"Catch Up"...since everyone is doing it :)

So Mike is officially out of the AF tomorrow....can you believe it? He spent last friday in a day long session of testing for the electricians apprenticeship and now we are just waiting on the results. So we will see. But we did find out a cool bit of info....When Mike was in basic training he declined the GI Bill....I don't understand why but I was so furious when I found out..Anyway the new post/911 GI Bill allows those that hmmmmmf, make the same decision he did, to enroll for free in a new plan. So needless to say we will be doing that. So with the new plan he will get tuition paid (upto like 7k a year, 1k per year for books/supplies and E5 BAH while in school). So for me that is good enough. So that will be good. Yippee!....oh and for other spouses.....there is a new thing out there for spousal education assistance and I think they pay about 6k a year to help AD spouses....so check it out if you are into it!

On to me...I am currently working at Target. I have been there for about 3 weeks now and am enjoying it. I am slowly learning where to find stuff and where to direct customers who are searching for strange items. I have gotten over my fear of the "walkie" that I am required to keep with me and use. I don't know why but that darn thing freaked me out...especially since my voice was broadcast all over the store. Hehe, Im a nerd, I know. But I am working in softlines right now so that means I am the one hissing and cussing over the messy clearance racks and refolding all the shirts that customers insist on unfolding...hehe. I really don't mind it...well sometimes folding does get on my nerves but still. I seriously love the fact that I am there to see all the new clearance additions though. The other day I got Ash 2 pairs of jeans for 3.24 each (adjustable waist too :)) and yesterday I got Benny two for 2.24 each...What a deal, especially when I get an extra 10% off for my discount...yay! I am working quite a bit right now and that is great. I am getting into the swing of things and getting a break from being a mommy for the past 4 years.

We bought a new little old car...hehe its a 1992 Honda Accord. It's in pretty good shape and is working perfectly as my little car to drive to work since we only have one set of car seats in the van. Mike has done a bit of work on it and is planning to do a tune up and replace the timing chain and water pump and we should be good. Its cute though...its a seafoam green color, I like it.

The kids are doing well. They got to got to their cousins birthday party for the first time and had a blast...Sadly I missed out because I was working but Mike was the lucky one who got to take them. We also had 2 of their other cousins staying with us last weekend so we had 2-4year olds and 2-2year olds...it was quite busy but we did manage to go to the beach for a few hours and to go see some horses and a donkey at a farm. The kids all enjoyed it a lot. But seriously I think I needed leashes...trying to keep them all going in the same direction and not running off was a bit of a challenge.

I have some pictures I need to download, but I will post them soon.

Ugggh, the Department of Licensing sucks

So today was just a crappy day...It is my day off work, so it should be a good day but nope.. We decided to go get our new WA licenses today and so I was a good girl and checked out what would be needed online before we left. There was specific details for military members, so I made sure we met the requirements and had the necessary documents....We drove out to Bremerton (about 40 mins) to the office that was listed in the phonebook....guess what...the office is no longer there. Sweet! So then I called up the number that was listed in the phonebook and after a huge menu of options I found out the address of the new location. So we made a detour to the other side of town and found the office. We went inside, took a number and a seat and waited. Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long to be called but once we were called the fun started....The lady took all our information...gave us both our eye tests and then asked for proof of residency....hum...according to WA DOL website we didn't need proof of residency...I would guess that is because we are still offically WA residents and still paying WA taxes...and um voting...and um ya...but the lady insisted that we were required to have proof of our WA state residency. The list of items that were acceptable are pretty standard except for the few issues that arose...like the fact that all of our bills are coming electronically and they only accept "originals" not copies or faxed documents or any other documents printed from a home computer.... Needless to mention we didn't have any of the "originals" in the car since the site did not say that we needed to have them so we were able to turn around and walk out the door...with our hands empty and ....according to state law illegally....sweet! Oh and I have to mention that the lady could have smiled...maybe just once and .....could have possibly controlled the urge to roll her eyes repeatedly at us when we tried to make our case......I love, love, LOVE good customer service...

