Inspections, and Disney, and Planning... oh my!

It's hard to believe that July is almost over. I find myself, once again, wondering where in the world the time has gone! Sayre's been very busy lately with life on the ship... long hours and weekend workdays have kept him going non-stop, but he's been a really good sport about it. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that once they pass this beast-of-an-inspection that they have coming up, things will start to calm down a bit.

My job has kept my very occupied lately as well, but I find myself loving it more and more every day (which, for me, is hard to believe). Just this past week I was surprised and very touched to be given the first "Beyond Your Ordinary Employee" award from my bosses. Honestly, when they began saying very sweet things about the recipient of the award I never imagined they were talking about me, but then they passed the certificate my way and handed an accompanying pair of tickets to Disney World to me :) They sure do know the way to my heart! I'm so blessed to have found such an inspiring, fun, and unique place to work with such fun-loving & incredible people. Now the pressure's on to keep cranking out some fun playground designs and begin preparing for my CPSI exam at the end of August (Certification for Playground Safety Inspectors).

For now, our main focus is just making it through Sayre's ship's inspection. Unfortunately that seems to be the one thing that has been dictating our lives lately, but that's just the "Navy way." It'll all be over soon, thankfully :) and then maybe, at last, we'll be able to make our trip up to Alaska... I'm not getting my hopes up anytime soon though. If there's one thing I've learned in the past year as a military wife, it's that nothing is ever certain and flexibility is key to maintaining your sanity :) Keep your expectations low, rejoice when things work out the way you hoped, and just let it go & move on when things fall through.

The Fourth Times Two

Sunday night we celebrated the Fourth of July all over again... this time with Sayre! He's been working very long hours lately, but I guess since it was Independence Day his captain decided to have mercy on them all and gave them the day off. When he came home verrrrrry early Sunday morning after standing watch I was still half asleep as I asked him if he had gotten the day off and then subsequently told him something along the lines of, "Oh. Good. Well, Katharine & I are going to see some more fireworks tonight so you can come, but only if you want to." Hehe I'm not sure if he appreciated that at the time or not, but at least I invited him, right? Anyway, the three of us ended up having an all-American celebration complete with bar-b-qued hamburgers and some delicious lemon squares that Katharine made & a little patriotic dessert that I made as well.

After eating, we headed out to the beach to watch some fireworks. The beach was pretty packed and to our surprise (and slight horror) we found that they actually let you shoot your own fireworks right there on the beach despite the fact that it was packed with people as you wait for the real fireworks show to begin. There's no way that this is even a remotely good idea but we just made sure to duck when they were getting to close for comfort. Danger aside, we had a good time and the fireworks were, once again, a beautiful sight to see on such a wonderful holiday.

Continuing the Celebration

Ok, so maybe not everything went according to plan for my 4th of July holiday, but I'm making the most of the situation and celebrating in true patriotic-style :) Who knows... more fireworks may be in my future for the weekend too. After all, it's still only Saturday!

Happy Independence Day!

So, technically it's only July 1st, but for some reason this year (despite obvious downsides - see post below) I'm really excited about July 4th coming up! So much so, in fact, that I made these little cupcakes and brought them to work today in anticipation of Sunday and to celebrate my co-worker's birthday :) Tomorrow night = fireworks show with my neighbor!