One month!

Another day in El Paso. We have officially been here for a month now. So I guess that means 35 more months to go! Nah in all honesty-if John had the option to stay in his unit after the three year enlistment is up-i'd probably encourage him to do it in a heartbeat.

John was home pretty much the entire week. I never know what day it is anymore since he's always home. It always feels like the weekend. So Chance is always expecting a big, giant breakfast since we usually cook breakfast on the weekends. We went and did some shopping earlier in the week and I bought some new summer clothes since it's already so hot here. Bought a membership to Costco, and I'm already loving that place. Thursday I was finally able to get away for awhile and have lunch with a friend. On the way home, since I was already driving right by the outlets, figured I may as well stop and wander around the kitchen stores without having to listen to Chance complain over and over. Found a couple of things for my stand mixer that I have been needing, like the whip and dough hook....then they had a flat beater that has silicone edges to scrape the bowl! That was a good day.

We decided to put Chance in karate. He missed t ball sign ups already and I guess they only do indoor soccer which is weird to me, so we thought this would be a good outlet for him. So he's paid in full for the next six months, so even if he hates it-he'll be going anyway hahaha. Nah but he loves it so far. He's only had his two private lessons where they just get a feel for how well they will be able to listen in the big class and Chance did great. Have to work on the 'yes maam' and 'yes sir', but I think he'll do great. He started on Wednesday and his second lesson was Friday. All day on Thursday, he asked us over and over when he got to go to karate. He practiced his kicks, punches and yells. Now that he has all the equipment, he is even more excited about it all.

John went in to do their muy thai workout and I about died laughing when he came home panting like a dog. I thought he had ran all the way back from the school.

Really not much else going on around here. We had really wanted to try and get Lulu out here before C's birthday but with the temps already getting up in the mid 90's, we know we'll probably end up having to wait until it starts cooling off which is unfortunate, but i'd rather her get out here safely than something happen b/c of the heat. Luckily we hadn't mentioned anything to Chance about it.

After talking about it, we've decided to pay my truck off. We still have two years worth of payments left, but we have money sitting in savings that we aren't touching, so we may as well put it to use you know? And it will be nice to have an extra $300 a month to put in savings or to put towards one of our other small debts. I'm excited about it. John has to get my truck registered in Texas first since i think it will be easier to get things taken care of with the title and all that way, then we're going to pay it off. I look forward to the day that we have NO car payments, but I can certainly handle John's car payment since it's less than mine and he has a better interest rate on his.

Here's a picture of Chance getting his white belt on Friday.

Our interesting Easter

We didn't so much really. Chance got a basket from the "Easter Beagle" as he calls it and was very happy with what he got. The other day after the Easter Bunny/Beagle finished up their basket shopping, Chance was talking about how he wanted Santa to bring him the new Halo Master Chief toy. I perked up at this b/c wouldn't you know it, the Easter Bunny had already picked this up. That was the first time he had ever mentioned that toy so I was pretty proud of myself....err, the Easter Bunny I mean.

John made breakfast this morning while I caught a couple of zzzz's on the couch. I stayed up late reading again which is no surprise but I was so close to the end of the book-figured I may as well finish it. Right about the time I was finishing up, in stumbles Chance climbing into bed with us which means I am getting crap for sleep now. It's a miracle I haven't fallen out of bed yet and busted my head open. Chance takes up so much room to be so small.

Around noon, after we ate some grilled cheese sandwiches (nothing makes these two boys happier than grilled cheese) I was officially bored silly and we called the bookstore and surprise! They were open. Off we went. Picked up Breaking Dawn so now I can finally stop climbing the walls and twitching and finish the series. Then I got the idea to hunt down the Super Target. We finally found it buuuut it was closed. Awesome! Went all that way for nothing but needed a couple of things from Walmart that was right across the street, so it wasn't a total waste even though we live 5 mins from a walmart. I found a set of silverware I really liked and picked it up. (I'm getting to the significance of this tidbit of info shortly) and some Chicago Cutlery kitchen shears for cheap and we headed home.