The Easter Train

Mike's older sister flew in on the Saturday before Easter and we all had plans to go on the Easter Train that is put on by the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad. It was quite pricey but we were promised a treat. And boy oh boy were we disappointed :( So here is the story:

We drove 2 hours to get there...




And once we were there, they allowed us to wait for an extra 45 mins in the cold blustery, rainy weather un-sheltered of course, while they figured out what was wrong with the train.



After pulling up to the stairs, and backing up, and pulling up again about a dozen times they finally allowed us to board the train. We had actually been making fun of the broken down train while waiting in line thinking that we were waiting for another train to return from the previous trip. Nope, we were riding in the the rusted, mossy, broken, old train.

I think seeing the steam engine up close was probably the neatest thing of the whole trip.



Now the inside was probably dated back to the 50's and honestly I don't think it has been updated at all. The bathrooms were out of order, there were holes in the walls (see picture at bottom), it smelled funny, and the windows were all dirty and steamed up...oh and no heat on the train.

Below you can see some of the train and Ashley and her cousin Evelyn ( 2 months older).


Here are the four older cousins: Ashley, Lindsey, Taylor, and Evelyn.


So anyway, back to my complaining...once we were seated on the train we literally sat there for another 15 minutes, doing nothing and then no announcement, no seatbelts we jerk. Apparently they started going the wrong direction and ran right into another train. Sweet right, Poor Evelyn flew off the seat but was spared any injuries. The ride consisted of approximately 20 minutes of riding at about 1 mile an hour through a run down rural area..no joke we actually drove through a trailer park and saw a real outhouse...

Then we stopped and saw the easter Bunny. The kids enjoyed the easter egg hunt but were sad to find out that most of what they found in their eggs had to be confinscated by the parents...hmmm, jaw breakers and gum for the 0-3 year olds...hmmm not quite so smart.





Anyway after egg hunting for about 3o minutes we got back on the train and sat there again....forever...by this time it was time for dinner, kids were getting very cranky and considering there were 7 children with us 4 and under, it wasn't much fun.

Overall we were refunded for our tickets as we were not happy campers. I hate to be a complainer but for 18.00 per military adult and 15.00 for children...this did not cut the mustard. Below you can see the hole in the wall of the train that we were privleged to ride in.

Fox Island Easter Egg Hunt

Okay, so of course these pictures are in reverse order because I wasn't thinking and I don't have the energy to change it ;)

Ashley and Mike looking over her eggs at the Fox Island Easter Egg hunt held the day before Easter.



Benny figuring out that there are goodies inside the plastic eggs...what pure delight.



Visiting with the Easter bunny! Both kids were very willing to go and sit with the bunny, costumes don't scare them.


Mike and Benny walking up the street to the community center.



The kiddies right before we left the house. They were both so excited to have an Easter Egg hunt outside :)

I am really happy with the house we are renting. It is in a super quiet area and we actually have a view of the water from almost every window on the top floor. The only questionable part is the "fully fenced yard".

Our fenced yard consists of the picture below, yes the toilet is included in the price ;). Strange, so we have a fenced in portion of the yard that is could fit maybe two compact cars. There is not grass although it may look like it but instead a cement floor. I still cannot figure out what this should be used as or what it was enclosed for. Any ideas?





We do have a lovely yard. It was definitely not kept up to military yard standards...hehe...so we are trying to get a handle on all the raking leaves and yard clean-up. But it is coming along. But again the sad thing is that the real "yard" is not fenced in. We have been having to walk Boca on the leash to do her business and that is working fine since she is not an outside dog at all. The kids, well the kids are not the biggest fans of staying in the yard and with a busy road up above I have to keep an eye on them constantly! Here is Benny showing us the green grass... poor guy didn't really know what it was, darn ND winters ;)

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And finally I have included a picture of what happens when you mix a 2 year old, 4 year old, 60lb dog and a spider all in one stairwell.

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All jokes aside, Ben did take a tumble down the stairs...well actually he took 3 tumbles but 2 were only minor. This one gave him a nice bonk on his noggin....My favorite was when he wouldn't stop telling people that he "fell down and broke his head".

