Happy Monday!

I'm having mixed feelings about this Monday so far. It started off badly because a) its Monday. S and I had a little tiff over the weekend and although it all turned out just find, he called me this morning to tell me that he's been beating himself up over it all morning and that he feels bad and apologized again and again. It makes me feel good to know that he realizes his mistakes and I'm so glad that we can talk things out. Unfortunately, as I was on the phone with him having this conversation (we were both at work), my boss proceeds to come into my cubicle and stand next to me looking over a couple contracts that I left for her on my desk. Now, if you saw that someone was on a phone call and you can clearly see that they only have a little 6x6 cube of space to themselves, what makes you think that it is okay to stand over them while they are on a phone call???!!??!?! OMG. I'm so done trying to justify her behavior and pretend like everything is okay. I.am.so.over.it.

Note: I'm sorry, I try to keep everything in my blog very upbeat, but I was just astonished at this behavior. I was seriously on the verge of writing her a very nasty email about personal space, but I decided I would rather not fuel the fire. She is a nasty person as it is and she doesn't need anything, especially in writing, to use against me. Instead, I will use it to fuel my fire in getting a new job.

Which leads me to two new and exciting things! First, I have an interview at the Citadel (Military College of South Carolina), for Admissions Counselor on Wednesay, YAY! PRAY FOR ME. Haha, I need it! Although I think it will be a great seeing as to how I have worked in Admissions at two different colleges and am working at a third right now :)

Second: I had a meeting today with the Volunteer Coordinator at the Fleet & Family Support Center to talk about volunteer opporunities. I've thought about getting involved in with volunteering in the past, but never really did anything about it. But, since I am on the hunt for a new jobby job, I decided what better time to get involved? I know it will look kick-ass on my resume and it will be a great way to learn about Navy life. To make a long story short, I accidentally emailed the Volunteer Coordinator's boss's boss and she saw to it that I got contacted haha. Oops! I so did not mean to do that, I was literally just looking for someone, anyyyyone who I thought might be able to help me learn about volunteer opportunities.

Erin, the VC, said that they don't normally invite significant others in unless they are spouses, but they do make exceptions and apparently I am an exception! I am okay with that. Since I have both my bachelor's and master's degrees and a background in Higher Education, she was very interested in my background and very happy to meet with me. She also mentioned that the woman who oversees their Education and Scholarship area had an assistant who JUST retired this year and she said that she was going to pass my information and resume on to her. Score! She said that she is pretty sure that they are looking to bring in 2 people, but she wasn't making any promises. I am okay with that, but wow! How nice of her to think of me for that! I would absolutely love to work on base, that would be super convenient and a great way to get my foot in the door for the future.

She also said that it is good to get involved because although the FFCC has a very small staff, they do tend to hire their volunteers or recommend them for employement in other areas on base. She also invited me to come to Military Spouse 101 in a couple weeks to learn about all the services offered to families on base. I really couldn't believe how nice this woman was to me. I really wasn't sure how I would be treated since I am not officially a spouse.

SO that has been my day so far. We had a little bit of a rough weekend, but it has all been smoothed out by now. Here are a few pics that highlight the funner parts ;)

We floated down the Edisto River on Satuday for a friend's birthday. There are no rapids and its actually very shallow in some parts yet over our heads in others. It was a really fun, beautiful day. This is was South Carolinians do for fun :p

Lots of drunk peeps!

S

Me, S, friend Kt

S and I <3

Meeee :)

The end.

To get a dog or not to get a dog?? That is the question.

Hey yall,
So S has been very adamant about getting a dog lately. He has always had one growing up where as I grew up with no pets (unless you count a cat until I was 2 and a couple hamsters and fish along the way). We especially never had a dog. I have kind of a bad outlook on the who situation because I mainly hear a lot of negative pet stories; people mainly complain about the bad things that happen and tend not to brag about all the awesome things their pets can do. I know from reading a lot of blogs that so many people are so happy to have their "fur babies", but I'm not sure I'm that type of girl.

This discussion has been going on for a while and I have mostly just been making up excuses as to why we shouldn't get a dog. When S's fam was in town, even him mom was trying to talk me into it! He has been pretty good about understanding my reasons for not wanting to get a pet right now; we like to go out a lot and on the weekends, its not unusual for us to be out all day. It's not always easy to swing back by the house and let the dog out nor is it fair to leave them all day. My main concern is that a dog is going to keep us from doing the things that we want to do and I don't want to turn into that couple that always has to leave early to let their dog out, etc. I also don't want to give up spontaneous trips or trips home because we can't bring it or afford the added expense of a kennel.

