Getting Back Into Our Routine....

Since we've been in Hometown, USA essentially homeless for the past week or so things have been really out of whack.

We're from a part of the country that has cold winters, so we had to bring our warm cloths. Next week though, we'll be in Florida, and while its not "hot" down there this time of year, it definitely necessitates a different kind of clothing than we wear up here in the winter! So we have our warmer weather clothes with us also. Add to that all the baby gear that a 9-month old requires and well, we could really use a Uhaul!

You can imagine how hard it is to move from one place to another each day. We have to lug all AJ's stuff around each time we go from my parent's to D's parent's house (about 20 minutes). After doing that for Thanksgiving, we decided that since we're spending the week in Florida with my family after Christmas, we would just spend the whole week here in Hometown, USA with D's family.

We did a few days at my parent's when we first got into town, but since Monday we've been at D's Dad's house. Its been really nice to relax for a while, but now that we've been here a few days it finally feels like we are settling back into our routine.

For example, I made a few goodies for all the festivities that we have planned for tomorrow. We're switching it up this year and doing fondue for dinner, so I made some treats to dip into the chocolate fondue. I made brownies (from a box) and peanut butter rice crispy treats. We're also doing marshmallows, bananas, apples and pineapple in the chocolate. I think we're planning to do assorted veggies and bread in the cheese.

It felt good to be back in the kitchen, making food for people again. Since we've been home, everyone else has been cooking tons of food for us and I miss being in the kitchen!

Now I've got the brownies in the oven, D is wandering around the house with AJ enjoying the time with family and I am sitting down to blog. My FIL is wrapping gifts in the most beautiful way that only he can, I'm drinking an ice-cold Dr. Pepper and life is good. :)

Enjoy your holidays, folks! I know I am!

So I've Been MIA...

I know I said that I was going to try and post more now that the move is on hold (underway?). We really have just been hanging around, lounging, playing, eating and enjoying spending lots of time with all of the extended family. We're getting all geared up to celebrate Christmas with D's family on Christmas Eve and we'll then pack up the car and drive to FL where we'll spend the next two weeks enjoying the warm weather and celebrating with my family for a while.

My brother, his girlfriend and sister and her boyfriend, along with my parents will all be in Florida with us for the first week, then we're on our own for a week until we drive to our new duty station and close on the house! Yay!

To say that we're excited to get to our new place and finally get to settle in somewhere that is 100% ours would be an understatement. We're so excited, but its also daunting because we've already spent so much money and we don't even live there yet! lol

In other news, AJ was baptized last weekend. We waited a really long time to do it (she is 9.5 months old), but we wanted to do it at home with the priest we know (he married us!). I'm really glad that we did wait! We were able to have all our families there to help celebrate with us! Pictures from the big day will come later (after I find my camera cable in the mountain of things that is our stuff).

I haven't really taken very many pictures so far this trip, but I'm going to try to get better! We're going shopping this afternoon with D's dad and then we'll be back to just hanging out again!

Anyway, I just wanted to check in with everyone and let y'all know that we're still around, just not too much is actually happening lately! I probably won't be online much until after New Years, so if I go MIA again, don't be surprised!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Who's the Adult in Your House?

Because in our house its not me.

;)

The following is an actual conversation that took place last night.

D: Wow, that's a long blog post.
Me: You're a long blog post.
D: I guess I am.

Oh, and don't worry, the long blog post he was referring to was one I was reading, not writing!

There are a lot more reasons that D continues to be the adult in our house, but I just thought you'd like a glimpse into our otherwise mundane (and over-run by moving) lives.

You may continue on with your day now.

No ID Card For You!

Since we moved here 6 months ago my friend Meghan and I have been talking about going to get new military ID cards. Its recommended (but not required) that you update your ID card when your spouse makes the rank that ours are. We've literally been talking about doing this since the first week we were here.

Well, last week we decided to make appointments and go do it. You know, as sort of a last hoorah! Ha. We had plans to go to lunch afterwards.

After making my appointment I made sure to get my Power of Attorney (POA) out of the filing cabinet because I would need it to get a new ID card issued. If the military member is there, then you don't need it, but we didn't want the husbands tagging along on our girls afternoon out, so yeah, you get the picture.

Well, I stuck the POA on the front of the fridge and then didn't think about it again until this morning. When I realized that it was no longer on the fridge. I was secretly hoping that D had moved it from the fridge and stuck it in the portable file box we carry our important papers in when we move.

After frantically searching through each and every paper in the box, I did not find the POA. I knew that they wouldn't let me get a new ID without it, but I went and tried anyway. I mean, I had an appointment! As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I did not get a new ID card, but my friend Meghan did!

So, the moral of the story folks, is that you should never try to do anything extra the week you move. Just stick to moving, its stressful enough.

