What a difference a year makes.

"What a difference a year makes."
I've heard that statement before but I never really personally got it until now.

This weekend coming up is Labor Day weekend. Labor Day weekend last year my mom and brother flew out to Cali to help Ryan and I drive from CA to OH because we were moving home. For real this time. No more back and forth from OH to CA because of deployments. It wasn't just me moving back waiting on Ry to get home. Ryan was moving home too. We were finally going to be a family in our home, Ohio.
They say that "home is where is the heart is", well even though my heart is with my son and husband, a little piece of it was left in Ohio when we were living in CA. I got terribly homesick out there especially after Chase was born because I wanted him to experience his "firsts" in Ohio where our traditions are and where his grandparents are.

I guess now he can the be the cool kid in his class when he's in school and has to do his autobiography project, which I'm pretty sure most kids had to do at some point in school.
I can see it now... Chase: "An interesting fact about me: I lived in California for most of the first year of my life." Classmates: "OH!! WOW!!" etc. That will be fun for him. I know in elementary school whenever someone wasn't born in Ohio it was pretty much the coolest thing ever to the rest of the students who were, most likely, all born in the tri-city area.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I meant to write about our past year. It has been quite an eventful year to say the least.
When we first moved home we lived with my parents until Ryan could find a job and we could find a house. During that time Ryan started college at THE Ohio State University's ATI campus. He has since had to take a break thanks to his tuition never being paid on time. The new GI Bill is a great idea in theory but actually using it is a big pain in the butt! I know it's new so they're still working out the kinks but Ry got screwed over too many times when it came to him actually getting the money that he more than earned. Ok I can't get started on that right now because it makes me too mad. haha
Ryan has worked 5 different places in this past year. Not all at the same time but that's still a lot of moving from job to job. I think that he has finally found one that he likes. It helps that it isn't as far away as some of the other places and they're paying him more than other places too.
Chase had his first birthday at my parent's house. My dad had to stay in his bedroom the whole time because he was recovering from an emergency back surgery and couldn't move very well.
We found a house that we fell in love with and then about 2 months later moved into that house.
When we got married we couldn't wait to have our own house. We had our own apartments in CA but that's different. This house is OUR'S. For example, after we moved in we were really excited because Ryan was vacuuming at 11 at night. In our apartment complexes you weren't allowed to have any loud noise after 9pm so late vacuuming was really exciting for us! haha
We celebrated our first Christmas as a family. Ry wasn't there when was Chase was born and he didn't get home until January after that so he wasn't there for Chase's first Christmas.

I'm sure there are many other things that I'm forgetting right now because so much has happened. This past year went by so fast and I can't wait to see what this next year has in store for us!