One night last week, I came home from work exhausted and S brought up the idea again (he goes back and forth; if he hasn't seen a dog for a while he doesn't bring it up, but since we just saw his fam and their dog, it's on his mind again). I was tired and didn't want to get into it so I didn't say much, but I could tell that he was getting upset with me.

I know that it will make him very happy to get a dog, should I just give in? I have been entertaining the idea a little more the past few days and I may have told him we could start looking, but I don't want to regret my decision. This is an added responsibility/expense that I'm not I want to take on right now. I also made a list of my concerns for if we did get a dog (things like no pets on the furniture, must take obedience classes, cleaning/vacuuming). And I also told S that we would have to both agree on what type of dog we were to get. Right now, we are deciding between a German Short-haired Pointer or Weimaraner.

What are ya'll experiences getting/having a dog? What should I doooo????

Some overdue 4th of July fun and photos.

I get so caught up in reading everyone else's blogs that I tend to forget to post in my own! The past weeks have been pretty uneventful though so I guess yall aren't really missing out on anything.

So to recap, S and I took the first week of July off because his family came to town to visit. We had a lot of fun being tourists in our own town, which is very easy to do. Charleston is a very beautiful, historical city and there are TONS of great restaurants. It's minutes from several beaches and you just cannot escape that southern charm. Since S's fam is from Kentucky, we made sure to spend lots of time on the beach and eat plenty of seafood. We also took a trip up to the lake for a day with the boat and had tons of fun tubing and swimming and lounging in the water.

The fam left fairly early on a Saturday so S and I took that as an opportunity to head back up to the lake and have some more fun, but with friends this time around. We took the boat for a quick spin, but then tied up with a couple other boats and literally just floated the rest of the day. Another couple that S knows from work came with us and even though I had only met the hubby once, the wifey was super friendly, we got along great, and had lots to talk about. Here are some pics of our super fun, probably funnest day I've had in Charleston yet, lake day.

Flotilla!

Brilliant!

Nothing like some redneck fun!

Since it was the week of Fourth of July, they had fireworks that evening and we kept the boat out on the lake until about 10pm when it ended. It was so much fun!

New post!

I always feel like I should have pictures when I'm about to write a new post, oh wait...I do have pics yay! I almost forgot that I do indeed have pictures from out CT trip. I have additional pictures from the wedding we went to a couple weekends ago, but I keep forgetting to charge my camera so I can upload to my computer.

Some time has passed since I last posted. We had a great trip to NYC and Connecticut. S loved my family and they loved him right back. I can't help but wonder if he had a little chat with my pops, but I guess I'll leave that as a surprise. Speaking of my parents, they just bought a condo in Port St. Lucie, Fl, which I am very excited about because I will have free reign (and a key) to visit any time I want! I am planning on spending a week there with them in September, can't wait! It's also nice because since it's only 8 hours away, we can drive instead of having to buy two plane tickets. You would never think it would be SO expensive to fly from Charleston to pretty much anywhere in Florida. Crazy.

Hmm, what else is new...

I posted a little while back about how S and I started attending Seacoast Church here in Charleston, I really love it, however, S is a little on the fence because it's such a big church. He said that no one ever talks to us. My response is that we never stick around long enough to meet/talk to anyone! A couple weeks ago, I saw on the church's email newsletter that a couple about our age was starting a 20/30-something life group and I thought, that is just what we need! It was the most perfect thing and great timing. It is just a casual almost social group that gets together every week at the couple's house. We went last night for the first time and I really enjoyed it. We got to meet about four or five other couples and a couple singles as well :) Everyone was very friendly and I'm looking forward to getting to know each person there. The group isn't very structured; there is no required reading or workbooks or anything like that. Just a group of peeps who are around the same stages in their lives who can get together and hang out and maybe chat once in a while if there is anything heavy on their hearts. I'm looking forward to many more gatherings and now S will finally have some people he knows to stop and talk to at church.

The next big exciting thing, not sure if I already mentioned it, but S and I are taking that next BIG step and moving in together. I am currently living with a roommate and his brother just moved out of his apartment, leaving plenty of space for all my things! It doesn't make any sense financially for us to both pay rent. We are both 30 years old and we know that we will be married in the very near future so I don't see anything wrong with is (and I don't think anyone else should.) I have been soliciting everyone at work for all their boxes so I can get packing this weekend. I can't wait!

I just realized that I never really posted any pics from our Kentucky trip from earlier in May so here we go!

