we're really doing it.

(insert emotionally distressed emoji here)

goodbye first house: bedroom

the last room in the house is our bedroom:

 we have a tiny bed and we constantly fought over how much space the other person was taking up. during the olympics we took our mattress downstairs into the front room for two weeks and pushed it up against the couch. while we were down there, i slept up against the couch and that meant jon got most of the bed! we decided that maybe it'd be better if we pushed our bed into the corner of the room so that i could sleep up against the wall and we'd both be more comfortable. (i don't like sleeping close to the edge of the bed when its in the middle of the room, scary!!) it looks funny having our bed like this, especially since that means the rest of the furniture is lined up on the opposing wall, but it's actually helped a lot! the only thing i don't like is reaching over jon to turn on and off the lamp, and not having a place to plug in my phone.

(mouse!)

i think i posted about this before. jon used to go to work before i woke up and sometimes i was so sleepy i couldn't even say i love you! so i used push pins to spell ILY right by the door so that he knew i loved him every time he left the room, even if i didn't say it. the light switch cover is the one that was in my granny's bedroom forever.

i must say that our room never looks like this. maybe on the first day that we have guests. the floor is usually covered in clothes and shoes! but that's what makes it homey, right?!
i am writing this while i should be studying for my midterm tomorrow. it's been awhile since i've just sat down and written my thoughts like i used to.
it is our last night here in this house. i don't think it has hit me yet, it seems surreal. i did get a dose of reality when we were packing today. in the winter marines wear green cammies. they change to their desert (tan) cammies in the spring and wear them until fall. they just switched from green to tan when the time changed. that means jon won't be wearing his green cammies anymore...who knows if he will ever wear them again. we took out all the drawers from his dresser and he and his dad took the dresser out to the u-haul. i saw his drawer sitting in the middle of the floor filled with his green cammies that he is sending to storage for an indefinite amount of time. it made my heart hurt...a lot. it's enough to have to say goodbye to our first little house and move in with someone else. it's really sad to leave san diego, the place where we've spent our entire marriage, our friends, my school. but to think about leaving the military...that is more heart wrenching than the others. we can come back to san diego, we can come see our friends, i'll be back next year to graduate from my school. but come May 3rd, jon will no longer be wearing his uniform everyday. he won't be able to say "I'm a Marine." i will no longer be a Marine Wife. I mean, i will...but it just won't be the same. it is quite difficult to explain. it's just been amazing to have my spouse do something we are both so proud of. i'm proud that my husband went to afghanistan. i'm proud that he enlisted on his own free will. i'm proud that he has known since he was a child that he wanted to do this and proud that he chose the marine corps because it is the toughest branch(wink). i know we need to move on from this. jon has so much to give the world, so much more than the marine corps will allow him to do. he's starting school in june and i know he will do awesome!  he's had an internship this spring and met a lot of prevalent people who were impressed by him. i know he's going to do great in whatever he decides to do. i am sad to leave california, but i'm ready to be in a state where i can (hopefully) find a job that doesn't require me to mop before i go home, is that too much to ask?
i could ramble on and on, but i really must get to studying. we are packing up the trailer tomorrow and checking out of our house. tomorrow night we are going to sleep at the isaac's (that's who we will be living with when we come back to san diego on april 7th) and then saturday morning the three of us are road-tripping from san diego to san antonio! jon and my FIL tried to warn me about how tiny the middle seat was in the u-haul, but i told them to stop. i wanted to be surprised. i don't deserve to dread the roadtrip three days before we leave. i'll deal it with saturday morning.
wish us (me) luck!

this is our life right now.

we are such a mess! whoever thought it'd be a good idea to have jon and a.j. pack up their house by themselves was mistaken. 

i am a daring chick posting these photos. see what we are living with? it is the worst! nothing has a place. 

we cleared out the linen closet (everything but our D.I. pile) and bandit immediately jumped up there to lounge. 

my FIL gets here on wednesday to help us pack up the U-Haul and we head to texas on saturday. so sad to leave our house!

i think now you can see why we've been stress eating: 

amidst the chaos, we've recently taken a liking to screaming "HUMAN SCWEW!" and using our pointer finger to painfully "screw" into the other persons ribs. part of the fun is seeing who can scream human screw loudest and most like a child. do you think my in-laws will like living with people who scream for entertainment?

