Special Announcement!

Here it is.....the special announcement!!

I have to confess something first. When I first said I had a special announcement...I really didn't. I just wanted to see if I could drive people crazy. It worked on a few of you!

So nope...no babies in my belly...if that is what you were thinking.

But I am happy to report that we do have a big announcement.

Jer got accepted to go to the Domican Republic for a week as part of an outreach program at school. This is really exciting for him and I am really proud of him. He is already an amazing dentist (from what I hear) and I know that he will do a lot of good while he is there.

Good job Hun!

(sorry family if I got your hopes up! But if you got your hopes up...you should know me better than that!)

More Stuff

So continuing on...


Also in August I had a very important birthday....Y'all I am 26! I am officially on the other side of 25. I think I can be classified as "mid-to-late 20's" now. Wow!

At the end of August, Jer and I went on a much needed vacation. We went on a Carribbean cruise. We had a lot of fun. We went to Cozumel, Mexico first. While in Mexico, Jer and I went beginners scuba diving ("are you for scuba?").





This was actually quite a big deal for me...I am not a deep water person. Anyway, we made some friends on the cruise ship (Holla' Jess and Carrie) and they convinced us to go with them. Anyway, this is how it went.

We get to the scuba place and the instructor takes us down to this room to give us instructions on how to scuba. So a couple things here. 1) The room had an echo so it was hard to hear, 2) english was this guy's second language so he was hard to understand, 3) we got a 15 minute instruction session and then he said "alright lets go to the water", and I was thinking "ummm....isn't this something that people have to spend hours getting certified for and I just sat through a 5 second instruction session and now I have to go do it...great!"

So we got down to the water and started going through all of the steps that we talked about in the instructional room. I immediately start freaking out because my brain is just not liking the idea of breathing underwater. Next, the instructor starts to take us deeper into the water, and again I start freaking out because I can't figure out how to "pressurize" (if you don't pressurize you can really damage your lungs and sinuses). Well I am happy to report that after I got the breathing and the pressurizing all figured out, everything went fabulously. I actually had a lot of fun. We only went about 20 feet under the water, but both Jer and I agree that we would like to do this again.

Next we went to Roatan, Honduras where we just went to the beach. We had a great time here also. I played volleyball with bunch of people from the cruise ship. I didn't know them, but it only took me about 3 seconds to realize they were from New Jersey (all of the guys were Guidos). Also in Roaton, we went snorkeling as evidenced in the below photo (by the way, looking at our vacation pictures it looks like I am trying to bring back the "two thumbs up" in pictures).












The next location was Belize City, Belize. Here we got off the boat, got to the port, looked around and decided that we would not be venturing into the city. Belize City from what we have heard and what we saw, is not a fabulous place. We did however find a local company that took us snorkeling and then out to a private island. The snorkeling was fun and the island was pretty fun too. Here is a picture we took at the private island. (Posers!)



On the way back from the island, we saw some dolphins, two adults and a baby. They weren't close enough to touch, but I liked to see them all the same.

Lastly we went to Freeport, Bahams. We went to the beach, got a few hours of fun, and then the outlying storms as a result of hurricane Ike caught up with us and we had to go back to the ship.

When we got back from vacation, it was moving time again....except not for us this time. Our best friends, Corey and Nan were moving to California. This was very sad to me for a few reasons. Corey and Natalie were the first really good friends we made out here in Jersey. We did just about everything with them, in fact most of my memories of this area involve them. It was also a very sad event because Natalie and I were pretty much the same on the crazy scale (and I mean crazy in the nicest way). We were always singing something (even though I was never good) and we would laugh at all of the same things (particularly "mom jokes"). I put a few pictures in the below slideshow to show what ALWAYS happened when we were together with a camera. These are only a select few of the many pictures that we have like this. Finally I was sad because Natalie is pregnant and I am sad that I won't be able to be around for it. Anywho, we were very sad that they had to move, but we know that the friendships you make when you are an adult are so much stronger than those you make when you are children and teenagers so we know we will still see and talk to them.

