Buh-bye

A brief hiatus is in order,

for a certain couple on the Georgia border

We’re off to frolic, hand in hand

and place our toes back in the sand.

Goodbye, farewell, I’ll write again,

but not until after I work on my tan.

Love,

Mrs. K

splendid sun

Instead of frantically searching craigslist for a job so the hubby and I don’t have to hit the poor house (due to the pay freeze), I’m chillaxin in a comfy chair in a breezy, beautiful place and perusing failblog and failbook. They make me giggle.

Jenn and I have had a great time here doing absolutely nothing. The weather has been beautiful since that one rainy day and we’ve taken advantage of it, relaxing in the sun. In an effort to save money (due to the pay freeze), we prepared all of our food here (except for that tee tiny trip to the bagel place).

I’m anxious to find my way back to Georgia to the arms of my husband. Today, he told me: “I’ve completely forgotten how to function without you.” Apparently, he’s been living off of ramen noodles and Pizza Hut delivery. Bless his bones! I’ll be home soon, babe 😉

While away, I worked really hard to finish the book I was reading. Do you see the sarcasm here? I actually wasn’t working hard at all. I was reading on the beach, day after day, to bring you this book review:

Khaled Hosseini crafted the words in a new favorite read of mine, A Thousand Splendid Suns. I had heard so many good things about this book and finally found it at a repeat store in Columbus for a little over a dollar. I found a jewel with that purchase! I will say that the book might get you fired up! It might make you sick to think of the injustice in the world. It might make you see a tiny glimpse of the heartache that many Afghanistan women have endured over the last 40 years.

The novel takes you into the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila. Both grew up in separate towns in Afghanistan, but later find their lives intersecting in a most unwelcome way. After understanding that they only had one another, they began to bond over crushed dreams, day to day heartaches, and past wounds. Their story is one of oppression, but also one of compassion.

I don’t want to give too much away. You should read this book, though. I won’t promise that it won’t infuriate you or make you wonder if there’s hope at all for them, but it’s one that you don’t want to miss. It kind of puts this whole pay freeze into perspective. Sure, it’s annoying. But we’re so much better off than so many people in this world!

³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well

We’re headed “home” tomorrow. Wish us safe travels and we’ll chat again soon!

Love,

Merci (for voting)

First of all, I wanted to say thank you to all who voted in the last poll. A whopping 42.86% of you were right about our new addition to the family! 38.57 % thought the baby was a girl and the remaining 18.57% voted that I’d be having twins (psh. thanks! ha)

Baby and I are doing well. We’re enjoying lazy days at the beach and missing “Dad” more than we thought possible. Captain J and I are having trouble coming up with a name. There’s one that’s pretty high on our list, but I can’t bring myself to make the stamp of approval. It’s just such a big decision, right?!

I’m enjoying being pregnant this week. As I feel his little flutters kick into overtime every time I take a bite of chocolate, I know he is more like his Mama every day. I love the feeling of him growing inside me because now I can see the progress in me physically. It seems each day I wake up, my belly has grown even bigger. I’m beginning to realize that this is the closest I’ll ever be to my first born and although I want August to get here very quickly so I can meet him, I also want to keep him to myself for awhile. I know when he’s born his dad will get busy making him his little man so I want to be a little selfish and enjoy my time now. Any chance I can make my son a Mama’s boy? 😉

Yesterday, I tried laying on my tummy to get some sun on my back. He sure didn’t like that! After just a few moments, I felt what I think was a real kick (or three) so I flipped back over to give him more room. I guess those days of laying on my tummy are over.

That’s it for a quick update. I just wanted to talk about the baby a bit, but the sun is calling our names…

Pregnant With Laughter- Part 5

 Howdy friends! It’s time for another installment of Pregnant With Laughter. If you don’t know what it is I speak of, come around more often! Every Wednesday, I swallow my pride and find something funny about my pregnancy experience to laugh about and tell you all about. Sometimes it’s a weird dream or a tale of crazy hormones gone worse, but whatever it is, I hope you get a giggle out of it. I’m enjoying this time in my life, but there are trials so what else can I do but laugh at myself?!

Do you want to join in? Maybe you have a funny pregnancy story or your kid said something hilarious the other day at the grocery store- I don’t discriminate! Tell us! Just link up at the bottom of the page and feel free to swipe the picture if you’d like, too.

My confession for the week is this:

 

As many of you know, I’m at the beach. For many women (read “me), it’s sometimes difficult to feel super confident in bathing suit land. Sure, there have been times in my life when I knew I looked good, but that’s after working out my bikini body for awhile, drinking lots of water, and eating healthy.

Today just isn’t one of those days.

Tomorrow won’t be either.

In fact, I’ve got at least four months before I might think about being confident again.

And I might not ever, ever feel right about donning my two piece and tanning in public ever again.

This is my farewell.

Goodbye youthful, toned body of my past.

Hello, baby bump!

Ahh, the pregnancy bathing suit.-I’ve got to laugh so I won’t cry.

