Happy Halloween!!!

Our Halloween festivities were last night here on post and we had an awesome time!! Of course we dressed our dog, Emma up in her bumblebee costume and she loved it:

Our friends Jeremy and Kristina came over to hang out with us to pass out candy. We grilled up some burgers and hotdogs for dinner and then sat outside to greet all the trick or treaters. I do have to say that we saw some incredibly creative costumes, my favorite was an 8 year old girl dressed up as Michael Jackson! It was awesome!!! Although, the best part of these night involved her:

A couple walked up dressed as "Killer Clowns", immediately Kyle pointed out that Kristina hates clowns and this is what happened:

They followed her all the way to our backyard haha it was all in fun though, they were awesome!!!

We managed to not run out of candy this year and still had a few pieces left at 8 when trick or treating was over.

Earlier in the day was great as well, I ended up purchasing a set of golf clubs so now I can join Kyle when he plays. We went to the driving range so I could get accustomed to my clubs, I can honestly say I had the best time!! We also decided to purchase our Christmas gift to each other:

A nice new 60" TV lol

Kyle loves it and so do I! It was definitely worth it, have to love the PX and no tax!!

Well for those who are passing out candy or venturing out to trick or treat with your kids tonight, be safe and get lots of candy!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

*NOVEMBER 1ST IS THE START OF PANCREATIC CANCER AWARENESS MONTH, PLEASE HELP BY SPREADING THE WORD AND WEARING PURPLE TO SHOW SUPPORT*

Coffee anyone?!

Last night I finally went to my first "Coffee" for my husbands current batallion. Although we have been with this unit almost a year now, I either didn't have the time or honestly just did not want to go. I figured last night was a perfect chance to go (since it was being held 3 houses down from me). I ended up having a wonderful time, our batallion commanders wife Heather is a crackup and made it so much fun! Maybe this was the motivation I needed to start going more often. Our FRG leader sent us our updated calendars through May 2011, wow so much will be happening and all the red marked dates for things such as JRTC and Deployment kinda bummed me out. A few things that got me excited is that now instead of 2 balls (Division Ball and St. Barbaras Day) we now have 3 to attend! I love getting dressed up, my husband on the other hand hates his blues lol. I am taking advantage of the dress shopping while I'm in Vegas so I can spend some quality fun time with my mom. Also know we have a general idea of his block leave dates before deployment, we have decided that this will be a trip for us to:

YAY!!!!

I really can't believe that October is almost over, but November is going to be a wonderful month for so many reasons. My beautiful niece Kylie will be turning 4 years old. I swear it feels just like yesterday that she was born:

Isn't she beautiful?!?!

My sister Lisa will also be celebrating her birthday (she and Kylies birthdays are 2 days apart), I love my sister so much and wish I could be there to celebrate their birthdays with them. Not long after that I will be there for Thanksgiving, yay!!!

Me and Lisa on my wedding day

As I'm sure most of you are I am beyond happy that it is Friday!! It has been one heck of a week, we are going on a Hallows Eve cemetary walk tonight, which should be interesting. Tomorrow we plan on watching a marathon of Ghost Adventures and passing out candy to all the trick or treaters!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!

All I want for Christmas is..

Kyle and I really hadn't talked much about where we wanted to go for Christmas. We finally made the decision on Sunday (purchased plane tickets last night wahoo!!!) and this is where we are going:

We are going HOME!

I am so excited for 2 reasons:

1. We get to see our niece open gifts on Christmas morning, last year we had to settle for a DVD of her opening gifts. She is such a character and we are so excited.

2. My Mom (need I say more?!)

The best part is that she has NO IDEA we are coming. I have told my Dad and my sister Lisa because I want them to be in on it. Kyle and I can't imagine a better way to celebrate the holidays then with our families. He will be gone for Christmas next year and I want him to have this time with family.

