NEBRASKA

Hey, remember me?  Yeah, I'm still here!  I just took an unexpected year-long break from the blog!  There have been A LOT of changes in our lives this year and I'm still learning how to balance it all.  It has been a beautiful ride with a lot of learning and growth along the way.  I think I'm finally ready to jump back onto the blogging wagon!  However, I still have 9 old unpublished posts (left over from a year ago!), and most of them are worth posting, I think, so I'll try to get caught up by posting those first and eventually start publishing more current topics. Bear with me as I work to get back on track!

So, for now, here's some old news!  Enjoy!

PCS #1: NEBRASKA!  Our first duty station is Offutt AFB (Air Force Base) near Omaha, Nebraska!

NEBRASKA?!?!

Yes!  Nebraska!  Land of corn fields.  And more corn fields.  Oh, and that cute little small town.  And more corn fields...  

But... you mean... Tornado Alley?!?

Yup.  That's the one.

NO!!!!!  WHY?!?!?!

My thoughts exactly.      But, only at first.

Nebraska?  The only thing I knew about Nebraska was what Hollywood taught me.  TORNADOES.  Big, mile-wide tornadoes that throw cows and cars and flatten houses to resemble the landscape.  I was terrified.

During basic training, Rob was given an opportunity to submit a "wish list" of the top 16 bases he would like to be stationed at; a list of the top 8 foreign, and the top 8 domestic locations.  We came up with our list together, ahead of time.  We thought it through and decided it would be great to be stationed somewhere overseas while we still have a relatively small family.  We were offered the helpful hint that if we only filled out the foreign list and left the domestic one blank, we would be almost 100% guaranteed to go foreign.  We also knew that the top Honor Graduate at basic training would be given their top choice if at all possible.  Rob filled out his wish list with places like Japan, Italy and Germany.  He then graduated at the top of his class, and we waited for the news of our new foreign home!

... Nebraska

Wait, what?

Nebraska wasn't even on our list!  I didn't even know there was an Air Force Base in Nebraska.  I asked... no, pleaded with Rob to trade with someone else.  (We heard there was an option to trade with another airman with the same AFSC.)  He looked around for a trade, but also encouraged me to do some research on Nebraska.  

Reluctantly I did a little research and this is what I found: It turns out the last time Omaha has had a tornado do any real damage was over 100 years ago.  It's flat, windy, humid, hotter in the summers and cooler in the winters than Utah (where we currently live), and the tornadoes and thunderstorms are most frequent in the spring.  From what I've read so far, it sounds like if we see a tornado at all, it will likely be pretty small and very far away.  Hmm... maybe Nebraska isn't so bad.  After all, we would be living near a big city.  A lot of people live there.  I'm hoping that means they don't get those Hollywood, mile-wide tornadoes every year.  Alright, alright, now I just feel silly.  I may have over-reacted.  Nebraska doesn't sound too bad.  But I still didn't mind if Rob traded for somewhere else.

The longer I thought and learned about our new assignment, though, the more excited I got about the possibility of accepting it.  I joined the Offutt Spouses and Families page on Facebook and "met" a few of the families who live there.  I started looking at the military housing, and I was sold.  Fear melted into excitement and now the day of our road trip has finally arrived.

We camped out on the floor of our empty house for two nights after the movers had packed up our things.  When the morning of the move arrived, I wasn't quite myself.  I felt a wave of sadness as I took a last look at what we were leaving behind.  Provo has been a place of great learning and growth.  There are so many sweet memories here.  It almost feel like I am abandoning a part of myself.  I'm grateful I've kept a somewhat consistent journal over the last handful of years.  I hope I've captured this season of life well enough in my memory and writing that I might keep it with me forever.  As we drove away, I took 20 million pictures of Mount Timpanogos, the majestic landmark I've climbed and woken up to for so long.  I've heard our new home will have no similar landmark.  I've never lived so far from the mountains before.  I know I'll miss them.

