Pismo Beach

Every summer the Charles Family gets together for a weekend up in Pismo Beach.  It is such a fun time for us all to be together.  We laugh, eat, play games, go on walks & just enjoy being together so much.  Even though we all live in California, we don't get to see each other as often as we would like.  I am so blessed to have such an amazing family that I just can't get enough of.  I am always so sad to leave my family and Pismo.  Wish we could turn it into a week long family trip!  This year was especially fun because we now have four little ones (all girls!) in our family, including the youngest addition who just turned five months.  I couldn't get enough of the little ones.  Everyone joked that I was hogging baby Naomi, but she is just so cute and snuggly.  I didn't want to let that love nugget go!

See, I wasn't the only one holding little Naomi...

there was plenty of her love to go around...

the whole family.

But, I did get to wear the baby bjorn so I think that
makes me a little more official.

We all loved taking walks on the beach and pier.  In Pismo, there are so many pelicans on the pier.  They just love hanging out there and are so chill.  If you ask me, I think they are a little lazy because they just sit around waiting for a handout from the fishermen.  Those pelicans are pretty funny looking creatures, but also pretty neat little guys.

Missing my Drew

Cousins!

Me and my Pops

Beautiful Little Miss Abigail, aka Goose

This Day & Age

I've been really bad at blogging lately.  I've definitely been thinking a lot about blogging, but that isn't exactly the same as actually blogging.  I had a goal to do at least a blog a week, but I've drastically failed at that goal.  Oh well, there's always time to start over again.

I haven't written much on here about the challenges of Drew's deployment.  I didn't really want to get myself down or anyone else, but I think it's important to remember just how much all of the military spouses and families sacrifice too.  Living in this day & age, people say we've had it a lot easier than soldiers and families in prior wars.  I get to Skype with Drew almost every day, the mail works pretty regularly, even though I have yet to see if any letters can arrive from Afghanistan but I think that has more to do with Drew's lack of writing than the mail system, and we are bombarded with news about the war.  I am very lucky that Drew is not directly involved in combat situations because I don't actively worry about him everyday.  I trust that he is in God's hands.  But, there have been a few times when I didn't hear from Drew for a few days and I began to get worried.  So I scoured the Afghanistan news websites to see if there was any bad news from Drew's district.  Thankfully, there wasn't.

But I got to thinking...if I lived in a time when there was not accessible internet or Skype, and I only heard from Drew every few weeks by letter, I wouldn't really know when to be worried.  Maybe I'd be worried all of the time or maybe I would just live my life the best I can over here because I wouldn't have the luxury of rushing to the Internet to look for the latest news.  It would just be normal if I didn't hear from him for a few weeks at a time.  Maybe my arms wouldn't ache so much from wanting to reach out and touch him as I look at him on my computer screen.  Maybe I wouldn't feel quite as lonely after I say goodnight to him but roll over to an empty bed because I would have gotten used to being on my own.  I'm not saying it would be easier to go back to the old days because I don't know if it would.  And I wouldn't trade being able to Skype with Drew for anything.  But, it's hard.  It's hard trying to live your life everyday with half of your heart on the other side of the world.  I just think it's hard no matter what, though.  

Unbelizeable

It has been really hard these past few months with Drew gone, but I have definitely been spoiled with all of the traveling and fun things I've been doing.  Now I have one more fantastic experience to add to the list.  Drew's sister, Maggie, and I went down to Belize and Guatemala last week.  We had such a fabulous time!  It was the first visit for both of us to Belize and we absolutely loved it.  It is such an easy country to travel in - the people are so nice, everyone speaks English (it used to be a British colony), they accept U.S. dollars everywhere, there is so much delicious fresh fruit, and there is tons of excursioning to be done!

We spent three nights in the jungle near San Ignacio, which is right on the Guatemala border.  We stayed in an eco-lodge with cute little cabins, hammocks everywhere, a view overlooking the river and tons of wildlife.  From there we went on a hike (and saw a tarantula!), took a side trip to Guatemala to see the breathtaking Maya ruin, Tikal, and did quite a bit of relaxing.

Our jungle cabin - it was so dark at night!  I woke up in the middle of the night and
thought I was blind because I couldn't even see my own hand.

A little cribbage with river views and some Belikins (the national beer of Belize)

Amazing Tikal ruins rising up out of the jungle

The second half of our trip was a bit derailed by Tropical Storm/Hurricane Ernesto.  We had planned to go out to the islands off the northern coast of Belize, but they were evacuated due to the storm so instead we headed down to the beaches in the south - a little place called Placencia.  I think our last-minute trip ended up even more wonderfully than we could have planned.  We stayed two nights at a lovely little guesthouse (where the owner baked us fresh chocolate chip cookies!) that was right in the town.  We rode our bikes into town, tried out all of the local restaurants and enjoyed watching the Olympics.  For our last two nights we moved to a hotel right on the beach with a swimming pool, its own dock and the best restaurant in Belize.  It was truly perfect.  We wished we could have stayed about three more months there.  It was a wonderful trip!  I had so much fun traveling with you, Maggie.  Can't wait until next August!  

Placencia Village

View from our room - couldn't get much better!