This weekend went by way too fast for my liking. Friday night we went on the Historic Hauntings hayride in downtown and we had a blast!! It was perfect weather and we heards lots of awesome stories and some pretty cool reenactments.

us on the hayride

Saturday, we ate had breakfast out, did some shopping ( I took advantage of JCPenneys buy 1 get one for .88!! sale) and watched "The Lovely Bones" that night. If you have not seen this movie I highly recommend it, it was beautifully done.

I am back to work today after my procedure yesterday, everything went well there is no cancer and now the issue is under control. Thank goodness! All I can say is that the anesthesia they gave me was AWESOME! I have no recollection of the procedure at all. I slept until about 4:30pm and felt great after.

I better get back to work, have lots to get caught up on!

I hope everyone has a great week!

I wanna be sedated.....

If you are reading this right now I am currently under a lot of anesthesia having a not so fun procedure done (promise I won't go into detail). I have spent the last few days freaking out about this not knowing what to expect. Over the last month or so I have been experiencing a few issues that I needed to get checked out, then this procedure was recommended. Hopefully, this will help them diagnose what is going on (please pray that it is not cancer, as that is a very real possibility).

Hopefully I will be back to blogging in a few days. Please say a little prayer for me!

Good times..

These next few months are filled with a lot of fun things!! Tonight, Kyle and I will be going on a Historic Haunting Hayride in downtown Fayetteville. There are a lot of historic sites to see and I'm sure some awesome stories that go along with it. Saturday we are going to the 82nd Airborne Museum to walk through the "Haunted Hercules" it's a C-130 on display that will be converted into a haunted house!!! Awesome! If you live in the area you should check it out:

Next Friday we are going on a Cemetary Walk in downtown as well. We just bought these tickets today and are really excited. We love anything to do with paranormal activity, spirits and ghosts. Hopefully we can catch "something" on camera.

November will be fun-filled as well, we run the Raleigh-Durham Purple Stride 5k for Pancreatic Cancer on November 7th. I am praying for good weather and an awesome turnout! Towards the end of the month will be the busiest we are 3rd on a stand-by list to go on a retreat with Kyle's battalion to Great Wolf Lodge (we are pretty sure we will go), we have never been before and are pretty stoked about it. Then a few days later I hop on a plane to Vegas!! Yay! (I'm planning on getting my nose pierced while I am home, might even have another tattoo done but we will see)

I am excited to go here with my family:

My mom is the most excited out of all of us. Even though she can't ride the big rollercoaster anymore she plans on taking my niece Kylie on every kiddie ride.

Now we just have to figure out what we are doing for Christmas. (Maybe Disneyworld?!?! We shall see)

Happy Friday!!!!

Proud to be a clutz!

I'm sure some of you can relate to being clumsy. I, for one, am a HUGE clutz! I woke up about 9:30am on Sunday morning and headed for downstairs. I got down the first set of stairs just fine, the second not so much. As soon as my foot hit the stair I knew I was done for, this was me:

I hit every stair on the way down, oh my goodness it was painful!!! I sat on the floor calling out for Kyle, only to realize that he had left for work. I was in the most excruciating pain I have ever felt, I thought I had broken my tailbone. It is now Wednesday and it is still sore but thanks to epsom salt and hot baths it is getting better.

Hopefully it will be completely better by Friday because Kyle and I are going on a Historic Hauntings Hayride in downtown Fayetteville, we have heard awesome things about it!!!

Happy Wednesday!!!



Weekend Wrap-Up

Another weekend is coming to a close and it makes me sad. It always seems like the week drags on and the weekends fly by.

