The beginning of our trek across the country!

So I realize that I have been not posting about what has actually been going on in Mitch and my life so much as I have been using this to elaborate and reflect on some personal times in my life. The thing is that I just realized after sharing my first post about my mom that it was really liberating to write about my feelings. Not only does it make me feel like I can be more open about what is going on in my mind and heart, but it kind of takes a weight off of my mind when I have it written out. It's as if I don't have to carry the burden of remembering all those details all the time because I have documented them now. So, feel free to skip posts like that if you're not interested...but I have a feeling that some part of all of us is more interested in those personal posts than surface level life events. Or maybe I'm just the only person who is inappropriately curious about the details of people's personal lives... :)

Anyway--
Mitch survived survival training (ha!) and was very happy to get back home! Because of the tropical storm he even ended up getting home a few days early and had to reschedule the water portion of survival training for April. Lucky...he will get to go back to Pensacola when it is just getting warm and beautiful!
It was actually really nice that he got home early because it gave us some more time to get the house ready to move. We even ended up getting to take a trip to Ft. Rucker, AL to see what assignment night held for our friends, Jeff and Alisha. They got their top choice and are going to the other AFB in Washington, which means we will only be a few hours apart. :) Woo!

When we got back from our trip to AL we got to work on our last minute prep for the movers to come. We had to make some minor repairs thanks to our wacky dogs, but we finished with time to spare. Packing up your home really puts into perspective the amount of things you can do without...I know I said that in my other post, but for real..crazy. We also scrubbed the house from top to bottom- blinds, baseboards, fan blades...you name it. I think my hands smelled like bleach for days after we finished. Cleaning our house to that extent made me consider how potentially nasty it really is to continuously live in the same house. I was wondering how people who live in the same house for 15..20..30 years ever actually have a clean house.  There were just places that would have never been touched if we hadn't had everything removed from our house. Examples include hosing down our porch and all our porch furniture, under the washer and dryer, the back corners of cabinets and drawers, deep cleaning of the oven and fridge... Maybe that's what spring cleaning is for, but wow. And maybe people do those things all the time and I just have never had a full house of stuff to worry about...? Anyway, when we get settled in our house in Washington we have made mental notes to thoroughly and completely clean every now and then.

I am aware that I have always talked in tangents...back to business.

Mitch and I were originally scheduled, as per his orders (orders are the 8.5"x11" pieces of paper that make official everything a military member and his/her dependents can and must do because they have duty station and date information on them), to move from Columbus to Altus on the 18th of October. If you recall the beginning 16 days of October were a little rough for the government as it was shutdown and all. We had a couple setbacks and some unnecessary stress with getting our move figured out, but in the end we ended up rescheduling everything for a week later. Most of it went off without a hitch and we left Mississippi on the 25th and broke up the drive by staying with our friends, Trey and Christy, in Little Rock. The rest of the drive to Altus, OK wasn't too bad, but it did take us longer than we expected since the camper restricted our travel speed. Luckily the dogs have become travel champs and we had no car sick incidents the entire way! :) Unfortunately, however, even with the delay our apartment wasn't going to be ready for us when we got here. Our awesome friends, Alex and Shaylee, graciously allowed us + wacky pups to stay with them for a few days. Dex and Eli are about the same size as their adorable pup and they definitely enjoyed having some extra play time before we got our own place!

On Wednesday we finally were able to end our nomadic streak and settle in to our new temporary home. Because this is just a temporary duty (TDY) station on the way to Washington we didn't bring all of our stuff. The movers took most of our stuff to a storage facility in WA and we took some select stuff with us to get through the next 4+ months. We got a furnished apartment here which surprisingly was very nice! We are happy with the quality and (most importantly) the comfort level of the furniture. It is on the second floor which means we don't have a yard, so that has been an adjustment for the dogs (and us) when they have to go potty.

So far Altus has been pretty good to us. The weather has been pleasantly warm for this time of year and the only complaint we have is the crazy wind. There is a city reservoir really close to us that is a perfect and scenic place to take the dogs to walk or run. There is even a dog park by it which the dogs also really love as a consolation to their lack of a yard!

Mitch started his initial C-17 training on Monday and so far he is enjoying it. :) He should be moderately busy while he is here in comparison to at UPT and it will be nice to have some extra quality time together before we get to the "real world" and he starts deploying. I brought some projects with me and have a pile of books I hope to get through the next few months, so hopefully that will help me stay busy as well. Altus is definitely a smaller town than Columbus, but still has a decent amount to offer. Fortunately we have a good amount of friends here for training also from our time at Columbus, which is definitely making our time more enjoyable. It is crazy to think that this is our last stop on the way to Mitch starting his flying career! Time flies... He is scheduled to be finished here on the 19th of February and I'm sure that will be here before we know it!

I don't have any pictures of our place or anything great to share yet, but I will be sure to take some soon!