Canceled

So Ricky's TDY got canceled. He's sad that he doesn't get to go help the people in Haiti, but he's looking on the bright side. He gets to stay here with me!!!! :) I'm not sure how to really feel about it cause I want him to stay but I was excited for him to go so I could get a taste of how it would be when he deploys. But maybe next time.

If I've learned anything while being here and dealing with the Air Force it's that you have to go with flow and not get too upset cause life is always changing. Ricky's constant shift changes is a testament to that.

Well other than the TDY getting canceled life has been life. We're just trying to stay busy and not go crazy. It's kind of fun. Lots of randomness and last minutes splurging and unexpected visits to our friends here on base and random parties. There's more but I don't want to bore anyone who might be reading this, if anyone but me is reading this. :)

Rubber Band Man

So life is crazy. After the fiasco that was the first of the week, Ricky caught a flu bug thats been going around and was out all day Thursday. He probably could of used Friday off too but unfortunately the air force needed him. And when he got there they once again said he could be leaving, but to Florida this time, cause thats where they're flying out from now. But once again nothing has followed thru.

But life goes on, and we are just trying to survive. This week has been a little more emotional for me cause I had a moment. I was thinking about building something for my bike so that it would work for our bike rack that we have, and I was like my dad would be willing build it for me, but my dad passed away this last October. I felt awful for forgetting, and then I felt awful cause I miss him and all the wonderful emotions that go with loosing a loved one came back up. So thats this week has been hard for me. Plus it doesn't help when my emotions decide to go on a roller coaster.

Today started out bad. I had a bad dream that Ricky died and everyone was telling me to get over it and I didn't want to. It was awful and it felt really real. But when I woke up there he was next to me. I still felt horrible. And then there was a situation where me and Ricky felt left out today. I was a little upset, but I had some chocolate, watched a Disney movie, went on a bike ride, visited a good friend, and now I feel fine and don't really care about the earlier situation. I probably shouldn't have gotten upset, but I'm only human. Oh well.

So my completely randomness today was actually from yesterday. I needed to get some office supplies so I can organize and keep better track of all our bills, and while at the store Ricky saw a rubber band ball. He said please and I gave in. He was so happy.

To TDY or to not TDY?

Okay so the last couple of days have been crazy! To start with Ricky has changed shifts yet again. He's now on days. Also he was scheduled to leave on a TDY or Temporary Duty (it's where he would go to another base and do his job there for a while) to Little Rock, Arkansas on Thursday to go fix planes for the Army for a while, but with everything thats happening in Haiti, and a lot of the guys here going to help there or are on TDY's elsewhere or deployed they decided that they needed Ricky here more then in Little Rock. He was a little bummed cause he was really looking forward to it. Anyways yesterday a bunch of friends and us went to the park to enjoy the wonderful 70 degree weather that we're having, and Ricky gets a call saying your plane leaves tomorrow at 2, pack your bags, your going to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. It took most of the night to get over that bomb shell. And then this morning Ricky goes in to work and is told to be fluid, cause they don't really know what's going on with the trip, just to keep his bags packed cause he could get a call. So he as of right now is officially on stand by until further notice. And so now he's kind of upset cause they keep changing their minds on him, well that and he was supposed to have today off, so that he could study for a big end of course test that he has tomorrow that was also cancelled cause he was going and then not canceled cause he was staying, but they made him work a longer day then he was supposed to. So yeah he just isn't happy with his squadron at all right now. As for me I'm just trying to go with the flow, and help Ricky out as much as I possible can, which isn't much, but I am trying. I just hope that everything eventually works for the good.

Oh and the picture is an old one we took for our wedding announcements. I haven't had our camera with us so I haven't taken any recent pictures. But I wanted to have a picture with this post.

San Antonio again!

So Ricky has a longer weekend this week because of Martin Luther King day. And because of that he decided that he needed to get off base for a while. So we decided to go to San Antonio again, but for longer then one day driving up and back. So friday night we packed up and drove to Fredricksburg and stopped for the night because it was raining heavily and we were tired of driving. We stayed in a really nice inn. A bit expensive but really nice. I mean they had Bath and Body Works for their soap, that kind of nice. Anyways we had planned on going to the San Antonio temple for an early session so that we could spend the rest of the day enjoying the town, but that meant getting up around 5:00 a.m. so that we or more of I could get ready so that we could leave before 7:00 a.m. so that we could drive the remaining hour to San Antonio and make it to the 8:00 a.m. session. Unfortunately we didn't wake up that early and we left just after 7:00, so we were late making to the temple and we missed the session but we were able to do sealings which was pretty much amazing. I love doing temple work. I always feel so uplifted and just plain happy after going to the temple.

The San Antonio Temple. It's a really pretty temple.

They had a fountain so I took a picture of Ricky next to it. Doesn't he look dashing.

We also found out that they have a Distribution Center here too, so we were able to get a few much needed sets of garments for me and some military garment tops for Ricky. We also got a couple LDS movies and a picture of Christ.

After the temple we went and did a little window shopping. Then lunch and then to the Vietnam memorial. It was pretty cool.

