Category: Life

I have had one of the worst mornings in my life. A morning like this will definitely put everything in perspective. It will make you realize exactly how lucky you truly are.

My little hometown might be making national news. And not in a good way.

To start from the beginning….

At 4:22am this morning my husband’s cell phone rang. You always dread those phone calls. They can never be good. His dad was at work and was saying that there were tornadoes coming our way. I was pissed, we had no rain, no lightening, no wind. Nothing. It was silent. I even posted on my Facebook page that 4am phone calls were for family emergencies only and that I was not afraid of storms. Boy do I feel stupid now.

At 5:11am a co-worker called me. He said that there were reports of some really bad weather in Harrisburg (Illinois, not Pennsylvania) and that I might want to re-think coming up for work. By this point I’m still irritated that I’ve been woken up so early.

Approximately 5:17am, Nathan’s dad calls back and said that there were reports of the south side of Harrisburg being demolished by a tornado. I might want to try to get into contact with my family.

That woke me up. I was still pissed, but my in-laws have a bad habit of crying wolf when it comes to storms. They freak out. I’m the opposite, I’m standing outside looking up at the sky (sometimes a pretty dumbass move).

By this time the storm sirens were going off in our town. So I figured I should at least get dressed, just in case something did happen. Then I tried to call my parents. Straight to voicemail. Then my grandma, straight to voicemail. My other grandparents, they have no cell phones and I wasn’t surprised that there would be no power, so no answer.

I bring up my Facebook app on my iPhone and see a friend from high school has posted that the police scanner is saying that there is severe damage out by the hospital. That is where my family lives. Panic mode begins.

I don’t even know how many phone calls I made trying my hardest to get through. I’m not stupid, I knew cell phone service in that town would be a disaster. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I felt so hopeless. It was a terrible feeling.

All I could think of was that I had to have my family still with me. I want my son to know their grandparents and great-grandparents. It was a terrible feeling.

Finally I saw exactly what I wanted: “DAD” came up on my caller i.d. I think I breathed for the first time in at least 35 minutes. My parents, their two dogs, my grandmother were all fine. Their homes were severely damaged. Structurally they are okay, but the insides are a mess because their windows blew out. Dad’s vehicle had some serious damage. But he had no idea about my other grandparents. It would be another 40 minutes before I would hear that they were okay physically, but that their house was also severely damaged.

It definitely puts everything in perspective. I felt my whole world crumbling. I didn’t want to lose my entire family in one swoop. That would have been the worst thing ever.

We were supposed to go to St. Louis tomorrow – that trip is cancelled. My baby shower was supposed to be at my grandmother’s house at the end of March – that is not happening.

Obviously it will be a few days before the weather service announces any concrete information about the tornado. And it was definitely a tornado. How severe, I have no clue. Will it make the national news? I have no idea about that either. Are there any confirmed deaths? Not yet, but there are some unsubstantiated accounts of at least 3 dead so far. That one section of my hometown looks like a war zone. Obviously I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of pictures and accounts like this before, but it’s never been my hometown. And this time it is. And it’s heartbreaking.

But you know what can’t be changed or replaced or fixed? Family. And I still have mine. And that’s all that matters right now.

---

For the pictures:
PICTURE ONE: Damage around the south side of my hometown
PICTURE TWO: This is what is left of a strip mall
PICTURE THREE: That is all that is left of the building that was my old church. The church itself had been closed for about a year after being closed down by the Lutheran Senate due to lack of parishioners.
PICTURE FOUR: More damage
PICTURE FIVE: My parents house. I don’t know if you can tell but one of my dad’s back windows in his vehicle is busted out. There are a lot of shingles off their roof. The fence to the left side of the picture is demolished and I can tell when I blow it up that the fence in their backyard is destroyed.

While the above picture is not the exact view I will be having for the coming week, it is very close 🙂

I’m off to Florida for the next week. It’s a much-needed vacation/babymoon!

When I get back I will get everything together for my end of the year stats/favorite reads. I know everyone is starting to do this now. I’m a slacker and won’t get mine done for a while 🙂

See everyone next year!

So it’s been 5 days since we’ve been home from our vacation. Let me tell you, going back to work after 6 working days off is tough!! But it sure was nice to be sleeping in my own bed, eating food prepared by us, oh and driving myself where ever I wanted to go. We had an absolute blast and now I’m going to attempt to do it justice by telling you all about it. (WARNING: This will be long and potentially rambling, I apologize in advance).

