Blessed not stressed

Ok, sure. I feel like I've gained the American 15 (you know, the "oh crap we're moving to another country in a month and we're super busy moving out of the house and we have a lot to do and we're getting lazy with our meal planning and I want all the 'American' food I can get before I leave, anyway" equivalent to the Freshman 15) + I haven't been running enough to relieve stress, but let's face it, that is just me letting the stress win + sleep was not good for a couple weeks = I finally got sick a couple of days ago. Lots of tea and NyQuil and a lil' Bourbon (from Brandon and Julie) and I'm well on my way to feeling better already.  

But other than that, things could be going much worse. We sold our house & closed last week. Even made like $5 on it. We're living with good friends & having a great time. It's like having college roommates but we make fancier meals and drink much better alcohol :) It's FALL! And I swear there is more fall color than usual around here :) Brandon and Julie stole my car. Ok, no. They bought it. Thank you Brandon and Julie for buying my car! I hope you enjoy the ride. We also got to see them for a night when they picked it up. We went to eat at Red Rock Canyon, a local favorite of ours (and theirs when they lived here). We have a few more things to knock out but we would not have made it to this point so smoothly without the support of great neighbors and friends, near and far.  

(And thank you, Dave, for dealing with my stress when it does rear its ugly head.  You are the one who gets to see it up close and personal).

We're in this giant transitional phase and I'm really trying to choose gratitude over stress, anxiety or worry. Soak up the time with the people and the "things" we love & enjoy here, because as much as I long to get settled again, I know we will miss family, friends and 'Merica!

Estimated date of departure: 25 Nov!
Thanksgiving plans: Turkey (or Shephard's pie?) and beer in an English pub

(Click to enlarge tiny photos:)

Moving Picnic

The living room is empty. When I brought the dogs back from daycare, there was another level of confusion. They stared at the empty room. Then they laid on the edge of it most of the day. They were pretty tired, but after I did some more work around the house, I took them with me on my run just to make sure. Really trying to keep them tired and keep them in familiar environments to minimize their stress levels. I myself am obviously not confused, and haven't really been hit by the sadness. In denial maybe? But the longer I was in the house walking from room to room, preparing for the next phase of packers/movers (long term storage), it became more weird. Dave left this afternoon to go fly and expected to get home at about 9. So I decided to turn the living room into something less empty.  A picnic!

A blanket, red Solo cups, Big Bold Red Yellowtail (not only do we like that one, but we let the packers pack all of our wine bottle openers yesterday...obviously we are still moving rookies. the Big Bold Red is a screw top:)), and popcorn.  Ok I planned (microwave) popcorn, but Dave brought a light Arby's meal home.  Even better. Family picnic by candlelight complete. I think we might move the spare mattress upstairs tonight :)

How do you cope with big moves? How do you turn the weirdness into fun? ♥

Marriage Spices

A little over 4 years ago, Dave and I bought our first house.  Today, our stuff is being packed up to move to England. My emotions are running wild. 

And my olfactory receptors have been stimulated. Wait, what? While going through our kitchen, the packers mentioned that they actually can ship spices. Really? While I hate throwing away condiments and spices, I had already felt at ease knowing we were going to give them to some friends this time. And there is just something about spices being in storage for 5-6 weeks that makes me ok with getting fresh ones when we arrive. 

So I was doing a little inventory and found these in a box of Penzeys Spices my aunt gave me for my wedding shower.  We used up a lot of the spices but these were tucked away at the bottom and I forgot about them. I think these did the marriage good. I LOVE that guy a lot. Great 4 years.  

So the spices are staying here. But these little spice marriage charms might go with us. Hey, in the grand scheme of things we are still a newly married people, and I think we could both use the Rosemary for our memory improvement, anyway. 

Things my husband says: "I harass you so much not only because you are my wife, but because you're my best friend." (today).  Oh, thanks. See, marriage going strong :) 

Saturday- Ignoring the need for move prep. One more bonfire:

Day 1- Move Prep:

Day 2- Actual Boxes; some shown below. 68 total. We may have to build a fort out of the boxes and live there because I don't think we'll be living in a place big enough for our 68 boxes of stuff + furniture:

Dave, myself & the dogs did not get packed into the boxes, so we're good.  We're still a family unit. A few people reminded me of that today ♥  So if we can avoid getting packed into the storage boxes on Thursday, we're clear sailing. 

