From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 8

Hello hello and welcome to Issue Number 8 of From the Desk of Nettio Designs, my weekly email series where I share my thoughts on creatively capturing your life adventures, life and everything in between. This week’s issue leans a bit more heavily on the life side of things but I promise by the end it’ll wrap back around to memory keeping so stick with me.

I don’t often write about our life as a military family because well, to be honest, it’s really not that exciting! Outside of the fact that my husband wears a uniform to work and occasionally leaves the house at 4am or spends the night out the field, our day-to-day life is really not that different from any other.

But there are two military events that tend to affect our everyday life in a big way: deployments and the always popular PCS aka Permanent Change of Station move. Thankfully Adam is not deploying again but it does mean that, after a little over 2.5 years, our adventure of living here in San Antonio, Texas is coming to an end.

So where are we headed next you ask? Where will our 5th move in 8 years be taking us?

Well come May we are going to be moving to…..drumroll please….

Houston, Texas!

I know, kind of anti-climatic, huh? And not nearly as exciting as someplace overseas like Germany or Korea or Italy. Believe me, we tried hard for Germany.

But it’s true, our Texas adventures will be continuing for another two years as we move three hours east from where we are now to the 4th largest city in the US.

If you’re wondering if there’s a military base in Houston, the answer is no, there is not. Adam will be overseeing the medical recruiting process for the area (they’re the people who recruit doctors, nurses, medical specialists and such for the Army) which means this will be the first time in eight years where we won’t be living within a short distance of a military base.

But considering we’ve yet to ever actually live on a military base, we figure this shouldn’t really be all the different for us. Plus it’ll be a nice test run for what life would be like if he eventually decides to get out of the military since that’s the next big decision we’re going to have to make in a few years.

This past weekend we drove over to Houston to scope out the area, celebrate Adam’s 30th birthday with our fave Crave Cupcakes and do a little rental home hunting.

We went into it with uncertain expectations but ended up finding a place we loved so much that we didn’t want to gamble on it not being available later. We’re still waiting on final approval but fingers-crossed it works out because it’s exactly what we were hoping to find and weren’t sure would exist in our budget.

It’s an apartment so we’ll be downsizing quite a bit from our much-too-large-for-us single family home we live in now but it’s perfect: hand-scraped wood floors, 10 foot ceilings throughout, a kitchen with an island which we’ve very very much missed from our house in Colorado, and of course, lots and lots of natural light.

But as excited as I get about the chance to explore another new city, there’s always a little part of me that finds the moving process a bit bittersweet. When I was a child, I was the one who would tear up when an awesome camping trip or vacation would come to an end because I knew those experiences would never happen again in that same exact way.

And the truth is, there’s a little part of me that still feels that way.

Which is probably why I’m so passionate about scrapbooking – because it’s an awesome way to capture these priceless memories and adventures and save them for a later day.

So as we start preparing ourselves to say goodbye to our current home, I’ve been thinking about what stories or photos I what to make sure I capture before we leave. And I came up with a little list:

1) Make a San Antonio bucket list and scrapbook it

We’ve known for awhile we’d most likely be leaving San Antonio in the near future, so Adam and I have talked several times about things we want to do/places we want to go before we leave. But now that we’ve got a timeline in place, it’s time to make it official. I may end up scrapbooking this as a digital layout but I also think it could be a really fun item to include in my Project Life album.

2) Take more photos around our current house and neighborhood

I’ve definitely taken photos around our house and neighborhood while we’ve been here but since I’ve made quite a bit of progress on my on-going “Operation Home Sweet Home” home design goal, I want to make sure I capture all the details of our home in it’s most final state. When we moved from our home in Colorado in 2010, I ended up doing this a few days before the movers arrived and it’s so fun to look back now at what our house looked liked at that time.

3) Capture our San Antonio area faves

You had to know there’d be some form of the faves on this list, right? Haha. But really I’d love to take the time to make some Top Ten-type lists about our favorite restaurants, places we go, etc. Might even be fun to do it as an awards type of thing like “Best Place For Breakfast Tacos” (Little Texas Cafe) or “Most Visited Store” (Target).

I’m sure as we jump into the decluttering/planning/moving stage I’ll think of more things I want to capture but I figure this is a good start. My general rule of thumb when it comes to memory keeping is “You never remember as much as you think you will” and since a lot of times with military moves, there’s always a chance we might never return to where we were before, I always try to capture as many details as I can. Better to have too much than not enough, I say.

It’s Challenge Time!

Your adventure challenge this week is to take a moment to capture where you live, right now. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy: a single photo, a series of photos or a layout would do. Even if you’re in your forever home, life changes and I can tell you from experience how fun it is to look back and be reminded of all those little details and changes that have happened when you didn’t even notice.

And hey, if you have any awesome moving tips, feel free to lay those on me as well.

Well that’s it for this week’s installment of From the Desk of Nettio Designs! As always if you have any comments, questions or just want to share what you’re up to feel free leave a comment below. Until next time…

This post is Issue No. 8 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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