Airpane! Airpane!

I got some really great photos of the sky yesterday. Makes me feel really good.

Seriously Easter.

I have always known the meaning of Easter, but never really took it too seriously. I have always thought of this day as just another day for candy and a day to color eggs. This year has changed my whole perspective, and all in one day.

I promised my mother and father that I would go with them to church today for Easter service and didn't think much about it.

Now let me back track. Since I was about thirteen I have been questioning religion. Just being a skeptic. Maybe it was because I was a teenager and wanted to rebel, and maybe it was because I was in an awful spot all of those years and just started to question everything.

Now, fast forward to today. We show up at church and it seemed like the normal Sunday service. We grab some snacks, get our songs/serman sheets, and get our seat. The band played all the songs on the song sheet and we bowed our heads to pray. It was when the preacher started reading scripture that I knew today was going to be a bit different. Today was all about the Resurrection of Jesus, naturally. When the preacher asked everyone who wanted to profess to the Lord that we would like to accept him into our heart and fully into our lives I bowed my head. He wanted us to silently pray because after all, it is between us and God, no one else. As I was praying, I got this overwhelming feeling as though I could start hyperventilating at any time. From that point of the service to the end tears were flowing and I was getting almost light headed with this overwhelming feeling. No matter how many times I had been saved before, today I officially became a born again Christian.

After the service we went outside for a few people to be baptized. It was amazing to watch. I wanted it so bad it took everything in me to stay put and wait until I was eligible to be baptized. This feeling is amazing, I can't wait to go to church next week.
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For James' Easter service they got to go to the house of Abraham. I'm not too sure on the details of the service, but he said it was a very cool place and quite an experience. Below is a picture of the remains of the house of Abraham where James went to the Easter service:

So long Bruno

Sugar had her puppies four days ago, and Bruno has officially passed. I named him because he was so pretty, and I was going to make damn sure he would go to a good home.

Two nights ago I realized Sugar was putting him in the corner, and going to the opposite corner of the crate we have her in, isolating Bruno. I thought maybe she was doing it unintentionally at first, but yesterday morning I woke up and Bruno was ice cold. I moved him to where he would nurse in hopes that she would warm him back up and that was the problem. Every time I would go back in there, she had moved him away again, so I would move him back. By the middle of the afternoon yesterday my parents and I had come to the conclusion that Bruno was dying, and there was nothing we could do about it.

This morning however, he was still alive. He was like a man on his death bed. He was alive, but by the means of society he was already gone. This was my father's favorite puppy as well, so we went to get him formula as a last resort hoping that maybe he just couldn't latch on and Sugar wasn't willing to help him learn. My dad picked him up, and the breathing had stopped, and he was still ice cold. It was awful, so morbid.

Poor puppy. :(

I believe this may call for a proper introduction

Well, as I sit here in the cusp of the end of the fourth month an beginning of the fifth month of our first deployment I figured it would be very beneficial to start keeping track and giving regular updates on how James' is in Iraq and how life is stateside.

For starters I am 19 and James is 22. He is an Infantry man in the United States Army. He is a PFC and will soon become a SPC (as of May) all in the first 1 1/2 years on his Army career. As I stated earlier he is on his first deployment to Iraq and is a little over half way through. My name is Leslie and I go to school online. We met almost 2 years ago and got married in October 7, 2008. We have 2 dogs, Sugar who is a Pomeranian and Chewy who is a Yorkie/Shih Tzu mix. They are our babies until we can actually achieve having a child of our own.

From the last time I talked to James I know that he has gotten soldier of the month, a coin from a brigadier general, and is up for soldier of the quarter. Though he would like to be home, he is happy with what he is doing there and says he can see improvement in the country in just a few short months.

I have recently started my second semester in college on my way to earning my associate's degree in Early Childhood Education. I am really liking Biology- Introduction to Life Science, but am not a fan of Contemporary Issues in American Education.

The apartment we have is coming along nicely and slowly starting to feel more and more like home. Our dog Sugar had two puppies two days ago, but it seems as though right now that only one is going to make it.

Okay, so not too creative or poetic on the first try, but the foundation is set for the blog to get rolling.