Just Jackie

UTAH!!!

Well it's been a fun filled and interesting weekend!! Friday morning Craig took me and Linkin to the airport to hop on our plane to Utah. Everything went well in a hectic sort of way. We checked my bags curbside where I learned that two of them were over the weight limit. H aha! I had sooo much stuff! I also checked three bags so one was extra and the guy didn't make me pay the overage on the other two or for the extra bag, because I had a military ID. Bless his heart!!! Every little penny saved is important right now~! So then we were rushing around the airport. It's so hard being alone with a baby. I had like 7 bins full of "stuff" that had to be security scanned, and then I had to fold up the car seat, fold up the stroller, take off everything on me and put it all on the scanner while holding Linkin, and rushing so the people behind me don't get ticked off!! It was chaos. I was literally sweating sooo bad by the time I was done. Then I had to run run run to our terminal and they said I was the last one on the plane. ha ha! I found a seat on the aisle so that was a plus and our first flight was only a half hour. Linkin did well. He just played with everything in sight. No screaming or crying though, so it was good. The gentlemen next to me on the flight was very nice, in fact he offered to move into the middle seat as I was looking for a place to sit, and I took him up on the offer! Nice man! Sometimes you meet the most polite people with the best manners and we won't speak of the other times! Anyway, we flew to Albuquerque first and then went straight to the next terminal and boarded our flight to Salt Lake City!!! Yay! That was a longer flight and when we took off, we got this turbulance that sent my stomach in a shamble. I was soo sick. I was in the middle seat this time, with Link on my lap and I was scared out of my mind I was going to throw up. The girl next to me wanted to chat a lot but looking over at her instead of straight up or with my eyes closed, just didn't do me well so I closed my eyes and pretended to be napping but really I was praying that I wouldn't vomit. It went away fairly shortly and came back and landing, but it was no big deal. Linkin did SOO good. He fell asleep in my arms for a half hour and got himself a little rest. Little being the keyword as he was WIRED the rest of the day and didn't sleep until 10pm. Poor guy. I felt so sad for him. He just had a rough day. So did I and all I wanted to do was relax and fall asleep because I was worn out! I arranged for my sister to pick me up because no one knew I was coming except for her - and Josilyn, but she was in Idaho. Anyway, Jamie came in and helped me out with ALL MY LUGGAGE! I had the three bags I checked, plus two carry ons, plus a car seat, PLUS a stroller. Ha ha~ It was a lot of stuff. I couldn't even begin to do it on my own so thanks to Jamie for her help! Anyway, she picked me up and then we realized that I hadn't gotten my car seat afterall so I ran back in with the plan of her picking me up on the curb, so I got out to the curb and there was millions of people out there and the traffic into the pick up area was backed up forever!!! It was dreadful. The heat was just more than I could handle at the time and I didn't have my phone to find out where she was. Anyways, long story short, after about fifteen long minutes - oh and Linkin was crying for a bottle that I had taken with me to make the whole time too - Jamie decided to go into the drop off area and I was thinking the same and watched for the chance she might do that and I ran across the street and jumped in so it worked out. Then the plan was to surprise my parents by showing up but my Dad was on the roof of the house getting the swamp cooler running. Three hours later, he was still up there so we surprised only my Mom first. I snuck up to the house so my Dad couldn't see me, and then stuck Linkin in a gray box with some flowers and doorbell ditched them. My Mom opened the door and immediately picked Link up and started crying saying she missed him and was so excited. I then popped out and said Happy Mothers Day. She was thrilled and then her and Jamie and her kids helped me to hide while my Dad got off the roof and came inside. Eventually I snuck outside again and did the same thing to my Dad only with a much different reaction! He opened the door and just stared down for the longest time with really no words. He was like, "what the?" what the? Then my mom was like, pick him up!!! and I popped out and said Happy Mothers Day and then he was like, Linkin!! Hi buddy! He told us later that in his mind, he knew it was Linkin but since he had bought my plane ticket to come there and it was for the 17th, he knew there was NO WAY it could really be Linkin and then he was also afraid to say anything because if he thought it was Linkin and it was really someone else's kid, we would all make fun of him. It was really quite funny, but in the end, he was very happy and excited to have us both here! Linkin played with cousins and grandma and grandpa all night long. It was a good day! Saturday was kind of slow up until around 1 when everyone finally came home. My Mom and Dad and I sat around outside in the yard, while I checked out all the beautiful flowers in their yard. Holy depressing. My flowers at home all died and there was 1/100th of the flowers they have here and theirs are all thriving and Beautiful!!! I love their yard. It makes me so miss it. I'll like Mississippi, because I'll be able to grow something and it won't be so dry that everything will crisp out right quick!! Linkin remembered his Grandma and grandpa right away but he took a little while adjusting to the rest of the clan. He gets scared really easy considering he's not around people very often. So it'll be interesting to see if he ever gets used to some people. Sunday was an ok day as well. I had plans to go surprise Craig's family a their Mother's Day Celebration, but it turns out they celebrated mothers day up at chalk creek and thats 2 hours from here, a drive I didn't want to take alone with Link. I would probably get lost anyway. Then Sunday after church, there was too many conflicting plans to be able to go there and spend a decent amount of time there!! So...hopefully tonight, I'll be able to when they get off work. I'll be writing about that too I hope! They still don't know I'm here!

