Memories From This Last Year & More

I've got several blog posts written in my head, but haven't got them actually typed out. So here's one I can check off. Planning on blogging more but we have so much going on that I might not get a lot of chances too. But I'm working on it. : ) So here is the last year (plus a little more) in a summarized blog post, with pictures of course!

We have lived in Maryland for a little over a year now. In just 19 days we will be moving to the west coast. So much as happened to us in the past 2 years that I thought I would write down some of it so I can have it documented to look back on someday.

Before I married Matt, I had lived in the same house for my entire life. I didn't travel often unless it was to a surrounding state of Oklahoma, even though I really enjoy seeing new places. We spent most of 2011 apart since Matt was deployed to Afghanistan. It was a hard year. I was enrolled in college full time and working. College and work is stressful enough, but I worried about Matt everyday. He was literally moving to a new place in Afghanistan every week and I was so worried each time he headed to a new place. We got engaged when he was home on R&R in July. We honestly didn't talk about much about wedding plans because I hardly got to talk to him while he was deployed. I would get a 20 minute (sometimes longer) phone call almost everyday and once we were talking wedding plans were furthest from my mind. I just wanted to know how he was doing and we talked about what was going on in each others lives. Not to mention that our families are in different states and it would have been hard to coordinate a wedding with such distance between our families. So when he finally got home in December of 2011, all we knew was we were tired of being apart and just went to the courthouse and got married. My family threw us a wedding shower before we made the move to Maryland and I am so thankful for everything we received. It really helped us out a lot since we had nothing to fill up an apartment. Matt had only lived in the barracks on base and I lived in the school dorms. So we were just starting out with nothing. Now we have a lot of stuff that is not packed up yet even though we are moving so soon. Ha.

So once he was home and we were married, we made the move from Oklahoma to Maryland. 1,300 miles from the only place I had ever called home. Leaving my Mom was hard. I was home sick and sad leaving her and everyone else. I was so excited to start my life with Matt, but at the same time so sad to leave them all. Looking back, I can't put into words how thankful I am for my Mom. She's been SO supportive of my decisions and loves Matt and I so much. I couldn't ask for a better Mom and she will never know how much I appreciate her. 

We packed up Matt's jeep with everything it could fit. Literally every inch of that car was being taken up by something. I kept finding something I wanted to take and just shoved it into an empty space in the car. 

So here are some pictures from the last year..

When we got to Maryland we got the keys to our first apartment together. 

Right before we moved in our stuff

 

Valentine's Day 2012 Matt got me a puppy. I'd been wanting one for when Matt was gone on an FTX or had CQ duty so I wouldn't be completely alone at home. We adopted Bentley and he was the best present ever. He was with me on those lonely nights when Matt was gone and he's brought us so much joy. He's such a fun dog and we love him so much. 

Valentine's Day 2012

The first night at home with Benny

Watching TV with me while Matt was at work


In March we turned 21 together. Our Birthday's are only 10 days apart.

Trip to D.C. Summer 2012

Summer drive. He was loving the breeze.

Then towards the end of summer we visited family. I took a trip to Oklahoma by myself while Matt was on an FTX and then when I got back to Maryland we went to visit his family in Seattle for 3 weeks.

Love this city.  Seattle 2012

Out on the boat with family

Matt & his little sister Grace

Family Camping Trip. September 2012

Matt with their family dog. Buddy : )

Then when we got home, Matt and I began discussing him re-enlisting in the army for 4 more years. We talked about it a lot before he actually committed to it. He re-enlisted in the Fall and we knew we would be going to California but we didn't get official orders until around December.

Then Thanksgiving rolled around and we couldn't visit family since we had seen them just a few mother earlier, so we went to P.F. Changs. Haha.

I know the waitress loved our drawing on the receipt. : ) Who wouldn't?

Shortly after Thanksgiving we got an email from the man we adopted Bentley from. He told us they had some miniature dachshunds. 8 weeks old. We decided to meet up with him to see the puppies. We quickly picked out one and took him home. We didn't talk about the decision much. We just knew we wanted him, because he was so stinking cute!

One of the first pictures we have of Jax

We debated on names for about a week before we finally named him Jax. We got the name from one of our favorite shows. Son's of Anarchy. : ) But before we decided on that name we were debating Ollie. Then we realized that name was just a little to close to the my name. Molly. Ollie. Too confusing. ; )

We spent our first Christmas together as a married couple.

Christmas 2012

We received orders to California around the start of the year with our report date. Now we are working on moving and starting a new chapter in our lives. I'm excited. I am so glad I am doing all of this with my best friend.

Hopefully I will get the chance to post some more this weekend. Planning on relaxing since Matt didn't get a weekend last weekend. He had a 24 hour duty shift on Saturday, then he spent Sunday catching up on sleep. Hard working man. 

Molly