I know, I know.... You have pretty much given up on me ever updating again. I tell you what, our lives have been so hectic, I barely have time to breath. Much less update this blog. I haven't read my friends' blogs in ages.... Work has been hectic, the kids' schedules have been hectic. I think you get the idea.

Yes we are still alive and kicking (although sometimes I think its just barely). I wonder what we are going to do when the kids get more active in sports and school. I will probably just completely keel over from complete exhaustion. I think I'm about to do that now!

Let's see, where shall I begin... Well I will say one good thing. Two weekends ago my friends Lynn, Sam and I had a "Girl's Weekend" at Myrtle Beach. No kids, no husbands, just girls having some fun. We had to be the most BORING of all girls in Myrtle Beach. I guess that's what happens when your a married mom in your 30's. Lynn and I were just glad for the break away from the kids and a chance to sleep in until 9:00 a.m. Ahhh, heaven..... Sam likes to get up "at the butt crack of dawn" as Lynn and I like to say. But she was nice enough to not bother us when she got up. It was wonderful.

The only bad part of the trip is the weather decided not to cooperate. It wasn't real cold or anything, but it definitely wasn't sunny and wonderful either. We didn't even walk out on the beach! We laid out by the pool one afternoon, but not once did our toes touch the sand. Hard to believe, eh? I told you we were boring!

In other news, Skyler has started playing t-ball. Although I'm not sure why they call it "t-ball" because they don't actually use a "tee." They pitch to the kids until they get tired of it and then finally pull out the tee. That's not the way it worked when I was a kid, but whatever. She has practice once a week and two games a week, so that is keeping us busy for now. Luckily its only going to last until the end of June (if we make it that long).

We have been more places and done more things these last two months. But I guess I'm not in the mood to really talk about it today. I did want to just update and let you know we are still alive and kicking!

Hope everyone is having a great spring and I hope to update again before Christmas! Take care.....

Yes We Are Still Alive...

Here I go again getting slack about posting to this blog. I get on a roll for a few days and then it falls to the wayside. And I really wanted to finish my story on Jonathan and I... Alas, I am not inspired to do so at this time. So we will leave it at that for now.

As usual, we have been so busy my head is still spinning. It seems we never get a break around here. The good thing is we are going to have some free time to ourselves next weekend.

Next weekend Jonathan and I will celebrate our 16th anniversary. It is so hard to believe we have been married that long. God we are old. So we asked Jonathan's friend who owns the house at Myrtle Beach if we could use his house and he graciously agreed. (Thanks sooooooo much Steve, your a lifesaver). I've never even met his friend. But I love him dearly for his graciousness.

So tomorrow we are heading back to Kingsport to drop Chase off at my parents' house. I'm sure it won't be much of a restful weekend because my mom just had a shot in her spine and isn't feeling very well. Not to mention Jonathan will most likely be glued to the television most of the weekend watching the college basketball playoffs...yawn, sigh, boring...... I will never understand this man's obsession for sports.

The good news is I have asked (well not really “asked”), we’ll say I have “demanded” that next weekend on our 4 day weekend to Myrtle Beach there will be NO television. Yes, no basketball games, races, golf tournaments, etc. This weekend is all about US. I was surprised when Jonathan was all for it. He wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he graciously agreed. Later on in the week he did whine a bit about it. He informed me that if I fell asleep he was sneaking into the living room to catch up on the games. Geeze…

Well enough bitching. Like I said before, we have been so busy these last few weeks. Not just at home, but at work also. My work is in total drama mode. People leaving, quitting, coming. It has just been wild. We went like 3 years with no turnover and then all of a sudden its total chaos.

I have been so busy with work these past few weeks. This is my busiest time of the entire year. All of my forms committees are in full swing and I’m getting ready to travel for most of my programs. I will be gone quite a bit over the next month or so. I actually like traveling for my programs. I enjoy getting out and mingling with the members. I love my instructor. He has been instructing for us for about 6 years. And not to mention that I get to stay at really nice hotels. Its usually long days, but very fulfilling.

Last weekend we took Chase and Skyler to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. It is a totally awesome museum. They have this exhibit called Magic Wings Butterfly House. It is so cool. Its this huge building that is about 80 degrees year round and has thousands of butterflies flying around in gorgeous vegetation. The kids absolutely loved it. However, as usual, I can’t get many pictures of Chase. He just doesn’t like having his photo taken. You can view all of our pics here.