Out of the Office-

Are you wondering where I’ve gone? Fear not. I didn’t completely lose it in my gender reveal bliss! I’m simply taking a much needed vacay to relax and unwind. I’m glad to be in a place where I don’t have to clean up after my dogs. It’s husky shedding time, in case you didn’t know. Yes, I’m in a breezy wonderful place that I feel is my home away from home (away from home since the military is involved). Of course, I did have to bring these pesky pregnancy hormones with me so I miss my other half like crazy, bananas, but I’m having a good time with my bloggy pal, Jenn.

We arrived in Siesta Key late last night and woke up to showers this morning. Not the hot, refreshing showers one may find in a bathroom. No, the other kind. The beachy kind. We grabbed some bagels out in town with the intention of going to the grocery store afterwards, but that quickly became out of the question because a monsoon came. Ok, that’s dramatic but it felt like a monsoon to us. Wind was knocking us over and a quick trot to the car left us looking like we accidently got stuck in a car wash without the car. Good times.

The good news is that the rest of the week looks amazing and I can’t wait to get some sun on this pasty white body of mine!

(*I don’t know how much you’ll hear from me this week, but I’m going to try to post Pregnant with Laughter tomorrow…ya know, in between my busy sun bathing time 😉 )

Zip a dee doo dah…

Did you know that I’m a big, fat scaredy cat? I am. I haven’t always been, though. I remember a time, when I was just a young tike, when scary movies made me laugh and rollercoasters shot adrenaline through my veins. I didn’t fear much. Or at least I didn’t fear as much as I do now.

I took some steps in overcoming my ridiculousness this past week. I went ziplining for the first time. If you’ve never done this, you should make it a point to do so. Go ahead, add it to your bucket list!

We couldn’t have chosen a better place to zip across. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

pssst..hey…

Look at those two! They are bad to the bone, right? Rockstars. Supafly. Awesomeness seeps out of their whole being. Wanna know why?

Well, Captain J and I completed our open water dive certification. Pretty cool, huh? We started this adventure way back in October with hopes of accomplishing this task in NZ, but it never happened. Desparate to not dive in dry suits and excrutiatingly painful AK water, we made it a top priority to finish up our dives some place a bit warmer. I was so glad we did.

I cannot describe to you how nervous I was before Dive #1. I mean….how weird is it to be able to breathe underwater? It just doesn’t seem right. I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to throw myself into the depths of the ocean (40 feet) and trust  man-made equipment to sustain my endless need to inhale/exhale?’ Eventually I learned to trust the guides, the regulator, and myself which in turn built my self-confidence. It truly is a blessing to be able to explore the depths of an unknown place, another part of God’s creation. There’s so much more out there than what we can see.

Scuba diving is fantastic. We’re hooked. We saw all sorts of interesting fish, eels, dolphins, and coral. On our last dive, there was talk of a 12 foot Tiger Shark when we surfaced but thank goodness I didn’t see that. That might have stopped my heart for a few seconds! That might have ruined diving for me. It’s just too soon to be swimmin’ with sharks, ya know?

Captain J was wonderful in encouraging and comforting me underwater. I had a little talk with him beforehand. I told him that I wasn’t one of his Army buddies–I wasn’t fearless–I was nervous and I was allowed to be scared. Essentially, I told him I wanted him to baby me (hehe). He claims he didn’t have to, though. We had fun in this experience and actually did the whole pukey romantic thing of holding hands while we explored. We may or may not have broken out a few car moves in the ocean, too. Yeah, we’re that couple. The weirdos. Ahh, well…

We ended up finishing up the vacation with four dives under our belts, a sweet new certification card for each of us and the hope of being able to dive again soon. It feels good to have accomplished something new and fun-together.

Have any of you ever tried scuba diving? If so, did you enjoy it? If you haven’t done it, would you?

More on Hawaii later.

Snorkling Kona

What to write? I have so much to say about our adventures in paradise yet my computer battery icon is telling me that time is of the essence. I’m sitting in Anchorage on another dreadful layover. One more flight to go. I can’t tell you how good it will feel to be in my own bed… not that I’ll get to sleep because we are picking Drifter up as soon as we roll into ole F-banks. From what I’ve heard, he’s been pretty terrible.

But you didn’t come to my blog to hear me complain, did you? I just got back from a wonderful vacation with my loving husband so allow me to gush share with you some of our experiences and adventures.

When we got into Kona, we checked into our hotel and hit the sack as it was late at night when we arrived. Bright and bushy tailed the next morning, we hurried through breakfast so we could get a headstart on enjoying the beautiful Hawaiian sunshine. We decided to go snorkling because our hotel, the Outrigger, had a great snorkling beach on its premises.

We actually did a lot of snorkling during our vacay. In between our scuba diving excursions (more on that later), we dove into the water for an impromptu swimming session with dolphins. It was amazing and one of the coolest experiences of the whole trip. These playful spinner dolphins were swimming within an arms reach of Captain J and me. The pod consisted of about 40 dolphins…well, 42 if you count us pretending to be one of them. I hate that we didn’t have our camera with us that day. We saw so much under the water and it definitely has us intrigued for more. We look forward to exploring more of the ocean depths in other areas of the world!

I’ll leave you with a few more photos and the promise to write again soon about some of the other activities we did during week one of leave. More to come!