Starting from Scratch — First Grocery Shopping After a Move

02. December 2010 · Comments Off on Starting from Scratch — First Grocery Shopping After a Move · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

First grocery shopping after moving into the new house. Hard to keep it to one cart.  One of the symptoms of moving, is giving up a lot of the long-term items.  In my case, things like ketchup, salad dressings, peanut butter and jelly and my stores of frozen foods.  So today I replenished the stocks.

I ventured to the Hurlburt Field commissary.  Not quite as big as Offutt’s, but I’ve definitely shopped at smaller ones (Shaw, Seymour-Johnson).  My cart got so full my wrists got sore as I tried to maneuver around!

I owe the picture I took with my phone of the complete full cart, but I’m tired and I’m going to bed!

Goodbye KNEBELLE12!

14. November 2010 · Comments Off on Goodbye KNEBELLE12! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Whether you knew of it as the APRS station DW3809 or as Wunderground Station KNEBELLE12, this afternoon we disassembled the weather station and will set it up in a couple weeks in Navarre, FL.  I’m in the process of deleting our Wunderground tags from this blog and our Vollmer Family homepage.

I hope you enjoyed this window to our world, especially in the winter when we could show off how much snow we got here.

Not sure what kind of webcam view we’ll have from our new house, we’ll see!

Operation DO NOT PACK

14. November 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I actually blogged about this a little back in 2008.

Moving preparations continue. We are at T-3 days until the packers come. T-9 days until we leave the area.

We are starting to gather the items we don’t want the movers to pack. Some of the items are for our personal use for the week of homelessness. Clothing, towels, school-related items, paperwork, DVDs, a small TV, some lawn chairs. Many of the items are for security reasons: jewelry, photographs, my violin, our Wii system, insurance policies.

In North Carolina, it was easy to put the items in a room: Timmy was outgrowing his toddler bed, so sold it. We then moved Timmy’s stuff into Jacob’s room and the guest room we had. You can see the picture in the link above of how full it got.

It wasn’t so easy here. Our current “Do Not Pack” room has our full-sized guest bed disassembled and propped up it’s edge. It’s going into the living room just before the movers come. So far our room has the important paperwork, sleeping bags, air mattress, my violin, my worm bin, some cleaning supplies.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

When the packers arrive on Tuesday, the room will be closed off, with a giant blue masking tape “X” across the door.

There will be some other items that can’t necessarily go into that room that also won’t be packed. Dave’s train layout, Howie’s dog dish, the couch we’re trying to sell on Craig’s List. That’s where these will come in handy:

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

I printed them out the other night — 4 “DO NOT PACK” statements to a sheet — and had the boys cut the strips for me. They had fun with this. I’ll probably let Jacob go around the house taping them in place on Monday.

The Vollmer PCS Binder (TM)

12. November 2010 · Comments Off on The Vollmer PCS Binder (TM) · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

T-10 Days and counting….

I was thinking about new things to blog about regarding this particular move and it was a friend from North Carolina (Hi Faith T.!) who inspired me about my next post: The Vollmer PCS Binder (TM).

So, I’m sure you’re wondering, “Major Mom, what, pray tell, IS The Vollmer PCS Binder (TM)?”

It’s how we keep sane! It’s how we have all the answers at our fingertips!

It starts your car! It butters your bread! It scrubs your toilets!

Okay…maybe not.

Here is the binder from when we arrived here in 2008.  We probably didn’t have to be so fancy with the cover…but it was fun to do.  I wish I had a picture of the one from 2005 with Mr. Wuf on it.

From 2010 11 11 PCS Binder

And here’s the binder now (ran out of color printer ink).

From 2010 11 11 PCS Binder

It’s a 2″ ring binder with those clear pockets on the cover so we could easily change out the cover for each move. We’ve been using this particular binder since our move between Ohio and Florida in 2002 and we just change out the cover each time.

What’s inside? We populate it with indexed pages and clear document protectors.

Our current divider tabs are for:

1.) Orders: Everyone who needs to know about your move will want a copy of your orders.

2.) Household Goods (the items the moving company will pick up): This is where you can store the Government Bills of Lading, the itemized lists of boxes packed and items loaded onto the moving truck, and claims forms.

3.) Do-It-Yourself-Move (the items we’re moving ourselves in our vehicles): In our case, we are renting a U-Haul trailer, so the paperwork related to that will be stored in here.  Also, you have to weigh your vehicles empty and full…we’ll keep the weight tickets in this section.

4.) Travel Documents: Passports (if we were traveling overseas) and hotel reservations for our stops en route.

