Our 5th Anniversary!

A day before our anniversary (which is on January 21), Jim asked me if I wanted to go to a ride with him. I thought we were going to a store or something, and I said yes. He wanted me to be ready to leave around 2:30PM, as soon as he finished working in the garden.
After he came in from the garden he brought a suitcase with him and said I had 17 minutes to pack for couple days or so. I had no idea where we were going or what we were going to do. So I threw in some stuff in a hurry, and as we were ready to leave Jim noticed that his car keys were missing. For over half an hour, we were looking for his keys everywhere. Finally I found them in one of his coat pockets in the garage.

I was so excited for the surprise! We drove almost 5 hours, and I was trying to guess where we were going. One of the names of places I mentioned was Mississippi. Of course Jim wasn't telling me anything, neither yes nor no!

We drove through a heavy rainstorm and huge lightening.

Then I saw a sign saying Biloxi. I started playing with the word saying - it's a baloney when people call me Roxy, which I hate. So, that's why this place is called Biloxi (baloney+roxy). I know it's silly but that way I could remember the name. Little did I know that we were going to stay there!

It's a small place on the beach with lots of hotels and casinos. We stayed in Grand Biloxi hotel for 2 nights. It was a great one!

Here is the view from our window.

Some hotel suites were $2,500 and up a night!! It's crazy! We had a tour through those suites in Beau Rivage.

We had a great weather those couple days in Mississippi. We spent the time walking through the big hotels/casinos, eating in their buffets and doing shopping.

No, we didn't gamble!

Note our Hard Rock cafe matching hoodies

Hard Rock casino had a great Asian buffet. We had the best egg roll ever!
I am dipping a marshmallow in a chocolate sauce


As we were driving home on the 22nd, we made several stops at outlet malls, shopping malls and we had a wonderful lunch in the L Y buffet in Pascagoula, MS.


We definitely had a happy 5th anniversary!

My First US Driver License!

Today I needed to apply for my new passport but in order to do it I had to have an ID card. So I pull out my Alabama ID card that I got last July, to make a copy when I noticed the expiration date - 12/04/2009! That was a shock! I didn't remember about it, and I thought I had it for the next 4 years. No, because my green card was expiring on December as well, so that's the date they had to follow.

We got up at 6AM today to be at the driver license place at 7, so we wouldn't get a big line in front of us. As I have been postponing getting a US driver license for over 5 years now I thought I'd better do it now and be done with it.

So I took and passed the written test and as they were preparing my documents for the driving test, we noticed that my car registration was expired, too.
They told us to go and get it registered and come back the same day and go in without waiting in the line or come back some other day early in the morning.

I was determined to finish it today!! Jim and I went to take care of the car, and after a few hours of hassle we got a new Alabama plate number.

We got back to take the driving test, and a grouchy woman came with me in the car. As I was driving made my first mistake, I thought I was going to fail. But I managed the get 95% from the test.

After getting my license we went and send my application for my US passport. I'll get it in 4-6 weeks!

A Big SIGH!!!

I have to say, that dealing with the government offices is not fun!

A Surprise Party!

After coming back from Atlanta citizenship Interview, the next day I went to exercise as usual. My friend Chelsea congratulated me on my citizenship and said: "The first order of business as a citizen, I need you to come to my house tomorrow to watch my kids". I was planning on working on my mom's documents to bring her to US, and I was hesitant to say 'yes'. I promised to call her that evening with an answer.

That evening I almost forgot about it. Carol reminded me and I called Chelsea and told that I would be there the next morning.

On Wednesday, the 16th I got ready and got to her place as promised, at 11:30. As I got there, I saw a bunch of cars parked in front of her house. I could identify every car there. There I understood what was happening.

I parked my car and instead of going in, I decided to call Jim and tell him what is going on. For some strange reason Jim didn't answer any of the phones. As I got out of the car (I was all shaky) I saw Jim parking his car not too far from mine. Hello?!! That's why he wasn't answering the phone.

What's funny that Carol had to prepare a vegetable dish and couldn't do it properly as I was around and she couldn't hide the tray where I wouldn't see it. In the morning she grabbed the things and ran out of the kitchen as I was coming to kitchen, and I was surprised that she didn't stay to say hi (it wasn't like her). But I didn't suspect anything.

As I went into Anderson's about a dozen of my wonderful friends stood by the door and started singing "God Bless America".
It was very touching!

The food was great and we all had a great time visiting with each other.










Thanks to all my friends and family members who organized it, and made the yummy food, and especially for making me feel so special!
It was the first surprise party for me, ever!

I am a US Citizen now!

After struggling with paperwork for almost 5 years I finally became a US citizen.
My Interview with USCIS people was on December 14, 2009, in Atlanta, GA at 9:25AM. It's almost 3 hour drive to get there so Jim and I decided to drive to Atlanta right after the church. We changed our clothes in the church and left. We got there around 4PM. We drove and found the USCIS office to make sure we knew where it was.

The next thing was to get a hotel which wasn't hard to do. That place was surrounded with hotels. We settled down in one, about 5 minutes walking distance from the office.
Then we went for a walk (to the mall, not to buy anything but just kill the time) for about 3 hours, until we got tired and hungry. The mall was beautifully decorated and there was Santa Clause having his pictures taken with kids. You can see him in the right corner of the picture.


Then we went back to the hotel and asked for a recommendation for a good place to eat. We were hoping to find Olive Garden restaurant but they said it was about 15 miles away. Instead, the front desk boy suggested us to go to a family owned Italian restaurant. The food was excellent!


The next morning after going through a tight security in the USCIS building, Jim and I found some chairs and waited almost an hour and half for 5 minute interview. The test went very fast and very well. Then I was told that there was only one spot left for the oath ceremony for that same day at 2 PM. How lucky!

