Let Me Say Hello!

Well then.  It has been almost an entire year since I last posted in this blog.  I have been so busy LIVING life that I was forgetting to share it.  Hawaii is AMAZING.  I am so glad I listened to my own expectations when moving here instead of the negatives of the people who were miserable living here.  Honestly, so much of it is about attitude.  We live in one of the most amazing places on the planet.  I have had SO MANY unique and amazing experiences here.  And I never want to leave.

Today, I am sitting on the couch, resting, while my husband sleeps still at close to 1:00 in the afternoon because we are recovering from yesterdays adventure.  That is one of the great things about living in Hawaii, it certainly allows you to indulge (or grow!) your sense of adventure!  And the more adventures we have, the stronger I feel, both physically and mentally.

I have been to over 40 beaches on the island of Oahu.  I have amassed a collection of beautiful seashells and sea glass.  I have been to Maui, Big Island, and Kauai.  More recently my husband and I have started hiking and enjoying the mauka (mountain) areas of this gorgeous island we now call home.  I've swam with countless sea turtles and conquered my fear of waves.

My goal is to more regularly update this blog.  Catch you all up on the adventures I have been having and stay up to date with the ones we will be having in the future.  I will do my best to follow through!!

~Katy

Being Different Has Its Advantages.

So, as you may or may not know, my husband is deployed for the first time in almost 4 years.  The last deployment he had was right after we started dating.  Since being married, he has been home.  Not always able to travel with me, but at least he was home.  The moving process had us together nearly 24/7 for 2 full months, mostly in a car and hotel rooms.  Overall, we dealt pretty well with all that extreme togetherness, and now we get to deal with separation.  Back-to-back.  No middle ground here!  Yet somehow, we don't have much of a problem with adjusting.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not *happy* that my husband is gone.  I wouldn't chose it if given the choice.  But at the same time, it doesn't exactly bother me either.  I'm not one of those wives that focuses on missing my husband when he isn't home.  It just... is.  I'm not one of those wives who gets sad because her husband is gone. I'm the kind that gets emotional and get happy-teary-eyes cause I am just so thrilled to have such a great husband at all.  I don't understand when my husband is gone and people ask how I'm dealing with it.  Should I be having a hard time?  I just don't see what the big deal is.  I have lived alone.  Before being married I had as many (if not more) long distance relationships as not.  I am perfectly capable of living a fulfilling life without my husband around.  Am I looking forward to him coming home?  Of course!  I wouldn't have married him if I didn't like having him around.  But his presence isn't the end-all-be-all.

I am sure it would be different if we had kids, it would be far more stressful having more to do without him home to help but since we don't plan to have kids that's not a concern besides the fact that single moms do it every day anyways.  It would also be different if he were in a different branch with more dangerous deployments.  But if we think about it, we are pretty spoiled as a culture.  No one seems to understand "how do they do it?" like being apart is the end of the world.  Because here we are fortunate enough for the norm to be living together with our family.  In other countries, that's not always the case.  Think about one of the common immigration stories- someone moves to another country to find work, to send money home to their family or to save enough to bring their family to be with them.  People who work on cruise ships, many of them are married and have children.

Being apart isn't great, but it's not horrible either.  I know I am in the minority.  Most couples, both military and civilian, really don't like being apart for more than a day or two.  Some not even that long.  Me, it doesn't entirely phase me.  So I guess I am lucky, this is one of the times where being different works in my favor.

~Katy

The Journey Begins

It has been a while since my last post, and now it is time to catch you all up.  This will be the first in a series of posts called "The Journey" which will document not only our trip to Hawaii but our life here as well.  My husband and I took somewhere around 700 pictures on our trip across country from Virginia Beach to Hawaii, including photos of the sights and stops along the way, which I kept referring to as "documenting the journey" leading to what I am calling this series of posts.  All those pictures were taken on two cameras and my cell phone so a low battery would never mean missing a thing!  I will be picking some of the best as I share the experience of our journey.

Our last week in Virginia was a busy one.  It took a day and a half for our house to be packed up, and one more to load the truck.

