October 31rst

For Halloween we took the kids to white sands to go sledding. It was super sun and we had a blast. It was a perfect day with little wind, the weather was sitting about 70 degrees... perrrrffeect! The sand was surprisingly soft and we could let the kids climb a large dune and tumble down with little worry. They had so much fun and we were laughing most of the day. We were there for only about 3 hours and then had to head home for trick-or-treating but it was a good time.

Costumes for 2009 were megatron, skeleton chick, and an angry little garden gnome.. They wanted to be vampires this year but Dad convinced them to change to these scary and funny costumes instead. The little gnome was the hit of the night, he got extra candy because of how cute he was. lol.

Stories!

You guys are too funny!

Ok, so the peanut butter story goes like this...

One day while I was getting the house cleaned and spiffy (Melissa is this an acceptable word? :P)

and I was in the back of my house cleaning my room, bathrooms, kids room etc. I had been in the back for about 15 minutes when I noticed that the house seemed a little too quiet. You ladies know that type of quiet... the type of quiet that is to loud you know something it up. So I start my rounds from room to room... Aaron is no where to be found. Not in my room, not in the bathrooms, kids room, living room, dining room, garage or backyard. I begin to panic a tad because I did not know if he left the house, or what was up. I turned off the music in the living room (I clean while I am Jammin' (how bout this word?))... When I notice a small sound coming from the kitchen.. I walk into our kitchen listening hard to where this is coming from. Well, I finally pinpoint a cupboard that is making the noise. I open the door and Aaron is sitting in the way back of it with his hand in the peanut butter jar with peanut butter smears on him, and the entire cupboard. I wish I took a picture, because it was messy!

This is not part of the peanut butter story, but he LOVES the cupboards for some weird reason! (Aaron, age 2)

Another time he got into peanut butter he was thoughtful and washed it off before he put it back. (I did not know he had it until...) I opened it and there was water inside.. NASTY! He told me he cleaned it after he ate some. lol

I do have pictures that go along with this story.. Right after we moved into our house here, about 3-5 months or so after the kids were playing in the back in their room. Nothing too crazy, because I can hear them playing so I think all is well. However, Aaron comes out (and he is about 1 and a half years old at the time) looking a bit "white". Him and his big brother Justin had decided they wanted to play with the baby powder... Oh yes, it was an entire bottle all over everything. This did not happen once, or twice, but three times in the span of about a month. Yes, I replaced the baby powder every time, until the last and just stopped buying it. Good times!!!
I wish I got the room too.. There was baby powder particles EVERYWHERE! And that stuff is hard to clean!!!!

Too much!

So, this week is going to be an interesting one. Tonight was our FRG meeting, but we had a BN one, so yea, it was un-organized and sort of messy but we got it done. I do not think those are very good! I will have company level meetings from now on out! My voice is gone from all the talking, and I was not even speaking to the group, I was talking to everyone else, and I mean everyone. I feel so overwhelmed right now with stuff. Why am I doing this again? Because I care about the families? Yeah I do, but holy moly it can be ... I do not have a word right now.

While Joseph is gone, I may not have any time to miss him! I am going to be too busy and the time is just going to zip by! Good or bad, I have not decided.

I can probably ramble on and on at this point because I am so tired, I can just pass out, but I am waiting for the boys to fall asleep first. You know, so I know they are not into any food while I am not looking... If I havent shared the peanut butter story with you, I will have to some other time..

Ok, I lost my train-choo-choo of thought and that is never good. Uhhhhhhhhh...... drool........... I feel like patrick star right about now.

Well, on that note, I will say good night. I am going to take a moment and chillax before I end this day and start another busy one. -- I have decided-- I do not like being busy.

You got to Move-it, Move-it!

Thank you Melissa for the great advice the other night!

I have been looking at things differently in the last 2 days. I was sort of getting down on myself, and felt so overwhelmed! I got it off my chest, got some much needed advice and picked myself up the next morning and took off! It was slow going as I had class in the morning and it sort of hindered my energy, so I did very little, more than normal, but not enough.

Today however, I have been a busy little bee and got tons done! I am not done yet, and sort of sad that the day is winding down and I have to do other things like make dinner, bathe the kids, and put them to bed, but HOPEFULLY I will get back to my stuff!

Yesterday I went out and bought a protein powder mix to replace my dinners and breakfasts. I hope this will help with my diet, because to tell the truth, I am out of control with bad eating habits. It has become so easy to say "lets pick something up for dinner" rather than cook it myself. (not to mention it costs a fortune to do that!! and I would rather spend money on something else than fast food!) I haven't tried it yet, I will tonight though, it is my dinner! I am nervous about the taste but more nervous if it will keep me full so I don't eat a snack right before bed. (another bad habit)

This month is flying by, and before I know it Joseph will be home and then not. :( I have classes all next week except Friday to keep me busy. Not to mention my college classes! This block is Sociology and Philosophy! Oye! A lot of brain power going into these 2 for sure!!!

I started a new chores/rewards system with the kids. So far things are going smooth. We will see how long it lasts! I think I picked some good rewards to keep them motivated like a night out alone with mom or dad... $$$, and computer time (which is REALLY big for them right about now.)