It all started four years ago when my husband and I were planning our wedding. We got engaged in December of 2006 and wanted to be married in December of 2007. We knew we didn’t want to get married around home, between the two of our families we would end up having to invite the entire town and we really wanted a small ceremony. So we settled on marrying in Las Vegas. (No, we didn’t elope – our families came with us!) In May of 2007 – his family couldn’t get the time off in December to go out there, so we kept pushing it up and up until we hit on a day in May that would work for everybody. So here we are rushing around trying our hardest to plan a wedding in 5 months. Easy to do when you get in Vegas actually, you pretty much buy a package and just chose from already selected options – that was the most stress-free way I could have ever gotten married! I LOVED it! Then it came down to trying to figure out the honeymoon. We wanted so bad to take a trip to Alaska. Nathan didn’t really have the money to pay for it, but I was going to pitch in some of my money as well and it would be a hop, skip and a jump from Vegas – we were on the right side of the country. However, we soon realized that we would actually be getting married, growing up and on our own pretty much … Nathan had to get back to work. We just didn’t have the time to take the honeymoon we really wanted. We were disappointed, but decided that it was okay. We would save up our money and take a belated honeymoon to Alaska on our one year anniversary. No big deal.

So what happens? We end up moving to Paducah, Kentucky. Which means Nathan has started a new job. Which means Nathan doesn’t have any time built up to take vacation days. Which meant no Alaskan trip in 2008. No big deal, we’d wait another year. … What happens next? We bought a house! Which meant every spare penny we had went towards the down payment. So no trip to Alaska in 2009. Then what, you ask? Well, I’m not really sure what happened in 2010 – we were still trying to recover from our down-payment AND put a little bit of money into our house trying to make some improvements here and there. I think it just kind of fell off of our radar since we had not been able to make it work thus far. Next thing you know, in August of 2010, my parents get the Alaska bug. They want to go in 2011, would we want to go with them? Well, YEAH! So we planned it. For May of 2011, leaving one week after our anniversary out of Vancouver, Canada, on the Coral Princess. It was set! We were going! YES!

When you plan something 9 months in advance, it feels like it’s an eternity away. I think that’s how it snuck up on me so quickly. I was a little unprepared – I needed a new jacket (that I could have bought in the winter time, but waited until  nearly March to do so), I needed long underwear (once again, waited until March to purchase), I needed a new dress to wear on formal night (got that 2 weeks before I left) and of course, SHOES to match the new dress (one week before I left)  – okay, those last two I really didn’t need but wanted. The day before we left I felt like I was running with my head cut off, it was unreal. We were finally leaving!

We left on Friday, May 20th, for Nashville. We had an early morning flight. We got to the airport on Saturday the 21st around 4:45am. (Wow, is that early!). We had gotten an email from Princess that our boat was late arriving into Vancouver and that we wouldn’t be able to board until about 5pm, that was no big deal, we would just have a lot of time to kill in town before we could go to the ship. No big deal. So we get on our first plane, Nashville to Minneapolis. This is where the fun begins. When we get to Minneapolis, the airport has LOST POWER! Yes, you read that right – no power in the Minneapolis airport. So here we are, in our airplane, parked somewhere out of the way, for two hours. At this point, people are worried about missing their flights – I don’t know why, no flights were leaving! So after two hours they finally took us to the gate. By that point, we realized we would need to run to get to our next flight because it would be taking off shortly if the power was back on. We ran to the gate on the monitor. Nope, we’ve moved gates, it’s now back where you came from. So we ran back to the original terminal we were at and got to the correct gate with enough time to go to the bathroom and get on the plane. Then we sat in that plane for another 1.5 hours because no one had left and everyone was trying to leave at the same time, we had to wait in line. At this point, we were so glad that our boat had been delayed. Of course pretty much everyone on that plane was either taking our cruise ship or the Holland America cruise ship out that day, the boats probably would have waited for us since we booked these flights through the cruise line. We finally get to Vancouver and got the city bus tour. Then we were dropped back off at the pier and could have taken another bus to some park, but by this point we didn’t want to do that. Instead we went across the street and found a pub and parked ourselves for 2 hours 🙂

We got on the boat with very little hassle later that Saturday evening. Our cabin was really nice, we had a balcony. The bathrooms always leave a little to be desired on cruise ships. But overall, our cabin was very nice and we were pleased. Our first day on the cruise, Sunday, was a day at sea. We relaxed, participated in trivia (which, we found out very quickly, we stink at!) and went to the first formal night. For those of you who have been on a cruise ship, you know that the food is delicious, and that you can eat 24 hours a day! I love that! I think I gained 10 pounds on vacation. Oh well.