Our last night (March 14th) we chose to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise because they don't have any on the island (though there is a restaurant of the same name it isn't affiliated with Jimmy Buffet chain) and I am a little obsessed with their pina coladas.

We went home to a house empty of everything except our cats and the luggage we were taking on our trip with us- only as much that would fit in the car.  Writing this now I wish I had taken pictures of the empty house, the pile of luggage. But here is the cat tube that the cats rode in while they were in the car, and were stuck in at the house while the movers were there and our last night in the house.

We slept on the floor without so much as a pillow or a blanket so we wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room for the night.  We found out after we got here that we could have been reimbursed for that expense, but having that money for the journey was more important.  Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well.

The next morning our landlord came by to do the walk through first thing in the morning and by 10 or 11 we packed the car and were off, saying goodbye to the house we called home for nearly 3 years, the longest I had lived in one place since moving out of my parents house.

The car was pretty packed.  I don't know that we really could have fit any more in there.  See right smack dab in the middle?  That's the cat tube!

After dropping by the cable company to return their equipment we were off on our adventure!  This was the exit that we lived off of, and was also the exit I lived off of the first year I lived in Virginia.

Caspian has some issues in the car.  While he did have a sedative to take, which kept him from hyperventilating the whole way, he was still talkative.  We had a very talkative kinda drunk kitty in the back of the car.  This photo I somehow managed to get by reaching the camera back and taking the picture blind, and somehow I got him in the frame and mid-meow.

Saying goodbye to South Hampton Roads, and the bridge tunnel that was the bane of my existence MANY MANY times...

It was opening day of Busch Gardens for season pass holders this day.  We had season passes and I was very sad we couldn't go, especially since we had some friends there.  I waved as we passed by.

And then it was goodbye Hampton Roads, hello rest stop for a bathroom break... and to clean out the pet tube as best as possible.  Shortly after getting on the highway one or more of the cats had a very smelly accident and unfortunately some got on ALL of them :/ 

Poor things didn't have much space back there, since the extra luggage really cut into their space :(  

Then we were back on the road and noticed this very, very clean looking truck.  Yes, I took a lot of random pictures.

Our country has some quite varied scenery which was really great to see along the way.  Here are some of the sights in western Virginia!

And then it was time to say goodbye to Virginia. 

And that is where I will leave off for today.  I hope you enjoyed reading about the first part of our journey!  I made a tab for the blog that will just have posts from documenting this journey including the move and then my experiences living in Hawaii.  Posts about anything not directly related to this journey (like the *final* blanket update!) will not show up on "The Journey" page just the home page.

~Katy

The Week Has Arrived.

Oh. My. God.  It is here, the move is here, and I am FREAKING OUT.  As you can tell, our timeline got shifted...just a little.  The earliest we could be moved is this week.  The movers come to pack us Wednesday and Thursday and load up the truck on Friday.  While we were originally intending on going to visit family after being packed up, we ended up doing that last week instead, and have so much left to do that we cut the visit shot just a little.  It's a lot harder leaving when I'm not going back in just a couple months like I normally have done since my niece was born.  It was good though... we saw my family, and his family which is just a little harder since he refuses to talk to his parents and not all his siblings get along and blah blah drama so unlike with my family we can't see everyone all at once.  But we managed to see some on the way up to visit my family, including some of his/our friends, and some on the way back down.

I only made it to one night of the dance event I wanted to go to, but that's OK cause in the end I didn't much feel like going (and I had the worst headache ever on Friday anyways.)  I had fun once I got there, though.

There is still so much- SO MUCH- left to do.  He waited until the last minute to figure out shipping his car so he hasn't even scheduled dropping it off yet, cause he needs a letter from the lien holder saying he can ship the car.  We need to get me every power of attorney necessary that is PCS and/or deployment related.  We need to arrange our accommodations for when we get there.  I need to send in all the appropriate documentation for the cats to enter the state, and set up for them to be boarded while we are on our cruise.  And for them to be boarded once we get to Hawaii.  We need to arrange for their flight, which is looking like it will be on a different airline.  I need to arrange to drop off my car to be shipped.