Mattress Moving Moments

We have 3 Queen mattresses. The oldest is Dave's $500 clearance mattress from college. It ranks 2nd in comfort. It's not bad at all. The next is a "luxurious" pillowtop Spring Air mattress we bought from Rooms to Go when I lived in Georgia. Spring Air went bankrupt or something. That makes sense because it completely sucked after about 1.5 years and it killed my back (somewhere between the time I bought it and then, they went out of business. Warranty no good). It definitely ranks 3rd in comfort.  Let me put it this way....I was not looking forward to coming home to my bed after my deployment because my little twin deployment bed was more comfortable. When I got home, we went big. We went for the Tempurpedic. It is still glorious to this day.

Well Hotel Clark is also going out of business when we move to England. We won't have that much space. I am happy to say that both downstairs queens were utilized at the same time on two different occassions while we lived here, so it was worth it to have both of them :) And for a few nights, I guess the Spring Air wasn't too bad, so our guests said.

Needless to say, Spring Air is getting the boot. Today I scheduled to have it picked up as a bulk item in tomorrow's trash pick-up. But I thought why not put it out on the curb this evening and tomorrow morning and see if anyone takes it?

So began the adventure of Dave & I trying to get the massive pillowtop out of the bedroom, up the stairs and out the door. So. Awkward. I don't know how movers do it. I am guessing they are much, much stronger than me, and thus aren't laughing their asses off as they repeatedly drop heavy pieces of furniture. This crappy mattress doesn't even have handles.  Ellie was going nuts running up and down the stairs. She gets excited when she doesn't know what is going on. Teddy is watching patiently on the landing.  Probably nervous. I'm cracking up. And Dave is shaking his head. I wish someone was taping the whole thing.

Friends....Pivot. PIVOT. 

Once we got it out the propped-open storm door, we rolled it like a tire to the curb. As we approached the curb,  Ellie came strolling out behind us. Both pups generally know to not run out the door even if it's open, but I don't think she could handle missing out on all the fun. We were causing quite the ruckus. 

We threw it down on the sidewalk, she hopped up and made herself at home. I don't think she understood why we were throwing away this perfectly good bed. Ellie, it was in the basement the whole time. We should have chilled out there for a while, but the Tigers are on :)

I love her! Ha! 

Why is this so great to me? Because in the midst of many moving moments that are not fun, this one was fun.  And funny.  I needed a good laugh ♥

Tornado of Change

So I knew that I get cranky when I don't run, but now I've also figured out I get stressed when I don't write. Self-diagnosing.

Although I can barely process all the emotions I am experiencing right now. There is a lot going on at once as we get closer to moving (to England. No big deal. Tiny life change. RIGHT?). I keep feeling like I'm looking at myself from the outside and analyzing how life's events (that we asked for) are just wreaking havoc on my feelings.  Really trying to just make myself laugh it off.  Why not. At least half of my emotion is excitement.  Maybe 60%.

One example...missing the dogs. This went to an extreme. We always miss them when we travel without them, but I could not WAIT to pick them up from the kennel after our last trip to Michigan. I thought to myself that it's probably just because there is so much going on and they are comforting. When I told Dave I missed them SO much this time, he said "It's probably just because of all the big changes going on right now." Yup. He gets me. We both love our puppies. I just want to cuddle with them all the time right now! The poor things don't know they are about to be moved halfway around the world and I'm using them as one of my primary means of emotional support.  Well, they have the luxury of not knowing.  Or do they? I think they will start noticing soon.

As I cuddled on the couch with Dave and the puppies the other night, watching the Tigers and drinking some wine, I wondered how the heck we were going to get to England in any kind of smooth manner. So many details to figure out still with approximately 4 weeks left.  Of course, most of those are dog details.  It's amazing that we sold our house already, but closing is a little earlier than expected so we think we'll be living in our friend's basement for a little bit. Extra friend time!? Positive. Dave's orders aren't final. We don't have plane tickets or even travel dates, let alone final plans for the dogs.  Newest development for them is that we might just fly them to Paris to save thousands of dollars (thanks England. we're off to a good start, you and I).

