Farewell to the Families

Weeeell, since these lastest posts are catching everyone up, I'll start by saying we are now in GERMANY!!!  Yaayy!!!!  We are living on post in a 3 bedroom apartment.
Buuut, before we get to that, we made some trips to say our farewells to the fams before we left.
First we went to Houston to visit the hubs' family. It was the first time in years that all the kids were all together, so took the oppurtunity to take family pic :)

The brothers, I love this pic :)

Then after Houston, later on in Aug before the big move, I flew home to Canada to see my family (Curtis had limited leave days by then)

And since we were all home there as well, we took family pics too!  Except we got really fancy for them.....

Here is my Mom & Dad on the left, and my Aunt & Uncle on the right.

Here are the cousins:

and my favorite, the Grandmothers (one is a pimp!!!)

We had a ton of fun! 

While home we I also go to join in the fun of celebrating my Mom's big 5-0. We rented a hotel dining area and had a fabulous party!

I miss them all so much and can't wait for their visit to Germany!

Update #1 - Just a little homecoming

Well it's been quite a while since my last post, and A LOT has happened. I'm going to try and update everyone in a couple of posts. Starting with...... drum roll pleeeease......
HE'S BACK!!!!
My husband is back from a year long deployment to Afghanistan, thank God! He actually came back at the end of April, but it still feels new. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to picking up after him and cooking real meals. Wait, scratch that, I may get used to it, but I highly doubt I'll ever enjoy it.  But don't get me wrong, I would much rather be picking up after him than have him gone again for a year.
Anyways, the homecoming day was extremely exciting and probably the longest day ever! We decided to take his leave days and go on vacation to Hawaii!!  We stayed at the Hale Koa, the military resort. At first when someone mentioned the military resort to me I smiled and nodded politely, but in my head was saying "Why in the world would I go to HI on vacation and stay at a military hotel!?" But later when I looked it up online I was shocked.  It was like an actual resort! AND they have a redeployment/ R&R deal, 30% off your stay, food and festivities going on at the hotel. I priced it out and it ended up being a really great deal. We flew to HI in early June and stayed for 10 days. We stayed on Waikkiki Beach at the  Hale Hoa for 5 dyas and night, then stayed on post with friends for the last 5 days.  We had the most amazing time!  I reccomend the redployment deal to everyone!
We did lots of hiking, lots of beach'ing, swam with the sharks, saw huge sea turtles, went snorkelling, hore back riding, went on sunset dinner cruise topped with fireworks, toured the Dole Pineapple Plantation, and eneded our trip with a Hawaiin L'uau.

After HI, we also took a few small trips to Big Bear, CA, Houston, TX and to see my family in Cobourg, Ontario.  More about these trip in the next posting.

Chillin' with my dawgs!

Doing a little dog-sitting and chilling with the doggies :)

Tigger is joining us for the night.

My friend K

Todays post in honor of my friend K. She has been such a help while the guys are gone and become a close friend. She's always around when I need something, and hopefully I'm just as helpful to her. sometimes I refer to her as my wife. Let me explain that I do not swing that way, I'm completely joking when I call her my wife and I am happily married to an amazing man.
Anyways, she has cooked me dinner far more times than I have cooked myself any kind of meal throughout this deployment. She has brought me homemade soup when I was sick. She visits me at work. She refills my wine glasses as needed. She makes me desserts. Sometimes she even BRINGS me dinner to my work!  She's great company, and her 6 month old daughter E is fabulous company as well!
This past Valentine's she invited me over for dinner (her hubs is away as well) and she had the house decorated and a delicious meal ready for me when I got off work!

Thanks K for being such a good friend!!!

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A little R&R...

Sooooo.... the hubs was home for R&R a few weeks ago :)

And for the most part we just enjoyed hanging out at home with each other and the dogs. I wasn't sure if Vegas (our 2yr old Boston Terrorist) was going to remember him or not, so when we walked up to the door, and Vegas saw him and started barking like crazy, I was kinda bummed realizing he didn't remember him. But then hubs said "Vegas, it's me, come here..." and Vegas started running full speed and jumping all over him, he also peed more than I've ever seen him pee before. He remember him.  lol.

Cali, our pup loved him! Which I was VERY happy about b/c I've heard female dogs are a bit more aggressive than male dogs, and this was going to the first male in the house since he left.

Anyways, we did make a trip off post to L.A. for a weekend, which was much needed as he was coming from one desert to another.  We started the trip off with a little whale watching. So cool, right!? But wait, it gets even cooler! So we get there a little early and walk around the harbor, where they had beautiful green grass everywhere!!  Which might not be as exciting to you as it was to us. He's overseas in a desert all day, and I'm here in the Mojave desert......we haven't seen grass in a long time!!  

Moving along....after a little walking around it was time to board the boat. So we get on and we set off looking for whales. We probably were out about 30mins away when we spotted our first whale. *Side note: along with the passengers, there is the captain and someone from the aquarium telling us about whales and ocean life*  As we are approaching the whale all of a sudden you hear from the aquarium dude "ohmygosh, she's giving birth!!!"  So of course EVERYONE stands up and runs over to see.  Well by the time we were up close she had given birth to a baby whale!!  Then, the aquarium guy explained to us that when a calf is born it doesn't fully know how to swim and what to do, so the mother whale spends the first hour or so pushing the baby tot he surface and forcing him into the motion of what he's suppose to do. And we got to witness all of this!!  So we watched as the baby would surface, and then the mother, over and over.  It was amazing!!!  Also, because we were so close to them, you can imagine how much the ship would rock.  It was sooooo hard to try and get a pic all while trying to hold on to keep your balance.  They are hard to see, but here are some shots:

Us :)

 Here's a shot of the baby and it's mother =)  I know it's kinda far.....

 Some sea-lions we saw on the way back.

After the whale watching we went to a Japanese steakhouse.  It was my first time going to one and we just happened to get a table/ show to our selves :)

The next day, we went to the Laker's game!!!  The hubs is a huge Kobe fan, so we went ahead and splurged and got wicked seats to see them play the Celtics. We went early and got to watch them warm-up. 

check out Shaq!

The game was a close one, but the Laker's lost :(

For the rest of R&R we pretty much just chilled, had a few dinner and a movie nights, but just enjoyed each others company for the rest of the time.

Here's a shot of a couple of models I cam across:

And until we meet again :(

Whaaat!!?? February is almost over!!??

Heeeeello all!!
Well it's been a million years since I've blogged.  I have no idea what happened, or where the time went! I guess I just got busy with good 'ol, daily life.  With that being said I'll update you a little as to what's been going on in my life :)
As of today we have a teeny, tiny bit more than 2 months left in this deployment!!!!  I seriously cannot believe that.  I honestly thought the year was going to drag on, while I slept in and whined to everyone that crossed my path about the depressions of deployment. But to my surprise the year has gone by amazingly fast. I know this sounds horrible, but I almost feel as though I'm running out of time to do everything I had planned to do while he was gone!  Money that I had planned to put away each month somehow vanished, all the projects that I had planned never even got a second thought, and all the cooking I was suppose to be perfecting dwindled down to eating cereal, popcorn and ice cream every day. I can honestly say I am amazed at how fast this went by. And I'm so thankful for that.

The hubs was recently home on R&R. I was amazing!!!  He arrived 2 days before my birthday. Best birthday present ever!! We did lots of relaxing, and he got to meet Cali, our American Bulldog puppy, for the first time.  I was a bit nervous about their meeting as she's been with just me since July now, and has never had any males in the house, other than my family.  But I apparently had nothing to worry about as she was in love with him after the 3rd or 4th sniff.  I'm pretty sure she forgot who I was by the 3rd day.  We had an amazing time together. I'll post a separate R&R post later.

I've mostly been working like crazy. The 40 hour work seems to be more like a 60 hour week by the end. I treasure my weekends so much!  Especially a holiday weekend like this past one. I'm getting very tired of my work and I'm looking forward to leaving it when we PCS. Speaking of PCS'ing....

We're PCS'ing to GERMANY!!!
I'm so ecstatic I can't even tell you!! We will be leaving at the end of the summer. So when the hubs gets home, after a month or so of re-integration, we are going on vacation to Hiwaii, then a month later we will be making the rounds to Canada, NC and TX to say our goodbye's to family and friends, then after that we're off!  It's going to be an extremely hectic time when he gets back, but I'm looking forward to getting out of this desert and being in a new place, and of course traveling!!! I'm dreading looking for another job, but hopefully NAF, my current employer, will help with the transition.  If not....Paris here I come!!!  lol, JK.

Anyways, I'll end it there.
Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!!