WAAAHHHOOOOO!!

I received my 1st ever blog award =)  I see bloggers all the time posting these to their sites and I never in a million years thought I'd actually get one.  I feel like I finally fit in with the cool kids now, thanks Tori!  (check her out over at Tori and Chad and give her some comment love!)

My job now is to tell my readers 10 things they don't already know about me and since most of my readers already know me personally, this is going to be HARD, but here goes nothing =) (ok, I gave up, if you know me in person, you probably know most/all of these things about me)

1. I cannot believe this has never made it to the blog before now.  I AM ADDICTED TO COKE, as in Coca Cola!

I actually quit drinking it for 9 whole days and just gave in about 3 hours ago and chugged one that was hiding in the garage!  I'm going to try REALLY REALLY hard to cut back from 6+ per day to one a day, and I'm not going to keep it in the house so that should help drastically!

2. I don't eat red meat or pork.  

 

I didn't eat any meat for about 5 years, then instead of gaining the freshman 15, I lost it and I didn't have it to lose!  I was working for my college's football team, assisting 3-a-day practices and working my butt off and just not getting enough protein in my body.  So Easter weekend (don't ask me why I picked that weekend) I ate a chicken sandwich (from Burger King none the less) and slowly started adding chicken to my diet.  That was almost 10 years ago (holy crapola, I can't believe it's been almost 10 years since I was a freshman in college!) and since then I've started eating seafood and turkey.  Lately I've been considering adding red meat back into my diet (mostly for my hubby's sake) but I'm not 100% sure yet.  I believe the lack of red meat keeps me at a healthy weight and overall just healthier, so I'm not sure.

3. I miss working.

Before I married my husband I worked for Delta Airlines, and I miss it.  I miss having something to do during the day the most, but I also miss my coworkers, especially my best friend, Holly (wow we looked rough at work the day after my birthday but this is the only pic I can find of us at work):

I miss traveling for free, I miss the customers and their ridiculous stories, I miss getting to wear PJ's to work, I miss the friends I made working there, I miss making my own money.  I love my hubby, but I miss being independent!

4.  Before my husband, I gave my heart to the game of hockey!

 

So I went to games with my parents when I was young, in fact I remember hiding under my seat 2 rows behind the bench when a fight broke out because I didn't want to see anyone get hurt.  Then I went to a game in jr. high because a boy I liked was going to be there and that's when it happened.  Not only did I fall in love with that boy but I fell in love with the sport, and although the guy is no longer in my life, the game still is and I wouldn't trade it for the world! I love everything about it and I can't wait to watch the US beat Canada for the gold medal tomorrow!!!  My AWESOME HUSBAND was deployed during our 1 year wedding anniversary so he made up for it by sending me and my best friend, Holly, who I mentioned in # 3, to the NHL All Star game in Montreal:

Where we met GORDIE HOWE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (For you non-hockey fans, he is AKA Mr. Hockey!!!!)

But also ALEXANDER OVECHKIN who is, in my opinion, the 2nd best current player (some may argue he's the best, I disagree)!!!!

Let me tell ya, if my husband misses another anniversary, he set the bar REALLY high!

5. My grandma was my best friend and I 100% believe I would not be who I am today without her influence! I miss her dearly!

Which leads me to #6:

6.  Jason and I are JOPers!  We were laying in bed talking one night about getting married when he got back from deployment and I started thinking about my grandpa being sick with cancer, and Jason's grandma being sick with cancer, and Jason's grandpa being sick in general and the thought of my grandpa not being at my wedding freaked me out.  My grandparents practically helped raise me and if he didn't make it until Jason got home from deployment, I would have been besides myself, so we called our parents the next morning and said "what are you doing on Saturday?, nothing? good.  we're coming home (to Cincinnati) and getting married." And that is exactly what we did.  We took our parents, grandparents (who didn't quite understand why we were doing what we were doing), and our siblings and went to this ghetto little chapel in Kentucky and got married.  

Right before Jason deployed, his grandpa passed away, while he was gone, my grandpa passed and right after he got home, my grandma passed away.  I could not be happier that we did things the way we did!

7. Speaking of wedding, we had a big ceremony/reception a few months after Jason got home from his last deployment and I got a FREE wedding dress!  I read on the knot about a woman in New Hampshire that was giving away bridal gowns to women engaged to deployed soldiers for 2 days and 2 days only.  I made a few phone calls (lucky for me, my best friend still worked for Delta) and the next morning, my sister(and MOH) and I got up REALLY early in the morning and hopped on a flight to Boston.

We rented a car, spent a few hours in Boston, being tourists, drove to New Hampshire, stuck our feet in the freezing cold ocean

tried on 3 dresses (I think, maybe 4), ate some yummy seafood, got back in the car and drove back to Boston and flew home with a gorgeous wedding dress for free!

I even ended up on the front page of the small town's newspaper the following day =)  It was such a fun experience, and I'm so glad I got to share it with my awesome sister!

8. Before I married Army, I dated all other major branches of military (Navy on and off for a couple years, Air Force for about 2 weeks and Marine for a year and a half)...sorry, no pictures for this one!  Needless to say, most people weren't surprised when I married a soldier!  On my behalf, I must say that I never sought these guys out, it just sort of happened that way!

9. I love to cook, but I hate cleaning!  I would cook even more than I already do if I didn't have to clean up after myself.  I hate dishes, I hate laundry, I have vacuuming, I hate dusting...I am not cut out to be a house wife!

10.  I'm tired and I'm going to bed...maybe I'll think of something better to put here in the morning! (Edit: While laying in bed unable to sleep until 5 am, I decided I want to run the Cincinnati Flying Pig 1/2 Marathon in 9 weeks

However, I'm not a runner AT ALL, so I'm probably setting myself up for failure, but we'll see how it goes....training starts TOMORROW!!!!!)

Tori, thank you again, this was so much fun for me!  I got to go through some old photos to add here and I loved it!  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!