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!

So what do you say about 6 years together……

I’ve thought a lot about what I wanted to say about our anniversary and it all seems so inadequate to describe what our life together is like, or maybe I should say our life together and apart since we are apart as much as we are together. Either way, it’s been a very interesting life for us.

We went from oh so innocent with no clue of the things we would go though…

 

To a little older and a lot wiser….

Our 5th Anniversary

And at Disney in December

 

We’ve changed a lot. Boy have we changed. We we so young and still had so much growing up to do, but we’ve beat a lot of statistics already. Not only did we get married young we’ve stayed married though 2 years of deployments and months of other Army dictated separations. Unfortunately in this lifestyle that’s the exception and not the rule. We grew together, we worked hard to build our relationship during the times apart. We learned what was worth arguing about and what was best to let roll. We started out screaming at each other while working on the simplest project to building beautiful furniture together without a single argument much less a raise voice. Maybe we would have reached that point sooner if we had been together all of the last 6 years but I don’t think so. When you are together all the time it’s easy to start taking everything for granted. We know how important out time together is because of our time apart. We cherish the time we spend working together in the garage or just sitting together in the same room.

I am so lucky to have a fantastic husband who puts me first, who puts US, puts our marriage first in his life. I’m so so lucky. I have a husband who does the dishes and cleans house and takes care of me, he always takes care of me. I have never had to question his love for me or if he will always be there for me. I know without doubt that he is my other half. 

So Happy Anniversary Babe. Hopefully we’ll break tradition and spend number 8 together!

Our first anniversary.

Chairs….

Are actually pretty easy to build when you have a plan. After we built the table we’ve been waiting to build chairs until after we had a plan for chairs. Ana (knock off wood) finally posted a plan for chairs and I got to work. Tomorrow I’m having 7 people over for dinner and I have only have 4 chairs, I had a problem!
The plans call for 2x2’s for the structure but the 2x2’s at Lowes and Home Depot looked terrible so I left a comment for Ana and she wrote me back in just a few minutes suggesting gluing 2 1x2’s together! Excellent idea! I headed back to Home Depot this morning and got all the extra wood. So far I’ve spent around $80 to make 3 chairs and I still have a good bit of wood left. Using the Kreg Jig to make pocket holes…. well it’s just plain awesome. I love that thing. One day I’d like to upgrade to the professional one because it will make things a little faster. I did buy one of the Kreg clamps for this project and that is a lot easier than screwing the jig to the wood every time I need to make a pocket hole.
The wood cut and pocket holed for 2 chairs.

Using the jig makes A LOT of saw dust! The garage is a mess! Don’t you love our “saw horses”. One day we’ll get around to getting more stable and sturdy ones.

Front of chair (I made this last night with the 2x2’s before I went to buy the 1x2’s this morning. I just didn’t take pics again today)

Back of chair

Without the back rest.

With the backs but no seats.



I’m going to cushion and cover the seats but I don’t have the time to do all of that before tomorrow so right now I’m using whatever scrap wood I had to make the seat and I’m going to put a towel over the seats so we don’t end up with splinters in out butts! That would be no fun for anyone!!! Since I’m going to change the seats I didn’t put the extra support in the inside corners of the seats, I figured they would be good for 1 night with out them.

When I get back from my time in GA I’ll sand and stain them. They are a little rough around the edges in some spots right now. When I’m done they will be the same Dark Walnut as the table.
I started working on  the chairs at 12:30, I already had the all the wood but the front and back legs cut for 1 chair at that point. I finished them and walked back inside at 5:10. So I don’t think that was too bad. It would have been a lot quicker if the boy had been home so one of us could have worked on pocket holes while the other cut wood.

Good fences make good neighbors take 2

OK, I threw those pictures up right quick so N could see them when he was online. Sharon is my back yard neighbor and she's awesome! We have a lot in common (NO kids) and we both have 2 dogs. Her pups are Sam and Hailey. I kept them one weekend when she was gone to a wedding and my girls had the best time with them. I was surprised because usually Pooh gets tired of other dogs being around pretty quickly. The morning Sharon came to get them Pooh ran back to the fence and waited for them to come outside. It was so sweet. We had joked about putting in a gate so we could just walk back and forth across the back yards and seeing how well the kids all got along sealed the deal!! I picked up the gate hinges at Lowes and on Sunday we (I) started working. Sharon has never really used any power tools and didn't really know what I was going to do or how I planned to do it so she was there for great moral support! I put the hinges on her side of the fence first then went around to my side of the yard and put up the 2x4 to support the middle part of the fence then used a 2x6 we had in the garage for the cross support on the door. Getting the right angles cut was a little tricky and I hate using a skill saw but sometimes you just have to work with what you got. After I had the cross braces in place it was time to cut the gate free. I used the jig saw to cut through the 2x4s and the gate was open!!! Our yards slop a good bit so we had to dig out an area for the gate to swing into Sharon's yard. That took about an hour and now it's wide open for the dogs to run back and forth. And speak of the devil, Hailey just walked in my dog door. ;) Oh and not to be left out there comes Sam.

The pups all playing

Sam very happy he can come play with our toys.

Sam and Hailey running. I’m sure Pooh wasn’t far behind them.

Pooh upset that the gate blew shut. She kept standing there waiting for it to blow back open.

Kiowa enjoying the beautiful day.

Pooh being cute.

And this has been a beautiful Spring!! Big difference between this

And this