It's Christmas Eve Day!

The Bean and I are finally finished all the shopping. We had one last present for each other to get, so we did that this afternoon. Then we watched an episode of Friends Season 6, and I cut the turkey/ham, and now Bean is making the crust. We are going to Crossbridge Community Church today at 5:30 for the Christmas Eve service, and then we'll come home and have pizza and a movie.
Hopefully we can find a church to go to tomorrow, but we'll have to do some searching.

Merry Christmas everyone, and I hope your eves and Christmas will be fun and festive!

Less than a week

It is going to be a good week. Only four days of work this week two days next week. How awesome is that. I guess the military has some good deals to it. And then we get to see Paj and Maj and Belac and Lauri, and Nanny, who I haven't seem in years. Mostly it will be like meeting her all over again, but that should be sweet too.
We decorated some more last night, so now the house looks more festive. And we moved furniture so we can be ready when our new couches and dining room table get here. It should be great, especially so I don't have to sit here on the floor typing.
Well I need to finish getting ready for work, so have a nice week everyone and soon it will be Christmas.

Christmas Info about me!

That was a good idea, so I'm stealing Marla's idea. So here's my info

Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? I'll drink Egg Nog, but I much prefer the Hot Chocolate
Does Santa wrap the presents or just set them under the tree? There's no such thing as Santa Claws!
Colored or white lights on the tree/house? It makes no difference as long as there is lots of them. But my awesome wife likes the blue lights, so those will definitely always be around.
When do you decorate? Well this is our first year really decorating a lot, and we still aren't done, so I'd have to say all the way up until christmas. Next year will be sooner.
What is your favorite holiday dish? I really like the sweet potatoes, and pecan pie, but on the whole I just love getting together and eating a ton with family. Family is what all the memories are derived from for me.
Favorite Holiday memory as a child? I actually have some of the best memories when we finally got to spend Christmas with all the family. Ever since we were little we lived far from family, so when we got to be in CA for Christmas with Grandpa Bob and the whole crowd of Stricklands it was great!
Do you open gifts on Christmas Eve? No, but I always want to.
What kind of cookies do you set out for Santa on Christmas Eve? Well if I did, I would set out some awesome cookies from England called digestives. That would be funny.
Snow! Love it or hate it? I love it so much. I really want to come to Redding to go skiing!!!!! I miss my skis!
Can you ice skate? Yeah, but it's been years since I have.
What is the most important thing about the holidays for you? It is good to remember why we celebrate Christmas, but it is also a good time to evaluate the past year and life in general. I know that Christmas always gets me thinking about how I can live me life better and more meaningfully.
What’s your favorite holiday dessert? Oops, I already put it, but Pecan pie is the greatest. My grandma Betty makes a great pecan pie. I'm sure there's more, but for right now I'll leave it at that.
What type of tree? Real for sure. Not really sure though that I have a preference on the type. I think we have a Douglas Fir this year. And since it's our first Christmas in four Christmas's I guess I'd have to say then that Douglas Firs are the coolest.
Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? I like both. Sometimes it's great to give a gift that you know the other person really really wants and it's a surprise when you get it for them, that's a great feeling to see their face light up when they get it. But I sure do like to get presents too.
What is your favorite Christmas Carol? I'm not sure that I have a favorite, I just like them all because they bring back such good memories.
Candy Canes, YUCK or YUM? I like them. But after having too many I get tired of them. Like Crazy Uncle said, when having Camel breath, it's good to have a candy cane!

So much to do...

So USAA, our bank and insurance people, also who we went through to find a realtor gave us a check just to use them. What a great deal. So now Katie and I are going to get a garage door opener, and some shelves for her in the closet. We already have shelves, but it seems as thought the builder made the shelves for an NBA center. I can reach them, but even I have to reach quite a bit to get my stuff up there. Anyway so I guess it's cool that really these two things are free to us, seeing as all we had to do is say " Sure we'll take a free realtor that we can trust, and then have you give us a chunk of money to do so." or something like that. Good stuff.

Even better we finally got katie's compy upgraded to TIGER so now she's as cool as me and zach and do you have it PAJ? Well you should get it if you don't. Oh wait wasn't I supposed to get that for you? Yeah nevermind.......

I'm really excited that our downstairs and to the right is all done. The kitchen and fireplace room look good. Just as long as you don't look in the garage or upstairs. It's weird, I don't know where to put everything. We hid so much junk in the closets in England that now that we had to put it into boxes, now I don't want to take the junk out. Oh the humanity!