Goodbye, Mt. Timpanogos

DAY 1:
Our chapter in Provo, Utah has ended and our journey to Nebraska has officially begun.  As we took off down the highway, I watched sentimental landmarks blur by through tears.  Around each corner, another memory.  It was like watching a highlight reel.

It's only about a 14-hour drive to Offutt AFB, but our road trip was split into two days.  Due to military restrictions we were only allowed 8 hours or 500 miles on the road per day.  At 7 hours and 450 miles into our trip, we determined Cheyenne, Wyoming represented about the half-way point of our journey.  We're Cheyenne bound!  CHEYENNE!!  Now that's a location I can wrap my heart around!  Setting my sights on Cheyenne provided a little bit of  excitement to relieve the nostalgia.  I can't wait to see this part of "cowboy country," a city I've heard sung about in so many of my favorite country songs!

I was feeling much better by the time we stopped for gas in a small town in western Wyoming.  My heart was in adventure mode.  I forgot my sadness and felt like a kid in a candy store photographing as much of the countryside and cowboy decals as I could.

We let Kimber out to eat and stretch her legs.  As we walked and took pictures I wondered why we didn't just stop in Wyoming and live there.  It was so beautiful and just felt like "home."  So big and open, and like living in a feel-good country song.

On the road again, I took about another 8 million pictures of the landscape.  I'd never seen the sky look so big!  At this point, I was so giddy about being in Wyoming that I took a picture of every single interstate sign we passed for about a hundred miles!  I wanted a good picture of one because they had "Wyoming" written on them.  I wasn't completely satisfied with any of the pictures I had taken so far because of the motion blur!  I'll admit that this particular photo was taken with my camera arm out the window while we were traveling at highway speed.  Why do I care so much about documenting my life in this much detail?  I'm not sure.

In between interstate signs, I also took pictures of just about anything else that looked like it ought to belong in Wyoming.  My SD card quickly filled up with redundant photos of the sky, fields, cattle, tractors, and cattle trailers.

While Rob drove and I entertained myself with my camera, Kimber impressed us with her calm and patient behavior.  She's accustomed to being allowed to roam free in the car when we take her places.  She usually walks back and forth in the back seat area and looks out the windows, but since we would be travelling at high speeds for an extended period of time, we decided to kennel her for this trip.  She must have been bored and frustrated with her limited view, but she was very quiet and waited politely between rest stops.  What an amazing dog!  She has been a great blessing.

Later that evening we hit a snow storm.  I realize now that I've used the term "snow storm" pretty librally in the past... and I had no idea what I was talking about.  This is the first time I have ever seen snow fall horizontally!  The wind was so strong that snow was drifting across the road ahead of us.  Despite the conditions, we REALLY wanted to make it to Cheyenne before stopping for the night, so we kept driving on though we were the only sedan on the interstate as far as we could tell.  It was just us, a few 4wd vehicles and lots of semi-trucks.

Fortunately we made it to our hotel safely that night and got some sleep before facing the winter conditions again the next morning.

DAY 2:
When we got on the road again in the morning, the conditions were even more extreme.  We saw a lot of trucks off the road, and an ambulance or a tow truck every so often.

We saw so many that we decided to try to keep a tally of how many we saw run off the road.

Most of the wrecks seemed to be clustered just after driving under an overpass.  We noticed our own car sliding a bit in these places too.

We continued driving slowly and carefully over the ice, and tried to keep our pace up enough to get to Omaha before dark.  We were lucky on multiple occasions to drive through passages just before the road was closed behind us.

It turns out that MANY semi-truck drivers were NOT as fortunate as we were.  There were never-ending lines of vehicles stuck behind the road closures going the opposite direction.  We also noted that we were once again the only sedan on the road.  Among only a few 4wd vehicles and lots of semis, we realized (spoiler alert!) how blessed we were to reach Omaha safely that day.

After crossing the state line into Nebraska and as our altitude decreased, the ice on the roads cleared up and we even found the sun again.  The blanket of white gave way to cornfields, tractors, windmills and silos.  "Well, here we are!" I thought.  This is exactly how I'd pictured Nebraska to look like.  LOTS of corn fields!  Even the clouds had corn rows!

