April 5, 2011- Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you, Tomorrow...

     All I can think about today is going to pick up my sweet boys tomorrow! My littlest one has what we hope will be his last doctor's appointment to determine if everything with his eye has healed enough so that he can get us started on his rehabilitation routine. Currently, he can still only see shapes of things out of the affected eye, which is not a positive sign, but we are not going to give up! That said, I am not only looking forward to chatting with the doctor and putting a plan into place to help my son strengthen sight in his eye, but I am also looking forward to simply spending time with my darlings! I have chatted with them on the phone, and I've enjoyed having the uninterrupted time with my parents to catch up the last few days, but it's time to have my boys next to me, so I can hug them whenever I want and know they are safe, sound, and happy just by looking over at them! Being a parent is truly a tough, but rewarding job, knowing you are responsible for teaching your kids so many important life lessons.  The funny thing is that they teach you as much as you teach them in the process of growing up with you, and I would not understand as much about the world, life, people, and even relationships if I had never had them.  They complete me, and I miss them so much! So, in the words of Annie, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're only a day a-way!!"  Can't wait for tomorrow; can't you tell? 

April 4, 2011- Dresses, Invitations, and Locations!

      It was another busy day hitting the bridal shops to reconsider those dresses I've been mulling over in my mind since last week's first day of dress shopping. The local shopowner where I found the 2 dresses I had narrowed the search down to had a sign out front saying she would be back at 11 when we arrived a little after 10 (their normal opening time), so we figured she had something to take care that couldn't wait, and we headed to the mall next door to look for some other things on my list while waiting for her to return.  I was a bit nervous to go back as I was so undecided on which direction to go with the 2 totally different dresses. I had ruled out one other which simply didn't seem enough like a bride's dress, but the final two were both very bridal! After finding a few things we needed and a few things we didn't need, but purchased anyway at the mall, we headed back to the dress shop.  It didn't take long for me to find some more dresses to try just in case as well as the two I had picked out originally, and interestingly enough, I ended up with the only one of the original dress picks along with another new one to choose from. 
     To help with the decision, my mom took a picture of me in each dress with my camera, so I could "see" myself from a different perspective, so to speak. And that worked! It was obvious which was the better choice after this, so we said "yes" to a dress and carried it home.  I can't believe that part is done.  In fact, there's more than one important task that we were able to take care of today because I found the perfect invitation kit at Target of all places that was so affordable and gave us the option of creating some elements of the invite on our own (which I like, but which can also be time consuming if you have to do all of it by yourselves), but I simply couldn't pass it up! I had researched a bit online about the costs of invitations, then had decided to create my own using publisher software, then went back and found less expensive invitations online as part of an online wedding website, but never felt completely comfortable with any of it until discovering the invites today! Now it is getting really exciting! We even have a tentative minister for the ceremony set up. He's my cousin, and he thinks he'll have a convetion or mission trip around the time we will be getting married in Oregon, so keep your fingers crossed that it will all work out!
     Upon arriving back home and connecting up by phone with my fiance to update him on the breaking news conerning our wedding planning and preparation, we ended up chatting for quite awhile about location options. Our thought all along has been to have the wedding on his family's propery in Oregon, but upon considering this more fully, we realized it may be hard to find a large enough flat spot to set up chairs and tables for guests during the ceremony and reception, so we are keeping an open mind, but also pursuing other possible options.  The key here is to be affordable! :)  So, we are tossing the ball around to the family in Oregon to recruit their help and to see what ideas and thoughts they come up with for a wedding venue at their homes or around town. After all, it takes the effort of a family to organize a wedding! At least for us it does... :-) 

April 3, 2011- Southern Belle or Island Girl??

      Before I left for Alabama last week, I was craving fried chicken. I realized I hadn't had a piece in a very long time because there's no KFC in the islands, and I don't generally cook fried foods at home because they are simply not that healthy, and my eating habits have developed into more realistic ones for a 36 year old mom than they were when I was a teenager in the South.  The fact is that in the South, you don't have to go to KFC to enjoy fried foods. They are all over the place, so when we headed over to Crackel Barrel for some down home Southern cooking tonight, I ended up ordering the Sunday Fried Chicken special with mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, fried okra, and splenda sweetened iced tea.  The funny thing is, having fried chicken didn't satisfy my craving like I thought it would.  In fact, I remember fried chicken being much tastier than that. This was heavily breaded chicken skin, nice and crunchy like I used to enjoy eating it, but somehow it wasn't the same.  And I don 't think it was because the restaurant doesn't make good fried chicken. It is because I'm not used to eating like a Southern Belle anymore.  Sushi, grilled chicken and rice, pancit, lumpia, Greek salad, and all kinds of other Asian and island style dishes have become the preferred fare for me now.  Of course, some of these are fried as well, but a majority of the things my fiance and I prepare for ourselves on a daily basis are not of the greasier variety.  I suppose this doesn't make me any less of a Southern Belle, but there are some other things I've noticed that have proven I have become a bit more "cosmopolitan," so to speak during my years living on the atoll and traveling to different places.
     For example, now I notice the differences between the South and the rest of the world as soon as I hit that first Southern airport on my way to visit family. In Houston a few days ago, the accents, style of dress, make-up, and hair, and even the way Southerners carry themselves and interact with each other stood out to me.  It had a strong familiarity for me, but it also felt very distant from who I am now.  The homes and look of the countryside driving around Alabama has its own distinctive flavor now that I have seen the landscapes of Europe, Oregon, New York and Washington state, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, and the Marshall Islands among others.  More often than not, I no longer refer to a trip back to Alabama and "going home." It's usually stated as "going to visit family" much more often than it was a few years ago when I was still so closely tied to the South. I have lived in the islands only about 7 years less than the amount of time I lived in Alabama full time, so I suppose by now you could say I'm an island girl.  For the very first time on the trip this time, I didn't hesitate when someone asked where I was from to say, "the Marshall Islands" instead of Alabama.  It's interesting, right? How life takes you from one place to another and one experience to another and molds you into not necessarily a different person, but a more unique person whose life story is all its own.  I will never stop being a Southern Belle on some level, but I also believe I will always share a bond with others from the islands as I am just as much an island girl today as I was born a Southern Belle over 3 decades ago.

