Home Sweet Home

We have a house!

After much searching (both of the soul and of the local neighborhoods) we decided on the 2 bedroom house on base.

Call us crazy, but yes we picked this....

Over this....

This view....

Over this one...

As much as we liked the condo in the tower, we decided being on the 14th floor with a dog and a baby probably didn't make a ton of sense. I was also concerned about meeting people here since we couldn't tell which units were occupied or vacant and we didn't see any postings in the lobby about building get togethers or anything. However, we are going to keep it on our list of possibilities if we decide to move off base next year.

We also have cell phones again!! I'll send out an email with our contact info- if you want the info don't get the email, just leave a comment and I'll send it to you.

We get to move in Tuesday and our first shipment of unaccompanied baggage (Price's crib and high chair, my cast iron skillet and wooden spoon, the good computer) will be delivered some time that day, as will our temporary furniture to hold us over until our household goods arrive in October.

In Priceless news... he definitely takes after his mother in the favorite food department. He is officially a starchaholic just like me. Being in the land of rice for breakfast, we have started giving him steamed rice whenever it is available (which is pretty much all of the time), he especially likes sticky rice. I also made the mistake of giving him a piece of croissant at breakfast one day and now he throws a fit if he sees one and doesn't get to eat it. Finally, we gave him some french fries yesterday- and of course he loves those too. In fact, I got him to sign "more" for the first time today because he wanted another fry. As soon as we get into the house on Tuesday and I am heading to the grocery store to stock up on fresh fruits and veggies so I can get all of us back on track to eating well!! Oh, he has also learned how to unfasten part of his diaper (he gets this from his dad and his uncle Trey), we discovered that he learned to do this when I noticed a pile of poop on the floor and half of his diaper hanging down. He now has to have clothes on over the diaper at all times- fun, fun, fun!!!

This picture was not from the poop incident, this was taken after he took another diaper off later in the evening- hence the always in pants rule

Going, Going, Gone...

All (ok, not all but almost all) of our stuff now exists in boxes and has been loaded onto trucks and has begun its journey to the foreign land of Guam. We will be following soon. We'll get there first and have to live without much of our household goods for the next 2 months. Price and Isabelle's lives have kind of been turned upside down. Neither one of them has any concept of what is going on. Price doesn't seem to be super affected, but Isabelle isn't enjoying our new digs. If only she knew that in a matter of days she'll be on an airplane heading to Texas for 3 months...

We have accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. I feel better about things than I have been. We sold the car and the laundry machines (aka- washer & dryer). The movers have taken away everything except the stuff that goes into long term storage. The past two days went relatively smooth. My mom has been a HUGE help with Price and also keeping me on track and motivated. My neighbor Shelly has also been a huge help- keeping Isabelle, loaning me her vacuum and today keeping me company and scrubbing my disgusting stove with me. Until today, I always felt like I would only let a really old, life long friend help me scrub a disgusting stove since there is a certain degree of embarrassment that comes with each layer of filth that exists.

And then it hit me, I have made lifelong friends here- I just haven't known them as long as my other friends. We are still in the process of getting to know each other, and that's one of the bittersweet things of being a military wife (friendship is the sweet part, the bitter part is having an ever changing time frame to get to know people before one or both of you get moved to some other part of the world). I have made several really good friends in the three years we have been here, and a few of those have been just in the past year, even in the past few months. I hope that we are as blessed in Guam as we have been in Dayton.

I Know I Probably Shouldn't...

I'm supposed to be packing. The movers come tomorrow to box up and crate away all of our things. i have a about a million and one things to do before they get here, so it makes a lot of sense to be blogging. I can't help it. I am always surprised how quickly time flies. It seems like we just found out we were moving and had plenty of time to plan, prepare and pack. Now the time is here and I don't feel prepared at all- on any level!!

Don has been crazy busy at work this week and even in the evenings we are showing the car and other things we are trying to sell before we move, so when he gets home he doesn't want to do anything. That helps me to be less than motivated. I also know that once the movers are here and things are being boxed up and we move to our temporary housing, it will make all of this real. And as appealing as the prospect of moving half way around the world to a tropical island paradise with an awesome opportunity to travel around parts of the world I never dreamt that I would see is, the reality is I am really comfortable where I am now. Once those movers show up, I have to acknowledge how far away we are going and how different life will be and how it is going to be a while before we see our family and friends again.

I've known since June that we were moving to Guam. It's been a main talking point of just about every conversation I've had with friends and family members for the past 2 months. I've actually felt relatively calm about the whole thing. A calm I can't seem to embrace because I keep thinking it's going to leave and be replace with some kind of frenetic freak out. I hope the calm stays and I hope I can embrace it!

Currently I just feel overwhelmed with seemingly minor decisions about what to do with out grown baby clothes and items. Should we take them with us to a land of limited storage in hopes that we will have a baby while we are there? Should we get rid of them before we leave and then if we do have a baby buy stuff all over again? (We actually feel blessed because we have very dear friends who are pregnant and we are going to help each other out with some of the big baby items and I think I'm going to send the clothes home with my mom). And where do all of these boxes from under the beds keep coming from?? I don't remember putting them in there. So, as I unearth new boxes of stuff, I have to decide what to do with the contents. Keep or toss. If kept, kept in long term storage or sent to Guam. And the dust, I feel like I need to continuously dust so the movers don't bring the Dayton Dust Bowl with them, and I MUST get all of the trash out of the trashcans or we will have 3 months old stinky stuff when our household goods arrive, and take down pictures and curtain rods and, and, and the list just gets longer...

And then, when I allow myself to think about things I get a little misty as each day brings a new last- tonight is our last night in this house, today is the last day I will see my stuff until it arrives in Guam. Soon, we will have our last meal with our Dayton friends. I am ready for the firsts!!