What is going on with us?

Just a little update here. I am still staying at home and loving it. We have made some friends lately and it has been nice to spend time with other couples. One of the couples will only be here till October so I'm sad about that. I've been spending a lot of time with the wife of that couple because she stays home too and they don't have any kids either and we hit it off pretty well I think. It's been fun to spend time with another girl!

The weather was beautiful on Saturday so we were outside working in our yard and making a garden. We had to dig up dead grass with a shovel and then pull it out of the garden spot with a rake. They don't have any rota tillers here so that's why we had to do it that way. We didn't plant anything yet because we want to get the ground nice and moist first. Hopefully we will start planting sometime this week. Our lawn is all dried out so we I'm going to start watering and hope to have green grass in a month or so. I'll post some pictures once it looks nice.

That's it for the update!

How I made my blog cute

This is in response to the comments I received regarding my blog background etc. It started out as a reply comment, but got way too long so now it's a post!

I probably spent way too much time making my blog cute while I was procrastinating on doing other things that I really needed to do but didn't want to do. Anyway, I found the paper and stuff a http://www.shabbyprincess.com/. They have free digital scrap booking downloads. Then I found instructions on how to create a blog spread on thecutestblogontheblock.com. I spent hours creating my background only to have it not work. But, their website did talk about a free program called Paint.NET which I used to create my header. The website that ultimately helped me figure out how to put it all together and get it on my blog successfully was sjhblogdesign.blogspot.com. But, The Cutest Blog on the Block and Lee Lou blogs both have some really cute backgrounds already if you don't want to spend time creating a background. You could just spend all your precious time creating a cute header to match your background which is what I would do in hindsight. I am by no means an expert, I just love designing and creating!

Birthday pictures!

Joel with his birthday cake at our quiet little birthday party.

Make a wish!

Licking the candles.

Enjoying his ice cream cake!

Happy Birthday Joel!

It's Joel's 27th birthday today! He was able to sleep in today till 6:30am and I made him dutch babies for breakfast. He ended up over sleeping and I didn't want to wake him up because I thought he knew what was going on, but he didn't. Anyway, he had to take his dutch babies to go but he still made it to class on time but wasn't able to eat until 8:30am.

Later today he had a physical training test which he passed and ended up doing more push ups and more sit ups than he has done before. So that was a good birthday present too. Speaking of push ups and sit ups, he has gained a total of 20 pounds since he left for basic training and is looking buffer every day :). I would love him even if he wasn't though.

OK, back on topic. He has wanted an X box 360 for the last four years so he finally got it for his birthday this year. We went to Circuit City last night to buy it. He is pretty excited but is still being responsible about doing his homework and studying before playing. . .so far.

I made him his favorite orange chicken for dinner with mashed potatoes and spinach salad. He received two birthday phone calls before dinner (actually dinner was ready but we hadn't started eating) so I had to wait patiently for those to end. Then we had a nice dinner and now he's doing his homework.

We were going to go to San Jose to watch the Glenn Beck summer show at a theater where it is being broadcast, but he was too worn out by the time he got home so we are just staying here. I made him an ice cream cake which we will eat after he's finished with his homework. I just wanted to post to let everyone know it's his birthday and I am so glad he was born, he is the best husband a girl could ask for!

So Happy Together

OK, so I've been here with Joel for three weeks now and I guess it's time I posted an update. I just keep putting it off for some reason saying I'll do it tomorrow and now it's been three weeks! Here's a brief summary. I rolled into town on June 20th and met Joel outside the Army post. It was so fun to see him walking down the street towards me in his uniform, he looks so handsome and just sweeps me off my feet every time I see him. We stayed at his brother Jared's place for a few days and were fortunate enough to get our own place just three days after I arrived here. We have a three bedroom duplex located about 10 miles from where Joel has class every day. It's so nice to be in our own place together again and have life somewhat back to normal. Normal is what I'm still trying to figure out. For now we plan for me to stay at home and be a homemaker while we live here. I'm enjoying it but sometimes feel pressure from the outside world to get a job. The way we see things is that if life had turned out how we planned for it to turn out I would have been at home for the past four years anyway so why not now? So, I'm having fun taking care of my husband and doing everything for him that I can possibly think of and decorating our place. I love taking care of Joel and I am so happy to be here with him. It is even better than I remember! Thanks everyone for all your support while we were apart, it helped us both a lot!