Home Means Nevada

Here is the pictures of us in Caliente. We stopped here first to see friends and family there. I am kind of upset that we didn't get more pictures of the people that we stayed with. I didn't get pictures of Kelli and John, or her parents. And I also missed getting pictures of Beau and his little one!! I just miss them all so much, it would have been nice to have pictures to take home with me. I guess I will just have to get them next time!!

Here is Russ. (aka Russy) getting ready to go swimming. He is going to be such a little heart breaker some day!! And Alex is keeping occupied with my iPad.

It's me and Ally (aka Ally Bug!) I used to change this girls diapers and now look at her! She is a beautiful young lady!! Time just flies!!

Here is Dakota (aka Koda Bear) playing on the DS. I should have gotten a picture of him playing with the iPad. He loved it!! I told Kelli that they should get him one for his birthday lol.

Look at the teenage boredom!! :)

Here is Alex with more of the teenage boredom! I guess that's what you get on hot summer days!

Alex and I took a John's jeep out for a spin one afternoon and really enjoyed seeing the desert and mountains that we miss so much when we are here on the east coast. They sure don't have a lot of dirt roads in Virginia. At least not that I have seen!

This is the only "fast food" place in the ENTIRE county!! No drive-thru though, but we survived. :)

So happy to be home!!

Baby, lets drive!

Jeep Hair!!! hehe

Look at that! This is just gorgeous!! This is right next to the highway as you're leaving Caliente.

Trying to get us both in the shot. And that's little ol' Caliente in the background.

I love Jeeps!! Maybe I will get one someday! There is another shot of Caliente, too.

And there it is, Caliente. And would you believe that is actually the biggest town out of the three that made up my high school??

Waiting on Alex to get gas...

Another restaurant along mainstreet in Caliente. It is actually has a bar attached too.

I was trying to get a shot of the old railroad station as we were driving by. One of my really good friends grew up in a house just behind the old there.

Caliente's main businesses. There is actually a TruValue and a radio shack in there with all those old shops. Looks pretty busy today.

We drove out to Kershaw Ryan state park, but we weren't sure if we would have to pay to drive up there and take pictures. So I just decided to take a quick picture of the beautiful mountains.

My best friend having a good time driving the jeep. He loves driving a manual. When he drove through the water, he was nice enough to go slow that I didn't get covered with muddy water. :)

Home means Nevada, Home means the hills, home means the sage and the pine.......

Videos of Fireworks

Alex didn't realize he was recording with the camera sideways. Oops!

This one goes in and out of focus, but still pretty cool!

Can you see the hearts??

Habor Fest June 2010

In June it turned out that Alex and I had a Saturday off together (which is pretty rare). We started the day off by having a much needed yard sale. Alex helped me put all the stuff in the front yard and after about an hour of that he then promptly fell asleep on the couch in the nice, cool house. (He had duty the night before, so I just let him sleep.) Meanwhile I was melting in the sun trying to get all the stuff sold. By about 2:00pm I was ready to call it quits. We sold about half the stuff out there, ended up with almost 200 dollars and I was sporting a nice sunburn.
The second half of our day did not require nearly as much work and ended up being a lot of fun. We went with Rob and Michelle to Harbor Fest down in Norfolk. Michelle and I thought it would be a good idea to take the motorcycles to get better parking, but we were wrong. (and being wrong is something Michelle and I hardly ever are.) Sitting in traffic, in the sun, on a motorcycle gets very hot and we still had to pay 5 dollars a piece for parking! Grrr....Oh, well...lesson learned I guess. Moving on....
The Festival was pretty crowded but had lots of vendors and music, not to mention really awesome food!! Between the four of us, we munched on some gyros, BBQ sandwiches, freshly squeezed lemonade which were all overly priced, of course. Alex's favorite was the roasted nuts with cinnamon and sugar on them. YUM! Here are some pictures about the rest of the stuff that we got to see and experience....

THE FIREWORKS WERE AWESOME!!! Probably one of the best I have ever seen!! They had heart-shaped ones, smile-faced ones, tons of colors and they were all choreographed almost perfectly to music. I have some videos that I am also going to upload that shows the fireworks a little bit better.

I think this one was near the grand finale!

I wish this picture had turned out a little better. The fireworks shot up into the air and then into the water. They rose to the surface of the water and started burning on the water!! While this was going on, they were play "Smoke on the Water" Pretty cool, huh?