It was after dark when we arrived in Omaha.  It was late and we were tired, but curiosity got the best of us so we drove by our new house before checking into a hotel for the night.  I already love our new home even though I haven't been inside it yet!  We've seen pictures and floor-plans online, so we have an idea of what it might be like.  The one we're moving into is much larger that what we qualified for.  Rob is a brand-new recruit and we have a very small family, but the smaller homes were all full so we were given a two-level, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage home with a back yard and a GIANT park behind our house!  We definitely have room to grow!

DAY 3:
Move-in day!  We got the keys to our new home just before the moving company arrived in town with our things, so the movers brought all of our boxes and furniture that same morning!  From all the stories about military moves that we've heard, we knew we were unusually lucky to have things play out this way.  In any other case, our belongings would have been dropped off at a storage unit somewhere.  Then we would have had to get by with whatever we brought with us in the car until we were able to schedule our things to be picked up again and brought to our home.  I've heard this process could take a week or two in many cases.

I loved watching the moving company "unpack" us!  It was an amazingly efficient process!  And they put each box and piece of furniture in the room it belonged in!  This saved us DAYS of work!  They even offered to reassemble anything that had to be disassembled for the move.

I'm so glad we had a team of people moving all of our furniture and boxes because we got to use the energy we saved to start unpacking our house right away!  We had a few feet of packing paper covering the family room floor by the time we were done unpacking the kitchen alone!  We couldn't resist the temptation to take a break and play in it!  We hid Kimber's toys in the paper and made her hunt and dig for them.  She's already loving her new home!

We took Kimber on a walk and I met an opossum for the first time. I didn't expect it to be so cute!

NEBRASKA.  We moved to Nebraska.  I never thought I would find myself living here.  Life has so many unexpected surprises.  I feel nervous, unsure and far from home.  I feel blessed that I don't have to feel lonely too though, because I'm here with my wonderful husband and sweet puppy.  I'm not sure what our next few years are going to be like, but I'm happy to be anywhere as long as I'm with the ones I love.  Here's to our next great adventure! 

Kimber's Nerves

Kimber is our 24/7 source of amusement.  She's adorable, smart and funny.  She makes me laugh every day!  She has this nervous tic that we've noticed a couple times, and we've finally caught it on video.  Though the topic is not really pithy enough for a full post, I found this just too funny not to share!

This video was taken while the moving company was boxing up our things and moving them into the truck.  There were strangers in our house, loud noises and large things being lifted over her head.  On top of that, she was stuck in her kennel.  Lots of nervous energy and nothing to do with it:

Kimber doesn't get this nervous very often, but when she does, it's almost as if she just doesn't know what to do with herself, so she decides to bury her bones in the least efficient way possible!   Haha!  She uses her nose to dig in her kennel and looks as if she actually thinks she is making progress.  I promise she knows how to dig with her feet!  I've seen her do it before!

Once we hit the road, we ran into some pretty nasty weather conditions.  There were strong winds, blowing snow, limited visibility and bumpy, slick, icy roads.  It was a loud, bumpy ride and once again, Kimber was stuck in her kennel with no way to release her nervous energy:

(Please excuse the GPS shot at the end.  We were keeping track of altitude.  

The weather got worse the higher we climbed.)

Kimber has always been a good travelling dog.  Whenever we're just driving around town, we usually give her full reign of the back seat.  She's free from restraints so she can walk, stare out the window or take a nap.  Her favorite is definitely sticking her head out the windows when we have them rolled down!

Kimber's Head Out the Window - Provo, UT - April 2013

She's usually pretty good on long road-trips too.  Whenever we are travelling with Kimber at highway speeds for an extended period of time, I like to keep her in her kennel.  I got this idea from a Ceasar Millan: Dog Whisperer video.  At first I was considering a dog seat-belt, but Ceasar's advice was to use her kennel if at all possible.  It would reduce the risk of choking or getting tangled in restraints, and would provide a familiar environment that would feel safe to her.  It also saved me money because I just used the kennel we already had, and I didn't have to buy her a restraint.  She seems pretty comfortable too, although I'm sure she would rather be able to roam and look out the window.

