Wow. Has it been a month.

So Jeremy got home from Officer Training School but not before I got to go to Alabama and see him graduate. I have a couple pics here...

Also, many of you remember the crazy amount of snow Boise got dumped on in December. Here is some of the fun we had.

Getting ready for Christmas (the week before):

Here are Christmas morning pics:

And now we have traveled to our first station. Beale AFB in not-sunny Northern California. It is the "rainy season" and overcast everyday. It is making me depressed because we can't go play at the playground and we aren't in our house yet. Miserable.

So here is the story of how we chose our house. I talked to the housing office a wile back and they told me that they haven't "privatized" the housing yet (basically had a company come in and modernize and take over the management of military housing) so the houses are 1250 sq feet and have a 1 car garage if you are lucky. So yeah, I had no doubt that we would not be living on base. The housing allowance was a good amount and there were lots of nice houses online.

Well, we get here and start searching and found a couple we like but they would slip out from under us. One of them Jeremy really liked and we called an hour after viewing it and it was already rented to someone else. Same story for another one - just signed the night before. So these kept falling out from under us and I was getting really disheartened and frustrated. We were praying about it and praying to find somewhere that would be "fiscally responsible" and not have a huge commute. Jeremy asked me to call some of his co-workers wives and ask them what their opinion was. So I did. They said the housing on base sucks but there are some great benefits to living on base. If you can deal with the small house, the rest is good. So bam. Instantly felt a million times better and knew that this was where we are supposed to live. Unfortunately the housing is all wood and tile floors so the kids have been running through the empty house screaming and it echoes a ton so it drives us crazy. Our stuff comes on Monday so we will move in then and I hope that the noise will be lessened. The kids are going to share a room and the third bedroom will be a playroom, junk room, etc. So 3 or four years but it will save us a lot of money and enable us to come and see all of you more often. Crazy thing though. We move in the week another family moved out. The ward we are moving into has a lot of need and apparently is now wanting of a 2nd counselor in the bishopric and a new RS president. Yikes! Our records aren't here yet, but there is a lot of opportunities to serve.

Anyway.

We got here and met our one friend and went to New Years Eve at their house. Here are a couple pics for that. Jeremy and I met 10 years ago that night. Look where 10 years has taken us.

Since then we have been hanging out in temporary housing so last week we went to Sacramento. Across the street from the zoo there is a little park called Fairy Tale Land. We HAD to go there! Kaitlynn loved it. We went to Sherwood Forest. Drove Cinderella's coach. Slid down Owl's tree slide, Saw three blind mice, hugged Clifford, walked the Crooked Mile. It was cute. Here are the pictures. (And the milkshake afterwards.)

Here are our adventures in temporary housing, featuring the kids as well as the stray cat that sits at the back door.

We had an amazing Christmas and we are so grateful for the chance to say goodbye to you all. Thank you for being such good friends and family to us. We know where our home is and always will be.

So that is where we are at now. Monday we move into our new home. New adventures await us!

Hope your New Year and Christmas were great!

Funny story:
We went to see a house in Plumas Lake (30 minutes away). Here is the story:
The sister of the owner (Rachel) met us there (she lives next door. The brother lives 2 houses down.) So Rachel met us there and gave us the tour. It is a large house and way way way nice. The whole family looks very wealthy. So then she shows me everything and invited us to breakfast at her house because her sister (the owner of the house) was on her way. We ended up inside Rachel's house for a while visiting and everything was even more fancy over there (so I was nervous about the kids breaking something). I had kind of already made up my mind that it would save us a lot of money to live on base but I didn't want to be a jerk especially after meeting the whole family. So the sister (Rachel) is telling me that they will come down to $1300 for rent (they were asking $1500) but I am not sure the owner is 100% on board with that. Anyway, they were soooo nice to us and I could tell she really wanted to rent to us but I had my mind set on staying on base. So they are visiting with me and wanting us to stay and the kids are running around and getting rowdy so Jeremy goes outside to get the kids out of the lady's house and get away from it all. I finish talking with the sisters and finally make it outside. To my surprise Jeremy is talking to this old homeless looking lady. He glares at me and I walk over to him. The lady says she is their mother and wants our phone number in case we rent the house. (She is an old Asian woman) She tells us that we look like Angels. Jeremy just wants to get in the car and leave and I had to laugh to myself about the whole thing. I feel bad that we don't want to live out there even though she is willing to bend over backwards for us to rent from her.

So then after church on Sunday I have an urgent message on my cell. It is the toothless Asian mother who is very hard to understand. She is basically saying that she wanted us to move in and we will work out the payments later. "Call me back. Right away!"

Again, they were so nice and I felt like I was breaking up with a boyfriend when I called the lady back to say we weren't interested. Anyway, the old homeless looking Asian lady talking to Jeremy still cracks me up.