2018 Roundup

This year has been a busy year.  If you ask Brandon, it probably rates as one of the bottom three, with 2011 continuing to hold first place.  It's hard to beat being in the middle of the Arab Spring for making a bad year.
The year started off in Dushanbe.  We were starting to thinking about our next move to Tashkent when the Mysterious Medical Mystery appeared and moved up our timeline by five weeks.  So instead of spending the last part of March and all of April getting everything neatly in order for our departure, I spent it in North Carolina twiddling my thumbs and wishing I could be back in Central Asia.  Brandon spent those weeks desperately trying to finish up the loads of work he had while getting the house ready for pack-out.  It was not how I had imagined our move to be.
After Brandon got things finished up in Dushanbe, he joined us in the US for home leave, affectionately referred to in the FS as homeless leave, when we spend thousands of dollars to spend more time with relatives than either they or us are happy with.  We drove to Missouri and back, went to the beach, Brandon went to Utah to see his siblings, my siblings came to North Carolina, and Brandon and I ditched the children with my parents for five days.  It was very busy.
Then we spent three and a half weeks in a corporate apartment rental in Arlington where the children watched entirely too much HGTV.  The last week we spent fighting with DC over Sophia's medical clearance, finishing with an okay to fly thirteen hours before our plane took off.
Thankfully the second half of the year was spent coming down from the first half, and we were able to settle in to Tashkent fairly painlessly and are now very happily here for at least the next two and a half years. 
I'm happily looking forward to 2019.  We don't have any moving even near the horizon, I love my house, and we have lots of things to explore here in Uzbekistan.  My children are getting older and I'm enjoying the freedom of being able to leave the house knowing that it won't be in shambles when I get home.  My baby is potty-trained, starting to feed himself, and making real strides in communication.  I have made some wonderful friends here, as have the children, and we get to see them quite often (thanks to having two cars!).  I've gotten to resume a much-beloved hobby and share it with the children.  Brandon's job is perfectly reasonable, as jobs go, and he has a boss who thinks that not using all your available vacation time is a crime.  Our church group here is very cohesive and functional, something I'm increasingly grateful for. 
I'm sure that 2019 will bring surprises - both good and bad - but I'm looking forward to seeing what they are.  Happy New Year!