To tHe StATeS!

This past week was all about getting what I do at the shop squared away for Darin to do, and to get it easy enough for him to do it during his hectic day. I'll be gone for 2 weeks and my job is really just a LOT of busy work. We started a new bonus system which is AWESOME and I got a marker board to keep track of who's winning the weekly bonus and the monthly bonus. Hopefully my desk won't be a disaster when I get back in 2 weeks.

Speaking of my desk, what about the house! I've learned in life I can be an enabler. I enable my brother when I lived with him by taking care of ALL the bills, grocery shopping, mail, SOME laundry, cleaning, really a list of stuff. After I moved he's done pretty well at taking care of it, only paying the electric late twice and the mortgage once (yikes!!). I like to think when I leave this house for 2 weeks, my enabling abilities for the household (because I do a lot of that stuff) won't rub off when I leave it to Boomer and Darin. That laundry won't be everywhere, Boomer's hair won't cover the floor, ants won't be invading left over food everywhere, dishes won't be piled in the sink, it won't smell like a dumpster and sheets be clean when I get home. I feel like I do this stuff all day long, so while i'm gone, who's going to make dinner for Darin and going to do his dishes while he sits on the couch and plays call of duty??? He's a good husband, so I think he'll have everything caught up for me when I get home :) , even if he has to hustle the day before I get back. If my brother can do it, anyone can do it! 

Organized enabler:

I'm pretty sure i'm an enabler because i'm organized and don't think other people can do it as well as I can so I just do it myself. It's in my blood to be organized and have things done right away and not tomorrow. I can't leave the house with dishes in the sink, I can't leave laundry un-hung, I don't like 1 piece of dog hair on the floor, I have to make my bed and all my labels have to face forward. I do try and let go of some things....so this laid back lifestyle definitely helps me not be such a freak sometimes.

ADIOS!!! See you Orlandonians tomorrow!!!

GrOWn Up sTuFF

One of the most stressful things about being here are things like, health ins, life ins, savings accounts, credit cards, really anything that is going to be a monthly withdrawal. Since we don't have a bank account here, we can't set anything up for automatic withdrawal and if we did, who knows if they could make a withdrawal from a foreign account. Health ins and life ins plans are mostly if you live in the US and since we reside out of the country most of the weeks out of the year, it limits our plans to choose from. It's frustrating looking for things and having to call companies in the US with skype, then have the internet go down and i'm constantly calling everyone back. 

I did finally use my mom's advice and go to Clark Howard's website (http://www.clarkhoward.com/) to look up life ins companies on there. I called and found a life ins policy for people who travel outside the US more than in the US and are American citizens with a US address. All this red tape!!! When I go home in 2 weeks i'm also looking into health ins for us. Hopefully i'll find something and get that over with too. I want to set up a Roth account also and start saving money in there but the big task for all of this, will be to have money every time we go home for the coming months to leave in our US account. It's forced us to be better at saving money so we'll always have it in case we need it. We've thought about getting an account here when Darin gets his full permit, but it's so much easier with cash here. Not many places take cards, and if they do, it's with the carbon copy machine thing from like years ago when debit cards first came out. 

At least I don't have to worry about anything else until babies one day, and what country to have them in and health ins that goes along with all of that. It's going to be a whole other ball game when that day happens. Until then, we'll just get this other stuff out of the way so it's less to do when our lives get REALLY crazy.

BoOmMEr BuBBs

 This is what we do while Darin's at work. LOL my favorite one is the last one with just Boomer in it. He's so cooperative with the camera, I couldn't help but play with photo booth.

By the way this is our dog Boomer. He's actually a friends dog but they moved to Cayman and had to leave him here until his doggie health papers go though. But until he leaves, he's basically our kid. He eats dinner with us, snugs on the couch for tv time, lays in our bed to watch movies at night, enjoys walking to starbucks and the local post office, visiting neighbors dogs, laying in the sun on the front porch and going wild on the beach with his other dog friend Sky. He's very energetic and lovable, very smart, and always extremely happy to see when you've left for 5 mins or 5 days! He doesn't like when Darin and I wrestle, he's always got my back and jumps on Darin to save me......oh my hero!!

We have been dealing with a case of the flea bugs lately. He had a dip at the vet and I bought some flea and tic killing shampoo for after the beach on Sundays. He's still itchy and I found a flea again the other day. Hopefully this will end soon, I don't know what else I can wash and clean, they just keep coming back! 

OveR LoAD

SURPRISE!!! I've edited our blog...BIG TIME! Do you like?? It's taken me just about all day sitting her going through other peoples blogs, googleing "how to" do everything on my blog. I've edited the html stuff, the codes...deleted and replaced, changed colors for words, found a new cool background, and the hardest thing I searched over 2 hours for, was how to get those links to work. Ya know, the ones that say home, about us, contact, why blog etc, only to find out from 6 or 7 different sites and putting my own smarts together it was the easiest thing. I totally missed it a few days ago when I couldn't figure it out, so I tried again today only to find out it's like a 3 click step, no codes, no uploading, no searching necessary. Ugh....so it's after 5pm and i'm on a web over load, I think I learned some stuff today.

Oh and now everyone can comment on any post with out logging into anything, just write your comment and choose "anonymous" as the profile!! 

SinKiNg iN

We FINALLY live in somewhat of the 21st century here, meaning we finally have internet after fighting for over a month with the cable company here. Hopefully i'll be able to blog more often like i've been wanting to.

Lately Darin and I have been missing our group of friends. Our friends in Orlando and our other group of friends we had in Freeport. We don't have that group here, it's really just me and Darin. We've had people here recently and then we went home for a long weekend and I think it's setting in that it's just us now. We met a couple who we went to dinner with one night, just wish they lived here. Why can't we meet people that live here? As a newly married couple we're doing great on our own. We don't really fight and for as much time as we spend together, I guess it's a good thing. We have our tv shows that we love and we download the other shows from the channels we don't get. We download movies and have lots of movie nights, every Sunday we bring Boomer to the beach for the day and other than that, Darin works full time and I do part time. It's a very easy, carefree life we have here, but it's also sad sometimes because we miss our friends and family to do things with. We definitely save money, that's for sure.

I go home in 2 1/2 weeks for another friends wedding and also for my sisters 23rd birthday. Geez that makes me feel old! I loved 23, it was my favorite year, a life changing year and hopefully it will be for Laura too, in only the best way possible of course!