My Own Wonderland...

Just my random thoughts on life. A journal for the world to see.

Showing posts with label home. Show all posts

Friday, June 27, 2014

Lazy Days of Summer? Wishful Thinking...

Hello all!! Another month is drawing to a close. We're officially less than six months away from Christmas. How insane is that?! I swear I say this every year, but every year goes by more quickly than the last. Fourth of July is in a week. The next big holiday after that is Halloween! Crazy.
June has been a blur. I literally don't think I did anything but work. Nothing eventful or too exciting. How depressing is that? I am still only doing 40 hours a week, but doing the job of two people is exhausting leaving me no energy for anything exciting after work. I was hoping July would bring some relief, but it looks like I'm still on my own. I'm hoping we get my old position filled soon so my schedule can change a bit. Hopefully, I won't have to work as many weekends since my old position required me to work almost every Sunday. It'll be nice to, you know, actually hang out with my husband.
Speaking of my husband, we finally found him a truck! It was such a huge weight off of our shoulders to finally find one. It was more expensive than I was hoping for and overpriced, but it was exactly what he wanted so I didn't complain. Now if he would only take care of his two non-working motorcycles and get rid of the truck that no longer works....
Despite finally getting a truck, we haven't been kayaking yet this summer. I can't believe it either. But our schedules just haven't matched up. I'm way too tired after work to go for even a quick trip and he has classes on Saturday and I work Sundays. Sigh.. I'm hoping we get to go out for the Fourth since I managed to get the day off. I'm looking forward to getting on the water and spending some quality time together.
We've started to really plan our trip home in September for Ty's sister's wedding. I asked off for two weeks which my boss wasn't thrilled about. But I haven't taken any sort of vacation the entire year I've been there and I have plenty of PTO for it so he can deal with it. We've decided to drive too which is going to take away two of our days. It's just going to be easier than finding something to do with Pheobe and way cheaper. I'm looking forward to getting out of town and seeing the family. It'll be stressful having to drive all over the freaking Midwest to see everyone we need to see, but oh well. I can't believe it'll have been almost 2 years since we've been home. That's the longest we've ever gone without going home. All part of being the family members living a thousand miles away I suppose. I wonder if it'll feel strange at all. I know it will. Everything is different back home than when we were there. On my side of the family at least. My mother is married and in a different town with his kids. My dad is married and in his wife's hometown. My little sister is married and in a different city. Luckily, Ty's side is all pretty much in the same place. Sure, his sister is getting re-married, but she's been living with him for over a year, so no real change there. It's strange to think that my family have new families that I've never met. I've only met my mom's husband once when they came to visit before they got married. I've never met his kids or been to their house. I've spent a little time with my dad's wife before we moved out here, but I've never been to their new house or met her kids. I've never met my sister's husband (still too weird to say). Yet another drawback to living so far away.
As much as I feel a disconnect to my family now being so far away, I like that we have our own life out here. I like that we aren't stuck in the same towns we grew up in. I like that we don't have our families constantly looking over our shoulders or butting in. We've done it all on our own. Sink or swim, it's just the two of us. I definitely think that has helped our marriage. We figure out how to deal with things and each other on our own.
I'll stop my rambling there...
Hopefully everyone has an exciting Fourth of July! I'll spend my kayaking and then drinking and eating by the pool... sounds so nice right now. Can this week get over with already??? Until next time!

Birthday dinner outfit. I own this dress in three colors....

Did I mention I love to lift? If not, here's a douchey post-workout photo to show you

Rainy days and big mugs of coffee make for very unproductive days off..

5:30 am has it's perks..

I've started filling in my eyebrows (really random) and I think it's the best life choice I've ever made.

New hair!!

Friday, May 2, 2014

Hello May... I've Been Waiting for You...

May is finally here! One of my favorite months. And not just because it's my birthday month, although that helps. Spring is in full swing, the weather is lovely, and winter has finally melted away. I have good feelings about this month. It's going to be great.

Well, we pretty much spent all of April moving. We got the keys to the new place on the 10th and moved non-stop up until the end. We took car-fulls at a time since we didn't want to rent a u-haul. It was exhausting with just the two of us but we did it. Unfortunately, the moving was followed up with unpacking and cleaning our old place. Somehow the cleaning was left to me... hmm... It wasn't too awful but cleaning 3 floors is still rough. I started to panic last week when we were having difficulty finding an exterminator and carpet cleaner. I couldn't find a carpet cleaner under $400 and exterminators were running $300! I thought that was ridiculous since the whole reason we were doing it was to get our pet deposit back which was only $500. I almost said screw it and just walked away as is. But we luckily did find affordable places and got it done in the nick of time. Now we just wait and see if we get our full deposit back.

I am so relieved to finally be finished with everything and to be out. It was insanely stressful worrying about getting everything moved and cleaned and taken care of. Luckily our new place is smaller so it'll be much easier to deal with when we leave. We're loving our new house. It's exactly what we needed. There are some quirks about it since it is about 10 years older than our last house, but nothing too major. The decorating bug has gotten to me. I want to make this house really look nice. For some reason, we never really "settled" at our last one. We didn't hang pictures and had a lot of unpacked boxes. I want to live in this house. Even if this isn't our permanent home, we should treat it like it is.

