Christmas Time!!

Yeah it's Christmas time. Landen is so excited for Christmas!! He was so excited to put the Christmas tree up and to put the candy canes on it. Porter had fun staring at the lights and watching mom and dad walk in circles around the tree. We are sad that we are not going to be coming home for Christmas, but we are excited that we are going to be able to create some of our own traditions. We decided that since we wouldn't be coming home for Christmas we would spoil ourselves and buy new Christmas decorations that matches our furniture in our home. While Ty was in Utah I dragged him to Tai Pan Trading (I love this store. Good news is we have Gordmans that has some of the same things Tai Pan has for about the same cost. YEAH!! It is my favorite store here in Nebraska. Shhh don't tell Ty he thinks my favorite store is Bass Pro Shop. Lets just say I'm trying to be a supportive wife. Well to be honest I just want to make sure he doesn't come home with everything in the store.) and we found the cutest variety of snowmen. (If you know me well you know that I love snowmen.) I was so exited I wanted to buy every single one I found. To be honest I came really close too. They were all just so cute. We haven't found a tree skirt or stockings that match yet, but we were really excited for the way the tree turned out. I thought I would post some pictures of them and show you how they turned out.

Our New House!!

So this is our new place. We absolutely love it. We have great neighbors which makes it that much better. I don't have pictures of our bathroom or the office. They haven't been decorated yet. Someday we will get around to it. The bathroom is just another bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower so you can just imagine it. The office is going to look great as soon as we get it put together. So I'll probably put pictures on when we get that all finished. Well we are having fun here and all is well.

We could go broke!

Those of you that know me and my husband well know that we enjoy the outdoors. Well as we were driving around town we noticed a sign that said Bass Pro Shop and another that said Cabella's. Oh we are in trouble!! Since we have nothing and I mean absolutely nothing to do until Monday we decided to spend the day going to these outdoors stores. Bass Pro Shop was in Iowa and Cabella's was at the other side of Omaha in La Vista. So we just made one big circle to go to both of them. We went to Bass Pro Shop first. Landen was so excited when we walked in. He loves seeing the animal. I think his favorite part was the big fish tank and the glass elevator. We had a lot of fun at both stores. Ty is so excited that both of them are really close. He says he is going to get a part time job there so he can buy lots of new fun toys. He made quite the list of things he would love to have!

Housing Up-date!

We are no longer homeless!!! Yeah!!! I am so excited. I was starting to believe that we were all going to have to get thick flannel shirts, some walking sticks, and cans of beans. But thankful enough we won't have to! We still have to stay in our beautiful hotel room, which by the way I was going to start decorating with our things because I thought we were never going to leave. We get the keys to our house on Monday. My wonderful husband was persistent with the military housing office and in the end we get a nice 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom fully renovated duplex!! With a garage! Yeah!! I am so so excited!! The outside doesn't really have anything to special, but the inside is cute and is going to be so cute with all our stuff! When we get moved in and settled I will post some pictures of it! It was pretty crazy! Yesterday we went with our realtor to look at a house that was about 25 minutes away from where Ty has to work. It was a nice house that needed a lot of TLC. So we talked about it and decided that it was going to be to much of a commute and with the gas prices here it wasn't going to be worth it. So when we got back to our hotel Ty's phone rang and it was the military housing company. She said they had a renovated one and to come look at it ASAP so we pack the kids in the car and went straight there. We looked and loved the house then went straight back and did the lease agreement. The houses here are first come first serve so we wanted to make sure we got everything done so we have a place. Anyways I am just way excited. I can't wait to start decorating it!

Winter Quarters Temple

Last night we were pretty bored and wanted to get out of our nice little hotel room so we decided to drive and see the Winter Quarters Temple in Omaha. It was only a 25 minute drive which will be so much nicer than and 2 1/2 hour drive. The directions we got off of map quest took us on a partial dirt road to get to the Temple. As we were driving on the dirt road I couldn't help but think of the Pioneers that probably crossed that same road. The Temple is so beautiful. You can't tell in the pictures, but the little round windows in the front are actually stained glass windows with different pioneer scenes. They are really beautiful! The Temple is a lot smaller than most of the Temples in Utah. In the back of the Temple there is a Pioneer Cemetery. Across from the Temple is a Pioneer Museum. It was an amazing experience to be where the pioneers were. It makes me really thankful for all the things I have including a small hotel room.

Life in TLF

We've made it to Nebraska and well it has been a little well lets be honest pretty crazy! Before we came we had talked to housing and they told us there was not wait for base housing. So we packed everything up in our Penske truck (this time we got a 26' truck instead of a 16' truck and we didn't have to leave anything behind) and made the 15 hours journey. (FYI if you get a 26' truck from Penske they will only go 70 mph even when the speed limit is 75 mph. On mapquest it was only supposed to be almost 13 hours, but we putted right along and made it in 15.) Oh yes we left on Saturday spent the night in Sidney NE, then drove the rest of the way to Omaha. (We actually are in city called Bellevue.) So we are all excited to be here and get our house on Monday. So Monday we go to housing and they tell us they only have one house and it is not a renovated house. In fact they are planning the destroy it in a year or so. So we walk into this house and kid you not it was 10 times worse then the old houses in Monterey. There was tan linoleum throughout the house probably the original stuff from when the built it. There was some of the pieces replaced with white linoleum. The appliances where also probably from the 1960's. Oh it was bad. I told the lady that this was not acceptable. We have 2 boys. One of which is going to start crawling soon and I really wanted a house with carpet. She told us if we wanted a renovated home that we would have to wait for weeks. We told her that we were going to look at other options. Well since that initial visit on Monday, Ty has gone in every day to see what is available with them. So hopefully something will work out. We have also been talking to a realtor and looking at houses. Houses here are really cheap the only problem is there property taxes are crazy!!! Our realtor has informed us that they are number 6 in the country for the highest property tax. So anyways while all this has gone on our Penske truck is sitting in the parking and we are staying in Temporary lodging. Oh the joys of being a military family!

Happy Halloween!!

Yes I know Halloween was a week ago, but life around here has been a little crazy!! So I just wanted to post some cute pictures of my cute little boys!! Landen was a cowboy on a horse and Porter was a little spider. We went to a ward Trunk-or-Treat and they both won prizes for their costumes!! I was such a proud mom!! We also had a family Halloween party so Ty and I dressed up. Ty was a priest and I was a pregnant nun. (This is not an announcement by any means!! Porter is only 5 months old and well we just thought

the costumes would be really funny!)