20. May 2017 · Comments Off on Where Have You Been, Woman???? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Yeah, I know. I’ve been scarce. I am liking the Instagram connections with the blog, but I get that it isn’t saying much.

My last “normal” post was on January 5th, about my Instant Pot that I got for Christmas. But let’s now play a little catch up. This post will be full of photos and YouTube videos, so bear with us. More »

29. July 2013 · Comments Off on Boys’ Baseball Bedrooms on a Budget · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
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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04. July 2013 · Comments Off on The Weather Station is MOSTLY Up and Running! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Tonight I had set up our PC desktop computer on our new Ikea desk.

I turned on the Davis Vantage Pro 2 console, and I didn’t realize that our weather station is already transmitting from inside a deck box where it’s awaiting a more formal installation.

So for now, trust the temperature, dew point and barometric pressure. I’ll let you know when we get the anemometer and rain gauge assembled. I’m awaiting the formal movement approval for our MADIS community reporting also.

02. July 2013 · Comments Off on Military Move Musings – Day 4 · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

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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02. July 2013 · Comments Off on Military Move Musings – Day 3 and the Oklahoma City National Memorial · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,
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. More »

24. June 2013 · Comments Off on Military Move Musings – Day 2 · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

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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23. June 2013 · Comments Off on Military Move Musings: Day 1 · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

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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The kids were 4 months and 2 years old the last time they had to do this.

The kids were 4 months and 2 years old the last time they had to do this. In 2005 Jacob’s favorite house was the one with the toys in the living room for him to play with. We didn’t choose this pictured house, it was way overpriced.

Since I started my blog in late 2007, the house-hunting experience for our family had been pretty basic: Dave would fly out to the next destination and choose a rental home for the family. I’d stay with the kids.

For Dave, it was a whirlwind trip, but he could complete everything in as little as 48 hours…not just securing a new house, but also getting the boys registered for school.

This next assignment to Colorado Springs would be for a longer tour than the past two, so we elected to buy a house this time.

It was a tough decision, but we decided to bring the whole family on this particular househunting trip. We found a gap in the boys’ baseball schedule in early May that would allow us to take a long weekend and fly the family to Colorado; we would all shop for the next house together.

We were in contact with a realtor that a local friend here recommended, and she worked with us for several weeks in advance to hone our preferences and she has a list of ten houses waiting for us to view by the first weekend of May.

One of the houses went into contract right away so that left 9 houses to view. It was a very long day, and my head was swimming by the end. Ironically, we chose the one house that didn’t have an already-finished basement. The lower price made it appealing and we could apply some of the cost savings to finishing it ourselves to our liking.

The kids were great sports about it. They were exhausted by the end (the high elevation not helping things) but had many inputs.

It was a delicate balance of size, price, layout, schools and distance to our work locations. We chose a lovely house in the northeast part of Colorado Springs, centrally located. The boys can walk to their elementary schools, but will be bused or driven to middle and high school. But even the middle and high schools are closer than the kids are from their current schools.

We can’t wait to make our new house a “home” in the coming weeks.

06. June 2013 · Comments Off on Another Day…Another Move…. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
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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02. June 2013 · Comments Off on Farewell KFLGULFB11 and KFLNAVAR18! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
Technically, Dave is assembling our AcuRite sensor set here, but you can just pretend the drill is unscrewing rather than screwing.  Ha ha.

Technically, Dave is assembling our AcuRite sensor set here, but you can just pretend the drill is unscrewing rather than screwing. Ha ha.

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.

Our Davis Instruments weather station sensor set is beginning to get rather tired. I predict we’ll be getting a new one by the end of the year.

You can view the archives for these two weather stations through our Weather Underground pages:

We will retire these two names and will be resuscitating the weather stations in July in Colorado!

I’m sorry we didn’t have more fanfare or photography with this, but it’s really busy around here, the packers will be here TOMORROW!