 on friday we finally got to go on a trail ride together! jon hasn't ridden any of the horses since i've been riding, so i was really excited to have him up there with me. he rode a 5 year old mare named Magic. she was so sweet. i rode old reliable, gerry, who only spooked once when he heard a sprinkler nearby. he is such a calm chap, i love riding him. 

i'm so obsessed with this series of photos:

saturday was a rough day. it was my gran's birthday, her first since she's been gone. all day i was wishing i could call her and hear her silly little laugh and hear her ask "how you doin, dear?"

my dad called me in the early afternoon to tell me that my kitty back home died. i knew as soon as i picked up and heard him say "hi..." that it was about the cat. it was an unfortunate mishap involving a garage door. i think it sounds as bad as it was. it broke my heart.

(this was the first time my granny and chrissy had seen each other after a few months. they were both so happy!)

saturday afternoon we took bandit up to our old roommate, hanke's, house to stay until we officially leave for texas in may. i kept telling him that he was going to live with hanke and he obviously acted like he didn't understand, but i swear on friday and saturday morning-he knew! he was being soo cuddly and sweet all morning, it was not usual. it was really sad dropping him off and was just a reminder of what this move really means-lots of big and scary changes.

 look at those eyes. terrified.
it's not that alarming though, he's had a shocked look on his face since we got him:

after dropping bandit off, we went to the mall for some retail therapy. when we left the mall, jon handed me the bag and said "happy birthday." my birthday is next month, so i thought this was his easy way of getting me a gift. when i said "that's mean." he replied, "remember, your gran would get you gifts on other peoples birthday's so you wouldn't feel left out? i got you a gift on her birthday."

 we got balloons in my grandma's favorite colors and sent a card up up up into the sky. it was surprisingly relieving to watch them go and disappear into the heavens.

determined to have a better day sunday, we woke up at 5am (normal for jon, horrible for me!!) to head downtown for the hot chocolate 5k! 

we ran it with sara, it was really fun! the course was actually very challenging with tons of huge hills and quite a bit of downhills as well (my thighs are so sore from the downhills). my 5k personal record is 29:39 and i was really hoping to beat that, but i didn't. the hills were what were so hard and my nike+ sensor died so i didn't have it make sure i stayed on track to beat my time. however, if i hadn't been trying to keep up with jon the whole time, i wouldn't have finished as fast as i did! 

(jon is beautiful isn't he? he's also really sweet and put chocolate on my mouth right before the photo...)

they gave us a mug with hot chocolate and fondue with all these things to dip in it like a banana, pretzels and marshmallows. in theory, getting rewarded after a race with chocolate is an awesome idea. in reality, it was quite unpleasant. it didn't feel like we had ran a race at all, the chocolate totally cancelled out the good post-race feeling you usually have! but would i do it again? definitely. 

goodbye first house: upstairs/guest room/bathroom

we have a little bitty upstairs with two bedrooms, a full bathroom, a walk in closet and a linen closet. marines are issued a lot of bulky gear and have tons of different accessories to go with all their uniforms (seriously). base housing understands that, so we have tons of storage! its awesome. 

the first door on the right is the guest bedroom, the second door on the right is our bedroom. across from our bedroom is the bathroom. the second door on the left is the walk in storage closet and the first door on the left is the linen closet.

our guest bedroom is frightful. we had a roommate for a few months and after he left i didn't do anything to liven the room up. the only thing we ever use it for is homework and the occasional sewing project and whenever we have guests. this room has actually seen a lot of visitors which we have loved sooo much. we are so lucky to have friends and family willing to make the drive or flight out here to see us and stay in our humble home. 

our bathroom has stayed the same since we moved in. i brought the two pictures and iron detail from my dads house when we got married, they hung in my bathroom for years while i lived there. the picture of audrey is one that i bought from a street seller in nyc when i lived there. the poem is by Sam Levenson but credit is often given to audrey. i got the poem when i was in young women's from one of my leaders.

i printed that quote from a taylor swift song and colored the little heart. i have so loved sharing this experience in san diego with jon, all by ourselves. 