When I picked Chase up from daycare today his teacher was very excited to inform me that Chase had pooped in the potty for the very first time!! Woohooo!!! We are well on our way to potty training. He has been peeing in the potty full time now for about 2 months. But not once has he pooped in the potty (don’t you just love hearing about stuff like this). This is quite a breakthrough for us. I commenced to jumping up and down and clapping and making a general fool out of myself. Luckily my only audience was the teacher and a group of about 15 two year olds who commenced to clap and jump up and down with me. Hopefully he is getting the general concept down of crapping in the pot instead of in his pants. Keep your fingers crossed for me please. I think he is doing fairly well to only be 2 ½ and be of the male persuasion. I won’t get too excited though because we still have quite a long road ahead of us.

Well hate to cut it short tonight, but Grey’s Anatomy is on and I must run upstairs and watch it. Its been a rerun for weeks. Oh the things that get you excited when you are my age….

Here I Go Getting Slack Again....

We did absolutely NOTHING this past weekend. Saturday we stayed home and worked on cleaning the house and washing clothes. Fun (not).

Sunday we had full intentions of getting the kids out of the house. Just like us, they get a bit stir crazy if they stay cooped up in the house for more than a day or so. What can I say, none of us have ever been "homebodies" that's for sure.


We really had full intentions of taking them to the park, the science center, children's museum or something. But no, Sunday morning it was peedle pouring outside and cold and wet and just plain ole yucky outside. So it was another day of hanging around the house being bored. Fun. Like I should bitch after just spending a week in the Caribbean and then a weekend at home in Tennessee. I'm never satisfied.

Sundays are my days to sleep in. I slept in until 9:30 a.m. It was sheer heaven. For some reason I had a hard time falling asleep Saturday night and then I couldn't seem to drag my butt out of bed Sunday morning. The kids weren't screaming, yelling and fighting like normal. Jonathan had fed them and all was well with the world. But if I had slept any later, I definitely would have felt guilty. So I drug myself out of bed.

Jonathan and I watched You, Me and Dupree Saturday night. It was the longest and dullest comedy we have seen in awhile. For some reason I had also put Donnie Darko on my Netflix list. I knew going into it that it was a pretty weird movie, but 20 minutes or so into it, we just shut the thing off. It was S-T-U-P-I-D. Maybe we should have given it more time, but we just couldn't. So we ended up watching last night's episode of the Amazing Race on the DVR. Such an exciting weekend.

Again last night I couldn't fall asleep. Jonathan was snoring logs beside of me in his blissful sleep, and I was laying there thinking utterly stupid thoughts.

I was thinking, "You know, we've lead a pretty interesting life." "I really wish I had kept a journal of our history together." "Maybe I should start writing our history down or something...."

Don't even ask me where this stuff is coming from. But as I was laying there I got about 15 chapters into my thoughts. I know no one really gives a crap about my life, but still it might be interesting to write it down. I'm very interested in my family's history and I have always loved hearing stories from my grandmother, father, aunts and uncles, etc. I really wish that someone would have taken the time to write some of our family stories down. Most of them are probably forever lost as each relative passes on.

I'm sentimental in ways. I have every single letter that Jonathan has ever written me. The letters start in the fall of 1989, the month that Jonathan went into the Army. I have them in chronological order from 1989 to 1999. After that we didn't use "snail mail" anymore. No one actually writes letters in this day and age. Its a thing of the past.

But anyway, the letters start in 1989 when Jonathan first went into the military. The two of us were just friends. We had tried dating (for about 2 weeks) way back in high school. But for some reason, we had just always been friends. Very close friends mind you. But only friends.

We spent a lot of time together in the last few weeks before he left for the Army. But he met this girl right before he went in and fell madly in love (well lust). So the letters start out in a friendly kind of way talking about this girl he met and how basic training is going and what not. Just general stuff.

But as the letters progress we grew closer. I only have his letters to go by. I used to write him NOVELS. I mean like 10 and 15 pages of typed letters. I'm sure he probably took my letters with him to the john to read, they were really that long. His letters are just a couple of pages. Sometimes he would write really big just to fill up more pages because I fussed that his letters were so short.

As time moved on we talked about our lives. I discussed my current boyfriend at the time and he told me he was going to be stationed in Germany. I was sad because I knew we probably wouldn't be seeing each other for a very long time. I made plans to visit him at his basic graduation, but one thing lead to another and I didn't make it down there. (My mistake).