Our first day in port, Monday, was Ketchikan. It was here that Nathan and I went bottom fishing. Now, I am not a fisher, this was Nathan’s choice of tour. (I got him back later, we did a couple of things he didn’t want to!) So here we are, on this little five person boat, four fishers and the guide. In other words, four men and me. I’m used to that, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. I don’t like fishing. I don’t know how to fish. I’m a stupid woman when it comes to this, but really, they didn’t make me feel stupid for not knowing what to do. The other two gentlemen taking the tour and our guide was very nice to me and very patient. They should have been – I caught a fish! In fact, I caught a rare rockfish that you’re only allowed to catch one a year per person. I thought that was pretty cool. Nathan, on the other hand, caught nothing. He said he didn’t even have any bites. I think he was bummed, but I’m not sure if he was more disappointed because I caught something and he didn’t or what. Then our tour guide took us to a camp that the company has set up where they actually cook the fish that you caught for you to have for lunch. Apparently this particular camp has won the best camp food title from some cooking magazine. Well, let me tell you, this food was absolutely delicious. I would go back and do that tour in a heartbeat just to have that lady cook for me again. It was really good. Here’s some pictures of our time fishing:

The first two are of Nathan and I while on our fishing boat. The first of me is immediately after I caught my fish, which is the second fish from the right in the third picture. The last picture is of me at the camp site.

Next up on our vacation was Juneau, on Tuesday. We had a long day in Juneau, but it was a lot of fun. It was in Juneau that I got to cross something off of my bucket list. We walked on a glacier! Yep, that’s right, we took a helicopter ride up and landed on the Mendenhall Glacier and then had the opportunity to actually walk on it for about 45 minutes. Talk about amazing. I was in absolute awe of it every moment we were there. This is something that I have wanted to do for years and I’m so glad I got to do it!

We took advantage of all the time we had in Juneau, we walked around the town a little bit. We had lunch at a local place called The Hangar, we both had fish and chips and it was absolutely delicious. We got all of our souvenir shopping done in Juneau. Later that evening we went to a salmon bake. Generally, I enjoy salmon, but I really didn’t like this, I think it was the sauce they put on it. I’m not 100% sure. But now I can say that I’ve been to a lobster bake (in Maine) and a salmon bake (in Alaska).

Our third port was Skagway. We had a really good time here as well. Once again, we did two tours in this port as well. First up was zip lining! That was so much fun! I was a little nervous at first, but it really was exciting! After we finished up with zip lining we were trying to figure out where we could go to do that closer to home, we had that much fun! And then later that afternoon, we did a jeep ride into the Yukon area. This is where we were a little disappointed. The entire reason we took the jeep ride was so that we could go off-road. But when we got to the designated meeting spot they told us that due to the road conditions (ice and snow) we would not be able to go off-road. That was fine and dandy until we took one look at the jeeps that we were driving and realized that the reason we weren’t going off-road was really because they didn’t have off-road tires on the jeeps. Such a disappointment. Especially since we could have taken the same exact tour on a bus/train combo for A LOT less money. Oh well. We still had a good time on our tour, it was just not what we signed up for. On our jeep ride we were able to see three separate bears. It was actually kind of neat, one was directly on the road – it’s really scary to think that bears actually walk on the road like it’s no big deal like the deer do around our home! CRAZY! No wonder there were bear proof trash cans everywhere 🙂

After Skagway, we then went into two days of scenic cruising. We hit Glacier Bay and College Fjord. Personally, I preferred Glacier Bay, I thought it was more scenic. And during our time in Glacier Bay we had the opportunity to see the ice fall of the glacier numerous times. That was really a sight to see! Since we were just scenic cruising those last two days on our ship, we took the time to relax and rest up for our trip into Denali. But here’s a couple of pictures from our scenic cruising:

So early Saturday the 28th, we had to leave our cruise ship behind and hop on the train for our trip into Denali. Let me tell you what, 10 hours in a train is a very excruciating experience. Honestly, the first 8 or so hours weren’t that bad, but then I started to get antsy and I wanted off. At the same time, I’m glad that we did take the train instead of the bus. Although the bus trip was a couple of hours shorter, we were able to get up and move around a little bit, we had an actual table in front of us, it wasn’t that bad of a deal – it was just way too long. But, we did get to see some beautiful scenery. At the end of the day we were finally in the Denali National Park. Did you know that Alaskan natives actually call Mt. McKinley Denali?? Yeah, I totally just thought that Denali was the name of the park and the mountain was Mt. McKinley. And while that is technically correct, the local way of thinking is that Denali is in Denali National Park. So there’s a little factoid for ya. Oh yeah, and apparently I’ve been pronouncing Denali incorrectly all my life, too. Funny things you can learn from the local people of Alaska 🙂

So our first full day in the park, Sunday, was spent at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. It was here that we were able to go White-Water rafting (no pictures because we haven’t developed our water-proof camera yet). That was an absolute blast. Luckily, we were on a tour where we did not have to do any of the paddling ourselves, because I’m not sure I would have had the arm strength to do so. But it was definitely a wild ride! The suit that we had to put on was not all that comfortable, but we stayed dry the entire time. The only thing that I have to complain about after this particular tour is the fact that I would have preferred to have some sort of gloves on my hands because they were absolutely frozen by the time we were done.

Shortly after rafting we got on a bus and headed to the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, where we would stay the night and be in that area for part of the next day, Monday. It was here that we had a spectacular view of Mt. McKinley! Once again our weather was absolutely perfect and we could see every bit of it for the entire time we were there. And let me tell you what, I wish I had had capri pants and sandals to wear, the weather was that warm! Of course, that would not have been proper attire for our tour for that day. We went horseback riding. Now, I should just say that horseback riding is not for me and leave it at that. But I have to expand a little bit on this. First of all, I did not like being at the mercy of an animal. Secondly, when a horse stumbles twice on a very narrow trail with a very steep cliff on one side, it’s going to make anybody nervous. And lastly, it was the most uncomfortable ride I’ve ever taken. So, I think this was my least favorite part of the entire trip. At the same time, I’m glad that we took that trail ride because we actually had a beautiful background picture opportunity with Mt. McKinley (oops, Denali!).

After our trail ride and lunch at the lodge we made our way back to another bus and embarked on a 3 hour drive to Anchorage. And that was it. Our vacation was pretty much over. We had a nice dinner at our hotel, The Captain Cook Hotel (they had wonderful beds! So soft – which I hadn’t had the entire trip!) and then we went to bed. Had to be up first thing in the morning to catch our first flight back home. Our trip home was relatively uneventful compared to the trip to Alaska.

It was so nice to be home. I loved my vacation, but I swear I needed a vacation to recover from my vacation. It will probably be the only big vacation we take for quite some time. We are the king and queen of weekend get-aways, but this was a true vacation. We hadn’t taken a vacation that lasted more than 4 days in two years. I apologize for this post being so long, it’s hard to squeeze all the details of a 10 day vacation into a small post.

I just haven’t been in very much of a blogging or reading mood. College basketball has began again and I’m hooked 🙂 LOVE this time of year!I guess I’ll get back into the swing of things soon. Hopefully.

Okay … so I want to make the jump to the e-reader. But I’m stumped as to which one to buy. Kindle – Nook – Sony? I’m kind of leaning towards either the Kindle or the Sony. I like the fact that the Sony would be more flexible for other sources of ebooks. But I also like to one-stop shopping of the Kindle and Nook. The prices seem to be cheaper on Amazon than Barnes and Noble. But the books on borders.com that can go on the Sony are even cheaper. Price isn’t really an issue for me right now – this will be my large Christmas gift from my grandmother. I really want something easy to use. So let’s start a discussion, pros/cons of the different e-readers. Ready? Go!

So for my 25th birthday we took a four night cruise down to the Bahamas. We took the Carnival Fascination. And boy do we have some stories to tell!!

