It's only been 2 weeks??

A little recap from last Sunday to Friday- either some freak in my neighborhood or a cat (I can't decide which) left a mutilated squirrel on my front porch. I have yet to clean up the remnants because 1. we don't own a shovel (I don't know what I'll do if I ever need to bury something or someone haha) and 2. I don't want to touch it or go near it. I am now paranoid and not sure I can live here alone for the rest of deployment. I know Ryan's worried. He should really be worried about the power bill...I've been sleeping with the lights on :O

 And the transmission in my car died. My car that I just got last October. That only has 59,625 miles on it. :( 

Sooo I'm driving Ryan's truck for now, which is breaking the bank over gas. It cost me 52 bucks to fill it up today!!! And that was at 2.93/gallon, the cheapest I could find. 

 I am definitely ready for this summer. Mostly because I want this semester to be over with! I'm already over it. Not to mention I've had enough of the cold weather and I'm ready to start laying out at the pool again. I plan to be skinny and tan when Ryan returns :) My goals for this summer are 1. To be black 2. Look damn good in a bikini 3. Learn to sew 

   On a brighter note, I went to my first bridal show today! I think I'm now even more confused about what I want. There's just too many choices! It was a blast. There was cake EVERYWHERE! yes, I broke my new year's resolution already and cheated. I couldn't help myself. We're talking cake here. I am very weak when it comes to cake and theres not a gluten free option. I'll be honest. I sampled about 15 different flavors. :O 

   I'm sending Ryan his first care package tomorrow. He's decided it would be fun to send each other videos. Since the ship's email blocks any kind of media over a certain amount, we're exchanging SD cards (the little thing in your camera that holds pictures/videos). When I say videos, no they are not dirty. He thinks it'll be better than email, but honestly I think mine are boring. lol. They are all "Hey, this was my day...." and "heres Gigi being crazy again..." He's sending me a video and pictures from his first port call to Portugal (that's where they were last week). I'm excited to hear all about his experiences with their green wine, and what the food was like. I'm sure he has a lot more exciting things to tell than I did. He's been hinting around about snickerdoodles, so I'm going to include a batch of those too. We'll see how well they hold up in the mail for a week or so. 

  I found a farm in Ohio that makes jam, and all sorts of other goodies. So for his next care package, I ordered some gooseberry jam (his favorite) and boysenberry jam (since I ate all of it). He thinks I'm nuts for eating it with a spoon but I have a feeling he'll be doing the same. 

  I'm not sure how this post turned out to be about food after beginning with a dead squirrel, but regardless now I'm hungry and it's too late to eat :( Guess that means I should stop procrastinating and write my paper and go to bed!

4 Days In

    I'm still feeling good. Even though the blender blew up today, and I can't figure out how the heck to get the apple tv connected to my itunes, I'm still feeling good. I know Ryan's feeling homesick already, but I'm confident this deployment is just going to breeze by. I have no doubt we'll be a stronger couple for it. I'm so excited about the future and when he comes home, I'm not sure how I'm going to find the focus to get anything done!
   My classes start tomorrow and I'm really excited to be starting classes online. I think it'll make my life so much easier, I can do them whenever I feel like it. I am so ready to be done with school and move on with the rest of my life.
 On another note, I've been looking at paint colors. I told Ryan before he left to take a good look around, because it was going to be completely different when he came back. I'm really looking forward to selling this house and Ryan and I have a place that's really ours. Meaning we picked it out together. I will NEVER live in a condo again. I really hate not having a fenced in yard for Gigi to run around in, or even a yard period. I hate the Condo Association and the Home Owners Association here. Between the two of them, we can't plant flowers, not allowed to have a storm door, not allowed to have anything other than the ugly white vertical blinds, not allowed to power wash the house (it seriously has cob webs), and the list goes on and on.

It's a brand new year.

Last year was one of the best years of my life. I am kind of sad to see it go but definitely excited about the coming year. I usually break New Years Resolutions, so I'm hesistant to make any. However I do want to stay active, get healthy, feel comfortable in a bathing suit this summer (if that's even possible!), and maintain a 3.5 GPA. Maybe if I don't refer to them as resolutions, they will come true. So we'll call those my short term goals.
On another note, we took down the Christmas tree today. My house has officially been "undecorated." This makes me a little sad,it's my favorite time of year afterall. It's only 313 days until I can decorate again :) yes that would mean I put my tree up on veterans day. A month just isn't long enough to celebrate Christmas. I like to decorate early. I am already thinking about next Christmas, and getting a REAL tree. I think we should have one upstairs (Ryan's artificial heartfelt, meaningfully decorated tree) and downstairs in the kitchen will be my pretty tree.
This past Christmas was pretty amazing. Ryan and I flew out to California to spend it with his family. I discovered I don't like flying, Ryan's mom makes the best potato salad I've ever had, I learned how to make tamales, and realized we will have really well-behaved children or they won't be able to sit down. I'm not sure how we'll top it next year but we'll see :)
I am really looking forward to the future and spending the next year with Ryan .

Our First year together

I met Ryan 368 days ago. Let's play catch up. 
How we met: I made a profile on Match.com saying I was looking for my toilet seat warmer. (That was my headline). I explained when my parents first got married, they didn't have a lot of money and they've always been really cheap. My mom would complain that when she'd get up in the morning the house was so cold even the toilet seat was freezing. My dad being the old romantic that he is, started getting up before her to "warm it up" for her. (not to actually use it, just sit on it)
  Ryan emailed me, and we started chatting through lots of emails, IMs, texts, and eventually on the phone. For our first date, he took me to Stove, a quaint little restaurant in Portsmouth. We literally closed the place down talking for hours. Ryan was quite the charmer. In the middle of conversation, he leaned over and whispered, "I can't get over how pretty you are." I knew I was in trouble.  
    As a celiac, I can't eat anything with gluten (no wheat, barley or rye). I don't like to be the picky person at a restaurant that makes a bunch of special requests or orders something that's not even on the menu so I usually just don't say anything to my server. Not my smartest move on our second date. We went to Bardo's, and planned to see Cirque du Soleil that night. Unfortunately about 10 minutes after leaving the restaurant, I wasn't feeling too hot.  We never made it to the show :( Ryan was a really good sport, and he sat at the bar of the restaurant we stopped to use the bathroom at, while I got well acquainted with the bathroom. 
  After that experience, I thought for sure I'd scared him off but he kept calling :)
He has surprised me repeatedly over the last year, with random embarrassingly huge flower arrangements, jewelry (he showed up with a Mikimoto pearl necklace on our 4th date-who does that?), and always thinking about me. 
I'm completely crazy about him, and I've been secretly planning our wedding for way too long. Oops guess it's not a secret anymore? (not that it ever really was-He knows about my obsession)
   Although we were dating at Christmas last year, we didn't spend it together. So this will be our first Christmas together and I am so excited I can hardly stand it! Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love the smells, the lights, decorating, baking, and Elvis Christmas music. 
We are spending this Christmas in California, with Ryan's family. Although my mom is a little disappointed (this will be my first Christmas away), I am really excited to meet Ryan's family. And it SNOWS there! I'm praying for a white Christmas.