And then it just occured to me...all you need is love.  The 4 of us will get over there somehow and that is all that matters.  I'm going to bawl my eyes out when we walk out of this house for the last time, but I'll cherish the memories and we'll be off on another adventure together.  

And on that note- no, leaving the dogs here is not an option.  I know it's somewhat of an innocent question when people ask, but I almost cringe.

They are a part of the family.  They are a constant among all the change. When we come back from visiting friends and family far away, they are here.  When Dave is gone, they are here.  When I am gone, they are here for Dave.  Plus, they have it super good living with us. And they are so much fun.  How can we just leave them here? I would miss them terribly in England and I don't need sadness getting in the way of my fun :) Plus, they would miss out on roaming the English countryside.  That seems unfair to them.

Ok, maybe one reason to leave them here would be that England is the one country in the world that makes it extremely expensive to get them in.....frustrating, yes.  Showstopper, no.  They can make it difficult but they can't stop me.

Packaged deal

And no, you can't take one but not the other. 

Also, while on leave, there were some very important developments in the category of future Clark babies. The first thing is that we picked favorite names for both genders. 16 hour car ride, fun little activity for people in their late twenties. When we told Dave's grandparents about the names, other concerns in this department arose. Specifically, his Grandpa was concerned about us having a child in England, because this could possibly jeapordize his or her opportunity of running for president in the United States.  Naturally, this is a concern. Our kid will be awesome. Dave's brother also asked this question. Well, I've done some more research since and determined that our child would still be considered a natural-born citizen so all would be good. He or she will still be one fine presidential candidate. Everybody- sigh of relief, I know. Another huge concern we're getting: make babies soon so that they have little British accents. Come on people! Think about the timing. We'd really have to have a baby RIGHT NOW for that to work :)  But I agree, that would be kind of neat.

It was really comforting to talk to family & friends about England, our plans for where we want to live, work/school opportunities for me, possible children. Even though we will be so far away, it made me feel closer.  A lot of friends and family checking in on us and I'm so grateful.  We have people signing up to visit and we are really excited about that, too.

I kind of wish we could fast forward 4 weeks, when the tornado of change will just drop us in England. I know that will be another phase of change getting settled, but that seems more fun. I guess life isn't that easy, though. We must face all of the little details & various emotions that go with big moves.  Just like everyone else.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sing it, Kelly. Except that I'm not alone. But I like her passion.

Baby, Baby...

My phone, FB and residential mail has been increasingly filled with baby announcements and shower invites as of late, simultaneously making me really happy and antagonizing my feelings of wanting to have my own babies. I'm so happy for all my pregnant friends! It's an exciting time. I want to join the club. Your pregnancies are feeding my excitement. Specifically, I selfishly want my Kansas sister to have her baby before we move so I can meet her.

For now I will sit here and drink wine with my family, consisting of my husband and 2 fur children. No babies. NO BABIES. It's fine, haha. Until we get to England. But then there will be several pubs I would like to check out........dilemnas.

I remember when having kids was a distant thing in the far future. "When I'm 27 or 28, I'll have kids. Or something." And that was "forever" away. Well now I'm 28. Closer to 29. I know I'm still "young" (whatever). I'm extending my deadline.

I miss being 22, not even thinking about babies and having what seemed like forever to start. ENJOY YOUR EARLY/MID-20s, KIDS! :-p

But I also love being 28. I'm so much better than I was back then. And I don't view babies as ending your life. I'm ready. But I think me getting pregnant right now could potentially make our move a hot mess.

Maybe soon, you can find me in the pub. With my English baby. They do that there, apparently??  

I know Dave is more excited for the 3-4 year old phase so maybe we can trade off 3 years at a time. I'll take the newborn phase. Planning is important.  

Anyways, CONGRATULATIONS to all my pregnant friends. You know who you are :)

Ok, but seriously.  Where did my 20's go? It's like my alarm is going off and I'm just hitting snooze.

