Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving! I had to work last night so I came home and cooked garlic mashed potatoes! Of course it is still raining here. We have supposed the state 'official record' for most rain and we are now working on the unofficial record. Yeah us!

Not 6, but 5 years old

So, Sunday Ronnie had duty until 4 pm. I decided to go shopping at about 1100. I ran to a sporting goods store and picked up 2 gifts that Ronnie is totally not expecting. Then I went to Wal-Mart and picked up some gift boxes, a few gifts (not for Ronnie), and 3 seasons of Friends. Best buy was the next stop. (I had not yet bought Guitar Hero II because I had not had the chance but was going to.) I got there and asked for the military discount. The chick got really snooty, turned up her nose and said, "We don't have a MILITARY DISCOUNT, who told you we had a military discount?". I told her that the Everett store had one and she informed ME that HER store did not. So I left!

I ended up driving all the way back to Everett (this is 25 miles from my house and 50-60 miles from the Best Buy I was currently at). So I stop at the mall to get Taylor and Alexys a gift and I ended up betting my sisters something and I got a BUNCH of cool free stuff. (Yeah FREE STUFF.) Then to Best Buy. I got the game and drove home with only one and a half hours to wrap Ronnie's stuff before he got home.

So, I got all of his stuff wrapped and started on everything else. He walked in the front door and started grabbing boxes. Now, he apparently does this every year and next year, I am not getting him shit because Christmas is not about what you get or how much you spend. He attempted to tell me what was in every package but two. He only got 2 out of the 6 correct! This really bugs me because that is not how I grew up and it really irritates me that he can not act like an adult and leave well enough alone. (He just got a leather jacket.) All day he whinned and begged for the Guitar. NO was the answer. He eventually stooped so low as to say, "I did not want it for a Christmas present. I wanted it to play. You can either let me have it now or I am going to buy it and you can bring this one back".

I don't even know how to respond to this. My 15 year old sister did not even act like this. Someone wanna help out the newlywed?

0 kids to a 6 year old

Saturday morning I got off of work and made it home about 1100 or so. I got home cleaned up, changed and turned on the PS2 to relax a little and Ronnie started pouting and stuff. So I asked him what was wrong and he said he wanted to go shopping. I did not want to go because it is not yet Thanksgiving and I know how my holiday shopping goes.

We ended up shopping. I planned on going to the outlet mall and then to the Everett Mall. Well, we never left the outlet mall. We got books for us and the nieces (I have nieces now!), then clothes, kitchen items, more clothes, and then Ronnie an early Christmas present....leather jacket.

We went home, cleaned, went to the Everett Mall and then to Best Buy. At Best Buy we walked by the display of Guitar Hero II and watched for a little bit. (Have you seen Blue Collar Comedy Tour? Remember Jeff talking about bringing his kids down the cereal isle?) Ronnie went into a childhood flashback on me! I was truly waiting for him to lay on the floor and start kicking and screaming! The conversation went like this:
Ronnie: I am going to get it.
Me: No, you don't need it.
Ronnie: I am going to get it, I want it, you get it for me or I am going to get it on my way home from work.
Me: No, you don't need it.
Ronnie: Yes I do. I am going to have nothing to do for a month so I want it.
Me: Is this really something that you want to get into a huge fight over? Is it really worth it?
Ronnie: (about the time we are walking out of the store) Nothing to fight about I am going to go home and roll up change when we get home and go buy it.
Me: (After we walked out) I already bought you the damn thing.
Ronnie: Oh (Gets a huge grin, gives me a hug, and opens the door.) I love you.

So, we go to diner and then go home.

Flood

Last Monday I got off of work and received a phone message that had been sent 1 hour earlier stating that the river had flooded and there was no way to get home! I freaked out and called Ronnie who was already on his way home because he had received the same message. After talking to him for a bit I made arrangements for us to stay at a friend's for a few day's. He called me after he tried to access the house failed. Now, Ronnie has an '03 Jeep Liberty Freedom edition with 2 inch spacers and 'bigger tires'. (The typical chick explanation I know!) And the water came up to his 'hood' (or so he says.....I was not here!) He tried to walk but it was like 40 degrees and there was a current so that did not work either.

A good friend of his was sitting by me on our (not so) wonderful contracted transportation and offered for us to stay at his place because it was closer and we had not hung out in a while. So, there we stayed. After supper Ronnie and I went to the store to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, and all the other little things that you need in a situation like this but don't keep an emergency kit of in your car! Ronnie insisted on driving out to the property and 'checking it out' because I 'just had to see it'. (I am from Louisiana, I have seen a flood or 3!)

