Sitting in the Walmart Buggy.

A few weeks ago, Husband and I went to Destin with a great group of friends from our church. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I have are from the rides to and from the beach. Husband and I had the pleasure of having Josh and Erica ride with us for Ollie's maiden voyage to the beach. We spent the drive listening to music (and sometimes singing along- mostly to Disney) and munching on peppers and all the sugary candies that Erica graced us with.

A trip is not a trip until someone poses with a child's bike and Yoda.

Once we got down to the beach, we were too early to get in to the beach house, and it was too cloudy/windy/gross to hit the beach, so we stopped a restaurant on the water for lunch. Right around this time is when we all got a little crazy.

This bread pudding was probably the icing on the proverbial cake.

We stopped at Walmart to get the remaining supplies we each needed for our food teams, and we got a little silly in the process.

My view from inside the Walmart buggy, looking up at them pushing me around.

After a VERY short while, I was reduced to tears from laughter.

A little back story about the candy on the drive down. I'm not a big candy eater. I typically don't eat a lot of it. It's just never been my cup-o-tea. (I also am not a fan of flowers or bling). So eating as much candy as I did on the drive to Destin probably was more sugar in that short amount of time than I'd had cumulatively in several weeks. Around the time we got to Walmart, I was starting to enter the sugar high/sugar crash phase.

I managed to get only two or three pictures during the actual trip portion of the trip, so the few below are stolen from friends.

Everyone except for Becca, Matt and Anne Marie.

Hubs and I!

Then I got a few pictures our last night, when we all went to Seaside for dinner and general merriment.

Erica, Josh, Husband and I played some night-time Frisbee, after waiting around the pick-up window of a restaurant for 30 minutes for their desserts to be ready (only to find out that they were actually pre-made desserts located in the freezer that we were leaning on). We also walked around Sundog Books and enjoyed the cool breeze of the ocean-front city.

On our way back home, we ate BBQ at Jim-n-Nicks, and found this lovely, horribly misspelled sign:

"Congradulations Graduates of 2013. Come join us for a celbratory dinner"

I don't know about you, but I could look at this view all day.

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Then this past weekend I was lucky enough to take Ollie on her second beach trip! I went to Pensacola with my friend Cynthia from high school. Much fun was had.

We had a bit of situation with our Priceline reservation at our hotel, but it all got worked out, and in the end, we ended up in a much nicer place- one without lots of reviews of bedbugs.

We spent Friday night catching up over steak and beer at Outback Steakhouse, where we probably traumatized the two bartenders. Also- I told the bartender it was Cynthia's birthday and they sang and gave her a free dessert! (Her birthday was two weeks prior, but she wasn't able to celebrate because she was in the middle of law school finals, so it was totally legit.) After leaving Outback, we got checked in to our hotel and sat down by the pool area and sipped on daiquiris while contemplating the meaning of life.

Saturday we got up and hit the beach. We decided to go to the beach out in front of the Flora-Bama because we knew we ended to end up there later in the evening. Without noticing, several hours had passed and it was 2pm. We were starving so we went inside to get some lunch. We ended up sitting with some pretty cool people that we hung out with the rest of the evening.

Christy and her husband Mike.

Their friend Chief, who I jumped in the picture with.

This is just a big guy who was a dancing maniac, with Cynthia.

Cynthia and I

Last picture in Pensacola before heading back home.

Somehow, those are all the pictures I managed to get between the two trips, and the pictures truly don't do justice to how much fun we actually had.

RSA Token

I got an email yesterday afternoon letting me know my RSA Token was approved and ready to be picked up. So this morning, a coworker of mine and I went over to 4200 to get ours. On our way back to our building, we got a little sidetracked.

I've always been a bit of a NASA geek. How else can you explain moving from warm, toasty, mostly-sunny Miami with glorious hurricanes, to hot-and-also-absurdly-cold, randomly-tornado-y, typically cloudy Huntsville? Also, I've always been a picture-geek. Love 'em. Take as many as I can. I even sometimes like to believe that some my pictures are actually good (or at least better than a 4-year-old running wildly through a grocery store with a click-happy finger).

