Our Apartment :)

I know I've been a little delayed on getting pictures up of our apartment, seeing as we are half way through TBS already! I can't believe how fast it's gone...only 95 days left! Not that I'm counting or anything ;) Following are a few pictures of our first apartment/home in the Marine Corps...hopefully next move we'll be in a house :)

Building 25...our home!

A view from the outside! Our bedroom window is the first floor, back left window :)

Now here is a 360 degree of our main living area:

 Here is our front door/entryway, TV with only 1/3 of our DVD collection :)

A close up of the flag in our entryway. We love this! :)

Another view of our TV with the closet door and door to our back porch.

Inside our wonderful 7 foot closet! We don't know what we'd do for storage without this! You're not even seeing all of it!

Our little living room where we spend much of our time watching "Dexter" (our new favorite TV show!)

More of our living room. You can view the hallway to our rooms and part of our dining room.

Beautiful hydrangeas I got from a lady who leads a wives Bible Study. This picture is mainly for my mom because I know she loves hydrangeas!

 Our cute little dining room :)

 Our TINY kitchen! We could barely fit all of our dishes, pots and pans, utensils and food!

Another view of the dining room and hallway 

"Kyle's Hallway". His darn cuckoo clock and military picture. We settled on him putting those up in the hallway ;) The first door is the guest bathroom, to the right is the spare bathroom (you can't see the door) and the door straight ahead is to our bedroom.

Our guest bathroom. Now all we need are guests! Come on family! ;)

Our spare bedroom. It definitely is not livable for guests! Sorry guys! This is another storage area for us! Got laundry, books, desk with miscellaneous paper work and bins full of random stuff we accumulated!

 We also store our bikes in here! We found a great stand for them to save room though! (Pardon the drying rack)

 Our gun safe and a nice closet for Kyle's uniforms, my dresses and our linens.

Our bedroom :)

Different view with our bathroom

We lucked out with TWO closets! Mine is on the left and Kyle's is on the right. It's wonderful :)

Hope you enjoyed looking at the place we've been living! We can't wait for some of you to come see it in person! :) We love you and miss you!

FEX 2 (Patrol Fex)

It's been about a week since Kyle came home from his second fex. It was Monday, June 13th through Friday the 17th. This fex was called a "Patrol Fex". The men spent the week in the field and once again, we weren't allowed to communicate. Thankfully this week went quickly for both of us!

Kyle's patrol fex means he went on foot mounted patrols. In Kyle's words, "basically, this means we just walked on foot throughout the forest". They were divided up into squads, which consists of around 13 men. They walked and walked until they spotted the "enemy". The "enemy" is another squad. Once they spot the enemy they start to assault them. They assault them by using pairs. One guy would shoot blanks to protect, while the other guy ran closer to the "enemy". They would switch off who shot and who ran. When they reach the "enemy", they are done. Essentially, it is adult men playing war, like when they were little boys, except now they have real guns, but with blanks :) I think they are all loving it!

Kyle and McCormick having a fun day with weapons.

They would also partake in night patrols where they use their NVG's. Here we go with another acronym. NVG = Night Vision Goggles. Kyle says they are difficult to see. When you look through them you have no depth perception. During night patrols, certain squads were told to hide off the road and wait for the squads who were told to walk around. Then they would assault the "enemy" like during the day patrols.

During this fex they also had Land Nav 3. I talked a little about land nav in the last post. They need to find 6 boxes out of the 8 to pass. In Kyle's terms, "the terrain is heinous!" There is so much overgrowth that it is difficult to find a direct path to your box. Some of the bushes/plants are taller than him! During the last land nav Kyle did not pass because he only got 5 boxes :( BUT...he got 100% during this fex! I'm very proud :) These land navs are not graded though. They do these as practice for their Final Land Nav in September. So we will pray for 100% then!