So, we pull up to the drive way (which 3 hours before was completely underwater) and there were only 3 small spots that still had water on them. So, we drove to the house to do some damage control. The middle spot where water was present was still flowing at a nice pace, but not too bad. While Ronnie loaded up the 4 wheelers I packed us clothes and got all of our toothbrushes/paste, deodorant, (and every thing you need in a situation like this but don't have an emergency kit of in your car), and set it buy the door. The I removed everything I could think of off the floor so that nothing got damaged. Then I began to clean up the broken window that was smashed to get into the house by our roommate (a whole different story). Then we left.

Needless to say the next morning everything was fine. We went home (we all had the next day off to deal with this in case it got really bad) and the water was gone except a few spots in the field (that are still there). We cleaned and put everything back were it belonged and then checked the weather every hour or so because we thought it was going to happen again. We got lucky. It is still raining but no more floods!

It has begun

This past Saturday night we stayed up playing Playstation. About 2 am I feel asleep on the couch. I wake up and see sun light and I look at the clock.....then I look at him and ask him if it is really 6 am. He said, "Yep, and no, I have not moved one inch." (With daylight savings, that is 5 hours!) I get up walk into the bed room then walk back into the living room, look at him and say, "I am real disappointed in you. Not only did you not have the courtesy of waking me to see if I wanted to play, but you did not even try to get me back into bed. I turned around and crawled into bed. (Notice that I did not say (nor was I by any means) that I was mad or upset....just disappointed.) He crawls into bed a few minutes later and goes, "Baby, don't be mad at me". When I asked him why, he said one of the cutest things I have ever heard him say, "Because you LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEEE me". Ah, the softer side of Ronnie. It was really funny but he needs to save stuff like this for much much later I wasn't even mad.

I am going to become one of those mushy people and I don't like it.

In between

So, on with the wedding planning. His sister rocks....she did every thing....it was wonderful. Of course when you want things to be 'JUST PERFECT', everything gets screwed up and nothing goes right. So I just stuck with the simple stuff. She would call me and I would just say that I did not care. Maybe that made things a little harder for her, but I don't think so. Here are the issues we fought:
1. My dress. Could not find one.
2. Bridesmaid's dresses. They were in Louisiana and scared to make a decision on a dress because I am picky and they were scared I would not like it.
3. An officiant.
4. An officiant.
5. My dress. Hemming and dry cleaning (WAY TOO EXPENSIVE).
6. Bridesmaid's. Never got dresses till 3 weeks before the ceremony and they had to be ordered.
7. Marriage license. Why do I have to pay for this? I will be paying for the rest of my life I am getting married HELLO.
8. Cash bar or no cash bar?
9. Photographer. Some of them don't use a flash? Yuck
10. No cash bar
11. Plane tickets and reservations, and directions (Now, I can't take it anymore)
~I forgot invitations at the top ops~
12. My dress. Was not ready on time 3 times. Bad days right here
13. Little stuff until I started to freak out.
14. Airport. My mom was being my mom and my sister being my sister. Let's just say it was a bad day.
15. Night before. Ronnie does exactly what his is not suppose to do (he promised).
16. 2 am. Not a good night. I am freaking out again.
17. Day of 7am. I am freaking out AGAIN. Not because I second guessed or questioned our love for each other but I questioned his ability to keep his word.
18. 1000. The talk with the older sisters. (This leads to (several) talks to Ronnie not from me.)
~rowing best friend tries to talk to me about the night before...did not happen~
19. Hair and nail polish everywhere.
20. Makeup
21. The photographer arrived early and I was not even in my dress.
22. Pictures Pictures Pictures
23. The officiant is late?
24. The officiant forgot about us?
25. I think I whispered my vows.
26. The reception and a million more pictures.
27. Post wedding drama.
28. Driving 4 hours home in separate vehicles sucked.

I got through it and I LOOOOVVVEE him!

Utah and Vegas and Phoenix and Utah

Utah was wonderful. It did however show me exactly how much being in the military and truly away from home made things change. We got to Ogden and went looking for a Sonic because we don't have them in Washington and Ronnie said the HAD a few in Utah.... Well, since the last time he went home......they all closed! Hum.......lucky me. So, we went somewhere else. It was yummy....fry sauce. Good stuff. Now I know why his mom sends it to him for Christmas.

I was standing on the back deck looking around and enjoying the view when I heard a car pull up and someone muttering something like, "Oh my god.....he's here". I opened the back door and told Ronnie to come outside as I heard the pitter patter of sandals running up the drive way. I look over and see this bald head and up the steps comes is guy who proceeds to wrap his arms around me and through tears.....actual tears mutters something like, "Sylvia it is so good to meet you". After what felt like 5 minutes Ronnie comes outside and Derek lets me go and hugs Ronnie for what seemed like another 5 minutes...It was so cute.

