Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Last Saturday, Todd's Battalion offered transportation to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg for the day. So the 5 of us got up way to early for a Saturday morning and met up with the other people going, and rode a bus for 3 hours to the park. Anheiser Busch does this wonderful Salute to the Heroes in all their parks that allows military members and their family members free admission for the day!! You can't beat that price!! Once we got there, the girls went off to find all the roller coasters and water rides, and we went on the skyride, the train, and the river cruise. We all had an awesome day. Of course my favorite parts were the animals. We got to pet the Clydesdale horses, they are so beautiful and BIG. They also had a few gray wolves, that were way too skinny as far as I was concerned. We saw some other birds, but Todd and I's favorite part was Eagle Ridge. They have several bald eagles who had all been injured that could no longer fly, reading their stories made me cry...but they were so beautiful, we stood watching them for quite a long time, actually more than once :) So here are some of my favorite eagle pictures that we took...

quick update

Todd came home this morning with a lovely contraption and some sleeping pills (to help him adjust and for a 30 day study) to help get this apnea under control. Supposedly the CPAP doesn't make much noise, guess I will find out tonight.
Onto the house loan...it would really help if there were people working for the VA who understand how in the heck the Army works!!! I know, I know that is too much to ask for. So we are now typing up a letter with our intentions and reasons for buying, among other things, to send to our loan officer to pass on to the underwriters who have to answer to VA. We also have to have a letter from his command explaining policies for retirement, housing allowance and a few other things. So I repeat, if you work for the VA you should know at least something about how the military works!!!!! Oh well, it is being done and hopefully finished today!! Updates to follow when I know what is going on.

Monday Blah's

I am sitting here tonight with about a million thoughts going through my head. Why do I have so much time to think tonight when normally my brain is on overload during the day?? Well, Todd is at Walter Reed for the 2nd part of his sleep study. I guess I didn't do the update after his first one... He does have mild sleep apnea and actually stops breathing for a very short time several times a night. We were sent paperwork with his diagnosis about a month after his first sleep study. The paperwork gave him 3 options, 1. CPAP mask/machine (I refer to it as a darth vader mask) which would blow oxygen into his airway to keep them open while he sleeps. 2. some kind of oral device 3. surgery. Well he called the clinic after we received this lovely info, and they said they were going with the CPAP option!! They wouldn't even schedule an appointment for him to discuss any of these options with a doctor!!! So they tell him he needs to do another sleep study so they can determine the oxygen flow rate to keep his airway open. Of course we don't know if he will be able to handle sleeping with this mask on, or if I will be able to handle the noise it makes, oh joy!! I've had enough nightmares with Darth, don't need to feel like he is in bed next to me! :) So he will probably be in pain tomorrow, because for the sleep study he needs to be sleeping on his back, and with all of his back problems that is not good for him. So anyway, since he isn't here to occupy my time, my brain doesn't want me to chill out at all. We are also still waiting for our loan to come out of underwriting, so we will know if everything is going to go ahead as planned. Of course we had to throw a monkey wrench into it by doing a VA loan and confusing them with him still being active duty!! They needed to know why we are not buying a house here and why we would want to buy one in Indiana. Ummm...because we want to!!!! We SHOULD hear the final word tomorrow, but I am not holding my breath. Meg and I did get to see something very pretty tonight though that just made us both very happy. We had a small storm go through and it finished up with the sun out...

I hope everyone is having a calm Monday evening/night. Tomorrow hopefully I will post about our Saturday trip to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg after I finish going through all the pics!!

Update

Here's the update, although it doesn't mean the Picerne people are breathing fresh air!! The office opened at 8 so Todd and I were up there just before. We walked in and a very nice lady, who I would soon find out is our latest manager, welcomed us in and asked what she could do to help us today. Dangerous question for me!!! So we sat down and I told her about the maintenance guys and their lack of professionalism and knowledge :), I mentioned my phone call on Monday to the assistant manager and she wrote everything down. Within 45 minutes to an hour the AC guys were here, found a big leak, cleaned everything up, repaired the leak, talked to us for a few minutes and left. Later the pest control man showed up to make sure we didn't have termites in the back wall again (had issues here before we lived in this house), he sprayed because there were other creepy crawly things trying to get in my back wall, but no termites thank God. So I started doing some cleaning that needed to be done since the house was cooling off. Of course while I was cleaning some things I ended up making more messes, oh well, I cleaned those too!! I looked up from my kitchen sink and saw 2 men coming to my front door. They asked about a leaking door and window. I showed them the patio door and told them what I had been doing with towels when it rained and where we had seen the water. So they look outside and see that the cement is cracked and just yucky where the track for the patio door is. The one guy says "Hey have they ever thought about caulking out here?" I started laughing, cause that had been my suggestion to the Picerne idiot!! Well they caulked it and said we'd see what happens next time it rains. Then I show them the back wall and tell them what we think maybe happening. They get on a ladder outside, look above my dining room window and see that where the losers put the new siding (3 years ago) around the window it didn't fit right, no caulk or anything, and the water was running down inside the wall when it would rain!!! Of course it was made worse by the fact that the gutters were clogged just above these windows. So they cleaned my gutters and fixed above the windows!!!!!!! All I can say today is, thank God for private contractors!!!! The only things I am waiting on know are the Picerne people to come out and fix our outside light out back, and see if they will (hahahaha) repair the inside drywall, yeah right. Anyway that is my update, off I go to clean some more!!!

