Word from Jake!

Here is an update! Jake has been able to text me every day, usually super late at night, and in the mornings. We haven't gotten to call or skype at all, but Jake is able to email and can receive messages through facebook. If anyone would like his address for care packages or letters, message me and I can get that to you!

This was at a stop along the way. The people there were extremely grateful for all the men and women deploying.

 

     "They truly appreciated us, which was a weird feeling--going through a building with everyone shaking your hand and absolutely sincerely thanking you for your service."

Jake is doing great. After arriving, he says that it's actually really nice:

     "I am going to like this place...It's seriously like summer camp. Beautiful mountains. I'm eating really well! It's flat but there are beautiful mountains in the distance, it makes me want to go hiking really bad. It is really sandy though...Sooo we thought we were getting way from Washington but monsoon season...."

These are pics I found on the Internet. I'm assuming it probably looks something like this. I have no idea where or when these photos were taken, except that they are in Afghanistan.

     "We have an extremely nice abandoned airfield all to ourselves once the unit we are taking over for leaves. We will have an entire hangar for crossfit, a hangar for ultimate frisbee and the complete airfield is our track. There is a little store with essentials and small snacks. We have hundreds of water bottles that we have in fridges and at points throughout the post. I don't need anything! They have a legit dfac with pretty awesome food lol not roughing it at all--minus the walk to the dfac and how busy we are. We have a microwave in the hangar. We are so spoiled it's nice here--well for a 3rd world country. "

     "Did you hear that the elections went really well for their new president? That has shocked everyone. There was no rioting or anything as expected. We haven't even been mortared yet. Yet....Summer is coming though.
     It'll be easy to stay safe, this post is huge and they have a good system to stop mortar attacks. They only have one every couple of months. Nobody has been hurt."

I asked Jake about the locals:

     "I don't get to go off post to see the villages but I see them here. They make Americans look bad, they are all so courteous and respectful."

How so?

    "So the dfac was closed and they were cleaning. They saw us and brought everything out to let us in. They put us in the front of the line before all of the workers. They are all great people. It make's you realize how selfish we can be."

Here are a few pics he sent me of his living quarters. I already got the "OK" to post these, since we have to remember OPSEC.

"It was an empty tent and we built rooms...my room is legit--easily the most organized one I have seen. I miss you soo much but this is a blast...."

     "It's my new door. I found it in a compound next to ours. Everyone is laughing so hard. I am going to ask a huge favor. For the fung shway of the room, I want a big picture of Mona Lisa on the open wall in my room. I don't care if it's printed pieces of paper for me to tape here lol"

Work:

"It's a blast here and flying by. I got to go off [base] yesterday! It was just outside the gate to go to a gun range. The mountains are beautiful out here....Busy long days, but fun...."

Typical Jake:

    "I volunteered for anything that comes up. Don't worry, there's nothing I can do that is dangerous, I asked. The army paid too much money to train me in my job to let me go do something fun."
     "We work from 7:30-19:30. I am always exhausted. Having a blast though. So busy and tired! Right now we are just getting everything ready and situated for our higher ups. Super busy with TMDE I have tons of paperwork and monthly inspections. We have started maintenance but have a while until the other unit will leave."


So, Jake is loving it there and is staying very busy. Time is flying by, and hopefully it will continue to stay that way!

Deployment

Leaving Tacoma :(

Sadly it's that time :( Time for Jake to head to Afghanistan. Moving out was a very long, drawn out, tedious process. Here is a little bit of our living space while moving everything into storage. My amazing visiting teachers made us a nice meal, which was divine! We were so grateful we didn't have to go out to eat. There's nothing better than a hot homemade meal and cookies! 

We stayed in a hotel the last few nights. His departure was postponed a couple times, due to wives mentioning classified specific information about the departure time and location. I was grateful to have another day with him. 

Our lovely storage unit. We literally jam packed everything in there as tight as we could fit it. It will be an adventure figuring out how to get it all moved out of there before he gets back :/

My mom flew up to drive back with me. I'm so glad she came, it would have been the longest, loneliest trip ever! She helped us clean the rest of our apartment too. #1 Mom!

Adi on the way home. About a 14 hour drive :( She was very sleepy and a good trooper.......despite the fact she chewed my mom's wheel on her luggage. It was a long trip. We listened to Divergent the entire way home. Halfway we stayed with Kirk and Carolyn VanSlyke who were kind enough to let us crash so late. 

And of course, we go from beautiful 50-60 degree weather, to THIS! Blizzard, snow everywhere!

 Jake is now safely in Afghanistan and doing very well. He says the base there is a lot nicer than he expected and it's pretty much like "summer camp".  He is living in a large tent with about 7 other guys. They built individual "rooms" with 2X4s and plywood. We are both doing very well.

South Beach Camping!

So this last weekend, Jake, me, and Jake's friend from work and his wife (Ryan and Daniel) went camping. Daniel had never been before and wanted to try it out before she heads back to Florida to visit her family. We dropped the dogs off at a friends and headed on our three hour drive. So, Below is our camp, and next to it is the view from our camp--right in front of the ocean. It was beautiful!!!! A little chilly, but still very pretty. 

Here is our neighbor......yeah, freakin weird.                Heading down to the beach!

 Jake and I took a romantic walk down the beach before the sun started to set (;

We bought a stand up grill that we could set up over the fire and we grilled ourselves some juicy hamburgers and brats. Then we roasted some marshmellows and made smores!!!! It was Daniells first time ever making a smore.

The sunset was beautiful!!!! First time watching the sun go all the way down over the ocean. Of course I had to capture the moment with me and my love! Lol, Jake refused at first, but came around after some persuasion (:

Here is Jake in the ocean, it was FREEZING!!!!!

Here is Daniell in front of the place where we meet for our KAYAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, that's right, we went kayaking down the river!!!!!  Unfortunately we couldn't take our cameras--that is we didn't want to ruin them by getting them wet. So these to pics are the only ones I have :( But I swear we went kayaking and it was a blast! There were a few rapids we went down that were pretty fun! Definitely made the trip a lot more worth it.

Here are our life jackets and booties. We wore them along with wetsuites and helmets. It was kinda annoying, but not enough to ruin the adventure.

We took a hike on a 5 mile trail through the rain forrest. It is beautiful out here.

On our hike we found some berries that were DELICIOUS! haha, idk what they are called, but they were really good. We also found some salmon berries later on, I just forgot to take pics of those ones.

Daniell eating some of the berries while making reservations for our kayaking trip!

We found a really pretty waterfall! 

This was the only gas pump for miles! Totally old school. Jake found some bottled mountain dew at the gas station, and it was heavenly delicious. So good!

After we got home, we picked up Adi. She was with three other dogs so she didn't get ANY sleep. I'm sure she was ecstatic to play with some other dogs. When we got home, Jake and Adi hit the sac and were completely out! Adi has slept for the last two days and we have been super tired lol. The trip was totally worth it though!