5.) Lease/Utilities: This is where I keep verification documents related to turning off utilities at our current house, and verification of turning on utilities at our new house.

6.) School Documents: We have medical paperwork for the boys’ new school registration, as well as paperwork related to the boys’ new school.

And you simply fill the document protectors thusly:

From 2010 11 11 PCS Binder
From 2010 11 11 PCS Binder

If you’re a military family member, consider this tactic for keeping all the important documents in one place.  We’ve relied on it for 8 years now and it’s helped us out so much!
NOTE: I have to admit, with our iPhones, Dave and I don’t keep quite as much paperwork in this binder as we used to.  I have an e-mail folder called “PCS” and that’s where I’m dropping all of our utility confirmations and hotel reservations.  We can access this information from our iPhones even while on the road.

3 Times in 26 Months!

14. October 2010 · Comments Off on 3 Times in 26 Months! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
Okay, let’s all sing along (to the tune of Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again”):
I’m back in the O.R. again
Out under anesthesia, which I dread….
Where doctors take their knives
On what remains of my G.I.
Back in the O.R. again

I’m writing this corny little song from the surgery waiting room at University of Nebraska Medical Center near downtown Omaha.  Dave is in the middle of a basic hernia repair. This is a pretty common procedure, and for the most part I’m feeling pretty confident that everything’s going to be all right.

It’s worth discussing that there’s something about Nebraska that’s been driving Dave into the operating room every 13 months. First, there was his emergency appendectomy about 3 weeks after we moved here in August 2008. Then, in September 2009, Dave’s gall bladder removal. Which apparently I didn’t write much about, I was in a blogging drought in late 2009. Don’t know why.  I just looked at my blog posts from August/September 2009 and there wasn’t much at all.

Anyway, here we are, back again, for Dave’s 3rd surgery in 26 months. All of these procedures are pretty routine, and Dave recovers pretty nicely. You can’t even see his laproscopy scars from the first two procedures anymore. This one is an open procedure, so he’ll have a no-kidding incision on his lower abdomen, but that’s okay.

Dave’s health has been an absolute nightmare since we moved to Nebraska. We aren’t sure if it’s the air here, that our house is haunted, or the stresses of Dave’s job. Or just that his gastro-intestinal system was due to take a nosedive right about when we moved here. We don’t know for sure. It’s certainly frustrating, especially for a guy who didn’t really have any big medical issues right through age 30! The occasional twisted ankle, bout of the flu, etc.

We’re glad he’s getting this taken care of quickly, but it still takes away from the normalcy of our lives. But our life is anything but normal, right? Dave’s convalescent leave will take him right up to his trip to Florida to pick out a new house, then my Reserve 2 week tour in early November, and then we go right into the movers coming to pack up our house for our move!

We aren’t sure if we’ll be contracting with the “Big Orange Truck” company again for this upcoming move.  We’ll probably know this week.  They did a good enough job between NC and NE.
From 2008 07 10 Moving Pictures

In the meantime, I’m in “get ‘er done” mode at the house, wrapping up some projects so I can start preparing for the move. This is stuff I can do while Dave’s recovering at home. First off, finishing the boys’ Halloween costumes, then finishing up my HAP crochet projects so I can put away my sewing/knitting/crochet supplies with my other craft supplies. Then, I can get started on the garden: I have to disassemble our compost bin and dig up Dave’s hops. We plan to take rhizomes with us and get them in the ground as soon as we get to FL. I have to do it before Nebraska’s first hard freeze.

I’m dreading tackling the battery removal again.  Ugh…

Let The Games Begin — Vollmer PCS* 2010

27. September 2010 · Comments Off on Let The Games Begin — Vollmer PCS* 2010 · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

*Glossary: PCS: Permanant Change of Station

Don’t fret, we still have a few weeks.

Eight, to be exact. Almost exact: 8 weeks from Tuesday the 28th.

Yep.

My brain has officially shifted into “Prepare to Move” mode.

This is becoming old hat for me. Let me set the stage here. I grew up a military brat. This means I’ve experienced all or part of military moves 3 times as a kid. I was pretty young during those moves, but my sister can tack on the two she experienced in high school while I was in college.

In fact, I blogged during our previous move from North Carolina to here in 2008.

Since I joined the Air Force and married Dave, I’ve experienced 6 moves, and this move from Nebraska to Florida will be move #7. So goes life in the military.

I’ve developed somewhat of a routine to prepare the family for these moves. Today I will cover the first two of those items in my routine, and I’ll be blogging about the next several actions in the next 4 weeks or so.  Stay tuned for fun stuff like househunting, choosing/registering the kids for their new school, removing batteries from toys, getting the “do not pack” room ready, and arranging to transfer utilities/change addresses.