April 2, 2011- "Real Simple" Wedding Planning...

    The adventure of planning our wedding for the summer of 2012 has officially begun with the purchase of a wedding magazine from Real Simple.  I spent much of the day today browsing through the magazine, circling good ideas and information I didn't know that I found helpful, and writing notes to myself for sharing with my fiancee when I am back on the island, and we have a chance to sit down and sort out the details.  The other detail my mom took me to work on today was trying on dresses! Since we will have limited chances between now and next summer with access to shopping for my dress and my fiance's suit, I decided I better start getting some ideas now and purchase something if possible or at least place an order, so it was off to the mall and a couple of bridal shops to see what was out there. After a full afternoon of browsing and putting on one dress after another, we wound up with three completely different styles, colors, and types of dresses to mull over. I just wish my fiancee could be here to help me decide.  I know it sounds silly because traditionally, the groom would not see the dress before the wedding day, but I don't think we are a traditional couple.  Of course, I like to think of us an extraordinary couple who have been very lucky to find each other as we are such a perfect fit.  As we have grown closer to each other over the years we've dated, I find myself having trouble making decisions without him. On this trip, in particular, as it is the first one I have taken by myself since October of 2008, I've found myself floundering a bit when he's not here to help me do what we have been doing together the last few vacations, such as making sure we have everything we need planned out and ready to get out and to the airport on time for each leg of our adventure.  :) I've always depended on his input for the most momentous decisions, such as planning our wedding, but it would appear I've leaned on his help more heavily even in a lot of everyday situations I come across now. This is fine by me; I guess I just didn't realize how much I had started to lean on him until more recently. Either way, dependent or not, we're a team now, and that's what teams do, right. They work together! And as far as the details for wedding planning, that's exactly how it should be! I certainly don't want our wedding to be complicated or frustrating or stressful and having us both fully involved and keeping each other on track by focusing only on what we want and staying within our budget will make the journey toward our special day a smooth reality.  So, I will keep the title of this blog in mind as we continue to search out the right dress, wedding website, invitation, flowers, etc...And I'll keep you posted on how it's going. :)  Happy Saturday, wherever you are!  

April 1, 2011- April Fool's Day?

   It's now 12:35 am on April 2nd, and I just realized that today was April Fool's Day, and I didn't even know it.  For me, it was Saturday, April 2nd all day as I e-mailed people back at work where it is April 2nd, and the time that my body is apparently still on because otherwise, I wouldn't be so wide awake right now. So, what did I do today besides sleep in until 10:30 am after going to bed around 11 pm and operating all day on the 31st (stateside time) on about 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep from the 30th?  I caught up with my parents, chatting like there was no tomorrow about anything and everything...they are probably exhausted from my ramblings, but would deny that if I asked them right now because they are my parents and love me.  I guess I'll never know for sure how they feel about that one until my boys are 36 and rambling to catch up with me years from now, and I feel the same thing my parents felt today while listening to me and trying to get a word in edgewise. And I went shopping with them...to the Sam's Club store, to the Apple store, and to one of my favorite places, Barnes and Noble book store.  I can spend literally hours in there or any bookstore for that matter, and thank goodness, so can my parents and even my kids when they are with me.  I just don't see myself ever getting tired of going to bookstores, even when I come back to living within a convenient distance to them again.  I simple get lost in books like nothing else. It was a good day, but I couldn't help thinking about my fiance and children and what they would say, think, do, like, or dislike about anything and everything we were doing and the places we were going. They are an intrinsic part of me now, just as much as my parents were when I was a child or writing has been to me ever since that 6th grade teacher turned me on to journaling.  I miss them terribly when they are not with me, and life is simply not as exciting, funny, or joyful without them.  No offense to my parents. I did have a wonderful time with them, but they have their own separate lives far, far away from mine as my own boys will have from me someday, but for now, the lives of my children, my fiance, and me are all still very intertwined, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Miss you guys and can't wait until we are all together again in a few weeks! :)

March 31, 2011-Lost a day or gained one??