TORNADO!!!!!!!!!

Emergency Preparedness! Scary!!! Well today we had a bit of a scare. It was about 2 O' clock and Craig called me and said, "JACKIE (which he NEVER EVER calls me!!), there's a tornado at White Sands Missile Range and they have evacuated their base." White sands Missile range is fairly close to us here at Holloman. We pass it all the time on our drive to Las Cruces. So he told me the base was on alert right now and he'd let me know if anything changes, but asked me to watch the news so that I know what's going on. So I was just hanging out with Link when the sirens on base started to sound. There is an intercom system on base, so someone can talk into or what not and we can hear it even from inside our homes *more on the intercoms later. The sirens are played over the intercom system and as soon as I heard them I waited for a few minutes and they kept going so I figured that that was a warning of some sort so I started to get dressed to leave and Craig called again, and was like "do you hear the sirens?" Of course I do. He told me they meant to take cover and that I needed to get prepared in case this thing came our way.  So I moved our mattress into a position where Link and I could hide under it, and then went outside to look out toward White Sands and see what I could see. It was super calm. Scary eh? The "calm before the storm". Anyhow, I found myself putting our 72 hour kits together soon after that. It's amazing how unprepared we are for an emergency. I think a lot of us think, oh we have our 72 hour kits ready, we're fine, or we have a years worth of food storage, we'll be fine, etc. etc. But in preparing today, I realized that my 72 hour kit (thanks to Grandma Dear - SOO MUCH!!!) was just food and some basic first aid stuff, and what not, but in it was another huge list of things you will need in an emergency. A lot of them things I don't even have, let alone have it ready!! Not to mention that I haven't even begun a 72 hour kit for Linkin. So it's probably something that is moving up on my important things to do list. It's just that that stuff can be so expensive and we can't really afford to be stocking up on 72 hour kit essentials (a "classic" excuse!). So anyway, just something to think about. The sirens went off after about fifteen minutes and the warning for our area cleared so OBVIOUSLY, nothing happened and we are all ok. I must say though that last night, I was here working on the computer and we had the most intriguing storm I've seen in a LONG time.  It was windy as all get out and the lightning was flashing so much that it would light up the whole room. I loved it so much. Craig was asleep but he and I both LOVE lightning and I really wanted to wake him up and go drive somewhere to watch because it was so awesome. Also, the thunder was rolling violently. It was quite exciting.

*About that intercom system... I've been meaning to write this in here for a while but keep forgetting. Anyway everyday at 4:30pm the national anthem is played on the intercom system for the whole base to hear. When this happens, no matter where you are, or what you are doing (as long as you are outside) even in your car, you have to stop and pay respects. There's been a time or two when I was hauling down the road and finally noticed that everyone was stopped and then it hit me and I pulled over. I've seen kids walking to their parents cars after school and they do not continue walking until it's over. So that's the rule, and if you don't follow, you can get a ticket. Then again at 10:00pm they play another bag-pipe song. I'm so spacey right now that I can't remember what it is, but it's popular and I'll update this sentence when I remember. It's one you hear at funerals I swear. ha ha! Not funny. Anyway, so that's a little patriotic story for you.

I'm embaressed to say that Craig and I have set up a MySpace account so that we can communicate with some friends and what not. So we'll see how that goes. I'm not a big fan and it's very addicting to search and search for people you know. So we try not to spend time on there. ha ha! LOVE!