This was one of the statues that they had. All the names were on bricks around it. It was so amazing and heart breaking just to see how many people were killed from San Antonio in the war.

This one really got to me. I almost wanted to cry.

This is the symbol of the Air Force. They had one for each branches of the military. But Ricky's a little prejudice.

From there we went to the river walk. Both me and Ricky and been there twice before so it really wasn't anything new for us but it was fun to look around again, even if we did get lost. We got a few good pictures of us there too. Thank goodness for technology. Ricky was able to get us back to our car. We got a few good pictures of us there too.

It was really windy.

I really liked this one with the ivy all around the bench and such. I thought it looked really cool.

We look so good together.

After the river walk we went to Outdoor World. It was huge, and full of all the camping hunting fishing boating shooting and swimming stuff you could think of. Ricky was like a little kid in a candy store. He loves all of that sort of stuff.

Right next to Outdoor World was this ridiculously huge movie theater that played imax movies and 3D movies. We wanted to go see an imax movie but the one they had playing was going to start a lot later then we wanted to be in San Antonio. So we chose to go to Avatar in 3D. It's such a good show. Both me and Ricky really liked it, and eventually want to get it.

After the movie we started our long drive home. It was long and foggy most of the way, but we made it back safe, and fell pretty much strait asleep as soon as we got into bed. All in all it was a great trip for us.

Blah...

I haven't been feeling very good all week. I don't know if I'm getting sick or not eating right and thats what's getting to me or if it's the stress of mine and Ricky's, or maybe it's all three. Ricky's stressing out too. It's hard trying to share one car, especially when we really can't plan around each other's schedules cause his seems to be changing every week, and mine isn't set cause it's part time. And trying to stay in our budget while trying to save and find a truck is hard on both of us. Oh well without the lows there are no highs. Hopefully the highs can start sooner then later. I'm ready to start feeling happy again, and so is Ricky.

Sunday Madness

Sundays are fun. I always enjoy them. I'm finding that I love to play the piano. It's tons of fun even though I'm not as good as I would like to be. Anyways, Church today was really good, and so was primary. After Church I came home and made lasagna for dinner for me, Ricky, the missionaries, and the family that they are giving the discussions to, John, Brittany, and their baby boy Benjamin. It was really good.

The only sad thing about tonight was that transfers for the missionaries are coming this week. They find out tomorrow who is staying and who is going. I'm sad because I'm really close to them, they are pretty much my best friends here and it's hard that one or all of them have to leave almost every six weeks.

But anyways the picture was tonight. They wanted to get a picture with every one in it. I think it was a really good picture.

San Antonio

I have decided that me and Ricky are a couple of the most ridiculous people you may ever meet, if you ever meet us. A few weeks back we went to Dallas and came back with a lamp. We went to Dallas for a lamp! Now today we went to San Antonio to go test drive a truck, we're looking at buying. That all we did there was test drive a truck. I really think we need to take a good look at how and why we take trips. It actually was a fun trip. We got up early so that we could have a little more time but it didn't seem to really be enough. Anyways, we stopped in this nifty little town on the way there for breakfast. It was called Fredericksburg. Ricky said that it's a small german settlement. They had the best pastries there. And the buildings looked so cool. Here's a few that I thought were pretty sweet.

I'm not sure what any of them really were but the stone work was so cool to see.

I loved the structure of this building. All the windows and balconies and randomness of it all.

It looked like a castle to me.

The reason we didn't stay very long in San Antonio was because we had a friend who was getting baptized at 7:00. And with the 4 hour drive that it takes to get from Abilene to San Antonio, or the other way around, we really didn't have a ton of time to just enjoy our time there. But the baptism was really good. I of course had to play the piano. I seem to be getting asked to do that a lot. Oh well I did pray that I would improve my piano skills a while back and I guess this is God answering my prayer.

Anyways here are a few pictures from the baptism, and the reason I'm not in any of them is because I was taking the pictures and because I really didn't look very good today. Well here they are.

This is Ricky and Zach, (I don't know how to spell his name) the friend who got baptized.

This is Sister Jones. She's new to this area and unfortunately is probably going to end up leaving very soon. I'm sad about that but she just came out and will hopefully come back to this area.

In this photo starting from the left is Sister Smith, She's super sweet. I really like her. The two people fighting are Gorget and her Brother. They are investigating the church. They are good kids. Next is Sister Ficken (I really don't think I spelled that right). She is also amazingly sweet. Finally is Brother Gorben (again sorry about the spelling). He was baptized last week. I don't really know him but Ricky says he is a really nice guy.

I really enjoyed today even though I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked or really needed for that matter. Hopefully tomorrow will be just as good if not better.

Randomness again.

So Ricky's work sucks!!! He has just switched from day shift to night shift, back to day shift, and Sunday he goes back to night shift. It's ridiculous. I'm frustrated with it and and Ricky is frustrated with it. Hopefully things will go back to normal this next week, well as normal as life can ever get. I'm back to work. It's a lot slower now which makes it nice and yet very boring. Oh well I don't mind to much.

