Yea, I've been quiet ;)

And rightfully so! Josh has been home for about a month now. To say that time has flown by is an understatement. We spent the first week of his R&R snowed in in Abilene, yea, you heard that right - snowed in, in Abilene. Being a "midwesterner," I always tend to make fun of the Texans and their inability to deal with snow. You'd think with everyone driving big tonka trucks and everything ahh nevermind....

Anyways, I'm sure you experienced the same storm a few weeks back. Living on base, we expected it to be bad, but we were literally plowed in (6ish inches), so much that our little cars wouldn't even think about getting out. Finally, after day 3 of going stir crazy, we borrowed the neighbors shovel (yea, that's right we don't own one!), and then plowed half of our driveway to get out on the town. The base roads were surprisingly clear, no problems at all. However, the city roads had not been touched (even after 3 days!) and they were MISERABLE! It made for an enjoyable, yet slow drive on about 3 inches of pure ice. We even did a 360 in the middle of the street at a whopping 15 mph. Great fun! But, before that storm occurred, we had the warmest day of the year to welcome home Josh. It was SO beautiful, a sunny, 75 degrees, typical Texas day.

That next weekend, the weather cleared up enough and we headed to DFW to buy Josh some ski gear. That weekend just happened to be the weekend of the super bowl in DFW. It was awesome to be around football fans (even though it wasn't the Colts). We headed to downtown Fort Worth to eat Josh's fav - Uno's pizza. It turns out that the Steelers were practicing at TCU, so Fort Worth had turned into Steeler nation.

So, then two days later we headed out to our vacation, Ruidoso, New Mexico. The six hour drive was completely boring and rather flat until we reached about an hour into New Mexico. I was beginning to think Josh wasn't taking me on a ski trip at all! He had planned this whole thing while overseas, and he did a fantastic job! We stayed at the Lodge at Sierra Blanca, and it was gorgeous! Our room had a fireplace, balcony, and jacuzzi. Because we arrived on a Monday we were probably one of only 4 couples there. Awesome!

On Tuesday, it was off to the slopes! I had my first skiing experience and thankfully my lift ticket came with a free lesson. I'm not going to lie, the first day was a little rocky! My bruise is just now starting to disappear. But after taking Weds off to recover, Thursday went much better. I tackled all the beginner slopes I could and even ventured onto an intermediate slope. Skiing was so much fun! I loved being bundled up in all my snow gear!

I tried to look awkward for this pic, I think I succeeded :)

Josh, the pro, ventured ALL the way to the top of the 13,000 ish foot mountain and skied down rather fast, (he beat me coming down from the gandala!). This was a pic of the top of the mountain, the white sands are to the far left. We enjoyed our trip so much that we extended our stay one more day for extra relaxation.

After the ski trip it was back to the real world, the first day back to work for both of us was Valentine's day. How awful is that? But, we made the most of it and had a great dinner at the Olive Garden, we also purchased our Valentine's day gift for each other. Finally, new suitcases!! Josh was getting rather tired of my flower ones, so we finally splurged for a set of Samsonite luggage. We purchased it at Kohl's, where everything is always a bazillion percent off (that should be their catch phrase). Well, actually it was 50% but then I had a 20% off coupon, and since it was a big purchase, we opened a Kohl's charge card to get an additional 10% off (total of 80% off). I know, we don't usually do credit cards, but the coupons apparently make it worth it. So, we are responsibly using it. At the bottom of our receipt it said in pure Kohl's fashion "you've saved $650 dollars." Crazy Kohls!

After working a few days, we took off that Friday to head to New York to meet up with Josh's family. Josh's sister lives in NYC, his brother and his wife live in D.C., and his parents drove from Indiana to get together for President's Day weekend. We had a great dinner in downtown NYC Friday night when we arrived, and then headed up to a quaint cabin afterwards. We roamed around Woodstock, NY and took in all the sights of the nearby small towns. The greatest place to eat was this place called Sweet B's in Phoenicia, NY. Seriously, home of the largest pancakes I have ever seen! (Josh's dad).

Josh and his brother, Matt goofing around.

Some scenic pics around the cabin.

Finally, things are somewhat back to normal. We are loving life and every minute we get to spend together. Needless to say, Reggie is enjoying this time as well! That's right, he's in a baby swing at the park! We were just messing around, but it turned out that he loved it so he stayed in it for about 10 minutes until we finally pulled him away. Silly dog!

Now, it is finally cooling off outside, 86 degrees. I'm going to go out and enjoy the rest of the evening!

There are more pics on facebook, and if you aren't friends with me on there, you snooze, you lose!