1.) Clear out the extra stuff. This meant meticulously going through clothing, linens, books, toys, and kitchenwares and purging the extra stuff. Clothing and toys are pretty easy…if it’s outgrown, it’s going. Same for books. Nothing breaks my heart more than getting rid of books…but it’s horrible on the weight (we have weight limits on military moves). So I have to get rid of all but the most popular books, reference books and professional journals. For linens and kitchenwares, I ask “Did I need this while we’ve been living in this house?” If the answer is “No”, it goes. The new climate needs to be considered too…obviously we won’t be needing space heaters, winter boots, sleds, snow shovels or 20,000 pair of mittens in Florida, so those items go also.

While I’m cleaning out the extra stuff, I’m also keeping an eye on out of place items. When the packers come through the house, they’ll arrange things by what room they’re in. So if one of the boys’ toys ended up in the kitchen, it would get packed as a “kitchen item”. I have to go through the house and get all linens in one place, all toys in one place, books in their appropriate places, etc. Especially the out-of-season clothing I’ve been keeping in our basement. I have to put it all together in their respective closets.

2.) Consider how to get rid of this stuff. Lots of options here. Take it to Goodwill, take advantage of one of those charitable organization’s trucks that will take items right off your porch, bundle it into lots and sell it on eBay or Craigslist, or have a garage sale.

I chose the latter. This is the 3rd home in a row where we’ve been able to have a yard sale to help get rid of our stuff, and I HAVE to give props to the Eastern Nebraska yard/garage sale subculture. They’re the most polite and most respectful of start and end times.

A week ago we marked off our garage into areas (i.e., “clothing”, “toys/games”, “electronics”, etc.) and set out all of the items we planned to sell. This past Friday and Saturday, I had a yard sale. In my opinion, it was very successful. We made nearly $600 and I had spent about $80 in advertising/signage and other supplies. This blogger has a great article with tips on successful yard sales. I just now read this blogpost and I can say that I followed many of these tips.

Day 1 (Friday) had fabulous weather and I was graced with several dozen parents who were dropping off/picking up their kids at the school around the corner. The only earlybird I had was only about 5 minutes before my advertised start time, and I had a steady stream of customers from 6:55am till 3:45pm. I was able to put about 2/3 of my stuff outside on the lawn and in the driveway and it made things really easy to show. We made about $450 of our money on the first day.

Day 2 wasn’t nearly as good. The day was plagued with thunderstorms and a chilling wind. My first customer didn’t show up until 90 minutes after my advertised start time! I could only put waterproof stuff outside the garage, and stuff everything else into the garage to keep it dry:

From 2010 09 25 Garage Sale
From 2010 09 25 Garage Sale

Only made about $125 on the 2nd day. I had marked just about everything down to 1/2 price, which was a contributor to the low total.

Today, I converted the garage back to its intended purpose…a place to keep our vehicles. I packaged up the clothing (about 1/2 of what I started with), housewares and books and stuffed it all into the back of the truck. I was thrilled that everything I needed to go to Goodwill fit into the truck (with all the back seats down, of course!):

From 2010 09 25 Garage Sale
From 2010 09 25 Garage Sale

Tomorrow I’m off to the Goodwill shop right up the street to drop off the remains of my yard sale, then to the bank to deposit all the quarters and singles I’d accumulated over the weekend.

Until next time!!!

The Cat’s Out of the Bag!*

11. May 2010 · Comments Off on The Cat’s Out of the Bag!* · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
Picture by MAYNARD PAUL
Lovely picture, isn’t it?  Where could that be?  It’s so pretty there…boy…I wish I could live there….

So…those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter already know this, and if you aren’t on either of those websites, you could probably just glance to the right on this blog and see the news.

We ARE going to live there**!  Actually, that picture is of sunset in Destin, Florida, which may or may not be where we live (probably not, we’re looking more at Navarre), but it’s definitely in the area of where we’re headed this fall***!

Yes!  We’re moving back to Florida!!!!!  Whoo hoo!  Dave got a job as a “Director of Operations” for a weather squadron at Hurlburt Field, which is just east of Pensacola.  So this time we’re not returning to the east coast.  That’s okay…I’d spent some time at Hurlburt Field in 2008 while training for my Middle East deployment.  It’s a great area, plenty to see and do.

Whoo hoo!

