Fort Drum - or Canada South

Fort Drum is located in upstate New York approximately 26 miles from the Canadian border.  The military base there is home to the 10th Mountain Division.  They are a light infantry division, meaning that they carry a big old rucksack on their backs and go for little walks!  Apparently in WWII, the soldiers of the 10th skied across the alps (I think).  The post is a mix of new and old, with most of the barracks still being old Temporary building (at least while we were there).  It is a beautiful area, and the housing was pretty nice, but as there are so many troops there, there is not enough space on post, and the off post housing can be as far as an hour away in Goveneur.  Scott had stayed in the barracks while we waited for on post housing, as we did not want to make that hour drive back to post in bad weather. 


Our apartment was a cute little garden style home on the second floor.  It was two bedrooms and one bathroom, with a living/dining room combo and an eat in area off of the kitchen which we used for a study, since the builder neglected to put an overhead light in that room. We had a huge laundry room which offered extra storage space.  Our garage was not attached, but the stairs were inside the garage with just the door to the landing being attached to the landing of our front door.  It was definitely nice in the winter.


Our first year there showed what it was truly like to live in upstate New York.  We saw flurries on Halloween, and it snowed so bad that by Thanksgiving, we had 5 feet on either side of the driveway.  Thankfully Scott took the snowblower safety course, so we could use the shared snowblower.  It continued to snow throughout the winter, and we were still seeing flurries on Mother's day.  It was warm in May, but it was only truly hot for about a month in July.  We learned the importance of having a good cable package.  There was not a whole lot to do in the winter.   


Of course, my thoughts on how hot it got might be slightly off, as the first year we were there I was pregnant with Aidan. Okay, so there we a couple of things to do in the winter....LOL.   I was very fortunate to be going through my first pregnancy with a good friend who was also pregnant with her first.  Our boys were born 6 days apart!  Aidan came into this world after 21 hours of labor  followed up by a C-section weighing in at a whopping 9 lbs 6 oz, and stretching out to be 24" long!  The doctors called him Moose in the delivery room and were taking bets that he was over 10 lbs.  His head circumference was 15.5 inches followed by a 15 inch chest.  Good thing he was a c-section, because it sure seemed like I gave birth to a toddler!!!  

Aidan was a great baby, and soon I found other moms to hang out with.  There was a group of us that got together on a regular basis for baby play dates.  Of course the kids were too young to play together, but it was great for us!  This is the wonderful group of babies that we had from left to right:
Kimberly, Evan, Aidan, Hannah.
They ranged in birthday from Hannah being born in March to Kimberly in September, with the boys in the middle in July.  These kids and their moms helped me make it through that first year at both Fort Drum and being a mom.
And so the first year of being at Fort Drum ended and we were still in the same location, and did not  look like we were moving anytime soon.  It was so nice feeling like we were going to be someplace for a little while.  I knew it was a hard assignment for Scott, physically, with all the road marches, but it was nice having a group of friends to rely on if you needed something.