The boys and I are getting really excited about the mountain life!

The boys and I are getting really excited about the mountain life! This is a view of Pike’s Peak from the Garden fo the Gods, courtesy of Wikipedia.

I’m back from Nebraska, the trip was pretty good. Uneventful…I feel relatively caught up on my Air Force Reserve life now. I’m looking forward to investigating some full-time AF work opportunities while I’m living in Colorado Springs. I learned through the grapevine that there’s quite a bit to do, I can’t wait to learn more and toss my name in the hat for the occasional odd job. πŸ™‚

While I was in Nebraska, I had the time to really start investigating the layout of the community and how the schools are. Jacob will be going to middle school (yikes!) while we’re living there, so it’s time to take things up a notch and really get smart on this stuff.

We’re getting excited about it!

For now I don’t have that much to do — we haven’t even decided if Dave is going to try to fly out earlier to find us a house. We figured we could take a couple weeks right when we get there and take our time looking…we simply don’t know. Β And for now, we aren’t stressing about it. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of stress to go around in about 8 weeks.

Have you ever lived in Colorado Springs? What advice can you give to our family? I’ve never set foot in the area, Dave had spent 4 days there in early 2010.

10. February 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

The reason I was inspired to post about that 1957 Air Force wife book last week was because I was thinking about getting some “calling cards” of my own.  I’ve done this in the past, it’s great for trading playdate information on the playground.  It’s also much classier than scrawling down your information on the back of a crumbled gas station receipt at the bottom of your purse.  It helps out as a reservist, too, when you can’t access your military phone and e-mail account daily, you can just hand someone a personal card to follow up on a correspondence.

I learned this idea through a Mom on a playground in Cary, North Carolina back in 2005, but it’s reaped dividends as a military wife…when you have to introduce yourself to a new circle of friends every 2-3 years.

I had placed an order a couple weeks ago through VistaPrint.com for my free** 250 business cards and they arrived on Tuesday.

You really thought I’d show the world our address and phone number?  These cards are also great for “We’ve Moved” cards.  That way folks could just put your new address/phone/e-mail address in with other business cards.

Since they’re free**, you’ll be shamelessly promoting VistaPrint every time you share one of your cards.  I don’t mind, can’t argue with cheap well-made business cards.

**The cards are free, but you pay a small shipping fee (~$5).  Plus you have to be prepared to weed through no less than 15 webpages worth of “Would you like to add XX onto your order??” offers.

09. December 2010 · Comments Off on Getting Settled In…. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Howdy!  It’s been a few days.  I’m sure you’ve ALL been at the edge of your seat, spending all your time wondering, “How has Major Mom been with the move?”

I’m sure you’ve been up all night worrying about me, right?

Of course you have πŸ˜‰

So we had our stuff delivered on Wednesday, December 1st, and Dave and I spent a marathon FOUR DAYS doing nothing but unpacking.  Dave had taken a couple extra days off after our stuff was delivered to help with unpacking.  Somewhere in there on Thursday I made it to Hurlburt to do my first commissary run, and on Friday I attended a base spouses’ orientation that I probably didn’t really need.  It was more like “Military Spouse 101″…don’t get me wrong, it was a great class, but I was probably not the right audience.  I found out Hurlburt Field does this other spouses’ orientation that includes a bus tour of the base and that’s more what I’m looking for.  I’ll sign up for that course in January.

Anyway, by Sunday the 5th, we had unpacked just about every box and each room in our house was presentable.  I could take over with the “refining” while Dave reported back to work.

My current challenge: getting our daily routines in place during all this holiday hub-bub!

On Saturday we made it over to the beach for a quick photo shoot so I could get some Christmas cards made up.  On Sunday night the boys and I made our first batch of Christmas cookies.  I’ll be making dough for some sugar cookies tomorrow.  Tonight the boys and I got the bulk of the Christmas cards addressed, stuffed, stamped and put in the outgoing mail for tomorrow.

It’s great having the boys help with the holiday activities this year:

Helping with a family favorite cookie recipe: Holiday Cookie Surprises

Jacob stuffed Christmas card envelopes for me, while Timmy helped with putting on the stamps.  You can turn your laptop upside-down and squint for a sneak-peek of our Christmas cards πŸ˜‰

As for school, the boys seem to be doing pretty well.  Jacob has a LOT more homework here than he did in Bellevue, but like the school supply issue, I think the amount he’s getting here is more par for the course.  Jacob has commented more than once that the schoolwork here is more difficult than it was in Nebraska, but I think it’s more of a laziness thing for Jacob.  He just actually has to do more work.  I’ve had to exchange a couple e-mails with his teacher to seek clarification on some of the classroom procedures.  She always replies quickly and has great communication with the parents.  I won’t argue there!

Timmy is absolutely loving his new Kindergarten class.  He misses his Nebraska friends, and talks about his friends Roger, Micah and Jackson quite a bit.  We had to exchange a couple e-mails with Timmy’s former teacher about some school supplies he left behind, and it was nice to catch up with Mrs. Brockhaus!