Mommy-Daughter Road-Trip (34 hrs) August 2013

I know moving across country can be a stressful experience for pets, but we have been blessed with a very easy-tempered dog who travels very well.  As long as we stop every 3-4 hours or so to let her stretch her legs, eat and potty, she's a happy traveler; the perfect dog for a military family!  Having strangers in our house and driving over a rumble-strip or ice make her nervous, but even then I think she deals with stress pretty well.  She stays quiet and keeps herself occupied.  But... it still makes me laugh every time I see her do things like burying her bone with just her nose!  Never a dull moment.

Our First Partial DITY Move

I am a brand-new military spouse, and this is my very first PCS (Permanent Change of Station.)  Rob was born into a Navy family and has experienced multiple moves.  However, before my marriage to Rob, I had never experienced the military lifestyle, so this is all very new and very much a learning experience for me.  Our first PCS has been a very exciting and educational journey so far!

Packing up your entire home and moving every few years could be pretty inconvenient.  I'm so thankful that the military understands this and does so much to make the transition as smooth as possible.  We were given a few choices for how we would like to make the move:

1) We could let the military move our things, all expenses paid.
2) We could do a partial DITY (do it yourself) move, let the military move some of our things, and move the rest ourselves.
3)Or, we could do a full DITY move, and be paid for our move based on the weight of our possessions and the miles we hauled them to our new home.

We decided to try a partial DITY move, so we called the moving company and scheduled a day for them to come pack up most of our things.

The Morning of the Move - The Blue House in Provo, UT

On the day of the move, the driver pulled up to the house at about 8:30 AM in a large truck.  Our driver already had the possessions of 4 other families packed into his truck.

The driver came in right away and started moving our furniture.  He labeled each piece with a number sticker, and kept a ledger-like record of the furniture associated with each number.  

The driver then wrapped up each piece with a blanket and packaging tape, loaded it onto a dolly and packed it into the truck. 

At about 9:30 AM two packers arrived.  They brought HUGE stacks of paper and boxes.  I have been hearing stories about this paper for a while.  To ensure nothing gets broken in the move, EVERYTHING is wrapped in paper!  And I mean EVERYTHING!  From glass dishes, to stuffed animals and even the candy drawer.

The packers made quick work of packing up each room, one at a time.

The movers didn't pack anything we specified we wanted to move ourselves.  Military regulations don't allow movers to pack liquids or firearms for example, so instead of leaving them behind, we gathered them together along with the clothes, toiletries and food we would need for our road-trip.  We stacked these items in a few spots in our house and made sure they were clearly marked.

We were also encouraged by a friend in the Army National Guard to make sure our trash cans were empty before the movers arrived.  He warned us that the movers pack EVERYTHING as is.  This turned out to be completely true!  We were glad we didn't have our trash shipped to our new home, but we did manage to forget a couple of molding onions in our pantry... 

The packers systematically labeled each box with Rob's rank, last name and a list of the items inside.  

The driver loaded the boxes onto the truck as they were packed, and before we knew it we were standing in an empty house.  The military allowed us 8,000 pounds of boxes and furniture to be moved to our new home, and all of our things weighed in at about 4,020 pounds.  I've never described my things in weight before!  Four-thousand pounds sounds so much bigger than it looks!

All that was left for us to do was deep clean, turn in our keys, load up the car and hit the road.  Once we're on our way, we will stop at the first weigh-station we can find and have our car weighed, and then when get to our destination and unload the car, we will weigh it again empty.  With both weigh receipts, the military will reimburse us for the the items we moved ourselves.

This was such a new and fascinating process for me!  Have you ever had a moving company help you with a move?

