Washington, DC

This past weekend Dustin and I finally made a trip up to Maryland to see my brother and his family. It's about a 6 hour drive from North Carolina, and we got to see a real freeway! Thank you sweet 7lb sweet baby Jesus! Driving 50MPH on a "freeway" here is torture, absolute torture. So we finally got to see something more than 2 lanes of traffic. YES!

Add these to my list of welcome state signs

I haven't seen baby Ollie since September, and he's so much bigger now! He is the sweetest baby I've ever been around in my entire life. Seriously. I've never seen a better baby in my life. I don't think he cried once, and is just a happy cute little guy. You wouldn't be able to tell by this mean mugging picture with Dustin, but he loved Dustin so much! Dustin kept telling him "let's make your aunt jealous" because Oliver kept wanting to crawl all over Dustin. Hey Oliver, Dustin doesn't even like kids, but me, I LOVE THEM!

Oliver and Jesus

Remember the blanket I made? I was finally able to give it to him. It was perfect for our little trip into the city because it was freezing in DC this weekend.

Olliesaurus

Those cheeks!

What was great about our visit was that we got to see Dustin's little guido brother as well, Dennis! Dennis is stationed in PA as a recruiter, so he drove the 2 hours down to see us, bless that little boys heart. My brother in law, is PRECIOUS. I love that boy, he is the sweetest person, and always so much fun.

Near the Jefferson Memorial

I told their mother I would send pictures of them...

Walking to the White House

Don't mind the hurr, it was windy as hell

My favorite monument! I love how you can see the difference in marble! Also, notice how there is no one around?? When we walked back, ran a mile back to the car later that night it was 11 degrees. The best time of the year to go into the city is when it's cold! It's almost like you have the whole city to yourself.

We had a fun time in DC, and can't wait to go back and see some more museums! This was my fourth visit to DC and I still haven't seen all the museums, no wonder in California they take kids out to DC for a week, there is just so much to see.

So. Here is the saddest part of our whole trip. It snowed in New Bern, North Carolina while we were gone! :( I've never seen snow fall. I've seen it on the ground before, but I want to see snow fall. I thought it would snow in Maryland this weekend, but it didn't, there was a tiny flurry, but no snow. I swear, weather like this always happens to me! When I would go out of town for work in California, we would have like 80 degree weather at the beach. Story of my damn life!

Petey baby in the snow!

Now that my family is visiting in a little over the month, I'm about to get craft mothingeffing crazy up in my house. I have end tables to make, quilts to make, a ton of stuff!

Trip Two: Day Three (Dallas - Birmingham)

Yesterday we went from Dallas to Birmingham, Alabama, and it was our shortest trip yet! I am actually very happy that it ended up that way because we needed a break! The dogs were horrible yesterday, and if you know our dogs, they're the laziest dogs in the world. Usually our dogs sleep 23 hours a day, but not yesterday during the drive. We kept changing their spots in the truck, between on the seat between us and on the ground to get them to stop moving around so much. Every time we stopped, I took them out of the truck, and ran them up and down the truck stop to get them tired and it worked because they slept at night! Smokey is having a harder time than Petey, most likely because he is smarter and knows something is up. I'm hoping that they snap out of their funk tomorrow when we are in our new house and calm down and eat. They've been refusing to eat, and I fret over those two dogs!

We arrived at I think 5ish yesterday in Birmingham, and I immediately put on my workout clothes and hit the treadmill! You have NO idea how good a treadmill feels after three days of being locked up in the truck! We then went to eat at an Applebee's in the parking lot of our hotel because if I ate another burger or something fast food, I was going to flip! Applebee's was an experience! People in Alabama have THICK accents, they are actually pretty cute. Applebee's was so busy, it might have been the only restaurant in this little town we were in, and our poor waiter was getting shit from everyone about their food. The lady next to us, if you can even call her a lady, was ruthless!!! She was there with a friend, and when they got their food she immediately said "Is our food even warm!?" and then bitched that she didn't get her appetizer. The waiter apologized profusely and went to go get their appetizer. I then proceeded to watch Jabba the Hutt put a mound of butter in her potatoes the size of a fist! I mean it was an astronomical amount! Don't get me wrong, I slather butter on rolls and food a lot, but this was LITERALLY a mound of butter the size of a baboons heart. She then proceeded to get the trio appetizer, eat that, and then took a dessert to go! They badgered the poor waiter the whole time too demanding everything be free. Don't get me wrong, she ordered something and should have had it, but it was New Years Eve, they were ridiculously busy, and this poor kid was literally running around the restaurant. I hate people who are rude to waiters and waitresses, it's so uncalled for!

