Since it's been a month

Here's a quick recap:

We went to Seattle and had an incredible time. Pictures are on facebook, I'll probably post some on here some day.

Our next bigger trip is one we keep putting off, but we promise we will get there to see our friends! Vegas in the spring, hopefully!

We booked our flights home to Michiana, we were able to book super early, so finally a flight UNDER $1000! And out of Del Rio even, praise the Lord.

My job has gotten crazy busy, huge blessing.

For Veteran's day, we had a three day weekend and stayed here! Shocker! We did venture a little ways out of Del Rio to Seminole Canyon state park. We took a guided tour of the Indian paintings. Neat to see!

Josh is now the assistant flight commander in his flight. He's excited about that and loves instructing.

We booked a hotel for San Antonio for our Black Friday escapades.We also made reservations at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, finally! Looking forward to some good steak!

I think that's all!

Our house is somewhat clean!

In anticipation of a special someone coming home today :)
So I took some pictures! Also have to give props to bff Keri for helping make the bedroom my favorite room!

Our next vacation is......

Home to the beautiful, Mt. Rainier.

And flying fish....

It's Seattle!

Josh gets back into town THIS weekend! I'm so excited, I'd say it's been a long two months, but it's really flown by with all the socials, studies, church, and friend activities. We were originally planning on Vegas but decided to do that another time. We then said, well where else are we interested in? I said I'd love to go out west because the furthest I've ever been was Colorado. We really wanted to drive the Cali coast but that's expensive!

 We then googled cheap flights and BAM Seattle came up. We thought it would be a great time to get our colder weather and fall colors fix. We have rented a little cabin in the woods for two nights at Mt. Rainier National Park (free entry for military woo hoo!). And then we will stay two nights in downtown Seattle right near the Space Needle, Pike's Place Market and the original Starbucks :)

We've planned all of this rather last minute and booked everything except the rental car this weekend! We leave in two weeks! Can't wait!

Trips

Josh and I both encountered this on a drive back from San Antonio. It feels like we've traveled a lot lately, but couldn't remember all the whens and where's. We love to travel, we even wrote about it as a must do in our pre-marital counseling. SO, we must be getting older and losing some brain cells. I'm hoping to fill in the blanks of this list and add one for every year from now on! And we go to San Antonio nearly once a month so I'm no longer counting those unless it was for something special!!

2012 Recap
Montgomery and Destin, FL - Labor Day visit to SOS, September
Galveston/Houston/SA - July - Debt Free/4th of July celebration
Wimberly/San Marcos - July - Girl's Weekend
Austin/Barton Springs - May - 5 year anniversary - Joel McHale
Port Aransas - April - Josh's birthday getaway
Pernaldes Falls State Park - March - Harley trip
Abilene - Feb - Teara visited sweet friends!


2011 Recap
Visit home to SB - No Chicago trip this year - Dec
Tour of Michigan/Washington DC/Virginia beach - July
Gorman Falls State Park, TX - April

Probably two things too good to be true

1. We do not have a single day forecasted for 100 or above.
2. HIGHs in the 80s!?! We haven't seen that since April.

I pray this sticks around. Please please please!

10-Day Forecast for Del Rio, TX

			High / Low (°F)	Precip. %
Tonight Sep 09		Clear	68°	0 %
Mon Sep 10		Sunny	98°/71°	0 %
Tue Sep 11		Sunny	98°/73°	0 %
Wed Sep 12		Partly Cloudy	99°/77°	0 %
Thu Sep 13		Partly Cloudy	96°/75°	20 %
Fri Sep 14		Scattered T-Storms	88°/72°	40 %
Sat Sep 15		Isolated T-Storms	89°/72°	30 %
Sun Sep 16		Sunny	94°/72°	0 %
Mon Sep 17		Partly Cloudy	95°/72°	0 %
Tue Sep 18		Partly Cloudy	97°/74°	0 %

For your viewing pleasure

I know I have told many of you that Josh had at one time grew his hair/beard out. So, this is what that looks like. I've only seen it like this once, I believe this was fall of 2005.

The Holy Spirit

I came across this verse in my devotional. I'm blown away by this.

Do you ever pray for something but feel like the prayer isn't coming out the way you want it to? Or maybe you're distracted? Check this out:

Romans 8:26-27 "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."

"God knows our hearts, desires, and longings. He also longs for us to experience His best for our lives. When we pray, our requests, fraught as they are with our clouded perspectives and sinful human natures, are in essence "filtered" through the Holy Spirit. While it might seem frustrating that our prayers are no longer entirely our own, having God Himself interceding on our behalf is an incredible privilege."

That's some powerful stuff!

Distance makes the heart grow fonder

I'm so happy that our old squadron has been reunited after their long deployment! Though it is so bittersweet as it means our South Dakota friends are now out on deployment.

