I'm HOW old?!?!?!

Well, it's that time of year again...another one come and gone. On Saturday I will be turning (dun dun dun) 27. BLAH. People laugh at me and say, what's wrong with 27? Well, for starters, it's such an ugly number tww-ennnn-ty se-vvvv-en , eww. And second of all, it's just another inch closer to that black hole of oldness I see daunting ahead known as 30. My life isn't exactly where I pictured it would be at 27. I mean, I had the typical mental picture of married, house, couple kids and a mini van. Well, that certainly is not the case. The 26th year of my life has been full of tremendous changes. I have endured many things I never thought I would have to. A divorce, for starters, something I just knew would never happen to me. I mean, that's for the other 50% of the population, not me! But, as we all know, life has it's way of throwing us a curve ball now and then.

I've done what I can to remain strong, I mean after all, I am certainly no quitter and I have a little man that looks at me with those adoring eyes every morning reminding me of the things in this life that are really important, him and God. I have learned so many valuable life lessons this year about who I am, who I want to be, what I can handle and what I cant. I've learned that when times are tuff my family will ALWAYS be there. My father has been my pillar this year, as he has my whole life, with out his strength to lean on I don't know what I would have done. My family supports me in every meaning of the word, they are my cheerleaders, my confidants, my best friends and my biggest fans. Anyway, none of this was really the point of this posting.

The point is, that, it's true, with each year we really do become older and wiser. So, in honor of my 27 years of life I am going to list 27 things that I am grateful for...

1. The Gospel and the testimony I have of it. The strength I find in the knowledge of a higher being gives me hope and guidance.

2. Ryder. How was I so lucky to be blessed with the most gorgeous little boy? I mean really, the kid should be in Gap commercials.

3. Ryders calm and naturally happy demeanor. He is almost 2 but he says "yeah" way more than "no" or "mine". He makes being a single parent much more easy! Thank you Ryder!

4. Potty training. One day about a month ago Ryder just decided to be a big boy and start pooping in the potty. No poopy diapers? I cant think of a better birthday gift!

5. My dad. He has this silent faith that radiates from him. He is wise and never leads me the wrong direction with his counsel. I'll forever be a daddy's girl!

6. My mom. She would give me the shirt off her back if I asked, no question. She is such an example of selflessness. My brother and I ALWAYS came first.

7. My step mom. I dont think I know anyone who has endured more in their life than her. Really, her life is like a dang soap opera. Because of that she understands me and my trials, she loves me like her own daughter. She helps me with Ryder, lets me bring my noisy 2 year old to work with me. I admire her strength.

8. My brothers and sisters. Specifically Devon and Danelle. They are an amazing couple with great balance in there marriage. I look up to them (I've always looked up to Devon) more than words can express. Danelle was the first person I turned to with the many problems Josh and I had been having. She has laughed with me, cried with me, done way too much shopping with me and is in many ways my best friend. I have gone to see them 3 times in the past year and they always show me a great time. Devon takes such good care of his little sister. Thanks guys!

9. My fabulous job! I could not be more blessed to have my job. I work for Denises insurance agency selling health insurance to small groups. It provides a fun challenge plus my hours are flexible, Ryder comes to work with me, and it pays well! Holla!

10. My house! I have a little house on my dads 13 acers. Its all mine. My dads house is 100 yards away and the closest neighbor is another 100 yards away. I love the wide open space! Plus, my landlord (my dad) doesn't charge me rent. Love it!

11. Country music. It's not the "I lost my job, my wife left and my dog died" music it used to be. I can really relate to a lot of the songs. Singing them is like therapy. The Carrie Underwood song "Wasted" made me think she was singing about me. The Wreckers song "Cigarettes" is another song that struck a cord, truly a song about me. I will forever be grateful for those songs.

12. Hip hop music. Nothing makes me happier than dancing! Put on 50 cent In Da Club and my mood is insta-happy!

13. The tanning bed. Yeah, it's summer, but where the heck is the sun (will the smoke ever clear?!!?)? That's okay, I can go lay down and take a 20 minute power nap with the "sun" on my face a few times a week. I love the 21st century!

