Quick Note

Just wanted to let anyone who is still following along that we are vacationing in Hawaii at the moment!  This is the first chance I have gotten to get online, and I am only staying for a minute.  We have been here since last Friday and will stay until next (the 16th) Friday.

This place is absolutely amazing!  And I will have so many pictures to share that I am not sure where I am going to be able to start!  I love it here, but am missing home just a bit.  (Not enough that I am willing to get back on an airplane right now though!)  Many many things still to see.

I am trying to keep the fact that both my dad and I are unemployed out of my thoughts, but sometimes the worry is just too much to push aside.  Thank you to all who have offered thoughts and prayers on our account concerning both the joblessness and the vacation.  It means a lot.

Gotta go get some sleep so that we can get up early and see what else there is to see!  It is nearly 11:30pm here, which makes it about 4:30am at home.  I have pretty well gotten myself on Hawaii time by now, which is good since the first couple of days seemed a lot longer than they actually were!

Hope everyone is have a great summer so far.  Go spend it with someone you love!

Rambling Thoughts

I am so glad that it is Friday!  Matter of fact, I am glad that next week only has four and a half days for us to attend.  And, when we are released at noon next Friday, I don't have to come back until January 4th!  The worst part is that I will not be able to post anything here whenever I feel the urge.  I will have to find a computer to use.  Don't think for a minute though that I would trade my days off for having access to a computer!

I have gotten most of our Christmas gifts bought and wrapped.  They are not under the tree yet though because we have not put our tree up.  I know....pretty soon it will be too late.  But we haven't been home a lot these past few weeks.  I am hoping to get it up this weekend.  If not, then it may have to wait until we get out of school.

I entered this contest with the letter to my younger self a few days ago. Thought I would have a decent chance since nobody had entered it at that time.  Now there are several others that have entered, so my chances are slowly decreasing!  Much easier to win something when you are the only entry!

Also discovered that according to Georgie over at decisionally challenged, I am nowhere near the last one to mail my Secret Santa gift.  There are still 75 folks who have not sent in the delivery confirmation number....and there are only four more sending days until they should be shipped.  I somehow feel much better about that!  I also got driving directions to see just how many miles the package I mailed had to travel from my house to theirs.  Can't tell you now, but I will once we are allowed to disclose who we sent our gift to.  I think it would be fun to know just whose gift traveled the farthest to reach it's destination!

This weekend, we are going to be doing something special.  But I can't tell you about it yet.  I want to have pictures to go with my explanations.  I will tell you that it is something that we joined in on last year and have decided that it will be something that we will attempt to do every year from now on.  Last year it was cold and windy and this year looks to be the same way unfortunately.

Have I mentioned how much I hate being cold?  Well, I don't like it at all.  As I sit here typing this in a supposedly warm building, I have a short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie on.  Plus jeans and two pairs of socks.  And no, I am not breaking a sweat.  Honestly....my feet are still cold!  Other than that, I am fairly comfortable.

My husband's cousin is living in Hawaii at the moment.  She was saying the other day that she was going to the beach and that it was hot there.  I told her that I hoped that she and her husband were sent to Alaska by the Army on their next assignment.

The Boy tells me this morning on the way to work/school that he has two different Christmas lists.  He makes one for me and one for his father.  Tells me that this way he won't get duplicate gifts.  Smart, except that by doing this, when there is nothing on the list that I can either afford or am willing to get, then I don't have a clue that there are other things out there he is wishing for.  And I discovered that of these two lists, the items I have been presented with are much more expensive than what is on the other list!  I think the DNA Donor has The Boy convinced that I make more money than he does.  Amazing how that is so far from the truth!

I told The Boy that he needs to only make one list and then if it is a big thing that he is asking for, then if I decided I wanted to be the one to get it for him, I would just call DNA Donor and let him know to mark it off the list.  I know there are problems with that theory, (because I have lived through them) but I still feel it is the best solution.  Convincing The Boy of that is an entirely different thing.

Got paid yesterday.  It is gone.  Early in the year, I sat down and made a list of all our bills and when they were due.  I then made a list with all the dates that both myself and Crazy Man were supposed to be paid.  Once that happened, then I could assign bills to a paycheck.  Every bill has a paycheck.  Everything gets paid this way, and sometimes I get ahead.

How do I get ahead?  Well, some months have an extra week in them.  The way I do it, the bills come out in order.  That way at the end of the year when Crazy Man's checks get smaller because of less work available for him, I don't have to worry about not having the money to pay a bill.

I also have figured out that at the end of the week before I add in the next check, I divide the total my checkbook shows and take half of that to put into savings.  Even if it is only a couple of dollars, I have been able to save quite a bit.  We have been saving like this for 9 months so that we can have money to spend on our Hawaii trip.  I like being able to have money ready to pay bills so that I am not looking to see who can be put off for another month.

We don't make a lot of money, but we have everything we need.  And, even some things that we want!

Guess What I Got?!

Yesterday evening I did it. I just typed in the information and hit the request button. I held my breath while I did it. And then I got the confirmation that I could have what I requested. Wow! It was scary and exciting all at the same time! It is still scary and exciting!

