Our first snow of the year today! Quite a bit later down here in Oklahoma than it was in Colorado.
Very exciting!

Christmas Pictures

Hey all!  The tree is up, the mantle is decorated, and so is the porch.  We're all set for christmas, and only a little ridiculously early.  We'll be leaving for home on the 20th, so we got started early in anticipation of cleaning it up before we leave so that people can come see and hopefully rent our beautiful house!  here are the highlights:

First, a throwback to thanksgiving.  Our menu consisted of a Butterball Turkey Roast with light and dark meat, Stove-Top Stuffing (because if I'm not stuffing a bird, I'm darn sure not making it myself), Green-Bean Casserole, Mashed Potatoes, apple sauce and gravy.  The roast took 3 hours, the rest took about 1/2 hour, so it was about the easiest thanksgiving dinner ever.  Here's the table all set and some action shots:

Moving on, we also got our tree and decorated the house.  We drove all the way down to Oklahoma City for a 'choose-and-cut' tree farm.  It was adorable, but apparently all that grows down here are Pine trees, no traditional fir trees, so we end up buying a pre-cut fir that was brought in from North Carolina.  The tree itself is gorgeous, but it was still amusing.  We brought it back, gave the cats a little time to get used to it (they spent most of that time learning to protect it, like last year) and the next day took to decorating.  It's a little smaller than last year, so we have a bunch of unused ornaments.  Here, again, are the highlights (mostly):

     

Enjoy, there'll be one more coming once we get pictures of our obnoxio-dorable porch!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Normally I would refrain from putting this on here.. because I'm afraid of stalkers.. but it's so pretty!

(Yes, and thank you to Amy and John for doing most of it before we got there!)


http://www.militarybyowner.com/listings/tourplus.asp?F_BASE_ID=199&F_STATE=OK&LISTING_ID=93104

December

The next 2 months will be crazy, but in a good way. Let's ignore the next like 20 years for now ;)
Depart Enid: Dec 20th
In MD until Christmas Day
DE from Christmas Day until early on Dec 30
Eastern Shore Jan 2-3
Dayton 4-5 (look for housing)
Enid 6-12
Back to Dayton!

Our moving day is Monday, January 12th.
Put up our Christmas tree yesterday. It's super beautiful. Thank you to Kate and Eric for driving with us to pick it out and get a Chipotle fix!
I'll get some pictures up soon.

Gobble gobble..

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope you're all having a wonderful holiday! It has been a great day for Mike and I. My grandmother has said 'of course!' to our request to have our reception at her home on the Eastern Shore, and we have the church picked out and it's available. We're planning a nice long time back on the coast with family, and then a move not too long after that!
I'm very excited to finally be able to plan a wedding! Our 2+ weeks in MD/DE will be full of fun things.
Have a wonderful evening and holiday weekend!

RNLTD

We found out today that we have a report no later than date to Wright-Patt AFB in Dayton, OH of February 16th. We are authorized, however, to move up to 59 days before then.

We'll be driving to MD/DE from Dec 20th until at least Jan 3rd, and then to Dayton most likely to look at housing options, and back to Enid. Then we plan to move sometime in January, depending on how we do finding a renter for our house here in Enid.

As soon as Mike can get in touch with his new squadron in Ohio, he's going to ask about leave for the wedding, and if he gets an 'okay' we're sending out Save-the-Date stuff and going full-throttle into planning!

Very exciting for us! When we have made decisions about moving dates and wedding dates, etc, we'll post!

The AF Did It Again

Apparently calling to check on the paperwork wasn't enough. They had managed to ignore all the notes on Mike's packet and saw that he had an aeronautical engineering degree, and had already filtered him into the engineering track. Luckily, we were getting impatient again and he emailed his original contact this morning, who realized this problem and finally got ahold of the information she needed. So, we are still headed to Ohio, but it was almost a close call.
We aren't, however, leaving before Christmas. It looks more like January or early February, but no official date yet still.
Rather than stay in Enid, we are going to have a holiday road-trip adventure and drive back to the east coast from Oklahoma this year... wait for it.. with the cats, so we don't have to board them. They're going to stay with Daddy.
Vacation looks something like December 22nd to Jan 5th, but we might add a few days to the end.
More to come when an official schedule has been determined.

Our House

Pretty pretty house.

Still Waiting..

We are still waiting for word on a PCS. Called down to AFPC a few days ago to confirm they have Mike's paperwork. We didn't want a repeat of what happened when he graduated... they forgot to check a box somewhere and Mike ended up in the system as AWOL for 6 months, and lost his original pilot training date. They do in fact have his paperwork this time, they're just still working on it.
As soon as we get a date, we're going to have the realtor come and get pictures and put the house up online for rent. We'll also let everyone know, and try to get our Ohio housing figured out.
I'm getting antsy, want to get my application started for grad school, and work on more wedding planning, and a schedule for Christmas would be nice :-)
I suppose it's time to work on a Thanksgiving menu as well!

Current Status Update

Here is our latest info:

We are currently at Vance AFB in Enid, Oklahoma. However, we are anticipating a move very soon! Mike, after unfortunately going through several medical semi-crises this summer, is leaving pilot training. He has been offered a spot at AFIT (Air Force Institute of Technology) at Wright-Patterson AFB, in Dayton, Ohio. This is an awesome opportunity for him career-wise, which we realized after asking about a thousand questions. He'll be getting a Masters degree in Operations Research (wiki it, I can't quite explain it yet). School starts in August 2009.

Since the pilot training schedule is no longer in effect in our lives, we will be able to have our wedding this upcoming summer!! We are hoping hoping for June 27th to be our day, but are waiting to send out save-the-date's until we get an official 'okay' from his new squadron in Ohio. It will be (again, we hope) on the Maryland Eastern Shore. More details to follow, when we have them!

In addition to Mike getting his Masters, I (Katelyn.. I imagine I'll be doing most of the writing) am hoping to go for my masters as well. This is still much more in the planning stages than is Mike's stuff, so no official info yet, but I will be applying this spring to the University of Cincinnati's Masters in Social Work program, to start this upcoming fall.

Soooo.. we are waiting to hear from the Air Force about an official PCS date for our move to Ohio. We're assuming (as if this means anything to the AF) that we will be moving in the next few weeks, so we can be in Ohio before Christmas. This will allow us to drive back to Maryland/Delaware for a while for the holidays!