Ahhh warmth!

It’s sunny and 58* today. I have all the windows open and actually sweated a little while cleaning out the car. You know that that means? It means that it’s been TOO COLD for me to actually consider 58* warm! I even had on flip flops! I spent the day cleaning house and mopping, I’ve been putting that off since it’s been so wet that the dogs were just tracking yuck and mud right back into the house. At the moment the 10 weather isn’t showing any snow and I have my fingers crossed that it stays that way! I’m very tired of the snow. It is suppose to cool back down so I’m going to enjoy this warm weather as much as I can!

 

I’m also very excited that tomorrow is the last day of January!! I’ve been waiting for this day for a while! At this point it’s very unlikely that Nicholas will be home in Feb but at least he will be heading home in Feb and that’s all that matters to me. We still don’t have any dates but when we do I’ll email everyone. Right now he’s just trying to get everything packed up and ready to go. He will be moving into the tents around the middle of Feb and from that point on he will not have internet access unless he has time to use the computer at work. Thing is he will have to fight everyone else in the troop for time to use the computer so I’m not expecting much communication in the last couple of weeks of this deployment. At least when he gets home this time we will be completely done! I can’t wait. Thank God Feb is a short month!

Snow

Again. Don’t I sound excited? I’m not. The dogs and I are SO over it. I’d be thrilled if this was the last time we saw snow this year but I don’t think that’s likely since we generally get the big snow storms in Feb here. As it is this year the kids have used and exceeded all their snow days and now they are starting to add time to the school day.

Ki can run! She just usually chooses not to.

Pooh went over and stood under Sharon’s deck because she would be out of the snow. lol

Snow on the top of the car. This was what I couldn’t reach after I cleaned the rest off. I’m REALLY glad I finally bought a brush/scrapper thing this year. I’ve used it a few times now.

View from the front of the neighborhood.

The adventure continues….

I ended up spending a great few days in south Texas meeting Mari’s family and friends. I met Brianna when she and Mari picked me up from the airport and on Tues we had lunch with her again and then went out to her house so I could see her animals. She has 3 horses, 3 miniature horses, and a miniature donkey! I didn’t even know that donkeys came in minis! She also has 6 dogs, 2 cats, and a bunny.

He gives kisses and he’s VERY muddy because they’ve had a lot of rain and he likes to play in the mud.

Muscles the mini donkey!

Mari and Brianna. They were in a car accident in high school and due to a parts malfunction in the car there was a fire and Brianna lost her lower legs.  She is in school to get her masters in counseling and works for a company that does horse therapy with disabled children. She loves her job and loves her animals.

“Got anymore treats?????”

And since I’m showing you animals, this is Gadget! She’s Mari’s sister’s wienie and she’s a wild child!

This is the picture pose.

 

 

On Wed we went to the movies  at a theater that serves food during the movie. Coolest thing EVER! Every city should have one of these! They have a little table infront of the chairs and when you get to the movie you look at the menu and write your order down on a little piece of paper and stand it up so the server sees it. During the movie if you need a refill on your drink you just stand the paper up again and they will get you the refill without bothering you. They also have a bar and serve drinks along with the food.

Mari’s sister Mallorie came down from Austin to spend the afternoon with us so after the movie we went to the mall and did some window shopping. What’s a day at the mall without silly hats!

 

We started the drive back to TN on Thursday with the plan of staying overnight in Texarkana, TX which is the half way point of the 16 hour drive. As we were packing up we started getting texts and calls from our friends back home letting us know that a snow storm was heading that way. We decided to go ahead and start the drive and if the weather did end up getting bad we would just stay in Texarkana another night and at least we would be half way home. By the time we made it to our hotel we knew that we would probably be staying there 2 nights so we were sure to check out the movie and shopping options off the interstate! We ordered a pizza for dinner because we were tired from being on the road so long and after we got it we realized there wasn’t a fridge in the room so we put the pizza in the trunk of the car! It was cold enough that at 5:30 on Fri night when we went to reheat the leftovers it was still almost frozen.

We googled outlet malls in the area and found that there was an outlet mall and we were excited! We put the address in the GPS and headed out on Fri morning to check out the shopping. This is what we found.

Not exactly what we were looking for. We made sure to lock the doors and head back to a less sketchy part of town! hahaha That’s just our luck! We went to grab lunch and once again proved just how alike we are by ordering the same meal. It was really good.

I don’t have many pictures from the drive because ya’ll Tx and Arkansas are BORING!!! I did take pictures of a few things along the way.

Downtown Austin.

 

Baylor University, this is where Mallorie went to college. It was really pretty from the road.

We stopped at Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ to pick up some sauce for Steve 2 and took this picture while we were there.

And then there was this. I’m not really sure what this place was but I took a few pictures so you can get the full view of it.

I’m really glad we decided to wait and make the rest of the drive on Sat when the temps warmed up because we stopped between Little Rock and Memphis and when we went inside to grab more water we overheard the locals talking about how around 40 miles of the interstate had been shut down for about 6 hours on Friday because of thick ice and 3 tractor trailers had flipped and it had been a huge mess. There was a good bit of snow still left in the shady spots on the sides of the road. By the time we made it back home the snow had really melted down and then the rest of it melted off today. There is a chance we’ll get more tonight and tomorrow so we’ll see what happens. I’m pretty tired of all this cold and wet!

San Antonio

I lied, I didn’t layover in Houston, I was in Dallas. HA! I’m not sure how I messed that one up but yeah, I was in Dallas for an hour and a half on Sunday. After Mari and her friend Bree picked me up we went out for Tex-Mex to introduce me to the area! It was pretty good. Home make tortilla’s are the best things EVER!!!

