It's Okay Friday

It's Okay...

*To be ready to slam the door on July. Peathe. Out. Thucker.

*To be totally jealous of people who get to take vacations where there are lighthouses.  Totally.

*To have gone almost two summers in my home not knowing it had air conditioning. I guess if nothing else, I saved on an electric bill.

*To want to plan an epic BBQ full of good friends, food and fun. Any takers?

*To be just-so-sick-of-dieting I could die, but to have these things coming up in my life that keep me motivated...like family pictures and...OMGOSH a cruise!

*To aspire to be a photogenic human.  I swear, even when it's a good photo, it's a bad photo of me, I am working on remedying that.

Have a great weekend!!

We Want to Know!

 I am so excited to be joining WWTK with Mamarazzi and Alicia aka Queso!! 

{1} Who would you call if you had to get bailed out of jail?

I can't even think of an answer because aside from the occasional speeding, I don't think I have ever broken the law. Seriously. However, if I got arrested for going something like 110 miles an hour rocking the bean till her bolts were shaking, I'd call my husband. He would understand my need for speed.

{2} If you were a superhero what would your hero name be?
I would want my super hero power to be teleportation and to have mastered the kitchen. I know super heroes don't usually have multiple powers but I am starting a revolution. So my name would need to be....Culinary Teleportation Queen.

{3} What do you think is one of your best qualities?
The answer to this question is also often referred to as one of my worst qualities...but plain and simple, I am just a kind person. I will bake anyone a meal, offer anyone a shirt, provide a roof and a meal for last minute company, volunteer anyone my time that I have to offer...and do it all with a smile on my face.  My husband says it is the most endearing and annoying quality I have because it often results in my being easily used by others, but I choose to believe I help people who TRULY need it more than the other scandalous people who are using me, so it's worth it.

{4} What song would you pick to be your own personal theme song?
Because everyone makes mistakes and because everyone is perfect to somebody...

{5} What celebrity do you think is most over rated?
Brangelina.  Seriously, she is a home wrecker and he left his wife to be with her. Why do we idolize them, again?

Dear July, I won't miss you.

Remember how I said I wouldn't repeat July if my life depended on it? Well, yeah, I still feel that way. We made a quick trip to Rock Springs last weekend to see Douggie's family.  It was a nice trip and so good to see everyone, but like most things in life, too fast! This is a picture of Doug and I with his Grandparents. I totally stole it off my mother-in-law's facebook because time passed so fast I forgot to take my own pictures.

Doug's poor Grandpa decided my name was too difficult to remember so he decided to call me "Jake." I, personally, thought this was utterly hilarious. I must look slightly like a man! ;-)

Doug's sister also made this Cookies'n'Cream cake that was, quite frankly, one of the best deserts I have ever had. I should have taken a picture of it but I was too busy scarfing it down my face.  I ate three pieces of it, no lie.  My weigh in this week will probably reflect my pigging out, but it was so delicious I didn't even care!

After our quick return home, I worked one day and then headed back on the road to Casper for my Dad's heart surgery. Everything went swimmingly and he is expected to be back to his old self again some day...if he follows all the doctor's orders for recovery! He is going to have to learn to shoot with his other hand though, no more shotgun recoil is allowed on the left side of his chest...imagine that, eh?  This is him right after his surgery with me....he would probably kill me if he knew I put this picture up but since Dad does not navigate the interwebs, I think I am safe for now. July started with the scare of a lifetime when Dad had his heart attack and it is ending with a bright light shining through the tunnel. Grateful for the prayers and power of the Lord? Yes, yes I am.

The drive home from Casper was slightly dangerous as it was dusk for the first half and full on dark for the second half and I nearly ended the lives of at least 3 different deer.  Good thing I am a ninja driver in the bean because I spared their lives....AND I spared the bean from certain death.

I also decided that Clorox is my new best friend.  It is a the best stinking cleaning agent around. Period.

It's Okay Friday

It's Okay...

*To occasionally  need the above reminder.

*To have the kind of week so full of stress that when Friday gets here, you aren't even excited because the weekend is going to be stressful, too.

*To love lunch dates. They are super, duper awesome.

