BEACH!

Thursday - Nov 11th

           On Veterans day, Steven got the day off so we decided to make something of it and go to the beach with Charlie, it was alot of fun, and we are pretty sure it was his first time lol. he didn't know what to make of the water, I really wish i had gotten a video of his reaction it was priceless. The water is a little cold now so we spent most of the time just walking to the pier and back, (with my shoes off of course) . Steven and i also took turns running with Charlie, we found out he really likes to run! alot. by the time we got back in the car he was dead tired and asleep within about 5 min, and not to break tradition we went to Dairy Queen and got blizzards, we usually get ice cream every time we go to the beach. It was an awesome way to top off a day off with awesome weather, I didn't get any good pics of this but when we got back the dog also got a bath, it was pretty funny. 

Birthday Party!

Nov 9th 2010


Tuesday night we went to the USMC Birthday Ball. This year commemorates the 235th birthday since the corps was founded in 1775 in Tun Tavern (a bar of all places). Its a pretty big thing each year, well for us ladies anyway, it gives us all a chance to dress up and get pretty, and the guys to wear their dress blues. They have a nice ceremony with a guest of honor and a speech, with cake and dinner, and of course dancing :) here are a couple pics, they had the lights dimmed so it was a little hard to get to many good ones. 

CHARLIE!

All right, I guess some of you have been wanting to know about our new dog, His name is Charlie and he is a beagle, we got him from the Buddy Center in Castle Rock, where he was transfered from the Dumb Friends League in Denver. For some reason he was on the list of dogs that had been there the longest.. which I don't understand he is a pretty great dog, we haven't had any real problems with him at all! well except he thinks he is allowed to lay on my new black couch and use our little throw pillows like they were meant for him, but you can't blame him there, I just put a blanket on the spot he likes to lay, And I am convinced that he likes Steven more than me :P .

Pretty much before we got married I have been bugging Steven about getting a puppy, Now that we finally have a house where we are allowed dogs, they tell us no puppies, grrr. but it makes it a little easier, no potty training needed whew! Charlie is around 8 years old, ya he is kinda an old dog, but sometimes he seems old and sometimes he has more energy than he knows what to do with. He is perfect for us, he doesn't bark or whine, he likes to play, and will go on walks with me :)

He even made the whole drive back from NC just fine, although he found some pretty interesting ways to sleep... and he did manage to get in to our snack food and eat a whole bag of beef jerky that mad him smell great let me tell ya. haha.
I am working on training him better now, all he knows at the moment is how to beg, which is pretty darn cute, but he needs to learn to not beg, and maybe sit, stay, lay down,... you know the basics. which might take a while, he is lacking in the smarts area...

Road Trip

OCT 25th - ...... 

Now that we have covered vacation its time to go home! well as much as North Carolina can be considered home anyway. now that we have gotten settled in it feels a little more like home. As for now wherever Steven takes me will be my home. 

Day 1 - 

     The plan was to start our drive back to NC on Monday morning whenever we woke up, and packed the car, because Steven decided to buy a new truck on our trip we ended up renting a trailer from U-Haul to tow my Jeep back behind the Truck, so we had plenty of space to just pack the Jeep full of stuff and not worry about room in the truck, that made me happy :). Any way for some reason i felt the need to pack on Sunday night after we got back to my parents house which was pretty late. And being the nice husband that Steven is he packed up all my stuff (i have alot of stuff) instead of going to bed early. I think that was a good feeling on my part because Monday morning was COLD!!! and frosty, no complaints though :) its a nice change from the warm sunny winters they have out here in NC. 

Day 2 - 

        Surprisingly we woke up pretty early and were on the road by about 8 am. We had a great start and the drive was pretty nice too. (at least for me, Steven drove the whole way) He didn't complain either. Well until we got closer to the   Missouri line.. when Steven decided to tell me that he was still on vacation and he was going to do what he wanted.. and he wanted to go to Nauvoo.. First of all i had no idea what Nauvoo was and it was about 3 hours out of the way and it was already getting dark outside. So after my constant grumpiness for about an hour, we... (he) decided to stop for the night a little ways out of Kansas City and finish the drive to Nauvoo in the morning :) 

So we drove the next 2 hours to Nauvoo Tuesday morning and i actually ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Most of you already know what it is and what not, but for the very few of you who don't, its an old historical town just across the Missouri State line where the LDS settled after fleeing from the mob people who wanted to kill them. The town was pretty neat, they show you how they made bricks, food, bread, how they lived, how they made the wagons and the blacksmith shop, and we even got to see the home of the man who started brownings firearms. and where he made his first guns. 

