Goodbye Abilene, Hello San Antonio

I've blogged before about us moving, so I thought I would write a bit about our new temporary life in South Texas!

Before we got to live in SA, we first had to say goodbye to our first true station in the AF!

Before we moved to Abilene, we lived on three other AF bases for training. We were only there for a few months each, so we never had the opportunity for me to really start my teaching career or for us to make many friends. We originally wanted to get stationed overseas for our first assignment and we would be lying if we said we weren't a little crushed when our wish wasn't granted. But the day we got our assignment to Dyess AFB, we made a pact to be happy and to make the very most out of our time in West Texas. We both feel like we really made that happen.

I blogged a lot back then about my struggles in trying to get hired to teach, eventually settling for a job in childcare and then having to let that go because of my own struggles to get and stay pregnant. I felt lost a lot that first year in Abilene. If it hadn't been for the friends that I made during my husband's first deployment, I'm not sure I would've come out of that dark place I found myself in Summer 2011.

Once I did pull myself out of there and decide to go with the flow, we found a lot to enjoy in our little town. Trying new restaurants, going out with friends, traveling with friends and by ourselves, and taking advantage of what this amazing little town had to offer us. When we had Elise, we found a whole other side of this town to love. We can't imagine a better place to have started our little family. Even the second time around, we felt this all over again. I could've switched doctors and moved myself and our daughter to San Antonio with Josh when he needed to be there. But we had come to love and trust the people taking care of me in Abilene. My OBGYN and our doula and even my lactation consultant and pediatrician, just really put my mind and heart at ease which ended up making Lena's birth and delivery just the best that we could've hoped for.

The last night we spent in our house before leaving, I couldn't help but look around at the pictures on our wall of memories we had made living there and I just broke. Before marrying my husband, I had lived in the same town with generations of my family for my entire life. I'm not used to moving around and saying goodbye to people and places like this. Even though my husband wasn't raised as a military brat, he had more experience with moving around than I did. He assured me that the best memories were yet to come and that it was totally ok to feel sad because this was a loss for us both. But we did what we said we would do....make the most of our time there. Because of this, we have no regrets. It made me feel so much better to know our leaving (together no less) meant more time to spend together with our girls and even with our extended families. Worth it.

Now that our time in Abilene has finished, our temporary time in San Antonio has begun! Same rules still apply, make the most of our time here. It's a little more difficult to get around and do things with two little ones in the heat of summer, but we do what we can and try to be creative! So far, we've gone to the Riverwalk (kind of a bust!), gone swimming a few times, tested and found our new favorite Mexican restaurant, found a couple of indoor places I can take the girls to weekly (for FREE!), and have a couple of nearby towns we plan to check out in the near future. For only having been here about 2-3 weeks, I feel like we're doing well to reach our goal. It's exhausting, but well worth our effort.