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Category Archives: Friends & Family

Our first trip down to the ocean…

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Our first trip down to the ocean—just to look—ended up with two totally soaked kids! We weren’t surprised. 🙂

Me and Gramma Jean could NOT get the twirly sticks to fly. Tom was easily able to.

I looked up and Owen was just standing the ocean with his hands in his pockets. LOL

Gramma Jean took this awesome picture of Katie. I think I’ll be hard pressed to take a better one this week.

Mullet backbones? Why not.

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We stopped to eat a late lunch on the way home from the airport.

Gramma ordered mullet and the waitress asked if she wanted the gizzards and/or backbones. We all looked at her like WHAT? EWWWW. WHAT? But then we said what the hell, we’ll try the backbones (no fish gizzards, thankyouverymuch). And turns out they weren’t as scary as we thought…they were tasty!

It’s official: we’re headed to Chicago!

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Well, what can I say about the military other than you just never know what’s going to happen…?!

For the past few months we’ve been thinking we’ll be headed to California. Tom’s top two job choices were there and we haven’t been on that coast yet, so we thought it was all set. It was a catch-22 for me—I know I would love the weather but it was SOOO far from family. It’s hella expensive there…but when else are we going to get the chance to test living there for three years? But I had honestly just started to wrap my head around it and get kind of excited about it…when Tom got an URGENT email from the monitor with text that included “Ignore this message at your own peril.” Yeah, that’s never good.

Turns out they need recruiters AGAIN. And he fits the four-point requirements perfectly (correct rank, summer mover, previous excellent record in recruiting, etc.). And the positions are in the Chicago area, Pennsylvania, San Diego, and Parris Island, South Carolina.

Crap.

So long story short…after calling and talking to the monitor, they had eight people and six positions to fill. Which wasn’t quite the odds we were hoping for. But good news, Tom was the first to respond so he’d likely get his top choice (and at the very least, he wouldn’t get the place he did NOT want). So…our top choice was Chicago (to be closer to family), followed by Pennsylvania and California.

Of course, it wasn’t an immediate done deal. They had to check some other things and yada yada yada they told us we would know by the end of January if he would be doing recruiting or if we’d be back to waiting to hear on our previous California options. Then I think it was only like four days until they said he was officially tapped for the recruiting in Chicago (well, technically Great Lakes Naval Station).

And they already have his web orders completed so this is serious.

So, yuck for weather…but yay for being 7 hours from Papa and Grannie and 6 hours from Gramma Jean and Grandpa David.

The birth of F-It Fridays!

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Friends invited us over for dinner tonight along with four other families we’re close to (for a total of 10 adults and 13 kids). There was lots of good food, wine, and stories (and all the kids get along) and it was all so much fun that one friend suggested we do this once a month at different houses (they’re also helping me get my friend fixes in before we leave this summer). So, we all decided then and there to do every third Friday…but we needed a fun name. They were suggesting tame things like FUN FRIDAYS or FUN FRIENDS FRIDAYS but I just went straight for F%@# IT FRIDAYS and they all loved it. (It also kind of fit our mood for the upcoming inauguration.)

 

I do not want to leave these people. 🙁

Happy New Year 2017!

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In probably the most unexpected detail ever in the history of this blog…I did not take ONE. SINGLE. PICTURE. ALL. NIGHT. 😯

So, we were the surprise guests for this party. Meaning, obviously, no one knew we were coming (except the host and one other friend). We’ve had surprise guests at other Tivo events before and it’s always fun, so when it worked out that we could do it for this party (due to our White House tour) we were excited. And it was cool—we’re so glad to have surprised our old (and new) crazy ax murderer internet friends and spent the evening with them!

This was taken by Jay, who I haven’t seen in real life…

…since 2009.

You know you’re old when you have two glasses of sangria and think it’s got to be getting close to midnight…and it’s not even 9! There was lots of good food and games, and we all managed to make it to midnight (waiting for the ball to drop, below), but the party broke up shortly thereafter. I really knew I was old when I wasn’t drunk heading back to the hotel. 😆

I slept in until 10 (!) the next morning, and then it was off to brunch with friends before the wave of goodbyes (again, I did not take one single picture).

That’s what friends are for.

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After a long crazy day I decided it was time for this:

I also happened to be missing a friend of mine in the neighborhood so I texted her and told her I was on my way to her house and I wanted her to come out for a brief Pokémon walk with me. She met me on the street, decided she wanted some margarita, too (yes, I had brought it with me), so we stopped back our house and got her a cup…and since it was cold and we needed to hold our phones for Pokémon, this was her life hack: wear your coat backwards so you can put your drink (with straw!) in the hood! BRILLIANT!

We ended up walking a bit farther than we’d planned…and my phone died because of the cold…but it was a good night (and this is what the end of it looked like). Good times.

Movie & Popcorn

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I can’t remember what movie they watched but they both wanted popcorn for dinner—Grauntie Marge had given Katie an ENTIRE BOX of stovetop popcorn so they were super excited about that. So we let them eat popcorn for dinner. What a treat! Katie also enjoyed her new mermaid tail blanket from Gramma Jean!

Five member Pokémon gym!

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We got Uncle Rob started/hooked on Pokémon so we went out on one of our typical drives/hunts…and the kids took their new plush Pokémon they got from Santa.

And their Pikachu rode with me.

And then we took over a gym on one of our walking trails. We didn’t actually walk the whole trail, though—we just cheated and ran down to the pond.

With Uncle Rob here we can put five Pokémon in at a time!! (Oh yeah, that’s right, Katie now has her own account because I wanted her to stop messing around with “our” account.)

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