Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!  In celebration of the holiday, and because I was otherwise unoccupied today, I decided to decorate the house a bit.

I also decided it was time to make a proper meal in my newly organized kitchen. 

I decided to make a white bean and sausage stew from Better Homes & Gardens,

and a wonderful new rosemary olive oil bread recipe I found on Pinterest.  We will definitely be making this again.

I don’t have a great place to store the leftovers right now, but we’re working on that part.  Our fridge has to show up eventually!

Unpacking Pause

Things were really rolling along on the unpacking front until Thursday morning.  We had our bedroom and one of the spare bedrooms painted, our clothes were unpacked, and we were working steadily on removing all traces of Bambi and friends from our sitting room.  We were down to just a handful of boxes piled up in the living room.  Not too bad for just four days!

Then, as many of you who also get my updates of Facebook already know, I had to go in for hernia surgery.  No worries – after two days of drug-induced sleep, I am back and better than ever.  The only exception is that can’t lift anything that weighs more then 10 lbs.  Let me tell you what, EVERYTHING in our house weighs at least 10 lbs.  I can’t do anything!!  Can you tell I’m frustrated?  However, I have the best husband ever, and he listened very patiently this weekend while I talked him through moving most of the boxes out of the living room.  Here’s what it looks like now.

It’s still a mess, and the living areas still need paint, but we’re getting there.  On the down side, our storage shipment may or may not ever make it to our house.  It was supposed to be delivered no later than today, and there’s still no sign of our refrigerator or our washer and dryer.  Good thing we both have way too many clothes!

Kayaking the San Marcos River

Through the wonders of modern marketing (also known as Living Social), we were introduced to Texas Pack and Paddle a few days after we arrived in San Antonio.  We signed up for a kayaking day trip to one of the local rivers.  Last weekend, we took our trip to the San Marcos River, located about an hour north of San Antonio.

We were joined by another Air Force couple that’s new to San Antonio as well as several other paddlers (yes, we’re the dorks in wet-suits). 

Photo courtesy of Texas Pack and Paddle

We enjoyed the day floating down the river, soaking up the sunshine, and navigating a few small ripples along the way. 

We followed up our four-hour workout with a late lunch at one of the best barbecue joints in Texas, Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart, TX.  Our meal was fantastic, and we really enjoyed getting to know our new friends better!

Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere!!

In an unexpected, but much appreciated turn of events, our household goods shipment was delivered on Friday!!!  That meant we spent most of Thursday scrambling to get the essential walls painted and ready for furniture, but it was so worth it to sleep in our own bed again.

Chris took a few pictures of the unloading and unpacking that I thought you all might enjoy.

The main living areas before the unloading started:

Moving crates all unloaded:

The main living areas after unloading the truck and unpacking the kitchen:

We still have lots of boxes to unpack, but we're getting there.  Hopefully, we will get our refrigerator and our washing machine some time this week too!

Portrait Photography 2

Last year,at almost exactly this time, my friend Jacki asked me if I would take a few family pictures for their Christmas cards.  The results of that photo session were posted here.  Fast forward to this year, both Jacki and I have moved off the island, but, we have moved to Jacki’s hometown!!  Today, while she and her husband were back in San Antonio visiting family, they asked me to take pictures for this year’s Christmas card.  Once again, thanks to my awesome models, they turned great.

Jacki found some really cute poses to try, but this one was my favorite.    

Thanks Jacki, B, and Mason for coming to visit!

New House!!

After over a month of waiting, we got the keys to your new house yesterday!!  Here are the pictures you’ve all been waiting for.  Sorry they aren't great.  It was a cloudy day here today, and we have lots of burned out light bulbs to replace!


We don’t love the paint colors in the house, so we’ll be working our way around with new colors.  The first stop will be the master bedroom and bathroom along with one of the guest bedrooms.  We have to get these rooms done before our furniture arrives next week (fingers crossed!) because once a select few furniture items are in their place, it takes more than the two of us to move them.  Motivation to get their location right the first time.

In addition to painting, we’ve got a few other house projects lined up.  We’ve been deprived of projects for two years, so if I were you, I’d be buying stock in Lowes.  We’ll probably be spending most of our money there for the foreseeable future.  In fact, I started and finished our first project today!

Peel and stick tiles under the kitchen sink.

Moving Update

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I thought I should fill you all in on how things have been going.  In a word… slowly.  Very, very slowly. 