14. The Relief Society. My home ward is amazing. It is full of wonderful strong woman who love me and show me such great examples.

15. My work ethic. My dad has always said "any job worth doing is a job worth doing well". And Denise has always said "work before play". As a kid (snotty teenager) I cringed each time I heard those phrases, but now I see the wisdom and appreciate that my parents loved me enough to teach me the importance of being hard working.

16. My generally positive attitude. I have had people tell me that I am too positive, I'm sorry, is that supposed to be a bad thing?

17. My unbelievably awesome friends!!!! Melissa, Stacy, Becky, Chelsea, Kimmy, the many old friends I have who have known me forever and the many new friends I have acquired this year. I love you all. Thanks for all the fun times!

18. Airplanes. Is it just me or is it incredible that we have the ability to get in a very heavy metal cylinder and shoot through the air across the country at like 700 miles per hour?!?! It has given me the ability to be close to loved ones far away. I am so glad I don't have to pull a hand cart to see them!!!!

19. VACATION!!!! I love vacation! Some R&R is good for the soul!

20. Miss Resa, Ryders daycare lady he goes to 2 days a week. She is wonderful. She loves the kids and always has fun things planned for them. Ryder has learned a lot at her house!

21. Cookie dough. Because sometimes you just need a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough! Am I right?

22. My health. period.

23. Ben and Jerry's... Thank you Ben , Thank you Jerry!

24. Having said that, Weight Watchers, for helping me loose the rest of that dang baby weight from all the Ben and Jerrys consumed while preggers!

25. My car. Sure, it takes premium gas and only gets 18 miles to the gallon, but it is beautiful, safe, reliable and has gone over 50,000 miles with me in the past 12 months. Thank you Acura for building a great car!

26. My bishop.... this one should have been much higher on the list. Bishop Johnson is an amazing man of God whom I respect very much. He gave me great council through the divorce. His guidance and wisdom will never be forgotten.

27. The many many blessings I have that go unmentioned here. I truly lead a blessed life, I know that and I am thankful for that every day!!

Okay, that was probably the longest blog post ever....but I had a lot of fun writing it! I guess 27 wont be so bad after all. I mean, think of all the many exciting things I will get to experience over the next year of my life. I cant wait to see what this crazy life has in store for me. I have learned that part of the excitement in this life is the future and the many unknown possibilities it holds!

I am excited for a fun birthday weekend ahead. YaY ME!

**Kisses**

A fairly true Fairytale...

Once upon a time, in far away land, there was a poor frog who had gone prematurely bald. He was so self conscious about his lack of hair that he decided to wear a wig. This eventually attracted the attention of the nearest princess who promptly kissed him upon seeing his handsome head of hair. He miraculously changed into a short, fat, wig-topped 30 year old man, and the princess ran away.

The End.

Snakes Bite!

So, happy early birthday to me... Sugar got bit by a rattle snake today. Poor girl is in terrible pain. She was bit twice on her front right paw. The snake was apparently huge since the fang marks were about 3 inches apart. My dad was out plowing (wow, that makes me sound like a regular ol'country girl!!) when he noticed her laying down whining and unable to walk(totally out of character for my normally crazy hyper yellow lab). All he saw was a bloody leg swollen to about the size of a baseball catchers mitt. He took her into the Pleasant Valley emergency pet hospital. The county of El Dorado has no, I repeat, NO anti-venom so all they can do it put fluids into her, watch her and hope she has the will to fight it off.

My dad called as soon as he got to the vet to tell me what happened and that I was looking at a minimum bill of about 600.00. (again, Happy Birthday to me, BLAH) I rushed Ryder and I over to the vets office right away. When I got there she had a temp of about 106. I spent about 10 minutes with her, just petting her face and loving her. In that time her temp dropped back down to 100. I think seeing me made her feel comforted and calmed her down. The vet said that was a very good sign she will be able to pull through this.

I have had Sugar for a little over 3 years. She was only 6 weeks old when I got her and she is now very much a part of my family. I will be heart broken if she doesn't make it. But she is a strong dog. I'm hoping for the best....oh, and the cheapest. :)

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a picture of Wonder Dog Sugar last Halloween...