So when we arrived at the building to get our tokens and I saw some Shuttle gear out front, I just had to get a few pictures. But it didn't stop there. After getting the pictures in front of the items outside of 4200, I suddenly had to get picture in front of other things. The mini Rocket Park off Ride Out Rd, for one. (Luckily Ollie can off-road it!) The picture in front of the small replica of the shuttle was actually a lucky chance. We were leaving the Rocket Park and saw it parked behind a building that looked like it hadn't been inhabited in a while. Quickly snapped the picture and got back in the car. We were a little shocked that the cop (that we didn't see until after) didn't stop us to question what we were doing behind this random building at 815 on a Thursday.

It has been a good morning.

The Introduction of Ollie

As promised, I've written a post to Ollie.

Husband and I purchased a new car for me, since Big Bertha was becoming less and less reliable every day. Scary. Getting to work was a constant struggle between I-hope-the-car-doesn't-explode-this-morning and I-hope-the-car-turns-on-this-morning. She's been a little rough lately, but that truly doesn't lessen the amount of love I have for her.

A few months ago I made a short list of the cars I wanted to test drive, to see what I liked, what was too big, what had horrible blind spots, and what was just right. We only tested two cars.

We both decided one Sunday that we liked the look of the Subaru Outback, so we decided to take it for a spin. We loved this car! It was bigger than Bertha, but didn't feel like it. We waited around for a few weeks to let the excitement settle, so we could decide with level heads if it was truly the car for us, or if we were just lovestruck.

Ended up, that it was a little of both.

We had toyed with the idea of redoing our budget to make sure we could afford the payment, but never really got around to it, since, truly, budgeting isn't really the most exciting way to spend a Saturday (or any day, really).

Then on a Friday night, as Husband and I were getting ready to go out with our friends from church, I decided that we should take Big Bertha instead of the (P)impala. I think this idea is what got us a new car. As soon as Husband got up to about 60 mph, her steering wheel just started shaking. Uncontrollably. The only way to get it to stop, was to slow way down- close to 50 mph. It was decided. We needed a new car. One that didn't cause us to worry about my safety (or at least not worry about my safety due to the car. No matter how great a car you have, you can never control the other people on the road, unfortunately.).

We did the budget.

We went back to the Subaru dealer for another test drive- this time, an extended test drive. Instead of the lousy 15-minute test drive up and down University Drive (where I never am!), I was able to take the car home with me, over night, and drive it to work. The ability to do this really made me happy- I was able to see how the car would handle in the standard environment of my driving life. It was glorious. (Bonus- I found a radio station that only plays 80's and 90's music!! 93.3 FM)

We saddled up and spend most of last week at the Subaru dealership. Mostly a waste of time, truly, since they kept getting basic information wrong, and I kept finding it. So paperwork needed to be printed over and over again. Oye.

Saturday morning, April 27, 2013, I had a heartfelt goodbye to Bertha. Literally. When I signed the paperwork stating that I was allowing Bertha's title to be handed over to the dealership, I got a little teary-eyed.

But it's OK. Now Husband and I have started our life with Ollie the Outback, and so far she's been great. I love everything about her- especially the details that she came with. For example, she came with a Bluetooth System, hands-free iPod docking, all-weather floor mats (which I know is lame to be excited about, but whatever!), nice side-body molding, all-wheel drive, roof racks, and fog lights. Oh and did I mention the MOONROOF?! Heck yes. The moonroof was literally the only thing I absolutely had to have in my new car, and it has been open every single day (except for when it rained, of course), for every single drive. Love it.

An added bonus of the moonroof is that both of my arms will tan equally. Typically, by the end of summer, my left arm is noticeably darker than my right arm because the left arm hangs out the window while I drive. The right arm would be in the middle of the car, where there is no direct sunlight. But that problem is no more! Now with my super awesome moonroof, both arms can be tanned. It truly is the small things in life :)

I thought this was going to be my last picture with her,

but Ollie hadn't arrived from the out of town dealer yet,

so we had Bertha for another two days.

My official last picture with Big Bertha. So sad.

My official first picture with Ollie!

Our first joint picture with Ollie!

So pretty.

Taking Husband's dad and sister for a test drive!