It would have been nice to stay a little longer than just a couple hours but it was really cold and windy that day and we needed to get back on the road. So we got back on the road and crossed a few more state lines, and i of course had to insist Steven try to slow down at least a little so i can get  pictures haha. I got some pics but they aren't the best, we decided to stop for our second night in a small town Columbus Indiana, because we didn't want to stay in Kentucky like last time. for some reason every motel we passed in Kentucky looked gross. 

Day 3- 

     Yay! its day 3 only one more days drive and we should make it home by tonight! well maybe... not to far out of Columbus, I was on the phone with my mom but Steven noticed a funny noise from his back tires and someone in another car pointing at the trailer.. uh oh.. We pulled off on to an off ramp and found out that our back tire on the trailer had been completely shredded. So Steven spent the next half hour on the phone talking to some lady with U-Haul who seemed to know absolutely nothing. Finally they got a man to come and bring us a replacement tire, we would have fixed it ourselves but they don't have spare tires on their trailers.. maybe something they should learn in the future? and back on the road again! It only took about an hour and a half off our drive time. After a few gas/bathroom/food stops we finally made it to North Carolina yay! sadly my picure didn't turn out to well because it was raining. But we did make it home in only 3 days at about 10:30 PM. at which point i was ready to just crawl in bed but Steven was running off caffeine and candy, so he insisted on taking my Jeep off the trailer that night and unloading some of our stuff, (not all of it that would take forever). 

The Road signs are in order. we went thru Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and finally North Carolina 

Family

I'm trying to keep the past month in order so unfortunately I am still in the month of October and trying to catch up on the Colorado trip.
October  13-24th
The rest of our trip after Glenwood we spent with family. The majority of the time we spent at Mama Jo's house, aka Steven's mom. Thanks for putting us up! We really enjoyed our visit, we got to spend time with most of the family and all of the immediate family, Mom and Kirk, Dad,  Brian and Mellissa, Becky and Andrew, April and Dan, Mikel, Greg, Sara, David, and Savanna. Along with all our nieces and nephews. Annika, Sharlynne, Taren, Caden,Adaiah, Denver, and Elizabeth. Stevens Grandparents even came down from Idaho to see him, it was a really nice time.
 During that Time we also went to Chucky Cheese with Stevens Dad and the family, Steven got addicted to a maze game and was pretty much the only game he played the whole time we were there, after everyone turned in their tickets we had over 3,000 tickets, which was enough to get all the kids something that they wanted.
A couple days before we left, we took a trip to the Flea Market and walked around, it was a new experience for me because all of these years living in Co and i had never been to the flea market. It was fun we got to spend more time with family and look around at some of the neat things they have there.
Oh and I cant forget to mention the dinner we went to with Stevens Dad and brother Mikel, we went to Landry's seafood restaurant where they have an endless crab legs day. The funny thing is when Steven and his brothers get together it turns more in to competition so during dinner they were racing to see who could eat the most, In the end they ended up eating about 7 lbs each! thats alot of Crab.
Finally the Last Sunday in Co we spent at Stevens Dad's house, we had a mini football party with a bunch of food and family. After all the disappointment of the game, we still had a pretty good time. We didn't let the Broncos horrible game plan ruin our last day with the fam. I was mostly doing homework during the game so it didn't bother me much, but i did manage to fit a pie or two in there, the only sad thing from the trip is that my pies didn't cool off in time to eat before Brian and the families started going back home : ( .  

The pictures are of family from the trip not necessarily in any order, the picture in the top right with Becky, April, Sara and David, is a picture of them making this blog for me :) . The bottom right picture is one of my favorites because it really does give that family like feeling, they were all singing along as Mama Jo played the piano before church on Sunday morning.