Back to the start

Well, I have now been home from paradise for two weeks...and those two weeks have been extremely challenging. Being thrown back into work with no time to rest was horrific. We got a new system at work that has been full of bugs, making everyday simple tasks MUCH harder to accomplish. The fact that I have been given more job responsibilities on top of that has been almost more than I can handle. I wake up every morning feeling anxious, knowing that I have to work and feel such stress for 8 full hours. It hardly seems worth it. And just when I think I can't take anymore, I get in trouble for having a bad attitude. The emotional dam burst. I just don't feel like anyone understands how much pressure I am feeling, how hard this transition is, and how it's not just work that is weighing me down... However, since my meltdown, things have improved slightly. I am working on my attitude and feeling hopeful that things will get better.

It's not just work...it's life too. I still don't have a roommate, so finances are kicking me in the panties. It is scary, but somehow these small little miracles have happened this last week and I have found money to pay my bills. Whether it be getting a random check in the mail from a cardiologist that I went to 2 years ago, who audited my account and realized they had overcharged me, or from my sweet mother who paid me back for something I purchased for her and slipped in a little bit more. And let's not forget the tax refund that will be coming soon... Things are working out and I truly believe the Lord is blessing me for having the faith to pay my tithing.

Life is rough sometimes. But I am happy to say that things will be getting better, because I am ready to take the steps necessary to make them so. I am starting over. Back to the resolutions I made in January...that only lasted a few days. Back on the diet that is miraculous and makes me feel happy about myself. More aggressive roommate hunts. More activity in church. Making better choices and forgiving myself for the mistakes I have made. It's a new beginning. And I embrace it.

So this week I vow to:
*go to the gym faithfully at 5am every morning
*eat meat and vegetables, and believe that I love it
*clean my room and get more organized
*find what I did with all my tax paperwork
*go to work with a smile on my face
*not grunt when my computer freezes and I get an error message pop up
*figure out how to attract potential roomies
*find a way to serve someone else in need

Oh, and I will also start working on those free gifts I promised a while ago. Any advice for what a man would like? I don't think he would like a scrapbooked picture frame...

{Have a great week}

seriously

no, i am serious! you HAVE to check out my sis-in-law's blog (link in post below)...especially today because she has the greatest post about my leg trauma. classic!

by the way, i am so freaking busy at work that i don't have time to check the internet or blog anymore. i am still alive, just missing in action. i haven't checked any blogs (except my sis-in-law) for weeks! i am so out of the loop! besides, i got a new computer at work, so all of my blogs that were once saved in my favorites are no longer there. i have to find all my friends again...

just so you know, i started my diet for the 5 millionth time. so far so good. i put on massive amounts of weight in the last 9 months, so it's high time i get back to where i was and progress even further. happiness awaits me i just know it!

ok, i feel like i have more to say, but at this very moment my mind is blank. i promise to update again very soon...or as soon as i can.

{have a great day!}

Check it out!

Hey everyone...check out my sis-in-law's blog...'cause she took much better photos than me and also took much better notes about our daily happenings. She has a better detailed run down of the cruise and also has more to come. I know you will thoroughly enjoy it!

World's Longest Slideshow

Cruise recap

Sorry it has taken me so long to get this up on my blog. I have been crazy busy at work (coming back to one week of piled up work really sucks!)and I have also been sick. Nope, the cold did not go away the minute the cruise started. In fact, it progressively got worse everday I was cruising. BUT that is not saying I had a horrible time. The cold did not hold me back from LIVIN' IT UP and having a BLAST! I can only describe my little vacation in one word: AMAZING!!!! I loved EVERY minute of it (well, almost every minute)...

The fam (minus grandkids) met up in FL where we stayed the night in a hotel waiting to board the ship (the Crown Princess) the next morning. It was so fun seeing Natalie's face as she arrived at the hotel and also when she walked onto the ship. She has never been on a cruise before so it was fun breaking her in! There were all sorts of fun activities on board and we participated in many of them. My faves were line dancing, Movies Under the Stars, dancing on the Lido deck, the comedy shows, the dancing shows and the magic shows. Ok, so pretty much everything was my fave. Good times indeed.

