We have ORDERS!

We finally received Brandon's orders last Thursday afternoon. This was after Brandon "graduated" from tech school. He is officially done. He blew the test away, and aced it with a 95. I am so proud of him. We were both overjoyed and relieved. This part of the Air Force is finally over. From Basic through Tech School is a long time, 5 1/2 months long. We have been through 8 1/2 weeks of COMPLETE separation, 4 joyous days of spending together, then another 4 weeks of separation, to me moving to Biloxi, to where every weeknight Brandon had a curfew of 9:30pm. So in a nutshell, we are soooo soo happy to be almost finally under one roof together semi-permanently.

Back to the orders... The actual sheet of paper does not say much, but they do hold the power for us to get things done. Today we got so much accomplished. The condo is completely packed up and we will be leaving tomorrow to College Station, praying the weather holds decent for us. Our flight is on March 5th from San Antonio to Baltimore. From there, we will stay the night, and leave the following day in the afternoon. We will arrive on the island around midnight, March 6th. I hope Mason is ready for this! :) We were able to speak with the housing department at Lajes Field. Thankfully, there is no wait, our new house is all ready for our arrival!!

Unbelievable to think in less than 2 weeks, we will be in a completely different part of the world. We are looking forward to our new adventure!!

Vote Today!!!!!

Mason is in his first ever "I am cute" contest!! Please vote for him!

Contest is from Feb. 19th-25th!! Click on the link to the left to vote!

Birthday Fun!!

This past weekend was filled with tons of birthday/valentines day activities. We started on Saturday afternoon with our 1st ever Mardi Gras parade. Now, I highly doubt this was anyway close to the ones that they have in New Orleans, but we still ended up with tons of beads by the end. It was a lot of fun. It was in downtown Gulfport, and it was our first community event to go to in these past two months. We felt like locals.

Our before picture, with no beads.

Our 1/2 way through picture.

We never came out with our finale picture, for some reason, but we definitely got tons and tons of beads. It was a beautiful afternoon.

That evening, Brandon took me to a wonderful dinner at a restaurant called Jia. It was Asian cuisine. It is actually a restaurant inside of one of the casinos. If you have ever been to Biloxi/Gulfport, you know there is not a lot going on. The restaurants inside the casinos are probably as nice as they get here. Brandon had Shrimp and Chicken Pad Thai and I had some

delicious sushi. We never go out to eat, so when ever we do it is always a treat!

On Sunday, our big Valentine's day activity, was to make homemade ravioli. It really turned out to be something fun for us to do together. It took 3 long hours. By hour 1, we were soo hungry!! We made everything from the dough, to the filling, to the tomato sauce, and even for dessert we made chocolate raviolis. Everything turned out delicious. We were not able to master the art of dough making, so they were a little thick, but tasty.

Monday, my actual birthday, we took it easy. Coming from an eventful weekend, we took the day off and relaxed. We did go see Valentine's Day which was actually quite funny. It was a great weekend we had together!

In military news, Brandon takes his test tomorrow. If all goes well, he will out process all day on Monday, and I will pack up our condo. Then, Tuesday morning we will hit the road to College Station for the next 11 days. March 6th is our projected date that we may be leaving. Everything is still up in the air, and we are STILL waiting on orders, but this is the tentative plan we are following right now.

Waiting.

Days are flying by and we are still in the same position we were about 2 weeks ago. For those who don't know, we are moving to the Azores Islands! Ever heard of them? They are property of Portugal. The Azores are a group of islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 900 miles from Portugal, 2300 miles from the US. We will be moving to the island of Terceira.

Middle of the ocean! We are very excited to be blessed with such an opportunity. Although everything comes with its disadvantages, like being so far from family and friends who we will miss very much.

So that is the BIG news we received Jan. 4th, and we continue to wait and try to be patient. We have finally both fulfilled all of our medical clearances to travel overseas. This even includes Mason's paperwork. :) Brandon will submit that tomorrow, and that is hopefully the last piece of information they need to issue Brandon orders. Once we have the orders, we will be allowed to do so much more. We can actually schedule our trip, and know when we are moving from Point A to Point B. Good news we found out yesterday, Brandon was approved for his recruiters assistance program. Meaning, at some point of time before our journey to the islands we will come back to Texas for about 12 days!

In the midst of things, Brandon only has 5 more days of actual technical school! He just started a very challenging, stressful course, which is the last portion of the class. (He passed the other sections at the top of his class.) This course is typically a 20 week course condensed down to 5 days, with a high percentage fail rate on the exam. However, Brandon is feeling confident and absorbing all the material. The exam is next Thursday, Feb. 18th. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

As for me, I think I have spoken with every doctor, vet and office building that they have on base, to try to get everything situated. It has been semi-helpful, but apparently you cannot do anything without written orders, so we've learned. My birthday is on Monday, and we are looking forward to that. The Air Force took into consideration that it was Brandon's wife's birthday and gave him the day off / it's Presidents day. Either way, he has the day off, and we are looking forward to a 3 day weekend to be able to spend together.

Hope everyone enjoys the new blog!!