Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Abroad

I know it has been a while but to my own credit I have been out of the country and working some. Last Friday I left with my parents for London and got back this Sunday afternoon. It was a very fun 9 days but also very tiring. We traveled around London on Saturday after arriving, despite being very fatigued. We went on a river cruise, rode the London Eye, and did some general driving around, well more like trying to figure out the bus system. On Sunday we left for Birmingham where dad's conference was. Sunday through Tuesdaywas mostly spend relaxing- for mom and myself anyways. Dad was busy going to meetings for his Rotary conference. Tuesday night we went down where they had an international food festival and spent the night on the town. Wednesday we left to go back to London and ending up going down to Wimbledon. We waited in line for about 2 hours but were able to watch about 3 hours of tennis. It was definitely a lot of fun. Thursday morning we traveled to Lisbon, Portugal where my aunt and uncle were waiting for us. Elizabeth and Bill spent the rest of the week showing us around castles, palaces, churches, and tons of beautiful places around Portugal. There were so many wonderful things to see. Saturday late afternoon we headed back to London for the night and left early Sunday morning to come back home. All in all a very fun and wonderful trip. It was definitely a once in a lifetime thing that I am so glad I had the chance to do.

On a totally different note Jonathan is now about half way into his AIT in Missouri. I am able to talk to him on a more regular basis which helps a lot. He got his placement today, Cuba. I haven't decided how I feel about it yet. I am trying my best to stay positive about it but we don't know yet if I will be able to go with him. We may not know until the end of the month if I will be able to go with him or not. So that is my prayer right now is that everything works out so that we can go together. We are praying for the best and that is all we can do right now.

Monday, June 8, 2009

What a wonderful weekend

So I have returned from my long journey to Missouri to see my handsome soldier graduate from BCT. Jonathan's dad, Tim, rode and helped drive some of the way. We had some bumps along the way that ended up putting us 3 hours off schedule on the drive up there. In Tennessee, about 3 hours into our 12 hour journey I got a flat. Well to shorten a very long story it took us a while to be able to even get the hub to the tire off, so that ended up costing us an hour. Then we were able to locate a Walmart ten minutes up the road that had a tire service. We had to wait about 20 minutes before they opened. Well after that, it took about 30 minutes to locate the tires I needed because they were labeled incorrectly. Anyways, so in the process of putting that tire on and having them all balanced we discovered several other issues at hand. Mainly that my alignment was off causing two of the other tires to wear down badly. In the end I had to get four new tires and sometime this week need to them aligned and a strut fixed. Well other than that and the crazy back roads the GPS took us down there were no other set backs. We finally got to Missouri around 7:30.

Well Thursday morning we got up and got ready for the graduation. Just thinking about it gives me nervous butterflies, the same I had all morning that day. I am not sure why I was nervous, I just was. :) So the whole time of the ceremony and afterwards was absolutely dreadful because we had to sit there and just look at him and not be able to talk to him. Finally after they marched around to where all there stuff was we got to see him. I held onto him for like 2 minutes straight. It was just so great to finally be in his arms again! Thursday we spent the day with family and went around and saw different things around the base that they had done while training. I got to hold his hand all day!

Friday we also got to spend some time with him and we went to the museum that is on the base and that was pretty cool. All in all it was a wonderful two days that came to an end all to quickly. One of my favorite things was just seeing how happy he was to see us. It was wonderful to see how much he loves me in person again! It was funny, everytime we met any of the guys that were in his bunk they would all say that they had heard so much about me. It made me smile to know that he had talked about me so much. One of the guys knew who I was before Jonathan ever told him. He said he recognized me from the pictures, that I was the almighty Emily. That made me laugh and it also made me happy! I hated saying goodbye so soon. I wasn't ready to let him go! I miss so much already but he at least has his phone with him now so I have gotten to talk to him a lot! I will get to go up and spend July 4th weekend with him so that is less than a month away and then after that another month and he will be home for a little while. I love him so much and I am so glad that I got to spend that time with him.

Well I am going to try to get some wedding stuff done this week so stay posted on that. My dress and bridesmaid dresses have come in so that is exciting. They called me Friday to let me know and Jonathan teased that he would go pick it up for me! Haha. Anyways, I will update soon but that is all for now.