The boys are taking the bus to and from school.  I was pleasantly surprised at all the security that seems to go into riding the bus around here.  I can only coordinate directly with the county school district transportation office to arrange the pick up/drop off at our new house, and the elementary school kids don’t have bus stops.  We are instructed to wait at the end of our driveway for pick up, and the boys are dropped off at the end of the driveway in the afternoons.  I’ve met the bus driver “Miss Irene”, and the kids just play in the front yard until the bus comes.  Our street is arrow-straight and we can see the bus turn onto our street from 1/2 a mile, and 2 stops away.  Taking the bus really opens up the length of the school day for the boys, but the boys haven’t complained.

We’re enjoying our new house quite a bit.  I’ll have to give up a lot of my gardening, since the homeowner has invested heavily in the front-yard landscaping and I won’t want to mess with a good thing.  The backyard is ab-so-lute-ly BLANK.  Grass.  That’s it.  The backyards around us have more trees and bushes, and therefore the wildlife seems to hang out there.  We have seen numerous birds in the neighboring yards…on our 2nd day here I had the honor of seeing EIGHT bluebirds sitting on the fenceline.  I didn’t have my camera with me, so I couldn’t get a picture, although it would have been a nice one.

This morning while waiting for the bus, Jacob saw a Northern Flicker in the one non-palm tree in our front yard.  He was making funny noises, and Jacob was attempting to communicate with it.  I’m glad all the birding in NC and NE has paid off πŸ™‚

And finally, I’ll share my newest hobby: a small fountain/pond in my yard.  Among the fancy front-yard landscaping is a pond/fountain, a plain fountain and a birdbath!  I’m looking forward to seeing more birds in the front yard when the weather gets warmer.

The pond was certainly a nice bonus to our house — and we were pleasantly surprised to see 4 good-sized goldfish swimming around in the pond.  The weather’s been so cold the fish are more or less dormant so it isn’t very interesting.  They’re also pretty shy, hiding under the fountain column a lot of the time.  The algae in the pond has been a problem.  So these past few days I’ve been spending 30-45 minutes per day working on cleaning out the pond.  As of now, I’ve done a 2/3 water change, scrubbed the algae off the concrete, and I’m making sure to run the fountain during the day so the water is well aerated.  The water I add to the pond is from a well, which means I don’t have to worry about chemical treatments or anything like that.  Every time I’d agitate the water the algae would stir up and become almost opaque green — seeing the fish at all has been difficult.  Once the temperatures warm up more in a couple months, we’ll start feeding them and hopefully we’ll see them come out more often.

The fountain.  The pump sends the water up to the very top of the column and then it trickles down the “trays” that are spiraling around the column.  It’s very pretty, but I’ve been challenged with setting the water pressure such that the water doesn’t blast out of the trays sloppily.

Here’s one of the fish on a rare occasion that the algae in the water was settled to the bottom.  The boys haven’t named the fish yet (I see that coming real soon), but this one likes to hang out near the warmer pump unit when the water’s cold.  We have two gold ones, and two calicos.  Each are 6-8″ long.

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!

29. November 2010 · Comments Off on School Supply Shopping · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Today I learned one of the impacts of a mid-school-year move.

This afternoon I ventured out for the school supplies the boys need for their new school.  Their first day is tomorrow.

Dave brought home the school supply list last month after he registered the boys for their new school.  Whoa!  Not only was the list much longer, and had many “collective classroom” items, but it was also extremely specific.  “Crayola crayons”, “Fiskars scissors”, “Mead composition notebook”, “4 plain plastic folders with 3 prongs and pockets”, etc.

Fortunately, the Super Walmart right up the street from their new school has everything on the list neatly arranged in a single aisle, right down to the brand names.  It wasn’t hard to find at all.

This whole thing got me thinking: I was seriously spoiled in Nebraska!  My boys’ school supplies list in Bellevue was short and consisted of the basics: crayons, glue, scissors, pencils and a pencil box.  Bellevue Public Schools provided a LOT of the supplies for the entire class…especially the collective items, like tissues and hand sanitizer.  Homeowners in Bellevue will tell you that they’re definitely footing the bill, though πŸ™‚

I’m sure for many of you reading this (such as my sister in central North Carolina), you’re used to it.  I also understand that my boys won’t be denied an education if I chose NOT to provide these items.  However, the thought of the teacher having to provide many of these items out of pocket for every student who is unable to provide everything gives me the chills.

And I certainly wasn’t ready at all to buy everything at full price!  A consequence of starting my boys in a new school mid-year.  I know what many of these items will cost during the August Back-to-School sales and I’m pretty certain in the future these school lists will cost us about 1/3-1/2 as much.

Timmy’s school supplies.  Note the FIVE boxes of crayons in the front.  And the ream of card stock.  Definitely unusual items.
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Jacob’s school supplies.  His list was just as long, but his items apparently were smaller.  There’s a purple box under the markers filled with pencils, erasers, glue and scissors.
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Everything is bagged up and ready to haul into school tomorrow morning!