We got some good sleep last night! I love it when your head hits the pillow and you don't wake up at all until the next day. I am going to need all that sleep because we are going to be in North Carolina tomorrow and need all the energy we have to unpack!

Trip 2: Day One (Murrieta - Deming, New Mexico)

Yesterday we left Murrieta at about 6:20am to start our trek out east! We left 20 minutes late because mama needed a Starbucks and bless my sisters heart, she woke up at 5:45 to take me!! My little nuggets of some nephews were also awake! I think it's secretly because they wanted to see the truck off, Blake kept pointing at the truck saying "I want someone to give me a ride in that truck!" Uncle Dusty would have, but he had a miserable time backing that thing up the first time around. I told Blake he could ride with us but only if he sat in the chairs strapped to the car trailer! He agreed! Ha!!

So we left yesterday morning and it took us all day to get into the swing of things. Here is what we learned, so far.

Rule Number One: Stop when you think you have to go to the bathroom, in the slightest bit, or else you'll end up in tears saying to your husband, "I swear to you, if you don't pull over, I'm going to pee right here in this cup!"

Rule Number Two: Truck stops only. They may sound gross, you may have to squat above god only knows what, while your quads are burning from doing the Carrie Underwood leg workout, but it's easier to get in and out of truck stops when you're in a giant ass truck pulling a car trailer. If not you'll add on an extra 45 minutes to your drive time because you can't flip a bitch and you have to find three lefts to turn around! Thanks Palm Desert for that experience!

Rule Number Three: Toothbrushes and toothpaste for your dogs. My dog has the worst breath in the world and after 6 hours, I was over it. He wouldn't eat a mint, so I chewed up a mint, and tried to force feed him baby bird style and he wasn't having it!

Rule Number Four: Book light/personal light. I was nearly done with The Other Boleyn Girl last night and it got too dark to read and I was kicking myself in the ass for not thinking of this earlier!!! (Finished the book, btw, FABULOUS! A must read!!!!)

So far, that's what we've learned! We were on the road for nearly 12 hours yesterday, driving in this truck is way slower than when we did it earlier this month in the jeep, and some gas stations the diesel pumps SO slow! Like 30 minutes to fill our tank! We've also decided to NEVER do a DITY move ever again. If I ever meet someone that tells me they want to do a DITY move I don't know how I won't slap them in the face! The money you make isn't worth it to me!!!!

The next leg of the trip is Deming, New Mexico to Dallas. I love Dallas and the people there!!!! Best part of our trip!!!! :)

Here are some pictures from our traveling! We def aren't stopping as much as in the car!

Merry Christmas!

These past two weeks have FLOWN by. Partly due to my huge procrastination, and refusing to do anything house related, so I've just been driving around the San Diego area randomly. I have been putting off packing, anything moving related because of the holidays! It definitely didn't feel like Christmas this year, we didn't put up a tree or anything, so it all went by so fast. I am excited about the new home and putting up the Christmas decorations a year from now! Wow! We have the perfect little front window for a tree, and I'll definitely make Dustin get up on the roof and risk his life so we can have some Christmas cheer!

Merry Christmas from the largest shih-tzu soon to be East of the Mississippi!

Here is our lazy animal laying on some boxes. He only ever lays on stuff, never on the floor, too diva for that shit!

We took our nephews to Sea World last week. Military get in fo free once a year! So we officially became parents! My sister went with us, but when we walked up the older two shouted "Mommy & Daddy!" at us, it was pretty darn cute. Aren't they the cutest little people you've ever seen! Sea World is kick ass because you don't wait much in lines, thank god! And the shows were pretty cool this year too, since it was Christmas time they were all Christmas themed, and they had the teeniest otter that was waving in one show. Watch out hedgehogs, mama wants an otter now!  It was nice to do something with the boys before we left. I think the oldest one understands we are moving, but the little ones still don't get it. It's going to be hard to leave them because I see them so much! I love those little boys!

