of quality time with Germany’s favorite red head.
We wish you all a
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love,
Ross and Emma
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