End of Year Update

Wow! Life has been a little crazy this year and I have realized that we have completely neglected our blog for the past 6 months. As with others, Covid has been a contributing factor to some of the craziness this year. At work there has been a tent set up in the emergency room parking lot since mid-summer to handle the additional influx of patients with covid-like symptoms. We also transformed our minor treatment area into an entire negative-pressure treatment area for covid patients. While this has not changed the number of days or hours worked in general, the workflow within the emergency department has needed to be adjusted and changed frequently in response to changing guidance.

Kids

The kids have been growing up way too fast. Within the past few weeks they have concluded their martial arts program at our church’s after-school program. The instructor said they both did very well and even gave them both a set of martial arts gloves to take with them to our next duty station to use during future classes. Heather and I, as well the kids, thought this was a very cool gesture by the instructor. They both think they want to continue learning martial arts, and what better place to learn and train than in an Asian country.

Change of Residence

Within the next two weeks we will be moving out of the RV which we have called home for the past (almost) 6 years. We have had some great times in the RV and it has served us well. However, our family has obviously grown over the past 6 years and our spacial needs have changed. This paired with taking overseas orders with the military for the next few years just aligned to give us a convenient time to move out of the RV and into something different. It would also be rather expensive to move the RV across the ocean, mostly at our expense. However, this means that we have to move out of the RV, and we are figuring out just how much we have managed to cram into this 32’ house on wheels of ours.

School

After returning from the Covid deployment to Los Angeles earlier this year I, Kevin, have been busy with school. I started back with classes the last week of June and summer semester rolled right into fall semester, separated only by a single weekend. When I concluded classes for winter break on December 18^th, my brain was ready for a break after doing school for right around 6 months straight. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my school. The practicum experience has been very beneficial and I have learned a great deal about how hospital administration really works. Heather may not be enjoying it as much since many of my “off days” from work have still been spent at the hospital, just in a student status instead of a working status.

Trip to Ohio

In November we were fortunate enough to be cleared to travel out of state and took the opportunity to visit family in Ohio for two weeks. We made the 2,200 mile trip in just over 36 hrs from when we left San Diego. While in Ohio we celebrated both Thanksgiving and Christmas, which gave the grandparents the opportunity to see the kids open their gifts in person. In years past our visits have included a list of visits with friends around the state, but this year we curtailed our exposure risk by limiting our visits to primarily family instead. Despite these additional precautions the weekend we returned to San Diego we got word from our family in Ohio that many of them were beginning to lose their senses of taste and smell. You guessed it, they had covid. I spoke to my supervisor at work and it was determined that I should have a surveillance covid swab done to see if we brought it back with us from Ohio. Sure enough, I tested positive too despite having absolutely no symptoms myself. I and the family were placed on home quarantine for the next 10 days. We only ventured out for a single grocery run, and even then it was curbside delivery with practically no interaction with the employee that loaded our groceries in the back of the van. Luckily, none of the family developed any symptoms during the quarantine period either. If you were wondering, our Ohio family, while having minor symptoms, never progressed to requiring hospital care or emergency treatment. I am very thankful for that as many have not been as lucky as our family.

What’s Next

So what is next for us? In the next few weeks we will be packing up all of our household goods to send them overseas to the next duty station and will be temporarily be living in an AirBnB, which comes fully furnished, which gives us the flexibility to send our household goods ahead of time. It will also be nice to live in town again where cell service is much better than the campground at which our RV is currently parked.

Stay tuned for coming updates as we begin our adventures abroad. We will try to do a much better job at updating this blog so our friends and family know what we are up to. I will also have more time since I will be done with my Masters Degree by the time we leave the states.