Random Things We've Been Up To

This summer we've been staying pretty busy. Mostly with work but we were able to fit some fun in at times! I took a couple of short trips back to Utah which was much needed! It's so nice to be able to go back home and see family and friends! Randy unfortunately couldn't get work off to come with me! But for one of the trips I was able to bring a really good girlfriend of mine down with me! I had to introduce her to the wonderful home decor shopping we have available to us down in Utah, especially compared to the very limited and expensive options we have up here in MT. She very much enjoyed the trip (and the Shopping) but being from a small town in MT it was a little overwhelming! She hopes to return soon and enjoyed meeting the fam!

Towards the end of the summer Randy was sent out of town for training for six weeks! Suprisingly being away from him this time around seemed even harder than last time! I was able to drive out and see him about four weeks in so that made it a lot easier! We thankfully won't have to be separated anymore for that long of time, anytime soon, as far as we know! While Randy was gone my Mom and Kelsey drove up and was able to help me with some projects I had been wanting to do around the house!

We gave our front door an update!

Re-did our Main floor Bathroom!

Before

After

I stained the cabinets, painted the mirror white and the room light grey, still haven't updated all the towels but so far I like it much better!

We also finished up our grass in the backyard, for the most part! It was a mess when we first bought our house, only about half the yard had grass and the rest was mud and weeds! This gave us lots of work to do over the summer. We seeded the majority of it on our own and then for the last few strips, bought sod. I am very excited for next summer to actually have grass and be able to enjoy our huge yard! The dogs sure do love it, especially when its muddy, they also love bringing the mud in through their doggy door and tracing it all across the house, that isn't really my favorite part!

Last Spring

This Fall! (The dead stuff is the new sod)

Now that Randy is home they are switching his hours up at work starting the beginning of October and so he has the possibility of working nights or late late hours so onto the exciting news, I have found a new job!! I have been looking probably for the past 3 months and there definitely aren't very many job opportunities in this town! So we are very blessed that I have found a new job right in time. Like I posted earlier I was employed with the Red Cross which made me travel about 90% of the time and being out of town, over night, about 2 weeks out of the month. With Randy's new hours we wouldn't be able to give our dogs the attention they need and would probably have had to be kenneled the nights we were gone, NOT an option! So I finally got a new job with Wells Fargo as a teller. Less money and hours, for now, but much better in the long run! I will be able to be home at night and they give more bonuses and raises than the Red Cross and will hopefully be more flexible with hours if ever needed in the future. So we're pretty excited about it!

Other news, Our little guy Gizmo unfortunately lost his manhood last week. Bella was in heat and he was definitely having a hard time with that before he was neutered! Bella would sit on the back of the couch and Giz would just sit on the floor staring up at her shaking and whining cause he just couldn't get it done! Haha, it was quite the site! So, the bad part is we won't be having puppies! But again probably better in the long run!

Now that we have a house I really wanted to get into decorating for the holidays and making our house feel really homie since we don't have any of our families around to enjoy their houses haha. So on my last trip to Utah I made sure I went to Tai Pan and Hobby Lobby to get a Fall centerpiece put together and I love it!

Since we got our nice camera I wanted to take some pics of Randy's uniform/Dog-tags I guess to remember this time and I love seeing him in this! For some reason when I first saw him after boot camp I totally forgot that he would be issued dog tags! So it was kinda weird seeing him wear these all the time!

I am so proud of all that he goes/has gone through for us to have the things we have and to be able to set up a perfect career path for himself! He puts up with so much at work and is constantly improving in all his training! He has been recognized by his superiors and has been given more duties than others in his group because he does so well. Hopefully this will mean early promotions, but that's still down the road a while! He loves the different things he has been able to do at work, a few things are repelling and shooting, and for the most part seems to love his job!

House Pics!

As I said in my last post we are finally home owners which feels amazing! We wanted to get everything set up and have our bedroom furniture delivered before posting pics. We still have some updating and other things to do but you get the idea! We love our place and hope to have some visitors during our time here! I didn't take pics of all the bedrooms cause two of the four are empty, one is a guest bedroom and the other is just filled with stuff we don't know what to do with!

Main Floor Bath

Basement

Master Suite

Closet

Master Bath

I almost forgot!

After many great reviews from family and friends we decided to give in and splurge. I am glad we did! I love our new MAC and like they say we will probably never go back!

Wow, I'm awful at blogging! Almost a whole year!! But a lot has changed!

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I haven't really had the time, and when I did find the time I wasn't in the mood since there is so much to catch up on! I figured that since I'm sitting in a hotel room with absolutely NOTHING to do I better get this over with. I will attempt to keep it more updated but, who knows, I swear I say that every post.

In August, as many of you already know, Randy left for Boot Camp with the Air Force for a long 8 weeks of HELL! He did awesome though and graduated from BMT in October. We were only able to write letters to each other during those 8 weeks which made me feel like I was married to a missionary, it sucked! I luckily was super busy with school and work though so it suprisingly went by pretty fast looking back on it! After BMT he had to attend tech school for his job which is security forces, military police, which was about 4 months long. We found out around Thanksgiving that our home for the next 3 1/2 years was going to be Great Falls, Montana. Pretty much the only really really good thing about Malmstrom AFB in MT is that he will never get deployed!! It was such a relief to hear that, I don't know how I would handle him being deployed! He was able to come home for Christmas and New Years though and that was amazing! It was so nice actually having him home again and especially being able to fall asleep next to each other again! After Christmas break he had about 6 weeks of training left and that's when things really started to change.

In January my mom and I drove up to Great Falls, it's only about 8 hours from Salt Lake, COME VISIT, to look for houses! Suprisingly after looking at about 10 houses in one day we made an offer on the one and only house I liked! It's a remodeled 4 bed/2.5 bath, 2600 sq.ft., georgous master suite above the 2 car garage, and big backyard for our puppies! It was only on the market 2 days and had 2 offers on it, thankfully the seller chose our offer! I was so excited and had forgot that all the stress was yet to come! I have decided that I hated the process of buying a house, possibly because Randy and I were in different states, neither the state we were buying in, and I was pretty much doing it all alone. It sucked but as of February 13th we officially became home owners!! We still can't believe how blessed we were throughout this entire life-changing process of joining the Air Force, buying a house and the entire move to Montana.

I was able to find a job within a week with the American Red Cross as a phlebotomist. I started on February 1st so I had to move to Montana a little early and live in a hotel for about 3 weeks before Randy was done with tech school. It was definitely sureal at first having him home, I would say the weirdest part was just allowing myself to plan for our future again and knowing that he would be there the next weekend and the next. I love it, it's the best feeling in the world to be together again. I don't know how we did it but we made it and it has definitely paid off. He has gone through so much crap for us to be where we are today and for us to have the things that we have. We were definitely blessed with strength and safety during the times we were apart.

Randy is still doing training for his job at his new base and is working normal hours for now. It's really nice because we both have weekends off and can always look forward to spending them together. He will eventually go to working four 12 hour shifts a week, hopefully day shifts. I travel a ton for my job and spend about 6 nights a month in a hotel which doesn't seem like much but when we aren't in a hotel we usually don't get home until 9pm. So I work long days and am away a lot but luckily usually get three day weekends! Other than that we are just getting settled into our new house, spending Saturdays at Home Depot, doing yard work, and painting! We love it!

Pictures soon to come once we have it all put together! And we do have spare rooms so please fill them and visit us! I hear the summers are beautiful here, lots to do especially with the Missouri River running straight through the town!