Interesting blessings

Enjoying Florida while I am here.  Yesterday I utilized Meetup.com and joined some folks checking out some caverns here in Florida.  It was a beautiful park and the people were nice.  It's such a small world.  I do these things to try and meet new people, get out of the military circle and over half of the group was military :( Oh well...it gives us something common to talk about :P  After the cavern tour I went with them and had lunch.  It was a nice morning.  Came home and did some cleaning.  

Today it was beach day!  Spent about 3 hours at the beach before getting some froyo and taking a well deserved nap on the couch.  I have to laugh about the "diversity" here in Florida.  At the beach, one of the guys next to me had an ankle monitor on!  That was a first!  Then when I was walking back to my truck, a young woman with her husband and child was next to me and I noticed dip in her teeth!  Not chip dip but I'm talking about skoal dip!  I can only shake my head and focus back on the beauty of the beaches here and that it's only a 10 min drive for me to be there!
Life is a truly amazing gift.  Living in the moment and appreciating all that I have allows me to be truly happy!

November in Flip Flops

We still keep our sliding door open, the weather is awesome here in Florida!  It gets chilly every now and then, chilly to where I have to wear socks and shoes :P but nothing less than a hoodie is needed :D  

The last few weekends, one of us has worked a day...either myself or Joe.  When we do have days on the weekend together we like to get out and about.  The other weekend we went and checked out Eglin AFB (Joe needed to check out the clothing sales there).  We stopped at a neat Irish pub for lunch and then headed to the base.  It was a beautiful drive along the coast.  I learned something new about Eglin, they have this huge hanger that they can make extreme weather conditions to test planes, vehicles, weapons..... anything really.  It's really cool!

Mom and Dad came for a visit and had planned on staying with us for a long weekend but due to other circumstances only stayed one night with us. Hopefully we'll meet up again soon. We took them to a beautiful place on the water for dinner and made sure to cue up a colorful sunset for them ;)

Some days we have a relaxing time out and will stop at random places. One weekend it was overcast but we stopped and had drinks at a nice little place on the water.  There were some surfers for a little bit.  It was so peaceful!

The ocean is so relaxing to me.  I am truly blessed to live this close to the water.

This past weekend was a big car show.  We only went to one day of it but all the old cars were amazing to look at!  One guy let me sit in his car that he put together.  He had amazing random things on his car.  He had lights from WWII that flyers used to send out emergency signals if they needed to. All the little things he had on the car...I could look at it for hours.

Our Veteran's Day was amazing.  We didn't go to any of the restaurants that give the free food.  Neither one of us is a big fan of that craziness.  We have found a favorite bar/restaurant that serves great Cajun food.  We went there for lunch, had a couple of drinks, and then met up with one of Joe's friends that is military.  Had a couple of drinks outside enjoying a little hole in the wall place before going to a place on the water.  While sitting outside we saw numerous dolphins out in the water and had a gorgeous sunset.  Another military member, retired, showed up and I couldn't think of a better relaxing veterans day.  I spent it with good military members, having a few drinks, and enjoying a beautiful day!

Sunshine State!

We've been in Florida for a little over a week and we're still pinching ourselves.  The move went SO smoothly, we were really blessed.  We had great packers and movers, everyone was professional, nice, and did a wonderful job!  

Sami and Tux are such traveling professionals themselves at this point!  They were sequestered while everything got packed up.

They handle road trips like champs!  Mostly sleeping with a couple of check ins to see what is up!  The drive from NC to FL was about 11 hours or so, it was a long day but with the regular stops for Sami breaks and gas it wasn't too bad.  Since Sami got her walking breaks, Tux was not happy to be stuck in the car all day!  

We made it to the temporary living facility (TLF) on Tyndall that evening and we got settled.  When we walked Sami that night we came across a deer.  Later on we were informed that there are bears on base!  In our apartment complex, there is a rumor of a gator in one of the ponds and Sami and I came across a snapping turtle on a walk!  

The next day we walked over to the marina, yes walked, and checked it out and then drove into town to check out Panama City.  

far in the background is Panama City Beach where we live!

We got a two bedroom apartment in Panama City Beach. Most people told us not to live in PCB due to spring break craziness but we wanted to be near stuff so here we are!  We are not in the middle of everything but a quick drive and we have this....

I can deal with some crazy months of heavy traffic and people, and then have quick and easy access to the awesome relaxed low key beach the rest of the year!  Amazing!

The furkids have settled.  We have a good sized screened in porch, aka lanai, and with the cooler temps we leave the sliding glass door open a lot.  It didn't take those two long to get settled out there!