Alright, well I'm kinda just rambling like always, so I guess I'll go.

What a great weekend

We got back in last night around 8:30 so it took about as long to get home as it did to get there. But five hours of driving well worth it. I finally got to meet Lindsay and the other Justin and Kara and Aaron...and little Walker, and George and June. It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed all the food and "hurt myself" on a few occasions. But hurting myself never tasted so good.
Hopefully we will get to see you all again real soon. It's really nice to be so close to family. I think everyone should just move to Texas seeing how it is such a nice state.
Anyway I've really got a bunch of thoughts in my head that I want to say, but they just don't seem to be coming out right, but I will say Thank you to the Walkers for being so warm and welcome and letting us hang out for a few days. We Highly enjoyed it.

On another note, does George really have his own blob...I mean blog? Cuz if he does I'd sure like to see.

Alright, well I reckon I'll talk/see y'all later.

It's THANKSGIVING!

It's a great day in America. We get to go hang out with familia, and eat some great food. And like many of you have said on your blogs or in your comments, there is a lot to be thankful for. God has provided so freely and graciously this year and every year for that matter. But I want to specifically say that I am so thankful that God safely brought Katie and I back to our great country safely and ahead of schedule. If some of you folks didn't know, we are not supposed to be back here to the US until late January, but fortunately the Air Force and DOD decided to downsize, and now we are here. I also want to thank God for the smooth transition to Texas. It seems that everything fell into place. Which is very unlike our move to England, so it just made this move that much better. I am thankful for the house God is giving us. We don't deserve anything He gives us, but we are sure thankful that He is such an awesome God.

I really hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, and that we all have many things to thank God for this year.


And don't forget to watch football!

Better Day

Well after having a horrible first day at work here in San Antonio, I was a bit nervous as to how my second day would be. To start my day off right, I went to the gym and did some cardio, so as to at least get rid of some stress. Then when I got to work, the mean grumpy guy was not there. To say the least I was very very relieved.
However, I was informed that the work load is slow most of the time, and at times busy in short spurts. So I am a little bummed because that's how England was, and I would really like to do some work. I mean it is nice to get paid to do much or do little, but I know when I get out in a year, I will not be used to working so much and then it will take me longer to get used to the load. I don't know it sounds stupid, but I really just like to work when I go to work.

Later on after I was about to go home, I received a call from our house salesman and the loan officer. It was supposed to be good news that the Appraiser did his job and that all the other paperwork will progress without a hitch.....Except for the fact that the underwriters want to have a piece of paper that says I plan to reenlist and also they want a paper that says I am indeed eligible to reenlist.
The problem with that is I had thought because I had turned down promotion testing, I thought I would not be eligible to reenlist. This caused my beautiful bride to turn into a ball of nerves. Fortunately for us the Air Force in their Infinite wisdom made a personnel website where I can check things like reenlistment eligibility and whatnot, so I checked and found out we will be able to reenlist if we so desired(we don't). Anyway, now we are happy and relieved and ready to finish with the buying and closing of the house.

Anyway I thought I would include a picture of my truck. This is the type of sense of humor of the clowns I work with....good times. I drove all the way home from work with this on my truck. And to think this is the work of my boss' boss' boss.

First real day of work....

How I wish I could just stay home and get paid. It was so nice to have the ten days to house hunt, but now I really just don't feel like going to work. I guess I shouldn't complain because I know most of you didn't get free time off work to look for a place, but MAN!
Ok I'll stop being a wuss.
Anyway Thanksgiving is soon and now we get to for sure go to Uncle Rick and Aunt Denise's house. It should be pretty sweet. Since we haven't really had a traditional Thanksgiving since we've been married, this should be great. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to eat pizza in Rome and other stuff in Germany, but I am very excited for some turkey and mashed potatoes and whatever else there might be. And FOOTBALL! That is gonna be great. Sadly I haven't watched football in two or three weeks, since the last time I went to Football Frenzy in England, so watching football real time should be great!
Alright, well as much as I'd like to put it off, I should probably go to work. Hope y'all have a great day and we'll see some of you real soon.