For us, no deployments are in our near future (maybe 2014). Though, Josh is leaving soon for some officer training. Thankfully, it's only about two months and I get to see him at the half way point. I knew that marrying into the military would mean we would have to be apart for some time. So far we've had 2 months apart in Kansas, 1 month in MS, 6.5 months in Abilene, and now 2 months here. When you think about it, 7 years together and only about 1 year apart from each other. Doesn't sound too bad! Especially when you compare it to other military situations. We have been blessed. I actually feel really silly writing about this since it is seriously, only two months.

Anyways, I think it takes a certain couple to be able to withstand the distance. There's definitely a big difference between being separated for a few days and a few months. I've learned that although it is different to be without your husband for awhile, it's also pretty awesome. It really gives you the chance to remember how much you appreciate your spouse. It also gives you a chance to miss them more than usual. It makes you really appreciate the blessings that God has given you in your marriage, most importantly trust and respect. If you do it right, you learn to do life "without" them, and you learn to do it with class and not make it a pity party.

There's never a time that we've been in a set schedule for months, or years at a time. There is no 8-5 in the military as a pilot. I think that keeps our life and marriage interesting. As a spouse, you learn to keep yourself entertained whether it's 5 or 12 hour work days. You learn how to be your own person. You learn how to readjust when they come back.

And with each reunion is another honeymoon, and that can only be good for a marriage :)

I miss rain

This is a picture of our backyard (aka Mexico). I'm so tired of seeing this, hearing thunder, and getting absolutely no more than a drop or two of rain. I want some good storms!!

I think it's rained maybe one good time since we've lived in Del Rio.

Dios mío!

Galveston/Houston/San Antonio

We love getting out of town. It's pretty safe to say we've been to all of the large cities in Texas (minus the ones on the border!). Well, this past weekend we finally checked off the biggest Texas city - Houston! We haven't been able to go yet because it was so far away, but now, we are closer! We had also heard not-so-good things about the place so it wasn't very high on our list. Houston and Galveston greatly surpassed our expectations.

We stayed in Galveston for 2 nights, Houston for 2 nights, and San Antonio for the last night. We took the dogs and had an absolute blast. I must say, my husband has a gift for planning vacations. We really did a lot of fun things that he took the time to research. He is amazing. Here are some of my favorite things from the trip:

Eating at places with beautiful scenery.

Fireworks at Galveston and at Houston. Houston was probably the best we've ever seen. Maybe tying with Nashville. They had great music as well.

We spent an entire day at NASA Space Center. Wow, is there a lot to do there, we didn't even conquer everything. It was really neat to see though!

Josh loves to swim around and find fun stuff in the ocean. The dogs were very uncertain about these guys.

This is a picture of Pleasure Pier at night, just completed in May at Galveston. This was the absolute prettiest Ferris wheel I have ever seen! I was just hypnotized by it the whole time.

This is the Williams Water Wall in Houston, really neat to see, it's pretty and gigantic!

We watched Spiderman in 3D at the IMAX in San Antonio. The movie was VERY VERY good!!

That's a wrap on that vacation. We got back here Sunday and Sunday night Josh had already booked our hotel for our next vacation. We are going back to Destin, Florida for Labor Day weekend!! It seems far away, but Josh will be in Alabama for SOS training from August-October, so it's a great time for me to come visit!! Destin was our getaway while we were in Mississippi, so we are excited to go back.

I also get my own girl's vacation next weekend! I was graciously invited to spend the weekend at a sweet home near San Marcos, Texas. I'm so excited to spend the weekend with my bestest good friend, Keri, and a bunch of other great ladies! Hooray!!!

The day has come

For those of you that have been following our debt free journey....

We are now DEBT-FREE!!!!!!!!!!

And BOY! Does it feel great! Next week we are heading to Houston/Galveston for some celebrating of our accomplishments and the 4th of July :)

Now we start saving for something like this! The Infiniti JX. We test drove it awhile back and it blew the Highlander and the Pilot out of the water, but is more expenive. We are still undecided, and we still have a LONG ways til we need it. But, it's nice to have a new goal :)

And now it's June

I never knew how time could be so fast and yet so slow at the same time. Especially, when I pretty much spend all day at home, usually by myself, trying to find some work to do. My workload for my real job, thanks to the lower price of natural gas or whatever, has been diminishing to nearly 10-15 hours a week. Quite a change from 30-40 hours. So, I've decided to focus more of my time on my magnet business. A few months ago, I broke my "break-even point" and have been making some slow, but nice profit. However, it is a lot of work! BUT, with nothing but time on my hands, I've got the time to work. I had debated finding another job to do on the side, but really, my current job pays extremely well and to find something that pays well (without being bilingual) is pretty much impossible here in Del Rio. So, we've decided to keep only the job I have, and pushing on a little stronger with magnets. Praying this helps fill my time :)

What else have I been doing with my time? Well, surprisingly, I've been transforming into a little house wife, keeping a clean house, trying new recipes, walking the dogs, and hitting the gym here and there. For those that know me well, house cleaning has been a struggle of mine for quite sometime. However, with a smaller one-story house, mainly carpeted floors, and tons of time available, cleaning hasn't been too terrible. I think this is a reason Josh is fine with my current work situation! haha.