Beautiful Carolina

Ryder and I had the pleasure of traveling to Ocean Isle, North Carolina to vacation with my older brother Devon, his wife Danelle and their three darling kids (Devree, Delaine and Daxton). In addition to Devon and Danelle, Danelles whole family was there, brothers, sister, their kids, her mom, her cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandparents. It was quite the crowd! I have to say. I was in need of this type of relaxing vacation. And, honestly, it was so nice to get away from the smoke filled air that has been plaguing Northern California the past few weeks.

***

We stayed in an 8 bedroom house right on the beach. Every morning we woke up, had breakfast, put on our swim suits and headed out the backdoor to the beach. The North Carolina beach is much different from the California beach, for starters it was like 100 degrees out everyday. Second, there was no seaweed ( a definite plus in my opinion), tons of sea shells everywhere. And last, and most important, the water was like a bath tub. Like 80 degrees. I, for the first time in my life, actually enjoyed playing in the ocean.

***

I made my first attempt at boogy boarding on this trip. I loved it. The waves were incredible. At one point they came in so hard while I was boogy boarding that I could not stand up. It was a ton of fun!!! And my older brother Devon thought it was really funny watching me. He told me I was "only slightly retarded". Gotta love brothers!

***

After a long day at the beach we would head inside, shower, have dinner, which, by the way, was crazy and chaotic with like 30 people trying to eat at the same time. Once the kids were in bed we sat up and played games.

***

We really had a great time! Ryder was great on the plane, sleeping for most of the ride both ways. I am a true believer in red eye flights if you have little ones. They sleep and you don't have to worry about trying to entertain then for a 5 hour flight! I did a lot of relaxing, laying in the sun . It was nice to get away from all the stresses of life. Ryder now has a sexy little surfer boy tan and blond highlights in his hair. So cute.

This is Ryder with his cousin Devree

Ryder and I, ready for a fun day in the sun!!

Ryder, Devree and Delaine ready to watch fireworks on the 4th!

Lunch time! Ryder with Delaine

Ryder and I

Devon, Danelle and me on the way to the airport after a great week!

The beach house we stayed in.

Ryder, lookin cool in his shades, with his cousins.

Ryder cheesin' with Devree and Camree.

I love his face!! haha

Hard at work!

Ryder and me with my brother Devon and his little girl Delaine. You cant tell but that wave smacked us pretty hard!

Some random girl came and gave all the kids Popsicles. Ryder really enjoyed his in case you cant tell!

Ryder was so tired after being in the sun all day he fell asleep waiting to take a shower. Poor little guy.

Ryder and his favorite cousin Delaine.

Ryder and Laine having lunch.

Ocean Isle is a little island off the southern North Carolina cost. The Eastern side of the island is all beach. The western side is marsh land. On the western side there are canals like this one between all the houses. This island is sinking.

He's king of the world...or so he thinks.

This picture is taken from top of the bridge going into Ocean Isle.

Ode to Twilight

Oh Twilight, how I love thee, let me count the ways.... for reals!!! I am completely and utterly obsessed with this book! I am not usually a big reader. My mind wanders and I loose track of whats going on. But every once in a while a book will come along that will grab me, Twilight has done that and then some. I can not put the dang thing down. All my friends love it so I thought I would get it for my beach trip. Well, I had no time at the beach to read. But on the flight home on Saturday night I started. I only have 100 pages left now. That's like 400 pages in a day and a half. Yeah, obsessed! I plan on finishing it tonight and starting the next book after that. Stephanie Meyer all I can say is...THANK YOU!

On another note...I'll be posting lots of pictures from our North Carolina trip later tonight...

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!!

North Carolina or bust!

Yey! I am so excited!!! Ryder and I are leaving tonight for North Carolina! Our flight leaves around 10:30 tonight and we will be arriving tomorrow morning. We will be spending the week at the beach with my brother Devon, his wife Danelle, their kids and a ton of Danelles extended family.