If You Love Barry Manilow, You're Going To LOVE Insane Clown Posse!

What do you do when you officially have no furniture in your house and the baby goes to bed at 6:30 pm?

You watch stand up comedy, of course!

We're currently watching Zach Galifianakis (the weird guy from The Hangover) and he is so funny! (The title of this post is a line from the show we're watching right now.)

via

I have always been a fan of stand-up comedy and I am really enjoying the time we've spent sitting around watching funny, funny people the past few nights.

I have been working on my cross-stitch stocking that I'm making for AJ and just laughing. I'm looking forward to ordering Chinese food and spending some more QT with D tomorrow night. Even though moving is pretty stressful, its helpful to relax and decompress by laughing together.

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We always order Chinese food the first and last night we're in a house. Its kind of a tradition we have.

What are some of your moving traditions?

Mish Mash

This past week has been kind of crazy (to say the least). I mentioned a few days ago that the movers came and went. We also had D's graduation and the graduation reception for the course he just finished.

Here are a few pictures from all the festivities.

D's BFF, right after he realized that his name tape broke...

The whole group that is heading to our next duty station.

N was presented with this "doo rag" because at one point during the 6-month long class he wondered out loud if he could get a wave in his hair.

These two boys love each other too much sometimes. :)

As their other (better?) halves, at least we get along!

A quick prom pose.

D, right after graduating from his course!

Posing with the graduate!

All four of us after graduation.

Our backyard this morning!

Go Army!

Sink Navy!


While I've never made it to the game, I always look forward to this weekend! I'm really hoping that this year Army wins (since they finally have a shot!).

We're all decked out in our black and gold today and we're heading to a friend's house to cheer on the Black Knights!

WE'RE DONE!

The movers are done that is!

This was officially the fastest pack/load we've ever had. And can I say Hallelujah to that?!?

Packers showed up at 0930 yesterday and left around 1700.

The loaders were here bright and early this morning (read: 0745) and were driving away with all of our HHG (household goods for all you civilians out there) at 1145! WAHOO!

I'm sitting here on our couch with my feet propped on the ottoman waiting for 1430 to roll around so I can leave to make it to D's graduation on time! AJ and the dog are both napping and life is good!

Wait.

You thought I said that all of our stuff was gone, right? Well, I think I mentioned before that my little (24 year old) brother moved about 2 hours away from us right? Since this is his first apartment he is going to be inheriting our couch, loveseat, and ottoman when we leave and we're getting new ones at our next duty station.

Considering the fact that we have to hang around this hell hole place for another 5 days our plan to have the brother get the couches early next week could not have worked out any better. We have somewhere to sit for the next 5 days!

After our last move I could not be happier with the way things went over the past 2 days. To give you an idea of how bad that move was, I'll attempt to explain what happened when the moving truck finally pulled up to our house (14 days after we got here).

Side door of the truck opens.

Driver pulls several random objects off the top and starts holding things up in the air asking, "Is this yours?"

One of the things he held up was a pillow.

I'm not kidding.

It wasn't our pillow. Thank the sweet baby Jesus.

If you've never had the military move you before (or just professionals in general) then let me explain a little something real quick. When you move the packers and loaders (usually two separate crews) go through everything you own and tag it with little numbered tags. The tags are a specific color and they write down what each and every item is on an inventory as they go through.

There is no reason that the driver should ever pull something off the truck and ask if its yours. He should know that your shipment is everything with the yellow tags (or blue, or green, or whatever) and as the crew brings the boxes and furniture into your house, they call out the number on the tag. 47! 189! 2! etc. As you hear the numbers, you quickly scan the 8 (or more) sheets of inventory and check off the number.

At the end, you should know exactly what you're missing.

Needless to say, we had a few missing items last time, not to mention a few broken items. Couple that with the fact that it took 14 days for the truck to arrive after we got here, and well, you could imagine that I was less than pleased. We didn't get here super fast or anything. We had a 3 month old baby at the time.

Anyway, there's your little lesson on how to move when you hire a professional moving company. I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert considering that this is the fourth time we're moving in three years (fifth if you count when I moved from Hometown, USA to GA to join D at BOLC).

Alright folks, I'm signing off for now. I'm going to relax for an hour until our neighbor gets here to watch AJ for the graduation.

Following Up....

I've noticed that a lot of bloggers are struggling lately with motivation and I think that its just that time of the year when life gets crazy and blogging takes a back seat. I think this is especially true with commenting on other's blogs as well.

The reason I bring this up is because I don't know if you remember a few weeks ago when I told you all that to celebrate reaching 100 followers I was going to collect your favorite recipes and randomly choose a few to make a celebratory dinner. Well, due to lack of comments, I'm going to have to postpone for a while.

