Moving, Part 1

We are in the thick of the move now! It was only a week after we got orders that the house was being packed up. A few days later and we only had a few mattresses and camp chairs (plus a TV) left!

We set aside one room to hide all the stuff we didn't want packed. This is where Cade, alex and the dog hung out while the packing was happening. Cade took advantage and got some extra sleep!

Carson had fun going around the house and cleaning up the spots that had been covered up for years

The piano is always a huge factor in our move. We get to count it as spouse pro-gear, so most of its weight doesn't count against us. That also makes sure it gets packed appropriately. In Korea they made some custom packaging with our upright piano. In Colorado a piano moving company came and prepped the piano for move and then the movers loaded it. This time they hired a company to make a custom crate for it! That baby ain't moving around in that crate! 

I think the movers played a good game of Tetris! So organized!

And the house is empty. We stayed in the house for almost a week with just a few mattresses and the essentials. Sometimes that makes you wonder why we all have so much stuff, and then after awhile you miss your stuff, lol.

I had to grab a shot of the opening ceremonies of the olympics. This is the 3rd time that we've been in a moving transition while the olympics have happened. It's almost become a tradition! The first was in 2012 when we moved from Korea to Colorado. I very clearly remember being in the base hotel and watching the opening ceremony with the boys. In 2018 we moved from Colorado to San Antonio during the winter olympics. I have a picture on facebook of us in our Airbnb that we stayed in while house hunting and watching the opening ceremonies. This time Covid made it so the olympics were a year later and the opening ceremonies were on while we had no stuff! 

This is how I was feeling in the middle of all this. It's pretty easy to over exert myself and pay for it later. I've had quite a few days where I could be helpful, and then days where there was just nothing left.

Another aspect of moving is saying goodbye. In our last few weeks, a lot of people hosted us for dinner, dropped off dinner or met us for meals out together. I didn't get pictures with everyone, but our family felt very blessed to have encountered such good people in our time in San Antonio. We had great friends that we met through work, church, music and motorcycles! 

I got my last haircut at North Star Barbershop. It was during our first week in San Antonio that I saw a girl at Lowe's with an awesome haircut and I asked her where she got her hair done. That let me to Liz and some rockin' hairstyles over these last 3 years!

It also seems to be a tradition to have some sort of motorcycle drama when we move. Last time it was when Dan was prepping his bike to be packed, but instead of just getting his tank close to empty, he ran out which led to all sorts of problems that we certainly didn't anticipate.

This time, on our last weekend, Dan had a "small" wreck. Thankfully he wasn't hurt too bad, and the bike was still rideable to get home, but the damage did total the bike. We couldn't get the insurance to take care of it in time for us to move, so it came with us in the Uhaul. Guess it's a problem for future Dan!

In our last few days, I had help from the Relief Society sisters to get the house vacuumed and clean and ready for the pros we were required to hire upon moveout. My friend Dana pressure washed the back patio, but left us a message first!

Tradition in the military is to have a hail and farewell each month. They welcome any new soldiers in the unit and say goodbye to those that are moving. Dan's replacement put together a very thoughtful departure gift- a framed gold record with a list of all the recruits Dan had put into the army band, and a QR code linked to a YouTube video of all the other liaisons sharing a goodbye message.

On our last night in our house the boys were each sleeping over at a friend's house, so we didn't see much point in setting up our mattress up in our room. Dan, Carson and I hung out in the living room for one last sleep.

And a few last pics before we left San Antonio!

Thanks to Jacqui and her parents for hosting us on the official last night since we couldn't be in the house anymore, but couldn't leave until the next morning. 

Well that wraps up the events of moving that took place in San Antonio. Watch for a part 2 and part 3, road trip, house hunting, and finally arriving in Washington! Spoiler: as of writing this post on August 9th, we still don't have a place to call home yet.

Moving Forwards...

I wonder if I haven't had the desire to update the blog because we have been in limbo for so long concerning our upcoming move.

FINALLY! Finally! FINALLY we have orders which means we have the golden ticket needed to make the rest of our move official. Within a day of receiving those orders we scheduled movers and then were able to get everything in line to leave San Antonio.

Our first set of movers are coming on July 16th (that's less than a week away!!!!) They will pack us up, and then on the 21st they will come back to load the truck. We have decided to leave San Antonio early on the 28th of July. So between July 16-28th we will be air mattressing it out in our house, saying our last goodbyes, finishing out processing, rounding out doctors appointments and hitting those last few restaurants that we'll miss.

The whole housing situation is still very much up in the air, but I just have to move forwards believing we won't end up homeless, lol.

Here's a random collection of photos illustrating what we've been up to during this summer of limbo!

You can count on Cade to find the creepy crawlies in our backyard

As you'll see in subsequent pictures, Alex put on his very first bake sale! Here he is doing some prep work for all of his many many orders!

Here's Alex with his friend Miles, and Miles' cousin  Jonah having a blast at Six Flags

I'm so thankful that there were a few last live performance opportunities before I moved, and that I got to play with these folks. My percussion friends have been an amazingly supportive family for me and I will miss them all very much. And you can't go wrong playing Pines of Rome for your last concert!!

Bake sale time! Alex had 25 different people order from him. Alex made 13 dozen M&M cookies, 10 dozen snickerdoodles, 5 sets of 6 cupcakes, 13 8x8 pans of brookies, and 3 9x13 pans of brookies. I am so proud of him. He literally did all of the baking. He never made a mistake. Everything turned out. We never had to remake anything, or throw anything away. We actually ended up with some extras and he obviously earned himself some $$. 

This is just the butter needed for the brookies. He had already used almost that much to make all the cookies and cupcakes!

