Rambles

I started a blog and it got deleted by accident. So this is just a run down of everything I had typed before. Ugh! haha

We are doing so good in saving our money! I love to see our savings account get bigger and bigger every week. It feels so good to look at our bank accounts and be proud of what we are accomplishing. Last weekend was the first time I had eaten out at a restaurant in a month and it felt good! Our checking account is thanking us for that too! I am dying to buy a house and look at listings all the time. Patience is not my virtue so sometimes I get antsy. But I am thankful we have the experience of Hawaii and it is allowing us to save even more money for when we finally do settle down. So I guess I have that to look forward to. I just look forward to settling down and putting roots somewhere for my kids to grow up. I hate moving and am very, very thankful we haven't moved too much in his army career. I love stability the most. Especially for the kids. I hate having Kaylie switch schools all the time and start over.

Curt has been talking a lot lately about his career. At work they have been trying to talk him into reclassing into a career counselor. I know his heart is not in that though. I know how much he would hate to be a paper pusher and thats so not him. He truly does miss being a scout. Its been awhile since he was depressed about that, and to see the melancholy in his face talking about this the other day is sad. I feel bad for him. He has no idea what to do. Reclass to MI, be an instructor, go back and work at PEO, he has no clue. It hurts me to see him struggle with his new life post injury. I still wish I could take it all back. I would love to rewind time for him.

As for me, I am still pushing through school. One more week of this class I hate and then I will be done with it. Thank God! In a few more weeks I start two more classes. World Religions which I am really looking forward to learning about and a history of psychogloy class which doesn't seem like it will be too bad. I also signed up for statistics again this summer. That class starts in June and will last four months. I am dreading it. But I am taking it alone so hopefully I won't have to withdraw from it this time. I will concentrate solely on that class.

Curt's 30th birthday is in a few weeks and we are planning to go to a luau. I'm excited for that. Should be fun! I have been really bored lately and lonely, so I need to start making more friends. I plan on joining the spouses club and getting involved in more activities around post. Anyway, thats about it for now. My life is pretty boring!

Crankiness

Well, not much has improved since my last blog! I'm still in a "sort-of" funk. I don't know what it is and I don't know how to snap out of it. I'm still slugging through school. I'm just ready to be done and get my degree. Feeling the age crunch sucks! I mean I don't know how I even got in this funk. My life is full of good things. I have two beautiful, healthy, smart children. I have a husband who would do anything for me, I am living in Hawaii, in freaking paradise, we are not living paycheck to paycheck, we have more money in savings than ever before and I have a supporting, loving family. So what is up my ass??? I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm tired of being bitchy all the time. I want to be FUN again.

I think part of it is taking this real estate class. Now that is all that is on my brain again. I'm ready to settle down and buy a house and make a home. Yes I am so thankful for this Hawaii experience, and yes I am loving it here, but I just feel unsettled. Knowing this move is only temporary makes my itch even worse. I am trying to not think about it, because I don't want my drive to own a home overshadow this wonderful experience over here.

Anyway, its spring break for Kaylie which is sooo nice. I love sleeping in and am enjoying every minute of it. I don't feel pressured to get to bed by 10:30 at night. No big plans since Curt is gone at camps for the Warrior Games again. He is at Fort Meade right now until Monday, then he will be in South Carolina for the rest of the week before flying back home on Saturday. The warrior games are at the end of April and I would love to go and watch him compete again this year and I would love to see Colorado again, but I can't have Kaylie miss school and I am certainly not taking a 6 hour flight with two kids alone ever, ever again! haha

Anyway, short and sweet. Not a lot happening!

Feeling down and out

I have been in a funk for the past like three days. It sucks. I hate feeling this way. It started with me thinking about school. After these two classes I am in are done at the end of March I will be a little over halfway done with my degree. I feel like I will never get done. I am starting to feel like its holding me back. If I could go back and time and do it all over again, I would have went to college right after high school. I feel like my age is catching up to me. Let's face it. I'm 31, pushing 32. By the time I am done with my BA I will be 33 or 34. Then to go on to my Master's, which will be another 2-3 years. I will be about 37-38 when I am done. I don't want age to stand in my way...but I am totally feeling the time crunch. I feel like no on is going to want to hire a almost 40 year old woman for the start of her career. It sucks feeling like that. Like I said I wish I could go back in time and do it all over again.

