New Awlins

Before I get started on this post, I just want to throw out a disclaimer. I was reading through my last post, and I was thoroughly embarrassed by my typos and the other mistakes I made throughout it. Like lunch. My parents don't take us to lunch for our birthdays... it's ALWAYS dinner. I have no idea where lunch came from. Basically, they're things that are no big deal, but when I was reading it, I felt like I was reading the blog of someone else, ha ha. The reason? I blog at work. (rough job huh?) And work is usually from around midnight till 8-ish am which means (like right now) I blog around 4am. Good enough excuse? I hope so cause I'm sticking to it.

Back to the post at hand. I recently went on a trip to Louisiana for the annual convention of a company I'm part of. It's kind of a random thing I guess that I'm even part of the company, but lets just say it's a fun time-filler while Rich is gone :) I don't really know what to say about the convention other than it was fun, informative, but kinda weird. I went there by myself and met up with a girl in Baton Rouge who I had never met. We just emailed and decided to share a room at the hotel. Good thing she wasn't a creeper, huh? Anyway, there are some women in the company who are really neat and fun to be around, and then there are the crazies who, well, we've all dealt with crazy people in our lives at one time or another.. you know what they're like.

It's probably more fun to just look at my pictures and I'll tell you a little bit about each one. This first one is at the welcome party. It was 80's themed.. can you tell? ;) This is me with the owner and founder of the company.

At the party, I also met KISS! You should have seen their shoes.. they had to be at LEAST 6" tall.
Oh yeah, and Michael Jackson came back from the dead to sing a few last songs for us. He shrunk a little.
There was an awards night where the ladies in the company who take their business more seriously than me won some awesome prizes and awards! We're talking trips to Hawaii and Disney Land, $1000's of dollars in cash, 14 cars were given away and a brand new Harley. The part that was the most fun for me was just dressing up :) It was a formal event. These are my roommates from the weekend
Bourbon Street. Pretty cool huh? They were good..
Although New Orleans was fun and all, It wasn't my favorite place in the world. If I'm going to go to a big city with lots of people, I'll go to Manhattan. I like it MUCH better. When I flew in, the girl I mentioned earlier picked me up from the Baton Rouge airport and drove me to where she was staying with her family till the convention started. It was family property and she was staying at her grandma's (doodah) where her great grandma (grand nanny) was also living. Her parents lived right next door and her aunt's house was down a little dirt road about 200 meters back. Basically, they all lived really close. This family was so cute and they were SO nice. Talk about southern hospitality. Spending time here was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. My flight didn't leave till Monday morning, so on Sunday we had nothing to do. Between the aunt's house and doodah's, there's a little pond that they like to fish in. They stock it with their own fish and feed them so they get really big. They're not really big yet though as you'll see below.

Here is our quaint little fishing pond :)

with little white flowers in the grass all around it
This is Samantha, my roommate for the weekend. I can't remember if that was her bait or what she caught ;)
They were little, but they were pretty
So what if I fished with a pink and purple princess pole.. ha ha
So all in all it was a fun trip. I have to say I didn't know a whole lot about Louisiana until I went. I couldn't even spell Louisiana! Doodah said if I come back I can stay at her place again. I may just take her up on that one day :)

R&R

R&R stands for rest and relaxation, but I think both of us were ready for some R&R after Rich's R&R! We did SO much while he was here and I loved every second of it! Here are a few pictures of some of the things we did for the two weeks that he was here:

Rich played indoor soccer a few times with two of our brother-in-laws. He loves any kind of sport and was happy to play.. even if he had to wear pink shin guards :) He also played in multiple basketball games both for a city league and church ball.
While Rich has been gone, he's gotten a new niece and a new nephew! He was so excited to meet them both. Here is Rich with little Jaxon

Lucky for me, Rich was able to make it in time for Valentine's day! We decorated cookies at my parents house and went out to lunch AND dinner to celebrate :)
Oh, and we also helped cupid deliver a Valentine to Parker at work :) He had quite the crowd following him.
We were lucky enough to have two free passes to Canyons so we spent a day out on the mountain. It was really fun other than it was a little windy at the top.. ok, it was REALLY windy. But still fun.

Rich's birthday was in January and we wanted an excuse to have everyone over to see him-so we called it a late birthday party and had cake and ice cream. The little kids loved the Army man cake :)
Everyone though we were crazy planning a cruise during leave.. Dates ALWAYS change with the military so we were really risking it. I was so set on a cruise cause I'd never been and being on a ship with all you can eat food, room service, entertainment and sun sounded like the perfect way to spend leave. Anyway, after some worrying of my own, it worked out perfectly! We went to Cabo San Lucas and loved it so much

After the cruise, we flew into SLC and just stayed there for the Linkin Park concert at the ESA. While we were there one of our friends just happened to be sitting a few rows behind us.. he is also deployed with Rich and was on his R&R. What are the chances? Anyway, I tried to be the crazy photo taking wife the whole time Rich was here cause I wanted to document the only two weeks we'll be together this year.. but I guess I'm not quite there yet. I forgot to charge the camera... so this was the only picture from the concert before it died for good:Oh, and Linkin Park is really good live but they didn't chose such a great band to open for them... Lets just say they weren't too creative with their choice of vocabulary :)

Although we had already had cake and ice cram, its tradition that my parents take out the birthday couple for lunch. Since Rich missed his, they had to make it up while he was in town. Turns out the best day to go was Austin's actual birthday, so we decided to do a combo. My parents didn't want to leave Heidi and Parker out however, so they talked and decided to celebrate Parker's birthday a month early! So we went out to dinner for the three son-in-law's birthday then had yummy cupcakes and MORE ice cream. The kids liked to help blow out the candles :)


Just a few days after that, Rich had to leave and go back for the last part of his deployment. I wasn't too excited about it, but he had to leave again before the countdown could REALLY begin. Not too much longer now and he'll be home for good! I can't wait for the day... Although we aren't perfect, I know that Rich and I are perfect for each other. We work together, and can correct each other when correction is needed. We can both be stubborn, but it just makes for a good laugh later ;) I love him so much and couldn't be more proud of what he is out doing right now!