While in Kentucky, we hiked at Red River Gorge up the Natural Bridge, it was pretty awesome. As you'll notice, we had quite a bit of rainy/overcast spring weather on both of our trips..

S's new truck that we picked up in Kentucky!

It was Military Appreciation Night at S's little brother's baseball game :)

A couple weeks after we visited KY, S's grandma and grandpa came down to Charleston to visit us. We showed them around and played tourists in our own town. Here are some pics from a carraige ride that we took them on.

The next day, we took them on the ferry out to Fort Sumter.

The weekend after the grandparents left, we hopped a plane to NYC and visited CT, too! S was dying to go to the Carnagie Deli and here is his giant sandwich, he killed that thing by the way.

Rainy day in Times Square.

My favorite bakery EVER, Crumbs. It is seriously cuppie cake heaven.



The Statue of Liberty from Battery Park.

Once in CT, we took a little trip down to the shore. We stopped at Sub Base New London and toured the submarine museum and USS Nautilus. I have no idea how S does it, but I could never spend days and days beneath the sea on one of those things!

 I promised S a trip to the casino (where he won $1200 playing blackjack!)

 And he got his lobster dinner that he couldn't stop talking about :p

On our last day in town, we visited my friends, Shay and Mike, and my goddaughter Maddie. Here she is with the little Carolina Girl t-shirt I bought her :)

I miss her, can't wait to visit again!

On my parents' doorstep, just about to leave for the airport to head back to Charleston.

Trips home always go by too fast and there is never enough time to do everything I want to do. Can't wait to get back home and visit again, but until then, I am always having fun in the sun in SC<3



Thanks to Karina over at Mr. and Mrs. Powell, I must have this!

{via Best Buy}

I can't get over the quality of pictures that it takes. I knew I shouldn't have let S talk me into that Sony even though I've always been a Canon girl! :p

Oh, and follow me on Pinterest!

Oops!

I don't know why I was thinking that I already posted about our NY/CT trip already, I guess I should look at my own blog more often :p I have lots of pics and fun things to post about, maybe later this afternoon I will have time....or tomorrow.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Getting excited for next week!

This month has been so busy and I'm kind of looking to some downtime when S and I can hit the beach or do whatever we want, whenever we want. His grandparents are arriving tomorrow and will be staying at his place until Tuesday morning so it looks like that's not going to be happening until at least the first or second weekend of June. Luckily, he is handing over his bedroom to them and will be staying two miles down the road at my place with me on those nights. At least we'll get a little quiet time in.

We are both getting very excited for our trip to CT next week. I am especially excited for him to get to meet my dad and brother and to take him to NYC since he has never been before (he's actually never been north of Virginia! On the East Coast anyway..) We are also planning a night out at Foxwoods Resort & Casino and I reserved us this room at the Great Cedar Hotel:

Fancy!

He's been dying to go to the casino, so I am taking him! I am also going to take him to Mystic Seaport and we are going to check out the Groton Sub Base and possibly tour the USS Nautilus. On top of all that fun, we will get to have din with my cousin, Amanda, and her hubby, Joe; have some drinks with friends, and cookout with extended family on Sunday. Its going to be another whirlwind of a weekend, but hey, we can't all get 30+ days of leave every year ;)

The weekend after we get back from CT is my friend Gingham and Tim's wedding. I'm really looking forward to it and this is the ABS Allen Schwartz dress that I bought for the occasion -

I'm going to wear the same great Badgley Mischka shoes that I wore for the sub ball (they match perfectly!) and remember how I said that I am awesome at finding deals? Well....This dress was originally $335, marked down to $99 on 6pm.com. I had been eyeing it for a while and was about to buy it one day when I decided to wait just another day or so. The very next day, I went online and to my surprise, it had been marked down AGAIN to $66. They have free shipping and there was no sales tax so I got a $335 dress for $66, score! It's a gorgeous, light, flowy dress in person and very well made. I need to get it hemmed, but I'm not too worried about paying for that considering how much I originally spent, couldn't have found a better deal.

I had also been shopping for a set of pearls since they are of course, all the rage in the South and what could be classier than a pretty set of pearls. I had found this set a little while back on Macys.com, but it was on backorder and I wasn't able to get it in time for the Sub Ball so I ended up borrowing some from a friend. When I knew I had time, I decided to go for it and purchase them on sale for $39 (regular price - $120) and I got a 25% off 'friends & family' discount code, which made them only $29.25. They are beautiful and I'm so excited to finally own my very own. I'm not the biggest fan of the earring, however, the bracelet and necklace match the set of Honora pearl earrings that S bought me for my birthday :D

Soo that is my life for the next couple weeks! Does anyone else have anything fun planned in the near future?

