I'm so sad that I haven't been able to keep up with my blog posts the last few months.  I started working part time nights and weekends at Target, which lets be honest.... it doesn't bring in any extra income, all it does is help support my Target shopping addiction.  But so far I'm enjoying it and since I have worked at Target before, it's not completely foreign to me and I'm actually pretty good at what I do.  I've also been busy with projects and crafts for the house and I'm re-doing Brinleigh's bedroom as well. 

So we are currently moving into a new house..... SURPRISE!  It was kinda sudden and unplanned before last week.  Long story short:  Our house was in foreclosure when we moved in but the landlord never told us that and we just found out last week that the house was sold in auction and we will be getting notified by the bank any day now that we need to vacate the house.  So over the last couple of weeks, in between Kolt and I both working and the holiday weekend, we spent all of our free time house hunting.  We were trying to be as optimistic as possible about the situation and believe that it's all God's plan and everything will work out as He intends it to.  Kolt ended up finding us the perfect house and we both fell in love with it when we went to look at it.  So now with Christmas only 20 days away, we are moving, my Christmas decorating has been put on hold and it's 85 degrees outside.  Needless to say, I'm not feeling very festive this year.  Our focus now:  Get moved into our new house as quickly as possible and begin celebrating the holidays.

On another note, I am playing around with the idea of opening my own Etsy shop to sell some of the crafts that I make.  My most recent project seemed to be a hit amongst my friends and I think I could do fairly well with my own craft shop.  It's still just a thought and I haven't pursued anything yet, but opinions and suggestions are welcomed.  I haven't written a post about it, but I made a picture of the state of Alaska with a heart where Sitka is located, to represent where Brinleigh was born.  We are going to hang it in her bedroom so that she will always have a piece of Alaska close to her.  I am going to make an Arizona one for Kolt & I to hang in our bedroom as well.

     

A Not So Quick Update!

I promise I have not forgotten about my poor abandoned blog, just been a little busy getting settled here in FL.  As I'm still working on posts about our travels, I have fallen behind on my normal updates.  I'm working on trying to get caught up.

The house is finally all unpacked and just about everything is put away.  I'm still working on some organization, re-decorating Brinleigh's bedroom, hanging pictures and sorting random things that we need to get rid of.  All of which needs to be done sooner rather than later since I started working part time this week.

I had a couple of interviews at Best Buy and Target a couple weeks ago and was offered a seasonal position with both stores. Target seemed to be a better fit for our family since they were so willing to work around Kolt's duty and deployment schedules.  I will be working in the evenings and some weekends until January and then I will find out if they want to keep me on as a permanent part time employee.  So this will also be a trial period for us to see how it works with me working opposite shifts from Kolt.

Kolt got assigned to a deployment team and will be going on his first two week deployment in a couple of months.  He makes extra money every time he deploys so he is going to try and go as often as he can.  We did find out the results from the big test he took back in May to try and promote and unfortunately, they only decided to promote the top four scoring tests (for his rate).  He took the last week and half off of work just to study and prepare to take the test again today.  He will get his "raw" score in the next couple of weeks, but we never know how many people they will promote so we really won't find out anything for a few months.

After arriving in Florida, we decided that we aren't going to be using the trailer as much as we planned to.  Our financial situation has also changed drastically with the PCS and leaving Alaska.  So as of right now, we are desperately trying to sell the trailer, one less financial responsibility.  So cross your fingers and pray that we can get rid of it ASAP.

My free time is being spent on some crafting projects to help organize our families daily life and routines and also redecorating Brinleigh's new bedroom. (I will post more about that later.)  Kolt and I have also been working on our very first furniture re-purposing project.  At some point while we were in Sitka, I decided that I wanted a new TV stand.  Something taller so that Brinleigh couldn't touch the TV and preferably with cabinets or drawers.  And then I came across a dresser re-purposing project on Pinterest and became obsessed.  Of course, as soon as I saw the type of used dresser that I have been looking for posted for sale online, I jumped all over it and sent Kolt to pick it up.  I was even more ecstatic about the project when Kolt got excited about helping me with it, but that might have been more about him being able to buy and use power tools. 
 

