House Photos

Not that I want to steal the thunder of Kyle's promotion news, but I have some pictures of our house thus far:

View of the front, there will be a second story above the garage

Close-up of the garage/front door area

View from the back corner, looking at the back porch

Another view of the front....so exciting!!

Promotion

Well I finally got that promotion I've been working for. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. It's been two years coming, but all that hard work has finally paid off. My new title is 1st Lieutenant. That's right, I went from 2nd to 1st. I have literally scaled the Lieutenant rank structure and made my way to the top. Where does one go from here? Well the occasion was both ceremonious and memorable. Truly an event to be regarded as one of the highlights of my military career. My only regret was that my friends and family were not present to share in this great achievement. I will however recap the days festivities so that we may rejoice together electronically via this blog. Let's see. It was Monday morning ... I woke up ... put on my uniform with the new rank ... and ... went to work.

Foundation and Framing!!!

So, we were informed yesterday that we do, in fact, have a foundation and they are starting work on the framing of our house!! One step closer to being first time homeowners and taking one more (big) step into adulthood.

Our realtor said she would go take some pictures for us, so when I get those, I will post them. I was just a bit excited.

On another note, as Kyle wrote, you really should expect rants about random things from him...he isn't joking. But, those rants are quite amusing, so I am glad others can share in that. ;)

My First Post

Hey everybody! My wife finally gave me permission to post on our blog or is it that I finally realized that we even had a blog. Whichever you choose to believe I would just like to tell you that I think Amy has done a wonderful job with this website and I appreciate her keeping our friends and family informed. And now that I’m on the blog you can expect random rants and raves and continuous tangents on topics that are exceedingly irrelevant. But really, on a more informative note, Amy and I just spent two wonderful weeks together in beautiful Altus, OK. We haven’t seen each other in almost 2 months, which is a very new thing for us. Frankly it sucks. Although, I am realizing how to be more grateful for the time we do get to spend together and also how trivial little things in life can be. For instance, I live in what amounts to be a hotel room with a full size bed, which is hardly big enough for me yet alone the two of us. Generally these things would drive me nuts which would then create tension between us, but now they definitely take the back seat to us just being together and I am grateful for that. Don’t get me wrong though, I really do miss the king size bed. Anyway, I think you guys get what I’m saying. Well that’s it for now. See ya!

Oh and here’s a picture of us at the Melting Pot. Mmmmmm … fondue.

Happy Anniversary!!

Today marks two years since Kyle and I exchanged vows. What a joy these years have been!

Oklahoma....really just an extension of Texas....

That title may sound a little pretentious, but seriously, I can't tell that big of a difference between Oklahoma and my beloved Texas. Don't get me wrong, its no Houston (or any other big city for that matter) but small town rural Texas = what Oklahoma is like (or at least what I have seen).

I flew in Saturday and Kyle picked me up at the airport, with just a few delays, around 12:30 or so (I was supposed to arrive at 11:55, but some genius in Alabama left the plane's battery on all night, so it was delayed getting to Houston, and thus delayed me getting to Oklahoma). Instead of driving back to Altus, Kyle decided it would be nice to spend a night in Oklahoma City to celebrate our anniversary. We checked into a very nice room in a hotel in downtown, ate some lunch and relaxed until dinner. He made reservations at the Melting Pot (which was within walking distance of our hotel), and it was soooo good! All of this was in a district they called "Bricktown" and it was really nice. The buildings were really neat, and they preserved the historic aspect of them as most of them were probably built when Oklahoma was still mostly "indian territory". If one ever decides, "Hey, I want to go to OK City", I would definitely recommend this area; very neat. Kyle really likes to plan things like this, and I definitely appreciate that quality about him. We really did have a great evening!

After breakfast on Sunday morning we made the 2 hour drive to Altus. People, if you miss the "country" and don't want neighbors, move to OK. Seriously, when I think "the middle of nowhere", this is exactly what I think. Not in a bad way, its just ranch after ranch with a small town thrown in here and there just for kicks (and probably so people don't have to drive too terribly long to do grocery shopping). Altus is not a bad town, its TINY, but not bad at all. I would take this over Del Rio any day (no offense to any Del Rio-ites, but you have to agree that the beauty of Del Rio is your friends and close community, NOT the town). Anyway, I digress. The town itself reminds me very much of downtown, and surrounding, Navasota. For most of you, that is a very poor reference point. Its a small Texas town about half way between Richmond and College Station. Anyway, there are a lot of old brick buildings that look very "western" in downtown (which is like 2 blocks) and the rest is just your average small town. That is why I say Oklahoma is really just an extension of Texas.

Charleston/House Update

My mom and I went to Charleston this past week to pick out the finishes for our house and it was a lot of fun. I was actually kind of dreading it because they get money out of you any way they can (and I hate that kind of a thing; when did people stop making good products?!?!). Anyway, the trip started off a little rocky as there was some bad weather in Houston Monday morning and our flight was delayed a couple of hours. But we still got there in time to go out to the lot and tour the model home in the neighborhood. I couldn't just copy and paste a picture of our floorplan, but you can see it

here
We added the bonus room upstairs as well. The way they decorated their model is pretty ugly; don't worry, I do not plan to take notes from their designer. Here are some other pics I took:

Our lot: Its sold!! :)

View from the back corner of our lot

This is our siding color, NOT our house

This is what our house will look like, plus a room above the garage

The next morning we went to the design center and picked out all the finishes from appliances to wall color to faucets. I didn't take my camera to the design center (dumb, I know, but I was nervous and forgot). After that we drove down to one of the public beaches to have lunch, again me still without a camera. Wednesday was pretty much a day we had to ourselves (no errands to run) so we went to downtown Charleston and explored down there. We had lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp (very touristy place, but since one of my brothers' nickname is Bubba, we had to go). Then we explored the open air market, a must for those visiting Charleston: they have some very cool stuff, and walked around the shops on the main drag. After dinner we headed back to the base (where we stayed) and relaxed for our departing trip the next morning. Here are some miscellaneous pics of Charleston:

A very cool church downtown

Me trying to be artistic (thats not the camera strap, its looking out from under a covered area); I tried...

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

Me trying to be artistic again, I thought the lighting on the church was nice.

Well, thats about it for now. I'll be heading up to Oklahoma next week to see Kyle, so I will update then.