Lot's-O-Pictures!

I have to start this post off with a very big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my love! Frank turned the big bad 26 ha. Today is a jammed packed day for birthdays. Today is also my mom's birthday, a cousins birthday and a friends daughters 1st birthday. Crazyness ha. And tomorrow our babies turn 3! I'll be taking them to the beach (not our idea of a beach, but it's all we get here :[ ) to celebrate. Happy birthday all :]

I decided to just do a bunch of collages from Frank's leave...

The day after he got home, enjoying Seafair and our time alone.

This was the late afternoon on Sunday (the day after he got home) at his parents house.

The first picture is from Nicole's bachelorette party. Then next few are from the shooting range.. pretty obvious ha. The following pictures that are in a sequence are at my aunts house. She had Frank try a shot that I can't remember for the life of me what it was. 

Wedding day! 

These are just a bunch of random iPhone shots starting when he first got in and ending with the morning he left.

6 months down...

7 months to go. Frank is back to GTMO which means his R&R is over and we're half way through this deployment. It's pretty amazing how fast it has been going, I have a feeling this second half will go even faster since we have the holiday's coming up. I think I've also decided for sure that I'll stay in Washington up until right before he gets back. I'd gone back and forth with staying until November when the explorer will be paid off or waiting it out and being able to pay down his car by at least $6,000 if we're lucky. Even Frank was telling me I should just go back in November since he knows how much I don't want to be here. But... it was the numbers that got me excited to stay. In April we are planning on going to Dallas for my cousins wedding (and see Haysel!) so we decided to add a vacation to it as well. Now I just hope it all works out! So staying here to save money for that is another thing I added to the list of pros to stay.
So Frank's leave.. Since he got in at midnight we stayed down in Seattle for the night then spent part of the day at Seafair. This was are one time alone the whole 12 days he was home.. and it wasn't long enough! (lesson learned, if he is gone long enough to get R&R we will never take it at home!) I was excited for Seafair since I hadn't been in years and love watching the hydro's, it was also Frank's first time so I was pretty happy to be the one to take him.

We got really lucky and Frank's cousin Ricky who is stationed down at Pendelton was up for Seafair representing his shop. We had one day (afternoon/night) to see him so we were pretty excited that it worked out well. He came up to town for a BBQ at Frank's parents house after we got home from Seattle.

Our first week was just busy busy with work outs and running errands. I had Nicole's bachelorette party on Friday up in Bellingham then the following Saturday we went up to NOAH so I could show Frank what I do up there. They were also doing a big adoption-a-thon so it was madness ha.

The next day was Nicole and Brad's wedding (BEAUTIFUL!). I was so happy that Frank was able to be home for it, we had a great time and loved getting to get dressed up :]

The next day (Monday) I took Frank to the shooting range as a birthday surprise. It's something he likes to do and has been wanting me to join him for some time. Monday's ladies pay no range fee.. and we got lucky because on the 1st and 15th military have no range fee's either. Needless to say we saved A LOT of money! Frank loved getting to show me how to shoot.. I don't suck too bad.. but I'm no where near being good ha. I let him do most of the shooting since taking pictures is much more fun for me.

The rest of the week was again busy, seeing family, eating.. not enough working out! Now it's back to the grind. Oh I almost forgot we got Frank the iPad 2 for his birthday! I LOVE it and was sad to see it go. We had been wanting to get him a laptop but didn't want to spend the money, then right before he came home I got the idea of an iPad. He can play games on it, he can skype with me (love facetime!) and use the same text app he uses on his phone to text me for free. We got some accessories so he can upload his pictures onto it. So it was a cheaper laptop pretty much! We only got wifi since 3G doesn't work in GTMO so it made it a little cheaper. It was also nice knowing we had the cash to pay for it, I love not charging anything anymore :]

This post is all over the place. Sorry about that, I'm having a hard time remembering everything. I'll post pictures later, they aren't wanting to rotate right now so I'll have to work with them to see what's wrong. Anyways, that's my little update about the last few weeks...

Still here.