I was able to get a little bit of reading done during our time on vacation. I read like a mad woman in airports and during airplane rides. I will be posting a review of a Jeffery Deaver book that I finished while on vacation, and I’m about halfway through a James Patterson book. So be on the lookout for some reviews in the near future.

For anyone who has been on cruises before, you know that there is always a tight schedule that the ship is on. Any deviation from this schedule can cause some problems. Well, of course we had to hit one of those problems. Our ship apparently lost power for 4-5 hours the day before we were due to depart. Because of this power outage, our cruise left 3 hours later than expected. Since we were delayed, our itinerary had to be reversed in order for us to get back on schedule. But this also meant that we had less time in our ports.

We had originally signed up to go kayaking/snorkeling in Nassau and a jeep ride in Freeport. The shore excursion we took in Nassau was great! It was a blast!! We started out by taking a catamaran out to a certain location. Then we set off kayaking. I had never done that before and it was something of an adjustment! It was so hard to keep centered in the kayak! But it was a lot of fun! The kayaks that we had were glass bottom, so we were able to see the fish underneath us! It was great! The water was so clear, it was really amazing! We did that for about 30 minutes and then we got back on the catamaran and got our snorkeling gear on! I have been snorkeling once before, but Nathan had never been. We both loved it! We had a waterproof camera, but I haven’t had the pictures developed yet, so I can’t post any of those pictures just yet. Then we took the catamaran back to where our boat was located and we walked around and bought some souvenirs for family members before we had to be back on the ship for sailing time.

Our second stop was in Freeport. Unfortunately, our jeep ride excursion was cancelled due to the shortened time in Freeport. So we were able to book another snorkeling excursion in Freeport. But when we arrived in Freeport it was raining and almost every single shore excursion offered was cancelled because of the weather! It stunk big time. We got all the way off the ship and over to the meeting place for the shore excursion and then were told that our tour had been cancelled – ugh! So what did Nathan and I do? We got right back on the boat! That’s right – we didn’t see one bit of Freeport. It was probably silly of us to do that, but by that point we were so frustrated with all the issues that we had run into with the jeep ride being cancelled first and then the snorkeling being cancelled because of the weather that we were so fed up with everything.

The boat itself was alright. It was a little on the small side for my personal tastes – I prefer the larger ships, the larger the better in my opinion! It was a little crowded though for the size of the ship and the amount of people that they had crammed on there. The layout was kind of funky too. And my biggest gripe – there was really only one pool. I put it that way because there was the main pool and then there was the water slide, but the water slide area didn’t have any type of a pool around it, it was actually a lot of wasted space if you want my opinion. But on the one day at sea, sitting by the pool is pretty much the only thing to do. But there wasn’t a single deck chair to be had. So we were a little bit bored on our day at sea.

Overall the experience was definitely interesting. It was a little bit frustrating at times. I will never take another Carnival cruise again, my opinion of them is not much to be said about anymore. I realize that very few vacations will ever be perfect, and to be perfectly honest, the Bahamas is not my personal favorite place to visit anyway, but our vacation could have been better. I feel bad for Nathan since it was his first cruise and his experience was not what is normal for cruising and was a little bit negative. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t already planning our next vacation 🙂 Alaska, watch out! We are coming to visit you next year!

Here are a few pictures from our trip:

I know it seems like I’ve been MIA for awhile. I am still alive and around. Unfortunately I’m not reading as much as I would like to. Work is really starting to get busy for me and we’ve been going to the gym a lot since the first of the year (11lbs lost since Jan. 4th!!). Plus American Idol is back on and I’m a sucker for that show 🙂 So don’t think that I’ve left the blogger-world because I am still around, just not as frequently as I would prefer.

And by awful, I mean awful!! I had a terrible virus on my computer last night. It took over my whole computer. I couldn’t open ANY of my files. $89 and 2 hours on the phone with McAfee later and the virus was gone!!

And of course what was the first thing that came to my mind: Oh my goodness, my reading lists are in Word Documents, I don’t want to lose them!! So I’m thinking about keeping a paper journal as well as an electronic version. Currently I keep a Word Document, one for each year since 2007, that lists the Title, Copyright and my rating for each book that I read. I’m kind of looking for a new system to keep my information. So I’m posing a question to all my readers: What kind of a system do you use to keep track of your reading? I’m just trying to get some feedback so that I can find a system that will work for me. Any and all advice is greatly welcome! Thanks in advance!!!