28. November 2010 · Comments Off on Hi Honey, We’re HOME!!!! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We made it! We had a nice uneventful trip, with about 22 hours worth of driving spread over 4 days, 1200 miles, and 10 different states!

This afternoon we went straight over to the house to empty out the trailer into the new house’s garage, although we aren’t officially moving in until Wednesday.

More pictures will come a little later, for now we’re in a sea of address changes, insurance changes, school supply purchases, and utility installations.  Today we went over to Pensacola and chose a new living room set and boy is it different from what we have had for the past 15 years!  Ironic how we opted for the red couch after we left Nebraska, huh?

Timmy’s happy to be back in Moe’s country, that’s for sure!  We stopped there tonight for dinner after our furniture shopping.  The one in Bellevue had closed just 6 months after we had moved there, so poor Timmy had been in a two-year-long Moe’s drought!  Relief, finally!

24. November 2010 · Comments Off on Moving 101 — Keeping it Fun for the Kids! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

I saw these at Target while I was shopping for gift cards for the boys’ teachers. CUTE! It’s a small Lego set that you get when you put money on the gift card! So I put $5 each on two of these and just now gave them to the boys when we got to our hotel tonight. It took them no time to assemble them.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
23. November 2010 · Comments Off on Weigh Too Much Stuff! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

When you drive some of your belongings during a military move, you can file to have the government reimburse you at 95% of what the government would have had to pay a shipping company.
To do this, you have to weigh your vehicles before and after loading. Here’s our completely loaded Pilot with trailer (the trailer was weighed separately) at a scale at our local nursery this afternoon. Trees, Shrubs and More on the corner of 36th and Cornhusker, for our local readers. We probably have about 2000 lbs of stuff we’re hand carrying.

23. November 2010 · Comments Off on In the Home Stretch · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I’m stealing this picture from Dave and his latest blog entry. Tonight we loaded up a U-Haul trailer with his model train layout. By leaving the legs up on the two parts of the layout, we have a plethora of space underneath that I found no problem filling with a couple dozen bankers boxes with assorted papers, liquids, and cleaning supplies.

It’s going to be VERY cold tonight, so I have held off on loading my violin or my worm bin, both of which won’t do well for too long when it’s <50F.

Tomorrow we will do the final packing while the boys are at school.  Dave checks out of the base, I will turn in the cable box and turn off the cable/Internet and then we’ll get the kids from school and hit the road.

This is our first serious cold-season move, so we’re working with very limited daylight right now.  I don’t want to do tag-team driving in the dark, so we’re trying to give ourselves enough time to get down to Overland Park, KS before dark (about 3 hours).

My next post will be from on the road!

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
22. November 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

So here I am, sitting in an empty house.  It took about 3 1/2 days, and it filled 2/3 of a 53′ trailer!  But it’s done, and we now are living with a minimum of stuff in our house.

Folks have been asking “Why aren’t you in the Transient Lodging (on base hotel, more or less)?” or “Why aren’t you staying with friends?”

Several reasons.  First of all, we enjoy our space.  We held on to sleeping bags, cots, air mattresses and camping chairs and are doing pretty well.  We kept our small TV, our Wii system, and laptop computers.  We still have our WiFi going (and will until 6 hours before we leave!), so I can still come to you from our empty house.

Secondly, we know Howie does much much better when the family is with him.  We could have kenneled him, but he doesn’t sleep well at the kennel, and he tends to not eat.  Better for Howie, for sure.

Finally, unless it was filled up, we’d have had to use Offutt AFB’s lodging, which we used on our way into this assignment in July 2008. They’re gracious enough to have a pet-friendly lodging room that we were able to get, but it was very small and very old. The 4 of us, plus Howie, weren’t too comfortable, so we decided to save the government some money and stay in the house until we vacate it on Tuesday.

So here we are in the house. I’m down to just odds and ends…we have all utilities set to turn off later this week in our current house, and our Florida house will have utilities coming on early next week.

Enjoy some pictures from our packing up…and our life in an empty house:

I ran an errand to Kohl’s to use some Kohl’s cash that would expire while we were on the road.  I came home and saw this ENORMOUS truck parked in front of the house.  I was tickled by the map of Florida painted on!
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Those who were packing our boxes did a nice job stacking them neatly so we could still maneuver around.
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The dining room.
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The furniture pads helped protect the larger items while crammed into the truck.
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This is the fridge getting loaded up onto the truck.
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The packers were kind enough to leave two chairs for us until the very end.  That computer table wasn’t coming with us, we’re leaving it for the next tenants.
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The fridge coming down the stairs out of the kitchen.
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As one of Dave’s Facebook friends pointed it, seeing our stuff get loaded was like watching a game of “Tetris”.  That’s our fridge, washer and dryer across the bottom there.
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Howie’s old hat at this — this will be his 4th move in 10 years!
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This is from this morning.  My boys have a “Breakfast with Spongebob” tradition on the weekends.  Today was no exception.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010