Rumor Mill is Cranking

O the dreaded D word rumors are coming already. Soldier hasn’t even left for the training that I’m already dreading and now these rumors. Of course, they are just that, rumors, and everyone knows nothing is final with the military so I’m not getting caught up worrying about it until the orders come. Speaking of which, the orders for his training just arrived in the mail today, *sigh*.

Moving Woes

I have absolutely no idea how everyone handles PCSing so gracefully. I packed up everything this weekend except for the essentials and a few extra things; 2 TV/DVRs, bathroom things, clothes for the week, a few dishes, and the fridge and freezer foods, linens on our bed, computers, etc. And then I realized that I hadn’t unloaded the dishwasher so I have many more clean dishes that need to be packed and I walked into our office and found this!

It's a good thing I love him :)

We are moving into our house on Friday and I had hoped to have everything packed and moved on that date. We still have our current apartment until the 15th so we have plenty of time to clean it up before we turn in the keys. But as I am planning this move I starting thinking, what if we were moving to another state and had to completely pack up the apartment and move EVERYTHING that day. What about cleaning the old place? You would either have to clean it as you’re packing. Although, I don’t know about anyone else, but I seem to make a bigger mess as I’m organizing/purging. Or you just kiss the deposit goodbye and tell them to take the cleaning charges out of the deposit. Which, as I’m trying to fit packing into the work week and still sticking to the gym schedule, is looking like the more attractive option every minute.

My husband is in the Guard so I’ll never experience a PCS move like many of you have or will. In fact, I have done very little moving in my life, just from my parents to a college dorm room, into a house with roommates (where the only thing I brought was my bed, dresser, desk and clothes), back into a dorm room and then into this apartment. 3 of these 4 moves were in the same town and everything then fit in the pack of a pickup truck. Now we’ve accumulated so much more than the basic necessities and need to rent a uhaul truck to carry everything. God willing this will be our last move because I would love to be able to stay in this town, and quite frankly, I’m exhausted!

At The Risk of Sounding like a Broken Record...

I cannot wait to move! This morning was definitely winter coat weather and I have already boxed up our winter coats and only have a spring jacket left out. It doesn’t really keep you warm at 38 degrees at 5:30am in the morning. And the long winter coat is much better to have on cold days when your car has leather seats. Yeesh it was cold on the tush this morning!

Impatiently Waiting

I am getting very excited and cannot wait to move into our new house. I am soo ready to be done with this apartment. I have been here for several years and it is falling apart, literally. A corner of the building is sinking and it’s putting stress on the beams which is causing them to press through the sheetrock. You can see the distinct outlines of the beams through the walls. We also have a very long crack running the length of our ceiling and a water mark just appeared on our ceiling last month, so the roof’s leaking too. The floors slope so badly towards the middle that we had to put phone books under the bookshelves to keep them level.



For these reasons and so many more I am impatiently counting down the days until we are out of here. Of course, then I remember that as soon as October comes we are just that much closer to K leaving and then I don’t want it to be here so quickly.

Moving Countdown Begins

We finally found a house and are moving in just a little under 3 weeks. It’s a little short notice so we’ve been working like crazy to pack up our apartment. We packed up the office (the room I was dreading the most so I wanted to do it first while packing was still exciting – that lasted for all of 3 boxes) and I packed up the dining room, utility room and entryway closet this weekend before I ran out of boxes. K is picking up some more after work today and I hope to finish packing the living room and linen closet – maybe even start on the kitchen (another room I am definitely not excited to do) during the week and finish packing the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen this week, leaving out just the essentials to get through the week before we move into our house!


We are a little crazy though, Soldier doesn’t get any time off from work and has to work the next weekend as well so we’ve been doing all our packing during the week after we’re both done with work and I get home from the gym. Yes, I decided this would also be a great time to start working out again, so K gets home from work at 6pm and I usually get home from the gym at 6:30pm. Which then after making, eating, and cleaning up after supper it’s about 8pm which leaves maybe 1-2 hours of packing/purging/organizing/cleaning time before K needs to go to bed because he has to get up for PT at 5am. We get the keys the day before we are set to move so I’m probably going to stay up all night cleaning the new house before we start bringing everything in.