Friday we had planned to go to the Vander Haunted Trail with our friends Jeremy and Kristina. All I can say is that we were not disappointed. It was really scary, it is out in the back-woods area and there really isn't much around it. When we got there they had some of the characters running around the parking lot scaring people and they were pretty successful. Once we got our tickets, they had a Haunted Train Ride you could go on, it took you around the woods and there was people waiting to scare you. It took us about 30 minutes to get through the whole thing and in typical haunted house fashion the last part was guys with chainsaws they chased us out and kept following us haha. My voice was definitely hoarse the next day. Kyle and I then headed to Dairy Queen for ice cream (yum), then headed home to watch Ghost Adventures, overall a great night. Here is a picture of us after we exited the Haunted Trail:

Saturday I decided it was time to get my flu shot, for anyone that knows me really well knows that I HATE needles. To keep my mind off it beforehand we did some shopping at Target (finally got my thank you cards for the people who donated to our pancreatic cancer fundraiser) and then had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. The shot ended up not being so bad it just really hurt afterward. A little bit later I decided it was time for a change, I went and got my hair cut off, it feels soo much better and I love it. I will post a picture eventually.

Today, we are just lounging around and going to watch football. At some point I have to make homemade cinnamon rolls and chocolate chip cookies for Kyles work (it was requested haha). I love days like these!!

On a great note, we finally reached our goal for our Pancreatic Cancer 5k!!! We are still happily accepting donations though :)

I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend!!!

flight is booked!!

I am so excited that I finally have my plane ticket booked to go back to Vegas for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, my wonderful husband won't be able to make it back with me (that is the only thing that has me upset about the whole thing). I am looking forward to the time I get to spend with my mom. I have to be realistic about everything and know that this might possibly be the last Thanksgiving I will get to spend with her. As much as that hurts me to say I know it is possible. I can honestly say that I have the most amazing husband, he is understanding, caring, supportive and so loving. He understands how important this is to me and he doesn't question it all (even though that means our Thanksgiving together will have to be the weekend before). So far we are planning to take my niece to Knotts Berry Farm and Legoland in California, my mom is so excited (it will be easy for her to manuever her wheelchair around each place).

Until I leave Kyle and I have a lot of fun things planned. This weekend we are going with friends to a haunted trail, I'm hoping it's really scary haha. We are also finally getting our pumpkins to carve (and probably a few extra just for the seeds) we have to do 4 because we always carve little ones for our "kids" (Emma and Fishy). Speaking of them I bought them costumes for Halloween and have to share the pictures:

Emma in her bumblebee costume

Fishy in his hot dog costume (he was really pissed off at me)


We are always less than 1 month away from our 5k, holy cow I need to get my butt in gear for this. Kyle and I are excited and can't wait!


I hope everyone is having a great Wednesday!!

Scarf Swap!

I was so excited to participate in the Scarf Swap. I got paired up with Channing from Better Together.... go check out her blog she is awesome!!! She sent me the most beautiful scarf, I love it:

sorry for the somewhat blinding picture lol (my husband is not the best photographer lol)

I have worn my scarf for the last few days and it's perfect! Thank you Channing!!!

Also, I wanted to say a big thanks to Mateya at Our Journey from Iraq to the Altar for hosting this Scarf Swap, I can't wait to participate in another one.

Appointment Update

I just got the dreaded phone call from my mom (I love hearing her voice). She got good and bad news, good news is her platelets are up. They were really concerned about them the last time because they had dropped. Bad news is her tumor markers have gone up to about 103 (they were at 77 the last time), honestly I'm not really sure what that is going to mean for her treatments or anything like that. I know my Dad is going to sit down with the Dr and figure everything out. She was getting ready to have her infusion done (ie: she was going to sleep), which she always dreads.

Thank you for all the prayers. Lets hope for better results in 21 days!

I hate appointment days...

Today is the day I always dread, every 21 days this rolls around. My mom is back in Arizona for her appointment. They will do the usually blood work and infusion and find out if she has made any progress. About an hour from now she will begin her day and see her doctor (well not her specific doctor because he is gone right now) to begin the tests. I sit and stare at my phone until my dad calls me to give me the results. She has had some rough days lately, constant upset stomach and her bones ache. We are just hoping for a miracle and hoping that her tumor markers are still going down. She told my dad the other day that she is just tired of being sick but we know she is not going to give up this fight anytime soon.

