we had guests!

 the norrick's!!!!

they have recently made a huge life altering decision and it moved them from yuma, az to jacksonville, nc with the marine corps! they drove alllllll the way through and made a stop in san antone just for us! and maybe the alamo:)

 we love having them come visit us because they love being tourists like we do. we toured the alamo, spent a significant amount of time in the gift shop and walked along the river walk before getting rudy's bbq for dinner. they stayed for two nights and we couldn't have been happier! only really good friends can share a bedroom together (us on our bed, them on the futon) and not think it's weird. 

 

another couple reasons why we love them: they love cats and board games as much as we do!! 

whenever we hang out with them, i can't help but think about how grateful i am for the marine corps for helping us find friendships like this. brandon and jon shared a barracks room in school back in 2009. we would have never met them if not for the marine corps and i'm so grateful to have them in our life. i'm so excited for their next adventures (!!) and can't wait to go visit them in NC!

three years.

three years ago, on September 14th, 2010, Jon left for 7 months to serve in Operation Enduring Freedom in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.

this day, and the months following rocked our world. 

i'm grateful every. single. day. to have him home safe and pray so hard for the men and women still over there and the families left behind and especially for those whose loved ones haven't and won't come home.

texas is pretty fun, i guess.

you can't really go wrong with:

celebrating belated birthdays.

introducing your pets and having everyone on edge except logan who is allwayyys like "whatevers!"

sending your man off to his first day at the university!

seeing twins loving each other.

THIS. JUST THIS.
(i got the photo in a text)

crazy chickens in the house.

you can kind of go wrong with getting rained out from tubing down the comal river in new braunfels. we lasted a good 45 minutes before the rain started coming down so hard it felt like nails on my back/shoulders. also, i did wear a swimsuit it just looks like i didn't.

you can also kind of go wrong with going downtown for a boat tour down the riverwalk but getting rained out of that too. it still made for a fun and pretty night at the riverwalk. 

i could argue that there is nothing wrong with this picture, but i think alex and kathy would disagree. "we" poured cement for the chicken coup and almost everyone got soaked with cement. i'm sure i would have been soaked with cement too, had they let me help to my full potential.

you can definitely not go wrong with getting marine corps awards even though you are out of the marine corps.

the sunsets haven't been anything toooo crazy, but i did appreciate it this night. no matter where i am, sunsets always remind me of my dear friend katie.

you can't go wrong with a beautiful day on canyon lake. orrr

with facetiming your dad on his birthday and seeing this hanging into the shot.

pouting at work. (or can you?)

having four dogs. (logan needs the most work, but jade, who is not pictured, comes in at a close second.)

WITH SEGWAYING. ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.

all of us at the texas state capitol in austin, tx.

and i mean that. if you've never segwayed, you need to search groupon extensively until you find a segway tour near you. it was the best thing i've ever done in my life and i can't decide what is funnier: 

me infuriating jon by circling him over and over anytime we stopped

or

alex tipping over on the segway (which the tour guide said was impossible), getting back on and tipping right back over again.   

alex: "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what happened."

tour guide: "I don't know what happened either, but i do know you and your sister have been messing around this entire time and I haven't said anything."

'your sister' is me and he's right- we were messing around the entire time and no, he didn't say anything. best night!

i'm not mad about exploring the 10 acres that make up the hagerman compound with alex even though we almost tipped, but don't tell anyone. i guess being around children causes me to revert in maturity.
(jon didn't witness this, thankfully)

i'm mad but strangely comforted by this image.
seriously zombies, just go somewhere else.

i am furious about this room, but it's made so much progress.

see?:

i could be upset by working in the food industry still, but i'm actually not. it pays way more than panera bread did and it's much more fun. (although i miss mendez.) and i never leave feeling like i need my entire body sanitized, which is a big bonus. i work with my sister in law kaitlyn and work both in the store and on the pizza truck.

there is absolutely nothing wrong with swimming in pretty lake travis before ziplining thousands of feet with your fun family in austin.

or working on a pizza truck. the best part about this is sweating gallons upon gallons. its like being in a sauna or doing bikram yoga with pizza and without yoga. it sounds awful but it's actually quite nice.