I am excited for a nice vacation away! I plan on relaxing, feeling the sun on my face, doing a little reading and enjoying the company of family. There are going to be like a million little kids there (hmm, on second thought that doesn't sound very relaxing!) around Ryders age, including Ryders cousin's Devree, Delaine, and Daxton, so it should be a ton of fun for him to play at the beach through the fourth.

I hope you all have a very safe and fun filled 4th of July. I'll talk to you all (ya'll- little Carolina slang for ya!) when we return!

Kisses!

I love SWA & NJ

Okay okay okay. I told people I would update this dealio and here I am doing it. Theres a ton of stuff I would like to cover, but don't have the memory/time/desire to do so, but I'll at least hit the main points. How does that sound? Good.

Okay, to update those who don't know, I'm hired by the company that I have been training with for the past two months! (FINALLY). It certainly wasn't an easy road, but its well worth it. I'm currently based out of an airport in New Jersey called Teterboro (TEB is the airport identifier). It's a very busy GA airport (General Aviation, which means pretty much anything other then airlines... so your corporate jets, your sunday flyer, etc. Good, now you know something new about flying!), one of the busiest actually. The times that I have been flying out of it, its fairly quiet, although that is because its 4:30 in the morning when I depart. Usually when I come back, however, there is a fair amount of traffic holding short (lined up behind the runway) waiting for departure. The mix is usually something of Gulfstreams, Lear Jets, Citations, King Airs, etc (google image helps). ANYWAYS so that gives you an idea of whats going on. Oh yeh, there are three other MAJOR airports close by in which many airlines arrive and depart daily. LaGuardia, Newark INT, and JFK... just to name a few. That being the case, it's ever so busy during the day time with many of the controllers. Watch out!

I haven't been downtown as of YET, but probably by the time you reach this, I'll have hit up NYC ever popular Macys 4th of July Fire Work Display. I'm relatively excited about that, and being able to see some of the popular sites in the big apple. Having not been to the east coast, this experience should prove to make life interesting. Backtracking a little further, I had quite the travel experience one weekend. Thursday evening I woke up at 5pm, at din din, got ready and headed down to do some training/checkride (final test sorta thing) work. Got done around 4am and then headed back to the hotel to get stuff, catch a flight from Columbus, to Ontario, cali. When I got in, someone picked me up, drove me back to apple valley (my previous location of residence) so I could pack my remaining things, and drive home to nor cal. So far in that time period the only sleep I got was like a quick nap on the airplane. Suck. Anyways, a 6 hour drive to nor cal (with strategic caffeine usage, :-/ ) and I'm back home. Unfortuantly, the rear brakes on my car started to show signs of wear and I didn't want to leave my sis with a failing car, so rolling in at 11:30 and I'm already ripping the rear of my car apart. finally get to sleep around 1:30ish (clean up, unpack a little and check e-mails) total sleep, 7 hours. Okay. Wake up, finish unpacking, grab a quick bite with some friends and it's catching a plane back to ohio that evening. again, not much sleep on the plane a minimal nap if that. Back in ohio I got a little bit of sleep... like 7 hours, and then its driving to NJ. FINALLY when I got in, I was able to catch some Z's. Wow. that was a lot of not sleep over a long weekend. The end.


haha. So anyways Ive done a few cool things in NJ sense I have been here. I longboarded across the George Washington Bridge, went to a Fort Lee (where I live) street fare, and Drove on the New Jersey Turnpike... picture time!


So from L to R and T to B, heres the scoop.

Driving from Ohio to New Jersey took me through several differnt states. One of them being West Virgina. Along the way, there were several tunnels that were a couple of miles long each. I thought that was pretty cool. Hmmm looks like I got a little out of order on picture line up, but oh well. I'm lazy and not going to fix it. The next one is an airborn shot (me flying) over Central NY. We have a beautiful bridge shot looking at NYC with a sunset... The video is crusing between Buffalo New York and Teterboro NJ. Lastly we end it off with me long boarding over the GWB (George Washington Bridge). Dunno why I'm sticking my tongue out. (FYI, click on pics to enlarge)