Dustin, Me, Logan, Blake, and Luke 

Blake & Luke and Shamu

Oh god. Here is the story with this situation outside of my house. So we live/lived in South Oceanside, it's supposed to be one of the nicer areas in Oceanside. Wellllll, we are the first house in a nice neighborhood. Get it, FIRST house, aka we live next to derelicts. Our neighbor towards the shady side is a bit odd, but he's a nice guy. A nice guy as in he'd literally kill someone on our lawn for us, in fact, he did beat someone once on our front lawn with a billy club....Soooo one time my girlfriend borrowed my wetsuit, and I was leaving out of town, so I left it on my back porch for her, so she pulled up in my driveway, went and got my wetsuit and came back out and my neighbor was watching her staring her down. A week later I still wasn't home, but my husband came home and the neighbor told Dustin that he saw a girl come to our house and leave with something in her hands and that if anything was missing, he took down her license plate number!!! Bahahaha - so he's odd, but he means well, and he likes us because we never make a peep!

Anyways, the other morning as I was finally packing crap, I noticed a cop car pulled up outside of the house. Next to our crazy neighbor, on the other side of him, is a shadyyyyy duplex. For example, one of the people that lived in the duplex had just got out of the slammer and used to jump rope in front of the house with his ankle bracelet on. Walking the yard, literally. But he was actually a nice guy...anywayyyssss, the people directly next to our crazy neighbor are WHITE TRASH. They are horrible. Their kids are always out in the street, barefoot, at all hours of the day. Their dog is never on a leash, and it shits in my yard probably daily, and they're always out on their patio furniture, in front of the house, smoking watching the people walk by. And we are pretty sure they deal drugs too because random people will sit in front of their house in their car for like 30 minutes, and then go inside the house, get something and leave.

Well, when we noticed one cop showed up, then two other ones including the field evidence team came as well, I went in and made myself a sandwich and sat on my front porch to watch it all go down. Apparently, the wife beat her husband! I found this actually really hilarious because they're always screaming at each other on the lawn, and she's a little thing, and he's a lot bigger than her. Anyways, I watched them talk to her and him and when the police were questioning the husband, his children were standing on the hood of a car in their driveway, it was like an episode of cops or something! This all took place I think 2 days before Christmas BTW! They ended up arresting the mom, and put her in the cop car, and they drove her past her house, and her kids were waving to her. BIZARRE!! Merry Christmas children, mommy's in the gray bar motel!

Our new neighborhood in North Carolina is already MUCH nicer, let's hope that I don't have crazy neighbors there too!

And here is our other dog Smokey at the beach the other day. Our property management company that we had didn't know we had 2 dogs...for 3 years! HA! They didn't want a big dog in the house, you can only have big "outside" dogs? What the hell? WHY have a dog if it's only ever outside? That's not fun! Anyways, we had our inspection last week, so I took Smokey to the beach to enjoy some time. He gets CRAZY there and you can't control him! Luckily it was raining that morning, so there was no one there except for the kite surfer in the background. We hung out at the beach and watched them for a bit before it got too cold and we headed on back. Isn't Smokey such a beautiful dog? Very smart too. Love him.

Today we got the moving truck, and that's going to need it's own post tomorrow because WHAT an experience that was. A sneak idea? We had to call a mechanic already...

We leave for North Carolina on Saturday, please keep us in your thoughts and hope for good weather! NO SNOW!

xoxoxox

the gidge

Day Five - New Orleans - Cherry Point, North Carolina

I am sooooo happy to be blogging from a computer now since we are now at our hotel! Blogging from your phone is less than ideal, especially when I have diarrhea of the mouth, and just can't seem to stop talking/typing about everything!

That trip yesterday was quite a long one. We knew it was going to take a long time, and in hindsight, I wish I would have gotten up earlier and went around New Orleans earlier than I did. We decided to sleep in and get as much sleep as possible, or so we thought!

