Ready or Not...

And this new chapter begins...Danno started TBS yesterday. The day before...we pulled out all his uniforms that we crammed into those vaccum bags...his "Alphas" (the green and kaki uniform pictured here) was first worn when he was first commissioned back in Aug 11, 2006. He hasnt worn them since, and they still fit him just right. Phew!...ironed out all the nasty creases...pinned all his insignias. BTW, insignia pins are always a pain...depending on the uniform, its 1" from this edge..1/8" from another edge...parallel to that edge...centered...etc. The perfectionist I am makes me both the best and worst person for the job!...but I still love it. Plus it's nice to know these big strong uniform men actually need the woman's help from time to time. hehe =)

The next morning we ran around a bit more to buy some last minute gear and uniforms he needed. After clipping ever single stray thread from head to toe, off he went to report to school...looking excellent of course in his Alphas, new shiny shoes, and a high n tight (the Marine Corps signature hair cut). To no surprise he had to stay on base last night. He has lots to do during this week of in-processing and they started very early today 0400 (4am) so it was best he stayed there. They provide the "brown baggers" (those who dont live on base) with living quarters so they can stay on base as their rigorous schedule demands.

Meanwhile, I received good news today that we got accepted for the townhome we just applied for. Woohoo! It was actually the only one we pursued. The challenge was finding an owner who would be willing to rent for 7 months, so many on our potential list got eliminated real quick. This owner increased the rent a bit since its a short lease, but it still fits in our budget. We can begin moving in this Saturday. This is perfect timing so that when our monster Mayflower arrives on June 2, they can come straight to our place, instead of bringing all our stuff to storage and move it again. Thanks for your prayers everyone. We are good-to-go for housing!

Next I get to deal with the movers myself since Danno will be at school. Let's hope they know how to put everything back together and are as nice as the people who moved us out! Hopefully we'll get some internet access again soon so we can post our move in adventures and give you a tour of our place.

Til then, take care everyone. We miss you all!

The Search Continues...

Man it's tough finding a place here in VA, even without Emo dog with us. We dont have the luxury of Irvine, where there are tons of places and its hard to find a "bad" area. Here the townhomes and apartments may look nice in themselves..but the neighborhood makes a difference. A great tip the base housing office gave us was to drive around during the week and at night, to truly see the activity when people are home. So finding listings online only do so much.

We've spent the past days driving down every lil street, so we have a good idea of the neighborhoods we favor. We will continue our search...today we will be meeting with a realtor to check out a neighborhood that had around 10 different rentals, in addition we'll check out an apartment complex that got good ratings. This website reviews apartments and it was an awesome tool for us to rule out many on the list that the base housing office gave us. Highly recommend you use it if you ever need to relocate.

Meanwhile we left my Auntie's in Maryland and are staying in the basement of my Uncle's place in Dumfries, VA (out here everyone has phat basements!). It's just down the street from the base which allows us to get all the military stuff done too and get us familiar with the area. They have been feeding us like crazy so I'm anxious to get back to pilates and Danno's ready to get running again!! He has no choice anyways since Danno starts TBS (The Basic School) tomorrow. So lots to get done today in prep for that.

Keep praying we find a place soon...our monster Mayflower truck is due to arrive by June 2!

Hunting in Virginia (houses)

Day 5 & 6 Th-Friday May 23

So we finally made it to Virginia!!! Boy, we "think" the weather is cold here, but I'm sure all of you from the East coast would think we're weak sauce. So here's our new home...

JK! We only wish! We are currently staying in Loralee's Auntie's house in Maryland. We arrived on Thursday night. Its HUGE! They have a 3 bedroom house with 4200 sq feet. They have a huge basement the size of our house in Irvine! Craziness. They have 2 sweet daughters (so new cousins for us) and they have all been so kind and hospitable. Friday we went house hunting in VA after visiting Base for a bit.

Loralee's other uncle that lives in Dumfries took us around Quantico and helped familiarize us with the area. When we arrived we were greeted with freshly cooked pancit! Filipinos' love language is cooking/feeding people! haha. They also have 2 young kids, a boy and girl, so more cousins for us!

The area near base is definitely a change from what we're used to in Irvine. We will be continuing our search for the perfect home tomorrow and staying there in Dumfries until Sunday. So if you could pray that we find a nice, safe and affordable home/townhome that would be great.