Waiting for everything to dry is what took the longest.  Kolt sanded everything down and then I proceeded to stain and then re-stain before applying several coats of polyurethane.  We chose to leave the top middle drawer out and put down a piece of plywood to make a shelf for the blu ray player and cable box.  Kolt drilled a hole in the back for all the cords to go through so we could plug everything in and then I replaced all the hardware on the drawers.  We are pretty proud of how it all turned out since it was the first re-purposing project we have ever done.  I have another dresser sitting on the back porch that I plan to start working on this weekend.  It is long over due since I got the dresser when we were in Sitka, but I am going to make it a storage piece for all of my craft stuff.

Surprisingly, Brinleigh is still sleeping in her crib and so we decided to keep it that way as long as we possibly can.  We are gathering all the necessities and prepping to start our potty training adventure soon, so wish us luck with that.  I'm really not looking forward to the potty training, but I'm super excited about not changing diapers anymore.  We recently taught her "Patty Cake" which has turned into one of her favorite activities and has got to be the cutest things ever.  She is in love with squirrels and all things animals so we decided to go check out the Tampa Zoo next week.  She is still growing like a weed and starting to talk more and more every day.  She is such a happy little girl and so much fun to play with.  I am so proud of how patient she has been with all the changes that have been happening in our lives and how well she has adapted.

Happy Halloween!

It is finally starting to feel a little more like fall here in Florida with some cooler weather coming through.  A couple weeks ago we went to check out a local pumpkin patch and it was so hot outside you would have thought we were in the middle of summer time.  It was still fun nonetheless and we were pleasantly surprised with the normalcy of it all since we are accustomed to "Sitka standards".  There was a petting zoo which Brinleigh enjoyed, a pumpkin patch where Brinleigh had a great time picking up handfuls of hay and throwing it in the air, and pony rides, which she absolutely loved!

We have several projects going on at the house right now and with still trying to get settled and me trying to get a job, I have not been the least bit motivated to get into the Halloween spirit.  My decorations consisted of some window clings and a glitter sign on the front door and some pumpkins lined up on the bookcase.  We didn't do any Halloween crafts or make any festive treats and we even forgot to carve our pumpkin in time.  But hopefully we can start to get more into the holiday spirit around here after Thanksgiving.

Last weekend we went to our first Coast Guard event on base.  They had a kids Halloween party and costume contest in the C-130 hangar.  After Brinleigh's constant refusal to wear a witch hat for weeks prior, I finally changed her Halloween costume to a Bumble Bee and I was very happy with the outcome.  She has got to be the cutest bumble bee EVER!  Everyone who saw her thought so too.  We walked around and checked stuff out, got some candy, decorated a cupcake and Brinleigh won "Cutest Costume" in the costume contest.

I bought Brinleigh's bee costume at a local Halloween store and it came with everything we needed.  For some reason, even though it was a size 2T, the tights were so short that they looked like they were made for a one year old and Brinleigh refused to wear the headband with the bee antennas.  I ordered some larger tights online and then I bought some yellow poms and glued them onto small black ponytail bands and put those on her pig tails.  I had just bought the cutest little black dress shoes for her and they went perfectly with the costume.  When we were shopping at Michaels craft store one day, I saw a little bumble bee bag that matched her costume and we used that as her treat bag.  I had previously bought her a pink pumpkin bucket for her candy so we brought that just in case and she ended up carrying both of them.  She had to have her "perce" (purse=bumble bee bag) and her pumpkin bucket, both with candy of course. 

We decided to take Brinleigh trick-or-treating in downtown Dunedin. (The next town over from us.)  We love the town and it's such a cute little are right on the ocean.  They closed off the streets downtown and all the shops were handing out candy (just like Sitka does).There was a free movie in the park right in the middle of town and they played "Hotel Transylvania".  Downtown ended up being a lot bigger than we thought and there were a lot more shops and stores than we were expecting.  It was busy when we got there but once we started trick-or-treating it was getting packed full of people.  We stayed for about an hour and a half and then decided to go get dinner and head home at a reasonable time.  Brinleigh seemed to have a great time walking around and seeing all the other kids in costumes, but I think it was also a little overwhelming with how busy it was and all the older kids and tall people running around everywhere.  We received numerous compliments from everyone we passed about how adorable Brinleigh was and people gushed over her cuteness.

