Home Sweet Home

I've been rather MIA in the blog world recently. Mainly because I've been traveling. This past week I traveled East for the first time in six months. I really cannot believe it's been that long. So crazy to think I've been living out west for half a year. However, when I made the trip I realized just how long it's been. I was AMAZED at how GREEN everything was. There is ONE yard in our NM neighborhood that has the greenest grass, so going East my eyes were overwhelmed with color, and seeing that every yard was just like that one yard here.

It was great to go home and see my family, but the reason I booked the trip was for medical check ups. I picked this past week simply because Luke was attending a bachelor party in Gulf Shores with all of his buddies. Since we are moving around I really don't want a new doctor for every town. I went and had my annual pap smear (I think it's pretty important not to change that doc with every town) and had my foot and knees checked out. I can't believe it's been five years since the accident, but I got a great report from my doc saying the foot is looking great, and as good as we could hope for. He gave me an ankle brace to help out with long periods of walking or hiking, so I'm excited to use that and hopefully keep my foot well. My knees have been killing my for a while now. My doc took some x-rays and checked them out. Turns out that therapy is the best bet for helping that issue. He said my naturally body alignment with my hips, knees, and legs don't line up well: and that in turn pushes my knee cap off slightly. He said the problem is often in female athletes and that therapy can show me some moves to help out. So...good reports all around are always great!

Here is a picture of my Atlanta home! This is my little sister's house where I stayed Tuesday and Wednesday night. I had to post a pic to show everyone their wonderful new yard and just how green it is. Thank you Jenna and Prem for always allowing me to stay with you.

While in Atlanta I got to eat dinner with some of my favorite ladies Tuesday night, but of course forgot to take one picture.

Wednesday I got to play with my amazing little nieces MA and Bear as we call her. They are so funny and sweet. Thank you Patrick and Stacie for dinner Wednesday night. Here is a picture of MA on the way to swim. She's a hoot!

The Bear's cute little fin floater.

MA has one of the funniest swim caps ever. It has a little fin on top and in back. So cute and funny.

Thursday I dropped by my old office at CEVA and had a wonderful time catching up with everyone before I hit the road to Augusta. Jenna and Prem have an extra car, so I used that for the two hour drive. Sad part...the air conditioning wasn't working, so I poured sweat the entire drive (and you guys know how much I sweat--it was nasty).

Thursday night my parents and I went kayaking on the Savannah River. While kayaking we came upon a cove with a dead end. Seeing the main drag only 15 yards away looked definitely reachable through this one marsh spot with a pretty strong current running through. So...we took off trail blazing and made it probably 95% of the way through until I just couldn't go any further. Getting in proved to be the easy part: my dad and I spent 15 min. giving it everything we had to get back out of the marsh. It was a definite work out.

Dad at the start of the journey

Mom borrowing Grans plastic shades under her glasses. Pretty funny looking.

Finally I made it home sweet home! Martinez/Augusta, GA. My house below I lived in my entire life until college. Once again I was blown away by how green it all looked. I had to take a picture.

Yesterday I returned to New Mexico but not without and eventful travel day. My flight was scheduled out of Atlanta at 2:30, so mom and I set off with enough time to drive the two hours to ATL and also stop and eat a nice lunch along the way. Turns out we had to rush lunch a bit just to be safe, but I made it to the airport perfectly on time at 1:00. Once I arrived they announce that my flight has been pushed back to 3:30. No worries--I can take an hour! Well then I look up and it's 4:15, then 4:40 and finally my flight ended up leaving at 5:15!!!! That was crazy! Of course I had planned perfectly for only a 30 min. layover in Dallas until I left for Midland/Odessa, but with my flight leaving so many hours later I ended up missing my connector and having to fly out of Dallas on an 8:30 flight. Having a 2 hour and 50 min. drive from Midland/Odessa to home had me pretty down and tired. However, one really cool thing happened on my 8:30 flight. The YOUNGEST KING IN THE WORLD was on my flight with me. The plane was super tiny, so there was no first class, so he sat two rows in front of me. I noticed the flight attendant was giving this young man and his mom special attention, but didn't think too much about it. Once off the plane I was walking right behind them to baggage claim, we round a corner and I see all sorts of camera's and people with flowers. I have NO idea at this point who these people are and what's so important about them. Finally at baggage claim a girl asked one of the cops. Crazy though! Turns out this guy is the youngest king in the world. So... that was exciting.

Here is an article talking about the king and why the heck he was in Midland, Texas.

http://livemidlandtexas.com/views_4th_estate/2010/06/22/city-royalty-comes-to-downtown-midland/

Not exciting however, was arriving into Carlsbad at midnight mtn. time. I was sooo tired. It was a LONG day!

One last thing to mention before I end the longest blog post ever. Since Luke and I were both out of town we had a neighbor watering our garden for us. When Luke returned on Sunday he picked our first zucchini. I do realize it is WAY to BIG mom (but we weren't here to pick it sooner). So I thought I would show you our first football sized zucchini.