We started out in southern Texas and left the minute Chris was allowed to. Okay maybe three minutes after.

After our quick stop in San Antonio turned into a two day event, we had to change plans. What was to be San Antonio – Albuquerque – Las Vegas – San Diego – San Francisco – Seattle turned into kicking Las Vegas out of the lineup. Which was disappointing because we had planned on meeting friends for a day or two.

We didn’t spend very long in any place until we got to San Diego – where we spent a very busy week – and then another week in San Francisco. We stopped in Oregon to have a fantastic dinner with friends and then made it to Seattle the next night, where we had another awesome dinner.

Considering Chris has been in the military for over ten years, the few places we’ve lived and the handful plus of times we’ve moved you’d think we’ve been on vacation before. But we just never had the time! We had to meet our stuff (HHG or household goods for those not in the military) or we only had a matter of days to report somewhere, and a vacation just never made the list.

So this time we did. We stopped at more then a dozen places along the way and while I thought we did such a great job at not spending a lot of money, looking back I can see other ways to save. I’ll be sharing my tips as I share our adventures.

Technorati Tags: vacation tips, travel

I finally bought Chris’ plane ticket.

I should have bought it last week when it was a bit cheaper! As it is, the countdown has started. He’ll be leaving soon and then a new countdown will begin – of course the new one won’t really have a purpose. We don’t know what happens next – how long he’ll be gone or if we’ll be able to live together soon.

I have so much to share! The typical vacation season is almost here and I have so many tips for people traveling to San Diego!

For now we are just about settled in. We’ve unpacked most of what we have here with us and will need to get more from the storage units. With luck we’ll be down to one unit by the time Chris leaves. I don’t need a lot but we packed the pantry and my fabric and that didn’t make it to the house.

I’ve missed reading blogs and finding out what my online friends have been up to. It’s been a long month.

I got up at 3:45AM because that’s when Chris’ alarm clock went off. Yay for middle of the night waking. Only not really.

Today is the last day in southern TX! I can’t say TX because we aren’t going that far away tonight and who knows if we’ll leave early enough tomorrow to actually get out of the state. It has been fantastic living in a hotel. No cable bill, no electric bill, no internet bill (and yay, the internet is fairly fast!), and sure we are eating out a lot but we also have a fridge so have veggies to snack on to keep me sane. Oh and the best plus about being away from the stress ball that was military housing – clear skin! Seriously folks, if you live in an environment that crazy (I know I haven’t said much about it, but I will) moving away is awesome for your skin!

We are planning a crazy awesome vacation. Chris is getting a huge amount of leave – which you can look at a couple of different ways. I decided to be positive and happy about the fact that we get to take this crazy amount of leave now despite all the years of never getting to take leave in the past. I guess it all worked out? Yeah.

First stop, San Antonio. If you know where we are, you are laughing because we are a mere couple of hours away from SA. That’s okay, at least we are getting started and will be on the move! We leave tonight after Chris gets off work. On Thurday the plan is to do a walking tour of the Missions and maybe a Riverwalk boat ride and then leave, heading for New Mexico. We have much more planned along the way and I’ll share pictures as we go.

For now, I’m going to attempt to go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

I didn’t think this would happen, but our plans changed. Instead of the kids and I leaving a few days ago to head to South Dakota, we are still here, in a hotel in Texas (that would make a great country song “In A Hotel In Texas” – just sayin’).

We decided to wait for Chris to take leave before leaving here. For one, the kitchenette room we have is fairly inepensive (staying here is cheaper then staying in housing) and it would either be a hotel here or a hotel in CA. We nixed the plans to go to South Dakota after the third snowstorm in two weeks made its way through the area. Sure I don’t mind being snowed in there, but Chris has plans and when his plans don’t get to happen when he wants them to, let’s just say he really doesn’t like that. So him and snowed in in SD wouldn’t be a fun combo! We’ll get to SD soon enough – I have two nephews graduating high school and we’ll go back for that.

So here we are in the hotel for a bit longer! We took in the aquarium yesterday and did laundry and some grocery shopping today. Being in a hotel room for very long is never all that fun so we are thinking of things to do each day. Tomorrow we are going shopping and I’m sure we’ll spend a bit of time at the park too.

Chris is gone right now but will be back soon enough. I got a quick text message earlier tonight, which came at the right time because the first few days of him being gone are always the hardest, regardless of how long he’ll be gone. Or I say that now, but we are coming up on a long separation so we’ll see how I do getting through that.

How was your weekend?

I was reading Moving Day and at the end, she asked

What is your favorite home memory?

which made me laugh because about a week or so ago Chris, Shannon and I were sitting outside visiting and we talked briefly about this. Now that we are out of the house and living in a hotel I’ve been thinking about my favorite memory here.

When we were sitting in the front of the house, there were cats walking around (we have *way* too many strays and outside cats for my liking here) and humongous bugs were walking on the street. At one point there were two huge bugs not too far away from us and a truck drove by – it went over the bug and the bug popped. Yes, popped. Gross!

Chris said that was definitely one of his favorite memories of the place. He’s odd that way. Me – I loved our get togethers! We had several toward the end of ’08, it seemed like every weekend people were over and we’d have food, drinks and a great time. I love hanging out with friends and those times made me not completely dislike this place. I remember feeling exhausted at the end of the day on Sunday because we had people over Saturday and Sunday, or Friday night and Saturday. But it was a fun, awesome exhausted. Being surrounded by friends at a place that you don’t particularly love, or a place where one person makes your fun times hard to have, is the best. It’s your friends that get you through the rough moments.

PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my baby brother! Okay not the baby baby, but he’s younger then me so he’s one of them. He’s 29 today!