Our dining room

For those of you who haven't had the privilege of visiting us, here is a photo of our "dining room". Although, I'm not really sure why we call it that. We don't actually dine there.
This table was acquired shortly before we got married for about $15 or $20 from a friend of a mom of a friend of my husband. How d'ya like that one? :)
I thought I better get a picture while the house was still in order...probably won't last much longer!

Time is FLYING!!

But I guess it's a good thing.
We were able to reschedule our TMO appointment, so a moving crew will be here Tuesday to load up our air shipment and send it to the states. The chick who coordinated it for us said to give it 5-6 weeks to arrive. Hopefully since they're coming Tuesday, it will be delivered within a week of us getting to Texas! That's a relief, now we just have to pray that we'll find interim housing arrangements quickly! I am optimistic...we looked online and there are several apartments in the area that offer short-term rental agreements.
Anyway, I'm off track. So Sunday I plan to take down the dining room table (insert laughter here...I don't know if that thing can really be called a "dining room" table!) and in it's place, set aside most everything that we want to go with Tuesday's shipment. We'll both be off work all day Tuesday, but it is one of those "they'll be to your house between 8 and 5" kind of things. Yippee!
I also took leave for Thursday, so I can take care of anything else that comes up between now and then. So, with only 3 days of work next week, that puts me at a grand total of 7 MORE WORK DAYS!!! I can't believe how fast the last few weeks have flown by!!

More moving news

We found out we can only stay up to 30 days in Temporary Lodging at Lackland, so we're just gonna go ahead and find a small apartment right after we get there. Seems that will be the best bet, as I doubt we'll be able to buy a house and move into it in that short of a time period. AND, since we know we'll be living in an apartment for the first few months, we are going to try to reschedule the packout date for our air shipment so it will get there a few days after we do! :) Yesterday we sat down to write a list of what we want air-shipped. (Is that a word? Maybe it should be air-flown? Nah, that doesn't sound right either.) The first thing on the list was our computer...yes, even before dishes, towels, clothes, air mattresses...we can't live without it! Luckily, we'll have J's laptop for the few weeks we are w/o the compy! Otherwise I don't know *what* we'd do!!
I washed and vacuumed out my car yesterday so we can take some pictures. We'll be trying to sell it really soon now. Please pray that the timing will work out and someone will want to buy it *right* before/after I leave! If not, I can always walk to work, (I work really close to home, it just sucks if it starts raining!) but it would be really nice to keep the car till I finish working.
Tomorrow starts the beginning of my 3rd to last week at work! YIPPEE!!

Good News!

I don't have TB! You can all breathe a sigh of relief, as I'm sure my last post has kept everyone is suspense. As an added bonus, when I got the clinic they decided to give me a tetanus shot as well. According to the chick working the front desk, they will be considering me "delinquent on *all* of my immunizations" until I prove otherwise. Good times, good times.
We should be getting ready to move soon. We need to figure out what we'll be sending in our air shipment and what we'll just send over on the boat. Instead, we are both sitting in front of our computers playing, as usual.
I have nothing else to write about today and Jay is telling me to just post this as is.
Hopefully tomorrow will bring more excitement to our lives! :)

Monday, Monday...

Extra points if you *sang* the title to today's post! (Oh, and before I forget, 17 points are hereby awarded to Zachary for correctly guessing "Larry the Cable Guy".)
So today was relatively uneventful. Fall is officially here, I think. Our highs have been the 50's and 60's during the daytime. It's nice getting to break out a few winter clothes again. I looked at weather.com for San Antonio and their highs for the week are in the 90's and 100's. Wow. Hope it cools down in the next month and a half or we're gonna be in shock!
Tomorrow we are going to get our TB shots. Apparently it is required before we move back to the states. Should be...um....fun... Oh, who am I kidding? It's another afternoon off work and I'm all for it!! :) The work day countdown is at 18, but hopefully I will have a few hours off here and there for other random moving-related appointments and such.
We got the pre-approval for our loan, so I guess we're one step closer to buying a house. Too bad it isn't, like, a 5-step plan. That would rock!!

upgrade

I read Eisel's comment before leaving for my run early this morning, and I keep thinking back to it.
Eisel is right...I think I probably make my scale too hard. Should I be grading on a curve? Maybe, based on the tough times we have been through in the past few years. I don't want to be that negative person! :)
I have decided to upgrade yesterday's score to an 8.7!

eight.one

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say today ranked at about an 8.1! Here's my day:

I went to the gym to lift this morning, but I wasn't feeling that into it, so I only stayed about 30 minutes, then came home, read blogs, and got ready for work.
Went to work, which was kinda stale, but I actually got a lot accomplished and am not nearly as slammed as I have been the past 2 or 3 weeks. Jay called me about 1000 with the news that he was about to go pick up our orders! YAY!!

