Two Years, Spring Break, Mike OCS

 For our 2 Year Anniversary, we didn't want to spend too much money and kind of relax so we decided on small gifts and making dinner and dessert.  I went out and got all the food to make Emeril's Crawfish Etouffee from the Food Network website and cleaned the house a bit while Mike was at work.  I had time to take a quick shower and then get to cooking.  When Mike got home he had time for a quick run and shower to be ready for dinner.  I was going to make blackberry cobbler for dessert, but Mike surprised me with my gift/our dessert, an Edible Arrangement!  Altogether, dinner was great and the dessert was amazing!  It was a good 2 Year Anniversary celebration :)

 On Wednesday, we woke up early to head to the National Guard armory to pick up all of Mike's gear.  Afterwards, we went and met Lindsey for lunch and then Mike headed to Addison for work.  I tried to conserve enough energy to hang out with Taryn, but since I only had about 3 hrs of sleep, I couldn't make it.  I headed home for a quick nap and then out to get some of Mike's supplies for OCS.  When I got home, I washed what I could of his gear and then we laid everything out and labeled it so it was all ready to go Friday.  I was leaving for Kingwood Thursday morning and he was going to work so Wednesday night was our only chance to work on it.  Here is some of his gear.

 Here is some more of his gear in the guest room and the rest was laid out in the master bedroom.  It was so much stuff I had to take some pictures.

 Thursday morning I woke up with Mike, packed, loaded up the car with everything and the puppies, then headed to Kingwood.  Once I got to Kingwood, I went straight to my parent's house and my dad met me there.  We unloaded the Expedition and played with the pups for a bit.  My mom, Aunt Liz, Lauren, and her friend were in Galveston so my dad was nice enough to drive me out there to meet them and drop me off.  They were done at the beach so we met them at the Tremont Hotel on the Strand, where we were staying.  My mom, me, and Aunt Liz stayed in one room and Lauren and her friend stayed in the other.  My dad stayed for a few minutes and then headed back to Kingwood to walk Koda.  I was so grateful he drove me out there!  Love you dad!  That night, we all headed to the Kemah Boardwalk.  Lauren and her friend ate at the Lighthouse Buffet and my mom, Aunt Liz, and me ate at Landry's.  The food and company were awesome!  We had such a blast!  We then walked around the boardwalk in the little shops and discovered that Thomas Kinkaid is doing Disney paintings!  They're gorgeous!  We all loved the paintings and Aunt Liz got me the Peter Pan plate so I can hang it in the kid's room for decoration and then later put it in a China cabinet.  Yay!  We then headed back to the hotel and hit the hay.  The picture is me with an old fashioned Kemah police car.  Friday morning we got up and went back to the beach for about 2.5 hrs, went to lunch at Mario's on the Seawall, and then headed home.  Once we all got showered, my mom, Aunt Liz, Nanny, and me headed to Target to have some girl time shopping.  We then went to Culver's to get some custard ice cream, which was great!  When we all got home, Kyle had driven in so me and him headed to get some dinner and then us and our parents watched tv for a while.  Kyle and I stayed up later and were able to hang out and visit for a while.

 Saturday morning we all got up to get ready for the Crawfish Boil!  Soo much fun!  This picture is Dozer, Kyle's hedgehog, roaming around the backyard with Olivine and Bronx right there with him.

 Here's Dozer annointing himself.  It's really weird.  He licks the grass and then it creates a foaming saliva and he licks himself.  Dozer's gotten so big and way more social!  It was a blast playing with him!

 Kyle monitoring all the pets roaming and playing in the backyard.  Thank goodness no one stepped on Dozer.  Haha.

 Olivine and me all smiles in the backyard playing around :)  The dogs love running around in the backyard.

 Here's Bronx and I all smiles in the driveway getting ready to start coking the crawfish.

 And here's Koda!  He was soo happy everyone was home!  He always loves everyone getting together :)

 My parents and Kyle with Bronx sneaking his way into the picture haha.

 30 lbs of crawfish!  And we ate all of it!  Aunt Liz, Nanny, James, and Uncle Mark ate the Sobret hot dogs instead of the hot dogs so my mom, dad, Kyle, Rachel, and me ate all the crawfish.  I was the last one eating haha.  They were just soo good!!

 This is before everyone got there and we're boiling the water with the seasoning and the potatoes at the bottom of the pot.  My dad's putting in the seasoning and Kyle and my mom are sipping on their beer with the dogs running around.  Everyone showed up around 1:30ish.

 Bronx and Olivine were both able to fit their heads in the bucket and drink at the same time.  It was great since they were running around so much and getting so hot.

 Kyle, Aunt Liz, Nanny, James, and Rachel, his girlfriend, with Olivine in the middle hanging out while everything is cooking.

 Uncle Mark was able to come, which was great!  Nanny, Aunt Liz, James, Rachel, and Uncle Mark walking to go see Dozer.  And Olivine running around.

 And here's Olivine running along the back fence of the backyard.  The neighbors have a big dog so they would both run along the fence "chasing" each other and whining and barking.  It was funny.

 Here's Bronx taking off to go get the frisbee my dad is about to throw for him.  Playing frisbee is one of Bronx's favorite things to do!  And he adores my dad, his grandpa, so he was SUPER happy :)

 My mom and me with Koda making an appearance :)  My mom and Aunt Liz got great tans from the beach and me not so much.

 Since we're not all going to be together for my 26th birthday in 6 days, we celebrated my birthday.  My mom got me a Carvel cake, which was awesome!

 I'm cutting the cake with Nanny and Uncle Mark happy we're about to eat it :)-  Haha.  We had mini eclairs and the icing sugar cookies to go along with the cake.

And here is the family photo taken towards the end of the event.  My dad headed out to take Koda for a walk and I played frisbee and tennis ball with Bronx and Olivine.  James and Rachel left first at around 5:30ish and Aunt Liz and Nanny didn't leave until 7:30.  Uncle Mark stayed the latest until 11:30p.  We all headed in around 7:45 to visit some more and watch tv.  Kyle went upstairs to study for his O Chem test on Monday and my dad, mom, Uncle Mark, and me watched Taking Chance downstairs.  It's an amazing and touching movie!  Mike and I had gotten it on Netflix and decided we needed to buy it and that we needed to share it with my parents b/c we knew they would really like it.
While all this was going on, Mike was in Bastrop, TX working his butt off at his first weekend in OCS.  He had to report in at 1800 Friday night and they did in processing and PT-ing.  They woke up at 0400 Saturday morning and did some more PT-ing, classroom stuff, and Land Navigation.  Mike said they would also get "smoked" (make the recruits work their butts off on physical stuff) every once in a while.  On Sunday morning they got up at 0400 again and did more PT-ing and Land Navigation.  We couldn't talk all weekend so I wrote him emails every night telling him what we had done during the day.  I've done that every time he goes out of town for the military.  He wasn't able to read them on this trip, but it helped me b/c it was like I was talking to him and I could tell him everything we were doing, which he said makes him feel like he was there.  I left Kingwood at 5p and he got done and left Bastrop at 6p so we were able to get home around the same time, which was great!  He hopped in the shower and I washed his nasty clothes.  He was absolutely exhausted and definitely had bruises, cuts, and blisters from all of his hard work.  We made a simple dinner, watched tv, then got in bed early.  Altogether, it was a good Spring Break spending time with my amazing family, but we all missed Mike :(  He was definitely in our thoughts and prayers the whole weekend.  One weekend down at 17 more months to go!