So obviously I'm not very good at blogging with Erik home, but I'm going to start trying to do better. Tomorrow.

We'll start with my random realization today:

Erik's camera cord has been to more countries than I have. This needs to be remedied. Who wants to go to Australia?

More later. And hopefully it will have a little more substance...

Erik's Home!

And I'm pretty happy about it.

Melissa's sign cracked me up!

About to head in!

Some of the coffee group ladies :)


Mandy and I were pretty excited even though it was really ungodly hot in the building, and as you can see my hair-do was really starting to reflect that.


They had this screen up in the corner so we could see the guys coming in. Would you believe they showed an Army commerical on there too? Hellooo, I think we're already committed.

The best part :)

Where Men Win Glory

I came across this on Jackie's blog the other day. It's a little long but it's definitely worth watching. Though it really hurts my heart to think about the things they saw over there and they way they had to live, I also can't bring myself to ignore it. There are still soldiers living, working, and dying in Afghanistan and we can't forget about them.

You will probably notice the 10th Mountain patches the soldiers wear. While the footage was filmed during the time Erik was in Afghaninstan and these are 3-71 soldiers, they are from A Troop. I think it's a really interesting look into the way they lived and the things they encountered. And it reminded me once again that this deployment is nothing like the last and for that I am incredibly grateful.



Jon Krakauer's Afghan Diary - Long Form from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on Vimeo.

Okay, I'm getting sick of this tsunami business. In the last week we've had two watches/warnings and I'm afraid that soon the meteorologist is going to become the boy who cried tsunami and when there really is one coming no one will believe him. And honestly, why do I live in a place where these things happen? Give me a tornado any day...

How Did We Manage?

So today is the 5-year anniversary of our first date. We don't really count it, because we didn't go on another date for a month afterward, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, our first date was over Labor Day weekend in 2004. And somehow, in spite whatever the heck life was throwing at us over the last few years, we've managed to always be together over Labor Day weekend (inadvertent though it might have been at the time). We've only ever spent 2 Christmases together, maybe a couple of birthdays and only half a wedding anniversary, but Labor Day weekend - that's our time. Until this year, anyway...

But it's okay because we always have next year! We should go to Maui...