Not sure how many of you knew that before we were in North Carolina, where I started this blog, we lived in Viera, Florida from 2002-2005.  Dave and I were both on active duty, stationed at Patrick AFB, which is just south of Cape Canaveral.  Both of our sons were born in Melbourne and we owned a great house just off I-95.  We really enjoyed it there.  Lots of great things to do (such as Washington Nationals Spring Training), lots of great friends and lots of rocket and shuttle launches.  Okay, not a lot of shuttle launches.  There were only 5 launches in the 3 1/2 years we lived there: the 4 that occurred in 2002 after we moved there, then STS-107 which was the Columbia mission that exploded upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.  It was really cool to see the launches from our front driveway in Viera!

Actually, we had known about this for a couple months now.  But we wanted something in writing first. Dave got his official assignment notification on Friday.  We had mentioned this to the boys back in March, and Jacob’s first question was “How far will we be from Disney World?”  Ha ha!  They’re looking forward to the beaches and the warmth!

So, if you didn’t hear me the first few times on this blog post: Whoo hoo!****

*What does that idiom mean, anyway? Is there some sort of archaic story behind this? Let’s find out!


**Boy, I hope I don’t jinx things by shouting out all this happiness so soon!


***Technically, we’re headed down this fall.  Dave’s report date is before the first day of winter, even if it’s barely so…


****For those in the Omaha area reading this, please don’t feel that we don’t love you guys and gals!  We really like it here, but we Vollmers are EASTERNERS so to get to go back East of the Mississippi is comforting for us…

Walt Disney World!!!!

27. December 2009 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
From 2009 12 19 WDW Vacation Day 2

I didn’t make a big deal out of this beforehand, but for Christmas the Vollmers took a vacation to Walt Disney World! We were there from December 18-23rd and the flight home on the 24th was pretty scary. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport cancelled the next flights to Omaha after ours left. We flew out around 2:40pm. Phew!

It’s rare for us to take a traditional vacation like this. As a military family, we’re typically pretty far from our extended families and Dave’s vacation time is usually dedicated to visiting our parents…the kids’ grandparents. Our last non-family vacation was 2 1/2 years ago.

But how could we resist? We were able to take advantage of Walt Disney World’s 2009 military promotions, both for the hotel room and for the tickets. So all 4 of us enjoyed 5-days of Park Hopper benefits for about the price of one 5-day Park Hopper!!

We had a wonderful time this past week, the boys were very well behaved despite getting about 90 minutes less sleep per night than usual, and we managed to fit in everything we were interested in doing in all 4 of the Walt Disney World parks. We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, which offered an outstanding deal for military families. Jacob and Timmy met 21 characters, we had the standard “breakfast with the characters” and I got my grown-up fix with the fantastic Spirit of Aloha dinner show on our last evening at the resort.

NOTE: We received a lot of questions about why we didn’t stay at the Armed Forces Shades of Green Resort which is near the Magic Kingdom. Dave and I had stayed there before when we were younger, but this time around we didn’t make the arrangements in time, so we could only get a suite for Christmas week (which we didn’t need), and with Dave’s rank, we’d have been paying about twice as much for the suite as what we got at the Caribbean Beach. No need for a suite, all we did in the room was sleep.

We had debated taking a trip while we were still living in NC — we’re very glad we waited, though. Timmy’s now 45″ tall and the break point for many of the more-thrilling rides is 44″. Only two of the attractions were off-limits to Timmy: The Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios and the Primeval Whirl at Animal Kingdom. We definitely were able to live with that. Both boys will proclaim that the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is their favorite ride. DINOSAUR at Animal Kingdom ended up being quite frightening, Timmy was rather spooked afterwards….

We took advantage of the Disney Dining Plan during our stay. The link at the Disney World website is very vague about it, so I’ll include this one that provides MUCH more detail. The pricing for 2010 is a bit more than we paid, but you get the gist. For about $102 per night of hotel stay, our family (2 adults, 2 kids) enjoyed 2 complete meals plus one set of snacks each day. Do you come out ahead? Well, if you aren’t doing anything except Disney World during your visit, it’s an outstanding deal. Several Downtown Disney restaurants are included in the promotion, so we even had a great dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s one of our nights there. It would have been difficult for us to spend less than $100 per day on meals, so by having prepaid for the meals with the hotel payment, we didn’t have to make such a big deal about what our meals would cost. It’s great for budgeting the food portion of a Disney vacation.

It’s also great for things like the $36-per-person buffets — we loved the Tusker House Mediterranean/African buffet at Animal Kingdom and the boys enjoyed breakfast with the characters at Chef Mickey’s — and the $60-per-person Spirit of Aloha dinner show. With the dining plan, we could choose those types of meals and definitely come out ahead! Even the “Quick Service” fast-food style meals were rarely less than $50 for the 4 of us.