Please say a prayer for her today!

Halloween Spirit!!

We finally got our Halloween decorations put up today and we are finally in the Halloween spirit. It's fun watching people walk by pointing and smiling at our decorations. Every year we buy something new to add to our decorations and we are really happy with how everything looks this year, here are a few pictures:

Our House

Our new sign (it's fitting especially for what I do for a living)

house all lit up

We are so excited to see how many trick or treaters we get this year. We have gotten soo many the last 2 years (we ran out of candy the first year haha). We have started buying candy and we already have 8 huge bags, we will probably need more. We are loving going all out since Kyle won't be here for Halloween next year (or Christmas for that matter).

So much is going to be happening in the next few months that we are enjoying all the time we get to spend together. With Holidays coming up and me going to Vegas things are going to get crazy starting next month. Kyle will head off to JRTC in January with the command team for 2 weeks and then headed back for their deployment rotation in March. Sometime shortly after that he will be deployed. We are definitely taking advantage of our time together.

A good friend of ours came home from her deployment today so we are headed out tonight to Huske Hardware for dinner and drinks. It will be awesome to see her again.

Enjoy your weekend!!!

Less than a month

Kyle and I have less than a month before we run the PurpleStride Raleigh-Durham 5k for Pancreatic Cancer. We are still $180 short of meeting our goal. We are excited to be a part of this wonderful event to raise money for research to hopefully one day cure this awful disease. Pancreatic Cancer is the 11th most commonly diagnosed cancer in the U.S. About 29,000 people are expected to be newly diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer each year. It is the 5th leading cause of cancer death. About 20% of patients diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer survive the first year and only about 3% survive 5 years. Please help us find a cure. I look at my mom and am more determined than even to help find a cure. Any little bit helps. Click the link below if you are interested in donating (all donations are tax deductible)

PurpleStride Raleigh-Durham 5k for Pancreatic Cancer

Thank you in advance for any support you can give.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Happy 30th!!

....And They Lived Happily Ever After

This story begins 30 years ago today. Two people committed their lives to each other and vowed to stay together for richer or poorer and in sickness and in health, they never thought that last part would be their biggest test.

My parents met in early June 1980 while living in the same apartment complex in Las Vegas. My mom was a single mom to my oldest sister and my dad was a single dad to my two brothers. My sister Lisa and I have heard several stories on how they met and how my mom had offered to make my dad and the boys dinner one night and from then on that was it. About 4 months later on October 4, 1980 they were married at the Justice of the Peace. Having 3 kids they knew that a big wedding was out of the question. In 1981 my sister Lisa was born and in 1985 I was born. We lived as a blended family and we loved every minute of it. Yes there were struggles, my dad worked and my mom stayed at home, but they always supported and loved each other no matter what. In 1989 my dad began racing and that was our big family outings every weekend. To this day my dad will not race unless my mom is there.

All of Us (well minus 1 brother)

I also knew that my parents loved each other very much but it became even more apparent when my mom was diagnosed with cancer in June of this year. My dad is so protective of her and hearing him talk about her, you hear him get choked up. You can see the commitment and love that they have for each other especially in this very trying time. A few weeks ago my dad wanted to get something to honor my mom, he has carried her high school picture in his wallet as long as I can remember. He had this done:

My mom at 17

Lisa and I have been so incredibly blessed to have our parents. They are loving, kind, funny, understanding and most of all patient. They were always there for us growing and still are now. I know that all I have to do is pick up the phone and they are there.

I just wanted to say to them:

Mom and Dad,

I love you more than words could every describe. You both are incredible people and seeing all you have been through in 30 years and to still be going strong is amazing. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do for us.

Happy 30th Anniversary!!!

Enjoy your anniversary weekend at the beach in Oceanside, CA!!

I love you both!!!

How do I know I'm married to someone in the Military?

Because I have jump boots air drying on my window sill! Haha!

Enough Said!