Friends, Canvas & Finger paint

This weekend we went to dinner with Mike & Aimee and celebrated Homecoming with the rest of Wichita's high schoolers at Red Rock Canyon. We toasted to the kids with some dirty vodka martinis. This was unplanned, but fun. My last homecoming was 11 years ago. What??? I will say, we looked less like prostitutes at our dances back in the day....and Dave was unimpressed by the guys (well they looked more like 10 year old boys) not in suits. Maybe he will feel differently when we are asked to pay for our kid's suits and dresses one day :) Then we introduced Mike and Aimee to the game Cards Against Humanity. Fortunately they did not get offended, so we can all still be good friends. Not that I thought that would be a problem. Needless to say, we had a great night with plenty of laughter and outbursts. As if that game isn't good enough, there is something even more special about playing with first-timers :)      

And yesterday...the first day of fall. Autumn. My favorite. I'll give it to Kansas....the weather really attempted to acknowledge the occasion :) It just so happened that I was getting together witth my friend Rachel for our Second Annual craft day. It was so much fun we may even throw in a second craft this season! :)

As I browsed Google and Pinterest for ideas, I have to say I was more drawn to the crafts intended for small children than to the more complicated, adult projects. Maybe my inner 5-year old just needed to get out.  I sent Rachel a few ideas but in the end we decided on this paint project. We made our trip to Michael's to get the whole list of 2 supplies we needed (canvas and finger paint :) We threw in glitter to really spice things up. We grabbed some Chipotle on the way home to fuel our bodies and creative minds (critical for a real artist.....obviously).

It was so. much. fun. catching up and using the right sides of our brains. At first, I thought it was impossible to go wrong with this craft. How can you mess up an outline of your arm/hand (which most of us learned how to do when we were 5) and a bunch of dots? Much to our surprise, the arrangement of the dots do not necessarily look like a tree. It's not a given. Hilarious. You had to be there. But with Rachel's guidance, we were able to turn random dots into trees. I am going to MISS THIS GIRL.

 

There are few people I can talk to about absolutely anything. Well, and not feel weird. We can talk about pregnancy, babies (no I'm not pregnant and no I don't have a baby, but she's about to teach me everything :), our visions of parenthood, sex scandal Dateline stories, school, work, life goals, family, it doesn't matter......so glad we met 3 years ago.  She's like my Kansas sister. We might need to craft over Skype next fall when I'm in England.  :(

Stay Soft

I saw this on the FB yesterday.  When I was in the Air Force, they used to say "10% of the people will take up 90% of your time."  It was true.  I think the same goes for the world.  We can focus so much of our attention on tragedy & evil and forget about all that is good and all who are good.

On a personal level, I have definitely allowed myself to become hard to people I come across.  I've put a guard up because of bad or broken relationships.  But I was just thinking the other day that I'm so grateful for people in my life who knowingly or unknowingly break down that guard by just being great friends.  Great people, really.  They seem like they are willing to risk pain and put themselves out there.  They are vulnerability role models (I just Brenee Brown-ed that).  And then I'm reminded to be softer.

Don't let the world make you hard.  Don't let people make you hard.

Are you hard or soft?

Colorado Flood Experience Part 1

The last time I checked in we were about to list the house. A lot has happened since last Wednesday, but I still haven't gotten used to seeing this:

I read somewhere when I was trying to figure out how to get the house ready that when you put your house on the market, you can no longer think of it as yours. I know the context of that was in terms of decor, taking down family photos (which we didn't really do) and sort of un-personalizing everything. But once the sign went in the ground and the listing surfaced on the internet, a feeling of sadness came over us as we realized we were actively trying to sell our house to someone else. Of course it isn't ours anymore.

We put the sign in the ground and drove away immediately after. We were heading to Colorado for about 5 days for a Running Coach Certification course I've been wanting to do for a long time. And this is where I would get some perspective on "house" and "home."

Fast forward 8-9 hours and we arrived in Arvada, CO where we were staying with some of my family. We had a nice dinner with them but then the focus quickly sort of turned to the weather that seemed to be turning into a problem. Rain, rain, rain. It's kind of blurry now so I don't remember how serious it got that evening, but by the next morning it was bad. My class wasn't scheduled to start until 1 p.m. in Boulder and all morning we watched the news and the flooding that was developing. I hadn't heard anything from the instructors at about 1145 and was about to get ready when I got a call from Lorraine Moller, one of the instructors. She said they had been evacuated from the Newton building and to standby. She called back shortly after and gave me an alternate location to go at 3.  It was a Newton employee's house, still in Boulder.

