The past few months - puppy, visits, wedding and Blue Angels

My laptop broke and there is nothing more annoying than typing a blog post on my phone, so I have been MIA for a few months.  I finally got a new laptop (Thanks Dad!), and I can now update people on my life, because I'm sure everyone is soooo interested.  Well I've got news for you people! I have done some pretty interesting stuff these past few months.

So here they are, in no particular order:

1) We got a dog! In October of last year, Peter and I adopted a teeny tiny little boxer puppy, who we named Marina.  We kept her a secret from the world because we were afraid of our parents.  We planned on telling them eventually, but we never did.  This month, Peter's mom and brother came to visit so we didn't really have a choice in whether to tell them or not.  When I called my mom, I prefaced the conversation with, "Don't be mad at me" and she said, "What did you do to the car?"  I happily told her that the car is fine, but I have a dog!  I could tell she was not pleased at first, but I won her over with cute puppy pics and tales of how well behaved Marina is.

Tiny Marina: Day 1

Next we had to tell Peter's mom, which I had approximately 500 panic attacks about.  She wasn't as mad as I imagined in my mind and who wouldn't love her cute little face?  It also helps that she's kennel trained, very well behaved and a very good listener.

She's about 10 months old now and basically the best dog ever (I guess I'm a little biased).  However, we have had some difficulties.  In January, we let her inside from running around in the GIANT backyard we have here, and we noticed she was limping and wouldn't put any pressure on her back right leg.  We thought maybe she has sprained it so we let it go for about a week just to see if it would heal itself.  It didn't.  Fast forward X-Rays and hundreds of dollars later, Marina had to have surgery to remove a fractured growth plate.  She's fine now, even though she will probably favor that leg for the rest of her life.

She's smiling - She loves laying in the sun

The surgery ended up costing about $2000 and our vet had a program where we could pay it off within 6 months and we wouldn't owe interest at all.  I'm proud to say that we paid it off in full through doing odd jobs and saving money, and now that I know I can do it, I'm going to try to apply the same approach to paying off my credit card bills.

This is before I figured out how to focus on my camera

Marina is the sweetest dog.  She is about 43 pounds of pure love, she likes giving kisses and her tongue is too long for her mouth so it's always poking out.  She know how to sit, stay, down, up, paw, other paw, high five, roll over, go around and play dead.  She is always on the look out for intruders but I think she would be nice to them if they actually did intrude.  She loves to cuddle in bed (or on the couch, or on the floor), but she will go straight to her kennel when she wants to nap or is ready to go to bed.  Basically I am obsessed with my dog and Peter and her are best friends.  She definitely listens to him more than she listens to me.

2) Synna came to visit! One of my best friends, Synna and her husband, Robert came to visit after a storm foiled their plans to vacation in Key West.  I got really lucky because Target had cut my hours a lot that week so I got to hang out with them a decent amount.

Synna got to meet Peter and Marina, and I got to meet Robert!  It was an especially nice visit because it's the first time I've seen Synna's in YEARS and now she is expecting little George III.  Also I ate fried pickles like every day of her visit and I needed to go through a fried pickle detox and I really doubt that I will ever eat fried pickles again.

3) We went to Erin's wedding! I moved in next door to the Coburns in Vicenza in 2002 and Dana quickly became my BFF, a friendship that still continues to this day.  Erin is her big sister and I was super psyched when I got invited to her wedding in Columbus, GA which is about four hours from Pensacola.  Peter and I drove up there and stayed with Synna.

Marina had the whole backseat to herself

Our road trip was uneventful except for a speeding ticket that was given to Peter.  I was super excited to see all the Coburns and Meghan Higgins.  I wanted them to meet Peter too.

Pretty cake! 

The ceremony was wonderful and Erin was beautiful.  I definitely cried when Mr. Coburn walked her down the aisle and again when Erin and Matt exchanged vows.  Both the ceremony and the reception were at the Rankin Gardens in downtown Columbus and it had this cool interior courtyard that was just perfect.

The bride! 

I was having a lot of fun at the reception when my dad emailed me to tell me something was wrong.  Assuming the worst, I made him tell me so that I didn't think up random scenarios in my head all night.  I wish I waited until after the wedding to find out that Cleo died.  I cried a lot and kind of embarrassed myself but the Coburns had lost Cleo's husband Chipper a few years earlier so they knew what I was going through.  They had this nice little table with pictures of people (and animals) that they wished could be at the wedding and I thought that was a really thoughtful and nice detail.  For those that don't know, Cleo was my family's 16 year old Maltese.  She had been with us for a while, with no sign of stopping.  She fell into our pool and drowned, which is what made her death so tragic.  But she lived a full, happy and spoiled life, and I'm grateful for that.  

The table

I tried not to dwell on it (even though I cried off and on for the next few days) and ended up having a good time at the reception!  Dana was the Maid of Honor and I'm pretty sure she planned the wedding and it was so cool seeing her so good at her job!  Maybe one day I can find something that I both enjoy and am also skilled at.  I teared up at her MoH speech and at Mr. Coburn's speech.

Dana giving her Maid of Honor speech

I was really excited to wear the dress that I wore.  I originally bought it on Asos.com to wear to Peter's sister's wedding about a year ago, but it didn't arrive at my house until about a month after the wedding.  It's so cute and I'm happy I finally had somewhere to wear it!  I also got to see Meghan Higgins, which was an added bonus to coming to the wedding.  I think Peter was a little nervous to meet everyone but everyone liked him, which was a given, because he's great.

Top: Prom 2009, Bottom: Erin's wedding 2015

4) We saw the Blue Angels on the beach! This past weekend was the annual Blues on the Beach, where the Blue Angels put on an air show for people on the beach.  Every time I told anyone I was going to the beach this weekend they would respond with, "You know it's the Blues on the Beach? It's going to be crazy!" and I responded yes, I knew but I did not really heed their warning.

The night before I wasn't feeling well and when I woke up I had a low fever but I wasn't going to miss this!!  We left the house at 7:30 and we had to sit in traffic for about two hours.  We got lucky and found a parking spot, which was 1/2 on the grass, 1/2 on the sidewalk, behind a bunch of other cars, but it was right in front of a beach entrance, so we barely had to walk and we got a good view of the show.

The water was perfect, and while you couldn't go in the water during the show, we had a few hours to kill before the show actually started.  I bought goggles the day before and put them to use picking up sand dollars on the ocean floor! All of the pictures I took the whole day suck because there was a smudge on the camera lens and because it only has a display screen and the sun was so bright, I couldn't really see what I was taking a picture of, let alone whether it was a good picture or not.

Here come the Blues! 

The beach was PACKED! There was barely any space for more people to come after we had been there for about an hour.

On this pic you can see the beginning of my sunburn on my face

By the end of the show, I was done.  I was sunburned, I had a fever and I was tired and cranky.  The hour wait to leave the beach did not help.  As soon as I got home I passed out on the bed and took a two hour nap.  I feel much better now, aside from the giant sunburn complete with sunglasses tan line on my face.

Starting Wednesday, I work for a week straight, so nothing fun will be happening there, but I have a Friday and a Saturday off coming up and I think we are going to go tubing on the Blackwater River when Peter's sister, Jackie comes to visit!

Okay! That's all for now!
ciao ciao
Katelyn