Overall, Kyle said this fex went "alright". He enjoys certain activities they do in the field, but he doesn't like sleeping on the ground too much. But I can't blame him! Plus, this week it cooled off quite a bit so he got a little chilly :( Luckily, he only had about 5 hours to sleep (1am to 6am) in the cold and then he was able to get up and move around to get warm...lucky right? ;) Kyle also met an instructor in the field from OSU! He said it was nice to have someone who had a connection back to home like him.

My fex experience was similar to the last one. I spent time at the gym with some wives attending spinning class and rep reebok (weight lifting) class. Also spent some time at the pool with wives, bible study, get togethers, and dinner :) I'm so thankful to be making some wonderful friends in fellow wives :)

I will leave you with one lesson Kyle learned from Fex 2: Be sure to check EVERYWHERE for ticks! Whenever Kyle is in the field for days or just a couple hours, he will come home and have me check in places he can't see. Friday afternoon we found 9 ticks! But...Kyle forgot to check one place and Friday night he unfortunately found it in a place no man would want to find one! He's been taking antibiotics just in case it had been on there since Monday. He's being a good sport about it and we can laugh about it now :) He's making sure he tells all his Marine buddies to check EVERYWHERE because it can happen! :)

FEX 1

First off, you’re probably wondering, “what in the heck is a FEX?!”.  FEX = Field Exercise.  I CANNOT emphasize enough how much Marine Corps lingo I have learned!  That may be another post in itself…I will test you all on it because, by golly, I feel like I’m being tested!  Kyle already taught me the phonetic alphabet, so I’ve got that down at least!

Anyway, this first FEX was Tuesday, May 31^st – Friday, June 3^rd.  I will explain to you a bit about Kyle’s 1^st FEX and also about how I kept myself busy while he was gone. And when I say “gone”, I mean GONE, as in no texting, no phone calls good night, nothing…nada…zip. It’s zero communication for those 4 days.  So, here we go:

Kyle’s FEX Experience

Every morning the men woke up at 0430 (working on my military time) to start their day.  Every night each person had 1 hour of fire watch, which consists of “standing and staring into the darkness”.  A direct quote from Kyle ;)

Each day the following is what they wore/carried

·      Wore their flak jacket, which is a bullet proof vest with sappi plates in it that protect from rifle rounds.  Weighs about 30 lbs!

·      Here comes another acronym…FLC that stands for Fighting Load Carrier.  This is basically a vest with pockets, but it’s purpose is to hold magazines.

·      Then Kyle, carried the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon).  Someone from each fire team volunteers to carry it.  Kyle volunteered to carry the 24 lb. “gun” and regrets volunteering just a bit ;)

One of the main events of this FEX was “land nav”.  They did land nav as a group and individually. When it came to the group land nav, they had an objective.  When they found their objective they would then buddy rush through it, which is basically diving on the ground, firing, getting up and then leap frogging with their partner.  I can just picture the Marines now leap frogging with a buddy haha :)

At the end of the week they did their individual land nav.  Their goal is to find 8 boxes in 6 hours over a 15 square kilometer area.  They are given an 8 digit grid coordinate and then they have to FIND IT!  Ultimately, they plot their map, find a familiar location on the map to draw a line between the familiar location and one of their boxes, find the azmith (the degree they’re walking in), and then follow the azmith using their compass. Easy right? ;)

When Kyle got home he was a stinky fellow!  They have no showers and sleep on the ground the whole week.  Plus, the 100-degree weather on their first day with a heat index of 110 didn’t help!  It “cooled” off to the 90’s the rest of the week though.  Even though the heat was a bit unbearable, Kyle still found one other thing to be worse…the CREATURES!  For one, we have found more bugs in our apartment than we have ever seen in Oregon.  One of the worst bugs for me was a centipede! A CENTIPEDE!  We found a dead one in our bathtub and a live one crawling on the wall! ICK!  Those one’s were about the size of my pinky finger.  Kyle found one much bigger in the field and it just so happened to be crawling on his leg!  He said its body alone was the size of his middle finger!  EEWWW!!!  I’m glad that one didn’t make its way inside our apartment.  But, that wasn’t the most disturbing to Kyle.  Him and a buddy were standing about 2 feet apart and heard a loud “thump”.  They looked around and some other guys were cracking up and told them to look down.  Kyle looked between him and his buddy and there was a 4-foot snake that fell from the tree above them!  For those of you who don’t know, Kyle isn’t too fond of snakes, so needless to say he was a little freaked out :)

After the FEX, Kyle expressed that he doesn’t really care for the field…or the “little” creatures for that matter!  Here are some pictures of Kyle’s experience during FEX 1.