Side note: I have been thinking about starting to do some restaurant reviews and reviews of other attractions in the Charleston Area. We have so many amazing places to eat and so many fun things to do and I would love to share!

Wow, I can't believe that its been almost two weeks since I last posted! I've been thinking about it almost every day, but I had wanted to wait until I uploaded my pictures from our Kentucky trip. That's probably not going to happen for a few more days so I guess the pictures will have to come later!

S and I drove up to Richmond over Derby weekend to visit his fam. Our original plan was to actually GO to Derby, but turns out we didn't plan very well and waited too long to get tickets. There were infield tickets available still, but we wanted a good Derby experience complete with actually being able to see the races so we decided to hold off until next year. It's too bad because I had the PERFECT Lilly dress to wear, but I guess I find somewhere else to wear it ;)

The dress.



We tried not to make too many plans for our Kentucky trip because we still wanted to get in some relaxation, however, we still ended up having a pretty busy trip. We arrived in Richmond late on Wednesday night then got up Thursday morning to head over to Toyota to pick up S's brand new Tacoma. That was exciting because now we had a car to drive around in on our own, since we had driven up in his brother's car with him and his girlfriend. That is a whooooole another story...

After picking up the truck, we hung out at his family's farm until S had to leave to go to an school award ceremony for his youngest brother, Joe, with his dad. Only two people were allowed to attend and since his mom and other brother, Dan, had gone the year before; it was now S's turn to go with his pops. I stayed behind and chatted with S's mom the whole time they were gone. It was good to get in some qt with her, I feel like we are still getting to know each other sometimes and the boys are always around so we never get to get in a good girl-talk.

Friday morning, we got up kind of early and headed out to Red River Gorge to go hiking. We hiked up to the natural bridge and took lots of pictures. I wish it hadn't been so overcast and rainy that day although if the sun had been out, we probably would have been roasting! S and I are both sensitive to heights so while it was nice to get up there and see the view and take pics, I was also relieved when it was time to head back down. After an early dinner on the way back, we got cleaned up and headed out to Joe's baseball game. This kid is a 14 year old 8th-grader and is already playing on the high school baseball team. Can't wait to see what the future has to hold for him!

On Saturday, we got up early again because we had a 8am tee-time to play 18 holes with S's Uncle Greg. We played at Gibson Bay, which is probably one of the nicest courses I've played at. I was pretty happy with how I played and S had the best game of his life. He is now dying to try and replecate that game haha. Later in the day, since we didn't end up going to Derby, we decided to celebrate it at home with a cookout, complete with mint juleps, and invited S's dad's brother and sister and their families. We had a great time, it was a beautiful day and we played with the horses, played croquet and just enjoyed each other's company. That night we had a bon fire out in the backyard and watched for the Super Moon.

Sunday was our last full day in the country and we headed up to Cynthiana, which was about an hour away from the farm. On the way, S and I stopped in Lexington for our usual stop to a Kentucky pride shop so we could pick up a couple UK souveniers (not like we don't have enough already, but can you ever really have enough?) We cooked out again, but this time it was with S's mom's parents and sister and brother and their families. His aunt and uncle have the cutest house, kind of log cabin-style, but not? I wish I took a couple pictures.. Again we just chilled out in the shaded yard chatting it up and enjoying everyone's company. I was a little nervous on the way up there because that was the first time that I had met S's maternal grandparents. I knew well in advance that they HATED his ex, with good reason of course, however, this just made me that much more nervous. I have a thing about S's family liking me because of his past situation. He reminds me often that they love me and I have nothing to worry about. Come to find out just yesterday, after a conversation with his mom, S brought up again how much his mom likes me. I guess that little chit-chat had just the effect that I wanted! I was hoping that it would bring us closer together.

Soooo, that pretty much sums up our trip in a not-so-nutshell. This past weekened, my aunt and uncle came to visit and we spent some time with them on Sunday. Besides my mom, this was the first time that S got to meet some of MY family for a change. It was just a preview because in 8 days we are flying to Connecticut and S will get to meet my entireeee family. I hope he's ready!!

I do have a few pictures that I took with my phone over the weekend -

Across the street from the family farm.

Kentucky hills.

 Gibson Bay Golf Course.

 Joe!

 The horses.

 Seminole

 Tess

Heading home.

T