Life Update Going Into 2023-What The Heck Is Going On

So I've been struggling to pick which topic to write about and I've jumped between different drafts trying to decide what to write about first. I decided to settle on a general life update because man the last six months have been wild.

At the end of May, we left on our Disney World trip and we were gone two weeks. At the tail end of our trip Oliver actually got pretty sick and he and Bryden missed the last 2 days of our trip to rest in the hotel room. Then we drove back home and Kammy had her end of year dance recital just a few days after we got back. Then the following two weeks we jumped straight into two different week long summer camps back to back.

Now we're into July, and in the midst of all this, both before and after our Disney Trip, we had been trying to pack our house and do minor projects/upgrades to get it ready to go on the market. We had planned to get out of the military come October, sell the house and move from Maryland back to Washington. Spoiler Alert-That's not what ended up happening. The first week of July we of course had 4th of July celebrations, and then a birthday party to attend. The following week we had another summer camp, that weekend my in-laws flew in and was also Addison's birthday. At this point we're going into the third week of July and we spent that entire week busting our butts with my in-laws trying to finish up projects on the house so the following week it could go on the market and have open houses while we were gone on a 6 day road trip. That did not happen, I severely underestimated how much time some of these things would take. Especially with all three kids in the middle of all of it. So at the end of that week we didn't have the house ready but the trip was already all paid for and we didn't want to miss out so we just left on the trip. The trip was great, I put together a tour of all the New England states and we stopped in cool places along the way. It was an amazing time, we went through all 9 of the states above us, 7 of which I hadn't been to yet, 8 were new to Bryden and my in-laws hadn't been to any of them.

Now we are approaching the last weekend of July, my in-laws flew back to Washington and we had Kammy's late birthday party. Since we had celebrated her birthday in Disney World I wanted to give her an opportunity to celebrate with her friends here. The next week, the first of August, we had another summer camp. And there was a Covid outbreak at the tail end of the camp. Kammy thankfully only had mild symptoms and even though the rest of us caught it, we had an even milder experience. Thank goodness. But that did take about two weeks to run its course through the five of us. Then we took another trip to Florida at the end of August to go watch the Artemis launch. Sadly the mission ended up being scrubbed but we had a great time regardless. We had paid for tickets with a company that takes you out on the water to watch the launch and we were already out there when they decided to scrub. So while we didn't see a rocket launch, we had a great morning out on a boat and got to see the rocket from afar and saw a rainbow out on the water because it had briefly rained.

Now we're approaching September and we are working to finish packing, got rid of a bunch of stuff including our dining room table, dishes, etc., work on painting walls-all the things. All while Bryden is doing military things for the process to get out, which involves a lot of paperwork, meetings and appointments. Then he comes home one day mid-September and tells me that his buddy from work was offered a really good contracting job and they are looking for more people. So Bryden wants to look into contracting instead of moving. Because that was always the long term plan- move back to Washington, go to college and then move to Utah and contract. So if we could skip the two years of college and jump straight into contracting and make that contracting money now, might as well! That led to a lot of things happening REALLY fast and I won't bore you with a play by play. But essentially we ended up with really good job offers from two different companies...only to find out there had been some paperwork mishaps with the military and it was too close of a timeframe to get them fixed and have a job in time for when the military contract ended, which at this point was two weeks away. So really our only option to get the paperwork issues with the military fixed would be to sign a year extension with the military. So we did. So now we are in the Air Force until October 2023 and we already have the job lined up to contract here in Maryland when Bryden gets out. We probably won't be moving to Utah until at least 2025, we will see how things play out over the next 2-3 years. But that is our long term goal.

After the dust settled from all that back and forth and very quickly getting an extension drawn up, we were working on unpacking the entire house, getting back into our weekly activities, establishing a schedule, etc. and then my family caught the flu. After recovering from the flu we had a week of normal, then we caught adenovirus. Then we had a brief period of not being sick and then we got a seasonal cold. Then it was the Christmas holidays. So we are now going into 2023 after one heck of a ride for the past 6 months, but we are very excited for our future plans-both the short-term and the long-term ones. One exciting and new thing that I've been keeping under wraps until everything was official, is that I am now a certified travel agent! I can now help you with your travel needs, especially with but not limited to Disney. I am very excited for this because I clearly love to travel and plan travel. I am very excited to see what else 2023 brings us!