O, and because K can’t take time off I get to load all of these nicely packed boxes into the uhaul all by myself. I thought about calling some friends to ask if they’d help, but moving is such an unpleasant job I don’t even want to do it. And his parents are coming to visit the weekend we’re moving and that also happens to be the weekend of my parent’s 25th anniversary, soooo, K is going to have to move all those boxes into the house with the help of his parents because I’m leaving to go to my parents where the rest of my sisters and I are meeting for a family anniversary dinner with the grandparents.

I asked K to not do any unnecessary unpacking until I got back because I don’t want to have to rearrange things that had already been put away – especially in the kitchen – just to put them how I want them or I’d never find anything. So, when I get back on Sunday night I’m going to start the process of unpacking and putting everything away.


Whew!

Winter Already?!

We got snow last night! Can you believe it - it's only September and we already had our first snow. Fortunately it didn't stick and melted as soon as it touched the ground, but it seems like we might skip fall again this year and head straight to winter. Last year the leaves didn't even get a chance to change colors before the frost came and they just fell off the trees. Hopefully we get some colorful folliage this year because it is soooo beautiful. We got married in the fall almost 2 years ago and had the weather was perfect, 50 degrees and the trees were gorgeaus. Maybe we'll be lucky again this year, but the weather man said it was going to freeze tonight so I better pick the rest of my vegetables.


I finished the knitting projects for my nieces and nephew's Christmas presents and here are the finished projects.

Little bitty hat and booties for the newborn

Camoflauge hat and scarf for the duck hunter

Pink and purple hat ans scarf with beads for the girly girl

Yellow and gray hat with matching gray scarf

Blue hat and scarf for the bears fan

Procrastination

I should be packing up our utility closet and the living room, but I made the mistake of turning on the tv for some background noise and saw that Sixteen Candles is on. Then I made the second mistake of picking up my laptop and am now procrastinating on the internet. I heard about these videos a few months ago and just have to share them with you as they are hilarious. Maybe not as funny for you non MidWesterners but I'll share anyway!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In

Join in over at Wife of a Sailor

1.How do you spend your deployment money, do you save, pay off bills or enjoy the extra money while it is there to buy the things you do not normally have?



Save and pay off bills. We became completely debt free during the last deployment and put away a sizeable amount for a down payment on a future home.


2.If you could relive one occasion or moment, what would it be?


Defintely our wedding, the day went by so fast that I don't feel I got to really capture every moment so I'd love to go back and do it all over again!
3.What’s the worst job you ever had and if it was so bad why did you take it?


My worst job was also my first job at a grocery store, but it was bad because of the manager. She was an interesting lady and a horrible boss

4.If you could play any character on TV, who would you be?
 
Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. I would love to have her closet!

5.If you could become the world’s expert in something, what would it be?


Hmm, I would like to be fluent in a ton of different languages. I'm thinking of  using Rosetta Stone to teach myself a language but I can't decide which one....

The Cookbook

I got a package in the mail from my mother-in-law. She has a tradition that she has given a cookbook filled with family recipes to her children for their wedding. I was fairly excited to get it because I love to use family recipes that have been passed down. My family still makes a lot of traditional Norwegian and German food and I’d like to incorporate some of K’s heritage into our cooking. Plus there are some of her recipes that he would like to have (her chocolate chip cookies are to die for).


Boy was I aiming a little high! This cookbook has recipes for mashed potatoes, jello jigglers, green been casserole, rice krispy bars, applesauce made by cooking down apples and throwing in a few red hot candies, cider…you get the picture. Pretty basic stuff and nothing I couldn’t learn how to make by reading the can or the box. I was incredibly insulted when I got it. First, we’ve been married for about 2 years now, and I can definitely cook better than this. I’m pretty sure I’ve got how to make mashed potatoes down!

I immediately called my mom to ask if I was out of line for being so upset. (My mom will definitely tell it like it is and I trust her to put me in check when needed). She said I wasn’t. Who knows, maybe my mother-in-law is still having trouble coming to terms with losing her ‘baby’ and is keeping these favorite recipes to herself so that I can never make cookies like that and then she can still be the best provider for him. I don’t know, I think I’m stretching for that one, but I just need to try and see why she would do something like this. It probably wasn’t even intentional, my in-laws are nice people, they just do some frustrating things. I can’t tell K how mad I was because regardless it’s his mother and I’m not going to say something mean about his family to him even though when K saw it he was pretty disappointed too. I’m going to have to call my sister-in-law (K’s brother’s wife) and see what her cookbook was like…