Anyway, another thing that sucks is I am feeling very lonely over here. I need more friends here. Its hard to make friends though. Its hard to find good people that have the same standards and interests as me and that I feel comfortable around. I don't want drama and I am a very quiet person. So its always been hard for me to just walk up to someone and say "hey, lets be friends". Last time I did that I ended up befriending a psychopath. haha
I am very picky when it comes to friends. This was the problem I had at Belvoir too and ended up meeting two great women less than six months before we were moving here. I miss those girls. One in particular I really clicked with and we had great times together laughing and joking. We were so much alike and I miss her terribly. The military sucks sometimes!

As much as we are enjoying Hawaii and as much as we really love it here and will enjoy our time here, I can't wait to get back to the mainland and settle down. Start our "real" life so to speak. Anyway, hopefully soon I will get out of this funky mood I am in.

Real estate on my mind....

So now that I am back in school I have been doing a lot of thinking. Right now I am taking a real estate class and learning all about that of course. And now my obsession with House Hunters and HGTV in general has come back full force. So I have been thinking. While we are here in Hawaii I want to save as much as possible. The plan right now is to save all of our COLA (cost of living adjustment) each month. We have a very cushy savings right now, but I want to put all of our COLA in a separate account from regular savings and save it just for a house. I want to put a very nice down payment on a house. That will allow us to get a house that is over what we could afford with no down payment. I think it would be awesome to do. So if we could save our COLA-- and we get close to $900 a month for that--for the next three years we would have a very nice, cushy down payment. I would love to be able to get a bigger, more expensive house than what we could get with nothing down. So that is our goal. I am really hoping we can still to it. I think the advantages of doing this will be so worth it in the long run. I am beyond ready to settle down and buy a house. I have been ready for the last few years. Getting through the next three years and saving as much as we can is key. We spend so much on junk and throw money away left and right that we need to put ourselves on a budget.

I just watched an episode of House Hunters with these two college graduates who were 23 and 24. They just moved from Colorado to Florida for their new jobs and this guy had saved 90% of his checks he earned working in college just for a down payment on their new home. It was great! To be able to put that much money down they could afford a $300,000 house. That is what I want too! This is my new goal. Wish me luck!! I know we can do it if we really try!!

Adventures begin

So we have decided every weekend we are going to do something around the Island. I bought so many books about Hawaii before we moved here and we want to start taking advantage of all there is to do here. I feel like if we don't start doing stuff now, we will just continue to put it off and then before we know it we will be leaving the island and regretting everything still on our "to do" list. So from here on out we will be doing something every Saturday or Sunday around Oahu.

Today we went to the Honolulu Zoo. It was no fancy zoo and really small, but the kids had a blast and that's what counts. We also are working on using our camcorder more. We rarely use it, I mean, half the time I even forget to bring the camera! So we are working on capturing more stuff on video and also I am working on taking more pictures. There are sooo many pictures I need to print out. Still from when Brandon was born even! I suck in that department!

This is my last weekend before my classes start up again. I have two classes starting on Monday. I am sooo ready to get back in the grind with school. I hope I can find time to get it done during the week and before Sunday night, since all my assignments are due by Sunday at midnight eastern time, I am really going to work at getting everything done by Friday night so I can relax for the weekend. If need be, when I have papers to work on, I will give myself until Saturday night. I hope that plan works out!

Besides all of that, not much going on. Kaylie has an ultrasound of her kidneys and bladder coming up on Valentine's Day. Her blood work came back normal she had done last week so that's good news. Curt is hoping to get selected for the Warrior Games again in March. It just sucks because the games happen to be the week of Kaylie's spring break so I don't know what we will do while he is gone and I'm here alone. We are certainly not flying to Colorado alone to watch him compete!!

All moved in!

We are all moved in to our house. I am so thankful to be out of that damn hotel. I am glad I won't see it again until we PCS out of here. haha
Of course we have had our issues since we moved in. One I hate, hate, hate the park in front of our house. It's constantly filled with bad little kids. I am constantly yelling at them. I am going to be the mean lady on the block that the kids don't like. But that is okay with me. I would rather be the mean one, than the passive lady. :)

When we first moved in our dishwasher didn't work. Which was a pain because I wanted to wash all of our dishes that had been on a boat and in boxes for months. At least they came out fast and fixed that. Then one of our mailbox keys didn't work, so they ended up finally just changing the whole lock out and rekeying the mailbox. Then yesterday our A/C went out. Ugh.. It's fixed now though thank goodness. I don't like being hot!

