I look at the calendar and I realize that I haven't done a blog post in a couple of months. I was feeling so proud of myself because by the beginning of September I was almost completely caught up and I was so excited. And then life happened and I literally have not had any free time to post. But I think I have a couple of really good excuses which justify my not having posted for a while and why it might take me another couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so before I can get back to it. Don't worry I will plan on getting into a lot more details on all these "fun" events later. For now though I just wanted to get it written out.
Let's see, it was the beginning of September last I wrote. I was backtracking to the beginning of August when we had found out that Eric's EAD date had been moved up to September 30th. And then on September 8th our townhome flooded with that once in every 500 years storm. The water that came in was so contaminated that we were pretty much evicted from the home and had to move out ASAP. So we packed up and moved out in a matter of days. We put most of our stuff in storage and moved in with Eric's parents.
During our time there we were busy trying to decontaminate our clothes by thoroughly washing them and attempting to pack them. The packing was made more difficult because we found out that even though we were given a house on base, we wouldn't be able to move into it until the end of October. This made it necessary for us to find temporary housing along with figuring out what to pack for the month of October and what to put in storage until we could move in our house. Along with taking care of that I was also busy working on the flood claim with the insurance company so that we could get reimbursed for our damaged property (about half of our furniture). Those were a few very busy weeks.
On the 20th we went on a fun family outing to the lake. While at the lake I broke my foot jet skiing. Not fun. This was about a week and a half before we were supposed to move. That next Sunday (the 28th) we did Mikaela's baby blessing with all the family in attendance. The next day when Eric and his Dad went to the storage unit to pack up our stuff we discovered that the storage unit had flooded from a huge storm that had hit 3 days before. We had to unpack and document all the damaged property before repacking it up so that Eric and his dad could drive it to Oklahoma. They arrived in Enid on October 2nd and later that day Jan, myself and the kiddos flew from Phoenix to Oklahoma City.
This last month we have been staying at a bed and breakfast (of course our room is on the 2nd floor - going upstairs with a broken foot - double no fun; especially with 2 babies). The first two weeks were busy with Eric doing everything on his in-processing checklist. So that means I was with the kids all day long those first 2 weeks. In this bed and breakfast we have no kitchen, only a mini-fridge and a microwave, so meals have been not as up to par as I would like. And since we are more of long-term tenants here there is no "breakfast" for us. Luckily this place is a little bigger than a typical motel room so we are able to stick Gabriel in in own little section for his naps. Even still the 4 of us in a 1 bedroom place is a bit rough.
We have been able to get out and meet lots of great people here. There are quite a few play groups and activities almost every day so we have been going out and about. Gabriel loves to be outside so we have been hitting up the park at least once a day every day.
Next Monday we are moving into our home on base. Eric's mom (Jan) is coming out to help us for a couple of weeks while we try and get settled into our new home. Since more than half of our furniture was damaged in the two floods we now have to replace it so we can have something in our house. The next couple of weeks/month are going to be very busy settling in.
Needless to say, life has been kind of crazy and will only continue to be so for the next little while. As soon as things calm down I will definitely get back on the blog wagon. But for now it is all about survival. That pretty much sums up our life as of late.
