Diary of an Unremarkable Vanilla

I have never tried to hide the fact that glitter makes me happy. Very happy.  Unnaturally happy.

I’m contemplating setting this page as my default homepage when I open the internet:

Martha Stewart Glitter

O happy day of glittery goodness!

We hosted a surprise baby shower today for our coworker, Alex. The whole office showed up and everything went as planned - she was so surprised! And she left with some of the cutest baby stuff I’ve seen!

The diaper cake that Beth and I made was definitely a 2 person job! It turned out soooo cute! It was both of our first time making one and I was surprised at how nice it was. Thanks to my neighbor Jeanie for the great idea to cover the cake with receiving blankets (or in our case, since the NEX sucks and doesn’t sell receiving blankets of all things, burp cloths instead). Some of the leaves around the washcloth roses fell off in transport from the dining room to the patio; they looked a lot nicer when it first started.

This is Alex and Carole together. This is such a typical Carole look, it makes me laugh every time I look at the picture.

The biggest hit of the party, though, was definitely the babies in attendance. Both of these little munchkins are 2 months old; they’re two weeks apart and kept everyone entertained.

Anja and Ella:

Carole and Aidyn:

This one surprised me: Isak has never been much interested in babies but today he really wanted to hold Aidyn, and any time he was around Aidyn would smile at him. It was so sweet!

And the finale of the party, the part where our heads exploded from the cuteness, was when we put Ella and Aidyn together. Ella is 2 weeks younger than Aidyn but a lot, well, meatier. Her daddy jokes that she could eat Aidyn for lunch, and apparently she took that as a suggestion:

Good times!

Most of you already know, but the Chief’s results came out on Friday and I did not make it this year. While it always hurts to not be selected, I was extremely happy to find out that my good friend Ronnie made it. We were in Iraq together and I was really hoping he would make it this year, and indeed he did. While I’m doing what I need to do right now, what I really need to do is get on a ship - not on a deployment but real duty on a ship. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick which ship I can get on. We’re now considering cutting my extension here a bit short so that I can transfer before next summer and report to a new duty station early next year.

So while the first day was very tough, I’m keeping my head up and looking forward to continuing on what I’m doing now. I’ll make it when it’s my time and I just hope that next year, no one EVER MENTIONS ANYTHING about me making Chief.

So with that, it’s back to my regularly scheduled programming. We haven’t been doing all that much this summer as far as traveling around, but we’re happy with what we’re doing - which includes a lot of weekends spent at the swimming pool having a great time together.

Yesterday, I took off work to go “hooky hiking” with the family.  In the entire 2½ years we’ve been here, we’ve never once taken advantage of the tours run by MWR.  Most of the tours are either overpriced or too tour-centric for our tastes (we don’t really like to go in a large group of people somewhere).  However, yesterday’s tour was a hike that was pegged for “all levels of experience” and encouraged families to bring along the kiddos.  We left bright and early while it was still cool and got to the starting location by about 9.

Our hike took us along the El Bosque river that flows through the Grazalema National Park, starting in the town named after the river and ending in a town named Benamahoma (I can’t find a single useful link to send you to, sorry). The hike to Benamahoma wasn’t too challenging; the kids loved finding things like the ruins of a mill, lime trees, fig trees, blackberry bushes, lizards, fish in the river, etc.  Once we got to our turnaround point, we were starting to be leary of walking up the hills that took you to the few shops located in the town, but we walked in anyway so we could get some cafe con leche for the grownups and some ice cream for the handful of kids on the hike.

Turning around, though, it was noon and it. was. HOT.  The sun was now high in the sky, eliminating a lot of the shade that kept us cool as we hiked through the forest.  And it was on the way back that we realized that this was a very long hike - it was over 3 miles into town, and then we hiked about a half mile through town, which meant our hike was about 6½ miles long - hard enough in cool weather, but when it’s over 90°, the return trip was not quite as much fun as the first leg.

I am both glad and regretful that I didn’t bring my camera with me.  The hike had some really beautiful spots, and looking through the web I realize there is a lack of pictures from that area.  However, it was a very long hike and by the end I was cursing the added weight of my watch, so I’m sure my 2-ton camera bag would not have been a wise addition to the hike.

We really did enjoy ourselves on the hike, though, and I’d like to take more hikes while we’re still here; the exercise was great and it was nice getting to meet other people from the community here.   I hope that wherever we go next time already has pictures on the web for me to share.

Last weekend was eventful, with the extended weekend being filled with carnivals, barbeques, beach trips, and waaaayyy overpriced dinner. This weekend was markedly different, spent within 5 minutes of home and involving a lot of Pledge and Windex.

We contemplated having a rummage sale next weekend with our neighbors but decided instead to pack all of our stuff with us when we move back to the U.S. and have a rummage sale there. It really is easier moving things thousands of miles away than to think about dealing with the Spanish converging on our house. The last time I sold some stuff I wanted to take my toys and go home, literally.

But what has me posting this weekend is Anja. She is mourning the recent move of her best friend here, the one person that she has spent the most time with; the one who she clicked with from day 1 of them meeting. We have always been so happy to have him over because he and Anja can spend hours playing happily together, and it finally hit her tonight that he’s gone. That’s the hardest part of being a military family, having such short times to forge friendships.

So this post is for Anja and Mason, two fantastic little kids that enjoyed their friendship every day they were together - I’m hoping they get to eat Popsicles together again soon.

As most of you already know, the main reason we went back to the U.S. last month was for B to finish the naturalization process and officially become a U.S. citizen.  While it wasn’t the smoothest process we’ve ever gone through, B was very fortunate to get a great USCIS agent who was very accommodating to our situation and he ended up getting sworn in as a citizen on June 16th.

It has been decided by The Powers That Be that B needed a nice American name now that he’s an American, so…happy Fourth of July, Bob!

These are the four grandkids on my family’s side.  My nephews are Matthew, who’s 12 (gasp!) and Jacob, who is 4 months older than Anja and already several inches taller than his 2-years-older cousin Isak.

Jacob gets his eyes from his Nana…heh.

We had a great time at home and had a very eventful trip what with celebrating our 9th anniversary, my birthday, my mom’s birthday, my grandpa’s birthday, father’s day, B (now aka “Bob”) getting his U.S. citizenship, going to the most awesomest waterpark ever, and add in lots of eating, family time, and shopping, and we were kept very busy.

Our return trip can be summed up in one word: exhausting.  We took the Wisconsin-Delaware drive (900 miles) in one day, arriving at 2:30am.  The next morning we had to be up and at ‘em early to check out of the hotel and find out when the flight would be so we could return our rental car as close to that time as possible.  After confirming the flight time, things were going well until we went to unload the luggage to check in at which time we found out the flight was canceled - again.  Fortunately for us it was only our first day that we were canceled but there were other people waiting that had been waiting for 4 days while flights were canceled.

That night we decided to splurge for the night and stay at the Holiday Inn which wasn’t all that much more than the smelly Best Western we’d stayed in the night before.  I’m so glad we did because it was so much nicer.  The beds were so comfortable that I kept waking up all night aware of exactly how comfortable I was.  After a very long and exhausting next day of waiting, we finally made it home to Spain yesterday at noon. The thing I looked forward to most at home was seeing our kitties again; Spitty was howling in happiness and rubbing all over us, but Yota had disappeared under the bed afraid of these scary intruders.  Once he realized it was us, he was the happiest I’ve seen him and has stayed on top of one of us ever since.

It’s been a great last several weeks, a much needed vacation for us, but it’s so nice to be home again.

You should see the look on his face when I sit on his back now.