    Somehow I feel I have lost a day even though I actually gained one.  Once arriving in Hawaii, my son and I woke up around 10 am with a short 4 and a 1/2 hours of sleep starting from turning the light off at 5:30 am.  We had to check out by noon, so it was a hectic 2 hours to accomplish the "we made it okay for the first leg of the journey" phone calls to the islands and Alabama, showers and cleaning up tasks, and packing back up the few things we had a chance to take out of our suitcases before heading down to the lobby to check out for the day. Our flight wasn't until 7:20 in the evening, so we stored our luggage at the hotel and headed out for lunch, then an afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo. This was definitely the highlight of the day, especially watching my son get so excited to take pictures for his classmates of the animals they are studying for their research projects at school. He wants to print out the pictures when we return, put them on a poster, and share them with his classmates. He took the pictures based on the animals each of the third graders are studying for their individual reports.  What a great memory he has! I wish mine was still that good. :)  By the end of the afternoon walking around the zoo, the lack of sleep was kicking in hard for me, so we sat down for a few minutes and had an Icee, a big treat for an island born boy who resides in a place that does not have the luxury of an Icee machine in the local convenience store.
    After such a relaxing afternoon and the lack of sleep attacking my brain, I foolishly thought we still had plenty of time to get ready for our 4:20 shuttle to the airport. Well, by the time we had our luggage pulled out of the storage area by the bell hop, turned in an ID to get a key card to the hospitality hotel room in order to change clothes and freshen up for the long night of flying, then actually getting to the right hotel tower, up the elevator, and to the room where we were going to change, we ended up with only about 20 minutes to take care of last minute details, get back down to the lobby with our luggage, return the key, and get outside to jump on the shuttle....well, almost as soon as we walked in the room, they were calling me to tell me the shuttle was there, albeit a little early, but there waiting nonetheless. I still thought we'd be done and down in 5 minutes, which was the time they were scheduled to pick me up in the first place. What I obviously didn't realize at this point is that the jet lag brain had taken over. I simply couldn't move any faster, and we ended up having to tell the shuttle to go on and pay about $20 more for a taxi because I couldn't pull it together in time.  You'd think after so many years traveling back and forth, I'd have learned to budget that extra time for incidentals and such, but it just shows you can't underestimate the debilitating power of operating on a sleep deprived body and brain. :)  Even so, we still made it to the airport in plenty of time, albeit a little poorer, and had a nice dinner with another friend who was traveling from Kwaj to the states to see family, such a fun dinner, in fact, that we had to run to catch the plane during the final boarding call.   I know, I know...that's terrible, right? I believe it was fated to be one of those trips from the day we left this time...I started off in a huff of unpreparedness and stress and was just never able to shake it off. Chalk it up to just another personal experience to back up what I preach to others, but sometimes forget to practice myself..."when you are prepared, it cuts down on the stress for you and your students and makes for a much more fun and less chaotic experience." Hopefully, I will learn from this umpteenth international trip halfway around the world and have a smoother journey on the way back in a couple of weeks.  
    You're wondering when the day that I am writing about is going to end, aren't you...well, technically, it's still March 30 in Hawaii when all of this is happening, so I've gained a day, but somehow it feels I lost one since March 30 in Kwajalein was such a blur. I suppose March 30 actually ended somewhere over the Pacific Ocean or on the mainland between Hawaii and Houston, our first stop in the continental United States and the last one before Alabama.  I don't care enough at this point to figure out exactly when, but the next 12 hours or so were spent either in the air or in a Texas airport, and March 31 really began for me upon seeing my sweet baby at his grandparent's house when we arrived there around 1 pm on the 31st.  I've never seen such a big smile as the one he had looking out the glass patio door when he saw his big brother coming in.  They were so excited to play together again that I received not much more than a couple of big hugs and a "me too" in response to the "I missed and I love you's

March 30. 2011-Blurry Wednesday...

     This day went by in a blur. It consisted of work, work, work in between finishing up stuff I needed to do to get ready to leave on the plane in the evening, and finally pack, pack, pack, and try to remember the things I was bound to forget before getting on the plane where I would no longer have access to my home, belongings, work related materials to study while away, etc...Talk about being one big stress ball! That was me pretty much all day, accompanied by a teary conversation with my fiancee four hours before leaving because I no longer wanted to have to leave.  I wanted to get to my son and be with him, but I just didn't feel ready yet! For a very organized homemaker, and a "you can't be too prepared" educator, this was not a good feeling because I was neither organized nor very prepared today.  Oh well, everybody has their off days.  This was definitely one of mine.  In the end, my son and I made it safely to the terminal with all the essentials we needed for the next three weeks and then some and had an uneventful 7 hour plane ride all the way from Kwaj to Hawaii arriving at our hotel around 5 am just to crash into bed for a few hours before getting up and starting the whole travel process all over again for an additional 24 hours.  At least I won't have to worry about packing or finishing up with work tomorrow.  I only have to worry about getting to the airport on time and catching our flight...Wish me luck!