(i am pictured, talking business (pay) with the owner of the store and truck. he's also the chef.)

i can say there is nothing wrong with going to the horse races but i can't, with confidence, say there is nothing wrong with gambling and especially gambling for your 20 year old sister and 16 year old brother who aren't of age yet. fortunately, we all came out on top!
(and no, i'm not addicted, but i can't say that with confidence either.)

can i leave you with two pictures? one of my cooped up cat who found the only open window in the entire house and one of my dog who unmistakably resembles the dog from Up. 

i'm pretty happy here, it has been an awesome 3.5 weeks so far. we've vacationed here so many times that it felt like another vacation for the first few weeks. it's starting to feel a little bit more legitimate that we are actual texas residents who have jobs here and go to school. it is weird, but i am loving it!

(and so is logan, but that's obvious!)

goodbye first house: bedroom

the last room in the house is our bedroom:

 we have a tiny bed and we constantly fought over how much space the other person was taking up. during the olympics we took our mattress downstairs into the front room for two weeks and pushed it up against the couch. while we were down there, i slept up against the couch and that meant jon got most of the bed! we decided that maybe it'd be better if we pushed our bed into the corner of the room so that i could sleep up against the wall and we'd both be more comfortable. (i don't like sleeping close to the edge of the bed when its in the middle of the room, scary!!) it looks funny having our bed like this, especially since that means the rest of the furniture is lined up on the opposing wall, but it's actually helped a lot! the only thing i don't like is reaching over jon to turn on and off the lamp, and not having a place to plug in my phone.

(mouse!)

i think i posted about this before. jon used to go to work before i woke up and sometimes i was so sleepy i couldn't even say i love you! so i used push pins to spell ILY right by the door so that he knew i loved him every time he left the room, even if i didn't say it. the light switch cover is the one that was in my granny's bedroom forever.

i must say that our room never looks like this. maybe on the first day that we have guests. the floor is usually covered in clothes and shoes! but that's what makes it homey, right?!
i am writing this while i should be studying for my midterm tomorrow. it's been awhile since i've just sat down and written my thoughts like i used to.
it is our last night here in this house. i don't think it has hit me yet, it seems surreal. i did get a dose of reality when we were packing today. in the winter marines wear green cammies. they change to their desert (tan) cammies in the spring and wear them until fall. they just switched from green to tan when the time changed. that means jon won't be wearing his green cammies anymore...who knows if he will ever wear them again. we took out all the drawers from his dresser and he and his dad took the dresser out to the u-haul. i saw his drawer sitting in the middle of the floor filled with his green cammies that he is sending to storage for an indefinite amount of time. it made my heart hurt...a lot. it's enough to have to say goodbye to our first little house and move in with someone else. it's really sad to leave san diego, the place where we've spent our entire marriage, our friends, my school. but to think about leaving the military...that is more heart wrenching than the others. we can come back to san diego, we can come see our friends, i'll be back next year to graduate from my school. but come May 3rd, jon will no longer be wearing his uniform everyday. he won't be able to say "I'm a Marine." i will no longer be a Marine Wife. I mean, i will...but it just won't be the same. it is quite difficult to explain. it's just been amazing to have my spouse do something we are both so proud of. i'm proud that my husband went to afghanistan. i'm proud that he enlisted on his own free will. i'm proud that he has known since he was a child that he wanted to do this and proud that he chose the marine corps because it is the toughest branch(wink). i know we need to move on from this. jon has so much to give the world, so much more than the marine corps will allow him to do. he's starting school in june and i know he will do awesome!  he's had an internship this spring and met a lot of prevalent people who were impressed by him. i know he's going to do great in whatever he decides to do. i am sad to leave california, but i'm ready to be in a state where i can (hopefully) find a job that doesn't require me to mop before i go home, is that too much to ask?
i could ramble on and on, but i really must get to studying. we are packing up the trailer tomorrow and checking out of our house. tomorrow night we are going to sleep at the isaac's (that's who we will be living with when we come back to san diego on april 7th) and then saturday morning the three of us are road-tripping from san diego to san antonio! jon and my FIL tried to warn me about how tiny the middle seat was in the u-haul, but i told them to stop. i wanted to be surprised. i don't deserve to dread the roadtrip three days before we leave. i'll deal it with saturday morning.
wish us (me) luck!