He ended up meeting someone when he was in AIT (the training you take after basic to learn your military specialty. Its usually about 10 to 12 weeks long). Its funny, he never really mentioned her in his letters. It was an "AIT Romance." You know your missing home, you find someone who you have something in common with and you latch on to that person.

So as the time drew closer and closer for him to ship out to Germany, I kept promising myself I was going to drive down to South Carolina to see him. I wasn't quite as adventurous in those days. I was afraid I would get lost going down there, it was a long drive to make by myself. You know excuses.... So I never made it down there to visit him before he left for Germany sometime in early 1990.

Once he got to Germany the letters continued. We grew closer and closer through letters and phone calls. I had met someone new and been dating them for about 6 months. The two of us became engaged....

All through high school Jonathan was my person who I told all my secrets to. He was the person I talked to all the time about my boyfriends, my life, my dreams, etc. He always listened and never judged. And best of all, he agreed with everything I said (he still does that to this day to keep peace in the house). ;-)

So when things went bad with my boyfriend and we were on the verge of splitting up, I picked up the phone and called Jonathan in Germany. It was 3:00 a.m here in the States, but it was early morning in Germany. Jonathan picked up the phone and I began sobbing and telling him about my current mess. He was like, "Oh come on over and Huck will make it all better." "I'll give you a hug and you can tell me all your problems and we'll work it out."

And I was like, you know what, I might just do that. He kind of laughed and told me to come on. I know he thought I wasn't serious. But we hung up the phone and I made a few phone calls and found a flight for $300 round trip. I was going to Germany to visit my buddy.....

TO BE CONTINUED........

In the Beginning

Nothing much going on this weekend. I was so far behind on laundry, I've spent most of today working down the massive piles of it.

The weather was actually pretty nice today. I think its around 56 degrees now. The kids spent about an hour and a half playing in the backyard on their swingset and playhouse. Me, I was still in my pajamas at 3:00 in the afternoon. No reason to get dressed up to do laundry. After walking outside to see what the kids were screaming about and seeing neighbors walk by, I figured it was time to haul my ass back inside and put some clothes on.

The picture on this post is actually a photo of The Caribbean Princess. Its the ship Sam and I cruised on a few weeks ago. Its their newest ship and was quite lovely. But I wasn't as impressed with it as I was Carnival's Liberty.

This photo was taken while we were on Princess Caye. They tendered us in from the ship. Sam and I stayed on the ship until late morning. We didn't want to stand in line to get a tender from the ship. I love the beach, but can't handle more than a few hours of it. The water was ICE cold, so we really didn't swim very much. Of course you couldn't tell it was cold by all the people in the water. But it was definitely too cold for me. Princess Caye is somewhere in the Bahamas.


This is a picture of Megan's Bay in St. Thomas. Its one of the top 10 beaches in the world. Jonathan and I spent 4 days in St. Thomas back in 2005, and we went here almost every day. This photo was taken from the mountaintop. There is a small restaurant and gift shop there that sells "world famous" banana daiquiris. Since neither Sam nor myself are really drinkers. We passed on the alcohol and just enjoyed the view.

The water in Megan's Bay is just gorgeous. Can you imagine having a house up here looking down at the ocean. It would be wonderful.

Speaking of pre-planning. Our 16th Anniversary is next month. We usually don't do very much for our anniversary. Reason number one is we don't have any family near to babysit the kids. Reason number 2, well we've been married 16 years and we have pretty much seen and done it all. Reason number 3, Jonathan is pretty slack when it comes to anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, etc.

However, this year, I think we will try and go out of town to celebrate our anniversary. It will be nice to have a couple of alone days away from the kids. Not that we didn't just have an entire alone weekend in January when I won the trip to Charlotte. I guess I didn't blog about that, but I won a 2-night stay at the Hilton in Charlotte and suite tickets to a Bobcats game. It was pretty sweet. We had a great time and it was a lot of fun. However, babysitting for the weekend set us back about $100. If we had family that lived by, we wouldn't have to spend the extra money. But again, that's the price you pay with no family near. Oh well, bitch, moan, groan....

Well anyway, its getting late and I need to get supper started. Its pork chops tonight. How much do you wanna bet that the kids won't take two bites and will ask for hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.