What is this mysterious thing that I did? I bought us plane tickets to Hawaii!

When My Crazy Man and I got married, we decided that we wanted to visit Hawaii to celebrate our first anniversary in July 2012. But, we wanted to take The Boy and my Little Little Brother along. We decided that this would be a once in a lifetime trip, so we started to save.

Then, Crazy Man's cousin and her military husband found out they would be sent to Hawaii in June 2009. They would be there for a minimum of three years. If we waited to go in July 2012, they may be gone. And it is always more fun to have friends and family around to do things with. So, we decided to move it up to July 2011. But then we found out that a couple of our friends who wanted to go also wouldn't be able to go then since he is scheduled to be deployed that month. So, we moved it up to July 2010.

And that is when I bought the tickets for! We are supposed to leave the morning of July 2 and our return plane lands the afternoon of July 16. When our plane takes off, we will have been saving money for 18 months. We know that we will have enough, because we have been cutting back on things for just this reason. We would much rather put things off now so we can make this a once in a lifetime trip.

The plan is that this will be a graduation present for my Little Little Brother (who is scheduled to graduate in May 2011). We are hoping to be able to take some pictures over there that he can use for his Senior Pictures. I love to take pictures and I think this would be a great thing. I would be able to take pics, and my parents would be able to save money. (Since we all know that the professional pics usually cost big bucks.) The Cuz's are scouting great picture places in Hawaii everyday!

I think I should also clarify a few things in the previous ramblings. After reading it I realize that it doesn't make sense to say I am married and plan to celebrate our first anniversary in 2012! It also may not make sense that I have a Little Little Brother who is going to graduate in a couple of years.

The easiest one to clarify is about my brother. I am the oldest of three kids. I have a Big Little Brother who is 20 months younger than I am. He has a 10 year old son. When we were preparing for my first wedding (the marriage that brought me The Boy) and my Big Little Brother's high school graduation, our parents told us that we would be getting another sibling. I loved going to the priest and telling him that we would need to move my wedding up a couple of months due to pregnancy! You should have seen the look on his face! Talk about priceless! It got even better when I told him that the pregnancy was my mother's and not mine! I thought he was going to pass out from the shock and laughing so hard!

We were all excited since my parents had always wanted three kids and had tried for years without luck. All of a sudden, we got what they had hoped and prayed for for a lot of years. It was a fun pregnancy actually! (I don't think that 'fun' is the word my mom would use though!) We were all there for the ultrasound and the day of delivery.

So, my Little Little Brother was born when I was 20 years old. I didn't know how else to distinguish between my brothers since I then I had two little brothers. The easiest way was to call them my Big Little Brother and my Little Little brother! Of course, they are both a lot bigger/taller than I am!

And that is the reason I have a brother who is a junior in high school and a son who is a freshman. They have been raised almost as brothers and look out for each other in the manner. They fight and bicker like brothers too.

As for the first anniversary celebration in July of 2012. That one is fairly easy to clarify and yet, not so much!

My Crazy Man and I met in 2001, online. We dated for several months and decided that it just wasn't going to work out for us. He had planned to become an over the road truck driver. I didn't think that our relationship was strong enough to survive being apart that much. So, we went our seperate ways.

Fast forward to January 2006. I saw him pushing a cart in Sam's Club one afternoon. I was going to say something to him, but then saw a purse in the cart and decided that I would act as though I didn't see him. I figured that the purse had to belong to his woman and if he saw me and wanted to speak, then I would talk to him. But I wasn't going to initiate the conversation.

Well, he did see me and called my name. He told me that he had a new "baby" and asked if I wanted to see a picture of her. Of course I said yes. He pulled out his cell phone and showed me a picture of a blue Harley Davidson motorcycle! I just looked at him like he was crazy. I told him that I thought he meant an actual baby. He said no, that he wasn't even married! I asked if the purse was his then. He said that it belonged to his mom! He took my number and we started to talk nearly everyday.

We talked like that until the day I wished him a happy birthday in March. He stopped calling after that. I figured that it was going to be up to him, that I wasn't going to chase after him. He called back on May 7 and left a message asking if I wanted to go for a bike ride with him. We then made plans to go ride on May 13, 2006.

That was the first real date we had since we had met back up in January. It was also the first time I had ever been on a motorcycle. We have been together everyday since. We have either talked on the phone or been side by side everyday.

On February 14, 2008, my Crazy Man won a contest through the Sean Hannity show where each Valentine's Day three couples propose. He was chosen to be one of those guys who was able to propose on air.

On February 29, 2008 (yes, 15 days later!) we were married in the local Harley Davidson dealership. We wanted something different and totally 'us'. And we got it!

That is why we say that our real first anniversary will be in 2012. In February this year, we said that we had been married for 3 months! Next February it will be 6 months and so on. We have been having a ball with it all! I will have to post some pics from our wedding sometime in the future. I don't have them with me today since I didn't really know that I would be writing about it!

All of that to say that we got tickets to Hawaii for next July!