Well, this was therapeutic! I may have to come back to blog more often about the day!!! Off to continue my chores while this energy lasts!

And the count-down begins.....

So, last night at 11pm we dropped off the Man of the house at work. He is at NTC for training, and will be back in about 4 weeks... Then we get about a month with him before he is in that big sandbox in the east.

So far things are ok. The kids seem to be ok for now.. Dad has been here and gone a lot lately, so I am hoping that when the big day arrives, they are troopers and will take it better than I expect.

I do have a headache though today. I did not get much sleep last night as you can imagine, and I have had about 1/2 liter of Dr. Pepper and I am sure I will polish it off before bed tonight, or it will be gone by tomorrow afternoon! No sleep and caffeine are a fun combination! Also, I was re-arranging furniture all day... Don't worry, Joseph knows.. it was planned! My forearms are killing me though! I guess I was using muscles I haven't used EVER before. I can hardly lift anything anymore.. looks like I will clean up my mess another day. I would say tomorrow, but I have to be realistic!

I think I am going to take a sewing class on post if they offer one. I have been wanting to learn to sew for YEARS and tried to teach myself, I even have sewing machine, but I do not know how to use it very well. I would like to add that to my hobby list! That could keep me busy during deployment and productive so I am not sitting around doing nothing.

Well, it is time to go relax, I hope. I have so much to get done around the house I feel overwhelmed. It is time to clean things out and re-organize but it is so much, I just do not know where to begin... Someone needs to come and help me!

It is 6pm, I think I will put the kids to bed at 7 tonight and have some quiet, or maybe I can pass out too! TTYL

Gila Cliff Dwellings

This weekend we spent a day in New Mexico to see some cliff dwellings from about 700 years ago. They are called the Gila Cliff Dwellings and are located just outside of Silver City New Mexico. It was a beautiful drive once we got into the mountain area. It took a lot longer than we anticipated, about 4.5 hours! But it was a great day. Here are some of the pictures we got on the digital. The kids had cameras too, but they are on film and we need to get them developed. (But they took all of their pictures before we hit the dwellings, umm like of the car, my rear end.. um and the car window.. I am sure we have about 45 pictures of those!!) We found some other cliff dwellings in southern Colorado that is about 8 hours away, and will try and take a long weekend to go there. Anyway, here are the pictures from this weekend....

Cruise to Mexico

Our trip was amazing. We had a great time and loved just about every minute of the cruise! This is our stateroom. We had a balcony, so we could go out and just sit outside and relax in our own space. On one of our "fun day at sea" days we spotted many flying fish, manta ray's, sea turtles, sharks and a bright blue fish that was huge! It was super fun!

This is a picture from our balcony of the Queen Mary. There was a concert going on over there so there was live music for our departure.

We went to 3 places in Mexico. Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas. Puerto Vallarta was super humid. I think it was 95* with humidity at 99%! It was all rain forest like. We walked a few miles trying to find a beach to relax on, but it took some time. When we finally found a beach, we jumped in the water and it was refreshing and warm! After swimming for about 5 minutes Joseph noticed an odd shaped and colored thing floating next to him (possible poop) and so we got out. We started our walk up the beach, and we were bombarded by people every 30 seconds trying to sell us things like hair braiding and pot! When we got to the end of the beach we started our way back to the ship and I felt like I was getting a sunburn so I started to walk faster... Big mistake when you are wearing new sandals and your feet are sweating! When we got to our room, I had bad blisters on the bottoms of each foot, and had a hard time walking for about 2 days! It was miserable, but it did not stop us. Later that night we had an excursion planned. We took a boat to a secluded island and had dinner and watched a very neat show. It was beautiful!

Our next stop was Mazatlan, but with my poor feet, we decided to stay on the boat and relax. We watched movies in our room and napped a lot. There is not much else we did other than that. When we docked in Mazatlan, we were next to a shipping yard, so it was not as pretty as we thought it would be.

My absolute, hands down favorite of the trip was Cabo. It is so beautiful there, and I would love to return sometime. We booked a snorkeling excursion later in the day so we went ahead and walked the shops for a couple of hours and looked around. It was not too bad, but it was fun looking at all the miscellaneous things people sell. Unfortunately the snorkeling is on another camera that we need to take to develop but we are not done with the film. Hopefully soon we will have those pictures. Our first stop was neat. There was many, many fish everywhere and they seemed to come right up to you. It was fun. Our second stop was not part of the snorkeling, but our guide told us that the other spot was very busy, so we could just stay in that spot so we did. (there was only about 10 of us on the boat). Our guide snorkeled too, and would dive down into the reef and find things to bring up. (oh and I dropped my mask on the 1rst stop and it went to the bottom of the ocean, but he dove down and got it!!! :)) I would have but I could not go far!! My ears hurt when I would dive.. must have been the salt? Anyway, so while we were there at our second stop, poor Joseph had been drinking a lot of sea water and made him sick, so he fed the fishes for a while... :( We had learned a LOT of lessons for the next time!! lol.

Here is a picture of a beach next to lovers beach. This one had no people on it and it looks beautiful. The next picture is from the famous arch at the very end of Baja California.

The water was so clear, warm and pretty!!!

Even with all of the "bad" things that went down, we still had a great time and are planning another trip when Joseph returns from deployment.