And the mayhem begins...

Joe and I got back from the cruise fairly late Sunday evening (after the long 12-hour drive from Tampa) and only had a one day turn around to do laundry, un-pack/re-pack for the holidays. We spent Christmas in Huntsville, AL with my parents and brother. It was the first Christmas my whole family has been together in over 4 years.

Christmas was nice- great food, great presents and great company to spend it with. The pups enjoyed tearing open their new toys and I have to say, everyone got really great gifts (Joe and I got quite a few awesome gifts from our registry from our parents along with new iPods from my brother). We can't wait to go shopping and use all the giftcards we received! Hoepfully we have time to get all of that done before the packers come!!

Speaking of moving, we hope to put in our final pack-out dates next week when the offices are open from New Years. We will have our unaccompanied baggage shipment on the 7th (all the stuff we want right away because the rest of our "stuff" will take longer to get there)... so that means some of the essentials... like a few pots/pans/plates/silverware/glasses, sheets, small TV (who can't live without that?), towels, etc. Then we need to organize the rest of our things for our baggage shipment (everything else that's not going into storage) and hopefully Joe can help me get that ready before he goes to resistance training for three weeks. Yes, this means I will be handling all the packers/movers by myself. I'm a little worried/stressed, but hopefully it will go smoothly.

So in the mean time, we have lots of packing (we will be living out of whatever suitcass we pack for probably a month or even longer), cleaning and going through all our stuff (it always amazes me how much "stuff" I'm able to accumulate in one year time period... and now that there are two of us and two dogs, let's say we've accumulated a LOT in the last year), organizing our things into what shipment things need to be packed up in, and then getting things ready to be stored. The biggie will be my car. Of course the AF can't make anything easy. They only have certain storage locations we can go to, so that means we have to drive my car to Atlanta and fnd a way back. It would make sense for them to pay for a one-way flight or rental car seeing that they are the reason we have to store the car in the first place, but no. We have to find our own way back to wherever we are staying for the time being. Thankfully my parents are willing to drive with us, and drive us back to their house (where the dogs and I will be camping out after everything gets packed up).

Anyway, if you haven't gotten bored enough to stop reading this blog (I wouldn't blame you, I'm just rambling) you can see how much we have to do in such little time!!! I'm hoping we can get everything done! It's going to be a busy start to the new year!!!

We're Back!!!

We're back from our amazing wedding & "honeymoon"!!! We spent several days in Tampa, which were filled with numerous trips back and forth to the airport picking up friends and family. Let's just say Tampa traffic isn't very friendly and probably spent more time in traffic jams and getting lost with the crazy construction more than anything! None-the-less, everyone made it into town safely and we had a blast spending time with everyone!

Joe and I realized we have several different "generations" of friends who came out. Friends from high school, college and friends we've made here at UPT. Even though the military sometimes makes it tough to stay in touch with people over time, it's great to know we were able to have so many wonderful friends come all the way to join us for our special day! It meant a lot!!!

We had a wonderful dinner the night before with many of our guests followed by a fun night out on the town! Getting a group of friends together who haven't seen eachother in over a year in most cases makes for a great time!!! Although the next morning at 5:30am I think we might have slightly regretted how hard we partied and how late we stayed out. Nah, it was worth it!

The big day went by fast. Hair and make-up took up most of the early (very early) morning and I ran around like crazy making sure everyone was ok and ready to go, bags packed, hotel rooms checked out of, taxis ready and dealing with the slow valet service. My wedding planner was a little on the crazy side, and after handling a last minute crisis with the luggage full of wedding supplies being too big, everything else went smoothly.

The day was great, I had so much fun. I enjoyed sharing it with my friends and family and of course, it went by much too quickly. The food was great, far better than I expected and the reception I had been dreading went better than planned. As the wedding portion came to an end, we said our good-byes and were sad to see people leave, but at the same time we were so excited for our CRUISE!!!

Including ourselves, we had a total group of 10 people sailing. We had a GREAT time sailing all over the western caribbean together. December sailing was a little rough some days but overall I can't complain. It exceeded my expectations by far with the amazing food, great shows, beautiful weather, extremley friendly staff and the crazy excursions we went on!!!

In Grand Cayman we went snorkeling and swam with the sting rays. They were WAY bigger than I expected... probably 2-3 feet wide and were heavy!!! They felt like wet portabella mushrooms. They only slightly freaked me out, but what a cool experience!!! That day the waters were rough and I swallowed a bit too much salt water and was feeling sea sick so I skipped out on the coral reef snorkeling... which I heard was more of a work-out than anything else. Cozumel was beautiful, maybe my favorite place of all! We rock climbed, zip lined and snorkeled in the clearest blue water I've ever seen! Belize we went cave tubing, which was "refreshing" seeing that the water was only in the 70s. We went on a beautiful hike through the jungles and the caves were amazing!!! The saying for the day was "butts up!" because you didn't want to get your butt hit with rocks on the bottom of the water!!! Our last stop was the Roatan Island in Honduras and we decided for a relaxing day at one of their beautiful beaches. We snorkeled a bit but mainly just soaked up the 90 degree weather for all that it was worth.

We had a great VACATIONNNN (the karaoke guy screamed this about every 5 seconds and clearly became the saying for the trip). John was a Legend in the Legend Show, only 1 person got sick and had to be on isolation, we stuffed ourselves silly with far too much food, some money was made and some money was lost for some at the casinos, and great times were had with great friends!!!

Now it's crunch time to get things rolling for our upcoming move and the holidays!!! Speaking of which, I need to run!!! We have SO much to do!!!

It's here! Well, nearly!

The time has finally come! Thursday we're making the grueling 12-hour drive down to Tampa!!! I'm so excited, I can't wait to see everyone!!! Most of our friends and family will be coming in Friday and Saturday and we can't wait to spend some time with them! Many we haven't seen in years.

Sunday of course is the big day! Then we set sail on our one week cruise with some of our closest friends and family! It's going to be amazing! A lot of prep work has gone into all of this, and I think it's going to be a wonderful time.

Of course I'll post pictures as soon as I can!