Rodeo Time...

So if you didn't know Prescott, AZ is the home to the World's Oldest Rodeo.   Which means that it's a pretty big deal for the locals.  It is one of my favorite things to do in Prescott. For 4th of July Prescott puts on a lot of fun events and we Celebrate for an entire week.

For fun, part of my family got together and went to the rodeo to begin all of the celebrations.  Every year the rodeo and 4th of July celebration remind me of Grandma Billy.  She was Prescott Frontier Days Rodeo Queen of 1948.  It's fun to dress up in her old cowboy boots and tromp around the rodeo ground in memory of her.  Pam, Taylor, Wyatt, Mimi, Papa, Mom, and I had a fun evening watching all of the events.  My 3 favorite events are bareback bronk, barrel racing, and last but not least Bull Riding.  They were all pretty entertaining, but sadly nobody was able to ride the Bulls for 8 seconds :(  As we were leaving my mom saw a booth where you could take a pick with a bull so what did I do?  I rode the Bull at the Rodeo =D

I even stayed on a full 8 seconds ;)

Entertainment from the rodeo clown doing a skit and dancing to the YMCA.

We are gearing up for the fun events of the weekend including the parade, the rodeo dance, line dancing on whiskey row, the pit bbq at Mimi and Papa's, visiting with everyone, and the fireworks show.   I wish Ryan was here to enjoy all of this with the family.  He has always been working and missed out on most of the 4th of July festivities.  Someday we'll have to come home to visit and enjoy 4th of July together.  

Enjoy the holiday weekend everyone!   

It's Rodeo Time....

My Misfortunate Mistake...

Last Thursday night as my mom and I were packing to leave for San Francisco, my mom yelled down the hall for me to print out our boarding passes.  I quickly went to US Airways and typed in my confirmation code and it tells me invalid code.  I'm thinking what's wrong with this I paid for it, the money came out of my account, I have the confirmation and everything right in front of me, it cannot be an invalid code.  So I promptly type it again, "Invalid code".  What the heck!!!  I look at it and OMG it is an invalid code.  When I booked my ticket I hit July instead of June so I couldn't check in 1 MONTH in advance.  I sat there for a second wondering what to do.  By this point my mom is wondering what was taking me so long and came down the hall to check.  I looked at her and said I guess I'm not going to Chris and Sheila's wedding after all.  I want to cry.  I was so looking forward to going to see my relatives and go to the wedding.
My mom says well call the airline and tell them what happened and see if they can get you on the flight tomorrow.  While I'm sitting on hold waiting to talk to a representative we look up the flights to SFO from PHX.....SOLD OUT!!!  Now not only do I want to cry but I'm sick to my stomach.  We ask the representative if I could get on a flight and he said yes but I'd have to pay the difference in the ticket price plus I'd have to pay a service fee.  It was going to be over $500 (almost double what the original ticket cost).  UMMM...NO!  So we hung up the phone and as I was about to mope to my room and cry, My mom fixes Everything!  She looked up ticket costs to fly to Denver Colorado.  They were cheaper than our original tickets.  She imediately calls back and asks if we can change our flights to Denver for July 7.  They allowed us to do that.  WOO HOO!!!  We were originally going to fly to San Fran for Chris and Sheila's wedding then drive to Denver 3 weeks later for a family reunion.  Now it's the opposite.  So we quickly packed our bags and went to bed. We had a long drive ahead of us and we had to leave early the next morning since it was a 12.5 hour drive.
We made it to San Francisco no problems once we were on the road.   The weather was great.  It was actually really cold but it was a nice break from the Arizona heat so we enjoyed it.  We got to tour around the Bay for an extra day because we drove and had a blast doing so.  A few highlights of our trip were getting to go to Baker Beach and I got offered to try to fish for striper, Seeing the Golden Gate Bride, Lombard St., Of course the wedding, touring the city, and riding the cable car around town.  :-)

