Red, White and Blue

I tell everyone I see that I absolutely love living here in Georgia for one reason: the beach. This one reason is enough to mask the reality of living in a small military town. Yesterday we spent the holiday at St. Simons and after countless trips to the island, it still takes my breath away. I wonder if I lived there permanently if I would find the huge live oak trees and Spanish moss ordinary.

It's true that we could've stayed at Fort Stewart for the holiday (the military installation with the biggest and best 4th of July celebration) and joined the 50,000people who were there to see the Zac Brown Band, but we decided it was just too crowded, too many people, to actually be fun. So to escape the crowds we hit the beach and joined about 50,000 other people with the same idea of fun: boogey boards, a picnic lunch, and burying your big brother in the sand.

This year we celebrated with our own red, white and blue: our red cheeks from the sun, the white sand in our toes, and the clear blue sky.

Happy 4th of July!

True Love

Now that I am totally over the entire fiasco with the vice-president's wife brushing us off for a visit to an off-post school, I will tell you that my Valentine's Day was completely uneventful.

Let me first add that Wes is home, and because he has been home only two months in the last six months, this is saying a lot. Of course, this does not mean he actually sat at the table with us for dinner, or that he is even home tonight for dinner, but he is in the same state as the rest of the family. We define this as "home." When he returned Saturday night and began to hint that he had no idea what to get me for the holiday, I relieved his anxiety with a quick, "Nothing!" And he looked at me and said, "That's why I love you. You don't expect anything."

This is not completely true, and I almost told him as much. After so many years of marriage, I expect more - nothing in the form of flowers, mushy cards, or cheap chocolates, though. What I really expect is foreign travel and maybe a professional landscaper to fix my backyard that is currently the neighborhood drainage pond. But since the first would require him to actually be home and the later would require something other than a roll of his eyes, I see neither happening any time soon. In all honesty, I really foresee the purchase of a riding lawn mower as our joint birthday and Valentines gift because after pushing a lawn mower in 100 degree temps over one acre of uneven land last year, I feel like a riding lawn mower might just revolutionize my upcoming summer. That and our current lawn mower is held together with rubber bands, and this was rigged together after it visited the local small motor repair shop - twice.

This is how true love should be defined...true love is the purchase of a riding lawn mower for Valentines Day for the wife. Only true love would accept such a deal, or did I confuse true love with desperation?

The boys, on the other hand, hit the jackpot this Valentines Day with money, cookies, candy, and new Wii Games, and because neither boy came home with special gifts from a girl, I went to sleep considering the day a big success!