Sidenote: the 405 Freeway has cousins out here in Virginia called the 495 & 95 Freeways, very bad traffic. Up until that point we hadn't encountered any traffic and were blessed with excellent driving conditions. So we're trying to avoid these places which limits our living options.

We will try to update again in a couple days. Till then God Bless!

Wild and Wonderful

Day 5 - Wednesday, May 21

The best BBQ we've had -- Bandana's in St. Louis, MO put Lucille's to shame cuz everything on our plate was sooo good and amazingly cheap...super friendly waiters too. It was quite a nice meal to keep us going as we left Missouri and drove 705 miles to land in Huntington, West Virginia.

We went from dodging tumbleweeds leaving Colorado...to green pastures of Kansas that looked like the WindowsXP desktop image every time I looked out the window...to highways surrounded by monsterous trees everywhere through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky...Seriously these walls of trees are huge! They remind me of the Ents from Lord of the Rings. =)

Originally we were gonna end in Lexington, KY, but after some Waffle House for dinner felt the energy to keep driving another 2 hrs to West Virginia and made it by midnight. We're almost there, only one state away from Virginia! Along the way we've been crossing nice rivers...like the Missouri River, Ohio River, and of course the Em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye River. Not to mention, God has kept the weather beautiful for us this entire trip...We're watching the news always seeing storms rolling into places we've just left from, and moving past areas we are heading into. I thought we'd hit thunderstorms or at least some rain, but it's been blue skies the entire way!

We actually won't be heading straight to Virginia, but just past to Maryland..about a 5 hr drive ahead of us. We will first be staying with my relatives who also happen to be a former military family (now civilian workers) and understand our entire situation very well. We are sure to get wise advice from them. They have kindly offered to their guest room to us while we search for a place to live in VA...and it will be so nice to sit down to some home-cooked meals! I also have another set of relatives in Dumfries, VA right next to the base in Quantico, and Dan also has relatives somewhere in VA. So its nice to know we're not completely alone out here when we arrive! =) We have a busy weekend ahead of us as we start lookin for a home. Pray we find one quick and easy!

We're not in Kansas anymore...

When we have a more time, we'll post the pics from our Day 3 at the Rocky Mountains...until then here's a quick update...

Day 4 Tuesday May 20

From Westminster, Colorado we drove 618 miles straight through Kansas. My favorite drive yet! So much perfect greenery everywhere it was like driving alongside golf courses. Such vast green pastures, huge trees...I was convinced happy cows come from Kansas.

We landed in Independence, Missouri and now we are heading out to Lexington Kentucky. But first, we can't leave without stopping for some BBQ!

Be back soon...

Goin' with the flow

Day 2 - Sunday May 18

Nothing like free breakfast in the morning to start the day. The free coffee, fresh fruit, and individually packaged muffins come in handy for on the road. Not to mention, we do have quite a collection of yummy goodies our friends put together for us for our trip! In fact we have to keep ourselves from eating it all too fast! We already finished 1 pound of beef jerky!

We headed from Albuquerque to Boulder, Colorado. A 465 mile stretch, half the distance from the night before. A few places we stopped...

Las Vegas, NM
Trinidad, CO
Denver, CO
Westminster, CO

As we have our main route in mind, for the most part we've been managing to “go with the flow” in terms of finding lodging last minute and figuring out our site seeing plans. So far so good! It’s nice to have the freedom to be flexible. We ended up staying just past Boulder in the city of Westminster. (We’re coming across so many familiar sounding places, its almost as if we never left CA!) This La Quinta is so homey, cozy and relaxing -- much better than the first one – with a 24hr indoor pool, hi-speed internet that is actually hi-speed, and they even provided freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in the lobby! =)

We arrived sometime around early evening (we were still confused by the time change) which gave us more time to relax and have a filling dinner. The weather was beautiful. Crisp, fresh, clean air. Originally we were going to explore the Rocky Mountains the same day, but decided to stay one more night and to spend the next day to site-see the area before leaving. It was worth the additional day as we will share with you on the next post about our Day 3...there’s lots of pics to sort through!

