Charlie's Angels In Pensacola

YOU JUMP, I JUMP

Upon taking a self guided tour of the Pensacola NAS in the middle of the winter my two sisters, crystal and I came upon this gorgeous little beach. Since Danny was still in class we decided to stay here and explore a little bit. Since we are all a bit dorky and like to have fun we started taking random pictures along the beach to pass the time. Looking over these pictures today this quote came to mind.

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even though we are sisters, we are also great friends and this quote explains us totally. I cant help laughing at the pictures as I look through them, for one because they are cheesy, but also because they come with fond memories of time spent, happy time spent with loved ones.

Den Mother for Alpha Barracks

Living Next To Base Means Always Having Company

Lately I have been feeling like a den mother to many of the sailors at Alpha barracks here on base. This is because I am the only wife out of Danny friends, and/or the only one living 2 miles from base. I picked the apartment because of its location, size and flexibility, but never would have thought how much traffic would be in and out.

Actually its kind of neat, on most days we have about two or three sailors over for dinner, movies or just hanging out once they hit liberty. On the weekends though we have been having about 5 or so of danny's friends post up on the couches and air mattress.

Dont get me wrong Im not complaining or anything, actually they are quite entertaining to say the least, and our Dog loves the company too! Its just an interesting feeling cooking for so many people and being the driver, since were the only ones with a car here and so on. Good thing Im a people person I guess. Seems like the life of a Navy wife, hosting for all the Sailors.

We even had christmas with a few of danny's friends who were stuck in florida for the holidays. My sisters and crystal went to walmart and filled up stockings for each of them with candy and little trinkets for them, it was a nice feeling.

The Windy City

Love at first Sight

Ok, so maybe its not first sight as in the first time I ever saw Danny, even though I did have a huge crush on him then, but its our big reunion after boot camp! The best part was that he didn't barely recognize me, since I had gotten my hair done and lost about 12lbs while he was away. Ill tell ya the best motivator to go to the gym is knowing your husband is working his ass of 7 days a week in boot camp and he will be coming home soon! Haha got me to the gym 5-6 days a week while he was gone (lets just hope that keeps up).

So this is my first trip so far away from home since, well since I ever. Before this trip the furthest I had been away from home was Hawaii back in 8th grade. Its the middle of the winter and Im from California, heading to Chicago scared about the snow and freezing temperatures. I ended up buying a whole new wardrobe and two Pea-coats (got them both for 70% off at Old navy) just for the occasion.

When it came time to see him, I was so close to crying I was so happy! Ugh... two whole months of no contact was rough I tell ya, but oh so worth the wait to get to see him again. We ended up staying in Chicago over the weekend and visiting the sears tower and eating Chicago style pizza and doing all the fun touristy stuff (as much as you can in two days) before he was whisked away again, flown off to florida. Talk about a change in climate ;-) Overall the trip was great though, it was so nice to see him, and neat to explore new places.

Halloween Tradition

End of An Era

So for about 4 or 5 years now I have had a halloween party out at my parents house in the country. It was the perfect venue, secluded with enough room for many people, also no neighbors for days. This year is bitter-sweet. For one Danny wont be here, and its one of his favorite holidays, and for two its the last year we are going to have a party out at my parents. Hence they are moving and we are forced to find another location next year or something else to occupy our time on halloween.

With that being said I am still pretty excited, I love planning the party, shopping for ideas and decorating the house. Its so thrilling and fun to come up with cheap, fun decoration ideas to make the house look spooky. On the other hand its not gonna be the same without Danny here.

5 Ways to Reduce Cost of a Halloween Party

1. Thrift shop costume ideas

So unless you are one who needs the "gotta have" Halloween costume from leg avenue each year, this is an easy way to consider saving money for Halloween. Decide what you want to be for Halloween and before you buy the first store bought costume that you see make sure and check out the thrift stores, Ross, consignment shops and any other cheap clothing spot to see if there is anything there that you can use for a costume base, or to make into a costume.

My "wedding dress" from last year was $15 from Ross, the veil was an old tiara I had at the house which I glued the fabric onto.

2. Spider webs
Whether your going for the cutesy kid friendly decorations or more hard core spooky ones I can stress how important (and thrifty) spider webs are to the whole operation. We tend to multiple bags each year (it is a big house) and decorate the inside and outside with spider webs. Using tacs you can actually get very good at stretching them out to last longer too.

3. Internet browse for decoration Ideas
So for our first Halloween party my friend and I searched the internet for cool decorations on a budget. There's a lot of useful information out there, you just have to go find it.

Once example and we found that highlighter fluid glows in the black lights, so we ended up getting those dollar "potion" looking bottles from Michael's crafts and filled them up with water and couple drops of highlighter fluid, each with a different color... the (yellow and green worked the best) to make it look like a mad scientists corner, just hang a black light near by and vuala!

4. Dollar store deals
So I admit most of the stuff at the dollar store is really corny and completely cheesy if your not going for a kiddie party, but it never hurts to look. There are usually some cool buckets that you can use for various things around the house, and sometimes you get lucky and find some old netting type decorations which work well to cover outside tables and things.

5. Get creative!
Many of the things that we usually do to add finishing touches to our party are basically free, or very low budget. In the hallway we would stash a cd, which we had burned full of creepy sounds and noises, just put it on repeat and hide the cd player. Also one years we cut up some old sheets that I had lying around and threw fake blood all over them and hung them out on the clothing line out in back.

My best wishes to all of you! Hopefully this helps give you something to start with.

Do you have any ideas??

Leaving for the Navy

So its getting down to the wire and time for my husband Danny to leave for navy boot camp. Up until this point we have rarely been apart for more than a few days at a time and now things seem so hectic, scary, and new. We have both been trying to stay calm, while fitting in the canyon sized lists of 'to dos' growing more and more rapidly as D day approaches. Boy, I know that he has to leave, but as time gets closer it seems more and more like a bad dream and the two months seem like an eternity.

We sat down one day about a month ago and talked about how he had a whole bunch of things he wanted to try and do before he left, like another round of wine tasting, camping and hiking at certain places. Two of our close friends helped us brainstorm different things that were part of what made home, well home. So we each got our work/school schedules and we worked out a calendar of what to do when, a prospective look at what we wanted to accomplish.

Looking back that seemed to be a great idea. In both our eyes we feel that it helped him with coming to terms that he was leaving home for a long time, and got to do many of the things that he has been wanting to, and saw all the people he could; and for me it helped greatly because it kept us spending quality time together in his last month here. I hear many couples tend to fight nearing the date because added stress and worry about the loved one being in boot camp, but this idea we came up with helped keep our minds off him actual departure and focused on what we had next on the list.