Picerne Sucks...and our heat wave

This is going to be a rambling post filled with complaints, so read at your own risk!! Can't say I didn't warn ya!! Yesterday was day 4 of being under a heat advisory/excessive heat warning. We had been in the mid to upper 90's with heat index values over 100 (see we are at Fort Hades!) Anyway, Sunday we had issues with the A.C. unit again, it was putting out very little air and it was warm, then ice on the inside pipes. So I do what I am supposed to do and call the idiots at Picerne. Now mind you this happened about 3 weeks ago, they came out put more coolant in it, came out 2 weeks later, "cleaned" the entire unit inside and out, and told me we would be good to go for the rest of the summer!! Yeah right. Well the jerk that came out Sunday evening recharged the unit with more coolant and we asked when someone would be out Monday to check and make sure it was ok, he said nah, we don't need to do that, you are good to go, it'll keep running. Ok right, whatever you dumbass. Well it happened again Monday, just about 26 hours after the jerk was here Sunday. This guy, said we need to get you a private contractor out here to fix this thing right, I said "Well Duh!!" Well the contractors came out yesterday early afternoon, said well it is putting out cold air still and we have places that don't have any A.C. so we will be back later in the week. I know the other people are a priority, so I didn't argue. Well last night it went out AGAIN, a little over 26 hours again. Well if I had called Picerne they would have come out charged it and the whole thing would have started over again...and of course even though the contractors knew what they needed to check and do, they can't do ANYTHING without Picernes permission and money. Well the fun deal with that is Picerne has stopped so many contractors from doing their jobs properly, because they don't have the money to fix things right!!!!! We have heard a lot of things from several different contractors who have been in our house to "fix things". I woke up at 6:30 and with all the fans running, including the one that blows through the vents (with the A.C. turned off) it was almost 80 degrees in here. I opened up the rest of the windows, so now it is very humid and 78. The sad thing it is 69 outside. The office doesn't open until 8, and by that time I will be ready to rip someone a new...well you know :) I am also still waiting for other work orders to be taken care of that will stop our back wall from getting wet inside and my patio door from leaking. But hey I talked to the head of maintenance himself, and he was out here and I showed him what was going on. That was the 29th of May, and hey it has only rained about 4 times since then, and it is the 11th of June, no problem right????!!! Not to mention I talked to the assistant manager on Monday about all of this and she didn't seem to give a damn about any of it. Oh the joys of living in privatized Army housing!!!! I hope anyone who got through reading this is cooler than we are. Updates to follow whenever PICERNE pulls their heads out of their butts or I have to go over their heads yet again, oh wait I will probably do that anyway!!!

Country Living

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I miss Indiana and "country living", I hate having neighbors know EVERYTHING that goes on in and out of my little home here in Army housing. Well we found a house surrounded by farmland and not very many neighbors last week. Well things progressed nicely from there and our offer was accepted this weekend!! We have already started lots of paperwork and we have lots more to do! So as long as everything else progresses as smoothly (insert prayers and finger crossings here) we will be closing in July!! Here are a few pics that I have. Have an awesome Monday!!!!

What is Lil Man looking at??

Well for several weeks during the late afternoon this is where you would find Reggie at. He is looking out the dining room window into the backyard where our patio umbrella is. What is so fascinating?? Well, we had robins build a nest in top of the umbrella and they had 4 little baby birds!! They kept him entertained for hours at a time and a little frustrated, he really wanted to taste those sweet little baby birds! We saved them 2 different times when the wind blew the umbrella over. Mommy bird kicked them out of the nest last weekend and I think Reggie misses them, but I am glad they all survived and flew away. Now we need to find something else to entertain him!