Not only are they settling in, they have started conducting crimes together.  I think Sami is more of the criminal due to opportunity and that Tux is the instigator.  

Exhibit A:

Noticed the scratch marks?  Dogs are not that neat BUT this was found on the floor and Sami doing her best to lick it clean!  I just opened this last night and within 24hrs it's gone!  My chubby monkey Tux is already overweight and he acts as if he's starving! Crazy cat!

Needless to say, all is well and almost normal in our household with this move :P

I start my new job on Monday with three days of orientation.  It's always nerve wrecking to start a new job but I need to get back to work.  Although it's a PRN position (as needed), I am scheduled for 15 days in October!  Looking at the other therapist's schedules the average is between 13-20 days/month so we will see how this goes. I'm looking forward to putting my degree to work!  Bonus is that I am working with a population that I want to work with, veterans!

We are going to do our best to "survive" the next couple of years here ;) Oh did I mention all the fresh seafood?!  This weekend.... Scallop and Mussel festival, last weekend it was a lobster festival! OMG!  

Winds of change brewing....

Edenton NC

It looks like our North Carolina, east coast bucket list may not be met.  We'll do what we can and enjoy our time here.  

Edenton NC

There is a little tobacco museum nearby that we checked out the other other weekend.  We learned about how tobacco was and is currently made.  It was interesting and I had no idea that tobacco bloomed!  We pass the fields around here all the time now and they are beautiful, too bad it's such a crappy thing :(  

After the museum we stopped at a random field and took pictures.  I was nervous just going out to the field and taking pictures but Joe said it's o.k.  Joe grew up on a farm in Arkansas so he's a little more familiar with farm going ons than I am.  I guess as long as we don't steal  or mess with the crops then they don't come running out with shotguns (as I envisioned).  

Last night I went to my first book club meeting!  I figured it would be a good way to meet new people in the area and of course read some good books.  It was a good evening and I made a new friend, we're FB friends already LOL.  I'll be able to go to one more meeting in August and possibly the dinner get together they do every month before I need to find new meet ups.....

It's now official, we are moving to Florida!!!!  Joe was going to push the retirement button early this month but before he did he got a call about a staff job in Tyndall AFB Florida.  He came home, we talked about it, and neither one of us could think of a "con" to him applying for the job!  He did and he got it!  We are still waiting on the order to come down but the end of August, early September, we'll be Florida bound!  So my North Carolina living is now getting dramatically shortened :P but we'll be RIGHT ON THE BEACH so I think we'll be o.k. ;)  Life is going to get busy again for me!  Just after I decompressed some it's time to ramp things back up!

Loving life!

Carolina Beach NC

West meet East

See you later SLC, UT!

I'm a west coast girl by nature but on 20 May, my car was loaded with the bare necessities along with Tux, Sami, and my new co-pilot in life, Joe, and we headed off to North Carolina.   It took us about three days.  We didn't rush it and I got to see some parts of the U.S. I haven't seen before...very beautiful country!  
We got to Pikeville NC Saturday early evening.  Sami and Tux were awesome traveling!  Sami, I knew, would be but I wasn't sure about Tux.  I heard horror stories about cats in cars and was praying that Tux would go off of Sami's chill vibe and be cool and he was.  We had a small litter box for him in the car but he didn't use it until the last day of driving.  He would get brave and check things out every once in awhile but for the most part he found a cave behind one of our seats and slept.

Needless to say by the time we got home we were spent!  

Sunday was a lazy day but one of Joe's friend's, Chris, invited us over for drinks and BBQ.  Two lazy people who just drove three days had no problem taking him up on his offer!  Chris, well...everyone out here, lives on some land and it's country out here.  He has a beautiful house and it's right next to a wheat field and the sunsets are truly something to take pause and admire!  Chris's wife is currently deployed and he's a single parent of two girls right now, poor guy needs some adult interaction :P  

Monday my stuff was delivered.  Steve, the bad ass driver, and Mesa moving were AWESOME! I had no problems and would recommend them in a heart beat!