I went upstairs for a couple of mins before I started on dinner while John was in the kitchen putting the new silverware away. I hear him yelp, curse, and some clattering....ask if he is okay and he says no. I can already see where this is headed. He was cutting the zipties off of the silverware with my very sharp kitchen knives since you know....people apparently enjoy stealing silverware from walmart, so they have to ziptie the ever living crap out of it in the package. The knife slipped and stabbed him right in the wrist. He showed me and eww eww ewwwwww. Chance could have probably stuck a finger in the hole the knife made or I could have put a pinky in it. It wasn't bleeding much but I was still freaking out since it was his wrist. More so than John who was just standing there not really bothered much by it at all. I haven't the slightest clue where a hospital is, so I called 911 like an idiot and told her we were brand new in the area and I needed to know where the nearest hospital was. She asked if we wanted an ambulance which I knew probably would have been a little silly considering he wasn't even bleeding much. She said Beaumont would be the closest for us and easiest for him since he is AD. THEN she proceeded to ask me how it happened and if we were arguing. Nice! The lady thinks I stabbed my husband. It's back in the truck we go.

I do NOT have good luck with this place and their gates. I am letting Tomika the TomTom tell me how to get there and she leads me to a friggen gate that's closed. Surprise surprise. So I go down a ways and think I can get to the hospital another way. Wrong again. Gate closed. I do a u turn in the middle of the road and it's telling me now to go left to get to where i needed to go. (they were at least considerate enough on their signs to tell us which gate to use, so I put that into the Tomtom) We sit at the light for at least 5 minutes I'm thinking. I get suspicious when I realize that everyone's had their turn to go except us. I guess they figure that the gate is closed, so no one will be on that part of the road anyway so there's no point for the light to turn. I waited another couple of minutes to be sure, said to heck with it...backed up in the middle of the road to get to the other side of the island to turn right instead. Which ended up working out well since the TomTom was apparently about to lie to me and give me wrong directions again. FINALLY we get a gate. An open one. Get in the hospital and they triage John immediately. Whooooooa. I am impressed so far. Not impressed with the whole getting TO the hospital part, but once we're in-so far so good. The guy who triaged John was great. The soldier at the front desk came and brought Chance an Easter egg filled with candy. Ah I should also mention that they asked if he had a dog bite. So we've went from 'did your wife stab you' to 'did you get mauled by a dog?" all in the span of 30 mins. But there was someone there who DID get mauled by a dog and I guess dog bites are fairly common in this area.

After he's triaged, we're in the waiting room MAYBE 15 mins and they call him back. Hello.....freaking awesome. Are you reading this Winn Army!?!? Take notes! They won't let Chance and I go back with him which sucked. She said he wouldn't be back there long at all but it sure didn't seem that way to me. I started to get worried. Finally he's done and came out all bandaged up. Since it wasn't a "cut" persay and a puncture instead....there wasn't anything they could do but clean it out really well, bandage it up good and tell him to come back in 2 days so they can check it. No stitches or anything. Since he's Uncle Sam's personal pincushion, no tetnus shot either. He said in the truck he wished he would have just slapped a bandaid on it but yeah....I am too paranoid for that. Chance lectured him all the way home about playing with knives. I had deja vu' flashbacks from when I almost cut my finger off since he lectured me the entire way to the hospital and back as well. I am pretty sure I won't be hearing anymore scissor jokes though. It is a little ironic that he had reservations about buying me the nice knives for Christmas after my little scissor incident worrying that I would hurt myself with them and so far *knock on wood* I haven't had any issues with them. I am just glad it wasn't worse than it was. Seeing where he did it at scared the ever living crap out of me. He said it was a little sore a few mins ago before he went to bed and I convinced him to take a motrin. Hopefully tomorrow it won't give him any problems since he actually has to go into work. I told him he should take the motrin with him just in case it starts giving him problems.

We finally made it home, I threw the ham in the oven for an hour and we ate that along with a salad. Then John went and hid the eggs outside for Chance while the kiddo and I finished up our dinner. Chance loved looking for the eggs. He did a good job! He was finding eggs I never even noticed. Thanks to the two sweet soldiers at the hospital for giving us those plastic eggs, we were able to hide one with money in it. He remembered this from 2 years ago at his grandma's house and asked us if there would be 'money eggs like the ones at grandmas' soooo thank you soldier boys for the plastic egg!

So that's our easter in a nutshell. I apologize for the way the pictures look in the post below. I haven't figured out blogger enough to know how to prevent that. I'll work on it eventually.

Hope everyone had a great holiday with their loved ones.