my friend katie and i went to a 'retreat' type thing when our guys were deployed where they waxed our eyebrows, gave us massages and had other fun activities which were all free. we made bath salts while we were there and i still have mine. i'll bet its not very good in the bath, but it looks cute. we got the 'dream' plaque for our wedding and the toothpaste jar is from the titanic (i'm obsessed with the titanic)! not really, but the real versions were in the rooms of the titanic. we went to an exhibit for my birthday last year and jon got this for me. i keep my dainty bracelets in there. 

goodbye first house: kitchen

we got our little yellow butter dish from our dear friend from elementary/jr high/high school jenni hens (from anthro). she lives in san diego and goes to SDSU with me! we love her so much. she got that for us for our wedding almost three years ago! we just recently bought the two ceramic jars from the PX because they were ridiculously inexpensive. i like how they look with the painting, but who knows where they will all be in our new place.

the mirror is an heirloom i got from my granny's house after she died. she got it years ago at ZCMI!

there isn't much going on in our kitchen. i always had big plans for it, but they were never carried out. i will miss how big and spacious it is, hopefully our next house will have a kitchen like this. maybe with different cabinets and lighting though...

disneylandddd 3 of 3!

we had planned for day 3 to be laid back since we figured we would have done everything we wanted to on day one and two, but we still felt rushed like we had to see more! it was fine with me because we saw and did a lot of fun things.

we saw the bug's life 4d movie. it really terrified kim and i. at one point i was huddled in jon's chest and kim reached over to grab me and it scared me so bad i screamed! when we got out, i felt like i had just gone through a haunted house. wtf!

tower of terror was another crowd favorite, but for some reason every time we waited in line for it, we found ourselves stuffing our faces with all the food we packed. particularly flamin' hot cheetos! not a good thing to have on your belly when you're being jostled around like that. 

we had appetizers at carnation cafe again on sunday. those fried pickles are so addicting! jon and i shared a serving of pickles and another bowl of baked potato soup. it was just as good the second time around. 

at mike's request, we went to tom sawyer's island. kim and i put up a pretty good fight, but he wouldn't drop it so we went. we walked right onto the ferry and mike couldn't stop talking about it. "at least we didn't have to wait in line!" that man...

we spent most of the day going between disneyland and california adventures. jon and i got a dipped chocolate-chocolate ice cream cone last time we were here (in september) and we loved it and wanted another one this trip. it delivered.

kim's memories of disneyland included churros dipped in chocolate sauce and on the last day she finally found where to buy it!

the tiki room is a family favorite for jon and i. it was kim's first time!

jon and kim don't like riding on wet rides, but mike and i love them. we finally talked jon and kim into going on splash mountain with us! they sat in the back and mike and i sat in the very front. almost as soon as the ride got going, mike switched seats so that i was alone in the front by myself! i got mad at him and he assured me he wouldn't do it again. i knew something was suspicious because jon was in the backseat unable to stop laughing. as we started to ascend the final hill, i turned around and mike had left me in the front all alone again! i was pissed and tried sitting down in the same seat as him thinking that it was a spot for two (i found out later it was most certainly a one person seat) and all i could hear was mike yelling "you can't ride!!!" while pushing on my back trying to stop me from sitting on his lap. at the last minute, i sat in my own seat and we got this picture on the way down! there was no line when we finished the ride, so we asked one of the workers if we could ride it again. his response was "accctually nooo....we can see you guys and watched you switching seats..." way funny! we kept up the nightly tradition and finished the night off with one last round of space mountain.

candid!

not candid, but still cute!
it was such a fun vacation! we did so many enjoyable things and ate so much good food. i would go back in a heartbeat if i could. disneyland is always a blast, but its so much better when you're with three of your best friends.
kim's recap of day three here!

we had one more night with the birds, so we spent it in old town san diego eating cinnamon tortillas and drinking root beer. it's always so fun hanging out with mike and laughing at old stories. he's a really good friend and he couldn't have married a better girl! we all get along so well and surprisingly never got sick of each other, haha! it was pretty easy talking them into coming out here for disneyland, i'm hoping that talking them into moving to san antonio with us will be just as easy...