Moving into our new Home

When we got to Georgia, we stayed in the Value Place Inn, a cheap extended stay hotel. We were there for two weeks while we looked for housing. It was definitely not the best, but, like I said, it was cheap.
Initially, we were hoping to buy a house here in Georgia, but there were very few decent/safe/close-to-post homes listed in the range our budget would allow. The ones that were listed were not worth the risk of buying, since we don't know exactly how long we'll be living here. It could be anywhere from 12 months to 4 years. Mike's schooling will be 12 months (and he hasn't gotten into a class yet, so that time has not started yet) and we are counting on the army keeping him here for his follow-on assignment. All things military are subject to immediate change.
So, we drove around and around and around the Augusta area looking for a decent house to rent. We nearly settled on one when we noticed the name of the street we were passing was the street one of the houses we were interested in purchasing was on. That house was under contract when we got here, so we never got to look at it, and we wanted to drive by to see what we missed. Driving through the subdivision, we found a For Rent by owner sign and decided to call and check it out. The landlord was at the house doing renovations and invited us in at that moment. She had recently purchased the home as a foreclosure and was renovating it to lease. She had painted everything in the house (including the garage). She replaced the bathroom floors with nice ceramic tile, refinished the kitchen cabinets, bought a brand new side by side refrigerator, etc. etc. Anyways, it was by far the nicest place we had seen and we thought we had nearly seen every place in the area for rent in our price range. We agreed to rent it from her right away and arranged to have dinner with her and her husband and sign the agreement that night. They treated us to IHOP and we got to know them a little. We are very blessed to have a land lord that is local. Nearly every other place we looked at was managed my a realtor. We had to wait another week for them to finish the work on the house. This meant a second week in the hotel. We toughed it out. We moved in November 17.
In Hawai'i, a house with a master bedroom that will accomodate a king size bed (comfortably) is a rare find. We had a queen size bed while we lived there. Mike's feet practically hang off a queen size bed, and I like having my own space, so I talked him into us buying a king size bedroom suite when we got here. We found one at Rooms-to-Go and a mattress at Sam's, and this was the only furniture in our house for the next few weeks except for a small table and chairs set that we borrowed from a couple at church who weren't using it. I'll post pics of our house eventually. We're still not settled in.

Leaving the Island

We have successfully moved from Mililani, HI to Grovetown, GA. It has been more than a month since my last blog posting, so I'll try to break up the last month into a few posts so there's not so much to read all at once.
On October 22, our household goods were packed up and we spent the next 4 days/nights in the home of our friend, Candy, who took good care of us on our last weekend there. She even let us have friends over for a farewell and game night Friday night. The Baxters and the Cauthens came over and she fed us home-made enchiladas and guacamole and brownies with ice cream. She even cooked breakfast for us the mornings she didn't go to work, and she left coffee brewed for us when she did go to work. It was like staying in a high end B&B. Tuesday, the 27th, Mike took his truck to the port and Brenda Booker picked him up. After going back to her house, we borrowed her car and took Hayden to the doctor at Tripler, because he caught a yucky cough and I wanted to get him checked out before we left the island and had no medical access except for the ER for a while. They gave him an inhaler and a steroid (Prednolisone) prescription. They told me to give him 4cc's of the steroid once a day and use the inhaler 4 puffs 4 times a day. I thought this sounded like way too much medicine for an 11 month old, so I did not follow doctor's orders. I gave him the inhaler about once a day, when he sounded the most congested, but he never did get the steroid. He was fine a few days after we got to the mainland. Terry Booker took us to the airport around 7:30 for our 9pm flight. Hope and Trey met us at the airport to send us off. They brought us a goody bag with snacks for the flight. We checked 6 bags, Paco, and the car seat. We took Hayden's stroller on the plane with us. It was great to have it in between flight connections. We were able to put his big diaper bag in the basket of it when we were waiting for our flight, and Hayden got to push it around at the airport. He likes to stand behind it and hold on to the basket and take off. . The army pays for a seat for infants, too, so Hayden had his own seat on the plane to sleep in. Conveniently, most flights from Honolulu to the west coast are at night, so Hayden slept most of the way. We had the three middle seats on a 767, so Hayden slept between us. We didn't sleep much, partially because we had to keep catching Hayden from rolling off onto the floor.

Re-enlistment

On October 15, Mike re-enlisted in the army for 4 more years. As previously published, his defective hearing has caused him to reclass into a different MOS (military occupational specialty). He is reclassing from an MP (military police) to a SATCOM operator maintainer (something to do with satellite communications). Therefore, we are moving from Hawai'i to Georgia where Mike will do 8 months of school (AIT (advanced individual training))plus 18 additional weeks for the specialty he's in. We are hoping he will assigned to the same post in Georgia after the schooling, which would keep us there for around 4 years.

Clapping and Waving

I forgot to say in my last post that for a few weeks now, Hayden has been waving Hi and Bye. Today I finally got him to clap for the first time.

We have only 11 days left on this island! Time is passing too quickly. I have a lot I need to be doing right now, but if I don't write down the latest updates with Hayden now, I'm going to forget them. I haven't been writing things down in his baby book, so I'm depending on being able to come back to this blog later for dates and stuff.

A few weeks ago, Hayden started pulling up on everything. It has been harder and harder to get him down for his naps, because he keeps pulling himself up in his crib as soon as I put him down and I have to keep putting him back down til he gives in and goes to sleep. It gives us practice in being consistent.

Just this past week, he has finally mastered a true crawl! Now comes the difficult part. I have had to move Paco's food into another room because he likes to crawl to it and put dog food in his mouth. I keep finding him going after Paco's Kong. I think he needs his own. He really enjoys chewing on it. Paco keeps bringing it back to Hayden's play area after he retrieves it. Fortunately, the kitchen came with childproof cabinet locks when we moved in. If only I could get someone to mop my floor every night, I wouldn't have anything to worry about, except the entertainment center. Our new one will have doors on the front of it after we move.

Hayden really wants to walk, but he still has a ways to go. I'm counting on around 13 months. His birthday is November 28. He likes to walk holding on to us. Sometimes if he has the energy and motivation, he will walk down the hall holding on with only one hand. He hasn't learned to bend his knees well yet. He likes to hold on to my shorts while I walk and walk with me.

Tuesday, we had our unaccompanied baggage packed up for Georgia. This is the stuff that we can do without now, but would like to have soon in Georgia. It should arrive a couple weeks before our household goods. Hopefully we'll have a home by the time it arrives in Georgia, but probably, not. It is nice to have some things out of the house though.

Yesterday was my last day to babysit William. It is the perfect time for me to stop now that Hayden has mastered crawling. I'm excited about finding the time to exercise again and get out of the house. If only I had a car today. Mine should be arriving in Leander on Saturday. I am missing it. Mike is on Schofield doing his clearing paperwork. Tomorrow is our last free Saturday here. Next Saturday, the ladies at church are having a ladies day with guest speakers that I've been planning on attending. Tomorrow we need to patch and paint the nail holes in our house and prepare it for move out inspection. I wish we could spend our last weekend enjoying the island. Oh, well.