Easter Eve

I really need to try and be semi regular about this whole blog thing. But there really hasn't been much to blog about to be honest. We're mostly unpacked I think. Haven't touched the garage yet since there are a million boxes in there, but I really do need to find the hammer and nails so I can hang up pictures and really make it feel like home now. I do love our little living room though. While it's tiny in comparison to our living room before which was probably 4x the size as our living room now-it's "cozy" I guess you would say. But having the large kitchen and den makes up for the lack of space. I guess if we didn't have a ginormous sectional, it would seem so much bigger but I wouldn't trade this couch for anything! Other than not having pictures on the walls, the living room is finally complete. I really love that there are nooooooooooooooo video games in here! Those are in the den and they will stay in the den. We usually lay around on the rug in the living room and read, watch tv or play on the computers.

Ah, I know what I can mention! I have been here for 18 days now and today it rained finally! The other day I saw a couple (and I literally mean like TWO) drops of water fall on my windshield, but today it actually rained enough to get the patio wet. The pigeons were beside themselves excited and ventured out into the middle of the yard to take a shower. Of course it started raining right as we were about to drive through the mountains to get to the outlets. But it wasn't too bad. It stopped raining before we got to the other side. The wind was more of an obstacle than anything (as usual). It was only about a 15 minute drive to the outlets from our house which is awesome. Beats an hour like before anyday. They have an awesome selection of stores. I know where I'll be doing all of my clothes shopping for now on! Of course they also have two kitchen stores which will be the death of me. I picked up a food grinder for my stand mixer along with the pasta discs to go with it and I'm super excited about that. I really think John's a closet kitchen fanatic. He's been watching quite a bit of food network with me lately and even leaving it on there after I tell him he can change the channel. Hmmmm, suspicious no? Oh and I should also mention how he was eyeballing one of those vintage looking milkshake makers today in the store. So I am no longer the only kitchen appliance fiend in this house since it is sitting proudly on the counter now lol. I was a little disappointed that neither store seemed to carry the Le Creuset dutch ovens, but I did see some at Marshalls last week so maybe I'll venture back that way one of these days when I can justify spending that much for a kitchen pot. Although....someone does have a birthday coming up. Hmmmmmm.

Anyways, I've been toying with the idea of going to culinary school. I am certain that I want to go back to school. That much I know. But everything seems so boring to me and nothing I could really see myself wanting to do on a daily basis. I'm not the office type. Sure I could probably do some computer science major and do well at it, but eh. Too mundane and I am sure I'd end up hating going to work on a daily basis. I like to cook, I like to try new things in the kitchen and I'd like to really learn how to be better at it. I think the only thing keeping me from just going for it is fear of failure. I have a little bit longer to really think it over, but I need to just do it. I know I want to, so the rest will just have to fall into place I guess. Not to mention that the school is like oh....five minutes up the street from me.

John is really enjoying his new job so far. He hasn't really gotten to do much yet since the 2nd day he was actually in his unit-they said "Okay, keep your cell phone turned on-we're on call for the next nine days" John was of course a little confused at first and said "soooo tomorrow we do what?" and they said "stay home, dont' come in unless we call you". So my week was all mixed up with me thinking every day was a weekend since he was home most of the week. He went in on Friday to do a range and was home by lunch. It makes me happy that he is actually enjoying what he does. I am sure he enjoyed it before in its own way, but there's alot of crap that comes with being in a large unit like he was in. Now, his entire battaltion is the size of his old platoon. he came home the other day and said "I have to go to Mississippi in the summer" and here i'm thinking he'll be gone for a month and a half or longer like his last TDY and when I asked him how long-two weeks. Hahahaha, I really did laugh out loud when he told me that. Two weeks is NOTHING. I suppose it's sad that I think that way but look at the last six and a half years. Two weeks isn't even a drop in the bucket.

So I guess that's about it. Both of these boys have passed out on the couch so we need to get Chance up in bed before the Easter Bunny makes an appearance. I'll post a couple of pics from today when we drove out to the outlets.

In this one, you can see the dust storm off in the distance.




And when I say we had to drive *through* the mountains to get to the outlets-I meant that in a literal sense. I love that they had the areas where you could pull off of the loop to look over the city and take photos. They even have bike lanes but I would be too scared to ride a bike there after seeing the way some of those whackjobs were driving!





I can't do a post and not include a few pics of our feathered friends.
Here they are today enjoying the shower.