I am so looking forward to everything being arranged and done and for us to be on the road for this crazy journey!

~Katy

The "Kate Effect"

This is a weather phenomenon where all the exciting weather fails to occur over me, because I really like crazy weather.

To be fair, this time we did get a darn good downpour... but it's already looking lighter out.  It didn't even downpour for long enough for me to take the screenshot, crop it, and finish this post.

The last time I wrote about the Kate Effect... it never, if fact, rained a drop... http://chickcasa.blogspot.com/2012/08/it-does-not-rain-here.html

~Katy

It's Been a Week

Shall I update again?  Things haven't gotten very far from last week, mainly because we spent the weekend visiting my family for a bittersweet weekend.
My replacement at work falling through means I have discharge reports out the wa-zoo which all have to be done ASAP so my supervisor can look over them before I go over them with the families next week.  This is my last week working with the kiddos, I have 2 days left.  Tomorrow is my last day with one of them, and that is such a sad thing.
Since my medical screening took more time than we anticipated it looks as though the entire move is being pushed back about a week.  Not really a big deal at all, though.  What IS a big deal is that my husband is telling me they may not book our flight out to Hawaii until after he has separated from his current command, which means we can't adequately plan for things like possibly going on a cruise from the west coast, or making sure we can get the cats on the flight with us (pet spaces are limited, and it's first come first served.  This is a BIG DEAL.) It also effects our ability to find lodging once we get there, and I already checked and the Navy Lodge is booked for the theoretical dates we would need to stay, meaning we may have a hard time finding somewhere else to stay with our cats.
On the plus side we have gone through the majority of the stuff we never unpacked from the last move and have tossed quite a bit of stuff.  Wish we had tossed more, but at this point, I don't so much care.  At this point I want the plans made and the hard part behind us!  I just want to have the move started and it feels like it will never get here... even though I only have 2 days left with my kiddos at work.
Now, to try and get some sleep so I can wake up early and get a report out of the way first thing.

So.Much.Left.To.Do.

~Katy

How About An Update?

I see I have gotten out of the habit of updating this thing!  Some of you may be wondering what is going on with me.  I know some may be interested in the move.  And at least once of you (you know who you are!) is interested in that blanket.  So, here we have updates... I will start with the blanket.  It's the shortest update:

I have made virtually no progress on the blanket since the last blanket update.  My size on the squares has varied a TON and I had to go through and sort the ones out that were just FAR too big and set them aside to redo them.  In November I spend almost an entire day just redoing squares while at a dance competition that I refused to compete in.  I wanted to go to the event, because those will be few and far between after the move, but I was stressed out that weekend and really just wanted to relax.  So that is what I did!  I partied and danced with friends at night, and spent Saturday in bed in the hotel room with the competitions on the TV while I crocheted.  I might have made a square since then, but I don't remember, I got started on Christmas presents, and then I got focused on knitting socks from a book I got for Christmas.  But have no fear!  I have NOT given up on the blanket!  NO!  I will be bringing every single square and every hank of yarn for the blanket with me as we travel across country and then hop a plane over to the island.  I intend to have an entire suitcase dedicated to yarn. While leads me to an update on the move...

It is almost upon us.  Yikes!  And yet, none of it is scheduled yet.  I have one last appointment for my medical screening so I can be put on the orders, so we can schedule our move and have our plane tickets booked.  Good times.  That will happen this Friday and once that is all set we can get that all scheduled.  What we are HOPING is to get out things packed and taken away the last week of February.  My last day with my kiddos at work will be the 21st... that's right, a week and a half left with my kiddos :(  Then I will have that last week to tie up loose ends with work, and clean the house.  Eric's last day at his command is Feb 28... then hopefully, March 1, we will be out of here.

From here we go to NJ to say goodbye to his family for probably overnight (I am HOPING to make it at east a full 24 hours.) then up to Syracuse to spend the rest of the week with my family.  After that... dance competition!!  I have to get one last one in.  From there it will be off to Ohio to stay with some of my relatives.  Then to Nebraska with some of my other relatives.  After that we don't yet know, Oklahoma?  Montana?  We have relatives in both.  Or we could go through Colorado.  After that- Las Vegas!  Maybe for a couple of days.  We will see.  Then, there is again the chance that we MIGHT... maybe... take a cruise outta LA.  It's a good price.  I don't see how we can turn it down, it will be our 4 days to celebrate both of our birthdays which he will be deployed for, plus an early anniversary celebration.