Joe had all that following week off of work so we got busy unpacking, hanging things on the wall, and just getting settled.  Sami and Tux were helpful as is their norm :P  Sami will be 11 this August and her back legs are getting weaker.  Stairs give her problems, although she tries her best, and she gets tired rather quickly.  We have a nice back porch but some decent stairs that go to the yard.  Joe quickly made Sami girl an old lady ramp so she has access to the yard AND I don't have to carry her up and down stairs.  It's taken her about a week and a half but now she goes up and down the ramp completely on her own with no coaxing!  She's such a smart girl :D

That Thursday since we had pretty much finished unpacking we headed to the beach!  :D  I love being driving distance to the beach.  We spent a good afternoon there, got some food and headed back.  It was an overcast day with a nice breeze so THAT is what I blame our sunburns on, NOT that we failed to utilize sunscreen :(

It's been a week and I'm still peeling off my skin! ugh

Last week Joe was back to work :( But I had things to do. NC driver's license, NC license plates CHECK!  Looked into getting my interim social work license here and found out I need some paperwork from some good folks in UT :( ugh.  So that's on the docket for completion next week. I'm also getting my bearings around here.  I'm so use to having a big mountain range to gauge where I'm at, and what direction I'm going in.  Here.... not so much.  I'm seeing tobacco fields right and left but they don't help me with a sense of direction :P

This is the first move in my life where the military wasn't a part of it somehow.  Yes, Joe is active duty Air Force but that has no real impact on me.  Even when I moved to Utah I transferred to the Utah Air National Guard and I was still part of something, I had work responsibilities, something while I searched for another job.  Now, I don't have that anymore and it's weird but nice at the same time.  Granted, being a military brat and then serving for 20 years I will never ever be completely away from the military!  Yesterday I went with Joe to a retirement on base, followed by a house party and yep.... military everywhere I look.  It's fine, it's kinda nice being the "civilian" girlfriend although he's told everyone that I just retired so I can't play like I don't know anything about military stuff LOL

Today I did some venturing on my own and while people watching realized how "white" Utah is.  I knew it was but being here and seeing so much more diversity is a nice change of pace for me.  Also, the history here, I think, can be felt.  Just driving around some of these small towns you see some amazing old houses, plantation houses, Victorian looking.... I can't wait to explore more of the East coast and all the history in the area.  

On Monday I'm meeting up with a friend I had in middle school/high school!  We were in the P.I. together and the last time I saw her I was a freshman in high school!  She lives about 2 hours away with her family so we are going to meet in either Raleigh or Chapel Hill!  I have another close friend that is about 3 hours away, and then another one about 6 hours away!  I have NO excuse not to travel up and down the eastern seaboard!

Since I've been here I've slacked on photos.  Mainly it's because I usually use my phone but T Mobile SUCKS out here and I have been having phone issues :(  That's something else on my "to do" list!  I'll probably blog more now since I have some free time with the job hunt and all.... 

We will see how that goes :P  

Lake Tahoe and a little bling ;)

     Shane and I took a little vacation last weekend to Lake Tahoe.  It was a long weekend, we left on Thursday and then drove back on Monday.  I've never been to Lake Tahoe or Reno so it was great to see new places :)
     In Reno we stayed on the main drag, the famous sign was just about a block away from our hotel.

I can mark Reno off my "been there" list.  It has it's historical neatness about it, and it seems as if Reno does have some stuff to offer (they have a river walk) but we were only there for one night and then off to Lake Tahoe.  We walked around this main street (it didn't take very long) just checking everything out.  It was weird to see big casinos empty and shut down!  One big empty casino turned the outside into a big climbing wall!  Pretty good idea, and they seemed to be doing good business.  We ended up at the Eldorado Brew Brothers for some dinner and micro brews.  Good food and they had a live band that started up once we got there.  Started off with some good music, I starting missing my old club days back in Oki! But then the music got bleh and we called it a night.  Well, I did.  Shane did some gambling that first night and did decent.  I don't mind him gambling because he is somewhat smart about.  Goes down with a plan, how much to spend and when he wins he starts putting it to the side.  

     We got up at a decent time and headed out.  Shane's cousin lives in Lake Tahoe and works for the casino and she really hooked us up with places to eat and things to do :D  Before we left the Reno area we had breakfast at the Squeeze In.  Their claim to fame is their omelets.  They are good and I'm not a big omelet person!  The atmosphere was eclectic and hippy like so I enjoyed that :D  Shane focused on getting his new toy working, a GoPro.

Guys and their toys!  He borrowed one for our canyoneering trip and I wasn't totally shocked when he bought one for this trip.  I'm more of a picture gal but he likes the video.  He took a lot but I haven't seen any of them yet.  We mounted it on the inside of the car but that wasn't working too well (glare, a lot of dash in the video) so we eventually put it outside of the car!  That made me nervous but at our first stop there was a couple in a Porsche that had one mounted on their windshield and they've never had a problem.  

     We took a mountain road into Lake Tahoe and it was beautiful with all the overlooks!  