Today we went to Downtown San Antonio and Mari and her parents showed me what it’s like to be a Mexican here. lol We went the the Mercado which is a little shopping center with a lot of little stores and we got some Mexican candy and a Watermellon drink that was really good. Then for dinner we ate at Mi Tierra (My Land) and had some real Mexican food and even had a Mariachi Band sing for us! After that we went to a little bakery called a Pan Duelce which means Sweet Bread Shop. We haven’t eaten any of the yummies we picked up yet but we got 2 bags of food for $9! So cheap!!

In all of that we also went to the Alamo to take pictures. It wasn’t open today so we couldn’t go in but we did get good pictures!

During the flight to Dallas

The Catholic Church in Mari’s hometown where she and Brandon got married. It was absolutely beautiful inside.

We had our picture taken at the Market and it was hysterical! He let us take one with our camera to send the boys.

The Alamo

A random building that I thought was pretty.

Mari’s parents!

Us with the band!

Planes, Planes, and Automobiles

Tomorrow I’ll be boarding a plane (all alone for the first time!) bound for Tx. I’ll land in Houston where I’ll have a layover then on to my final destination of San Antonio! I’m going to spend a couple of days with Mari’s family sight seeing around historic San Antonio. We plan to take a picture in front of the Alamo. On Wed we plan to start the road trip back home and split the drive up into 2 days. I just don’t think I can stand being in a car for 16 straight hours of driving. The girls will be staying with Sharon but I know Ki is going to be VERY upset with me when I leave. They’ve both been eyeing me while I’ve been packing so they know something is going on and they are expecting to be a part of it. I don’t think Ki would handle the flight very well though so she will be better staying home. I don’t think Pooh is going to care all that much either way. She’s much more go with the flow than her sister.

I’ll be back with plenty of pictures and there is a chance of videos. We’ll have to see how those turn out.

Snow and Stop Mail

We have snow now! Not too much thankfully and the roads were good when I went out this afternoon so it’s not bothering me too much. I wish it would warm up a little bit though.

I actually bought a scrapper and that came in handy when I was ready to run to the store today. There was a nice layer of ice on the car under the snow so it was nice to scrap it off right quick instead of waiting on it to all defrost. It was also nice to leave the house for the first time in days. I’m ready to be completely over this crud that seems to be holding onto my head. My ears are still very stopped up and painful so on my short trip out today I made sure to wear a hat that covered them.

 

Just a reminder that we are *quickly* coming up on Nicholas’ Stop Mail date so it would be best not to send anything else out. He will be moving into a tent in the next couple of weeks (which is NO fun for him but one step closer to coming home) so he will have very limited space and that means no room for extra stuff. He hasn’t really needed anything in a while so he should be good for the rest of the deployment. We’re both very excited about that!! The end will be here soon! Another thing, once he’s in the tents there is a good chance that he won’t have internet access like he does now so all communication will be limited. I’m not thrilled about that at all because I’ve gotten very used to talking to my boy every day but he reminded me that the same thing happened last deployment. I told him that I had obviously blocked that out all together! Hopefully Feb will be such a busy month that it will fly by and the lace of communication won’t be that bad.

Ice

We were expecting a big snow storm last night and when I got up this morning…… barely half an inch of snow out there! I won’t say I’m sad because I’m pretty over the cold and snow but it was a surprise. This afternoon I stuck my head out the door to look at the deck and noticed what looked like a lot of ice in Sharon’s yard. I put on my snow boots and grabbed my jacket and hat to go check it out. Sharon had a timer on the faucet in her back yard and she forgot to turn off the water and it froze and busted sending a nice spray into her yard which froze. We aren’t sure how long it had been spraying but the yard looked really cool!

One blade of grass with ice on it.

So that was my excitement for the day. We are suppose to get more snow tonight and tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully it won’t be very much. And hopefully we’ll get all the big snows out of the way this month and next month will be nice and clear so that no one has to deal with delayed homecomings. That would be terrible.

Busy, then a little lazy, then a lot sick.

I headed home on Monday after dealing with sick dogs on Sat night and Sunday. Needless to say they’ll never get another large ham bone for the rest of their lives. Ugh, I am not a fan of puke at all and Pooh was just pitiful. Once I got home I started cleaning because somehow the house was a complete mess, probably because I didn’t do a whole lot of cleaning for the whole month of Dec. I spent Tues and Wed cleaning and organizing so I could put some stuff in the attic to get it out of the way. Then on Thurs the crud started hitting me. I went to the urgent care last night and I have infections in both ears and some chest crud. I am feeling better today than I have for the last 2 so that’s good. I really hate being sick.

I never put up a picture of my outside decorations before Christmas so I took a picture the other night when I got home. I’m really a big fan of the colored lights and big bulbs lately. Usually we do all white lights outside but the lights we’ve been using for the last few years decided the was the year they wanted to die so I had to go get something new. I love it.

 

A close up

I also got a GREAT picture of Santa’s bug and reindeer when I was in GA this time. I thought he usually did the bug in red but I could be wrong and green is a nice change!

That’s about all I have going on. Nicholas asked me what I had been doing for the last couple of days and I said I was holding the sofa and bed down like it’s my job. I’m hoping I’m feeling a lot better in the next couple of days because I have stuff to do!

Oh and I’ll throw this one up here because I forgot to add it before Christmas. Mama actually got a picture with all 3 of us looking at the camera, very rare!!