I only got 2 comments and that was going to be a pretty interesting dinner of 7 Layer Bars and Cheese and Chocolate Tunnel Cake (although a whole dinner of just desserts is my type of dinner, I don't think the hubs would go for it. He's so responsible sometimes....).

So anyway, I'm going to continue racking my brain for something exciting to blog about so that I don't bore you all to tears any longer and hopefully I'll be back very soon with something interesting to say!

Oh, also, bear with me if this week is slow on my blog, we have a formal tonight (I'll post pictures) and then the movers come tomorrow and Thursday.

I'm excited to get all dressed up for the ball tonight, even though I'm wearing a dress from my closet. I knew that we had the reception coming up, but I hadn't gotten any information from D before we went back to Hometown, USA for Thanksgiving. When we got back here he handed me the invitation. If he had let me know a few days earlier I could have looked for something new while we were in civilization. I think that he purposely held out on me so that we wouldn't have to spend money on a new dress. Grrrr.

Oh, also, I mentioned the other day that I was pretty sure he scheduled the movers the same day as his graduation so that I wouldn't be able to attend. Well folks, I got confirmation of this last night. I swear, he's lucky I'm so madly in love with him.

Anyway, I should have plenty of time to blog after the movers are done, since we won't have any furniture or tvs and the internet will be our only means of entertainment for a few days.

So, look for some new stuff soon!

Who's Ready for a Vacation?

I know I am!

D and I were talking yesterday about something and I mentioned that we're going on vacation in 3 weeks. After saying it out loud I almost had a break down because I couldn't believe that it was still that far off.

Seriously. Could we fast forward through this move and go right to vacation?

Oh, I forgot to mention, we're moving next week.

D graduates from the school he's in next week, the same day the movers are coming. I'm pretty sure he planned it that way so AJ and I wouldn't go to graduation. At least I am able to go to the reception on Tuesday. One of our good friends here is going to watch AJ for us.

I'm excited about getting dressed up and going out, but kind of bummed that since we live in the depths of hell middle of nowhere the reception is being held at the Officer's Club and not somewhere else that could possibly be fun/cool.

Have I mentioned that I'm glad we're moving?

I'm not excited to move, but I am looking forward to being done with this whole moving every 6-10 months thing we've been doing the past 3 years. Ugh.

In other moving news, things with the house are going just swimmingly. So well, in fact, that I'm allowing myself to get excited about it. I know, I'm weird. The thing is, I've gotten excited about enough stuff that was hardly even remotely related to the Army and had my soul crushed over and over again. Now when something good looks like it may happen, I have to remain uninterested and stone cold in order to not have my hopes and dreams dashed again.

I know that all you MilSpouses know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the move update is this:

We took everything off the walls yesterday. I bought Mr. Clean Magic Erasers at Lowe's (after 5 moves, these have really proven to be one of the most valuable tools you can own). We made a list of things that we should put in the car.

This move is infinitely more complicated than the past moves for a number of reasons. They are:

1. We're buying a house.

2. We're leaving here mid-December and not moving into our house until mid-January.

3. We're spending half the time in Hometown, USA (cold climate) and half the time in FL.

4. We have to pack accordingly for the climate in each place while still keeping what we bring in the car with us to a minimum.

Okay, I know there are more reasons, but I am getting a little overwhelmed thinking about them all right now. So, if we could just fast forward a few weeks and get to my vacation, that would be great!

Oh, sorry for being MIA and then posting a big, long, complainer post.

The Pictures From Our Travels

The first thing AJ and I saw when we got off the plane at the beginning of our journey. I thought it was fitting because AJ loves taverns. lol

AJ and her Daddy hanging out on Thanksgiving. She takes her holidays very seriously.

AJ hanging out with family on Thanksgiving.

AJ eating whipped cream for the first time. I walked in on this after the fact....

AJ trying to break out of my childhood bedroom at my parent's house. She was hilarious. She would lean over and look at herself in the mirror and just laugh her butt off!

Me and AJ hanging out at D's dad's house the day after Thanksgiving.

AJ and her great-grandpa (who happens to look just like Joe Pa).

AJ, her grandpa and Grandpa's dog, Rocco.

My New Project

Two quick things....

First off, AJ has a cold and has basically been a miserable baby the past few days. That's part of the reason I haven't really been around after I promised I would be. Sorry!

Second, while I was home in civilization I went to Hobby Lobby (yay!) and got the stuff to start AJ's cross-stitch stocking. I've been trying to find time to work on that (don't worry, I don't think its going to be done by Christmas, I'm hoping for next Christmas) and blogging has taken a backseat for the time being.

I kind of feel like I've lost my mojo a little bit, so I'm going to blog when I have things to talk about, because I don't want to bore you all with my laundry woes!

Don't worry, I have a few things to talk about soon because we're getting ready to move. Yes, again!