Not Quite Settled Yet

I think I psych myself up to think that every time we move it's going to be easier. No amount of psyching makes any move easier for me - not even moving back 'home' or at least to somewhat familiar territory close to family and old friends. There still is the process of reestablishing routines, getting kids signed up for school and finding childcare options for the little kids, figuring out where to buy groceries and finding the paper that has the best coupons.

I say all that to say this hasn't been an easy move for me. Not at all! I think I've mentioned before, but if you've ever read anything about 'spirited' children, I fit a lot of the descriptors as an adult. I don't do change well. I don't respond well to processes that don't make sense. I get easily frustrated when my mind has been made up that something is going to work a particular way and then it doesn't. My responses aren't good, either.

Pile on the change the fact that F5 has to be at school at 7:30am and you've got a tired, cranky out of sorts, not adjusting to change well wife and mother and an F4 and F1 who are out of sorts and sleep deprived, too. It's not pretty. It's not pleasant. I have had many moments over the past few weeks that I wish I could take back and have a do over, but that's not how life works.

Nonetheless, I'm pressing on. I'm trying to embrace our new home and our new life in our new city at our new post with grace, but that's not always the case.

One Step Closer

The home buying process has been a little more stressful than I imagined it would be. After being prequalified, I guess I just thought everything would go very smoothly. It seems like every other day I'm having to divulge more and more information to the mortgage company. Some times I know the answer right off hand and other times I have to go digging and hoping that I haven't made any serious mistake when filing our taxes or something. Our most recent hang up has been with the title to our van.

We bought the van with a loan from whoever the dealership we bought the van from used as their lender. We knew we were going to immediately pay it off with a low interest personal loan we were eligible for when Cpt was at Officer Candidate School. Apparently I paid off the loan with the initial lender and then never got a copy of the title! Oops! Honestly, in my mind we still are paying on the van, only for about 3 more months, so I never thought about us 'owning' the van outright and being the title holders. Thankfully, the underwriters for our mortgage are willing to take a written statement from us detailing why we don't and won't have the title to the van by the time we close. I think that's our final information hurdle!

We did our walk thru with the builder today to determine if there were any touch ups or repairs that needed to be done before closing. We only found some minor things like drawers that don't close flush, a light fixture that is coming loose on one side, and a noisy ceiling fan. Other than that, we just need the paint touched up in various places and we'll be good to go.

I am so excited and can't wait to get out of our apartment and into a house again! Not just any house, though - - OUR house.

House Hunters

After several months of wondering whether or not we would get the next assignment location that we wanted, we finally have an answer and we got it! We've been assigned to Fort Hood, TX. This is great for me because we'll only be about 45 minutes from some of my family in the Central Texas area.

Tomorrow we meet with our realtor to start looking for a place to live! I can't believe it. For months I've spent hours at a time looking at houses online. I've actually looked at 3 different locations because for a while, earlier in the year, we thought we were going to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas! We were overjoyed about that because we love Vegas, but through a series of conversations, that assignment was yanked out from under us. It's really a blessing, but was disappointing at the time.

We've cleared the prequalification phase with a mortgage specialist so we can rest assured that we can actually purchase a home. Even though I know our credit is good, I still worried about this prequalification process because I was worried we would be approved for much less than we really want or need to spend to get the kind of home we think would suit our needs as a family. Praise the Lord, we are prequalified for much, much more than we would ever imagine spending on this home.

I probably won't get much sleep tonight because I'm so psyched about looking at houses! If I were a better salesperson, I probably would be a good realtor because I love looking at houses! The hubs even asked me the other day what I was going to do with all my free time I'll have now that I won't have any need to look at real estate websites! I'm sure I'll find some other pointless obsession to fill that void!

Boxes, Boxes and More Boxes

A house full of cardboard boxes is the sure sign that this move is really about to happen!

2 ladies spent the day here loading boxes and getting things ready to go to Oklahoma next week. The master bedroom, garage and outside storage are the only things left to be packed. It's not been too bad to live among the boxes yet. However, CMC went to eat ice cream tonight and realized that we don't have any utensils! I also realized that I didn't take underwear out of the drawer for Bailey. They packed a drawer full of Maverick's diapers that I didn't get put in the 'don't pack' stack. Jenna Beth has no sheets for her crib so she's already in the pack n play.

We were only expecting a couple of hours of packing today and the rest to be packed on Monday. Yesterday we found out the plan had changed so we weren't quite ready to have most everything packed today. It is what it is and we're trying to roll with the punches. I have some cookies to bake tomorrow for teacher gifts. I hope I set aside everything I needed for that project to be successful!

After the packers left this afternoon, my first thought was that we have to do this again in 6 months. Hopefully I can be more on top of things next time and be more prepared before the packers come knocking on the door!

Winding Down

I think we have about 17 days left in the great, and hot, city of El Paso. Give or take a day or two! I'm beginning to realize that there aren't enough hours in the day to do all the things that I want to do before we leave. I have managed to do a few cleaning/purging projects in the past couple of days. One of my projects was cleaning out clothes from Jenna Beth and the boys' closets. I have given some of them to different people at the church and today there were 3 kids wearing shirts or dresses that once belonged to us. It was weird and gratifying all at the same time!

