Housing: Part 1

Hello Dear Family & Friends!

Yes, we are still alive!  We just got internet two days ago!!!!  

About a week after we got here we were eating breakfast at guest housing on a Thursday morning when Tim received a phone call informing him that they had a house for us!  It was MUCH sooner than we had expected (we had even bought a hot plate the night before so we could cook a few hot meals in the hotel).  Tim did the walk-thru inspection on the house around 1 PM on Thursday and we were supposed to be checked out of the hotel by 11 AM on Friday.  It created a huge frenzy!  

The ARMY provides some of the basic furniture which was already in the house.  We have a kitchen table with six chairs, a couch, two chairs, three single beds, and one double bed.  What they don’t provide are any of the sheets/blankets/pillows/etc…for the beds.  No towels either.  We still were about a week and a half shy from receiving our unaccomapined goods, which had these items in it, so we had to make a trip to the PX Thursday evening to purchase all of the basics.

The other problem we ran into was trying to figure out how we were going to get everything over to the house.  It was on the other side of post.  Normally, this would be where Tim’s Sponsor would come in and help take everything over, but the unit just left two days earlier to go to the field for a month.  The only people that were left were all the new guys who either had no driver’s license or no vehicle…or neither.  While the bus works for getting to and from the Commissary/PX it wouldn’t have been very helpful due to it’s route.

After we made our trip to the PX for linens, we got back to our guest room, ate dinner, then decided we would go ahead and walk over to the house and take a few suitcases with us.  (I REALLY wanted to see it and we figured the boys could use the time out of the guest room.)  We planned on dropping off the suitcases, looking at the house real quick then catching the last bus back to guest housing for the night.  Tim said he would maybe walk one or two more loads over Thursday night, and then get the rest Friday morning.  No sooner had we started walking then it started raining.  I guess we should have checked the weather first.  It was only a light mist but still enough to get everyone pretty wet.  It’s probably about three-quarters of a mile from the guest housing to our house.  The boys were troopers and we kept a good pace but by the time we got to the house the boys were pretty wet.  Tim said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.  Good news, we made it!  Bad news, you’re staying here.”  I didn’t really argue although I knew what that meant for him.  Tim made four more trips by himself to get everything out of guest housing.  Then he made one more trip, about half the distance to the Shoppette to get us food for the morning since we hadn’t planned on being there. 

On Friday I made two more trips to the Commissary/PX to try and get some more basic items to get us started.  Tim also had to make another trip to the Loan Closet to pick up a playpen for Blaine to sleep in and a few basic dishes to use.  I think over our first weekend here we made another three trips to the Commissary/PX as well.  You can only buy as much as you can carry, so it means A LOT of trips.

We got housing a lot quicker than we anticipated but we are very thankful that we even got on post housing.  We’ve been in the house about two months now and we finally got our internet hooked up, so check for updates as I will be posting something semi-regularly to try and answer the many questions I know you have.  :)