We are planning to go north and check in to the new base either the 23rd or 24th. I am ready. I miss my stuff. I want to crawl into my own bed, eat off of my own dishes, cook in my own kitchen. I want to get started on finding a home to call our own. With a pool…. I am ready to get the kids into school and start a regular routine. Back to reality so to speak.

I have to go get ready to make dinner and try to find out if the man bought me anything while he was out with his mother today… I bet he didn’t. He is always afraid he will disapoint me with his choice so he takes me and lets me make my own decision, but I am weepy and I want him to do it sometimes.

So last night I was sitting on the sofa watching the finale of America’s Got Talent and feeling chilly I had a little blanket across my lap. My son says “uh, uh mom, uh…” and I look down and the biggest freakin roach (palmetto bug) was starting to crawl across my lap. I started to freak! I was screaming and almost stopped breathing… It was BAD. I tossed the blanket, bug, and remote control across the floor and let out the biggest girly shreak. For the first time ever, my husband came running across the room scooped up a shoe and smashed it, without saying a word. Usually he would tell me to stop being such a girl and just kill it. -yeah not likely to happen! But last night he was a night in shining armor. My hero. All that sappy stuff.

Little Maggie came running out of the bedroom to see what the commotion was and saw her papa with her shoe in hand smashing a “cacaroach”. She was NOT happy. Told him he is never to pick up her shoe and kill anymore “cacaroaches” ever, ever again! He appologized to her but said he had to to protect mommy, and that seemed to make her ok with it.

Anyways I had all kind of nightmares about freaking bugs on me last night and Jeff still has a nasty cough that kept me up all night so I feel like dragons breath smells this morning. But, I was rescued last night and that makes me feel good. Somehow, I will have a better day!

Key West was awesome!! I have dreamed about going there since I was like 10 or something. We parked down by The Southernmost Hotel and walked all over. We stopped first at the southernmost point of the US. There is a neat pole thing painted there, and we took a photo of all the kids next to it. Then we stopped in to Ernest Hemmingway’s home. We petted on some of his beautiful kitties, and I drooled over most of his furniture. Then we walked down toward the Aquarium and stopped on the boardwalk to pick up some water for everyone. (Did I mention it was FREAKING hot??) We walked right past Mel Fichers Maritime Museum, where he shows his trasures found from sunken ships of long ago. When I was much younger this mans adventures are how I fell in love with Key West and its mysteries. He found one of the biggest lost treasures the Florida Keys has to offer, the Atocha. If you dont know much about it I strongly reccomend the National Geographic video about him and his finds. Most video rental places should have it…

Anyway I didnt get to go in this time as it was about lunch time and the kids were starting to grumble. We chose to go into the aquarium and see what it had to offer and after dad and the hubby got thier fill they chose to go get the cars and park them in a paarking garage close by. The Aqarium had all kinds of tanks filled with every tropical fish you could imagine and then some. Plus a great touching tank as you walked in. The kids loved the hermit crabs, sea cucumbers, pencil urchins, conchs, and horseshoe crab. We walked past a huge open top tank with sting rays and a sea turtle and another with nurse sharks. Which was a little scary cause I kept thinking one of my kids was going to fall in cause they were so thrilled to see REAL sharks. They had displays for different kinds of sea turtles, urchins, sharks and all kinds of beautiful fish in the same tank, all kinds of conchs (this is the Repubic of the Conch we are talking about!) and more starfish than you can imagine. They even have some live web cams that you can view from their website. While we waited for the men to come back with the cars we sat near the stingray tank and the rays must have enjoyed it as they kept coming near us and popping thier heads out of the water to get a god look at us I guess. A few times a couple of the bigger ones damn near hopped out of the tank trying to get a good look!

Once the guys got back we walked over to the Conch Republic Restaraunt which we happened to see on an episode of Road Tasted on the Food Network a week or so before (click the link and scroll down to the little map and click the dot for Key West-you can even watch the whole episode there!). The food looked so good we decided to eat there when we finally went. We also saw a great place to get frozen Key Lime Pie on a stick dipped in chocolate, and one to get toasted coconut bread. We planned on going to those places but, didnt get to as we were all feeling pretty lousy from the heat and my sister in law was really feeling the effects of the heat, as she almost had a couple seizures when we sat down for lunch. (for those of you who don’t know my sister in law is 23 years old but only has the abilities of a 2 month old baby. At some point in her development in-utero she was denied oxigen and this is how God gave her to us, a beautiful angel) We decided after those close calls to just call it a day and go home. We live in Florida now we came come here anytime we want. And next time, we will come down and stay a weekend. There is so much to see and do, you just can’t do it in a day trip.

The drive home was just as beautiful as the drive there, (by the way, we left at 6 am you should to, its a 3 hour drive and the place is hoppin by 9) there was a huge black cloud looming overhead with a great display of lightening for us to see and a bit of rain to go with it. When we got home it was raining and it probably had all day from the size of the puddles everywhere.

And the pool this morning was just plain nasty! I was teasing Chelle the other day about her pool being gross after a storm and now I have gotten my just deserts! Ours was so murky you couldn’t even see the bottom rungs on a bright blue ladder! EW! So much for getting some sun on my white legs! I must do laundry now so I will end the HUGE post.

Ciao.

My mother called me yesterday to tell me that my aunt was told a week ago that the last bout of chemo didn’t work, and there is nothing more that they can do about it. She has only weeks.

My sister works for a hospital in Washington that can do a pin-point laser surgery to destroy the tumor and not touch the surounding tissue. My aunt is looking into it, if this doesn’t work, I will loose my most favorite aunt.

Please say a prayer for her. She is a good woman, worked hard all her life, is good to everyone who walks thru her door, a great mother, grandmother, and aunt. She deserves to have a long and happy life and to see her kids (all of them) finish growing up, marrying, and have children of thier own. She deserves to die of natural causes, not be taken out by cancer.

To my aunt, I’d like to say, I love you. You are a great woman and a fantastic aunt. You are an insperation to me. You will forever be my favorite aunt.

I hate thinking about this. It makes  me sick to my stomache. I have lost so many people in my family to cancer I want to scream “HAVEN’T YOU TAKEN ENOUGH FROM ME?” I need to take some painkillers. My head is pounding.