Before Corey and Natalie moved, Natalie and I celebrated our birthdays by going to a Broadway show. We went to Gypsy, and it was amazing! It stared Patti LuPone (who I guess is a pretty big deal) and she really was amazing also. I would have never chose this play on my own, but luckily Natalie is a theater person and new the play well. I highly recommend the play. It is not for the kids, because it is based on the memoirs of a stipper named Gypsy Rose Lee (no worries there is no nudity).



Jer and I also saw another play when his brother came to visit. We went to a new musical "A Tale of Two Cities". A....maze....ing!. We loved it! Great story (I am actually to read the book now) and the actors (singers) they had were really really good. We were blown away, especially by the lead James Barbour (who played Sydney Carton).



And lastly...

Jer finally got his Playstation 3. He has wanted one for a long time. I made him save up his money and buy it. This was the only way I would led him get it. I didn't want it, I didn't think we needed it, so I didn't want to spend a penny on it. Well, Jer saved up the money he earns from assising a dentist every now and then, and he finally saved enough. I must say, I like it as well. The PS3 has blu-ray which is awesome. One of the first movies we watched with the blu-ray was Harry Potty: The Order of the Pheonix, the graphics and clarity of the movie was really cool.

What the heck have we been up to?!?!?!

So here is it....the catch up blog.

So where should I begin? I think the best place to begin would be where I fell off the blog-wagon back in July.

July

When I posted last, I was actually in Switzerland...yes, be jealous because Switzerland is the most beautifully gorgeous country I have been in my life. It is so gorgeous, it is ridiculous...infact it is so beautiful...I am mad at it!

I was in Switzerland for a week and I had the weekend to kind of explore. I went for a nice long drive on Sunday and came across this gem of a landscape (unfortunately is was rainy that day so it is not the clearest shot). Nearby where I took this photo was this sign saying that on July 31st there would be a fireworks show over this valley, how freaking awesome would that have been!!! Unfortunately I had to go home before that, but just look at the picture and try to tell me you would not have liked to see that also.

Also while meandering through Switzerland, I drove past a town called....

Yup...Frick! I may be the only person that thinks this is funny...but that is okay. I am usually the only person laughing at my own jokes anyway...so I am used to it.

Back tracking a little. The week before I was in Italy. We had one night to spend in Rome, and we had an Italian showing us around. I have been to Rome before, so I have seen all the main attractions, but this guy showed us something that is not quite as well known...

I guess somebody wrote some love story and the lovers in the story wrote their name on a lock and attached it to one of the light posts on this bridge as a symbol of their never ending love. Well, people decided to copy the book and did the same. Apparently so many locks were attached to the light posts that the mayor (or Italian name for it) was going to take the locks down and through them away...people had a fit! So the solution was to put up this railing (there were atleast 10 more of these on the bridge) so people could attach the locks to them instead. It is insane the amount of locks on this bridge. It was interesting to walk around and read people's names on the locks and to see how much of an impact one person's seamingly insignificant idea can have.

Out of all of the locks I looked at, this was the one that I felt was the most heartfelt and got me a little emotional ...

I know it is kind of hard to see...and it is in Italian...but roughly translated it says, "Die Everyone!" Ha Ha! What?! isn't the act of laughing an expression of emotion.

August

August was moving month. Basically the second I got home from Europe, we had to start moving. I got home the very end of July, we moved on the 15th of August. I dislike moving soooo much. What made it even worse is that we had to repaint our apartment. We had painted it brown, and had to get it back to a whitish color, so the apartment people could come in and paint it again anyway...stupid. Anywho, we tried to make moving a non-event by doing a little everyday. I think it made the process go a bit smoother, but it was still stressful. Many thanks to all of you who helped us move.

Here is a picture of a big part of the moving team...