Just in Time for Valentine's Day!

MY AIRMAN HAS COME HOME!!!

Eight months ago Rob swore into Air Force Active Duty and shipped off to Basic Training.  We kept in touch through letters and the occasional supervised 15-minute phone calls.  We were reunited briefly for graduation, and then Rob transferred to Tech School.  We then enjoyed texts every morning, a phone call every night and seeing each other's faces every weekend through Skype.  Now he has graduated and is an official Air Force Medic!  He's home!  We've returned to the familiar luxury of talking for hours, holding hands, and just getting to live under the same roof!  We made it!  We did it!  We're back together again!

Picking Rob up at the Airport!

What a strange feeling!  Now that Rob is home, it feels like we were never apart.  Like we haven't been living in two different states, and never felt pain or loneliness.  As tough as the separation was at times, his homecoming swept those feelings away like they never happened!  However, I definitely cannot deny that the last 8 months has changed me.  I'm a newer, stronger, more capable and independent version of myself!  I feel like we've reached the end of a chapter.  I feel accomplished.  I feel like I can turn around and say, "Look at what we did!  We have come so far!"  It's an amazing feeling!  Life keeps moving though, and we're already headed into "what comes next."  The next three weeks are going to be packed full of activity and adventure!

Just a few exciting things I'm looking forward to in the VERY near future:
-12 days of RAP (Recruiter's Assistance Program)
-Valentine's Day!!!
-Getting together one last time with as many of our Provo, UT friends as possible!
-PCSing (Permanent Change of Station) to our first duty station!
-Blogging about all of the above!

Yes, "sappy" is my middle name, but I'm so grateful for the internet, social media and blogging!  As we're beginning our Air Force career and getting ready for our first big move, I feel so blessed to get to stay connected with our amazing friends and family along the way!  It's my way of bringing all of you along on our adventures!

A Blog is Born

My name is Whitney Lemme.  I wear many hats: I am a personal health-coach, an artist, a writer, a dreamer, a daughter of God, a woman, a wife, and a mother.  Mostly, for the purposes of this blog, I am a military spouse.  I am an Air Force wife, namely, Airman Lemme's loving WingWife.  This is the story of How My Heart Grew Wings.

How My Heart Grew Wings - Copyright Whitney Lemme

I was born in Oregon into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  "I am a Mormon."  I was raised out in the beautiful, Oregon countryside.  It was just us: my mom, my dad, my younger brother and I.  We had an abundance of space, time, and quiet.  Most of my childhood memories take place out in the pastures, under the tall grass, beside the cows, and surrounded by the colorful country sunsets.  Rainy days were spent reflecting on God's creations through my artwork and journals.

In Town: Preschool Playground

My dreams of quiet solitude, riding horses and swimming with an Orca Whale soon morphed into getting into Brigham Young University to study and become an Art Teacher.  I was accepted into the BYU, Provo Art Education program and quickly discovered that art was more beautiful and sacred to me as a hobby than a career.  A fascination with the human body led me to the Exercise and Wellness program in which I graduated.

While attending Brigham Young University, I met and married Robert Lemme.  His dreams included serving his country.  Through prayer and study, we decided to join the Air Force.  Rob enlisted in August, 2012, and thus began a new adventure.  Our futures are sure to be full of joy, hardship, love, sacrifice and service.  Whatever it may bring, we are proud to serve our country!  We feel blessed for the opportunity to serve among the ranks of the Air Force!

San Antonio, TX - August 2013

The idea for the blog came with the New Year, 2014.  I love to write.  And I write a lot!  I keep multiple journals including a personal memoir.  My personal memoirs are typed and printed every few years.  As I was editing my 2013 chapter, I was surprised at how often and how much I wrote.  It reminded me of a relatively new dream of mine to write a book.  This dream has expanded into writing more than one book and possibly on more than one topic.  I'm already writing so much, so, why let that dream live so far in the future?  I began looking for a way to help my mind transition from personal journal-keeping to writing for an audience.  A blog is born!