I'm Back... and I'm in Hawaii!

These last few days/weeks/months have been very busy!  The busyness isn't over, but I am at least at a mental state to where I can begin blogging again!  I've also been doing a lot on Pinterest in the last day or so.  If you haven't checked out this site before, it is worth checking out and setting up an account.  I heard about it from my friend Sarah Beth, who also blogs at The Country Inspired.

The wedding is coming up in a week and a half, and everybody is arriving in one week to the day!  I hadn't even realized that everybody would be here so soon till Monday when my mom mentioned that she would see me in just a week and a half.  Although I am very excited to see everybody, I haven't even been thinking about the wedding up until this point.  I have had so much going on including a camping trip last weekend with some friends up at Bellows Air Force Station, as well as a luau this weekend to get ready for.  I stupidly volunteered to cook and prepare two things for the event:  a week before my wedding and without my own kitchen or kitchen appliances etc.  I would say, oh well live and learn... but I'm only planning on getting married once, so I guess I won't be doing that again!

We've finalized the menu for the wedding and I'm really excited about all of the fall flavors.  Some foods (like canned pumpkin) are a lot harder to find here on the island, but we've tracked down everything we need for the reception so far.  We finally decided on a cake type: pumpkin spiced cake with a cream cheese icing.  I LOVE pumpkin spice and cream cheese icing, so I am excited that this recipe will workout for our fall wedding.  Tomorrow a friend and I are going to go down towards downtown and Waikiki to look at flowers and hopefully pick out and order the flowers for the wedding.  Still hoping the sunflowers will workout, I have my fingers crossed.

Much is going on, and not much time left in the day!  Will post more later and will start up the blogging rotation.  I also started my 101 in 1001 a few weeks ago and haven't even been thinking about it or working on it, so that is the first line of business when this wedding stuff finally calms down and life is back to somewhat normal.  I'm so ready to be in housing on base so I can have some assimilation of normalcy and regular scheduling of a daily life!

M.I.A.

I've been missing in action the last few weeks!  Life has been so busy lately.  I have a lot to report, but not much time to do so.  I move to Hawaii in 8 DAYS and I still have so much to do.  In the last few weeks I have traveled through 6 states, met about a million of my in-laws family members, and had a really beautiful bridal shower thrown by my future mother in-law.  When we were in Wisconsin I even had the chance to milk a cow! (pictures to follow later)

Welp, just wanted to check in to make sure you guys didn't think I fell off the face of the planet!  More to come soon when I have the time to devote to a good blog post.

Hawaii bound.... 8 days!  Can't wait to see my man!

What I Learned Last Week

1) How to shoot these guns:

2) Back to school shopping is EXPENSIVE!  I don't know how my mom and dad let me get as much as they did when I was little.  I was so lucky to have the opportunities and upbringing I had.  Lucky in the sense that I had no real needs.  Unlucky because I was conditioned to think it necessary to live in a highly consumerist way.  BBBS gave us $50 to go back to school shopping.  Paige picked JC Penny because she doesn't get to shop there often.  We spent almost all of the money when we were there just on one pair of jeans, one shirt, and a package of sports bras!  I would have never expected that a pair of jeans in the kids section costs as much as they would in the adults size!

3) If you have bad tires, sooner or later you will need to replace them, whether you want to spend the money or not.  We got very lucky when someone left a beer bottle under the tire and we didn't get our tire slashed open then, but now they are so thin that a thorn from a tree branch has found its way into our tire.  We're going to have to spend the money to get new tires for the car.  Although I know we have the money, I was hoping we wouldn't have to spend the money until we have our BHA (Basic Housing Allowance) coming in so we would be able to pay our rent without a worry incase the military didn't get our pay rolling in right away.  Hopefully we will be able to replace the tires without dipping in to that savings!

Monday Medusozoa

White Spotted Jellyfish

• These jellies are native to Austrailia and are fairly harmless to humans!
• They filter sea water all day in hopes to absorb the nutrition from the tiny plankton. 
• They can filter 13,000 gallons of sea water every day in search of their foods!

Wedding Announcements

I haven't posted for a while (other than MilSpouse and Monday blogs) because I've been really busy!  After moving down here I've had my work cut out of me.  My days have been filled with taking my grandma to Arkansas for doctors visits or Branson for hair appointments, unpacking and repacking my things that I moved in to moms basement, trying to tie up any other loose ends that need to be taken care of, as well as the surprisingly large task of completing wedding announcements for our friends and family.  Although we are getting married in Hawaii and only inviting our parents and although we don't expect gifts or anything of the support, we thought it would be good to send a formal announcement of our engagement.  I thought it would be a good idea to make them all by hand.  This was a fun task to perform, however, I didn't expect it to take the amount of time that it did.  Even though I spent a lot of time on them and quite a bit more money than expected, I was very happy with the finished product.

outside of announcements with sunflower stamp



front of our announcements with our picture on the front



inside of our announcements

After the announcements were sent out I didn't even think about the fact that I might start hearing from the recipients.  I was so happy and overjoyed to hear from all of my friends receiving announcements and also my crazy amazing cousin down in Florida!  My friends are such amazing people and I feel so happy to have their support and love!  Even though many of them already knew about our engagement and wedding, and many of them had never met Levus before, they all offered support and congratulations!  Some asked what and where to send our gifts, which was very surprising and unexpected and one of my good friends (who also happens to have a blog out in the blogosphere) even sent me a picture of our wedding announcement on her fridge, which I feel is a huge honor!



I feel so lucky to have such wonderful friends that support Levus and me.  Because of my many moves and my friends moves I have been living many miles away from a lot of those friends for quite a while, but we have still managed to stayed in contact.  Knowing that my friends will be there for me no matter where in the world we end up living makes me feel a warm fuzzy inside that I didn't know was there.

On Tuesday Levus' family is coming from Kentucky to meet my mother and grandmother, and for the two weeks following we will be going on a road trip up to Wisconsin to meet most of their family and then back down to Kentucky to visit a bit longer before my wedding shower that my future mother-in-law is putting on for me.  I'm excited to be spending time with them and I'm excited to get the opportunity to meet so much of the family that has been so supportive of us so far!  I may not have the chance to get on here too often to update, but I will do my best as I have time!

Aloha! (I'm practicing... just one more month from next Friday till I'm back in Hawaii with my love!)