pcs

Boys’ Baseball Bedrooms on a Budget

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Who needs a Fathead? For the cost of a single Fathead we were able to do all this with Jacob's room.
Who needs a Fathead? For the cost of a single Fathead we were able to do most of this with Jacob’s room.

Each time we move, we try to come up with ways to make the PCS appealing for the boys. You know, something to look forward to. In the past we have given them gifts, and we’ve also given the boys some liberties with decorating their bedrooms.

(Truth be told, the boys absolutely love it here…they’re really enjoying the hiking and the views of the mountains from throughout our house.)

For the past two houses we were in rentals, so we weren’t able to do much with the bedrooms, but in our current house we let them have a little fun. We told the boys they could come up with a theme with which we’d be willing to paint the room. They quickly agreed on baseball-themed rooms.

As always, I came up with a Pinterest board with the boys’ ideas.

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Military Move Musings – Day 4

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Day 4: Raton, NM to Colorado Springs, CO

Hi honey, we're home!
Hi honey, we’re home!

This is a short drive day. We timed things so that we could easily arrive during the work day so we could visit the realty office and pick up our keys.

Very little to talk about for this short 2 1/2 hour drive. The trip up I-25 northward from Raton is pretty tricky. With the trailer, it was a lot of effort for the truck to wind its way through the mountain passes.

We picked up our keys from the realtor and then had a nice outdoor lunch in downtown Colorado Springs. We ate at a place called La Creperie, which had outdoor seating and welcomed pets. Howie sat at our feet and people-watched. He dog-watched too, since there were so many dogs.

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Military Move Musings – Day 3 and the Oklahoma City National Memorial

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Our view for most of Day 3's drive.
Our view for most of Day 3’s drive.

Day 3: Oklahoma City, OK (1200′ elevation) to Raton, NM (6680′ elevation)

This was not quite as long a drive as the previous day, but it was the least interesting day of driving. It was westward across western Oklahoma on I-40, then we turned northwestward in Amarillo taking U.S. highways (instead of interstates) towards Raton.

Before we hit the road, though, we took a few minutes to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is a park at the site of the former Alfred Murrah Federal Building. The memorial is very beautiful and very well done. We visited at about 8am on a Sunday, so it was nearly empty. It’s sunk into the basement of the former federal building, and evidence of the bombed building can still be seen.

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Military Move Musings – Day 2

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Day 2: Opelousas, LA to Oklahoma City, OK

This was the longest driving day, about 8-and-some-change hours worth of driving, along with 2 more hours worth of numerous stops and traffic/construction issues in Dallas.

Dave slept 9 hours Friday night. He asked that nothing wake him up — neither alarm clock nor my noise — so I let him sleep.

…and sleep….

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Military Move Musings: Day 1

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Day 1 = Navarre, FL to Opelousas, LA

Being that this is our 3rd move since I started this blog 5 1/2 years ago, I will attempt to write a diary of sorts of our 4 day not-quite-although-it-feels-like-it cross-country drive between the Florida Panhandle and Colorado Springs.

Day 1 for us was supposed to be a “short” drive. In a good-old-fashioned military change of command, the outgoing commander says a farewell/thank you speech, ceremoniously gives up his guidon to the new commander, and then beats feet out of the area.

Dave had been saying for the past several weeks, "You'll have to pry the guidon out of my cold, dead hands!". But he was joking....
Dave had been saying for the past several weeks, “You’ll have to pry the guidon out of my cold, dead hands!”. He was joking…but you wouldn’t know if from this picture, would you? Photo: Michael Bruenning.

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Another Day…Another Move….

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This kept us busy today.
This kept us busy today.

Today was the day. A great big truck pulled up to our house and picked up about 99% of our belongings.

Yeah, we’ve done this before…but it’s still a really big deal, and really exhausting, despite the gentlemen from the moving company physically hauling everything out of the house.

I can’t believe this is the THIRD military move I’ve been through since I started this blog in 2008.  Here are pictures from the 2008 move, and more pictures about our 2010 move.

I’ve been scarce lately, even though I have lots of pictures and stories of this past month to share. From Colorado to the kids’ baseball to our wrapping up the school year here. But for this post, we’ll talk about our moving adventure so far.

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Farewell KFLGULFB11 and KFLNAVAR18!

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This afternoon Dave disassembled our two weather stations in the backyard. One of them (KFLGULFB11) had been reliably reporting backyard weather since December 2010, the other (KFLNAVAR18) was a test weather station whose review post is coming up soon on GeekMom.