We took our time driving to our hotel.  We checked out short hikes that we'd be passing on our way to the south side of the lake.  Our first stop was at Sugar Pine Point State Park.  

It had an old lodge built in 1902 as a summerhouse for the wealthy.  We didn't go inside but walked around the grounds and down to the beach.  It was beautiful!  First time walking down to the water and there is huge pine cones and geese!  I'm use to palm trees and seagulls!

Our next stop was for a little hike to Cascade Falls.  It's just a mile out and then a mile back.  But with it being to a water fall it's not a flat easy trail :P  A lot of uphill and rocks! Ugh.  It was worth it though!  It overlooked Cascade Lake which is a private lake.  Shane and I wondered about the lake, we heard later on that it was used for movies... so with the help of google here is some information on the private Cascade Lake if you're interested!  John Steinbeck wrote his first book there while he was hired as a caretaker and tutor!

After that hike we headed to our hotel, The Tahoe Beach Resort!  I recommend it!  It's small, and they are doing renovations right now so it will just get better.  We had a room that overlooked the lake, there was a fireplace in the room that was never used but would be awesome during winter!  They have activities for families and just neat stuff to do... yoga on the beach, wine tasting!  A pretty good set up!  Friday was a long day but good.  We ended up at MacDuff's Pub (walking distance) for dinner!

     Saturday we had a relaxing morning before heading out on a longer hike.

We went by a grocery store and got some food for lunch and headed out.  We hiked a portion of the Rubicon Trail, starting at D.L. Bliss state park.  It's about a 4 mile hike (one way) but we went and checked out an old light house so we did about 5 miles that day.  The hike takes you around Emerald Bay and we stopped at the Vikingsholm castle.  We didn't get a tour because at this time we realized we had a bit of a time crunch.  We were planning on taking a shuttle back to the state park so we didn't have to hike back but the last shuttle took off in about 20 minutes and we still had to hike up to parking lot which was a straight up hike!  We were going try and if we missed the shuttle we were going to hitch hike back.  Shane stopped some workers to confirm the shuttle time and one of the workers offered us a ride back to the park! SCORE!  Talk about vacationers luck :D  Awesome!  We actually high fived we were so stoked!  I was sort of looking forward to my first hitch hiking adventure...but I guess that is for another time;)

the Lighthouse

our lunch stop

Vikingsholm

     Now Shane had a plan for the night so he was stressing about getting back to the hotel so we can go to dinner.  We didn't have reservations anywhere but the whole sunset thing was crucial.  

     Yes ladies and gents, he proposed!  I didn't make it easy on him.  I was tired from the hike and I just wanted to shower, throw on some cloths, and get some food.  He wanted to look nice.  So I did, but I took my time not knowing anything.  He wanted to walk down to the beach and I'm just thinking FOOD!  We stopped there and just enjoyed the sunset and I'm still thinking FOOD and then he does the one knee thing and proposes. He smartly added the long engagement clause, which I also repeated :P but at the same time the word yes came out before my brain got engaged with what was going on!  So ta da!

After that I finally got some food ;)

     On Sunday the plan was for a lazy day, and his cousin got us some comp tickets for a boat cruise across the lake.  We had a nice little breakfast before setting out on the M.S. Dixie!

The boat went from the east side to Emerald cove, so it was neat to see it from the water after hiking around it on Friday!  A lot easier too :P  It was a touristy thing to do and they told us neat stuff and facts about the lake.  A very nice way to spend the morning!  We then went back and spent a few hours on the beach!  Shane got into the water but it was too cold for me!  I got half way up my calf and I was done!

That night we met up with his cousin and her husband for dinner.  It was a good time and then we checked out the casinos.  A casino is a casino to me but it was neat all the same.  We went into Harvey's, the beginning of it all... of course it's all renovated and not it's old self but it's still neat to check everything out.  Shane did a little gambling there, didn't do well but didn't "loose" anything either.

     Monday was our drive through the desert back :( Ugh but this was our parting shot leaving our hotel.

It was a wonderful vacation!  It was hard to come back to work.  

     After he propose he wanted to start calling people :P  I, on the other hand, wanted to keep it to ourselves before  making any post or calls plus we were on vacation!  I'm not a phone person anyway so why would I want to spend my vacation time on the phone!  He did tell Codi while we were still there, that was fine.  I haven't made any FB post either for the same reason, we wanted to call/text and tell people that were close and important to us so they don't find out via the Internet.  We might have missed someone here and there but I'm going to load ALL my vacation pics onto FB today and the word will then be out to the masses!

If you want to check out all of my vacation pictures, go here!