We made four stops on our Eastern Caribbean cruise (side note: I mentioned before I left that I was headed to the western Caribbean...well, it wasn't until the 3rd day on board that my family told me I was mistaken about which side of the Caribbean I was on...oh well). The first stop was at a private little island called Princess Cays in the Bahamas. Obviously, the cruise line we went on was Princess, so the island is owned by them and was just for the 3500 of us on board. There wasn't much to do on the island. We just layed out, took a cool dip in the ocean and did a wee bit of shopping. I only got asked if I wanted my hair braided by the local merchants three times...

The next day was a sea day, and sadly the wind was a little crazy in the Caribbean so the boat was rockin' a bit. I don't get sea sick, but if you know me at all you know that I have a fear of vomit. I was pretty much worried that someone in my family would puke near me (namely my bro Curt) and it was hard to relax. But all was well. No one got sick and I was a happy girl.

The second stop was my FAVE stop of the entire cruise and it was to St. Martin/St. Maarten, an island of the British West Indies. Half of the island is owned by the Dutch and the other half is owned by the French, hence the reason for the two spellings of the name. Since we spent our time in the Dutch quarters, I will spell the island name as St. Maarten. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place! The weather was amazing, the beach was gorgeous, the scenery was awe inspiring, etc. We never ventured to the French side because we heard that the beaches are "clothing optional" over there...and the boys didn't really need the "eye medicine," as one of the locals called it. We just went shopping in port and strolled along the beach, but I loved it. I honestly don't know why this was my favorite port because looking back, nothing exciting happened there. Maybe it's because the next port was so horrific for me...

The next day we stopped at beautiful St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I had such high hopes for this port. We decided to participate in an excursion while there and took a little island tour/shuttle to a place called Coral World. There we got into a semi-submarine and took a little boat ride around the coral reefs seeing the beautiful sea life. Coral World is like an extremely miniature version of Sea World, just full of fish tanks and different variety of sea life. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful park, but then things took a "tumble" for the worse. While making my way down a set of rock stairs, I somehow lost my balance and managed to fall forward down the remaining steps. No one was near me, I didn't trip over anything that I can remember, I just simply fell down the stairs. I heard someone in the distance gasp as they saw me falling and all I could think to myself was, "get up you freak! This is so embarassing!" I got my composure and walked to where my dad was only to notice that my left calf was cut open in many spots, both of my feet were scraped, my right knee was bleeding, my left elbow was cut, my left hand was sore and I think my second toe on my left foot got broken. It was quite a spill. My mom had to get some alcohol pads and neosporin from the staff there and clean me up...what a champ! My dad noticed that my pants had ripped open near my bum (I had no idea) so my mom got some medical tape and taped my pants up too. I looked awesome! Needless to say, that kind of put a damper on my day. We spent the rest of the time shopping (yes, I was still a bloody, taped up mess) while all the people stared at me. It was fun. Then to make things even better, right before getting back on the ship my mom and I walked into a gift shop. While looking at the shot glasses (don't ask why, but they intrigue me and I have a small collection of them) I happened to knock one over and it shattered on the floor. Yep, they made me pay for it...and they wouldn't even give me the shattered pieces to glue back together. So, I went to St. Thomas and paid $3.97 for air and got an awesome leg decoration. Do you understand why St. Thomas is my least favorite place in the world??

The last stop was Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. I was really excited about this port just because I like to say Turks and Caicos. We had signed up for a snorkeling/stingray adventure. We had a couple of hours to kill before the excursion so we looked at the shops for a while. Once the excursion started we had a lot of fun. Snorkeling was a blast. I LOVE snorkeling! It is amazing what lives in the ocean, and it is no wonder the ocean freaks me out. Snorkeling really opens your eyes to what is in the water with you. Kind of scary! But it is still fun. After the snorkeling adventure we cruised to a little private beach where the waters are full of stingrays. It was a little creepy (visions of the Crocodile Hunter flashed in my head) and I worried that the stingrays would attack my leg and suck my blood...but they didn't. I got to hold a stingray and even got to kiss one. Mmmm...SLIME! Then I got to get a stingray massage. The whole adventure was tons of fun and something I will not soon forget.

