Pictures!

Hello again!

I now have some pictures to post for your viewing pleasure. They are from before we received our household goods, so the rooms are quite bare & quite white. (I'm only posting the lr & kitchen for now.) I bought some paint yesterday.. but when we got home and painted a little patch in the living room, the color looked all wrong. So, we're still rocking the white walls, and we're still in the middle of settling in. Everything is unpacked, but nothing looks put together. (I'll make sure to put up some new pictures whenever that feat is accomplished.)



Our new home is one half of a duplex, which we share with a couple named Tim & Crista. (We are on the left.) They have the CUTEST little girl named Adilyn, and someone pointed out that by the time we part ways after our stay in Dover, we will have watched this little one year old grow into a kindergartener! This strikes me as significant. We should be in this little state for 4 years, and we think (at the moment) that we want to stay in this house the whole time... that would be the longest I have lived in one location since leaving home in 2001. I moved around every two years in college... so staying in one place could be very nice!

The front door/entryway

The living room + Kyle

My kitchen!! So much better than the 1960s galley kitchen at Laughlin

But, we'll see about that staying in this house part... we've had some maintenance issues since arriving only 13 days ago. We've had to call in a maintenance request THREE times for our air conditioner. We find that quite ridiculous, for a new ac unit in a brand new house. The first time we called was our first night here... we turned on the ac and suddenly our back yard was filled with this outrageously loud "thwack, thwack, thwack" noise as the fan hit the shroud of the unit. So, we had to turn it off then, to wait for the maintenance guy to show up the next day. So, he came, he repaired, he left. Not 2 days later, the temp in our house shot up to 83 degrees & it was miserable! Another fellow came out, decided there was a coolant leak somewhere in the unit, and that someone else would come out the next day (or the next, or the next, or the next) and repair. So he recharged us, and the temp came down and we were comfortable for about a week. Then last night, Kyle and I both noticed that the air was suddenly becoming very uncomfortable again.. humid, sticky, not cool! (Literally & figuratively.) So, we called again, yet another repair guy came out last night, and we learned our unit had not been repaired as promised. Boo!! He recharged the coolant again, and we have been promised another repair man will come out and fix the issue. They could save themselves quite a bit of cost & effort if they just took care of the problem the first time! Needless to say, Kyle and I are pretty exasperated with this situation.

But, we are thankful this didn't happen in Texas! It is warm up here, but it's not 100 degrees as it would be in Del Rio. One thing we've discovered though is the humidity! It feels like we're back in College Station again, the air is just saturated with moisture. 94% humidity today. Bleh!

We have started "church shopping". This morning we attended the traditional Protestant service on base at the chapel. Next week I think we'll try the contemporary service, and then after that we will venture off base. There are several Baptist churches in the area, which is great! So, please pray that God will lead us to the right church home for the us. We want to get plugged into a good one!

We just returned from lunch with our friends the Houcks. Jack was in UPT at Laughlin with Kyle, and Lori his wife did double duty as a Civil Engineer at Laughlin and as a student pilot spouse. She and Jack were able to be reassigned together, so it's great that they are both here! They moved into a house that is only two duplexes over, so I am very happy about that. For lunch we tried this place called La Tonalteca, and it was actually pretty good. One of the concerns most important to me in this move was "Is there good Mexican food?" And happily, there is! This place had really good food, better than most places we ate at in Del Rio. Ironic huh? We move half way across the country, away from a bordertown, and the Mexican food is better. Go figure. :)

We also shared in our 4th of July festivities with the Houcks, as well as several other couples from the base, some of which we already knew (they're Aggies), and some new friends as well. We attended the town's parade, which was fun but also one big political advertisement. Every other parade entry was someone running for some type of political office, and it was really obnoxious! I did see Joe Biden though (a Congressman whose name is thrown around on the telly a lot), and that was interesting.

After the parade, we hit up the concession stands - hot dogs, funnel cakes, cotton candy, and SWEET TEA!!! Hahaha, I was very excited about that cup of sweet yummy goodness. :) Then we settled onto the town green, which ran in front of the capitol building. There was live music and a C-5 flyover for our enjoyment, although it was so much a flyover as a fly-in-the-vicinity. The plane didn't even come close to going over heads, but it was okay because I'm biased... a C-17 would've been better anyway. :)

The fireworks were scheduled to begin at 9:20, but at around 8:00 o'clock a light, but steady rain began to fall. It slowly, very slowly kept getting heavier, until the girls took shelter under blankets, while all of the guys stood around getting soaked. They started the fireworks early, and at 9:00 the show started. It was a really nice display, I just think it would've been better if we weren't hiding from the elements. Here are a few pics... they're kinda blurry, but you get the idea.

Us + the Houcks

Well.... I think that's all I have to say today. I hope you enjoy the pictures, and as always, thanks for keeping up with the Modells. We'll report back in later!

-Jill