This is right after the test

As we had couple hours until the ceremony, we decided to go out and do something. We went to the mall and bought couple things and came back.

They took me and another 157 new citizens to a big room for the oath ceremony. They announced that there were people from 58 countries around the world who became a citizen that day! the lady who was responsible for the ceremony called the names of our countries asking us to stand up. I was the only Armenian there!

I was very grateful that they called our family members in, as well. Jim came in and started taking pictures.



After the pledge of allegiance and a few short clips we were allowed to take pictures after everyone else was out of the room. As we were exiting, an employee handed us our certificates.


We made friends with a lovely couple. The girls is from Mexico. They were so excited to have her citizenship done, too!

Botanical Gardens in Birmingham!

Last Sunday after church we got out and saw the beautiful weather and Jim took a lot of pictures around the temple.

After we came back home I asked Jim if he would like us to go to the Botanical gardens before the cold season starts. That Sunday was a day before his birthday, and it was a perfectly beautiful day!


We got changed, and then I grabbed some orange rolls and peppermint tea and left.

The colors in the garden were amazing!





Jim found a big bell and had a lot of fun "ringing" it several times.


It was getting dark and we went to the car and got our orange rolls and the tea and came back to the park to eat them.


We were so glad we went there when we did, as it froze soon after that.

For the next day, Nov 30th, on Jim's birthday we didn't do much, but we had some fast food and hurried to watch the movie "The Blind Side". It was new in movie theaters, and I chose that movie thinking he would like it. Jim did not like it, he LOVED it! So did I! That was the best highlight of his birthday.

I had bought a cell phone for him for his birthday but it didn't arrive until December 3rd. But he is loving his phone so far!

After watching the movie we hurried to the airport to get Amanda and Michael and bring them home.

A Funny Story!

I thought I'd write about this "little challenge".

A few months ago I bought a new phone from ebay for Jim.
He tried to use a few times and then decided that it was too fancy for him and he didn't like it much. So, I thought to myself "you kill the dog you carry it!" (it's an Armenian phrase).
Jim had to fly to California for some meetings and then to Utah and drive his car back home to Alabama. I didn't go with him, and I also kept the phone. We talked a lot while he was gone using our landline and his cell phone.
He was supposed to come back Saturday night and instead he called me on my new cell phone Friday at 6 A.M and here is the conversation:

Me: Hello? (Trying to wake up and understand what's happening)
Jim: Is this my Honey???? (with such a hesitation in his voice)
Me: Yes, of course! why? what's up?
Jim: I don't know...your voice is .... different....!
Me: That's because you woke me up early in the morning in case you didn't know that.
Jim: Sorry, would you please do me a big favor?
Me: Sure! (my heart is already pounding as I tend to think of something bad happened with him)
Jim: Could you please come to the front door and let me in?

I couldn't believe my ears, as he was already home. He drove all night without stops to get home early. I was happy!

But here's the fun part to come.

On Monday morning I am driving to my exercise class and I decided to call my friend Melissa and let her know that I've got a new number that she can call me directly. Here is our conversation (I might have forgotten something, sorry Melissa, if so):

Melissa: Hello?!
Me: Hi Melissa, it's Araksya!
Melissa: It's who?
Me: Araksya (with such a strange feeling, why didn't she recognize me?)! I have a new number now you can save that number to call me.
Melissa: Hold on a moment! (she turns on her speakerphone). let's try again, this might be better.
Me: Is it better? can you hear me?
Melissa: I have a hard time believing that it's you, the only thing that sounds a little familiar is your accent. Steve is listening to you now and he also agrees that it's a man's voice!
Me: (I started panicking and I am trying to make sure Steve understands that it's not a MAN talking to his wife) OK, let me change my phone and I'll call you back later to see if it's fixed.
Melissa: Oh, please, because I can't talk to you like that, sorry!

I hung up and I still don't really know what's going on. I got to my class and Sherilyn was there, so I told her about the conversation with Melissa and decided to call Sherilyn so she can hear "my" voice.
As I called and started talking to her from the next room, she said, it's really a man's voice. So we switched our phones and this time Sherilyn spoke to me from my phone. That literally gave me chills and I was shocked!

Now I understand why Melissa couldn't talk to me and why my husband, coming home a day early from his trip calls me and a man's voice answers the phone! Wow!

As I was telling this to my brother in Armenia, he got excited about this new phone and the ability to change voices. I think I'll give the phone to him when we go back to Armenia next year. He also helped me fix some settings in the phone and got my normal voice back. Thanks Hrach!! As it appears my phone has voices of 2 men and 2 women and a child.

When I told this to my sister, she and her husband were laughing SO hard! Then after we hung up my sister asked her husband - what would have you done if you were in the place of Jim, when you call and a man's voice answered the phone? he said - you know better what I would have done! (and he means it! a big jealousy and sick doubts in those men in Armenia!)

I am grateful Jim didn't think that way! Maybe I'll play another trick on him?!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving we didn't have any plans, and I thought just for the two of us I won't cook a big turkey or a meal. We'll either go out to eat or travel.
Well, neither of them happened.

We heard that our friends are staying home for Thanksgiving so we decided it will be better if we spend the Thanksgiving together. Then the missionaries wanted to come for dinner, as well.

So I was happy to prepare the dinner.

We had a yummy meal with desserts and a fresh juice that Jim made by blending some fresh fruit. The color of the juice was perfect with my dinner setting! That was a coincidence though.


Laura made the best Lemon meringue pie I had ever eaten!
After dinner the missionaries left and the rest of us stayed and played rook cards.

I am so grateful for my family and good friends!
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!