Luke's Homecoming BBQ

August 26th, Wednesday  morning, Luke got back to the states from Iraq. That evening we had a wonderful homecoming dinner at our house. It was complete with steak and shrimp kabobs, cheesy scalloped potatoes, and garlic french bread. Then we played a little wii before everyone was too exhausted to continue the day. Here are the photo's.

Jared Liked his Pie!

 Luke is so competitive if you can't tell from these two video's. :) And Yes..they are playing the game with their butts! lol

My Apologies :)

I know I always post a ton of pictures and my blogs are always so long. Sorry but I can't seem to make them shorter without telling all detail of our life :)

Viva Las Vegas

This past weekend we went to Las Vegas to spend some time with my cousin Annika and her Fiance Roger.

 What a fun weekend trip!

I got off work at 12 because of summer hours, so I rushed home to pack our things, and get them loaded into the car so that we could just leave when Jared got home from work. We got kind of a late start, we didn't end up leaving until 3:00 because they wouldn't let Jared off work. But we loaded Tico in the back seat and off we went. Friday night we went out to eat at Chili's with everyone before climbing into bed. Saturday: Roger was having his groom's bbq and as I like to call it a "Bro"Shower. So we just kind of hung out, did a little shopping, played with Tico, and overall enjoyed each other's company until the party began. We dropped the boys off at my cousin Clayton's house and then Annsters and I drove down town to the stip. I haven't walked the strip since I was little, when we could come out to vegas to help my family move.  I'm pretty sure we walked about 12 miles :) We walked from Treasure Island to Excalibur. Along the way we stopped and watched the Siren's of TI show, Bellagio water show, and the Mirage volcano erruption. We ventured into the M&M, and Coca-Cola Shops, as well as Margaritaville. Unfortunately it was getting late and was too crowded to eat or drink. The boys called us later and begged for us to come get them so we left the strip around 11:30 pm. It was so fun, I'm so glad that we could do that.  Sunday: We got up and went to breakfast and then gambled a bit at the casino. I suck horribly! On our way home we got caught in a lightning storm just outside of Vegas. The last storm I saw was in vegas about 2 years go when I took Mellisa home with me while our boys were in Iraq.

Ultimate Wii Night!

We just got a couple of new remotes and Rayman Raving Rabbids Tv Party. So wednesday night we had Jamie, Erik, and Heath come over and we played until midnight. It was so much fun and we were all sweating like crazy...we even had the doors open and a fan running. Today my arms are super sore! Here are some fun photo's and video. :)

The Gang

Jamie trying to drive a tractor thing

Erik trying to sabatoge her. (click on the picture to make it bigger...Hilarious!)

Me trying to do the tractor thing...It was hard

This crazy Horse Race game...I always lost...as you can tell in the end.

Jamie ready to beat the crap out of Erik hahahaha

But she was caught....

PARTY

Our sad verison of Toxic..The boys are the best part to watch.

Erik was afraid of Tico. We showed him he was ok

Heath Liked him!

Mellisa's Birthday Celebration

On August 17th it was Mellisa's 22nd Birthday. Jamie and I wanted to celebrate with her over the weekend because monday is a busy time for all of us, So we all went out to dinner. Jamie and I made her an awesome cake! Here are the pictures, Enjoy!

I look so overweight in this picture!
Jamie

The cake liked the smell of the Smirnoff

Our Amazing Cake

Make a wish!

Jamie Click Clacking away to Brian like usual lol

The End!

Road Rage.

I have often found myself giving the knife hand (as pictured above) to people here in California. I have acquired some intense road rage while living in the city and dealing with crappy CA drivers.

Over the last weekend Jared flew back to Wyoming to go to a cousin's wedding. If any of you have flown recently then you understand how high the pricing is! To fly out of San Diego which is only 30 miles from our house was over $500, but to fly out of Long Beach which is more like 68 miles away from our house was $340. So guess who gets to drive Jared to the airport....Yup...This girl! I was slightly annoyed the day Jared left so I was already in a bad mood and the whole way there the south lanes of traffic was stop and go. I told Jared "You see what you are going to be putting me through when I drive home! I hate rush hour!" We got to the airport just in time for him to board, so I just dropped him off at the terminal and then headed to the gas station before starting the long haul home. Well two minutes later Jared called me and said "Come back...they wont let me get on the plane." So me..Being annoyed as I was..Flipped out! "why wont they let you board? That is rediculous! You tell her that you paid to fly out of Long Beach and that is exactly what you are going to do!" That sort of thing except it involved fouler language....Yeah my rage that night was embarrassing I know. So I go back and get him and he explains to me why they wouldn't let him board. I guess there is a two hour boarding policy that we weren't aware of with U.S. Airways. They want you to be there within that two hour time before your plane actually leaves. When he purchased his tickets online we didn't see that so they wouldn't let him on. He was nice to her though and she booked him a flight in LA without charging him the $100 late fee and $60 rebooking fee.

So here we are driving to Los Angeles on a friday night trying to make it to the airport in time. That was the first time I had ever been to LAX, I didn't realize how massive that airport was. I always figured it was big but not that big. Again I dropped him off at the terminal and started home. I was leaving the airport and my gps told me to keep right...then as I am passing an exit it tells me" Take ramp right" Hmm...So I drove into LA a little more and finally found my way back onto the freeway. Not surprisingly it was bumper to bumper and everyone was doing 3 mph. I was slowly trying to inch my car onto the freeway without anyone taking me out, before the lane I was in turned into an exit *The last thing I would want is to be lost in LA even with a garmin!* You know how sometimes lanes just suddenly shift in the big city? well mine did that and I ended up on the exit anyways. I immediately freaked out and was trying harder to get over. A Nissan Titan ,whom was going entirely to fast for that many cars on the road, came flying up behind me then slammed on his brakes to avoid running me over. Mind you, he is ten times the size of my little RX8 so I was very nervous. After almost crashing into me he laid on the horn and started to throw up his hands *like the knife hand* and flipping me off. The whole time his window was open and was yelling obscenities at me. It was aweful! Well later in my trip home I almost had my mirror ripped off by a bullet bike who decided to go flying past me doing at least 80 mph While we were all still in rush hour. That trip took me almost 3 and a half hours to get home. Then on Suday I had to go pick him up and I did the whole thing over again.

