4th of July Weekend



It has been a long but fun weekend! My sister in law Hannah was visiting us for the past week and a half so for the 4th of July she tagged along with us and some friends to celebrate. Naturally I got bit by the baking bug so Hannah and I made a Red White and Blue cake from scratch... the red and blue layers were regular cake (which sadly came out a little heavier than I like, less flour next time I think) and the white layer was cheesecake. Hurricane Arthur hit us Thursday night so we started baking the cheesecake then and the rest of the cake Friday morning. We even made the cream cheese icing from scratch! I don't think I've made a cake not from a box and icing not from a can in almost a decade! Not too shabby!

 

 

We then headed over to my friend from work Jo's house and hung out with her, her husband John and my other coworker Morgan until we left for the fireworks. Henry, their adorable pup, wanted to be in our picture too. 

 

We figured it would be insanely crowded on base so we left pretty early to fight traffic. We didn't want to go in the giant massive crowd, personally I was ok with missing LL Cool J, so we decided to drive to work and park there. Luckily with our husbands' active duty IDs we were able to go through the road blocks and park with ease! We could hear the performers down the street and we still had room to play frisbee in the parking lot. Sadly once it got later MPs started directing people to park in our area but most of them still walked down to the field so our view remained safe!

 

The weather got ominous looking but only one or two drops hit us. After the show we could see it rained elsewhere on base but it seemed to stop just shy of us and the fireworks! We had a good hour or so to tailgate and hang out and we all had a blast.

Boys being boys

Surprisingly the fireworks started early, maybe by five minutes, and they went on for a long time! It was a pretty long show, nearly half and hour, and had one of the longest finales I have ever seen. I am very impressed Camp LeJeune! We had a perfect view from the truck and I love fireworks. They are near the top of my Top Ten Favorite Things List (yes it is a literal list) hence the reason Ryan proposed to me during the Disney Fireworks at EPCOT.

Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays. I love the country I live in and that my husband serves and I love celebrating that. For my family and my friends and everyone who calls this great nation home, it makes me proud as punch!

 

I am a terrible selfie taker.

We took the back gate home and luckily there was basically no traffic. Thank Goodness! We all hung out a bit longer before heading home and falling sound asleep. Pretty darn good 4th of July if you ask me! Saturday was spent cleaning, playing tennis (my husband finally got a racket!) and getting Japanese food for dinner. We also took the Dup for her yearly 'furminator' bath to help with her ridiculous shedding. She gets a special bath in deshedding shampoo and conditioner and then at least an hour long brushing session. Even the groomer said she was pretty shocked by the amount of hair that kept coming off, and we brush her a lot too! Dup Dup's report card was glowing, they all said she was incredibly sweet to everyone who handled her and gave tons of kisses. That's my good girl! And she looks so cute! I cracked and got her a bandana (since the proceeds go to military service dogs I could not resist!).

 

 

It did wear her out though and she slept pretty much the rest of the day. Sunday we went to church, drove to Wilmington to meet my mother in law and her husband to drop Hannah back off with them, have lunch, run to the commissary and then home again to pack our lunches and prepare for the week. Then we went and played tennis again. Today I am pretty sore (helloooo out of shapeness) and quite exhausted. I look forward to going to bed early tonight.

I hope you all enjoyed your Independence Day!

 

Happy New Year!

Yesterday I had to work until 4 and the library was dead! We had maybe ten people the entire time I was there and more seemed to just be passing through than checking out materials or using the computers. Ryan was off so I came home to a clean house and plans for New Years. We even slightly dressed up. 

We decided to drive up to Morehead City and go to the Crystal Coast Countdown. We found parking right across the street from the park and the restaurant right next to the truck became our dinner destination. We had a fantastic seafood dinner! Crabmeat stuffed shrimp, New England clam chowder, snow crab legs, twice baked potatoes, cornbread and hush puppies! Phew. Needless to say we were FULL!

After we ate we walked around the docks for a bit and just digested. 

After we felt less full we saw they had ice skating in the park. We buy tickets and rent skates and once we saw the ice we were confused. 

It wasn't ice!!!

I shouldn't be surprised, it is eastern North Carolina, but it was different. The 'ice' was plastic that fit together like puzzle pieces and then was wetted down with some liquid. 

We've ice skated before but our minimal technique didn't work on this! It was really hard to get momentum and I'm surprised neither of us fell! A lot of kids were falling every time they moved. 

After 'skating' we went to listen to the live music and did a little bit of line dancing. Once it got closer to midnight we staked out a spot on the docks as close as possible to the fireworks. 

The big thing was a crab pot drop. 

The crab lost power twice on the way down, it was pretty funny actually. Then at midnight the band played Auld Lang Syne and the fireworks went off. 

I didn't try and take any more pictures so even though this one was blurry I don't mind. It was more important to cuddle up with my husband and watch. 

It was pretty great. 