Then we fly to Hawaii... and get started with our new life.

Did I mention our cats are coming across country with us?  Four cats.  One back seat.  We got them a tube thing for the backseat so they can move around and have a litter box... Well... could get interesting... We will see!

~Katy

Scheduling a Tweet from TweetCaster App

Hey there!  I'm organizing a twitter bomb to try to get Zibbet trending on twitter!  Since not everyone who would like to be involved lives in the US (aka,they will be asleep when we do this) and others will be at work or otherwise disposed, I wanted to shre ONE of the ways to schedule a tweet to happen at a specific time.

I use TweetCaster onmy android when I am away from my computer to manage the TeamZibbet account.  I also use it for another twitter account of mine and have for a year or two now.  Here are the steps to schedule a tweet to happen at a designated time in the future.

 First, you need to set up the app, and select your twitter account.

To write a tweet, you lick on the button that looks like a paper with a pen.  This is the same if you are scheduling a tweet for later or sending it in that moment.

Type in what you want yours to say.  Pardon the typo, it's past my bedtime and I didn't want to bother retaking... anyways, you type in your tweet and once it is written you touch the top right where there are three dots.

This will open up a menu with the option to Post Later.  Dooooo ittttttttt!!

That will open up a calendar to use to schedule your tweet.  Just choose the date and time (I of course selected the date and time of the twitter bomb!) and hit OK!  Done.  After this it will still have your tweet in where you entered it.  I just hit back until I get back to my feed.

Pretty simple!  Hope it helped.

~Katy

About That Blanket...

OK finally!  I have been promising a blanket update for months now, and finally here it is!

I have a little over 100 squares done, making me about halfway done with the squares.  Of course, then there will be stitching them all together and stitching the edging, so not half way done with the blanket quite yet. 

It is going much more slowly than I had hoped, but the past week or two I've really tried to pick up the pace.  Hopefully I can get this thing done in under a year!  We will see.

I tried to upload a picture from my phone... for some reason my phone camera seems to suck, for no good reason at all.  I was trying to get a picture to put on instagram and it would look great on the screen then I'd tae the picture and look at it, and it turned out horrible.  I don't understand why it didn't just take the picture like it looked on the screen! I tried a few more, and here is the best I could get.  That's a lot of squares!  I'm clearly going to run out of room in the bag before too long.

~Katy

The Gorgeous Watkins Glen

I know, I promised an update on the blanket.  It will be coming soon!  But I am also 2 weeks behind getting my post up about what I did on my birthday!  Eric and I went up to Syracuse, since our nieces first birthday party was the day after my birthday, and since we are moving off the continent it was our last trip to NY before the weather starts getting cold.  Once I had realized we are actually moving to Hawaii, I was looking into things to do there and there's a LOT of gorgeous hikes.  That got me to thinking about pretty places I have been and the very top of that list has to be Watkins Glen State Park.  It's a beautiful gorge whereyou can hike up right along the water passing and walking over and under waterfalls the whole way.  And since I made sure to bring my camera... and take about a ZILLION pictures... you can take our little trip with us a little late :)

I was thankful that it worked out to be a GORGEOUS day, warm enough to be chilly to mebut perfect in the sun and after a fewminutes of walking.  The nature of the gorge means the path is wet the whole way up, and the area had been rainy this season so there was, well, larger puddles than in the years I've gone before.  So now to sift through the pictures and share with you the best!

 We have arrived!  As you can see, the parking lot goes right up to the entrance of the glen.  You go up some stairs through a hole I imagine was drilled in the rock up to the bridge...

 You can see my dad and Eric in the front, and random strangers coming down the stairs.  It was pretty busy the day we were there!

To the right of the middle in this next one is a hole in the rock from wherewater once flowed through.  Note it is nowhere close to where the water level is now, you can't even see any water in this picture!