So more random news, we got Netflix. I'm really liking it. We've spent the last few nights watching movies on Ricky's Xbox. They have TV series on there too so we are getting our fix on tons of movies and show. It's pretty sweet We want to get rid of our cable because we can watch any channels that we usual do on Netflix. Its' pretty sweet.

Anyways here are some photos from this evening.

This is Ricky after work. He's actually not unhappy anymore, cause he's off work and we have plans to go test drive a truck tomorrow.

This is me after work. I'm happy just cause I can be.

Nothing to exciting.

Well Ricky's back to working night shifts. I don't really like it when he's on this shift because I have to go to bed alone, and as safe as it is here I don't feel as safe without him here. I don't know if I'm crazy, but it's late enough that I really don't care. I can't sleep tonight. The dogs are gone, and Ricky's at work, so I'm all alone. It's kind of sad, and it doesn't help that I'm watching creepy shows about death and figuring out who did it. I really shouldn't. I just know I'm gonna have nightmares tonight. Oh well good thing I don't work tomorrow.

Sorry about my randomness again but I just needed to talk to someone and since I'm home alone and it's so late I figured this would be the easiest way. Anyways I think I'm going to stop now, and try to go to sleep.

Today's many excitements and randomness

So today was very exciting. I walk into church, with about 5 minutes before it's supposed to start, and the 2nd counselor comes up to me and says that all the people who can play piano are either gone or sick. I'm the primary pianist, so I play for a bunch of little kids and I'm not very good at it either, but they needed somebody so I was the lucky one. Actually I did luck out cause I sort of new how to play most of the songs. I didn't do to bad, considering I had 5 minutes notice.

Tonight we had some friends come over for dinner. They're really good people and both me and Ricky really like them. They aren't LDS but they are taking the discussions and they can really feel the spirit. I know that they can feel it's true they're just not really sure what it is yet. But anyways they had dinner here and then the missionaries came here and taught them another lesson. The spirit was really strong I love it when I get to be apart of the amazing work that the missionaries do. I always feel so amazing. And some how I just know that my dad is there helping and is so glad that I'm trying to be like him by helping the missionaries. I hope I'm making you proud dad.

Sorry anyways other than that excitement today I have a feeling this week is going to be rather boring. I don't work to much but Ricky does. So that's not going to be fun. But I guess life can't always be fun. Oh well.

So here are some random pictures to go with my random thoughts.

Ricky was posing for the camera.

He wants you to play Modern Warfare with him!

I thought I did my hair really cute today. It was in bun with a flower off to the side. I really liked it.

Unfortunately I didn't check to see how bad my hair had frayed and frizzed before I took the picture so it looks kind of bad. Oh well life goes on.

Family

I finally got pictures of my family. I'm pretty excited cause they were taken back in October. I feel like sharing and showing off what an awesome family I'm lucky to have.

Sorry about how small it is. This is my entire immediate family as is from last year. We found out two of my sisters are pregnant and one of my brothers is going to adopt 3 girls into his family so it's going to grow even more.

This is me and my brothers. I was the only girl growing up, but as you can see from above, I'm not anymore.

This is my most amazing mother. She's so crafty and loves doing things for everybody. She's the one I get my love of home made meals and doing things myself from. I love you mom.

This is my oldest brother Troy, his amazing wife, Sarah, their two boys Nick and Hudson, and their beautiful daughter Saylor. They're the ones who want to adopt the three girls. I'm excited for them.

This is my second oldest brother Travis and his wonderful wife Cara. They just found out she's pregnant!

This is my third oldest brother Ricky and his lovely wife Nikki, and their adorable son, Riley.

This is the middle child and my fourth brother, Robert and his charming wife, Ruth. They are also expecting a baby!

This is Andrew, the brother just older then me, and his delightful wife Alicia, and their wonderful daughter Mckinley. (I hope I spelled that right, I always have trouble with her name.)

Then of course you know me and Ricky. I really like this picture of us so once again I decided to share.

My younger brother and baby of the family is Daryl. He's going to be 18 this summer. I can hardly believe it. Mainly cause I still feel like I'm 18, but still... It's crazy how fast time can fly.

I love my family, and miss them every day. I unlike the rest of them, who can get together on most any weekend, don't really get to see any of them anymore and it can be hard at times. But I love my life here and wouldn't change it for the world.

IKEA

So me and Ricky went to Dallas New Years Eve. We were going to go look at trucks cause we're hoping to be able to buy one this spring, but the weather turned out to be rainy and miserable. So we went IKEA. If you don't know what IKEA is don't feel bad cause I didn't really until we went there. It's a huge furniture store. It pretty much has everything you could need to start decorating your house. I was really impressed.

On the way to Dallas.

Ricky drove. He's better at it then I am.

Ricky called this a chair molester. It's really just a thing to show you how durable the chair was. It was pretty funny.

I loved this. They had pineapple plants! It was awesome!

I really enjoyed going to Dallas but it wore me out so I completely crashed around 10:00 p.m. So I didn't stay up for New Years. Sad I know but I was beyond tired. But Ricky was able to stay up, so that makes us half cool. I'm very excited for the New Year. I don't really have any resolutions but I am going to be more willing to try new things this year. I've gotten better at it but it's the one thing that I just know that I still have a long ways to go.