 

Today we slept in and then went to Ale House to watch the Capital One Bowl. Luckily the gamecocks won!!

In a bit we're going to see Saving Mister Banks with my friend Donna. All in all it's been a great start to what I hope is a great year. 

Happy New Year my friends!!

Pre-Deployment Leave

Four years (and 11 days ago) I posted my very first entry on this blog. Hard to believe I am writing almost an identical entry four years and two weeks or so in the future.

As you may remember from my last entry Ryan took Rylie down to South Carolina to see his family for the first half of his leave while I worked. While he was there my parents drove down to pick Rylie up and they kept her so we could go to Myrtle Beach for the second half of Ryan's leave. We basically had a repeat of our vacation from two years ago with a few minor differences... but we even stayed in the same hotel!

The week was spent sunning on the beach, avoiding afternoon thunderstorms, staying up late (usually drinking), meeting awesome people, and eating really good food! Our hotel had an outdoor beach bar the was open until 11 every night with live music, an indoor club that was open until 2am, and a bar down the street that was open later on certain nights. My poor liver went into shock!

We ate at some amazing restaurants, RIOZ and the Flying Fish are two I highly recommend. Now they are pricey, but worth it for a big night out. RIOZ is a churascurria, a Brazilian restaurant that basically carries big slabs of meat around to your table and slices them as you request them. Plus they had a huge salad bar (I got to try quail eggs!), side dishes and a heavenly dessert cart. The Flying Fish had delicious seafood and was worth the hour wait we had.

There was one night we opted to bar hop and then we met some people from our hotel that invited us to hang out once the bar closed. We played drinking games and talked until it turned gray outside. Ryan and I headed back to our room but then as I laid my weary old head down to finally sleep Ryan decided he wanted to go on the beach and watch the sunrise. Now, once my husband gets an idea in his head it is pretty hard to break him of it... when he is drunk it is impossible. Hence the reason I found myself watching a sunrise on the beach in my pajama shirt and sweatpants with my husband in my sweatshirt with all the morning joggers and shell collectors. We obviously were the only ones who had not yet gone to sleep! It was beautiful though and I am glad he forced me down there.

We also went back to the Boardwalk to play arcade games and spent time at Broadway at the Beach. Our newest favorite find was the mirror maze. It was so fun! For a decent price you can go through as many times as you want until closing. I am not lying when I say we did it at least a dozen times. We also had these trippy beer goggle-esque glasses that they gave us which made it even more difficult. We went through with the glasses, without them, forwards, backwards, starting from separate ends and racing... it was a blast. The employees liked us so they walked us through the "quick" way and showed us the mirrors that are actually doors (for emergencies and the break room, important!). We caught some fireworks and had a blast.

Even though we've done the Myrtle Beach thing before I didn't mind doing it again since Ryan really wanted to go. Our next trip anywhere should be international and post deployment, so I am really looking forward to that for many reasons. Thanks for sticking around with my lack of posting... just trying to spend as much time with my husband as I can!

Nostalgic Illuminations

When I miss Ryan I tend to get really nostalgic... looking at old pictures and doing silly things like that. So I instantly knew what song I wanted to do for this week's link up, Illuminations - Reflections of Earth. It is the soundtrack to the fireworks show at EPCOT.

Newer readers to my blog may not know this but I worked at Walt Disney World as a college program intern for about six months after I graduated college. Ryan was in Iraq for most of it and it was my ultimate distraction. At the time, my blog was actually named Disney and Deployed... if you cannot tell I have a thing for alliteration! I fell in love with Disney (again) and I absolutely loved working there. I would tell Ryan all the time how much I loved it, I worked in EPCOT as a presenter at Innoventions and part of my night duties was crowd control for Illuminations. So I got to be in front of the rope (awesome on the nights it was not windy and you came away with ash all over you) and talk to people from all over the world. Plus the people I worked with were so fun and unbelievably awesome.





All of these factors and my unhealthy love of fireworks all added to the story of why Ryan decided to pop the question during Illuminations!

If you ever want to read the story of our proposal (it is actually kinda funny and very typical of my husband and I), feel free, but just know I will always love this music. My friend Jenny got me the CD for Christmas and during the cocktail hour of our wedding this song played over the loudspeakers from my ipod... and my friends from Disney who came to the wedding may or may not have made fun of me for it! Ryan came home early from Iraq and decided to visit me with my family for some Disney fun. He proposed the day after he arrived.







Around the 9:00 minute mark is when Ryan got down on one knee (:

Wordless Wednesday: Alexandria Sesquicentennial

(Not so wordless part: This was awesome, we walked down to the park and the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra was amazing! They played some Big Band, music from ET and Harry Potter (!!) as well as the Overture of 1812 complete with cannons shot by Marines from Quantico, we had a great time! And my pictures weren't too bad, especially coming from my tiny point and shoot digital camera.)