Left at Albuquerque

We finally have decent internet reception to update you on our trip...so here's to start catching up a bit!

Day 1 - Saturday, May 17

We decided that our first leg of our journey would end at Albuquerque, NM. I always remember in Bugs Bunny cartoons when someone would get utterly lost because of Albuquerque. It was this mystique which drew us to Albuquerque.

Our route from Orange County, CA took us through Arizona and some of the most amazing places in America. We took the 91 East through California to I- 15 North to the I-40 East through Arizona and New Mexico. On the way through Arizona we took a short detour to visit the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. (we have both visited the Grand Canyon before, so we decide to explore something different) It was perfect timing since the sun began to set just as we left the park. We arrived in Albuquerque at 10pm and lodged in a La Quinta Inn to re-energize for the next day.

Here are some pictures thus far...most of course being the view from our car. It's quite refreshing to get away from the busy and congested OC...to be able to admire the vast landscapes and see miles ahead of you without electrical poles, high-rise buildings and freeway overpasses obstructing the views. The Petrified Forest in particular was awesome.



To recap, on the first day we've driven approximately 850 miles and here's a short list of places we've visited on our first day:

Ludlow, CA
Williams, AZ
Gallup, NM
Albuquerque, NM

Mayflower Power!

Our first experience with professional movers!

One of the perks of being in the military is having the pleasure of relocating to far off distant lands. And this would only be made possible by the professional movers hired by the Government. In our case we decided to do a Partial Do It Yourself move. This meant that the Government would pack up most of our gear and household goods and ship it to our destination, then we would only be responsible for moving our car and the goods we didn't want them to pack.

We spent the few days before sorting and throwing out tons of junk and we ended up organizing and packing the important stuff the night before until 0300 (3:00AM) and had only finished a little over 1/2 the house. The items we didn't pack were small knick knacks, the kitchen and our garage. Its amazing the amount you accumulate over time. Things that you can't seem to throw away hoping to use it later!

Boy were we surprised by the ferocity and efficiency of the packers that came to the house. Jeremy and his older brother Bryan two gentlemen from Mayflower were our professional packers. They were two very burly viking looking fellows. They arrived at our house on Wednesday morning at 0815 (8:15AM) and were done by 1300 (1:00PM). It was amazing.

At the same time the packers were boxing up the whole house this monster truck strategically backed up to our house. It had some mean lookin spike rims! The driver + 4 movers took care of the large items and furniture and loaded everything. We just walked around, monitored all the commotion , making sure they don't pack what we're taking ourselves or leaving behind...otherwise they are so fast, you come back and they finished packing up stuff you didnt want packed! (we only had to dig through a box once to retrieve some stuff hehe.)

Normally they are supposed to take one whole day to pack a house our size and another full day to load. But in our case they only took 5 hours total to complete both tasks! Pictures really can't capture the sheer speed and volume of stuff they packed in such a short amount of time.


Bye bye belongings...after a few more stops, the movers are expected to arrive to VA with our stuff approx first week of June. We sure are happy packing out went so well and we hope get everything back in one piece! The great thing is that when the movers unload at our destination, they also have to unpack the boxes and re-assemble everything back the way it was! Veerry nice! So lets hope that goes just as smooth as the move out!

We end with our good pal Emo..that's how we felt after the move out was finally over! (BTW, we can't take him with us due to breed (pit bull) restrictions in most VA housing, so we'll definitely miss him lots!)

Farewell Party Recap

Hi everyone!

First off, thank you to all those who were able to attend our farewell party! Though it was brief, we really enjoyed the time we got to spend with you. Some of you we hadn't seen since our wedding...others we've grown up with and we definitely don't see enough...and then theres the people we see so often, but can't seem to get enough of (like our small group!!). It's always a joy to be surrounded by the people who continue to be such an important part of our lives.

Special thanks to...the many helping hands who prepared the delicious food (btw we managed to eat all 250 lumpias! WOW!)...those who blistered their hands cutting watermelons...those who ran around blowing up balloons...helped with setting up and cleaning up...those who traveled considerable distances...those who arranged the delicious surprise Birthday cake...and of course extra thanks to Tams who provided his home and set up the awesome Guestbook program (so clever!). We of course couldn't resist sharing the resulting snapshots...

(click image to enlarge)