Brinleigh's vocabulary is quickly expanding and she is starting to understand and comprehend things a lot more.  Her most recent discovery is that ghosts say "BOO" and it's scary.  This is the cutest thing ever!

Brinleigh's "BOO" Video

From One End of The US to The Other: Part 2

Arriving in the lower 48 brought relief, excitement, stress, anxiety, annoyance and then..... a little bit of regret.  

When we got off the ferry in Bellingham it was hot and we could smell all the pollution in the air and there was traffic everywhere.  We weren't in Sitka anymore.  What did we do? Can we turn around and go back? Maybe we should have chosen an air station more similar to the Sitka environment, like Astoria, before jumping right into the hot, humid, beach city that we were headed to.

As soon as we got off the ferry in Bellingham we decided to find a donut shop (there aren't any in Sitka) and then took the truck to get new tires before we started our road trip.  The plan was to head to Seattle that afternoon to start looking for travel trailers, but Kolt found a couple in Bellingham to look at first and we ended up really liking the second trailer.  The rest of Day 1 in Bellingham was spent driving an hour and a half to stay the night in a hotel near the bank that we had to go to first thing the next morning.

Day 2 in Bellingham started off with a trip to the bank and then an hour and a half drive back to where the trailer was.  When we went to pick up the trailer, Kolt and the seller ended up having a really hard time switching out the hitches and had to make a parts run so Brinleigh and I got to hang out with the wife and their two kids for a couple of hours.  Thankfully, they were awesome and super nice and it gave Brinleigh a chance to run around in the sunshine.  Once we were finally able to get on our way, we only made it a few miles down the road before dropping Gunner off at Petsmart to get a de-shedding treatment while we went shopping at Walmart to stock up on food and other necessities for the trailer.  After picking up Gunner it was dinner time and of course I insisted on a trip to Olive Garden.  While at dinner I called every single rv resort/park and hotel within a 50 mile radius and not single one had any camp sites or rooms available.  Are you kidding me?  I finally found out that there was some kind of huge car show going on that weekend and was informed that I probably wouldn't find anywhere to stay anywhere in the western part of Washington.  After debating on camping out in a Walmart parking lot, we weighed our options and decided to just drive until we figured out another plan.  We eventually found a hotel that had one room left and we arrived at about 2am.  At this point you can imagine how much we were missing Sitka.

We spent ALL of Day 3 driving and first thing that morning, we made sure to plan a stopping destination for the evening.  We were successful at making a reservation at a KOA and we even arrived in the early evening so that we could unload the truck and set up everything in the trailer.  The KOA was really nice and the weather was beautiful.  We learned very quickly that the trailer was not exactly baby proofed and we had to get creative with how to accommodate a two-year old.
The back bunk bed area was made into Brinleigh's "area".  The top bunk folded up & we removed the mattress from the bottom bunk and stored it in the storage area underneath the bed area.  Then we set up her pack n' play on the hard surface of the bottom bunk along with a Rubbermaid bin full of toys and a couple of plastic drawers for her clothes.  She also had her own little closet cabinet.  This worked out perfectly because in the evenings when we put her to bed, we could leave the bathroom door open and it blocked off the opening to her "area" making it dark and more separated.
We put our small 19" flat screen on the wall above the dining area which helped to keep Brinleigh entertained, although she was more interested in climbing all over the dining room table, the couch, our bed and into her "area".

Since we found a trailer on the first day in Washington, we were ahead of schedule.  We had called the RV park at Yellowstone to see if we could arrive a day early but there were no available RV sites.  So we ended up driving as far as we could and stayed at a KOA about an hour from the entrance to the park.


To be continued......

