Breaking my OCD one day at a time!

So lately I have been searching the web for Oilfield Wives/Family blogs that I could connect with and so far I have found a few. And surprisingly enough they are mostly up north around South Dakota, or PA, or Virginia, or even Alaska! I would have assumed with as much craziness with the Eagle Ford Shale we have here in the south, that I would have found more wives blogging closer to my home. 

Either way it has been neat reading the many different posts from all over about what their particular family is going through. I found one wife wrote a post that was so up my alley....trying to plan while your husband works int he oilfield! For anyone who knows what I am talking about, I only pray that you are not like a crazy planner person like me because it will drive you CRAZY!

Dave and I have been together over two years. He has always worked in the oilfield....it is all we know as a couple. His schedule has changed a few times and he has switched from production testing to coil most recently. You would think that by now I would know not to ask "When will you be home?" or "When are you leaving?" I quit asking where he was going a long time ago. Now I just wait for him to call whenever he gets where is going...crazy I know.

It has been just over two months since Dave and I got married and we had planned to take our "honeymoon" in the spring. Mainly to save up money and we wanted the weather to be amazing. I cannot even begin to tall you how many times we changed our honeymoon plans to accommodate his old schedule/new schedule/new-new schedule. Because I am a crazy planner person I started planning our honeymoon two or three months before we were married. Then he switch companies and it all got scrapped. Once we figured out his new schedule with Pioneer I planned it again. Even bought our flights out to San Diego. Then comes a reassignment to a different crew which means a new schedule! ARGH! So our plans were pushed back a week.....bonus was I now have a $44 credit with Southwest Airlines.

I guess the upside to my self proclaimed OCD is I am always busy planning something since it is always changing :-)

We didn't change our Fredericksburg plans for next weekend in hopes he gets off in time to go with me. I don't think I am ever going to stop planning to go and do things but I have learned to plan with flexabilities and refundable activities. 

If your an oilfield wife...I would love to connect! 

Leave me a comment

The life of an oilfield family

So this has been going on for almost three months now. While most people are super stoked about the low prices at the pumps, the oilfield families are worried. It is like Dave said, "We can afford to pay $4 for a gallon a gas, we cannot afford to pay $2." 

There have been layoffs from the merger of Baker-Hughes and Halliburton which were expected due to the redundancy of jobs. But there have also been many layoffs because of this shift as well. 

Lesson to learn from this - don't ride high on the horse.....liven within your means always and you can ride the wave if you continue to chose to work within this industry. 

Thank goodness he is not on the drilling side because then we could really be in a pickle. Coil is till working at a steady pace which is good for us. All I can say is thanks goodness we don't have anything major this year. Our goal for the next two years is just to get out of debt while we can. 

I am glad we completed the Dave Ramsey FPU class. I feel we are more educated and can better take on a solid, successful budget....even with the downtown in crude oil prices per barrel. I have heard it could take 12 to 18 months for things to change around. I guess we will just have to wait and see. 

Last weekend of buck season

In an effort to try to get some more meat, Dave and I booked a hunting trip for ME in Pleasanton over the weekend. Dave did a lot of research on the land owner and read up on the previous hunts that were posted before we sent the guy $350 that was non-refundable. 

Sunset of Friday night. The property was pretty and set up well. 

Home for the weekend. Yep...we tent camped. 

And it was 39 degrees when we woke up at 5:30 AM Saturday morning!

But that little two person tent did well for us I must say.

Sunrise from blind 2...the blind we hunted from all day on Saturday

Sums up how our morning hunt went....happy to be in a blind but bummed because 

we didn't see a damn thing. At this point we were still optimistic that we would be able to 

get something before the weekend was over. 

Driving the property scouting for different blinds and looking for tracks

Saturday afternoon hunt. It warmed up quite well while we were out there so the afternoon wasn't 

as cold as the AM hunts. 

But if this doesn't tell you the activity level we had I don't know what does. 

There were some other guys hunting on the property while we were there. After talking to them and getting the scoop on their two days we were starting to realize that the land owner has really over hunted his property and any deer that may have been out here are pretty much all hanging out on the neighboring property. We were not the only people there who had not seen a single deer.  

Since we were all ready paid and camping we decided to stick it out and see what Sunday morning brought. Unfortunately it was nothing different than Saturday. 

The weekend was a bust. No meat. Dave and I had a good time together but we still are looking for a place to grab does/spikes so we have enough meat to make sausage for the next year.  

Some wedding pics from Kendra Squeo

Over 900 pictures were taken just from our photograpgher Kendra alone. Here are just a few!