Besides moving which has taken up most of our life, I've officially enrolled in classes for the fall. I'm still deciding if I'm regretting it. I'm hoping once the bill comes that I don't back out. I need to get over the fact that I'll have loans. Everyone else in the middle class does too. I just need to do it. I really don't know if I'll do anything with a degree, but it has earning power at least. I know doing school and working full time will be difficult, but now's the time. Ty will be out of the military soon and I'd like to have a degree under my belt by then. That way, if I need to get a better paying job, it'll be a little easier.

We managed to fit in a nice Easter amid the chaos. We had friends over for brunch and mimosas and it was amazing.. I LOVE breakfast food. I wish I could eat like that all of the time. But I'd way 200 lbs in a week... After a post-mimosa nap, we went over to their place for dinner. It's nice to have another couple to hang out with sometimes. They enjoy doing things that we like which helps.

We actually went to a baseball game with that couple as well. It was my first MLB game. We went straight after I got off of work and got dinner after stopping by the hotel. Dinner took awhile to get to us, but we weren't complaining since the drinks were tasty even though we missed the first inning. We finally made and I was surprised how good our seats were. We could see everything. Baseball isn't really my thing, but it was fun to be in the crowd and experience it with friends. Unfortunately I had to be at work at 6am the next day so I passed out right after the game. I'd really like to do it again on a weekend that I don't have to work that way I can really enjoy it.

Not much else is going on with us. Moving takes up most of your life. We're anxiously waiting for our first kayaking expedition, but we've had a ton of rain so it'll have to wait. I have a feeling we're going to spend most of the summer on the water which is fine with me. It's a free activity at least!

That's all I have for now. Hopefully May is treating you all well so far!! :)

Unpacking...

She is not thrilled about all of the hardwood...

Home sweet home...

Easter dress...

This happened...

Sometimes you should just buy yourself some flowers...

Aren't we cute??

Monday, April 15, 2013

Life Happens...

Well hello all! Sorry it's been so long...(do I start every post that way??) Getting back into the swing of things (aka life) needed all of my attention, but I am finally able to update on life at the moment. :)

So far Maryland has been pretty good. Ty and I both started working and I've been working way more hours than I ever did in California. While sometimes I would much rather not work at all, it's nice to not feel so lazy sitting at home doing absolutely nothing like in Cali.. As far as work goes, so far so good. The team is friendly for the most part and I think they like having someone who actually knows how to do things and do them right. They've been using me like a work horse. But my wallet definitely doesn't mind.

While having a lot of hours at work is great, it sort of prohibits any exploration of our area considering I usually work weekends. We haven't really gone anywhere of any interest yet. We have checked out all of the nearby malls however. lol I can't believe we've been here this long and haven't gone to D.C. or even Baltimore or even the coast!! Sigh... We'll get there eventually I guess. We're here for awhile, we can take it all in.

There's so much I want to do around here! I want to see all of the historical buildings and sites (hello, associates in history) and go hiking and go to the ocean and all of the museums and maybe even get to NYC eventually.. There's SO much to do around here that it's hard to know where to start! Now that it's getting warmer, we have nothing holding us back. We just need to plan our weekends out and do it!

Speaking of the weather... it is gorgeous here at the moment! It's so strange, one week we have 5 inches of snow and two weeks later it's almost 90! I think Maryland believes it's the Midwest. But now we're actually getting spring weather and I'm loving it. Flowers are blooming and all of the blossom trees are so gorgeous. We even got to do a little gardening yesterday (well, Ty did. I watered them...). We officially have lillies as long as they don't die...

That's really all I have to share at the moment. Work, work, work...

On a side note though, I've been thinking more and more about what I want to do for work. Apparently there is a program for military spouses to receive money to get certificates. I started looking at what jobs I could do with some sort of certificate that I would like. The only thing that really stood out to me was getting certified as a personal trainer. I've been on my own fitness journey for awhile now and the longer I'm on it, the more passionate I get about it. I've actually been seriously considering getting my degree in nutrition or at least certified as a nutritionist. The importance of food to our health is something that I have become pretty passionate about. With a certificate in personal training, I could have a well rounded career. Ideally, in my dream world, what I would like to do is get a degree in either nutrition or psychology with a minor in whichever I don't major in and also get certified as a personal trainer. I would love to provide a "360" approach to health. While exercise and nutrition are vital to overall health and wellness, I think mental health is overlooked on the journey. It such a key factor of health and wellness that needs to be addressed. If you don't have a healthy mindset or a healthy emotional relationship with your body when you're "unfit", you won't magically obtain it when you're fit. I would love to start that discussion with clients I would have. I would provide the fitness and nutritional aspect, but also scratch the surface of the mental health aspect. Obviously, without a doctorate or further education, I couldn't do a lot in the way of therapy or psychology, but with a minor or bachelor's, I could at least address some of the minor issues and be able to refer to a professional with the greater issues such as eating disorders.

These are just some thoughts I've been having... It's good to dream big right? lol

Well, that's all for now. :)

Except for these...