I left work at 1230 to grab some lunch before Jay and I went to the "Smooth Move" class at the Family Support Center. We got some good info about...having a smooth move! :) That got over at 3. Since I had taken leave for the whole afternoon, we took care of a few other things. Went to TMO and chose a date for our pack-out. (Meaning the day that the moving company will come and pack everything** in our house.) Probably 25 October...that'll be confirmed on the 4th when we go to the briefing.

ALSO, Jay got confirmation that his flight out has been booked. He'll be leaving on 4 November! Other good news, a shuttle will pick him up on base and take him to the airport in London and we don't have to pay for it! WHOO HOO!!

We've been looking into houses in San Antonio and have found several that look really nice for a very decent price. We filled out the application online for pre-approval for a mortgage...should find out about that in 24-48 hours. Also, we signed up for the MoversAdvantage program through USAA which gives us a real estate coordinator to help us out with the whole process. Needless to say, we are incredibly stoked/totally freaked out!!! :)

To celebrate, we went to Chile's for dinner. Yum.

And to top it off, tomorrow is Friday, jeans day!


**We heard a story today about a cat that apparently hid in a box and got shipped out with the family's household goods. Talk about dis-gus-ting!!

the thrill of anticipation

When we were little, Zachary and I used to have "countdowns" to the exciting events in the near future. My favorite way to count down was to cut up pieces of paper, write the number of days on them, and staple them together before sticking it on the fridge. That way, every morning I could pull off yesterday's number to reveal a lower one...a little reminder of the day we were looking forward to.

Right now the most exciting thing in my life is the fact that I will be moving back to the states NEXT MONTH!!

In an effort to let everyone share in my excitement...no, y'all don't have to dance around the house with me singing at the top of your lungs...unless you want to, that is! Personally I find it enjoyable! Where was I? OH, I've added a countdown clock to my blog!!

Eisel, Bob, Mom, Dad and Chuck--can't wait to see y'all! Everybody else, come see me in San Antonio next year! It's closer *and* cheaper than England!! :)

New Look! Same Great Taste!!

As you may have noticed, I've given my blog a makeover! :) Jay was gone for several hours last night to watch football with his friends and (surprise!) I lost track of time and spend the better part of 2 hours in front of the compy playing with my blog.
Anyway, it's Monday now, I just got back from my 5k this morning. It was perfect weather for running (about 50°). I have a feeling the heat and humidity of San Antonio are gonna take some *serious* getting used to!

Check out our pictures!

Santo Tomas, Menorca, Spain

This is the first of 4 photo albums, each one will only allow 48 pictures. Just click the links at the top of the page to view the other 3!!

San Antonio

As you may already know, we found out this week that we will be spending our last year in the military at Lackland AFB, TX. Our DEROS is set for 1 Nov, and Jay is trying to get out of here as early in Nov as possible. Since I had already planned to be in the States through the 2nd, it seems almost pointless for me to return to England. So, at this point, it looks like I will likely be meeting him in San Antonio shortly after he arrives from here. That means I have only 37 days left in the UK!! Haven't really worked out any details yet, but we should be getting a lot more dates/other info this coming workweek. I know the next month is gonna fly by and I will probably feel totally unorganized and scattered by the time I leave. I just pray that all will go smoothly for both of us. I wish we could get there together, but obviously it just wasn't meant to go down like that.

Although I have never been to San Antonio, I am getting really excited. I've looked on yellowpages.com, and there are SO MANY stores that I love! Ross (4), Target (20), Bath and Body Works (9), Old Navy (6) (for the sake of time I won't name them all). With numbers like that, there are *bound* to be some close to me!! After nearly 3 years here, I'm stoked to think those will all be so easily accessible!

Also, it looks as though houses there are pretty cheap. We're still considering the pros and cons of buying a house there. Just one more of the *many* decisions we'll be making in the next 6 months or so.

Oh, other big news! I got an email that my best friend from HS, Elizabeth, is engaged! She and Steven will be getting married sometime in March and I'm going to be her Matron of Honor!!!! Wish I was close so I could help plan the wedding and the parties and all the other stuff the MOH should be doing, but I know she has friends there who will help with that.

A few vacation pictures

Chillin' at the beach.
Sunset over the Mediterranean Sea Saturday evening.

A few minutes of shade at the hotel snack bar.
Watching the sunset Sunday evening.
Awww...aren't we cute?
Us on the balcony of our hotel room.

We are home

We just haven't had much luck with the ol' internet the past few days. SORRY! I'm dying to post some pictures from Menorca, but I guess I'll have to wait. Blogger doesn't seem to be working for pictures.

Anyway, most of you already know this, but we had an *awesome* vacation. We both agreed: our best "European holiday" to date! Mostly we just relaxed on the beach, talking, sleeping or reading books. 2 nights we climbed up some little cliffs near the beach and watched the sunset over the sea. It was absolutely gorgeous! We also went mini-golfing one night. Jay beat me by 3 strokes (what can I say? he has all that putting practice from "real" golf!).

Soon I will post some of our pictures!

Oh, and a shout out to Bob...welcome to the blogging community! :)