The Story of Lexi and The Lizard

While I am still working on my novel of blog posts about our travels, I figured I would go ahead and start sharing some stories from our time in Florida so far.

You know how most states have squirrels or birds that you will usually see running or flying around outside?  Well Florida has lizards.  I am not over exaggerating one little bit when I say they are everywhere.  EVERYWHERE!  Especially at our house.  I'm not so sure what it is about our neighborhood, or maybe its just specifically the location of our house, but at any given moment you can walk outside and see at least ten lizards scatter before you have even taken two steps.

With that being said......

One night I was going to the grocery store and since the weather was nice, I decided to go with no A/C and roll down all the windows.  I started my car and opened my sunroof and out of nowhere, I see a lizard hit the cup holders in my center console and then jump onto the floor of the passenger seat and then scurry up into the bottom of my dash board.  Is our lizard problem really that bad that they are making their way into my car?  So of course, I did what anybody else would do and I immediately lost my shit.  Now I'm not afraid of lizards, I'm just not used to seeing them everywhere and haven't fully accepted them yet as constant companions in my life.  So I run into the house screaming about a lizard running around in my car while Kolt looks at me like I've lost my damn mind.  He went out and searched my car and no lizard was to be found anywhere, but he also realized that the lizard was probably sitting on my sunroof and when I opened it, the lizard fell in.  Kolt tells me not to worry, the lizard isn't going to come back out of the dash board and it's probably going to stay in there and die.  He made sure to reassure me that lizards don't smell when they die so nobody will ever even know there is a dead lizard somewhere in my car.  I still needed to go to the grocery store but all I could think about was driving down the road and this lizard either popping up on my steering wheel or my shoulder and scaring the shit out of me causing me to crash.  I'm being serious about this vision.  I braved the drive to and from the grocery store with absolutely no sighting of any lizards inside my car.

A few days later......

Brinleigh and I went to CVS so that I could cash in on a laundry detergent coupon deal and as I am loading my six bottles of laundry soap into the backseat of the car, I move something and what do I see????  That damn lizard sitting on the seat.  I try to think fast about how to approach this thing to catch it and get it out of my car but I was too slow and it ran somewhere into the crack of the seats.  Of course I immediately text Kolt telling him that damn lizard is STILL in my car!  He thinks it's hilarious.

The following day, I went outside to clean out my car.  As soon as I open the back door, there is my little lizard friend, chillin' on the side of the seat.  Again, I was too slow and he ran somewhere behind Brinleigh's car seat.  I went into the house to tell Kolt and he did a detailed sweep of the inside of my car, to include making me remove Brinleigh's car seat.  No lizard.  This thing is taunting me now.  So I told Kolt to wait a few hours and then we will go check my car again and the lizard would probably be somewhere in sight.

A few hours later.....  Kolt and I go out to the car, me with flashlight in hand and Kolt ready to pounce (he lives for this kind of stuff).  Kolt doesn't see the lizard so I decide to look in the car and right away I see him sitting on the seat on the other side of Brinleigh's car seat.  So I start jumping around and pointing to where he is, while Kolt plans his sneak attack.  Kolt is a better lizard catcher than I am and he snatches it up on the first try.  The lizard bit him and then peed on him, but Kolt let him go in the front yard.

So thanks to my husband, my car is officially lizard free again.

From One End of the US to the Other: Part 1

 Where it all began: The ferry ride

We left Sitka on the Columbia, the same ferry we arrived in Sitka on.  It was a two day-three night trip and had it been any longer, I probably would have started pulling my hair out.  It really wasn't all that bad, especially because we had our good friends, Kate and Cooper, with us.  We only had a few short stops that were during the night or early morning.  For the most part, our entertainment consisted of walking around the ship, hanging out on the back deck, and eating meals in the dining room.  Throw in a few play sessions on a plastic kiddie slide which Brinleigh was obsessed with and watching a few movies in our cabin and that was our exciting boat ride.  Each night, after we put Brinleigh to bed, we would take the baby monitor up to the bar or the cafeteria and play Uno with Kate and Cooper.