A shameless plea to come visit us in San Antonio

So if you weren't already thinking of coming to this great city to visit us fine folks down here, hopefully these pictures will help you make the right decision. That is to come see!
We went downtown to see the riverwalk and what not. It was only my second time ever, the first being right after boot camp, so it wasn't nearly as much fun as seeing it with the bean, but anyway it was katie's first time down there and I'm sure we'll go back numerous times. It's a great atmosphere and relaxing, except I'm sure on Saturdays right after boot camp graduation.
Anyway enough rambling, here are some of the photos we took today. Not many, but sure fun to look at.










































And ten points to the first person that can tell me what kind of bird this is....Keith and Belac you better get this one.

My new truck

We finally took some pictures of our sweet new to us used cars. It's quite exciting if you ask me. So it does have some dents and dings and what not, but technically this is the newest car I have ever owned. So I'm pretty stoked. Hey it's only 5 years, or 6 if you count that new cars now are 2006s instead of '05 although it is still 2005....but you get me.
So here it is in all its glory.


In other news, we got our washer and dryer today. Unfortunately our maintenance guys didn't get around to installing it, so we can't do laundry until tomorrow. And no I would have done it myself seeing as how it is not difficult, but they think they are too cool for school, so we have to wait.
Hope you like my new sweet bamboo background. I was getting bored with my blog, so I needed to change something, but I don't have all those skills like Zach to really hook it up. So what I'm sayin is HEY ZACH hook a brotha up!

We have a sidewalk

Yes it is great news. We now have a driveway and sidewalk in front of our house.
We have been looking at furniture, but we weren't quite sure how big the living room was, so we decided to go back to Michael's office who sold us the place, and get the measurments from him. Fortunately for us he was busy with some other customers, so we got to go look at our house again. As we pulled up we noticed they had poured the concrete and gotten it all done in the past day or so. Good stuff. You know it woulda kinda stunk to not be able to drive into the garage, so on the whole I think it's pretty sweet we have a driveway.
In other news, we now have two cars. Actually a truck and a car. And really I guess right now we are borrowing some cars, with the plans to pay for them on monday. Hopefully we don't run into any more snags. The short version is it was a pain to get the whole deal worked out, but in the end the good guys always win and so we won.
Alright, well that's all I have.

Hablo español en solamente cuatro dias

Yeah right, but hey we're here and stoked. As I'm sure you read bean's blog, we found a house. We have the coolest Realtor in the world. She took us around yesterday and the last one we looked at was the stuff. Anyway long story short we now have to do all the piles and trees worth of paperwork to get the place. But that's ok because we are so happy and thankful God has provided so much already in the short time we've been here.
On a not so good note I think I am sick now. So far my throat just hurts, but I'm feeling kinda..... not so good. But oh well.......
Again thank you all for your prayers. We have seen the rewards of those prayers in so many ways. God really has taken care of so much and we pray for continued blessings and the finding of a church. Hopefully this weekend we will be able to start the hunt. Hopefully it will not be much of a hunt, maybe more like a sitting duck, but we'll see.
Ok I'll go now, more to come very shortly I'm sure.

More ramblings

As I am sure everyone is so enthralled with my posts, I will give you yet another.
Today I had the final housing inspection. To give you some background, when the woman came for the pre-inspection she told me how nice and clean the house already was. Of course I took that as a compliment because my beautiful wife katie is the man when it comes to cleaning. So I was happy to think I wouldn't have to do any super hardcore cleaning. Which I didn't, but I did clean the whole house, it just wasn't dirty, so it was just touch up work. Last night after telling my buddy Foltz goodbye, I came home and finished up the laundry and mopped the floors. Confident that the house was in better then inspection order......Stinking lady. Not so much. Although she didn't point too many things out, she white gloved me. What's the deal with that? She just inspected my other friend Bladen and took all of 5 minutes at his house. And even if he exaggerated that, it still could of taken 10, 20 minutes? Yeah well my appointment was for 9 am, she arrived just a little before that. Before I knew it ,it was 10:00! And to add insult to injury, the day or two before my inspection I went to the housing office to check to make sure it was ok that I left the mower and gas cans and what not. They said "Sure, mate, that should be fine, no worries, I'll even tell the lady that I told you that." What I should have taken that to mean was "Are you crazy you buffoon, no way can you leave all that junk in your shed, and yes I will tell the inspector lady that you are a big, I say BIG moron."
Anyway, so I did leave the stuff, only to find out that by leaving the stuff there, I greatly offended the inspector lady. Shame on me!
After much tribulation, all was taken care of and now we no longer live on 1110B Birch. It's a great day......eventually.
Now I am happy to relax for a few days and have no worries except for an appointment at Molesworth tomorrow. The weight and stress of this moving are dissipating and now I am much relieved. Happy Days are here again.
Thanks for all of your prayers. I am sure that God is working in this move and keeping me sane and free of over burden.
I love all of you that read this blog, even if I haven't met you yet. See you soon in Texas.