My hotel campers

The kids did exceptionally well on the trip from ND to WA. They were happy most of the time and actually both slept at the hotels even though they weren't in their own beds. Yay. I only snapped a few pictures during the whole drive. We were more focused on making good time and not so much on sight seeing...So here are two from the hotel room in Grand Forks, on our last night there!

We are *almost* settled

Well we just hit our 1 week mark of being in WA. We are almost entirely unpacked and I have started to hang some stuff on the walls. It is finally starting to feel like home. I love our house. It has just about double the living space that our Grand Forks house had, which is great. But of course there are some things that are just not going to work here. Our master bedroom is a bit smaller than I would have liked but it does have a full bath and access to the deck so that makes it better. The appliances are old but all seem to work well. The yard needs some love, serious love. The neighbor stated that no one has lived in it that cared for the yard for the last 4 years....so we have some work cut out for us. But we are ready for the challenge.

So far since we have been home we have gotten the chance to hang out with my family, mikes family, some old friends and we are looking forward to Easter and all the festivities they will have here. Not to mention the likely chance that summer dresses will be able to be worn...outdoors ;)

The kids are adjusting well. They were quite cranky for a few days and they didn't quite understand that all the people who came to visit us actually had to go home. They apparently thought they all needed to move in or something.

I have taken some pictures but the camera is upstairs so that is just going to take too much effort at the moment...but soon I will post a few for you to view!

My last update from ND!!

We rented our moving truck on Monday. We got the 26 foot truck (I have to admit I thought that it was quite excessive...) but Mike and all the sites I googled said it was better to go bigger than smaller. Well they were right! I was wrong ;(. Mike and I packed the entire truck, by ourselves, on Monday. It took us about 6 hours and we ran out of room. Thank goodness for picking the bigger truck. We still had to pick and choose what to keep at the end but at least we got all the important stuff in there first. The most miserable part....hmmm, the washer and dryer from the basement...those won the award. My arm has a nice big bruise where it got pinned between the heavy washer and the stupid, darn wall :) The best part....was when I heard a knock on the door and it was the housing inspector informing us that we are on the tear down list again and are only required to do a limited clean!!! Whoohooo

Yesterday we spent our day by:

1. scooping poop since the snow all melted
2. cleaning the garage
3. cleaning the bedrooms
4. collecting straggling items for packing
5. cleaning the stove

Today, we have to clean:
1. the fridge
2. the kitchen counters, drawers, and cupboards
3. sweep out the entry way
4. pack up the tv and our dear computer.:(

Then we are done!!!

Well we will still have to do a final sweep of the house but thats nothing

Oh and our basement is flooding...and we woke up to about 6 inches of fresh snow this morning....The joys of ND!!!

I'll update again once we arrive in WA!!!

My new doo :)

So I decided today that I wanted to chop my hair off. I donated over 11 inches to locks of love and ended up with a cute short bob. I think its the shortest I have done but i think it will be an fun style to play with.

The miserable part of a big move....thus far

Okay so my experience with moving thus far has always been to a house near by; never any great distance. When we moved to GF all our stuff was already in a storage unit so we didn't have to experience the "emptying of the fridge". I am so not a fan of this stage. Were at the point where we are trying to use up all the food in the fridge and freezer so we don't have to toss them out and waste them, which is a huge no-no for me. But still I hate this. I have a bunch of odds and ends left and nothing seems really appealing. Anyone want a can of peas for snack....hear the echo in the room:) I do need to go shopping anyway because we are low on milk and cereal and kids snacks but I am trying so hard to be good and not buy loads of perishable stuff. All I can say is that at least we are doing a DITY move so we can pack all of our spices and canned goods that the movers reject.

Okay so there is my moving complaint...at least for now ;)

Brrrrr

Right now the temperature inside my house is 62 degrees. Outside we are hovering around 0 with a -11 windchill. Its just darn cold and of course our last few weeks is when our furnace decides to take a vacation.