There are a LOT of stairs when you are going up the gorge.  It's harder going up, which we did, but this direction you are looking forward at the waterfalls above you, rather than them falling from where you are below.  You just see what is coming without having to turn around as much.

What was that?  I promised you waterfalls, not stairs?

This particular waterfall was ROARING when we were there.  It was honestly a little scary being so close to the water shooting out with the path behind it.

Getting closer!

 And here we are!  Eric and I under the waterfall!  Note my sweatshirt.  I was still chilly at this point.  I should note I did see one other person in a sweatshirt.

From behind the waterfall!  I find myself very thankful that I got my camera at the NEX and we got a protection plan for it, which includes water damage so I could get some of these pictures and not have to worry about having to buy a new camera.  It's still just fine though, even though it got a little bit wet.

From next to the waterfall, you can see how the water shoots out!

From above!  I chose this picture to post of the splash pool, as you can see the way the water has carved out beheath the path quite a bit.

Looking up at a bridge that connects to a path higher up.

A first look at one of the puddles!  I missed getting a picture of the puddle so big and deep that a large rock was placed in the middle for people to go across.

And another puddle.  I took a bunch of puddle pictures.

One of the signs in the park showing some of the geological history.

In case you are wondering how far into the sheets of rock on either side of the gorge we are at this point in the climb.

Eric sat for a minute and found a fuzzy friend, which I had to get a picture of!

More waterfalls!

 A picture of where the water is calmer.  The striations in the rock are amazing!

All sorts of water.  Here on the left there is a stream that falls into the gorge with a shower like waterfall over the path.  You can reach out and touch it!  Of course I did.

And got pictures from behind it!  Of course.

Another little fall.

A close view.

This to the right of center was another shower down the side ofthe gorge.  I don't remember ever seeing this one before, we think it was just because of all the rain in the past couple months. It was particularly gorgeous from behind because the drops just sparkled with the sun shining down through it, which I tried to get pictures of when we got there.

More of the creek.  It's just so pretty.

A particularly large puddle.  No rock to help us over this one... had to balance right against a sheer rock wall with one foot on the side of the puddle.  And yep, that is my husband in flip flops.

At some places the water carves out wider or more random circles into the rock.

Ah here we are!  That shower fall, from behind.  You can see how bright the sun shone through!

You can almost make out the rambow shimmer in some of the drops farther down.

I did also get a video of it.  It was just that pretty.

The creek gets wide and narrow, wide and narrow.

I actually got a short video of this one, it's some foam that looks like a big angel food cake.  It was slowly rotating there in its little corner.

And here is that video!

They were waiting while I took an indecent number of pictures.  Like pictures of them!

This is what they are looking out over.

And the sign above where my husband was standing in the previous picture

The frowning cliff...

It looks like such an unassuming little creek.  Minus the sheer rock walls to either side!

More stairs!  There are hundreds of stairs hiking up the gorge trail.

Here the water flows through a VERY narrow section.

A railroad track which runs over the gorge.  There is a sign with pictures of how the bridge was originally built.  Basically, they learned the hard way that having a support in the middle of the creek was a really bad idea.  Those stairs are the end of the trail.

Stopped to rest half way up the stairs!

After this we took a bit of a break. I had a hot dog and some very delicious locally made ice cream!  Yum!  Then we chose to take the indian trail along above the gorge to get back.

Looking across to the cliff on the other side of the gorge.

Random structure.  I need to look up the story behind this. I'm not even sure what sort of building this was once used as, but it's a pretty color!

Another surprise along the indian trail... a random cemetary.

The look down from that bridge we were looking up at much earlier in the pictures.

And the parking lot, from high above!  There is, as you could imagine, a steep, tall staircase near here that brings you down the gorge to get back to the parking lot.  You can see how gorgeous this day was!  Hope you enjoyed the pictures and if you get the chance, head to Watkins Glen State Park in Watkins Glen, New York right next to Seneca Lake.  While you are there, check out the wineries!  It's just a beautiful place to visit.

I'll get a blanket update posted soon!  :)

~Katy