I swear Road Rage is a contagious disease. Little things on the road just piss you off, like the guy in the Titan, and Myself with people not using a blinker or that pull out in front of me. Moral of my story...I need to learn to control this better.

The Elephant :)

We who have taught, or love children who have been taught, know this is funny!
From the diary of a Pre-School Teacher

My five-year old students are learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,
"Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"

I took a deep breath, then asked...."What did you call it?"

"It's a frickin' elephant! It says so on the picture!"

And so it does...

" A f r i c a n Elephant "
Hooked on phonics! Ain't it wonderful?

60th Post! Decided to make it a funny one!

How often do you see this in your local fast food restaurant?! HAHAHAHA

Pride and Embarrassment..

Have you ever listened to our National Anthem and shed a tear? Yeah I'm that girl.

After Jared's tour in Iraq I have become quite a softy. When the deployment started, I said goodbye and left before the ship left the port. I couldn't bear watching him float away from me. I did really well on the drive home, I only choked up once. I felt like I had to be strong for Mellisa because she hadn't been with Luke long and I didn't want to break down. When I got home I woke Tico up and then crawled into bed and broke down. The rest of the deployment was overall breezy, very little break downs. Well now that Jared is home, I am the biggest softy! I cry when I see other people cry, hear a sad song, the military presentation at the Shamu show at Sea World, See our beautiful nation's flag blowing in a breeze. *Yes I cry about that. haha I'm lame* Basically everything, it's embarassing. It's so wierd to me though because I didn't cry at my high school graduation, my wedding, or when I moved to California. It all started after I got here.

Point is...there is this country station that I like to listen to here in San Diego called KSON. Every morning they have a radio show called Cliff and Company. I have this one morning radio show that I listen to every day but it's on a different station, when they go to commercial I flip through the dial to see if anything is worth listening to while on the break. I time it just right every morning, that when Channel 933 goes on commercial, I flip to KSON and he says "In honor of our military past and present we would like to Present to you our national anthem" Then they play it. Some days its instumental, other days there is a singer. Well...I cry like a baby every time.

Wii!!!!

Last year for Jared's birthday I bought him a Wii. I love the system..Nintendo was so smart to create something like that. Such a good workout! Of course we bought the Fit, Mario Kart, and various other games. But the newest addition to our collection, Rayman Raving Rabbids. haha So funny! Here is a video of Tyler and Jared playing the music portion. *I completely suck at that one!* Towards the end you can see Tyler getting frustrated right before he dies haha.

Creepy Crawlies!

So as most of my readers have heard on facebook and myspace, we have a bad spider problem! On the 26th of July we had taken our captured black widow to the office to show them just how big the spider was and how dangerous that is if it was to bite you in your sleep or something. We have black widows near our garages and so we cleaned everything out, gotten rid of all the webs, and they maintenance guy came and sprayed around them while we were outside. Plus it was a good chance for us to go through all of our things and throw out what we no longer wanted. Mike at the front office put us on the list to get our house fumigated on the 30th. So we tore our house upside down, moved all of the furniture to the middle of the room, took down Tico's cage and moved it to the garage, and basically did everything we could to prepare for the fumigators. That process took us about 4 hours on Wednesday night.

Torn apart house.

Tico Slept in our room like this for 2 days

So thurday morning I loaded Tico up and took him to work with me. He did such a great job. Since he is so shy he didn't say anything all day and he was really friendly with everyone. He just hung out on the filing cabinet beind me all day. Took a nap, ate some grapes, danced for everyone. Good day! Everyone at the office enjoyed him, some even said that he should come everyday.

We get home and put the house back together. It took us two days to get Tico's cage back together because we bought new flooring to put underneath it so he can be out of the cage and poop without getting anything on the carpet. Then we go to the office on Sunday to put in another maintenance request and they inform us that the fumigators didn't even come!! We were so mad because we spent all the time for nothing. In our annoyance we decided that we would just leave it as it and not have them come.

Well the other night we were getting ready for bed and I notice a "dead" spider on the floor. So I got into the living room and say "Jared did you kill that spider in the bathroom and just leave it there? because that's not funny!" *I'm so scared of spiders...especially ones that can kill me haha* Jared said "What spider?" and comes to investigate. Turns out this nasty giant spider was trying to shed it's skin in my bathroom by the toilet! It was on it's back with it's legs curled, that is why I thought it was dead but spiders do that when they are going to molt. They never just flip over like that just because. Jared being the kind of guy he is, thinks he needs to poke at it. So he gets a push pin and starts to mess with it. As soon as it turned over Jared says "Holy Crap! I think that's a brown recluse!" So he puts it in a shot glass so he can get confimation of what it was. If you don't know anything about brown recluse spiders they are venoumous. If they bite you, you can't feel it but you start to get this deep red sore that continues to burrow down into your skin so you have an open flesh wound. It heals VERY slowly if at all. Bad deal! So between black widows and the brown recluse we opted to have the fumigators come again and do the process all over again!