I wrote about our initial journey in this post.  Since then, we've found a house and negotiated all the nitty-gritty details of the contract.  We are scheduled to close on Monday.  Keep your fingers crossed that nothing changes that date!  I’ll post pictures of the house once we are actually the owners.  We have attempted to schedule our various shipments for next week as well, but in typical military-move fashion, nothing is working out as we had hoped.  We will be able to get our unaccompanied baggage next week, so we’ll have a vacuum, one bicycle, a TV and some clothes.  However, our main household goods shipment was held up in customs, so we may no see that shipment (or our bed) for at least two weeks.  Yippee!!  We have also been unsuccessful in scheduling the delivery of the items we put in storage when we moved to Lajes.  As of today, they will be picked up from storage on the 18th and delivered in 2-14 days.  Really… 2-14 days, that’s the best you can do?  At least I have the internet installation scheduled for Tuesday!

Since we knew there would be a big time lag between finding a house and actually being able to move in, we scheduled a trip back to South Dakota and Nebraska to see our families.  I wrote about that trip here.  It was great to see our family, and I was thankful to not have to spend those 10 days in a hotel.

Almost immediately upon our arrival home from South Dakota, we found out our car had arrived in Dallas.  We flew up to Thursday morning and drove it home Thursday afternoon.  We were lucky enough to meet my cousin Amy and her family for lunch.  Thanks Brown family for being our taxi service!  It was great to see you guys.  We also purchased a new-to-us car a few days after our arrival.  We are now the proud owners of a 2010 Toyota Prius.  We love the car and the 51 mpg we've been averaging!

We were also lucky enough to spend the last three days with my aunt and uncle from Denver.  I haven’t seen them since I tagged along with them to Hawaii last December.  My uncle was in town for a conference, so I spent the afternoons with my aunt strolling along the River Walk.

And that takes me to today.  Despite a long list of things I need to blog about, I’m really, really bored… Sam agrees whole-heartedly with that last part.

Maybe we’ll go to the dog park again this afternoon.  Or, maybe not.  It’s awfully hot and humid out right now.  Story of our new life.

Family Visit

While we were waiting for the paperwork for our new house to process, we took an 11-day trip back to South Dakota and Nebraska to see our families.  We started out the visit with Chris’s family in Lincoln, NE.  We spent Saturday afternoon in the park with Chris’s sisters and their families as well as Chris’s parents.  There are now six grandkids in the family, so we all kept busy running after everyone. 

On Sunday, we all went to church, then spent the afternoon at the home of Chris’s aunt and uncle.  They have a large and every-expanding family as well, so getting nearly everyone together was a special treat.  We enjoyed the opportunity to exchange stories about that last two years.  Hard to believe it’s been two years since Chris has seen his family!

Monday was spent at “the farm” with Chris’s sister and her family.  They live on a beautiful piece of land south of Lincoln.  Chris’s brother-in-law just finished installing a reclaimed windmill near their pond.  It looks perfect with the surrounding trees and fields.

Tuesday, we headed north, but not before stopping in Omaha to see two of our college friends.  Since I saw these two last November, they have each welcomed a new child into their families.  We were lucky enough to have one of the new babies join us for lunch.  She is an absolute doll!  Her dad is in so much trouble when she gets older.

The rest of the week was spent in South Dakota visiting various members of my family.  Our first stop on arriving in Sioux Falls was my brother’s house.  Matthew and Jessica welcomed their son Archer into the family this summer, and this was our first chance to see our newest nephew!

He’s still pretty young, so he mostly laid there and looked at his mom, but he makes the most adorable faces when he’s deep in thought.  If you want to read some great stories about Archer, Jessica blogs about them regularly here.

We spent one day with my Mom being tourists in Sioux Falls.  It was her idea for me to put together a post comparing Sioux Falls to some of the places we've been in the last two years.  It turned out to be a really cute idea.  Even though Chris thought this was going to be a vacation for him, he got pulled into helping my dad on with the trees.  We helped Dad load a flatbed of potted evergreens and helped keep everything watered while he was away for a few days at his 40th high school reunion.  Chris has now experienced the single most boring chore ever – watering trees!

We finished up our trip to Sioux Falls with Archer’s baptism.  We were asked to be his godparents and couldn't have been more honored to be a part of this special day!  The weather cooperated, and we were able to enjoy a wonderful afternoon in the park with the entire extended family.  We even squeezed in time for a few family pictures.

All-in-all it was a great trip!

Sioux Falls as a Tourist

While at home visiting my family, my Mom convinced us to take in a few of the sights in the great city of Sioux Falls.  She also suggested that we compare them to some of the places we've visited in the last two years.  I thought it was a great idea, so here you go:

The Sioux Falls vs. Waterfall in Switzerland

Veteran’s Memorial Park vs. Normandy WWII Memorial Cemetery

Sioux Falls Cathedral vs. Yorkminster Cathedral

USS South Dakota Battleship Memorial vs. Battleship Missouri

Worthing Dinner Theater vs. Venice Grand Opera

Not all that different are they?