This is happening repeatedly for the last few weeks. The furnace works fine and is keeping temperature and then you go to bed and wake up and it will be in the uppper 50's-low 60's in our house. I called housing about about 1 1/2 weeks ago and they came and fixed 3 different faulty parts. "That oughta do ya, ma'am". So fine, it worked for 2 days and then of course last weekend it acted up again. So I called the emergency housing line and they came like 35 mins later and whey they got there they said the heat is working again so he didn't want to touch anything. So it happened one more time but when I reset the circut that kicked it back on. But seriously, come on!!!

So now I'm teetering...because it is now 63 degrees in the house and so the heat is actually working now, but still I don't want to wake up tomorrow with the same problem. But I don't want to be the crazy lady with a furnace that is not working that actually is.....ugh

Maybe for real this time...

So after finding an almost perfect house to rent last time and putting money down to hold it until we get there....the darn thing fell through. We were really quite sad but the owners of the home decided not to move to Florida as they had planned. So we were really bummed but now after much searching we found another.

This one is actually located on an island, a real island in the middle of the Puget Sound.... For those of you familiar with Western Washington we will be living on Fox Island. Yay, it will be fun, especially for the kids who have never...NEVER...seen a body of water besides a pool and turtle river...sad

So here is a snapshot of the island...check out those trees. Oh how I miss WA!



Here is the house. We were quite shocked to find it on the island especially since the average home price on the island is over 600k, ouch. So we will probably be the poor ones on the island but that is fine, we can handle that.



Now if you are up to some browsing about the area, I located a link for the Fox Island site so here you go... click here

So we are hoping this is for real this time. It should be since the house is sitting vacant and thus the owners really want to get renters in there. They even made an exception for Boca so that is great!!! Only 4 weeks left yay

5 weeks left :)

We are counting down. We have just under 5 weeks left now in ND. We found a house to rent that we love and are hoping that all the papers go through and it will be waiting for us when we arrive in WA. Yay, that would be so awesome. Here's a quick pic:

Last night I attacked Ashley's room and painted it back to the original blah cream for housing. At this moment I am quite glad that I didn't decide to paint more rooms in the house. We were expecting to be on the demolition list since we received a letter stating so over a year and and a half ago....but they backed out and are now using this housing again. So we have to do a full clean. Oh and I loved, loved, loved, how they commented during the pre-inspection that the work done in the basement was not satisfactory.....hahaahahaha....housing did it! The previous occupants put up divider walls in the basement and we have flooded about 6 times in over 2 years. So after replacing the walls twice they ended up cutting the bottom 2 feet of drywall off and just left it that way. Apparently the housing inspector didn't quite like that. :) Alright off to packing and cleaning...gotta love a DITY move!

Haircut Time...

So both kids were due for haircuts...and I got a wild hair of my own to do their haircuts myself. Ben's of course was pretty easy...just pick an attachment and go...but ashley's was a bit more challenging. I have since trimmed it a bit more since I was a tad uneven in the back but it looks pretty cute on her...Her hair was almost down to her jeans and was driving me insane because it kept tangling and getting food and paint, and glue and all other sorts of junk in it.

6 weeks left...really

We officially have just over 6 weeks left at GFAFB. So we are starting the whole separation out-processing and moving business. Yay. We are doing a DITY move since we would have to rent a trailer anyway to haul mikes car so we just thought we would do that whole thing. At least Mike has some buddies willing to help us here and I have a big family back home too. We've got our housing pre-inspection next week, so I am curious to see if they will be reusing our unit or if we will be on light cleaning status....I am seriously hoping for the latter but not expecting it.

Mike decided to join the reserves. He wasn't planning on it originally but since McChord has heavies he is certified to work on them and thus wouldn't have to retrain and so he won't have a time requirement to stay on with the reserves. The plus side and the major kicker that he signed was the health insurance option they now offer. Its really going to help us take a load off our worries. It will be very similar to what we have now and the cost isn't that bad...especially compared to other options.