Okay this. Lol. This scared the ever living crap out of me. John was going somewhere...maybe to pick up something at the store, I can't remember. I just know he was standing right outside the door, and me half inside and half out talking to him. We had been talking for a minute when I happened to look up not even a foot away from me-there was this guy just sitting there. It had been there the entire time we had been talking and didn't seem to care that we were standing there. At first I wondered if it was dead or stuck since it wasn't moving but then it turned and looked at me as if to say "what's up?" or I should say "Que pasa?" here in this neck of the woods. Then after it looked at me, it went right back to what it was doing before. It wasn't even phased when I started snapping pics of it.



Happy Easter!

It's coming along...

The house that is. The kitchen is entirely finished and set up. Not much more cabinet space than before since we lost out on having a separate pantry, but everything fits and we do have more space to spare if need be. Love having more counter space to work on. It was a little weird at first cooking with gas, but I think I am going to enjoy it much more than if it were electric. The living room is mostly the way it is gonna be until we get a tv stand and the new tv. It's so small since we have two living areas, that really besides the sectional, tv stand and tv-nothing else will go in there except hanging pictures. I bought an area rug last night and now I just need to get new curtains in the color I want. But I need to go to Target for that. On the bright side, it's just 15 mins away to get to Target! Maybe even less depending on traffic.
The rec room is well on it's way to being finished. All we need to get is a tv stand for here too. That room will have the old living room tv, all the game systems, the papasan chair, some pillows, the bookshelves and all of the books, and it will be decorated with John's awards, his plaque, and the military prints we have. I'm excited to see it finished.

All of the boxes in Chance's room are unpacked but we have to do some purging in there. That kid has way too much stuff. He's going to need another mattress since his bunk beds are put together and his favorite place to sit and watch tv is on top of the ladder, so yeah....gonna need another mattress.

Got the washer and dryer hooked up. I did the washer and John came in as I was finishing up and he went to do the dryer. We ended up having to get a four prong cord since we had a three prong. Luckily the appliance repair guy was already coming by to look at the stove since one of the auto pilots on it wasn't working and we asked him what to do and he had a cord in his truck already and saved us about $9. So shortly I will be doing some serious laundry.

Really need to get started unpaking our room but ugggggggggggggh. Sooooo many clothes. I stayed up late last night/this morning unpacking and getting things in their place while John was passed out in Chance's bed, so I've slacked off today. John went to clothing and sales to pick up some goggles, gloves, face mask and some other things. I went ahead and started on dinner getting everything marinated so we'll just have to throw it on the grill pan once it's time.

Friday was John's last day of the inprocessing. Then he was picked up by his unit. He said he really thinks he is going to enjoy this job b/c so far the guys in his battalion are so laid back. Which I can imagine so since it's nothing but E6's and up so they don't have to worry about the stupid stuff that comes along with being in a line unit. I guess the entire battalion is the size of John's old platoon and most of them live right around here in the North East like we do so that's cool. I guess they meet up in the morning like one exit down at one of the local grocery stores so that is awesome. Not far at all for John to have to go.

Last night the wind was AWFUL. It got so bad that I went and got Chance out of bed and brought him in the room with us. I could feel the house moving. Since we are so close to the mountains, it's the worst on this part of El Paso. The moving guys informed me of this the other day. But it's a small price to pay I suppose. Today they're gonna be up to 50mph again on our side of town. Which is why I have zero plans to leave the house. Driving is NO fun in an suv in this wind.

I finally got my computer back. Still sucks that I had to pay so much and for whatever reason, now my C key wants to give me problems. I keep having to go back and make sure it typed it out. I guess it was worth it to get it back with all of my pictures and stuff on it.

Despite my initial thoughts on coming to El Paso, (mainly for the reason being that it is so far away from 'home') I am really loving it here. There's so much to do, especially if you enjoy shopping! Then I found out about the outlets just over the mountain, about 15 mins away.....oh boy. Watch out now. Of course there is all the stuff you are seeing on the news right now with Juarez and the border, but I will say this after having literally thirteen people in and out of my house just since Wednesday-everyone is so incredibly friendly here. It's just different than Hinesville. I don't really know how to explain it. Customer service is a million times better here, that much I can tell you.

I mean, they unload your grocery cart for you at the commissary! I have yet to run into any language barriers either. I'd still like to learn Spanish but we'll have to see how that works out.

Anyways, I guess that's about it. I will eventually post pictures once this place is completely finished.