Rhode Island Bound

Wow!  I've been a huge blogger slacker lately.  I guess I've just been so busy vacationing and having fun that I didn't budget in any time to blog - yikes!

Well, it's official.  We will be heading to Newport, Rhode Island in October!  We are very excited with this new post.  Drew will be teaching at the Naval Justice School there.  I think it will be a really good fit for him, and he's very excited about it.  Hopefully I'll be able to find a job quickly.  I'm not exactly looking forward to taking another bar, but not much I can do about that.  We will be there for three years, so we are excited to settle down and make our home there together.  We've already been looking up rentals and are looking for a place with three bedrooms so that we will have plenty of room for visitors.  So start planning to come visit us!!

Did Somebody Say Fiesta?!

Since Friday (the 13th) marked my last birthday as a twenty-something, I decided to celebrate in style.  Mexican style, that is.  Me and two of my dearest friends, Lindsay and Sarah, went down to Cabo for the week.  The three of us took a trip to Cabo after we graduated college, which was 7 years ago!!  I know, we're so old.  It was definitely a different trip this time - a lot less glitter tank tops, dancing and looking for trouble.  A lot more spa treatments, card games, reading and relaxing poolside.  But the same amount of laughs, chats and just enjoying being together.  It was a wonderful week!  Wish I could have stayed down there longer!!

The gorgeous view from our balcony

Getting golf-carted around our resort - flying first class

Lindsay and I decided to take a Cabo Adventure and ride some camels.  Yes, you read that right, I said that we rode camels in Mexico!  Camels are definitely not indigenous to Mexico.  In fact, the camels that we rode came from Texas.  Our adventure package included a nature walk, a camel ride, tortilla making, a delicious Mexican lunch and tequila tasting.  It was definitely an adventure!  I have to say that it was pretty awesome to ride a camel while looking out at the Pacific Ocean.  Not many people can say they've done that...

Pre-camels

Our luxury ride

Salud!!

Our camel was named Slim - pretty cute, huh?  Him, not us.

Other than the camel ride, we only ventured out of our hotel one evening.  We really are old ladies!  We went to one of the resorts associated with our hotel for a Mexican Fiesta.  There was a delicious buffet with especially amazing desserts (somebody who will remain nameless ate 6 desserts single-handedly!), dancing and a gorgeous view for our dining pleasure.

My girls

Here's to our Cabo trip in another 7 years, girls.  Love you! 

Happy First of July!

I love the month of July!  First and foremost, it's my birthday month.  Second, I really like the Fourth of July holiday for some reason.  It always makes me so proud to be an American (slightly cheesy, I know, and I hope some of you were singing the rest of the song in your head with me) and so proud of my hubby and all the others like him that are serving our country.  Also, let's be honest, I really like the food associated with holidays and there's nothing like some tasty barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad and watermelon.  Can't wait!  Also, July always makes me really feel like it's summer.  So, summer is here!  Yay!

This past weekend my wonderful sister-in-law, Angela, came to California for a whirlwind trip.  We managed to get so much done in such a short period of time.  We worked on cleaning out the hutch in my parent's dining room that was full of a lot of stuff.  For those of you that don't know, my mom collected salt and pepper shakers.  She had SO many - 76 sets in total!  We each kept a few of them, but also gave quite a few away.  She had so many cute and fun ones.  I kept a Christmas/Coke one that has Santa and a little dog standing by a fireplace, an set of elephants standing under a tree and a pair of London guards that Drew had brought back for my mom.  I'm really happy about the ones that I kept.  It was sad to go through all of her stuff and donate a lot of it; in fact, we actually dropped off some dishes at Goodwill and then I started crying on the way back home so we turned around and took some back.  At least they didn't make me buy them back!  I was so thankful that Angela was here to help me with this task.  I couldn't have done it without her.  Love you, sissy!

June Bugs!

Drew asked me the other day if I was trying to tell him something because I've been sending him so many kid pictures.   But the truth really is that I've just been hanging out with so many cute little munchkins that I can't help sharing the cuteness.  I'm at the stage in life when a lot of my friends and cousins are having kids of their own now and I'm just so glad that I get to spend so much time with them all.  It's going to be sad when we move away again and I have to miss seeing them grow up.  I'm just trying to soak it all up while I can.

In mid-June, my beautiful cousin Marianne and her husband, Josh, graduated from veterinary school from UC Davis.  I couldn't be more proud of them and I felt so honored to be able to make it up there for the graduation.  It was such a nice weekend hanging out with my family.  And I got to meet the newest member of the Charles family, little Naomi Marie Charles.  Take a look at all of these cute pictures, and just tell me if you wouldn't be sharing them too?!

Abby & her daddy 

Naomi Marie

Abby & her Auntie M

Naomi & her proud grandpa

And since I can't post only kid pictures, here are some pictures from the graduation.  I had never been to Davis before, but Marianne gave us a wonderful tour of the vet school - it is spectacular.  We even got to see the horses, cows & llamas.  So cool!  Now we have two doctors of veterinary medicine in our family.  Congrats!

Dr. Marianne Krumheuer! 

Family train ride through Old Town Sacramento!