*To be married and not have a kid right away.  We are a happy couple who wants children someday, but we don't NEED to run out and have one right away.

*To have liked Horrible Bosses and laughed hysterically despite the raunchy undertones of the movie.

*To miss my husband when we are seperated. It's ok to do things without each other. Healthy even. But I do miss him.  Which is also totally okay.

*To be totally ready for the month of July to be over and welcoming the return of a normal schedule with summer's end.

*To also not be totally ready for the weather to change with our schedules.

*To miss my little brother a lot lately.

*To want to see Captain America!

Happy Friday!!

Our Bean, the Trooper...

“I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU BABY, YOU WERE MADE FOR LOVING ME.” My brain slowly comprehended that Doug’s ringtone was blaring from my purple berry as I drug myself into a conscious state.  Panic was the first emotion I felt. It was 10 after 11 that night and the man knows I am in bed by 9:00 p.m.  He wrecked. He must have crashed my precious Jelly Bean!!!!

“Hello?” I know I answered groggily and with a question. You know, like what the hell are you calling me for I have been sleeping long enough I was entering REM.

“Love, I need you to come get me. Something is wrong with the transmission on the bean.”

I muttered something incoherent but he hadn’t spoken the words “crash,” “wreck,” “bleeding” or “hospital” so I know my alertness immediately started to die. In fact, I was almost asleep when I hear his voice nearly shouting at me….

“Are you awake?! Are you going to remember to get up and come get me?”

Yeah, yeah of course I was. Right? Wrong. I totally went back to sleep. Who knows for how long…

When he called I told him the low fuel light had gone on in the truck on my way home so would I need to get gas and he told me yes. So not only did I have to drag myself out of bed but I also had to get totally dressed because I had to pump gas. I left my new glasses in Idaho last weekend so I was rocking glasses with a prescription 3 years old. This was not my idea of a good Tuesday night…er, Wednesday morning by this time.

So anyway, I get dressed, I go pump ten dollars’ worth of gas, I squint my way into 20/20 vision with the help of the old glasses and I drive across town to get Doug from work.  The whole way there all I could think was how on earth were we going to afford a new transmission, how did this happen, didn’t we just get a tune up and everything checked out, the bean is a trooper what are we going to do?!?!?!

So I get there and my husband is annoyed and tired and just wants to get home, but of course not without showing me that the gear shifter is just flopping around all Willy Nilly and not connecting to any of the gears. Great. Just. Freaking. Great.

My husband is a level headed man. He always has the attitude that life happens and we will just make it work. Do what’s right, pay your tithing, be a good person…it all will take care of itself.  So while I am fuming and telling him, “Whatever you do, don’t tell my mother because I don’t want to hear I told you so from her and she will say I told you so because she keeps saying the bean wasn’t meant for road trips” he was just quietly driving home with complete confidence this would all look better in the morning. So we prayed. And we slept.

And he was right.

This morning he woke up with the epiphany that sometimes on manual transmissions the gear shifter itself disconnects from the transmission and it is just a matter of reconnecting it with a bolt or something else manly and tool sounding. So he drops me off at work and drives to the bean and sure enough, he fixes it. In about two minutes.

Turns out, the bean was made with a bunch of plastic parts and the gear shifter just slipped out of one of them. He slipped it back in and PRESTO! The bean was revived.  This is great news. We can go to Rock Springs this weekend now and not spend our life savings.  We can go to the wedding in August we are set to attend. You see, no matter how poorly built the bean may be for road trips, she’s all we got and we’ve got to make do with her. She will live on!

All that to say, I didn’t need to stress eat that bowl of ice cream, the plate of nachos, OR get woken up in the dead of the night if he had only had that epiphany about 8 hours earlier….

And Then It Was July....

I think in 10 years if someone asked me if I would be interested in re-living the month of July from 2011 I would politely decline their offer with a big, fat HELL NO!!!!!!!!