Alex also had his actual birthday just after his bake sale. He got an original gameboy from Uncle Kevin, a bundt pan and gift card from Grandma Kathy, a cook book and gift card from Grandpa Bob, and a new phone and wireless earbuds from us! I wish I could say I can't believe he's 13, but he is so grown up, so helpful and talented that it's fun to see him learn and grow older!

Eating a pazookie for a birthday treat!

Father's Day was right after Alex's birthday. The boys decorated a vinyl record for Dan and we helped make a good meal of ribs, cornbread, and watermelon. I loved seeing Cade use his new Instagram account to send a tribute to his Dad as well!

At the beginning of July the Robert McBride family came to visit us in San Antonio for a few days. It was the perfect chance for Alex to try out his new bundt cake pan since Izzy and Robert had birthdays. I'd say his first bundt cake turned out amazing!

He also made this banana pudding all by himself. This is a Paula Deen recipe, and you have to try it if you haven't yet. Don't mind all the broken cookies. Note to self- open up both bags of cookies before putting the non broken ones on the bottom, only to open up the next bag of cookies and find them all broken. Still tasted divine!

Other than waiting for orders, baking, and hanging out with family, we've taken advantage of our season passes. Last year with COVID, both the water park and six flags offered season passes that would last for last summer and this summer if you bought at a certain time. They kept their word and we haven't paid a thing for our continued visits to these summer classics. 

Here's they are right before riding the Joker. This ride is insane. I rode it once in my healthy days and even that was enough to keep me from riding it again. It goes SOO high!

Alex's latest creation was turning that large bundt cake into mini cakes! These things turned out PERFECT! He was really excited to try and fit these cakes into another bake sale before we moved, but since the movers are coming a lot sooner than we expected we will have to wait until we're in Washington. Watch out PNW, Alex is coming to share his goodies with you!

The end of school and beginning of Summer 2021!

I didn't realize how many little things happened in the past few weeks. Time for an update! 

First we had Cade's first of two outdoor, in-person concerts! It was so nice to finally hear them play for an live audience and hear just how awesome they sounded. Click here if you want to see the videos of their performance.

Next was Alex's piano recital! This is his third year with Libby Castillo as his piano teacher, and he has learned and grown as a musician so much. She has them take part in the Gold Cup Festival each year, and if they get superior in a category three years in a row, they earn an actual gold cup trophy. Alex earned a Gold cup in the solo and theory categories. Awesome job bud! The other trophy is for learning a total of 100 songs over the past three years. That's a lot of music!

 

That evening after the recital Cade had his second outdoor, in-person concert. This time it was for Jazz Band! All of the groups sounded great and there were a some good opportunities for photos. If you want to hear them you'll have to go to my Facebook page where I did a live video of the performance.

Cade and his good friend Carson

Cade with his directors Ms. Beasley and Mr. Berry. We will miss them as we move to another band program in another state!

End of the school year means end of the year awards! This was particularly bittersweet for Alex because he has enjoyed this DATA program and the friends he has made.

Alex with his teacher Mr. McKinney

Cade just thought this was a funny moment when Carson stretched out on his lap. So cute!

Dan kicked of his summer by doing a massive motorcycle trip. He left around midnight May 29th and returned home on June 6th. He did over 3,000 miles and earned his "iron butt" for doing over 1,000 of those miles in less than 24 hours. His trip took him out to Tennessee again for some Tail of the Dragon riding, and just all around beautiful scenic riding in the south. 

Here's our attempt at first and last day of school photos. Cade didn't really let me take a picture of his first day of virtual school, and this is him in the car on the way to his first day of in-person school. Either way, his first year of high school is done. We shall see what the rest of his high school career will look like!

Since our kids are always opposite in all things, Alex was happy to take a picture on his first day of virtual school, and then I forgot to take a picture on his first day in-person! One more year left in middle school for this guy!

Since we are moving soon we decided to end our extra-curricular activities at the end of May. It made for a hard last week of school saying all the goodbyes. Here's alex's last day of Power Park Ninja. I can't say enough good things about the sport and the coaches. They have been there 100% for my boys and Alex loved coming for classes twice a week and open gym on the weekends. We will miss it!

Alex and Parish!

Warped wall photo shoot!

On the cargo net!

Balance obstacles

Love this shot

Coach Parish surprised Alex and had a free day during class where they got to play whatever games they wanted, and then had popsicles and oreos at the end of class. So thoughtful!

Alex also had his last piano lesson that week and he wanted me to come in for his lesson so he didn't get too sad. I'm glad I did because I caught this fun moment of Ms. Castillo and Alex doing some improv on the pianos together! We will really miss her as well!

Enough sadness, right? Good thing we had a birthday party planned for alex to help lighten the mood. His birthday isn't until June 19th, but he will be camping and a lot of his friends were going to be out of town, so early party it is!!

Since alex is our budding baker, I thought it would be a special treat to have a professional cake done for his party. He picked the character of Mr. Saturn from his favorite video game and the flavors. He chose a chocolate cake with cookies and cream buttercream. It was... delicious!!!!

Alex really had a great time with his friends. We called it a hangout party where they watched a movie, played games, ate pizza and had cake and ice cream. Lots of laughter and loud noises!

This was the moment all of his friends decided to give him 13 hugs <3

Now with summer officially in swing, naturally I made an appointment for them to get their Covid vaccine!

And I had to snap this picture of Cade asleep next to the dog. He was looking at me like, help! I'll let these boys rest when I can because moving is inevitable and a lot of work.

Oh, and if you haven't already heard- we are not going to Japan, or El Paso. In a last minute surprise it looks as though we're headed to Tacoma, Washington! We are officially on assignment to JBLM in Washington and waiting for those all-magical orders before any dates can be set. C'mon Army! Let's get this thing going for real!