01 June 2011

Memorial Day Weekend

Hello blogworld and welcome to June...how is this possible? I can't believe it's June already!  We've now been in El Paso for 5 months...doesn't that mean it's time to move again? Ha!
The past few weeks here have been quite HOT. We're apparently going on around 115+ days of no rain, although we have a 30% chance of it today. I'm going to say that's not going to happen...sun is bright, not a cloud in the sky. I absolutely love the amount of sun we get here, but I think rain might help cool us off... A week or two ago, my friend Lucy came into town! Her fiance works with Brian, so we spent some time together while they were at work...which equated to lounging by the pool and talking for 5+ hours. It was so nice to lay out, soak in some sun, and have girl time, buuut...in true "Rebecca" fashion, and in my eagerness to get my first tan of the summer, I neglected to put on sunscreen with a respectable SPF. (In my mind, SPF 4 will do...). Well, I learned my lesson (for the 12th time in my life...). I was hot pink in quite a few areas. The El Paso sun is intense! Not to mention I'm 3,500ft. closer to the sun than usual-ha!

Well, the sunburn has subsided, which is great considering my brother is getting married in 10 days! Which is blowing my mind...I am so excited about seeing all my family and friends, but I know it's going to be a whirlwind of a weekend! I'm sure a lengthy blog post or two will be dedicated to this after I get back.

So onto this weekend! While with Army life there are lots of long hours/days, they do know how to do a holiday right. On federal holiday weekends, we not only get the holiday off, but also the Friday before or the Monday after off, resulting in a 4-day weekend! They totally deserve it. We did the math and realized Brian works a 12-14 hour day...everyday. So thankful for him! So in light of his long hours, we did Friday right: I subbed, he slept in and lounged all day! We capped the day off with Hangover II. Hilarious. If you go see if, make sure you shield your eyes for the pictures at the end...

Saturday we got up pretty early and went on a hike with our great friends Stuart and Dana. There is a ridgetop trail right behind our apartment that we decided we wanted to tackle. Roundtrip, it's about 7-8 miles, and normally, that wouldn't be too much of a task for us; Brian and Stuart spend large parts of their lives "hiking" around strapped down with heavy gear, and Dana and I are putting in some running miles, so we figured this shouldn't be too bad! But once again, the Southwest got the best of us. After spending 25 minutes climbing up the mountain (and feeling the burn in our calf muscles....) we reached the ridgeline trail. The wind blows constantly in El Paso, and up here on the top of the mountain it can get really gusty! Hiking up here is a little slow...you have a lot of careful stepping to do around cacti and rocks! Inevitably you get pricked a time or two by one of these little monsters. We had high hopes of making it all the way to the end and coming back again, but the sun started to get to us; we had started at 7:30, but it is probably in the 80s here by around 9 AM...and too, we also lost the trail.  Actually, it totally disappeared! We could see where it picked up again on the next mountain, but the only way we could get there (or so it seemed) was to climb down this super steep rock face, and we decided this was a little to treacherous for us! Especially once you see what the boys were carrying...All in all it was great hike, and we were pooped afterwards!

Sunday evening, Stuart, Dana, and our friends Ashley and Josh came over for dinner and games--so much fun!  We played this great game called "Funglish"; if you like word games, this one is for you! It's very similar to Taboo but with a fun twist. I think I turned my family off of this game over Christmas because I wanted to play it so much!

Brian and I have been celebrating his birthday this week since he is leaving tomorrow for California. His true birthday isn't until Monday, but since he won't be here we decided to deem this week "birthday week". Which means I'm graciously allowing him to watch "Civil War Week" on the History Channel...haha!

The past two days I've been helping Ashley and Josh move on-post, and it's getting me so excited about whenever we'll get to move there! The houses are almost brand new, and while they're pretty much builder-grade type houses, they're HUGE and clean! And they have laundry rooms. I am SO excited! Too bad we're still number 121 on the waiting list...patience.

While the guys are gone at NTC, a group of the wives from our brigade are doing a Bible study called "Tour of Duty", which is about preparing our hearts and minds for deployment. It starts today and I'm really excited about it! The author is a military wife and we're going to Skype with her at the end of the study-so cool!

Well, that is about all from El Paso! I'm getting so excited about going home next week! It'll be a good pick-me-up since Brian will have just left.  Here are some pictures from the past few weeks that I'll leave you with!

For our anniversary I decided to make our wedding cake. We already ate our topper...I figured it wouldn't make it through two moves...especially to the desert!

 Stuart and Dana on our hike!

See all the stuff the boys carried with them? I took full advantage and loaded Brian with some snacks and water :)



Our hallway...some of Brian's stuff for NTC. Notice how I said some...yes, there is more...

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