We got on the road at about 11:30, which wasn't bad, but we lost a hour when we finally crossed over into the east coast time zone.

We went through:
-The rest of Louisiana

Mississippi

Alabama

Georgia (There were ZERO lights anywhere!)

South Carolina

And into North Carolina!

I was a little bummed we planned it this way because it was so dark towards the end of our drive. I took a LOT of pictures with a real camera, that I'll add as well to my blog later. They are much better, but I wanted immediate satisfaction, so I used my iphone as well.

I was SO thankful I brought that random skull tank top with me to wear yesterday, because holy crap, it was SWELTERING in the south. It was so warm yesterday when we were driving I was so hot the whole way. I can't believe it's STILL humid there...in December??? Walking around NOLA was hot, but that was the only outfit I had that had a tank top, so I braved the tights and motorcycle boots!

The drive wasn't too bad. Our goal was to drive straight from NOLA into NC but the husband was worried that we would get about 4 hours away and be exhausted, so HE decided to book a hotel in NC for Weds night-Saturday morning and just wait until we got there in the wee hours of Wednesday morning and see how we go about getting a room that early in the morning...

We didn't see much in our drive. Mississippi/Alabama/Georgia/South Carolina all look the same to me, two lane freeways, excuse me HIGHWAYS, and trees on all sides. I kept point to water areas the whole way and saying to Dustin "There's gators there!" (I DON'T like alligators AT ALL!) and it became a joke the whole way. Just pointing at water and say "GATORS!" When we got into Georgia I told Dustin that I would start driving, and he could sleep so that he could drive later when I was tired. I took over and starting driving and he fell asleep right before Atlanta, and he picked the wrong time to fall asleep! Atlanta is confusing as all hell, their freeways have two names, what the hell is up with that? It would say something like "85EB/404E" I don't get that, in California you have ONE freeway with name, it's not the 101/405. We don't do that shit, it's too complicated. So people who are from Georgia can't talk about the California freeway systems!!

If we didn't have a GPS with us during this trip we would have been screwed. Although, I will say, I wish she was nicer. Our GPS is quite a bitch, "TURN AROUND, LEFT TURN!" she shouts at us all the time. Just once we want to hear her say, "Good job Elizabeth, that intersection was a hard one to navigate!" Luckily, I only got lost once when he was asleep and had to navigate Georgia alone. Georgia also has the most ridiculous speed limits. Thankfully, our GPS tells us what the speed limit is because the speed would go from 70 to 50 to 55 to 65 back up to 75, and they have cops everywhere. I saw at least 5 people get pulled over. That is SUCH bullshit, stupid speed traps!

I drove us from Georgia to South Carolina. Dustin told me before he fell asleep that he hoped we didn't end up being a scene from "Dumb & Dumber" when one of them falls asleep when the other is driving and they end up 500 miles in the wrong direction. I can't go the wrong way with a GPS! After we hit North Carolina, Dustin took over driving again. I think I only drove maybe 5 hours out of this whole trip! HA! He has to practice because when we come back I'm not driving a U-Haul! YEAH RIGHT!

When we crossed over into NC, I crawled into the back seat to sleep and I just couldn't. I envy those people sleeping on planes, in classrooms, anywhere that isn't a bed. I need to sleep IN a bed, on my stomach, with one arm propped up under the pillow and one leg out at an angle. Seriously. How do people sleep other places besides their bed.

We arrived in New Bern at 4:30am and went to the hotel we had booked for Wednesday night, we didn't have a hotel yet...And GUESS what, THEY DIDN'T HAVE A ROOM. Thanks Dustin for not letting me book in advance!!! Not only did they not have a room, neither did the other three hotels in the same parking lot. We had just driven at least 14 hours, it was nearly 5am at this point, and we had no where to sleep. I must have looked like I was going to cut the front desk clerk because she called around and found us somewhere to sleep that night. Bless her! So we went down the street, and threw ourselves into bed and had about 6 hours of sleep.

I am just glad that we made it here safely, there are SO many little white crosses on the roads out here, why don't these states invest in some street lights!?!? Now it's time to get used to this area and explore!

Day Four: Dallas - New Orleans (Part One)

I am going to warn you, this will be a LONG post...It will have to be 2 parts because of all the crap that happened in New Orleans.