The last day on board was a sea day and was spent doing all of the fun last minute activities. There was a Susan G Komen "Walk for the Cure" on deck, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to participate in that. It was cool coming together for such a great cause, especially when it is so close to our family. We played a fun round of Bingo, got in some shows and it was off to bed. We were sad that the cruise was ending. Honestly, by the last day of the cruise my cold was horrible and I just happened to get an eye infection too. I was feeling pretty crappy and was ready to crawl into my own, spacious bed, in my own house, where I could openly cough my lungs out and not worry about waking anyone up.

The cruise was a little piece of heaven on earth...spent with the greatest people I know! I wouldn't trade my experience for anything! Next time the family goes on a cruise though, I WILL have a husband...

Hello friends!

I am back! Am I happy to be back? Hmm...let me get back to you on that one...

{more to come}

See ya!

I am outta here! Off to discover the wonders of the Western Carribbean...and so glad to be getting away! Here's to hoping my horrible chest cold will be gone the minute I step off the plane in FL. Check back the week of March 16th for some updates complete with pictures of my jolly good time. Until then my blogging friends, I will miss you. Who am I kidding? No I won't!

the pinata post

I finally got around to downloading the pictures off of my camera. So really quickly, I will just show you some sundry delights of some exciting events over the last month or so. First of all there was V-Day. I hung out with my pal Sarah and we rocked Guitar Hero for a few hours. We vowed to only play "love" songs and I even tried my hand at the medium level. I pretty much suck, but we won't get into that. After our Guitar Hero finale we headed west to a YSA V-Day dance. Let me preface this by saying that I LOATHE dances! Never loved going to them as a youngin' and not sure if that will ever change. The reason I hate dances...boys don't ask fatties to dance...so I hang out by myself. Enough said. However, this dance was different. No, I didn't get asked to dance, but for some reason I just had a lot of fun. After the dance I went back to Sarah's house for a minute to enjoy a V-Day treat. This is what I purchased at the store:

I am fully aware that it says "Super Mom" on it...but my choices were slim. I liked the pink Superman sign, so I got it. And just in case you are wondering, it did not taste super.

The next Monday at work we got a visit from some Nascar friends. I am not really a fan of Nascar, so this didn't really appeal to me. But it was pretty cool nonetheless. Besides, they gave us free lunch...

The set up and the car...driven by Matt Kenseth (who actually won two races in a row recently)

And finally, here is the long awaited pinata post. I don't get compliments on many facets of my body, but more recently I have gotten many compliments about one particular region of my face...and that is my lips. I think my lips are pretty decent. I also like to get kisses on said lips, but that hasn't happened for a while. In my previous paragraph about the V-Day dance there was a kissing booth set up there. I was so close to just standing in the booth, puckering up and waiting for the blessed event to happen, but for some reason I didn't do it. Sarah and I have been hanging out with this fun group of peeps for a while now and somehow the kissing booth comes up everytime we get together (mostly by me and my flirtations). So when there was a post V-Day sale at WalMart and we saw "lips" pinatas...we couldn't resist. Recently our pal Kara celebrated a birthday. We thought it would be fun to surprise her with the previously mentioned pinata. It was quite the entertaining event. Here are some pics:

The pinata in all it's glory

Jessica and Kara not having much luck

Kenny definitely can't hit anything except the basketball hoop (which shortened our swinging stick a little)

That's it...the blindfold clearly is not working and has to come off!

Yes, the pinata breaks...and everyone stands around and makes no attempt whatsoever to run for the candy (except for Danny)

The aftermath


Inside...

Kara opens the much anticipated "singing dog" present, and kicks everyone's trash in a never-ending game of Nerts. It was a good time.

By the way, I have a girl coming to see my place tomorrow. Wish me luck! And also wish me health because I seem to have come down with the flu...and I leave in a few days on my cruise. I REFUSE to be sick on vacation!!!!