The travelling man

So, Jake leaves for California tonight! I am excited for him because I know he has been getting tired of the base in Mississippi so it will be a good change for him. We are just both a little nervous right now until we find out if he will have phone service out there. I really enjoy talking to him every night and it is the one thing that keeps me going in this crazy life without him. But, no fears because, as of Monday, it is only about 30days before Jake returns to NC!! YAY!

The only bad thing about this is that I do not know the exact days he will have off so I do not know what days to ask off at work. My work is so aggravating sometimes. I am afraid I am going to have to ask off for my five days vacation so I can actually SEE Jake while he is home. With our vacation hours AND sick hours combined together into one lump, it is really hard to ever take a break without going MAJORLY into the negative...(and then they dock your pay). Sometimes I feel like I might as well quit and save myself the hassle of ever being positive on PTO time again.
...here i would just like to pause for a minute and say that I really do hate my job.

But, there are some interesting and happier things going on as well. As soon as my lease is up in June/July I am going to move back to Durham with Jakes mom for awhile!! I am excited about this because I will have someone around who is missing the same guy I am missing and who can really relate to how I feel. I cannot say how depressing it is to come home and sit in this lonely apartment all night by myself. It really tends to make me cry a lot. I know this sounds disturbing, but Jake is always so happy and full of life that when he is gone the apartment is wayyy to quiet and subdued. I will miss a lot of things about Raleigh though. First of all I will miss the shopping and how close everything is to my apartment!! I will also miss the dog park that lela loves. But, after talking to Jake and my parents I am determined not to miss out on everything! I love the friends that I have started to make at the church and small group from Journey. So, if any of you guys are reading this I fully intended to make the drive up here (after all its only about 30min...or less if I speed a little)!! I have visited other places in Durham and they don't hold a candle to you guys :).... but I might have to switch over to the afternoon service since I do like to sleep in now and then. :-]
So, now that all the new news is out there I will go to bed. and OH MY. Daylight savings just kicked in so instead of 2am it is now 3am.....haha. okay then.

Quick Trip

Well, I had not seen my parents in a long time so i decided to take a quick trip down to their house. I had Tuesday and Wednesday off this week since I worked last weekend and I have to work this weekend too. So, it was a perfect opportunity to go visit the parents.
Once Lela and I got there on Monday night we pretty much just visited for a little bit then went straight to bed. Tuesday was a really cold day so we just stayed around the area and drove up to Elizabeth City and mom and I ran errands.But, today ended up being really really nice so mom and I packed up and took lela to kitty hawk! I was not totally prepared to take lela to the beach so we had to stop at Wal-Mart and I bought a 20ft lead so that she could run around and have fun without running away. Needless to say, Lela LOVED it. She was afraid of the waves, but she was not scared of the huge sea gulls and kept chasing them all over the beach.
After our beach trip mom and I drove back and I packed up my things to return to Raleigh. We got home at a decent time, but not in time to make it to small group which was sad because I look foward to that time :(
But, LOST is recording right now and lela is zonked out on the futon so it seemed like a great time to write a blog about how great it was to see mom and dad and to take lela on her first beach trip!! Here are some fun pics from the day we had.

pics from the weekend

weekend with the hubby

So this weekend I got to go see my hubby for the first time since Jan 3rd!! It was awesome that the army gave them a three day pass of base. I flew down on Friday and arrived there around 8pm and then left on Sunday at 11:00am so it was pretty busy! Jake and I had a great time though and it was just so awesome to see his face! We ended up staying in a new hotel which was awesome because i hate old gross hotels, and we even had a brand new rental car! On Friday night we just ate pizza in our hotel room and had a good time, then on Saturday we went out and explored Hattiesburg. ....Well, it was pretty tiny so there was not much exploring to do....

We ended up going to wal-mart, best buy, a circuit city close out sale, and the mall. We then went to the Hattiesburg zoo which was so small it only took us about an hour to see the whole thing. But, we ended up enjoying it because the animals that were there were a lot closer and all of the enclosures were right up at ground level.
After the zoo we headed over to the movies and ended up seeing "Friday the 13th"...ughhh. Certainly not my choice for a valentines movie but Jake really wanted to see it and he loves the movies (he owns all of them) so that is what we saw. (I actually kept my eyes closed through half of the movie because it was so gross!) Once I got over the grossness of the movie we went out to Chili's for dinner with another couple. We had a great time and I really enjoyed the other couple that we ate dinner with. (We rounded out the night by going back to the hotel and watching "The Princess Bride" and eating sunbursts...it was great! )

The next morning was not so good because I had to take Jake back to Camp Shelby. Camp Shelby is practically out in the middle of no-where mississippi and I am not surprised that Jake hardly gets phone service out there! But I was successful and did not cry until after I dropped him off at the barracks. The plane ride home would have been a lot worse except that I ran into two other army wives who had the same flights as I did! It was such a blessing from God to have support on the way home. They both felt the same lonliness after leaving their husbands behind and it was great to have company instead of flying all alone.

And well....that pretty much wraps up the weekend that I had with my awesome hubby! I will get to see him again near Easter which is about six weeks away!! :)

sick day

well, i was not feeling too well today so instead of going outside to try out the new camera I decided to stay indoors. I got a few good pictures of lela and callie.
After a good relaxing day at home I went down to Durham for book club. It was such a fun night, we had a classic Scottish meal and a friend of leigh's was good enough to come in full scottish attire to humor us book clubbers. Honestly, I probably should have stayed home since I have what i like to call "the crud" but i could not resist a night with friends and family. Our book for this month is "To Kill a Mocking Bird"...love love this book! I sense that feb. is going to be a good book club month!

As an ending note, here are the pics i took today. The clarity is alot better on this camera than on the old one.

A great day.

today I found out that I will get to go see Jake next weekend!!!! It really was a great surprise. Jakes mom called me to let me know that she had heard that the guys might have a three day pass for valentines weekend. So, I called Jake and it is true! Some of the other wives are driving down, but I get so car sick that I am going to fly. Yes, it does cost a lot to fly but i would rather fly then be sick and tired when i get to Mississippi. Plus, I have to be at work at 8am on Monday and as much as I would like to, I really don't trust the other people driving to be able to drive 14hours on sunday and get me home in time to recouperate and report to work monday morning. So...400.00 dollars later (courtesy of my lovely hubby Jake) I am flying out Friday afternoon and returning Sunday afternoon. I am so so so excited. I am also so blessed that we have been able to save so that I can go down and see him....i am so glad that God gave me this opportunity.

Even through all the hard times who can doubt the love of God when he reaches out his hand and gives you even the smallest of blessings?

The new toy :)

well, since Jake has been gone and we have a slightly bigger income for awhile I did a silly thing...
I bought a new camera!!! hehe.

Well, I am justifying the purchase by saying that my old camera was only 3 mega pixels and has been around since my senior year of high school. So, I decided to stay with the same brand since I really like my old fujifilm camera and since it has held up so well. So,I bought the new finepix camera that they have out. It is really nice, still getting used to the new buttons but the nice thing about staying with the same brand is that most of the buttons and menus are the same. The only thing I am a little dissapointed about is that it takes HD video and....my computer is too slow to upload and view the videos on.....so maybe i went a little too high tech....

:) I am excited about taking some great pictures to share in the future!

http://www.fujifilmusa.com/products/digital_cameras/s/finepix_s2000hd/features/index.html