That afternoon was Dave's first glimpse of his chauferring job that weekend. Getting me there was fairly painless. I got a warm welcome when I walked in the door from several of my classmates who were already there. We all quickly became comfortable around each other and were having a lot of fun in this cozy little setting, curled up with blankets and watching the lecture on a flat screen tv. I kept looking out the window, but honestly wasn't thinking too much about the flooding. By the time Dave came to pick me up at 7, he had a hell of a time getting back. He was frustrated. Then, we had an even better time trying to get out of Boulder and back to Arvada. 2 hours of running into road closure after road closure and turning around to try something new, going further and further out of our way. If we had been returning any later I am fairly certain we would have gotten stuck somewhere. I think my aunt was a little worried when I called and told her we were having problems getting out. Water was rushing everywhere. At one point, we were trying to go down a side street to go further east and all these cars were turning around in front of us. When we got up there, there were no cops or police cars so we decided to creep along and see why we couldn't go that way. All of the sudden, someone was blasting a huge spotlight at us from a house....blinding. I guess that was a resident trying to tell us "bad idea." There were so many road closures that we started seeing ambulances, in addition to cops, blocking off roads.  

Between my aunt and uncle's navigation, my handy little smartphone (that thankfully still worked even though every single person in the immediate area was probably using theirs), and sometimes driving on the opposite side of the road to avoid flooded roads, we got back. That felt good.

For the next couple of days, Dave drove me to class the long way due to all of the road closures. There was only one open road into Boulder. In the evening we would watch the news and see all the destruction in Longmont, Lyons, Boulder and other areas of the state. Sad and heartbreaking. Families evacuated out of their homes, over 1,000 people unaccounted for and fatalities (up to 7 now). Fortunately, for them and us, my aunt and uncle live in an area that was not severly affected along with my cousin who goes to school in Golden.

I also felt very fortunate that despite the weather, we were able to complete our course. Despite everything going on, it was an absolutely fantastic experience. The instructors invited us to return and retake the course during one of the later dates if we would like, but we had a great group of people in our class and I really enjoyed getting to know them a little bit. I'll post more about that later. Here are a few photos of the area just across the street from where we were still able to do our drills for class. The water was up to the road. In the grand scheme of it all, this was minor.

It really felt odd to have such a great experience in the middle of chaos. We also had a wonderful time with my aunt, uncle and cousins.

I felt guilty that I got so much out of that 4 days when so many people lost so much. And when we drove up to the house, I felt so grateful for our home...even with a sale sign in front of it.

Here are ways to help & support the victims of the flooding.

In the midst of crazy, it's wonderful

The last couple weeks: a whirlwind. We have been working so hard to get the house ready to list and I'm exhausted. Dave and I have different styles, though. Dave's routine looks something like this: go to work all day, come home and eat, calmly work on projects. I look more like a freak spinning in circles bouncing from room to room unable to complete my current task before deciding that something else is more important, and so on. More spinning. I have to say, once again, his patience, encouragement and reassurance that I'm working really hard and getting stuff done has been critical. Because in my mind I'm not efficient at this. Because I'm not. He is so sweet. Or fears a total meltdown. Regardless, I must give credit where credit is due.

Newsflash: selling a house is 100% less fun than buying a house.

The first phase was just going through boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff and purging.  You know, the impossible for me.  Then I slowly entered the cleaning phase and really thinking about staging.  I love actually cleaning because I can quickly see the results of the work :) But the less stuff we had in the house and the more I looked around, the more dirt I saw. Then I came up with a growing list of things to clean. 