The husband and I went camping over the 4^th of July weekend, which started out to be a really super fun time. However, about halfway through our stay, word came up the mountain that my father was having a heart attack.  The 30 minutes it took to drive to service to get updated information were the longest seconds of my life.  When we got to a service area, Dad was stable and going into surgery the next day.  For now everything is ok and he is at home resting.  There will be follow up appointments and one follow up surgery but the details in the medical world are so often to wait that I am learning to be patient, say lots of prayers and trust that the doctors are taking good care of him.  I went to spend a day with him that week and this photo was taken at that time. Technically, he probably shouldn’t have been in the horse corral, but when has he ever been a rule follower?

This is my lovely husband and I camping before the bad news.  This 4^th of July tiara my Mommy purchased for me and I think it is the best thing, well, ever.

After our whirlwind camping trip and buzzing to Riverton for a day, we spent the following weekend in Denver for Maggie’s wedding. This weekend also happened to be Doug’s birthday so we squeezed in some birthday festivities as well.  The wedding was very small and quick so I didn’t get the chance to snap any pictures of us at the wedding itself but here is a photo of us on the way to the wedding and below is one of us with Douggie’s birthday brownie from Dave and Buster’s.

The most awesome benefit of the weekend in Denver was getting to see my BFF. There is something so much better about quality face time then texting and calling. I love seeing her face, it refreshed and energizes me and it’s an awfully beautiful face, too!

We watched Transformers 3 in IMAX 3-D and headed home the next morning.  I suck and didn’t get a picture of it but we went to my Mom’s for BBQ for Doug’s birthday and had a fruit tart for his “cake”!  He got home to the surprise of this birthday present:

He was pretty excited so I would say all in all; it was a fabulous birthday/wedding/BFF reunion weekend.

The week after all that (which was just this past week) Doug worked every stupid night from 3-11 and since I work a regular 8-5 I didn’t get to see him at all because on Thursday afternoon, Mom and I packed our gear up and headed to Southern Idaho for the Tucker family reunion.  It was SO HOT there, but we had a really great time. It was nice to catch up with people and see everyone.  It made me miss my Granny but I know she was watching over us from heaven.  I always thought I looked an awful lot like the people from my Dad’s side of the family, but this weekend my Mom took this picture of me with my Great Aunt Linda and let me tell you what, I suddenly saw that I do, in fact, look like that side of the family as well!

It was a super, super quick trip and we hope to go back sometime soon and stay a little longer. Might I suggest sometime that it isn’t 90 degrees on the cool part of the day?

We made the long trek home Saturday night/Sunday morning but Doug left for Denver for Mayhem on Sunday morning.  This is how he spent his day:

He didn’t get home until 3:00 a.m. so I have still not really spent any amount of quality time with him, but he has tonight off of work so I’m pretty excited about it. Maybe I can convince him to take me on a date!

Next weekend my siblings were going to be in Cheyenne but due to some medical issues arising at the last minute they won’t be coming and I am quite sad about this business.  However, Doug’s family will be gathered at his parent’s house this weekend so we are going to be traveling (yet AGAIN!) to visit them.

I am very grateful for the friends and family that we have and the opportunities that we have to visit them and renew our relationships with them.  However, the traveling is starting to show in the bags under my eyes and my growing waist line.  I never imagined my first summer as a married woman would be so overwhelmingly busy, but here’s to hoping for a slow fall….

It's Okay Friday

It's Okay...

*to be ohmygoshsoexcitedIcouldpee to go camping this weekend!

*to be looking forward to the fact that there will be no cell service on said camping trip - it's time to unplug from technology for a few days.

*to also be looking forward to my phone going off with messages the second we get BACK to service! ;-)

*to think that July is going to be the most expensive month ever. We have Shoopman Family Camp this weekend, a wedding next weekend, a family reunion on my Mom's side the 3rd weekend in July (Doug has to miss this one), a day trip to Rock Springs to visit Doug's grandparents and then a sibling reunion the 4th weekend (although in all sadness Doug has to work that weekend). That is going to add up!

*to be grateful that even though it costs a lot of money, we have so much family that all 5 of those occasions will bring different faces for us to see!

*to have packed TWO books, yes I said TWO, for this weekend. I LOVE reading in the mountains!

*to love my nook but still buy certain books in hard copy.

*to be excited for the surprise Doug has in store for everyone this weekend....stand by for a future update on that.

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all have a safe and fun 4th of July weekend!!!!!