It's so close...

I have done most of the things I need to do, I just have to finish cleaning the house and move my stuff to my billeting room. But that can't be done until tuesday, so for now I will just wait and enjoy the british country side.......
It's weird having to leave your friends. For the longest time I didn't have that many friends here, but now that it's time to go I realize that I have grown pretty close with a few of the guys. As much as I don't like being in the military, I really have made some lasting friends. So on the whole I have to say thank you Air Force.

Anyway, back to reality..... I can't wait for tonight. FOOTBALL FRENZY! I love football. I just hope Mark Brunell does good this week seeing how I put him in for Favre this week. I never realized how fun Fantasy Football could be. ¡Vive el Futbol Americano!
Alright well hopefully by my next post I'll be totally done and ready jump in a van down by the river....I mean to the airport.

Just a few more things to do....

Well I feel like time is not on my side. I still have to send off a box of stuff that the movers left, and that I can't/don't want to stick in my suitcases. In which I have to carry the box to the PO because I no longer have a car. Fortunately we are getting rid of our old used once or twice since we've been here bike, so I can put the box on the bike and walk it to the Post Office. Save my back just a bit. Then I have to find a home for the lawn mower. Two words or one, I don't know and really don't care, but hey correct me so next time and can really type it wrong on purpose.
Anyway then I have a bunch of junk in the shed that needs to be tossed. That shouldn't be too much work though. Then I have to find a place for all the extra food in the cupboards. I would donate the canned food and what not, but I have this feeling that no one will take it unless I deliver it...and my charity only goes so far. Sorry, I may sound like a bad guy but I really do like my back and ability to walk. Plus I have to get ready to carry my suitcases to billeting. My buddy Olmstead comma Keith said he may be able to drive me and my bags, just to remind him, so hopefully that works out. I need to finish cleaning the house and packing my bags. Then I have to go to CE(that is Civil Engineering) Customer Service to sell my transformer to some guy, and then also while I'm there get new stove rings for the top of the range. After that I may just have to take a breath and relax.
I'm sorry if I sound like I'm complaining and being a not so tough kind, but you all know I'm not really that tough. But I really just wanted to keep y'all informed of what is going on on this side of the really large pond? Why people say that I don't know. It is more like a really big lake at least....
Alright well I hope everyone is doing awesome, and I'll talk, or write some more later. Maybe after everything is done so then I'll be in a really great mood.
OUT.

Two weeks and two days and then.....

AMERICA here I come. It seems like whenever I have a lot of work to do, I want to not have any work, and when I don't have any work, I wish I had a lot. Well that is my old way of thinking. For months now I have had literally nothing to do at work, except for the rare time when we had to clean and pack up all the equipment, which only lasted a couple weeks, and were in fact some of the best times of my time here...work wise. Anyway, I always just run on....so please forgive me....I tend to type just as I'm thinking stuff and I tend to think in run-on sentences....what can you do?
Anyway so now I've come to the conclusion.....no not that I want to have an even amount of work all the time or no I will not stop complaining, I really just want to say that I wish I was rich so then I didn't have to work, and then I could always just go skiing and four wheeling and stuff. Is that too much to ask.
No really???
Ok well I really meant to get on here and update y'all on what I have been doing since my beautiful awesome cool and did I say hot? wife left. Well today I got most of my outprocessing checklist done, so I am soon to be "Officially" done.
Thats's about it. Now you see where all the excitement is in our relationship. Katie is the man.
Anyway... I went over to the coffee shop where I used to work because my old boss John said he had some stuff for me. So I was thinking " Oh sweet a kinda lame going away gift" And you know how at work you have your Office Laugh and you Office Personality, well I figured I'd have to use those big time to pass the awkwardness, but then he surprise me and got me an England Football...soccer...jersey. All that to say that I am super stoked because I've wanted to get one since I've been here, but just didn't want to pay all that money for one. Well now I have one and am super happy.
Anyway that's about all I've got.

