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.

once again killing time at work

It's Friday and the boss is gone for the day, also part of our computer network has gone down for the day and we can't access our important files. I've done about all i can do for the day until they fix the problem... sooooo here i sit.

Here are some random pictures that i have on my work computer:




good ol' Cameron is back in Italy now after his brief stint in Qatar.
this is Claudia, she's the secretary at work and is a dear friend of mine. here she poses with a deep fried candy bar at the state fair. she and her husband are from miami and so we are all working together to turn her into a midwesterner. just so you know, the candy bar is deliciously disgusting - try it at your own risk.



here is joe (claudia's husband who used to work here but now does not), myself, and christina (who does work here). we pose in front of the cow which had just given birth 2 hrs before. claudia was mesmerized by the cow placenta hanging out of it's butt, as evident from the photo below. she just came in here and when i told her what i was doing she insisted that the cow placenta picture be included for everyone's enjoyment. notice that the rest of us are decidedly turning away from the cow butt.


and this is just a cool picture of wichita that charles' friend matt sent me a couple weeks ago. home sweet home.

well hello

so i havent written anything in a while, mainly because nothing is going on worth telling. i get to see my wonderful husband 4 weeks from today and anticipation is definitely building. it occured to me this week that i now have only 4 weekends to clean the house until he gets here, so that is my current focus. i have a huge running list of my random tasks, i.e. cleaning the baseboards and taking down the light fixtures and cleaning them. i can promise that he will not notice those things, and that is fine, but not only will it keep me occupied while i'm at home but it will make me feel all warm and squishy knowing that the house looks it's absolute best when he sees it again. however, right now, it does NOT. so there is much to be done.
crochet update: i finished the blanket for my friend evelin. i threw her a baby shower last weekend and mom came up for it also. it went well and she had a really good turnout. she is due march 5 and her husband comes home february 21, but if the baby arrives before he does, i'm it. plus, she has also put my name down to be one of the only people (other than her husband) allowed in the delivery room. she wants me there regardless, although i plan to discuss it further when her husband arrives because i know if it were me, i would NOT want a friend in there if i could have my husband. so we'll see. either way, it is clear that considering that i've only known her for about 4 months, we are pretty close now. so yes, i still have a blanket to make (which i've started at least) for mom's coworker and the blanket for little Claire (also started) and then a blanket for a friend of the family who happend to be born 3 months early last weekend. perhaps if i can make lots of progress on the house today i can crochet most of tomorrow, that would be very productive of me.
work is about the same, getting busier. my boss has put the flaming cattle prod to my back side and has requested that for each month i plan one outside event for kids, one for adults, and one contest - at least. and all these i must do at least 3 months in advance. this is fine though, fairly easy and i like to do it, just keeps me busier at work, so all in all, i think it's good. work has been the slowest block of time to pass so i'm glad to be a bit more busy. just between now and when i meet charles i have at least 2 big events to do, so thats good.
well ok, i will post some pictures of random things and the baby shower whenever i can remember to bring my camera upstairs.

fun with photos

not so much wanting to work

were you to pass by my office right now, you might assume that i am busy dilligently writing an article or working on a proposal for my current marketing event project. such a wrong assumption... alas, i am rambling aimlessly on my lovely blog. as usual, there is not much to report in my life. just over 7 weeks until i can wrap myself around my husband, that's good! i will fly to jacksonville, fl., pick up our rental car, and then tempt my fate on the inagural trip of the GPS as i wander aimlessly in a new city trying to find the naval base at which i will pick up my extremely good looking husband from the airport. from there we will again rely upon the trusty Garmin as we make our way to st. augustine. and so the vacation will continue as we experience a bit of beach time, some mickey mouse, a lot of roller coasters, entirely too much food, and some quality time staring longlingly at one another.
in other news, my weight loss battle is going slowly. i have always been a person who works best under pressure; but might i say that it was not wise of me to feel pressured 8 weeks before i see my husband again. 12 months - 52 weeks - and i wait for the last 8 to get serious. i have issues. but whatever, progress is progress. and at least in knowing that i am actively combating my chunk, i feel less pathetic and self-conscious about it, which improves my outlook considerably.
so to night is our rescheduled company holiday party. the restaraunt where it is usually held is fairly nice and we had prime rib and really fancy desserts and all kinds of nifty things last year. this year we're going to a bar in leavenworth where we will dine on little smokies and nachos. clearly a step down and i am not at all excited about it. in fact, i'm only going because you cant win a prize if you're not there, and they're giving away some nice prizes. but i am missing out on the gym and i will be cutting it close to get to jiffy lube to service my slowly dying mustang before they close at 6. tonight is "leg night" at the gym, so i will go home and do some sort of pain-inflicting activity that involves the muscles in my leg and will call it good. tomorrow i will work on my arms, which are still rather sore from tuesday. eeeexcellent.
i continue to attend birthing classes with my new friend evelin. evelin is the girl who was deployed to cuba with charles and his friend jamie. (she and jamie were dating when they left) one wedding and one pregnancy later, she comes back here ahead of him and is due march 5. she was living with me for a few weeks and now lives across the street. jamie will be back in about 5 weeks and if the baby (yet another goddaughter for us) gets here before he does, i get to play dad. last night at class we held hands and did stretches and i massaged her back, then we breathed together and stared into each others eyes as she imagined the intense pain of a 90 second contraction... this is a new level of friendship i think, but is silly and enjoyable in its own way. i will be giving her a baby shower on the 31st, but as she is just as un-sociable as i am, it will probably involve my mom (who has never actually met her) and my two friends from work (who have met her once or twice) and hopefully one or two girls she works with. once again, i have managed to find some amazing people to count among my friends who are not only willing to support me in my time of need, but my other friends as well.