The wedding was absolutely beautiful.  It was in Foster city, right down on the water.  The reception was really lively and entertaining all night long.  Chris interviewed both parents and put it together and added pics of both of them growing up through their engagement and then put of video of how it all started.  It was so cute!  There was a lot of dancing and man were they good.  Sheila's godson danced for them as a wedding present.  I've never seen such a little boy dance so well.  It was amazing.  Then Chris and Sheila's first dance came....It blew us all out of the water.  It started with a slow dance then the music  paused and they looked up at the crowd like what's going on, then the music changed and they had a hip-hop choreographed first dance.  It was so Awesome and creative.  I loved it!  I hope someone video taped it and I hope it ends up on You Tube LOL!  Everything turned up perfect :-)

My Misfortunate Mistake turned into a Wonderful Weekend......

Wonderful weekend....

After a somewhat stressful weekend, I got some time to myself and out with friends.  After work on Friday I got a call from my cousin Wyatt.  He works at Starbucks and was running a booth down at the local high school during the Relay for Life cancer walk.  His mom, my aunt, is currently fighting breast cancer and is almost done with her treatments.  Thank You Lord!!!  We sat out on the field talking with people and passing out coffee and tea to until about midnight.  We even participated in a couple of the events.  It was definitely a fun night out volunteering with my cousin.
Bright and early the next morning I got up and met my best friend, Kristen, to go hiking.  We then met up with 2 other friends Veronica and Jess.  The four of us spent the day hiking around and exploring Sedona.  It was such a beautiful day to be out hiking and so nice to get away and relax.  We hiked up to Devils Bridge where there was an amazing lookout over the red rocks.  Afterwards we headed into town and enjoyed a delicious lunch at a local Cafe the Tao's Cafe and shopped until we were all exhausted and ready to go home.

Sunday morning before my dad went back to work in Kayenta we got out of the house again.  Dad and I went out to the range and did a little target practice with our pistols.  I'm getting better.  I hadn't shot in a while so I was a little rusty at first but it came back real easily.  It was so nice to be out in the beautiful weather once again. Once my dad had left, Mom and I curled up on the couch and in the recliner and watched movies all evening.  It was a much needed relaxing weekend.  :-)

What a wonderful weekend....

Pen Pals....

So today I was reminded of an experience I had in elementary school, being a pen pal.  At that time in my life it didn't seem like much of anything.  I wrote couple letters to a girl that would be moving to Arizona and would be going to my school.  Once she came we knew a little bit about each other and it made it easier for her to make friends and adjust to the new school.
You're probably thinking what reminded you of this?  My current life situation has reminded me of this.  I'm new to this whole Army Wife life and am getting ready to move to a new state that I've never been to.  Through facebook I have met other Army wives in my same situation that have basically become my pen pals.  Facebook has become this amazing resource to be able to connect with other wives whose husbands are in training with Ryan right now.  We have become each other's support group and have made it easier to  get through this hard time.
Facebook has also connected me with a family that lives in the area where we are moving to.  We haven't talked much yet, but we have talked about the area and things to do.  Facebook has become the modern source of pen pals.  I am thankful for this resource and all of the wonderful friends I've made.  I hope to keep in touch with them and I hope to meet them all someday.
To all of you wonderful ladies, Thank You for your support and Thank You for being wonderful pen pals.....

Zumba....