Somewhere in the middle of all this we took a trip to Vegas. Long story short, we decided to go because we had flight reservations to use from a trip we previously had to cancel and, AND we got a "deal" on a hotel through the Holiday Inn for their Desert Club Resort because Dave has been a rewards member for so long.  So we decided it would be an anniversary trip...one last U.S. fling before moving to England. This deal included a 3 hour presentation about how we should invest in Vacation Ownership (like a timeshare, but SO MUCH BETTER, our shady presenter tried to convince us).  So, turned out we had to go on this tour/presentation or we owed $641 (the original deal was $199 for 3 nights and $100 cash back for attending the tour).   We found out about this ridiculous $641 when we missed our original appointment (we thought it was the next day).  They rescheduled us later in the afternoon.  So we showed up to the appointment a little annoyed.  $641? Really? That's a bit overboard. They called us after our first appointment to see if we attended, but they couldn't bother calling us before to remind us of the time? I smelled scam.

Caveat: I'm going through some of this to serve as a warning to others of what you might face if you decide something like this is a good idea.    

It began with smooth-talking I could see right through but I kept an open mind.  It ended with Mr. Business Man basically telling us we are not taking care of our marriage if we don't get this timeshare, and that it will end in divorce and, ultimately, him being pissed off and telling us that he doesn't get paid if we don't buy (oh no he didn't!).  So. Professional.  This is just a small summary of the obnoxious things said to us. Of course in the beginning he told us there would be no pressure at the end..........yeah, after saying no about 20 times while he continuously asked us how we would like to make the down payment for this $21, 000 investment, we took our $100 cash from one of the girls in the administrative office and ran.  It was hardly enough compensation for the torture.  But it did buy us a nice dinner before Le Reve.   

I really have to do a better job of doing official reviews of experiences and businesses, both good and bad.  This was just so unbelievable and, like I said, hopefully me sharing it is enough to serve as a warning to others who may get pitched the same or similar deal in the future.  Even if it saves one poor soul. In the end Dave tells me he sort of knew what we were getting ourselves into by taking the deal....ha! Oh man, I wish he would have enlightened me before we accepted.  The location of this hotel wasn't even that great and there are great deals right on the strip. 

Ok, that was a long story kind of long.  I planned on doing a Vegas Feedback Sandwich post about how our trip started and ended great with seeing some wonderful friends and awesome Vegas shows, with this rancid piece of meat in the middle.  So that was mostly the negative.  Here are the awesome buns:

Vegas Jump

Terminator

LOVE this lady

Beatles "LOVE" Cirque show

:)

Le Reve 

Le Reve

Who doesn't come home from Vegas a little exhausted? But we got back to cleaning and staging, with a few days left before our realtor, Todd, came over to take the pictures for the listing. Fast forward through a busy weekend seeing friends and watching some important football games, and there I was Monday morning at 0800, a sweaty freak who had been running around the house for a couple hours scrambling before Todd pulled up. I threw a hat on my head, the dogs in the car and asked Todd if I was any kind of normal for someone about to list their house. Of course he laughed and said I was "normal." What a nice guy. But really, we have been so happy with him during the buying and selling processes. If you ever find yourself looking to buy a house in Wichita, you'd be silly to not ask me for his info.  

Even after he took the pictures, I continued to deep clean (I started feeling like I was participating in a competition to be the best house on the market. I mean, that is pretty much what this is...).  But time is up.  We will put the sale sign up this morning at 0800. The house isn't really ours anymore. Time to stop the constant cleaning madness, at least at this pace. As we've worked so hard to get the house in top shape and closer to tomorrow, we've gotten sad about selling our first home. We've created so many memories here as a family. (It's amazing, I think our marriage has even gotten stronger in the last few years, even without holiday inn vacation ownership! Sorry, just a splash of my sarcasm. For now, I still love their regular hotels and they've been good to us during all of our travels around the states).

While we still have some great friends here who we will miss, many of the friends we made over the last 4.5 years have already moved away. Today, we said goodbye to some of the last Air Force friends who got here about the same time as us as they move on to their next duty station. I feel like we're next in the queue....it really is time to go. It is weird to be leaving, but a big part of this lifestyle is moving around and meeting great people everywhere. I am grateful to have good friends here and in so many places...it provides comfort in the process of constant change. And when we're living across the ocean in England, we will become friends with others who are also missing their best friends back home. The ones who can't just drive 4 hours from L.A. to Vegas to visit you for a day anymore. They call this the Air Force Family and I'm cherishing it more and more over time. 

This chapter of our lives is starting to close and it feels surreal.