Frank comes home VERY soon so I have been a crazy women getting ready. Mostly just lots of volunteering with NOAH. After running myself into the ground 24/7 for the last week I finally had to take a break today. So instead I went to the mall and FINALLY found myself a pair of jeans. I HATE jean shopping because it's torture for me. Needless to say I was really happy to find a pair today :] I'm also still on the look out for a pair of shoes to go with my dress for Nicole's wedding that is coming up. Speaking of which, last weekend was Nicole and Brad's bridal shower.

The happy couple.

There was a lot of good food, but the desserts were so pretty.. and yummy! So they made it onto the camera ha.

They also did the toilet paper dress game.. I need to get some of those pictures to share, along with a few more. All in all it was a good day. After stuffing my face more than I should have I was ready for a nap. The hour drive home was very quiet ha.

A letter.

Dear summer,
You have teased us here in Washington a few times now. Please come out soon! We'd all love it very much :] It is the middle of July and I have yet to wear shorts.. somethings not right with that. I think you can agree. So from every cold person in Washington... summer please show us! Pretty pretty please :]

Thank you,
Emily

The best breakfast smoothie EVER.

Right now since I am doing a 24 day challenge my breakfast consists of a meal replacement shake. By themselves they are AMAZING but I like to make them even better than amazing... what would that be?!

Usually I do all of this minus the shake with my muscle gain every morning, but for the cleanse I use only 1 scoop of muscle gain for some extra protein since I don't eat meat.

So ladies and gentles meet my favorite breakfast shake cast....

A berry or vanilla meal replacement shake

spinach (LOTS)

frozen bananas chopped up

frozen mixed fruit

muscle gain (vanilla is best)

fresh fruit if you have any (we have some blueberries that needed to be used)

Start with 8oz of water, your shake mix and one scoop of vanilla muscle gain.

Add in as much spinach as you would like. As you can see I like a lot of it!

Mix away...

Now you have yourself a nice green smoothie :]

Add in a handful of frozen fruit and a few slices of banana (make sure not to put in too much frozen fruit or you will end up with a VERY thick smoothie that you have to eat with a spoon!), throw in some fresh fruit if you have some... and mix that bad boy up.

All done!

Now you have yourself a very healthy, very filling and very delicious breakfast smoothie.

mmmm... so good :]

Happy 4th!

Hope everyone is having a safe and fun 4th of July!?  I personally can't wait for it to be over! Days and days and days of listening to fireworks is no fun for me.  Especially when they light them off till 4:30 in the morning! I don't even want to imagine what it must be like for someone with PTSD.. and when I say fireworks I mean the ones that sound like bombs going off. I do like the pretty ones though :]

Anyways, while I was searching for "God bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood (perfect song for today of course) I came across this little ditty! This was back whem American Idol was good to me, everyone looked normal still.. not like they were rock stars in waiting ha.

Strawberry Festival

My goal for the summer is to blog about things a little faster than I am doing now! We'll see how that goes...
A few weeks ago my mother in law, sister in law, two of the nephews, the sil's roomie, her friend and myself headed out for the strawberry festival parade. I haven't been in YEARS so I was pretty excited for this.

 Blue tongues!

 Courtney waving to the firemen ;] ha

 This was pretty cool!

 LOVED these dresses, so pretty.

Just for Frank... even though he doesn't get on the Internet much ha.

Dog park fun

So these pictures are from a week in a half ago, I thought I had posted them already.. but I guess I just "thought" about posting them so much I thought I already ha ha. I'm on the slow side. Today I was enjoying the first day of summer (YAY) at the park with the girls and as soon as I got there I wished I would have remembered my camera. It was beautiful out. Hopefully the weather will be nice to us in Washington this summer so I can get lots of pictures to share :]

 This dog was too cute!

 Yup they were VERY happy to have the tall grass to play in.

 Hanging out in the mud puddle :]

I want to do a post just on Molly at that park. She is my favorite.. subject ha. Ellie doesn't like getting her picture taken so whenever the camera comes out she stops what she is doing, or she turns her head. Little stinker!