*Helpful hint...always make friends with the missionaries. They are the key to a quick move.

So moving was a bittersweet process. There are things we will miss and there are things we will not miss so much.

Things we will miss:

1) The view:

2) Our friends (including Ozzy's best friend) - Tom, Elena, and Frankie

3) Being close to the Leishman's and the Reed's

4) That feeling of being home (this was the longest place we have lived since we have been married and it truly felt like home)

5) The pathway by the river, nice for an evening stroll.

6) Something that Ozzy would do...but I can't describe it, I have to show it. But I can't get to the video, so I will have to post it later.

Things we will definitely not miss:

1) The fact that we could support a small country with the amount of money we were paying each month for rent

2) Our apartment building that was "settling" especially where our apartment was located. Everything was slightly slanted in our apartment.

3) Our noisy upstairs neighbors (who I am pretty sure were druggies).

4) No storage

In the end, I think we got a much better apartment. It is bigger...cheaper...and more state of the art.

Here is our old apartment:

And here is our new apartment:

I do have more to blog about, but I think this is a good place to stop for now. I know that I don't really have the attention span for long blogs, so I am sure many of you are the same (if you have even read to this point, for all I know you gave up a while ago). Stay tuned for a few pictures from our vacation, a farewell to a good friend, some other random things, and a special announcement ;)

Ain't all it's cracked up to be

So I know that I promised an update on what we have been doing, and it is coming....later.

So as most of you are aware that over the past 3 years I have travelled ALOT for my job. As many of you are quite jealous of all the different places I get to go and see, I just wanted to give you an idea of the woes that come with the territory of traveling alot. I am getting to the point now that it seems like something always seem to go wrong. Honestly, I don't think that any of these things would have ever happened to me in my life if I weren't on an airplane at least 4 times a month...

Here is listing of some of the more interesting traveling woes I have experienced:

1) Found cockroach in rental car

2) Rental car infested with ants

3) Crashed company car in France

4) Prepped for any emergency landing while flying over the Atlantic Ocean because of a electrical fire in the cockpit. (no worries, the fire was extinguished and we landed okay).

5) Hotel room that was so small that I had to share my barely bigger than a twin sized bed with my suitcase because there was literally no where it would fit in the room.

6) Same hotel room bathroom so small that I either had to sit on the toilet seat sideways or drape my legs in the tub.

7) Exercised at 3 am because I was wide awake from the time difference and there was literally nothing else to do.

8) Fell down the stairs in a hotel lobby (and yes in front of a crowd...awesome!)

9) On one flight was surrounded by a group of individuals that immediately took their shoes off, the smell was horrible. I switched seats only to find it was the coldest seat in the plane, and it didn't recline, and the flight attendants skipped over me 3 times. When I asked for things and politely let them know that they skipped over me...they got pissy with me!

10) Sat directly behind someone with hygiene and gas problems.

11) Can't even count the amount of hours I have spent in an airport due to delayed flights, you learn quickly how to sleep in the airport chairs.

12) Eating out, though it may seem great to not have to ever cook, you really get sick of it.

13) My malnurished husband who only eats candy and pop while I am out of town.

14) Spent a 5 days in Belgium....stayed in 5 different hotels.

15) Airplane that pulled into the wrong gate so we had to wait longer to get off the plane.

16) When I am traveling my dreams get VERY interesting. I have weird dreams normally, and by weird I mean waking up in the morning thinking "what in the world was that?", but when I am traveling they get even worse.

I am positive that there are plenty more that I can't think of...it is midnight and I have been working all day so my brain is fried and refusing to put a coherent thought together.

My Apologies....

So I have been grossly neglecting this blog. I promise I have had a good excuse. Between business trips, moving, and vacations, I just simply have not had time to update the blog.

Goods news is that life is starting to get back to normal. I promise I will be making time next week to give you a much needed update of what has been going on with us over the past few weeks...woops I mean months!

To be continued....