So Kaylie has had some issues since we moved here. She has blood in her urine. She has peed in a cup two times so far and each time there has been blood. She has to pee again this week and then we will go from there if there is still blood in her urine. I'm not too terribly worried because my sister has always had this problem too and they could never come to a conclusion as to why she has blood in her urine. So. We shall see. She also had an EKG done yesterday and saw the cardiologist. Her doctor here had heard a murmur and wanted it checked out. Well, we had done all of this when she was little. She had an EKG done when she was 3 years old. But whatever, he wanted it done again so we did it. She got a clean bill of health from the cardiologist so that is that. Kind of a waste of my time, but whatever, it made him happy.

So now that we are all settled in we can get back into our normal routine which is nice. I have to say also even though Kaylie has only been in school for about three weeks now, that she doesn't seem to be too far behind what she was doing in VA. I actually think they might be a bit ahead in math than what she was doing back there. But we are still enjoying Hawaii and just putting the house together. It's fun decorating, but moving is such a pain and such a hassle. I am glad we have been pretty stable in our military career. One more move after this and we will be done moving forever hopefully. Moving sucks! I like stability, especially for the kids!

Anywhoo, here is a picture of our house:

Just wanted to give a quick update!

Countdown to move in!

Not much has been going on. We are still at the Schofield Inn. We actually signed the lease for our house this morning, but we don't move in until Tuesday. Only 6 more days. I can't wait! That day will be entirely hectic and crazy. We are supposed to go pick up our keys at 9am that morning and we have the movers coming the same day. It will be just like when we moved to Belvoir and the movers were waiting for us while we picked up the keys and stuff. haha

I am sooo looking forward to being in my own home again. To be able to cook a meal and send the kids upstairs to play will be golden. We can all have our own space and own beds again! It will be so nice. I also can't wait to get Katy back with us. She has been staying with our friends here while we wait for housing. I miss her so much. We have been enjoying Hawaii still. We went to a nature park this past weekend called Waimea Falls. It was sooo gorgeous, I felt like we were in a movie or a fairytale or something. I kept saying to Kaylie watch out for the dinosaurs because this feels like Jurassic Park! At the end of the trail was a waterfall and swimming hole. It was pretty cool. 

We have still been exploring the island some, but not as much as we did while Curt was inprocessing. He's back to work now and is enjoying it so far. He is the MAR2 coordinator for the 25th ID and works at the retention office right across the street from the Inn actually. What he does is process profiles that come down to him from division and then he sends the memo's to the units that those particular soliders will be going through a MMRB (now called MAR2). It's a pretty easy job and he thinks he will like it.  I think this will look good on his records and I hope he will get put on the E7 list while we are here. I know being in the WTU has hurt him for this time, but I feel he could get picked up and get a promotion number while we are in Hawaii. Not this year, but possibly next. I will keep my fingers crossed for that. I know it would mean a lot to him to pick that up like his basic buddies did last year. He was so disappointed when he didn't make it, even though they say being flagged in the WTU shouldn't hurt promotion wise, I just know it has to hold some type of negative thing when they looked at that.

Kaylie started school on Monday. She was nervous and a little bit scared, but she did great. We got to school pretty late that morning due to the soldier who were still out doing PT. (learned my lesson and have since taken the back roads to school and we get there much faster lol). We went into the office and they lei'd her and took her picture for her ID badge. Then we went to her class to meet her teacher. She's young, maybe my age or so. She's from Philly so she has a thick northeast accent. I love it. haha
The school will take some getting used to since its all outdoors. The classrooms are in quads and Kaylie's quad is all the way in the back of the school. It's definitely a Hawaii school, it has the look of Hawaii.
So far I can say I don't think she is that much further ahead if at all when it comes to the curriculum. In math they seem to be working on the same thing she was working on in VA. Her spelling words were really easy, but I'm sure the teacher will figure it out that she is much further ahead in spelling that her class. She was the best speller in her class at Belvoir and in a group all by herself as far as words were concerned. My little book worm and great speller..but slow at math just like her Mama!  :)


Other than that, there is not much going on. Just waiting to get the heck out of this Inn and into our house. Woot!