I added this pic to the blog in the wrong spot, but can't figure out how to move it. But anyway, here is Alex, me, Michelle, and Rob standing in from of one of the cool boats in the Harbor.

All of the pics would probably be a lot better if it weren't for that stupid flag in the way!! I we tried to get move around it a little bit, but it was really frustrating!!

Waiting for the fireworks to start! Alex was telling me that when he was a kid he was afraid of fireworks because he was afraid they were going to fall out of the sky on him. I didn't put the pics on here, but we have pictures of ourselves covered in ashes and pieces of fireworks after the show. I guess Alex really did have reason to be scared :)

Another one of the boats parked at the Harbor.

I was so tempted to run over there and get wet just so that I could cool down! Those kids really had the right idea!

Very pretty sunset sky at the Harbor!

Proud to be an American!

If you look really close, you can see the GPS system.

Hey, a guy can dream, right????

Visitors in May

My older sister Chere came to visit for a couple weeks in May. SO I got to spoil my niece and nephew!! Here are some pics of us hanging around and going to the park. They were just so full of energy!!

Aunt Sarah is trying to play with Grant on the playground equipment. What was she thinking???

"mmmmm.....this could taste yummy!!"

Such a little monkey!!

"Whoa, Whoa! Be Careful!!"

Look at that Grin! He is just too cute!!

Grant was just happy to have room to run around. He really didn't care about all the play equipment at first.

Little Ally just swinging her cares away! :)

Can you say CHEESE!!!

Snack time! That face is just so lovable!!

Catching Up!

A LOT happened in June so I am going to have to do a few post to get caught up! We went to Nevada, went to Harbor Fest, and there are some more interesting events and quite a few pictures. It will all be coming soon! BE PREPARED! :D

Funny Story

So last night I am sitting in the computer chair paying some bills when Alex walks up behind me. I am busily getting our finances straight so I don't really pay attention when Alex tries to feed me something. We share snacks and treats all the time, so I open my mouth willingly only to have a VERY disgusting DOG TREAT placed between my lips!!!! GROSS!!! I spit it right out before I actually took a nibble. Alex almost cried he was laughing so hard! What a BUTTHEAD!! But what can I say, I love him nonetheless. :)

May 2010

I am surprised that I haven't posted anything this month, but on the other hand our day-to-day routines aren't really "blog" worthy and we aren't really exciting people to be completely honest. There have been a few "big" things happen this month that I want to mention and write about though. Just sort of summarize.....
First of all, Alex left on the 10th for sea trials, or work-ups, or whatever you call them and had to be gone almost the rest of the month. This was pretty hard on both of us and it is really making us think about making the military a career. I know it is kind of pathetic because it wasn't even a full three weeks and there are a lot of families who do it for a year or more at a time. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it also hurts a lot. I guess we will have to see how it plays out this summer as he has to be gone more and maybe we can grow more accustomed to it, but it really was an eye-opener for us. He came home for a night on the 28th and had to go back again on the 29th, but having him home even just that one night brought the smiles back into my heart. It was wonderful just have him dreaming his dreams right next to me. I really did miss my friend but he won't have to be gone again for that long til July, thank goodness!!!
So moving on to one exciting thing that happened this month was my birthday!! (unfortunately Alex had to miss that) I am now 24 years young!! When I have sat back and looked at how my life has played out so far, there are some things that I had wanted to accomplish by now, like having my nursing degree finished, or having a couple kiddos. But even with that, I can look at my life now and say that I am TRULY and completely happy with my life and the direction that I am heading. I haven't always been able to say that, but I can say it now. I hope that the next year of my life continues in growth and love and I can look back at 25 and say the same thing. I am blessed.
A couple other things that have broken up our day-to-day routines are that my sister and my niece and nephew have come to visit and has ended up staying for a couple of weeks. Being able to spend time with my niece and nephew has been a joy. But it has had it's challenges since I received all of my stuff that was sitting in storage in Alabama for two years. So I have two houses in one at this point. It has been kind of a stress to have such clutter in my house, but it's unavoidable right now. We plan to sell 90% of it and use the money to help fix up the house. Once all this stuff gets out of here, I will be breathing easier again.
Well, that about sums it up for the month of May. I guess we will see you in June!! Happy Memorial day everyone!!