Oops... where have we been?? I've had a slight blogging absence for a couple months. In January, Jeff left for SERE school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) for a month and I planned on getting a lot of work done on the blog during that time. Well... that just didn't happen. While he was gone, I spent most of the month trying to stay active with Chipper and doing what I could to get ready for our upcoming PCS. Also my computer lately has been moving at the speed of snail and I really haven't had the patience to sit down and deal with it. But I'm back today with a little update from the last couple months!
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| Chipper going for a swim at Lake Tholocco |
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| Stuck my hand out the sunroof so it's very crooked, but managed to catch this Blackhawk come in for a landing at Lowe Field on Fort Rucker. |
February was our last month in Alabama and we spent it mostly relaxed. We celebrated a Seahawk Super Bowl win with some friends from Washington who lived down there with us. Chipper turned 2 (finally!!). We had a low key Valentine's Day at home with a bottle of wine and the Olympics (if you know me, you know when it comes to the Olympics I go hard-- can't miss a day). And how could I forget that we survived the Southern Snow Storm of 2014! I'm sure you heard about the people in Atlanta and Birmingham being stranded in their cars and spending the night on the freeway, at school, in the ditch, at the office... It wasn't that bad in Enterprise but it was definitely an eye opening experience. The roads were dry as a bone and yet the grocery stores were cleaned out. Walmart was only letting people in for a couple hours a day and you could only buy food. I was thankful for an Alaskan background that week, let me tell you.
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| Chipper on his 2nd birthday, practically flying through the dog park |
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| Notice the dry roads. |
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| The bread aisle was CLEANED. OUT. for the 2-day storm. | |
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Then at the end of February we made a quick trip up to Chicago for Melissa & Jon's wedding. I mean quick-- we left from Atlanta on Saturday morning and returned Sunday afternoon. We really crammed a lot into that one day span though! We got some local eats, partied with some friends we hadn't seen in a while at the wedding and reception, went downtown and saw the Magnificent Mile, the Cloud Gate sculpture, and Lake Michigan (which was half frozen over--I guess that doesn't happen very often, thanks polar vortex!), and then booked it back to the airport.
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| Myself with the bride. We were (and still are!) so happy for them but sad to see them move to Japan! Hope to see you guys at the next duty station! |
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| Loved this view! I love a big city. |
So then we came home and it was crunch time to get ready for our PCS. Since we are TDY en route (read: we are just stopping in Albuquerque on our way to our actual duty station) we only got reimbursed for bringing 600 lbs of stuff (for reference, our 2 bedroom place was a total of about 6,000 lbs). Everything else has to sit in storage in Alabama while we are here and then will be shipped to Spokane when we get there. So we really couldn't bring much besides clothes, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, that kind of thing. We rented furniture when we got here so we didn't have to bring anything with us, and we still went over our limit by about 150 lbs. Oopsie. But the PCS went well and we arrived safely in Albuquerque after stopping in Little Rock and Oklahoma City.
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| Saying good bye to our living room stuff for a few months! It's going to feel like Christmas when we get to Spokane. |
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We said goodbye to our home in Enterprise and hit the road!
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| He lived in the backseat for 3 days |
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| And enchanting it is ;) |
So far we absolutely love Albuquerque. I don't know if it's just because it's the biggest city we've lived in in 3 years or if it's because the scenery isn't bad to look at either! There seems to be a never ending list of things we want to do while here (hiking, going up the tram to the top of Sandia Peak, checking out Santa Fe, going to the hot springs, going to Carlsbad Caverns.. I could go on) and we are working on tackling that every weekend. Jeff's been hiking a lot on the weekends and I've been taking Chipper on the trails in our "backyard" during the weekdays. He's also been working on getting checked out at the airport here so that we can rent a plane and he can take me up for the first time EVER! Expect a blog post on that when it happens!
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| He does this all day every day. He just longs to go roam those mountains! |
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| Riding the tram up to Sandia Peak |
Dinner at High Finance, the restaurant at the top of Sandia Peak
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| Albuquerque from the top |
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| We caught one last day of snow before spring officially started-- yep, it snows in the desert |
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| The view for my hikes with Chipper |
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| We went offroading and had to stop for a pic with the New Mexico desert behind us |
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| Really comforting to see a little truck graveyard off the edge of the cliff. This was maybe 100 feet down. |
It's not all dry and sandy desert though. Spring is in bloom here in Albuquerque!
And last but not least, I think my favorite thing we have done since living here is... trade in my car!! My trusty ol Pontiac was starting to need a lot of little things done to keep up with it (new brakes, tire rod ends, new tires, windows would sometimes get stuck all the way down, the list goes on). We decided rather than putting a couple grand into those fixes that it was just time for an upgrade. So we found this fun little thing with low mileage and I LOVE it! It's a 2010 Acura TSX. I love driving it. I think once we get to Spokane I will miss having autostart in the long winters but maybe we will have a garage I can park it in. We will see. But for now I'm enjoying having a new (to me) car! Side note: it still smells like a new car in there... every time I get in I'm like ahhhhh! *cue hallelujah chorus*
So that's it! I'll try to pick up blogging more often so we don't have monster posts like these in the future! We have lots to do while here and that means lots to share with family and friends. I know people are wondering what the heck we have been up to! Hope everyone had a great Easter Sunday yesterday! We went to church and then were lucky enough to have friends invite us over for a delicious ham dinner. When you're in the military, you spend lots of holidays with your second family. :) Thanks for catching up, see you all soon!
