It's A Big, Big House….

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

Sailor came home with sad news, there were no houses available, or least no houses available to us. I decided I needed to start looking for a rental off base.

The dead mouse in the laundry, along with a family of mice living under our oven, and rats running around our backyard was enough for me to spend money we didn’t have to find a better place.

Sailor went to the housing office (again) to get a list of off-base rentals and came home home empty-handed. We didn’t need an off-base rental because they had offered us a house on base!

It was a four bedroom three and a half bath house right across the street from Admiral’s row. We had a playground right behind our house and a sidewalk for the kids to ride their bikes!

Not only would we be moving into a beautiful house on base, the Navy was paying for our move! We would be moving for free!

I couldn’t believe it.

And I didn’t! I was sure the housing office would realize they had made a mistake and take the house away from us. I wouldn’t let myself get excited about moving until we were actually living and sleeping in our new house.

The only problem with the move was that Sailor had a two week course in Texas and then we had a family vacation to Florida immediately following his course. We had about a week to prepare for the move. The movers would be arriving at our house the day after we returned from Florida.

Sailor left for his course and I was able to walk through our new house. It was better than I had expected. There were hardwood floors throughout the house, a large oven, and the washer and dryer were inside! It even had a one car garage (we’d never had a garage). We were beyond blessed!

I spent the time Sailor was in Texas cleaning out the mouse house and preparing for our vacation to Florida. It was a challenging task trying to homeschool, manage a baby and prepare for a move, but I realize now it was just a warm-up in my career as a Navy spouse.

Sailor returned from training and we made the twelve hour drive to Florida. It was our first time back in Florida since we had moved and it was great to see our family again.

On the day we were supposed to drive home I woke up with a scratchy throat. By the time we were out of Florida it was painful to swallow.

I kept drinking water, thinking somehow that would help, but all it did was slow us down getting home. We were stopping every hour so I could use the bathroom because I was drinking so much water.

Sometime after midnight, and on the home stretch of our drive I had to go to the bathroom again. By this time I had chills and a fever and all I could think about was getting home and curling up in bed!

Sailor kept looking for  a place to stop, but we were in rural Virginia and nothing was open. In desperation we finally pulled over and I walked into the woods to go. It was horrible!

Sailor knew I was pretty sick if I was willing to go to the bathroom in the woods so he hurried home and I crawled into bed and didn’t get up for three days.

The movers arrived and I remember laying in bed while they packed up our bedroom. I was so embarrassed to be sick in bed as strangers packed up my house but I had no choice!

Finally on the third day Sailor told me I had to go to the doctor. They didn’t have any appointments so I went to the ER.

The doctor took one look at my throat and then proceded to call the rest of the staff in to “check it out.”  I’ve decided that it is never fun to be the patient that all the doctor’s want to see because your case is either so bad or so strange they all want to have a look!

The determined I had a very bad case of strep throat and a few other things. They didn’t think I could swallow a pill so they asked me to gargle some syrup like substance to numb my throat. I managed to gargle for approximately three seconds before I promptly threw up the syrup and the remainder of my stomach contents all over the floor.

They finally gave me a shot of antibiotics and I went home and went back to bed for two more days.

When I was finally feeling better our old house was empty and our new house was full. Because I was in bed during all the packing, and the moving company wasn’t the best at labeling the boxes, it was almost a week before I found the contents of my kitchen!

Even though it took me over a month to find all our stuff, I loved our new house. We had friendly neighbors and even a teenage girl who babysat right next door! The kids made friends with all the other kids in the neighborhood and I began daily walks through the housing area.

It was a beautiful spring and I was determined to enjoy every single minute we lived in our big house on base.

(Our Story will be taking a break over Christmas. Look for the next installment will be January 8, 2012)