Yesterday we drove from Dallas to New Orleans and it was quite a little trip. Luckily, I think it was only 8 hours so it went by pretty fast, so I wasn't getting cabin fever being in the car like I am sure I'll have today!

We didn't see much on our drive. Louisiana is VERY southern, I don't think we did see a metropolitan city until we arrived in New Orleans. At one point when we were fairly close to NO, I pointed out to my husband all these trailers on this huge empty lot. I am mad now that I didn't stop and take a picture because it was unbelievable how many there were. There were at least 1,000 Fleetwood trailers, one after another, the same one over and over and they were used and parked so close together, and I couldn't figure out what the heck they were. I finally realized halfway through passing them that they were the FEMA trailers from Hurricane Katrina! There were SO many of them and they were tiny. I cannot believe people lived in these trailers. So I started googling the area we were in to confirm it, and we were right. It was basically a FEMA trailer boneyard. I also found a ton of articles from 2011 stating that even 5 years after Katrina, people were still living in them! I couldn't believe it! I also found that the government sold off some of the used trailers when people moved out of them, after seeing the condition they were in, I wouldn't have one of those trailers if they were given to me. I stayed in a trailer while camping for 4 days with 5 people, and it was hard to keep that thing clean, I can't imagine living in one for 5 years!!!!

We were eager to get to New Orleans because neither of us had ever been and I kept thinking it was going to be like Vegas since they don't have an open container law on the streets. To me, it was like the gas lamp of San Diego mixed with the homeless and street performers of Hollywood and the alcohol of Vegas. I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't anywhere close to anything I had in my mind. It was worse.

We arrived at about 5ish, and immediately we checked into our hotel, the Saint Marie, and got changed and left for Bourbon Street. Our hotel was about 1 block from BS, because I had read reviews that said that you don't want to actually stay on BS if you want to sleep! And I NEEDED sleep at this point in our trip. So we headed for BS to see what was going on, and I was shocked!!!! This was nothing like Vegas since it's so condensed, there was alcohol everywhere! I've never seen so much alcohol in my life, and they have tons of promoters trying to get everyone in their bars or more likely, their strip clubs. They have all these young girls standing out in the streets in their thongs and bras shouting at guys to come in. It was crazy for me to see, especially since I was with my husband, I didn't think they'd be yelling at him to come in, but they sure were! They were even talking shit on my body type to get him to come in, and see "real women." I didn't say anything, which is huge for me because I am a crazy loud mouth, but I just knew you don't mouth off to people down there. I just kept on walking...I can't help it I'm a petite person, but at least I don't have the clap! Crazy bitches!

We were getting a little hungry, so we went and got some beignets at Cafe Beignet. They were pretty good, for some reason I thought they would have a filling in them, but they didn't, they tasted like a funnel cake! Seriously, just like a funnel cake, and I love funnel cake!

We started just walking up and down Bourbon Street because there was so much to see. All the hotels, bars, clubs, strip joints, everything! We walked past some street performers that were neat and we stopped to watch these four teenaged kids tap dance. They were so young and Guido even mentioned that it was awfully late for them to be out on a Monday night, because I think they looked maybe 14/15? So, we are watching them tap dance and so were a few people because they were good! All the sudden, these five people grab these kids and throw them up against the wall. I saw this huge guy hold this poor kid down, and I started shouting for my husband because I thought they were getting robbed or something! I didn't know what was going on. Then these people started shouting "Undercover police!" and pulled their badges out of their shirts. We stood their shocked as they arrested these three kids (one took off running) and we were appalled. Don't get me wrong, if they were being investigated by undercover officers, I'm sure they did something wrong, it just really made me sad because they were so young. I'm sure they're out performing for money because they're families are poor. It just broke my heart to see their faces when they were getting arrested. It was like they just knew they'd were screwed.

When we saw those kids get arrested,, it really upset me. I felt horrible, but I was glad to stumble into a shop and find a ghost tour! I'll blog about that in the next post!

Enjoy the pictures! I don't know why when I blog on my phone I can't arrange the pictures in the order I want them too, so I apologize for that!