The next day (I think) We left for Vegas. Now, I am by no means a gambler nor have I ever had any desire to go to Vegas, but Ronnie on the other hand would be once a month if he could. We were meeting is sisters there in support of what I call 'The Def Leppard Craze'. Ronnie and one of his sisters love them. In fact, she had plans to see 3 concerts within like 8 days. Vegas being the one in the middle. So when we first got there we went to the ticket office to get them tickets. At this time we found out the Nickelback was playing the next night or the night after that. We bought tickets....Yeah. Well, we walked around a lot. Everyone else decided to get tickets the day of (both of his sisters are taken). Well, his older sister and her husband saw them a week prior and said they were AWESOME. They kept talking about these bands Hinder and cheaply. Well, lets just say THEY ROCKED. To our surprise Hoobastank played too. GREAT concert. We are going to Guam for 3 years, what the hell!

Sometime between getting to Vegas and leaving Vegas Ronnie's mom called and told him about something their neighbor said. She (the neighbor) and her husband had come over while we were there and hung out for an hour or so. All I heard was Ronnie saying a series of BAD words and mean things. Come to find out she said something about he does not really love me and we won't make it. WHAT A BIT%$.

Then to Phoenix! We stopped at Hover Dam and it was kinda cool. The view was wonderful but it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Here, we got to go see Journey and Def Leppard. GOOD show. Had a great time, but I could not do it 3 times in 8 days! Then we searched for a wedding dress. What a pain in the ass. I went to a shop (like the 20th one between Washington and Arizona) and tried on dresses that I did not think I would like because I was just frustrated and tired. I put one on that was HORRIBLE with a HUGE H. Then I put one on that had to get the zipper redone and like was toooooo big. I smiled.....huge and told Ronnie's sister that I did not even want to try on another. I found the dress. YEAH. Then, the last night we were in Phoenix we went to see Dave Matthews! We are going to Guam for 3 years, right!

On the drive from Arizona to Utah, Ronnie attempted to bring me to the Grand Canyon to propose. He screwed that up, so we stopped at some random rock and he did it there....

The morning after the concert we went back to Utah. Not a whole lot except hanging out with Ronnie's family and friends. We went to Lagoon and had a great time.

Yellowstone

We packed and packed and packed. To save space (?) we brought blankets and left the sleeping bags at home....Ronnie's idea. The camera, snacks and cooler went on the back seat with everything else in the back.

It was great. Me and Ronnie left after work. I got off at 130 and he had to stay till 3 so I tried to get his keys from him so I could change and move the Jeep to the pier so we could just leave. For some reason, he was not having it. Of course it pissed me off because it is a vehicle and he was being a jerk. Anyway I got the keys (to the surprise of many of his co-workers).

I picked up the Jeep, changed, and went to the pier.....and waited...and waited. Once he got off we dropped a friend off at the airport and then DROVE and DROVE and DROVE.

We stopped and we slept.

The next morning we drove some more. We stopped for gas right out side of the North entrance. Once we got in the park....I found out that we had to drive even more!
The first place we stopped had elk just walking around like it was cool! I have never seen anything like it. Then it started raining. We drove around looking at this and looking at that. It was all so nice. You could see where the big fire was that destroyed everything was and all the streams and rivers. We saw several waterfalls and bison out roaming around. We did a little shopping and decided to find a place to camp because it was early afternoon and we wanted to get settled for the evening.

We pulled into a camp site and as Ronnie was getting us registered we saw a bison walking right through the site. He was like 20 feet away from me and so HUGE. It was interesting. So, we set up camp and Ronnie built a fire. We decided to eat supper and then ride around to see if any of the animals were out eating around sunset. As soon as we pulled out of the camp site it started raining....hard! Shopping we went. By the time we got back to the camp it had stopped raining but EVERYTHING was wet outside of the tent. Ronnie managed to build another fire and I went to bed. About 1 am I wake up shivering. I have slightly adjusted to the cold in Washington but we were camping in the mountains by a lake..... Ronnie woke up too! (Wonder how that happened!) He was also cold...(guess we should have brought those sleeping bags). We somehow managed to make it back to sleep for about 4 and a half hours then I had to get up. I tiptoed to the bath room and used the hand dryer to defrost my jeans and sweater! Ronnie forgot that the temperatures in Yellowstone fluctuate GREATLY from day to night year round!

More waterfalls and animals playing in the trees were viewed as we made our way to the west side of the park and then we found Old Faithful who ended up not being quite so faithful!

