Home Sweet Home (...)

Well everybody, we made it. We rolled into Columbus, MS, on Memorial Day and stayed overnight in the base hotel. The town looks A LOT like Moscow, ID. It's really weird. The main road is a few miles longer, but the mall is the same size. Downtown looks a lot like it, too, but a little bit bigger. I can't wait to go down and wander around the stores when they're open (they were all closed on Memorial Day). I spotted a yarn store and a potential scrapbook store, so I'm all set! There isn't a pet store in town, unfortunately, but it looks like a few of the gas stations around here sell crickets for bait, so Lenny should be good to go. Hopefully I can find a pet store in nearby Starkville that sells quality dog food for our future puppy.

We moved into our new home on Tuesday morning. Since we are new residents, we got to choose a move-in present, and we chose a new washer and dryer! I'm SO excited. I haven't had my own laundry machines in over two years. And the machines are in their own room off the kitchen! The best part? We get to take them with us to our next station! Hopefully they come soon before we run out of clean socks and underwear.

The house is GIGANTIC. And by gigantic, I mean 1100 square feet. So actually quite small, but much bigger than our 400 square apartment we just came from. Matt will have his own office and I will have my own scrapbook room/Lenny's room/guest room. (Although if it's my mom or mother-in-law, they will probably have to sleep in the office because of their adverse reactions to Lenny). It's all wood floor, so my vacuum will not see many uses, but at least that means it will last longer, right? The living room/dining room is kind of small, but at least we have two extra bedrooms that we can store extra bookshelves and desks and the like, so it shouldn't look too cluttered.

Currently, our house is completely empty. Our stuff has arrived in Columbus, but breaching their contract (which pisses the both of us off REALLY BAD), the moving company (independent of the Air Force) has decided they can't move our stuff into the house until June 16th. So by the time we get our stuff, we will have been without all of our household goods just shy of a month. How ridiculous. Thankfully, our friend Bryan has let us know of a possible place on base that you can rent cookware from, so we might go and rent some pots and pans and a microwave so I can start cooking again. Eating out is getting SO OLD.

So far, I have enjoyed Columbus, and once I get used to the heat (IT IS SO RIDICULOUSLY HOT HERE IT'S INSANE) I think I will actually enjoy it. I haven't met many of the locals yet, or any of the wives, either, but I have a feeling I can't judge them purely from who goes into the WalMart. My good friend Cari has been showing me around, and I am eternally grateful to her for that. She has introduced me to a coffee shop in town that serves both coffee AND smoothies, so I'm not missing Starbucks too much. After a week surviving off of just hotel coffee, I finally had myself an espresso drink, so I'm not missing it too much now. The town is about seven miles from base, but I'm willing to drive that far :) Plus, it gets me off base.

Also of note, our baby boy puppy was born on May 31st! Now we just have to name him. He and his siblings were a few days early, but they're all doing well! We unfortunately don't get to pick which boy we get (we were the second on the list for a boy and mom Sadie only had two boys), but we don't really care: we're just excited to get the puppy! He won't be ready to come home until July 31st, but that gives us time to get to some bigger towns to go shopping for him.

Yay for puppies!