And finally, Ashley had 1st parent/teacher conference at school today. Overall she is doing really well. There are a few areas that she needs to work on...but for the most part its just her stubborn attitude :) They tested her and apparently she wasn't really in the cooperative mood...but today she did much better and proved that she knew a lot of the stuff that she didn't test well on...silly girl

Strange Dog

I swear my dog is real child inside. She demands to be included in story time for the kids. It is absolutely hilarious. She will come from anywhere in the house to lay on the floor and listen to the story. Last night she was in my bedroom with the door closed and heard me start reading the story and she started barking like crazy. I let her out of the room thinking she needed to pee or something and she came right into Ashley's room and curled up on the floor... What a stinker :)

Sickies

We are sick. I can't quite tell if it is a cold or the flu but it is nasty. Ashley started with it and came down with a bad cough and puked once. Its been 9 days for her and she is still coughing but doing much better and is acting like her normal self. Next up was Mike and I. We are both still feeling quite nasty and now Benny is getting it too. He's got the congestion and the cough so far but no fever or pukes as of now...knock on wood :). But the good news is he loves taking medicine so if he does get the fever at least I can treat it unlike his darling sister :)

Well I hope everyone else is trying to stay healthy cause this bug is no fun!!!

Ashley-ism

So we just had lunch and Ashley just brought her plate and asked me to save her sandwich for her until after her nap...Okay, can do...then she informed me that I needed to put a "RUBBER NAPKIN" on it before i put it in the fridge....hahahah

Rubber Napkin= Saran Wrap Just a quick giggle :)

Birthday Time!!!

So it is birthday time in our house! Well in reality it was last week but of course life happens! Ashley's birthday was last Monday and Bens was on Thursday. We had been planning to celebrate on the Saturday prior but I got sick.

It all started with a few quick bouts of dizziness that resolved themselves within a few minutes. Just enough to make me slowdown. This occurred for about 2 days. Then on Thursday the 8th I was hit very hard with horrible motion sickness, the dizzies, pukey, and all the fun stuff. I was running into walls and falling down and it was really freaking me out. Once I realized that Mike had to go to work, meaning no help watching the kids... I really flipped out and called the dr. Of course they could not fit me in on base but they referred me to the Urgent Care downtown. So off we went. The ride was horrible but thankfully once we were there they were able to determine the cause, Labryinthitus (inflammation or infection of the inner ear or labryinth).

They put me on bedrest for 3 days and thankfully mike was able to get out of work on Thursday night. He had friday off because he had weekend duty so that was nice as well. Saturday he was called in for 11 hours. I barely survived that day of taking care of the kids. I think they both knew I was under the weather and were both trying to take advantage of the fact that I couldn't move quickly nor could I do much at all. Sunday was pretty much the same story. Mike got called in at 3am and was there for 11 hours again...:(

Thus, with all the commotion, and my lack of sanity :) We postponed the birthday celebrations until this weekend.

Of course, this morning Ashley woke up with the pukes...but thankfully it only occurred once and she was just pretty sluggish the rest of the day. We did go on with the celebrations since it was just us here anyway.

Here is Ashley passed out on the couch while I frosted the cake and wrapped presents.

Here is what she woke up to...How fun, she didn't even know I had baked a cake. She was quite excited, but pretty bummed that she had to wait for Ben to wake up too!

The only thing she asked for was an airplane....hmmmm.

We looked at so many different ones but they were either way too old for her or were not designed to be played with...So we ended up getting her the little people plane. Its' a little young for her but they do have the barn, house, car, school bus, and lots of characters so it fits right in. She also got a really cool frog backpack, a dora the explorer book with magna doodle, and an elefun game.


Benny got a tool box full of tools so he can be "benny the builder". He loved it. I think the hammer is his favorite and next up would be the pliers. He also got a helicopter that makes noise and tractor that drives around. The tractor is awesome. Its a winner with both kids!

On Monday (her actual birthday) Ashley got a cool birthday hat from school. She was so excited and the sweetheart she is, shared it with her brother on his special day! What a doll!

Ashley's First Day of School!!!

Ashley started Head Start today. She was so excited to go to school but was quite disappointed that I was her bus :(

This morning it was -29 outside when we left to bring her to school but she didn't mind at all! Benny came along for the big day too.



The funniest (aka saddest/and proudest for me) was when I entered the classroom and she walked right up to the teacher and said "Hi"...."how are you today?" and then turned around and said "bye mommy"....that was it...she was ready for me to leave. No hugs or whining for me to stay, what an independent little girl!