It's Time!

Just wanted to stop by and say that moving day is tomorrow!! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!

Welcome to Travis!

After months of waiting Jake and I finally got to Travis together last Sunday! I took the above picture from outside our hotel room. Isn't it just gorgeous?! It's so beautiful and green here. I just love it! We've had such a great time getting to explore our new base over the past week and it is a completely different world than Columbus!

Travis AFB is like a perfect little town that is safe and clean and has everything you might need right inside its gates. There are tons of different food choices on base (Subway, Taco Bell, Godfathers Pizza, Burger King, and on and on), a Wal-mart sized BX for shopping (that sells Apple products -yes!), a full-sized Starbucks, a huge gym, hospital, bank, auto shop and gas station, post office, dry cleaners, movie theater, hotel, bowling alley, several different churches, community pool, a duck pond, a dog park, and the biggest commissary (grocery store) that I could ever even imagine. And then there's all the planes! We have the C-17, KC-10, and C-5. This base is massive! But even though it is so huge everything is laid out really well so it actually feels pretty small and not at all overwhelming like I thought it might be.

The great news is that if there is something that I can't get on base, we are just minutes from all the good restaurants and shopping I could ask for! Actually its kind of dangerous how good the shopping is out here... Vacaville outlets anyone? Yeah... AND we're less than an hour from San Francisco, Sacramento, and Napa. Should I say it again? I love it here!! And even though it feels like a city (a huge city compared to Columbus), the base and town are surrounded by gorgeous rolling green hills. Leaving the back gate of base actually reminds me a lot of the beautiful green hills of Austria! I hope it will stay this green for awhile and not turn brown as soon as the weather gets hot...

Now let me move on to the topic of finding a house. Back in August when we found out our new assignment, Jake and I researched and asked around to AF friends to see whether we would want to live on or off base. We both decided hands-down that we would live on base because you get so much more for your money (Vacaville is an expensive area), we wouldn't have to worry about my safety when Jake deploys,  we would be in an all-military community, and the housing is BRAND NEW!

As soon as we decided this we called to get our name on the housing list (back in October 2010). We entered the housing list at #20 but I thought it was sure to go down by the time March came around. Well, when we checked into the housing office on Wednesday we were disappointed to find out we were only #15 on the list. The housing lady basically told us to not get our hopes up for getting a house anytime soon. Bummer.

But in an unexpected turn of events, we got a call on Friday morning saying that they had a house for us! How we moved up 15 spots overnight is strange to me but, hey, I'm not complaining! I think I shouted "We'll take it!!!" before she could even finish her sentence. We immediately went over and signed the papers. Woooo hoooo!! And the really awesome news is that we get to move on the 28th, which is just a week from tomorrow!

After we signed the paper work, we went over to check out which house was ours. The current occupants haven't fully moved out yet so we tried to be sly as we drove by snapping pictures :) Check it out...

It's a one-story, 2000 sq ft., 3 bdrm 2 bath house and it was just built in September so it's completely brand new! And yes we have a palm tree in our front yard - sooo California :) Although Jake was really hoping for the 2-story model, I was beyond thrilled to get the one-story... I got SO tired of vacuuming dog hair off the stairs in our last house and having to go up and down the stairs every time I forgot something. Another nice thing about the house is that it already has a privacy fenced backyard that is move-in ready for the pups!

After getting this exciting and totally unexpected news about our house I couldn't focus on anything else so I talked Jake into going furniture shopping. We've been slowly saving up for a new living room set for almost 2 years now and decided it was finally time to buy! We shopped around at a bunch of furniture stores and then went back and looked at some more stores online. We came to this unanimous decision...

What do you think? I'm just in love with the whole set! I'm so excited about the ease of cleaning leather (no more vacuuming dog hair off couches every time we have guests over!) and the light color of them will definitely brighten up the entire living room. It will all be arriving just a few days after we move in and I can hardly wait! 

So there you have it. What an amazing past week I've had! The housing situation was such a huge answer to prayer. Getting the house means that in just one week I get to be reunited for good with my husband and we can officially be back to life as normal. I've just felt so blessed this week and so thankful for the wonderful things God has given me - I stress about the details of each move we make (5 moves in 2.5 years!) but He ALWAYS takes care of us and blesses me beyond my expectations.

Get ready for a whole bunch of new house/decorating posts!

Happy Birthday Hubby!!

I thought I'd do a quick post just to say that today is Jake's 25th birthday! Happy birthday Jake! I can't believe I've celebrated 6 birthdays with him already. I wasn't sure we would be together this year but as I write this, Jake is on his way to Turlock to see me! Tonight we are going to go out to celebrate with friends and then tomorrow we are BOTH heading back to Travis :) I can't wait to explore the base and local area together - actually I don't even care what we do together, I'm just glad its together. I'm going to take some pictures as we explore base this week so I'll be sure to post those soon. Have a great weekend!

Disgusting.

When I woke up this morning I let the dogs outside to do their business, as usual. I intended to let them right back in but it was really cold in the house so I actually hopped back under the covers and ended up snoozing for a bit. Anyways, when I finally got up I went to bring them back inside and was horrified by what I saw. The dogs had brought a huge, dead, decomposing rat up to the back door and were playing with it! EW EW EW!!!