Brinleigh absolutely loved exploring and walking all over the ship and she would actually throw herself on the floor and have a full blown meltdown as soon as we would get to our cabin door.  She despised being in our cabin for some reason but that's where the portable DVD player came into play.
 Let me also just say, the little monkey harness that we have for Brinleigh was a lifesaver!  It didn't matter if we were going to eat or walk around, we put it on her every time we left our cabin.  She loves her monkey harness and would get soooo excited when we would tell her to put it on.  Mostly because she knew that meant we were leaving the room.  Some people judge me, some people think it's brilliant, I felt like it was safe.  There are lots of stairs and long hallways and not to mention a lot of other kids running around everywhere.  But with the harness we could let her walk and stretch her legs but still keep her within reach, especially when we would go out on the deck.  So people can judge me all they want, but my kid was safe!

  Ketchikan was our last stop before the final homestretch to Bellingham and it was several hours long.  Kolt and I decided to take full advantage of this and planned to explore another part of Alaska before we were out of the Last Frontier for good.  There was a bus stop right outside the ferry terminal and we only had to wait a few minutes before hopping on one.  We took about a 20 minute roller-coaster type ride to Downtown Ketchikan which Brinleigh seemed to enjoy.  It was crowded and super busy since there were two huge cruise ships in that day.  After a few minutes of walking, I went into freakout mode and had to figure out the bus schedule so that I knew what bus stop we needed to be at and what time the bus was coming to get back to the ferry terminal on time.  According to the schedule, we had maybe one shot to get a bus back to the ferry on time and that wasn't even guaranteed.  I decided to call the bus operator to ask what our best option would be and she did not help the situation at all.  So of course, I immediately lose my shit.  I mean, full on thought I was gonna have to pop a Xanax.  I didn't think we could catch a cab because we didn't have a car seat for Brinleigh so I was fully prepared to run the entire way back to the ferry terminal.  Thankfully, Kolt figured out a bus that we could get on that would hopefully get us back to the ship on time, however, that bus was on the south route and we needed to go north.  Since we didn't want to chance being late, we opted for this bus.  So we got to ride around Ketchikan for almost an hour before being dropped off at the ferry terminal.  We made it onto the ship about 20 minutes before the ferry was scheduled to leave.  Kolt and I were sweating bullets the entire bus ride, but my sweet husband didn't let me know that he was worried at all.  He kept reassuring me that we would make it back on time and Thank God that he did because had I known that he was worried about missing the ferry, I would have had a panic attack.  So there it is, our Ketchikan shit show.

   

I know some people are really curious about how the whole ferry thing works or what it's like and after arriving in Sitka, a lot of people asked questions about it so this time I decided to document everything.  Well, almost everything.  I didn't get any pictures of certain features inside the boat, such as: the dining room, cafeteria, movie room, gift shop, purser's office or viewing areas.  Ooops!

Getting on the Ferry:
We drive over a small bridge to get onto the boat, this entire level is the parking garage.  Once we are on the boat, we are directed as to where to park based on our end location.  Cars will be getting on and off during the duration of our trip so vehicles have to be parked a specific way.  Once we are parked, Kolt checked in at the purser's office and got our room key.  He made several trips to get all of our luggage into the cabin and then we had to set up Gunner.  We cleared out an area in the bed of the truck and set up his kennel.  He then stayed in his kennel the entire trip except when we had port calls or garage calls where we could let the dogs out to feed them and let them run around.

On the Ferry:
 The ferry has cabins that you can reserve at an extra cost, 2-birth and 4-birth.  The 2-birth has one set of bunk beds and the 4-birth has two sets of bunk beds.  Passengers are not required to reserve a cabin and when you walk around the ship you will see people set up area's that they plan to stay in during their trip.  At night a lot of the lights on the boat get turned off and you will see people sleeping on random benches, in corners of rooms on the floor, in the movie room, etc.  There is also a designated area on the back deck for tents.  You can pitch a tent and sleep under the stars and not have to pay for a cabin.  There are also public bathrooms and showers on the ship for all the passengers who do not have a cabin.

Getting off the ferry: