It’s been a busy month….

I’m finally back home in TN. I spent the last month “home home” in GA with my family. The time always FLIES by when I’m down there. I can’t believe it’s already thisclose to June! I love it, no complaints from me! Time is flying just as fast for Nicholas so that’s good. He’s been very busy lately, no surprise there. He’s always super busy.

I headed down to Destin to do some relaxing at the beach this past weekend and 2 of my best friends were able to join me!! It’s been too long since we’ve had a Go, See, Do and it was awesome.

The guy taking the picture told us to get closer and act like we like each other…

We were waiting on a table at The Back Porch, one of my favorite places to eat in Destin and we have to go every time we are down there and I always have to get a shirt.

Drinks on the beach

Could it have been a more beautiful night? I think not.

Well, unless you were this little girl and your brother had you in a serious choke hold all in the name of nice beach picture.

Me with crab meat on my arm, this was just one of the places that meat ended up while I was eating. Nicholas said “you’re like a bear with salmon when you eat those things”. I’m a little messy.

We saw TONS of sting rays! I’ve never seen any this close before. They were swimming up the shore line in groups and randomly there would be a few strays here and there. It was so COOL!!!!

Ki got a little hungry and bored while we were out

End of the night… NO MORE PICTURES!!!!

It was a fantastic weekend. I wish Nicholas could say the same. :(

Snakes on a Helicopter…….

Yesterday I went to the wedding of a couple of friends from High School. I graduated with Sharon and my brother graduated with John so it was a family event since we all knew both sides. The wedding was at 1pm so I knew that I wouldn’t have the chance to talk to the boy unless he got on a lot earlier in the day than normal so I told him to just send me an email and go to bed early. He said he could do that and sure enough as we were leaving the wedding I saw I had an email so I checked it (I fully understand why they call blackberries Crackberries!) and my reaction to the email went a little something like this…

1. GASP

2. OMG

3. Read it again.

4. OMG again

5. Full body shiver of ewwwww Oh Em Ge!!!

6. Laughter, lots of laughter.

This was the email.

(Troop Member) put his flight gear on this morning in the dark and strapped into the aircraft with a Saw-Toothed Viper perched on his magazine pouch by his neck.  Read that one more time for me.  Okay, one MORE time.  You can't make up stories like that.

OMG, I would've destroyed that aircraft getting out of it.  Can you even imagine?

I love this place so much, I think I'll ask to stay for another year...

Love you Doll!
Your now-even-more-paranoid-than-EVER DH.

P.S. - Read that ONE MORE TIME...

I imagine your reaction was similar, right? Now what I want to know is HOW did he find out a snake was mere inches from his neck and HOW did he get it off of him??? So I handle stressful situations beautifully (just ask the boy) so I would have A. crashed and died right then if flying or B. sat in the aircraft completely frozen except for my mouth screaming  hysterically OMG GET IT OFF OF ME I’M GOING TO DIE OMG GET IT OFFFFFFFFF and the snake would have promptly bitten me just so I would shut up. People would probably then thank said snake for shutting me up. See, I handle stress beautifully. This is why Nicholas is a pilot and I’m a stay at home wife.

 

But back to the wedding… I had a great time seeing friends from high school and family friends that I haven’t seen in more years than I can count! This is what I love about small towns, you know people. And you’ve known these people forever. I saw the parents of a girl I was good friends with in HS and got to catch up on how she was doing and find out she had a baby (It’s getting to the point we are some of the few left without a kid or 2 already! SO weird, we are WAY too young for kids! lol) Sometimes living so far from home I feel really isolated from all my friends and family. It was wonderful to actually be home and get to go to something and be a part of it instead of seeing pictures on facebook a few day later.

A few pics….

Summer, Me, and Nikki

With Cayla

My dad doesn’t really do so well with letting you know when he’s taking the picture so the beautiful bride wasn’t smiling. When daddy has the camera just smile the whole time. lol

Bubba and Cayla

T-ball on a Tuesday evening…..

I went to watch N’s little cousins play t-ball today and it was a RIOT. Seriously, if you’ve never watched a t-ball game go, go right now and find a rec center in your area and just go watch. If you don’t laugh you are dead, or you have no sense of humor, either one. I laughed so hard at this game. I mean it’s 3-6 year old playing ball and they pay about thismuch attention to the game. Most of them are trying their best to dig holes in the dirt around the field, one kid was playing catch with their own ball glove in the outfield. One parent yelled at their child “Stop standing there just looking pretty and DO SOMETHING”.  Again, it was a riot. I hope I’ll get a chance to go to another game before I head back to TN. Austin did great in the game but Brent just wasn’t in the mood today and Dana ended up taking him home pretty early in the game. I think he missed his nap and was just worn out. I hate I didn’t get to see him play more, hopefully next time.

A few pics of the kids

The CUTEST little girl I’ve ever seen. I swear I wanted to pick this child up and put her in my pocket she was so tiny and adorable. The T was almost taller than she was and the bat looked huge in her hands. She took at least 5-10 mins each time she went up to bat. So funny.

Austin knocking one out of the park!