I could deal with the fact that the dogs needed to be seriously bathed - I could handle that - but how the heck was I going to dispose of this horrible thing?! And why is Jake always conveniently gone when I get into these situations? Haha, just kidding Jake ;)

After pretending it didn't exist for awhile I came to the harsh realization that the rodent wasn't going to move itself; somebody had to do it. So I gave myself a big pep talk... "You are a strong woman! You can do this! It's dead, what's it going to do to you? JUST DO IT." I then proceeded to go outside and grab the shovel over by the big green trashcan, determined to get it over with.

The next part should have been video taped. I am ridiculous. For about five times in a row, I walked up to the, uh, "thing" and then ran away making dramatic "ew" noises. If any neighbors were witnessing this, I'm sure it was very entertaining. Anyways, I decided that the worst part was looking at the thing so I came up with the idea of throwing an old garage towel over it and then using the shovel. That would've worked great except I also have horrible aim so when I threw the towel I totally missed and ended up having to get even closer to the thing to pick it up. GAH! Why am I so ridiculous? Oh goodness...

Finally I maned-up and just did it. The "thing" can now rest in peace inside a towel inside my big outdoor trash can (which, I can assure you, will NOT be opened until after trash day). And they look so innocent...

Congrats to Jake!

On Monday Jake passed his final checkride and completed his C-17 training at Altus!! This is such exciting news because it means he's finally coming to California! He did such an awesome job through the whole program and I know he's so happy and ready to get to our new base and finally be out of the AETC training world. Today he drove back to our old base in Mississippi to gather all our things from the storage unit and start preparing to head west. And since I'm not much of a help with moving right now, his dad is flying out to help with the big move - Thank you Tim!!

I can't believe that in just about a week I will have my husband back :) It seems so surreal! These past six months flew by much faster than I ever expected but I am very much missing Jake - It's been 8 weeks since we've seen eachother.. Yikes!

Our next hurdle is to try and get on-base housing at Travis. We've been on the waiting list since last fall but still have 8 people in front of us. I'm really hoping we can get a house before we have to resort to signing a lease off-base. Until then Jake will live in a TLF, Temporary Living Facility, on base and I will come to stay with him as much as I can (Our dogs will still be living in Turlock until we get a house at Travis because the yard at my dad's house is so much nicer than forcing them to live in a hotel room with no outdoor area).

So thats the plan as of now. Yay for big exciting changes!!

Post-Operation Update

Well I can honestly say that this has been one lonnngg week. The surgery (and recovery) didn't go exactly as planned but in the end everything seems to have worked out just fine. Here's the story...

I went in on Thursday morning and was taken right back for surgery, and just an hour after surgery I woke up from the anesthesia and was cleared to head home. A short while after being home I started having really severe pains in my stomach, right below my ribs in the center. Without exaggerating, it was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. The pain was so bad that it was causing me to pass out and throw up continuously. Nervous and scared, I rushed back to the hospital where my doctor met me to look at my incisions. I was given morphine and finally experienced relief from the horrible pain. The doctor said that everything looked fine and the pain was probably from built-up CO2 in my stomach from the surgery, although to me it did NOT feel like gas pain to me! Either way, the pain was gone so I was happy. The doctor admitted me to the hospital for the next two nights to keep an eye on my recovery and help manage the pain.

It really was such a blessing to be able to stay in the hospital for a lot of reasons. First off, the bed was super comfortable and helped to lift me up and down from the bed when needed. I was also able to stay on the good pain meds and have the comfort of nurses taking care of me through the night. But the most unexpected thing that happened is that my mom got really sick on Thursday and even worse on Friday and was unable to do much of anything to help take care of me, even though she wanted to. I felt so bad for her! Me being in the hospital gave her a chance to go home and work on getting well without having to worry about taking care of me (And now she's feeling much better by the way!).

On Saturday morning I got to come home and was happy to get settled in my own bed. The Doctor prescribed me Norco (Vicodin) to help with the pain and while it worked well and helped me sleep, it started giving me some awful side effects like chest pressure and nausea. Sunday and Monday I continued to take it easy and started to slowly wean myself off the heavy medication, which really made me feel much better. I think I'd rather have the surgery pain than the medicine side effects - I guess I'm just really sensitive to meds! Yesterday was the first day I was up and around the house and today was the first day I was able to completely stop taking my pain meds (Woo hoo!). I'm starting to feel like myself again, just a bit sore and slow-moving. I have my post-op check up tomorrow so we'll see what the doctor has to say about my recovery. I would say I'm probably pretty average... I'll have to take it slow for another week or two but it's not too horrible (with the exception of the first two days of course!)

The good news in all of this is that the doctor gave me confirmation that my gallbladder definitely was the culprit in this roller coaster of illness - He said it was inflamed and infected when he removed it. Thank goodness because I would hate to have been told that it looked perfectly healthy and was not actually the cause of my troubles. Now, I guess only time will tell if I am able to resume a completely normal diet again (I'm still too nervous to try some foods...) but at this point I'm remaining optimistic. Thanks again for your prayers and encouragement! I'm beyond ready to put all this medical drama in the past and move on to bigger and better things :)