My wife is a STUD

Likeness of Katie to a gazelle



Me, on a good day


Well after a long time of not running and resting my leg, I got up this morning to run WITH Katie. I told her yesterday that I would run with her because I do need to get in better shape not just weight lifting shape. Long story short, she is in great shape from doing this three to four times a week, and I just couldn't keep up. She was nice enough to slow down a few times and even stop, and once even ran in a circle around the post office parking lot allowing me to catch up.....That didn't happen. I called it a day at two miles and that is after not running the whole time. I got a new appreciation for what she does.
I don't say this to embarrass her, just that I am proud my wife is so awesome at running and getting me more motivated to be in good shape like the Air Force tells me to be....and that I should be in anyway.
We are down to 24 hours and nine minutes until Katie leaves. It's crazy. But I'm sure she will have a good time with you Walkers and Chuck. What up Chuck?!
Anyway have fun everyone in Las Vegas and I'm sure before too long I'll get my chance to see the beautiful metropolis the call Pahrump.
Love y'all, until next time.

A buyer, and a mechanic

Well I am using one of the computers here at starbucks, and it is making me quite angry. Apparently the key board is a british one....check last post for my thoughts on our jolly ole' friends. So instead of pushing shift, i push \ because the shift on my left side is miniature. And the enter or return or whatever you call that button in inverted so I accidently press # . How annoying. #doh
We showed our car to Diego and his wife yesterday and now they made an offer. Not the offer I would have liked them to make, but an offer nonetheless. So we are going to take it and be done with our trusty red rover. What a great car!
And at work today, \i side note....from now on I will just leave my errors from this stinkin british keyboard. \at work today \i got to work on my car. The last guy that looked at our car took it to the mechanic and he said that our car wouldn't pass |MOT because the brakes are bad or are going bad. So being the great guy that I am I decided to go down to the parts store and get some brake pads. Well after I took off the beauty ring and then the lug nuts and the tire and the screws to the brake pad holders...not sure the official name for that, I found that the brake pads are not as bad as anticipated. After finishing the front, I had to go back to the part store, because they had to order the back pads last night. I get back to work thinking ok maybe these will be worse than the front..... Long story short, nope they were fine too. Why didn't you just take the pads back then, you ask? Well I don't know, I just figure I better do it so Diego doesn't get me for false advertisment, as I told him yesterday that I would be puting the new pads on today.
Anyway, it was a nice day because I got to be outside and not stuck in the hole.

Basically thought what I#m trying to say is that I'm sure thankful God answered our prayer for a buyer. It makes the stress level go down, and that is good.#

I hope y'all are doing awesome and I'll post some more at another time.

Brake pads and pancakes

So I was going to replace the brake pads on katie's car, but then well England lived up to it's less than stellar reputation. By this I mean to say that they again didn't suprise me by not being open, that is the car parts place. And even if they were, the Auto Skills Center was closed....run by brits...well at least brits work there, it's on base so technically it's American run, but hey I might as well blame it on the brits....stinkin brits.

But the highlight to all this was that katie made me pancakes again. You can't go wrong with pancakes. They must be one of the best breakfast foods in the history of man. Up there close to manna sent from heaven. THAT GOOD!

It's about time

Well I just typed like two paragraphs, and then for some reason they disappeared. Kinda weird.
Anyway, for the second time, I am quite glad to have math finally over. I shouldn't have to take anymore for some time. I also will have a month to a month and a half break for classes so as to make the move a little less stressful.
It seems like not much has happened recently, although, I know that can't be right. One of these days they will come up with a hard drive for the human brain, and I will be one of the first in line for it. I always forget stuff, only to have katie later tell me that oh by the way we need to get this and this and this done. Which is good, because if I didn't have her, can you imagine where I'd be. LOST, that's for sure.
Anyway, just a few more days until katie leaves. I'm sure glad she gets to go back to the states and have fun in Vegas.....Pahrump, but man I sure would like to leave too. IF only two weeks sooner. Eh, I guess I don't have much room, I coulda left on the first, but I'm a dork. Another reason I need katie. She makes me cool. Or does that mean I'm not cool anymore because I'm talkin about being cool.....Ah man.
Alright, well life is good, and my laptop is getting warm, so I will go.....Oh there's a christmas/birthday gift idea. There is this apple laptop deal, that raises up the laptop a few inches so as to allow more circulation under the lappy. Not sure if it works....but hey it's an idea, and when the time comes ideas are hard to come up with on the spot.

OK, ok I'm going. Out.