It’s a LOT of food. Every quick service and table service meal (when not a buffet) included desserts for each of us, most of the time we’d save the quick service desserts for later snacks (usually cookies, fruit, or their yummy famous Mickey-ear Rice Krispy treats), thus freeing up our daily snack allowances for bagel/cereal breakfasts in the morning.

On occasion Disney World offers vacation packages that include a FREE Disney Dining Plan. They had a very generous promotion in 2009, but we didn’t travel during the inclusive dates (we missed it by a day!).

Oh, one more thing — Disney won’t come right out and tell you this, but even if you pay for kids on the meal plan, we weren’t restricted to the kids’ menu for the Quick Service fast-food style meals. This came up at a Noodle House-style restaurant (near the Lilo and Stitch attraction at Magic Kingdom). Jacob wanted noodles, but the kids’ menu was only chicken strips or macaroni and cheese. It didn’t matter for the Quick Service, Jacob was allowed to order adult portions. At the more formal settings, they’re a little more strict, although at buffets it didn’t matter, and 4 of our 6 Table Service meals were buffets or homestyle where all 4 of us ate the same thing. I was happy about this because I wasn’t looking forward to my boys eating nothing but pizza, cheeseburgers, nuggets and mac/cheese for a solid week. Other great Disney Dining Plans tips can be found here.

Which brings me to my next story. On our 2nd day at the parks, Timmy had cheese pizza and chocolate milk at Pizza Planet for lunch, Mickey Ears ice cream for a snack, then a cheese quesadilla and chocolate milk at Wolfgang Puck’s for dinner. When we went to the Lego Store at Downtown Disney, all that cheese and milk caught up with him and he barfed right on the edge of the children’s play area outside the Lego Store. Poor little guy. No, I didn’t take any pictures, don’t worry! After he got sick, he seemed fine and begged to stay and play — he also didn’t make a mess of his clothing, which was a miracle! Were it not for how, um, neatly he got sick, I probably would have packed us all up and went back to the hotel.

We found out that many of our friends were taking their Disney vacations at the same time. We were able to meet one of our Air Force friends (who I was deployed with this past year), Rose, and her fiance’ Brad and his sister Wendy, at Hollywood Studios for lunch, and we also met one of Dave’s former NC State classmates, Nicole, at EPCOT for dinner in Mexico. It was fun to catch up with friends!

Enjoy these photo albums from the trip. I’ve captioned the pictures, so they’ll describe themselves.

2009 12 18 WDW Vacation Day 1
2009 12 19 WDW Vacation Day 2
2009 12 20 WDW Vacation Day 3
2009 12 21 WDW Vacation Day 4
2009 12 22 Walt Disney World Vacation Day 5
2009 12 23 Walt Disney World Vacation Day 6

Seeing the World Through "I’m Moving Soon"-Colored Glasses

12. February 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

As most of my loyal readers know, the Vollmer family has a move coming up. Dave has orders to Offutt AFB, Nebraska, and this week he got the first batch of paperwork verifying things. He had to select what date we want to leave North Carolina…and that resulted in a lot of discussion. It turns out the public schools in Bellevue, NE start on AUGUST 12th!

What???

Who wants to start school that early??? I remember being flabbergasted at how early the kids started in Brevard County, FL, when Dave and I were stationed at Patrick AFB.

Well, for some reason, it’s VERY important to me that if Jake has a chance to start school on the first day of school, he does so. After all, we’re talking about Kindergarten — the most important day of his life…

…well, thus far.

The point is, Jake will have enough other things to worry about with our move…having to single him out as the “new kid” a week after Kindergarten starts? I don’t think that’s cool.

So I convinced Dave to put “August 7th” as the date we’re leaving NC. Yes, it’ll be a fast trip to NE, but for Jake, I think if we can get him into the school routine as soon as he arrives, things will be good for him. The sooner he’ll make friends, establish a routine, and he won’t have to sit around bored while the furniture is being delivered.

Also, the upcoming move has had me looking at everything in my house so I can mentally label it “Should it stay or should it go?” Many things are illegal for the movers to take: candles, lightbulbs, liquids of any kind. Which means if we really want to take it along, we have to find room in our van or car.

This weekend I took a look under my bathroom sink and saw so many Bath and Body Works, Body Shop, and other pretty-smelling lotions, eaus, and body splashes. I thought to myself, “I can’t take all of it with me.”

Infant toys, magazines, clothes that are too small/out of style, pantry foods that I bought then changed my mind about preparing: need to get it squared away before July!

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