update

well damn, i had this whole nice intro typed up and when i went to upload my pictures, it disappeared. so i'll do my best to recap:

day 1 of the trip found me arriving in jacksonville excited and unscathed. i picked up my luggage and the rental car and braved the innaugural journey of the garmin to find my way to mayport naval station. it was my first time on a naval station and was pretty amazing. the dock was across the road from the little airport and while i was waiting for his plane to come in, i stared with mouth agape at the massive ships - it was pretty amazing! (however i thought it best not to take pictures of the US fleet while on a naval station... besides, i didnt have a camera) so suffice it to say that it's way cooler to see big ships in person than on a movie.

so charles arrived with a blue shirt on, horay! color! and his hair had grown out and was fixed. i had seen this before on a webcam but the effect in person was rather enjoyable. his friend carmen had helped him select a wardrobe for my pleasure:

so from the naval station, we went on to st. augustine, which was a little less than an hour's drive. i should say now - the entire time we were in florida, it was about 85 degrees and completely perfect. not much about the week could have been improved.

our hotel in st. augustine was not at all nice, but thats ok. i didnt much care considering that my husband was there with me.

we found a pretty tasty seafood place, as recommended by the hotel clerk, down the street from the room and then proceeded to the grocery and liquor stores to buy supplies. we were both very much looking forward to a completely relaxed week alone and so it was.

day 2 was a sunday. of all the times for the garmin to fail me, it was in finding the church... or perhaps masstimes.org failed me, i'm not sure. either way, i was not able to find the cathedral, or any other operating church, to go to mass. i did however find the shrine to Our Lady of la Leche, which confused me, as that translates to "our lady of milk". but i found a pamphlet that explained that it is more meant as a shrine to the family, which is pretty awesome, considering that objective #1 is baby making. i was elated and we took the morning to walk around this beautiful area and pray in the chapel and light a candle. (i'll let you know if it worked)

near all the little corner gardens and statues, instead of having rocks, there were sea shells. i was entertained.

we then walked around to some snazzy fort thing. st. augustine, being one of the oldest established cities in the US, has naturally one of the oldest places for battle. this fort was used to defend the US (or rather, the colony that was florida) against french invaders.

they had some period dressers doing muskett shooting, but this little boy was in the mix somehow with his parents wildly taking photos, it was pretty cute.

being a national monument, there was a park ranger - much to charles' entertainment.

we did eventually find the cathedral:

after roaming around the historic part of st. augustine for a while, we werent ready to go back to our nasty hotel room just yet so we just drove around town. on accident, i missed the drive a strip mall and ended up in a questionable residential area. i got half way down the street (passing the entire neighborhood of people who were outside working on a monster truck on blocks) before i discovered that it was a dead end street. not wanting to appear foolish in front of people we would never lay eyes on again, we pulled into the last house, which was conveniently for sale, and decided to pretend like we were going to buy it.. so we had to take a picture of our house. :)

so yes, the next day we drove into orlando, which was interesting. florida drivers kinda suck. turn signals mean nothing! but anyway, this was our hotel at disney world: the coronado springs resort. quite amazing. i should say, this picture captures about 1/8th of the hotel.

and since we had to wait a rediculously long time before our room was ready, we decided to blow off some steam at the lakeside bar. eventually we gave up on waiting for our room at the bar (it was getting expensive) and decided to spend the evening at epcot.

so yes, i will finish with disney pictures when i have access to the computer upstairs. in the mean time, i hope you have been sufficiently entertained. :)

almost reunion time!

so yes, i find myself finally facing "normal" life again with Charles in less than a week. i dont know that it's 100% hit me, mostly i'm just excited to see him and go on our trip and excited to begin the re-adjustment period. i went through a pretty stressful nervous spell relating to the "re-deployment", as it's called - but now i'm just at the point of "let's just do it and get it over with!" i am eternally thankful that he is so level-headed and calm, he politely lets me have a freak out and then reminds me that it is pointless to stress over things that cannot be controlled. we have really grown in our communication most of all in the last year, so i am very much hoping it will continue so well to the benefit of our marriage in person! i dont see how it wouldnt, but who knows. i'm sure there will be plenty of difficult things to muddle through as we try and figure out how to live together again. i plan to just go one day at a time and see how that works out. it sure will be nice to talk to him again though. we talk on the phone, and that's awesome, but it will be so great to experience things with him and be able to talk to him about it right then and there. side note: he has been giving me a lot of crap about talking to the dog.. yes, i realize she's just a dog, but when there's no one else to talk to immediately when you have something to say, you might as well talk to the dog! she looks at me and if i use the right tone of voice, she jumps excitedly as though she knows what i'm talking about and it brings her equal joy, but that's the extent of our "conversations". i forsee this being a point of contension in the near future because there were several times when he was home in october when i heard "who are you talking to?! quit talking to the dog!" :)
ok, so yes, our vacation will be pretty awesome and i'll be sure to take pictures and update this here bloggity thing when i return. my flight leaves saturday morning at 7 something and i get into jacksonville at 1:55, his plane lands at 4 something, so it should work out well to get my luggage, pick up the car, and then i rely on the trusty Garmin to get me to the naval station... never used the garmin, should be interesting. i have the addresses all programed in, so yea... might be fun.

my latest creative endeavors

a diaper cake (something i've recently learned how to do) that I made for my new friend Evelin's baby shower a month or so ago.


a blanket i whipped up for one of mom's coworkers. he is the first person to ever actually request a "michelle blanket", so i couldnt let him down. :)



and here is Evelin's blanket.

blankets still left to do:
i'm about 2/3 done with Claire's and then i will start one for another friend of the family's grandson (the 2nd person to request a blanket!). this baby wasnt due until May so i thought i had plenty of time, but he was actually the first to come out, a couple month's early... he's doing ok but still having issues.