Well, we made it... We moved all of our stuff to Florida at the beginning of June. I haven’t written because of how busy we have been getting settled in here. It is really nice here. We’re pretty happy with our setup here. The house is really nice. We have the East Bay River on the back of our property here.. and we have a short 3 mile drive to the Gulf for the beach. There are still a lot of tourists here, but it is really nice.
I forgot how nice it can be to just spend time together with my family. I didn’t realize it, but by being so busy over the past few years, I have allowed myself to become pretty callused to people and my family. I think that’s a natural response to being away for a long time.. my natural response to prevent being too emotional about things.. is to stay detached. Anyways, it has been really nice having the time to spend with Traci and the kids. I feel like I’m just getting to know the kids all over again. It has been really nice getting to spend so much time with Traci in conversation too. It’s hard to have very much deep and meaningful conversation over email or phone calls. so... LIFE IS GOOD.
We have been working to get settled into our house still. We have most of our boxes unpacked. We’re still working to find homes for everything though. This house is the same square footage as our other home, but this house has 3 bedrooms instead of 5... and is laid out a lot different, being a single story home. We like it though. I’ve continued to do a lot of work around the house. I’ve been giving my chainsaw a workout cutting back a lot of overgrown brush that borders our property. Our neighbor has a tractor with a front end loader. I’ve enjoyed using that a lot too. I think i’ll have to plan on having one of them some day... when I’m retired... maybe.. We’ll see.
My job is really different than anything I’ve done before. I’m learning a lot. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning about the Air Force and the job. The Air Force is really very different than the Army. I’m not saying one is better than the other or anything.. just that things are far different than I had thought they were when I started this job. I’m sure I’ll go through culture shock all over again when I go back to an Army unit. For now, I’ll enjoy the laid back environment and enjoy the time with my family. I also started going to school again. I’m taking classes towards my Master’s in International relations. Classes start in September. I’m looking forward to that starting.
I’m still driving my Ford. These discounts and Cash for Clunkers deals have been pretty tempting.. but i really like the truck.. and it’s paid for... so I’m happy with it. It still just seems crazy to me to think how expensive new cars are after doing so much work to my truck... and questioning if a new truck is really worth 10 or 15 times the value of my truck. So, I'm still driving a 46 year old truck. I put a good coat of wax on it this week.. and wow.. it looks good.. (in my opinion of course.) I still get different people at various locations wanting to buy my truck though... There aren’t too many older trucks like that around here.
Below are some pictures of the house... still sorting through stuff.. but you’ll be able to check it out.
Take care,
Steve