Yesterday started as a blah day.  I felt like all I wanted to do was run away, run far away.  For anyone that knows me I'm usually a very happy bubbly person, but yesterday was that one downer day.  I was supposed to be in Georgia seeing my husband for the first time in 3 months and I was going to get to stay with him for 2 whole weeks.  Since we've been married that would be the longest time we have been together since our honeymoon 10 months ago.  I just kept telling myself that everything happens for a reason and this is all part of gods plan.  Let put all of our faith in him and he'll lead us down the path we are supposed to be on.  I also listened to a friends advice, "While your husband is gone stay as busy as possible, do what you love, and LIVE your life".
To stay busy I called my Uncle Taylor.  He always has something for me to do or to work on.  I jumped in the car and went straight to his house to help him with paperwork and shredding.  Half way through the day I remembered that my summer Zumba class would be starting that afternoon.  Woo Hoo!  Something I love.  As soon as I finished up helping Taylor I ran to the mall and bought myself a new workout outfit for my fun summer class.  It's always fun to get something new plus I didn't have any summer workout clothes.
Zumba class always cheers me up.  The fun rambunctious energy makes you forget everything and have fun for an hour.  The up beat music makes you want to move and "Shake It" as my teacher would say.  You leave less stressed and just feeling good.  It is such a good workout.  It really works to get you back into shape.  I love it!
"Ditch the workout, Join the Party"
 ZUMBA.....

Wild Goose Chase...

So it seems as if the Army doesn't have positions available for all of the OCS guys to commission so what are they doing?  They are finding any and every reason to recycle these guys back to OCS or chapter them out of the Army.   A few days ago my husband told me he had to prove that he graduated from ERAU by providing a copy of his degree certificate and a copy of his transcripts to his cadre, but wasn't told when he had to have them.  I got everything together and made photocopies of each page and thought I was being a good little wife and would send him the copies before he needed them.  Monday morning rolled around and the package was sent off to Ft. Benning with a few other items he had asked for.  Woo Hoo!  He's ahead of the game and is going to be good to go.
NOPE....I get a phone call that afternoon and my heart sunk.  He never calls at 2 in the afternoon.  Since I wasn't able to call him back right away everything was running through my head, did he get re-cycled back to HHC, did he get hurt, what is going on, not another delay in training please.  It turns out that he needed a copy of his transcripts and degree certificate that day no exceptions.  I rushed home got them (thank god I did not send him the originals earlier that morning).  I went straight to my moms office to fax them.  Of course since so many wives/mothers/girlfriend/whoever was trying to send these in it wouldn't go through. Finally after trying for 45 minutes it worked.  I was so worried that I went straight home and tried to scan and e-mail it to him as well.  The scanner wasn't working.  Of all days for it not to work, why TODAY?  So off to the recruiters office I go.
SGT Thomas helped me out and scanned the documents in and sent them off to Ryan, but of course it was no easy task since internet explorer and outlook express both decided to stop working.   We finally got connected to the internet and sent it through his personal e-mail.  In the end he got it.  :-)  My visit with SGT Thomas and some of the other guys turned out good because I've been trying to figure out how I was going to get in to see a dermatologist and they told me a doctor that would help me out and get me a referal to go to the dermatologist.
All in all I had a good day.  Got to relax a little, go shopping, sent a package off to Ryan, hiked for about an hour, faxed and e-mailed Ryan his proof of college graduation and got to talk to him on the phone twice.  Wild Goose Chase of jumping through hoops for the Army for sure.  We've gotta do what we've gotta do.

OCS is in Session....AGAIN

So as the stress of Ryan re-starting OCS has began to settle, as the stress of him starting all over again has come back.  What if he doesn't graduate this time?  What will he do?  Where will we go?  These are all the unknown.  I just have to remember to be encouraging and Pray!  Pray that he has the strength and motivation to do this all over again.  Pray that his cadre and others will see his determination and see an improvement from last go round.  Pray that this will lead us to where we are supposed to be.  Pray that Ryan can be a leader and helper to his peers as he has some insight as to what they are doing.
We can do this and we will do this together.  This time apart is making us grow stronger together and teaching us the importance of one another and the importance of a strong family to support us through this long journey.
Congratulations to everyone who classed up to OCS Class 011-11 Charlie company!  Best of luck to all of you in this journey to commissioning as an officer of the US ARMY.
Let the Countdown Begin!
OCS is in Session.....Again