I decided I wanted to shop and so that is what we did. I looked at Ronnie and had one of my not so bright moments and said, "We can check out and go wait for the 830 show". The guy ringing me up was so kind to inform me that it was already 835. We put our newly purchased items in the infamous Jeep and begin to walk around to the other geysers in the area. At this point I got particularly upset because they were surrounded by pools of water that were normally gorgeous blues, and greens, and yellows, and oranges. On this particular day they were all muddy water brown (or gray if I was lucky)! As we walked around the back side I noticed that the fog was beginning to clear and view was wonderful. I fought with Ronnie at a couple of choice locations to set up the tripod and let me take a picture of us together. Once we were about 500 yards from the viewing deck of Old Faithful I happened to look up and she was erupting. 20 MINUTES EARLY!!!!!!! I threw my hand (with the tripod in it) towards Ronnie and begin to snap pictures. I ALMOST MISSED IT. I didn't and I have some cool pictures, but if you go.....stay and wait.....it is an estimated 92 minutes between shows and it was beautiful.

This ended the stay in Yellowstone. We were off to Utah!

Deployment and Vacation!

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands







create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Yeah...it has been busy!

Welcome Home

I just got back from deployment and lucky me, my storage unit was broken into......to tired to talk about it....more to come later.

Ring Ring

At 730 this morning. With my current family situation, I was not sure what to expect, but I new it was not good news. Grandma told Grandpa that she was ready to go and that she wanted to be taken off of the ventilator.
After several phone calls and many many tears, my mom and sisters were on the way to the hospital to say goodbye. I did get to talk to her even though she was unable to speak she tapped the phone to let me know that she could hear me.
After a long day, she is still breathing on her own even though her oxygen concentration in her blood is dropping and she is having a little trouble digesting food.
I will miss her.

The choices we are faced with

My phone rang about 930 this morning. "Grandpa calling" it told me. My brain said, "If something is wrong, they will call back, you are on vacation, sleep more." So I did. Whom ever was calling left a message. 20 minutes later, my Dad text messaged me. So I got up and called him back. He told me something about my grandmother not doing so well in the hospital and I needed to call mom because of something. So I called mom. Then I called grandpa. Grandpa's made it sound like the physician was telling him he needed to make a decision on pulling my Grandmother off of life support or not (TODAY). I freak out, call the hospital, talk to the physician, and realize the misunderstanding. (Which I am not happy about saying was mine. I told mom not to tell me anything important with in the first waking hour or so of my day!) What needed to be discussed was life support measures in the future. http://www.copd-international.com/ is a nasty thing and it will keep you in and out of the hospital for years.
She was in the hospital for 6 weeks then went home for 4 days. I spoke to her while she was home and she sounded better than she had in a few months. Her spirit was very high and she was happy. This is what a COPDer goes through in the end. (Remember that the human body does its own thing and 'THE END' of any illness and it can take from minutes to years.)
After calling the hospital I called my Grandfather back and told him that he and Grandma needed to make a decision on how much longer they wanted to go through this. Long story short, she said she did not want the ventilator anymore.
Thus begain the hunt for the Living Will.

Packing

I have spent the last few days on and off packing. IT BLOWS. I hate it.......did I mention it blows. Yesterday I packed as long as I could stand it and Ronnie and I started playing PS2. Great stress relief. Blowing shit up!
Today, we made 2 trips to the storage unit. All I have left are 3 end tables (that my computer sits on), my bed, a 3 drawer plastic dresser with the 'necessities', my jackets, TV, DVD's (that are all ready boxed but still here for emergencies), and shit to bring to the boat (and where am I going to put it all!?).
Yesterday and this morning I spent most of the day packing in between loading cd's on to my computer to put on my new iPOD (thanks Dad! Love ya). I would get a CD loaded, then pack a few things, change the CD, tape a box, play PS2 for a few minutes until I get annihilated by the bad guy, pack a box, change the CD, eat, change the CD, finnish that box, change the CD, listen to a few songs, tape the box, put the box in the living room, change the CD. Does anyone else notice a trend. No wonder it took so long to pack!

Drive

There is this great little bakery in http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=Sultan,+WA. They have the most awesome food. Everything is pretty much home made and it is YUMMY. The hand made bread is like 3x the size of the crap you by in the store and it is so soft. I love the blue berry muffins (and so does everyone else, because if you don't get there by 930 or 10 for breakfast, they are GONE!)
Then Ronnie decided to go for a ride. It was cool and if I had a better camera lens, I would have taken some pictures....(Karyn, what should I buy?) But I did see my first deer in Washington. It was pretty cool!

A long time commin'

I got My ESWS! For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, check this out ESWS. Now all I have to do is my Air Warfare.

Sunny D

If you have had the pleasure of being in the Pacific Northwest during the winter, you know that the sun shines from like 4PM to 402PM if you are lucky. This particular day....we were lucky.