 Their beautiful sleeping arrangement! Kyle said in this picture their campsite was NOT tactical, which means it was easy for the "enemy" to spot them, so they had to take it down and set it back up.

Kyle and his buddy Wiseman. Kyle is holding the SAW.

Kyle and Nick Wiseman again, in a 7 ton truck.

7 ton trucks...the name is self explanatory...they can carry up to 7 tons

Britt’s FEX Experience

Since this was us “wives” first FEX we decided to plan a lot to stay busy together.  Here is a little of how my week went:

Tuesday

Up at 7 to work on homework for my Masters courses.  Then headed to the gym around 10 to go run around 2-3 miles and then go to Rep Reebok, which is a weight lifting class and I LOVE IT!  I attend that with a fellow wife, Marissa.  Then headed home around 1, showered up and I met the wives for lunch at Panera at 2, which is our Tuesday ritual. 

Wednesday

Up at 7 again to work on homework.  Headed to a bible study at 9:30 that just started up with some wives.  An older woman is our leader.  Her husband is a retired infantry officer and they felt led to move back to Quantico to minister to those wives and men at TBS.  So she is leading this wonderful and much needed bible study for some of us wives :)  After Bible Study I headed to the gym to go to Spinning class which I am also addicted too!  Another wife, Megan, usually attends with me! My instructor is awesome and kicks my butt every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!  Got home around 1, lathered up the SPF and hit the pool to work on my tan!  Came home, got cleaned up, relaxed and then hit the movie theater with about 10 wives to see Bridesmaids.  It was basically a female version of The Hangover, but it was quite funny.

Thursday

Three wives, Amy, Megan, Morgan and I drove south to Fredericksburg for the day.  We spent the day walking around downtown and spending hours in a store called Hobby Lobby.  We don’t have those on the west coast, but I know my sister and mom would love it!  It is sort of like a Michaels, but with more home décor.  It was HUGE!  I do admit I bought some scrapbooking stuff, but it was all 50% off…so that’s how I’m justifying it ;)  After Fredericksburg we drove home to Stafford and went to a cute little winery near the base.  We got a cute little dinner and had an enjoyable conversation.  I am sad to say I forgot my camera that day :(

Friday

Same as Tuesday…up at 7 to work on homework.  To the gym to workout with Marissa and Megan.  Home to the pool, but had a tanning partner, Marissa.  Then about 15 of us wives met up for dinner at Pancho Villa before the men came home.  It was a blast!  After dinner, Amy, Megan, and Marissa and I were going to hang out until the guys got home.  It was already 9pm.  Marissa and I had to come home to check on her puppy before we went to Amy’s.  We got to Marissa’s (She lives in the same complex as us) and her 3 month old black lab had diarrhea in his cage :(  Poor puppy!  That moment made me realize I can hold off on a puppy for awhile longer haha!  While we were cleaning up, I got a text from Kyle saying he’d be home soon.  Marissa and I decided to just stay together since they would be home “soon”.  I should know by now that soon is never really soon.  Marissa and I ended up hanging out for about 2 hours, talking until the guys got home around 0100…1 am! It was nice to have a meaningful conversation with another wife though.

Overall, the FEX wasn’t too bad…for me at least.  I think staying busy with the other wives really helped keep my mind off not having Kyle home.  We are planning on keeping busy like that again for future FEX’s which actually starts tomorrow :)