Also, I've started reading the Hunger games! I'm about halfway through book three and I'm hooked. It's a great series.

As for Josh, he's been teaching students for a couple weeks now. To say that he loves it, would be a strong understatement. The hours are definitely long, 12-13 hours a day with 2-3 flights/day (no exaggeration), but he's enjoying what he is doing. It didn't take long for him to fail a student on a ride either. He helped that one get ready for his next check ride and he passed with one of the highest scores possible. SO, not only is he loving his job, he's also good at it. Is that really a shocker?

Del Rio is definitely an adjustment for me. There is very little to do off base. The base itself is not as social as I had hoped, but we are making great friends here and there. They have limited resources compared to other places we've been, no base theater, no thrift shop, airman's attic, post office, food court, and limited hours on the commissary. It's so quiet here, they've even toyed with the idea of closing down the BX! It is also extremely hot and humid. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can't be outside for longer than 10 minutes before I feel like I'm sweating like a pig and have to go inside. Even the night doesn't offer relief, we usually reach mid 90s by 1pm, and then don't get under 90 again til around 10pm. I also can't really remember the last good rain we had. I've never craved fall so much as I have this summer (which hasn't even officially started yet!).

Good things though, I'm going breakfast with a group of girls on Fridays. I'm going to a women's Bible study on Tuesdays. And we have made friends with boats :) The lake here is beautiful!! Also, the movies off base are $3.50 for a matinee and $5.25 for "prime time" HUGE change from Abilene! But, as we've been told and realized ourselves, being in a largely Hispanic city, your movies (no matter what rating) are almost always accompanied with screaming/talking kids. So, that's fun.

We've still been hunting for the perfect church and have come to the realization that it won't happen here. As many people here do, we will have to "settle" for much less than we have ever had for a church. It's hard to cope with that, so pray for peace with that issue.

I think you are about caught up!!

You know you've lived in the south too long when...

We are prepping for tubing on Lake Amistad and I think, let's wait a couple more hours, it's only 78 right now. That's kind of chilly.

Can you believe it?

We've been married for FIVE years! These have been the quickest, easiest, most enjoyable five years of my life. We had a conversation with a couple awhile ago about rough marriages and I felt so blessed when Josh said, well, it's been a pretty easy five years for us, we made it through pilot training, deployment, and school. Not to mention 5 moves in 6 years! I could not have picked a better person to grow old with, guess that's what happens when you leave that work to God! Also hard to believe, we are quickly approaching the "we've known each other half our lives" stage. We are getting old!!

We had an absolute blast in Austin this past weekend. Crazy thing, five years ago we couldn't find a hotel to spend our wedding night in because it was Notre Dame's graduation. We tried months in advance and had to go a couple cities over to find one. Well, this weekend was University of Texas's graduation and the place was packed! It reminded me of the crowds of New Orleans during the 4th of July a few years ago, minus the overwhelming smell of booze, immense humidity, and voo doo dolls. Anyways, somehow, we were able to find a reasonably priced hotel right on Sixth street. We were asked multiple times, are you guys excited for graduation!? We also got a few "is this I.D. fake" looks because of our out of state licenses (mine is still Michigan, Josh's is Kansas).

Anyways, we took our time getting to Austin to pick up some belated birthday and anniversary presents for Josh. He wanted a new bike jacket and a bike cover for his Harley. Check. We also got him a new reel for his fishing pole. Then we went on down to the outlet malls and shopped around. We checked out the bats but they had stage fright. We spent Saturday at Barton Springs and that place was great! The water was 68 degrees, incredibly frigid, but still warmer than Lake Michigan! And, our lips didn't turn blue! We didn't know what we wanted to do for our anniversary and not much was going on around the bigger cities. Then, we were watching the Soup and Joel McHale said, come see me in Austin on May 19th, and bam, we made plans! He was hilarious. Here are some pics.

Barton Springs

 Pre-gaming at the bar before Joel McHale

View of the city from the Long Center

My "surprise" anniversary gift, an anniversary band.
Yes, I am immensely spoiled.

 Night view

Our treasures from the drive!  Austin - Steak N Shake Chili, New Braunfels - Logan's Rolls, San Antonio - Olive Garden dressing from Sam's club, and Uvalde - Taco Bell Chili Cheese burritos!!

And we did a little outlet mall shopping with some other stops
at Cabela's, Harley, Academy, and Bed Bath and Beyond.
Oh, the big city life.... 

All in all, a wonderful, relaxing anniversary!
Hard to believe we have another long weekend coming up this week, hooray!