Funniest. Thing. Ever

My brother showed this to me and I almost peed myself from laughing so hard! Brilliant and funny!!!

Busy, busy, busy

I had previously written that summer was a time for slacking.

I am now eating my words. I have been super busy and have zero time for the slacking that I love so much.

I just returned from a week-long trip to Fort Campbell / Hopkinsville, KY. Long story short, my sister and her husband are getting a divorce and my brother, the kids and I went to help her move into her new house down there. She has a great job and lots of friends so she decided to stay rather than come home.

I also had to pick up some Army stuff for Stuart but apparently everyone and their brother is out of large PT everything so boo to them. Guess Stuart will just have to swim in his XL stuff.

I am in the midst of final exam time and I am trying to take last minute tests and finish papers before my exams finally roll around next week. Who knew that setting up proctoring for a test could be such a pain in the ass.


So so minor updating:

The wedding went okay. I didn't get all of the shots I wanted because everyone was EXTREMELY uncooperative. I was getting so angry but there isn't much that can be done about it at this point. I managed to get some good shots in and my uncle seemed happy, but I am not happy with the job I did. But you know, you can't MAKE the bride and groom stand still for pictures if they are just not going to do it.

And I think that is pretty much it. I will write more if I think it is important, lol.

It's a nice day for a white wedding...

So, I am taking pictures for a wedding today. For the first time. Ever.

I am incredibly nervous right now.

My uncle is the one getting married and the wedding will be very informal and more like a party, but still. I am SO nervous.

I don't know that this is something I would want to do all the time. I like taking pictures and all, but it is a fun thing for me. I am afraid that if I tried to turn it into something more I wouldn't enjoy it much anymore.

I have two cameras to work with. Mine and my Uncle's (his is an XTi). So my approach to this is to look for quality shots but at the same go for quantity since I will have two cameras.

Why o' why did I offer to do this? I am in way over my head.

Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens

We visited the Cincinnati Zoo, where we are members, almost two weeks ago. But I thought I would share some pictures anyway, even if they are late getting posted.

Charlie and Abby looking at snakes:


Charlie in the Manatee exhibit:


Charlie, Aunt Kelly (my sister), and the Rhino:


The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardensreally is awesome. There is so much to do and is one of the few zoos outside of Florida that has a manatee exhibit. Charlie loved, of all things, the snakes. I did not see that one coming. Abby was more into the monkeys, which was no surprise, as she probably wanted to go be with her people, lol.

And the train. Oh, the train. Charlie was in little kid heaven when we rode that thing. We didn't ride it until right before we left so I think next time we will have to ride more than once.

We didn't manage to see everything because the kids (coughAbbycough) got tired, but that is okay. With the membership we can go back as much as we want for the next year.

6 More Years

Today, my husband signed his papers for 6 more years.

6 YEARS!!!

It makes sense. I mean, this is our lifestyle now, but still, that is a big commitment. But Stuart is happy and that is what matters.

I am very happy, too, don't get me wrong. It is just very overwhelming.

6 years
Stabilization at Bragg
Small (very very small) bonus
6 month school option

So there you go. We are still figuring out the school option thing though. I mean, it is only 6 months at a state school. That is barely more than a semester. What is he supposed to do with that?

I'm a slacker.

I feel like I start every blog post with "I am sorry I have been slacking lately..." but seriously, I have been slacking lately.

A lot of personal stuff has gone on that I am just going to have to deal with without the help of the blogosphere.

Plus, it is summer. We are allowed to slack in the summer, right?


More posts to follow this one... ones with pictures, even. I promise.

Proud

My darling husband had his ceremony to receive his combat patch this weekend. It has been all he has talked about for a long time- the day when his right arm was no longer naked, lol.

I am very proud of him and what he is doing. He is happy as well so that is very important too.

I miss him, but I am glad that he has found a job that he finally loves.

I waste his time... literally

Communicating during a deployment is hard. It can also be expensive.

Right now, my husband is still living in a tent so he can go use the MWR internet for free but it is incredibly slow and he gets kicked off the wifi more often than we actually get to talk.

And we are actually very blessed because he had the opportunity to buy a cell phone that he can use to make calls because the lines are very long. The only problem though is that it is pretty close to $0.49 a minute for him to call me. I can call him using Skype for $0.29 to $0.34 a minute, but it varies so much, just from minute to minute.

We take turns with the way we communicate. Some days he calls me, some days I call him and most days we just talk using Yahoo. Yesterday was his day to call me.

I talked his ear off about nothing. And I didn't realize it until he was like "uh, yeah, so I had better go because you talked away all my minutes." What did I talk about? Good question. The kids probably. The tornadic clouds from the night before. My school work. Stupid stuff when you think about it. I spent an almost $50 phone card talking about nothing.

It is hard. The cell phone is really supposed to be a special treat and in case of emergencies only. But the hardest thing for me is that I can't just call him up whenever I want to say "hey, I am out of milk, pick some up" or "Abby just tried to swallow a battery. She is going to make me go to the insane asylum someday." So what do I do instead, I spend $50 talking about the stupidest crap on the planet.

And when I apologized at the end I could almost hear him shrug as he said "Eh, I'm used to it by now."

Book Review: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

*Spoilers Ahead: Continue at your own risk*

My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, is a book that was recommended to me by just about every single person that I know. I was eager to read it to see if it was actually as good as everyone said it was.

It wasn't.

Okay, so that really isn't fair for me to say. I will admit that I loved the book up until the end. The book was actually quite the page turner. It was well written and I enjoyed the story from the different perspectives. It was very interesting to see the situation in different minds. It let us know why Sara was the way she was. I can't say that I wouldn't have done exactly what she did if I was in her situation. When it is your child you are talking about, you will do anything to save them.

This book though... it ended up just being a 500 page slap in the face. I was reading right through it thinking, well, maybe it will all work out.

And then Anna died! She just frigging DIED on page 490 of a 500 page book!

I can understand that such is life and people die all the time. But what makes me the most angry about this whole thing is that it just reiterated the fact that the only thing Anna was good for in her life was to save Kate. She was a geneticly engineered match, she donated to her sister her entire 13 years and then her kidney went to her after she went brain-dead in the accident. Anna's whole life in this book was designed around Kate and that isn't fair to any single human on this earth.

I am very glad that the book ended with Kate remembering Anna. It was very touching that Anna could save her sister one last time. But I just don't like what the book said about Anna. Because when I turned the last page, the only thing in my mind was that Anna was created to save Kate and that is all she accomplished in her short 13 years.


I didn't hate this book. I was just so incredibly angered by it. Would I recommend it to anyone? No, I wouldn't. Read it if you want to be sad and angry, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Happy Memorial Day... two days late.

So, Happy Memorial Day... two days late. It really is a special day and we should all take the time to remember those who have lost their lives in a war and those who are currently fighting.

I really should have posted something two days ago but I don't know, I am just not feeling so articulate lately and there were many other blogs who said it much better than I would have.

I had a terrible weekend (NOT deployment related) and I didn't want to project my feeling on to you all through my blog. So there you go.

I would blog about it, but I don't know who reads my blog. Which sucks because I would really like to write about it. *sighs* I should have made this anonymous because then I could talk about people all I wanted without worrying about them knowing it was me. Oh, well.