And crossing home plate after his home run!

Austin made me laugh so hard, he loves to run fast and has NO problem passing other players in front of him if they are going too slow! He did better the last time he was up to bat and didn’t pass the other players because they had to get onto him about it.

 

I have a couple of videos but it takes a while to upload them so I’ll do that tomorrow. I’m so glad I went to the game and I got to see and have dinner with Grandmama and Tom, that’s always a good time!

The Boy looks good…

Nicholas was finally able to take some pictures for me. He’s just been so busy that carrying the camera around hasn’t been a priority. I understand but it sure is nice to see that face again. He looks so good. You know the last 2 deployments were pretty rough on him and he lost a lot of weight, the last time he was in    A-stan the food was absolutely terrible so he didn’t eat much unless I had sent it to him. This time the food is much better and he works a schedule that he’s able to make it to the chow hall for at least a couple of meals a day. He’s also got quite the tan going from  walking the flight line all day. I keep on him about sun screen but you know the boy is hard headed. ha

I love this one.

He looks good (this is in one of the hangars where they do work on the a/c if they have them pulled apart in a lot of pieces and don’t want them getting covered in sand while all the engine compartments ect are open.

Out on the flight line.

And just for fun, anyone that can figure this out gets a prize! This is posted on the Chow Hall door. We are guessing it’s half English/half whatever language the cooks speak? lol

He’s doing really good though. We are still able to chat everyday for at least a few minutes. Some days he has longer than others and some days the internets is in a better mood than others. It’s a little finicky over there sometimes. He prefers the days that he’s on the ground turning wrenches but he still loves to fly a couple times a week. Keeps him sharp I guess. It makes it easier for me to know that he’s doing so well. I know the same goes for him about how I’m doing. We have been talking more about getting out next year. On the 5th we hit the 1 year mark. That was wonderful because we’ve been waiting on it for so long. I admit I did a bit of a happy dance about it. Yesterday we talked and I think he’s going to extend his ETS date by a month or so because as it’s set now he would get back from over there and in just over a month he would be out, that doesn’t leave us much time to job hunt or get settled and all that. Plus by the time he gets back he’ll have over 2 months of leave that he would loose if he got out on his ETS date. We hate to loose time like that so if the extension works out that would be great. And it would be nice to still get a couple more pay checks while we are wrapping up loose ends! It’s almost strange that all of this is finally becoming a reality and we can start making more solid plans. For so long it’s just been out there and we couldn’t do anything because it was so far away. I’m excited for our future because we’ll be together. Everything else will just have to fall into place.

 

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there. Hope you had a great one! I was able to get a good afternoon nap even though my little black dog wasn’t on board, at one point she was laying on my pillow with her body wrapped around my head breathing in my face. I guess she hasn’t had enough attention lately since I’ve been working everyday. I think she might be spoiled. I could be wrong though….. lol

A beautiful wedding on a hot day…..

My cousin Jared finally got married yesterday! We were beginning to wonder if he and Shellie would ever get around to tying the knot! I’m so happy that I’m not the only married one in the family now and are so happy to have the wonderful addition of Shellie. I know they will be very happy together. Shellie is from a very very large southern family and the wedding was one of the most beautiful and elaborate events I’ve ever seen. You know we are flower people so we had to take pictures of everything! Shellie’s cousin (or Uncle?) from Atlanta did all the flowers and they were incredible. Mama and I did the boutonnieres and Mother’s flowers.

The wedding was held in a little church in their home town and I’m here to tell you it was NOT big enough for all the droves of people that came. By the time the wedding started at 6 the church was completely packed, people were standing in every single open spot you could find and we were told a number of people couldn’t even make it into the church and stood outside. Then we went to Shellie’s parent’s house for the reception and there had to be 500 people there. We were told they had planned for food for 300 and by the time we made it down the line they were almost out of everything and plenty of people were still behind us. I cut the groom’s cake and served almost the entire large 2 layer cake within probably 20 minutes. It was insane.

Now for pictures……

Now that is one good looking family right there! If only the boy wasn’t missing.

Now for some of the other family

With the groom, doesn’t he look handsome!

And with Robby

And with the beautiful Bride. Shellie and Nicholas have never met because Nicholas is ALWAYS deployed when we see her! I followed the lead of some of my friends back home and made a Nicholas on a pencil so he could have a picture with the family.

Oh and did I mention it was HOT, ya’ll it was HOT. So so HOT!!! We were melting. Bless Shellie’s heart!

Nicholas and I at the church before the wedding

Brandon and Cayla

Jared and Shellie, finally married!!! And really happy about it!

Some of the flowers!

The arrangement at the church

The huge arrangement at the reception.

Some of the other smaller arrangements that were all around the tables.

This was over the dance floor, so pretty!!

The bride’s bouquet.

And the cakes!

And because you know Jared is a cotton Dr. (I’m not kidding, he has his PhD in cotton and soybean stuff, no idea what exactly he does but we are super proud of him!)

And last but not least….. Mama and Bubba dancing together!!!!

We had a wonderful time and I could keep on adding more and more pics because I have a TON but I’ll leave it at this for now!