One thing I really need to tackle is the shelves in the garage. They've become dumping grounds for many random things. There are figurines that didn't sell in our fall yard sale, but didn't make it into the spring yard sale. There are no telling how many random toys or bubble wands that are hidden in the shelves. Every time I pull into the garage I think what eyesores they are, but get distracted and comfortable in the house and don't want to go back out there in the heat! Today may be the day that I tackle them. I may even let the boys ride scooters in the driveway since our neighbors are on vacation and there aren't 2 expensive cars out there to hit!

I know that the Lord has worked out the timing of this move perfectly, but it's still hard to think of leaving El Paso! The people, the places, the memories are great and wonderful. I told someone this morning that I'm already planning trips back to visit, but have to talk the husband into financing them!

The Snow is Falling

Literally and Figuratively -

We woke up this morning to the snow falling on the ground. It looks like a Winter Wonderland here! It really is pretty, but I'm sure it'll be gone before long. Jake and Bailey went out to play a little while this morning, but not after a good fight over Bailey wearing his 'toboggan.'


Jake didn't seem this was as funny as I did, but we're moving from Snow St to Waters St. So I guess our 'snow' is melting, too. I know, it's a stretch, but I still find it a little bit silly. We'll have to move to Desert St or something to keep the Global Warming trend alive.


We're still trying to move. I've been at the old house, hence why I'm posting, taking down pictures and curtains and just trying to clean out the miscellaneous stuff that's been left in each room. We have to be totally out of here by December 5 so we have plenty of time.


Today's the big Auburn v Alabama game and we'll either be watching it on Bailey's TV or we'll be sitting in our one chair in the old house cheering loud and proud! Go Tigers!

Moving Day - Sort Of!

Many of our neighbors are spending this pleasant November Saturday packing their trucks, vans and cars with their personal belongings to move to their new house about a block from where they currently live. It's a bittersweet day for me because it's the reality that our neighborhood as it is will no longer exist and we'll soon be moving out of our very first military post house. It's also the first single family home our little family of 4 has ever lived in. It's a great day because it's the beginning of the day we've all been waiting for - getting to move into our NEW houses! We've all been looking forward to moving since we moved into these houses. Unless there's a surprise letter in our mailbox today, we won't be moving until December. According to our housing rep, we're right on the cutoff line of who will move in this phase. It just depended on how many 3 and 4 bedroom houses were available.

I told Jake I've had visions of decorating this house with all my Christmas decorations and just putting my already decorated tree on the back of a truck and taking it across the street to the new house. He didn't like that idea so I guess I'll just leave my Christmas tree up until Maverick's birthday so that we can fully enjoy the work it is to get all the decorations out! We could have Maverick a snowman birthday and the house would already be decorated. Not a bad idea at all! I'll have to start looking for snowman plates and cups. Oooh, even better maybe I can find some on clearance after Christmas.

In other news, we're in the process of finding out where we're going after Fort Bliss. I may have mentioned once before that Jake's current battery is folding some time between February and April. We've been in discussions for weeks about what we would do next. Our favorite option is to try to get another assignment here at Fort Bliss, but we're not sure if there'll be a position available here. We have some other options. Anyone who knows anything about the military knows that nothing is ever in stone and there are no definites. Pray that we'll be open to where the Lord may need us to be next, whether that's here or there, wherever there may be! As most of you know we didn't want to come to El Paso, but have grown to love it here. If we can like El Paso, I have a feeling we can like most anywhere.

Movers

Today a VP from the moving company came to get an estimate of the weight of our household goods. It took her a whole 5 minutes to walk through our place. I felt bad for her because she drove 2 hours from Greenville to get here and had to sit in traffic on 85 around Gaffney and was only here for that little bit of time. The good news is I don't have to pack anything! Not a thing! Anything I do pack will be unpacked and repacked. Apparently that's a military issue. The bad news is I'll be without all of our earthly possessions for about 2 weeks. I guess I'll have time to really understand that all of this 'stuff' isn't as important and necessary as I think it is. I've already been trying to figure out how we'll fill our days without a TV since that's about all we do now. I guess we'll have to make trips to the library and the good playgrounds at Fort Bliss. If you know me at all, not having internet/computer access 24-7 will be my biggest issue. I might be talking Jake into a new laptop after all!

April 1st will be here before I know it! I do have 3 bags to take to Goodwill in the back of my van right now. That's progress and I'm about to go through all my gift bags and condense them down to one container! Think it's possible....

I took Bailey to get his nappy head of hair cut tonight and he was excellent! I told the girl I wanted it cut shorter than we've been cutting it so she tried about 4 different guards before it was about the length that I wanted. He sat in the chair on the little booster seat all by himself. That's the first time he's not had to sit in our lap. The stylists, if you can call them that, were all so impressed with how good he was during the whole ordeal. I think I was just utterly shocked by him being still and not fighting us the whole time. He earned his trip to the Chick Fil A playground and the free cookie he has figured out he gets when we do our grocery shopping at Target! When I walked out of the fruit department and the opposite direction of the bakery, he looked at me like "Aren't you forgetting something?" Then when we passed the sample tray for the deli he pointed at it like "There's the treasure!" The smile on his face when I pulled up to the free cookies at the bakery was priceless. When he was finished with his iced cookie, he got whiny because his hands were dirty. I didn't have any wipes with me so he just had to have icing covered hands and mouth for the rest of our grocery shopping trip. He has his first 'school' pictures tomorrow. I can't wait to see this proof!