V is for Vacations.

Since we've been married before we got married, Matt and I have taken quite a few awesome vacations. Shall we happily remember them?

December of 2004, I left the U.S. for the first time to visit Matt at his University in Beijing. It was a pretty amazing trip, and oh yeah, that was when this happened --->

On our honeymoon to New York City, when after wondering aimlessly down Broadway we stumbled upon The Ed Sullivan Theatre, home to the King of Late Night (always and forever in my heart, at least) and got tickets to see his show LIVE.  Our amazingness was expounded (and my heart nearly stopped beating) when Dave allowed Matt o ask him a question before the show ("Where's the best pizza in Manhattan?" and dear, dear friend Dave bought us the best pizza of our lives.  David Letterman bought us a pizza.  Best. Honeymoon. Story. Everrrrrrrrr.

<--- Us before the show.  Soooo EXCITED!!!

Then, quite sadly, the vacation life stagnated because we were dirt poor.  Oh, well, we had each other and all that jazz.  Two years into our marriage, we got our fancy little three year vacation in the form of orders to Okinawa.

So for our third anniversary/pre-deployment leave, we decided to go big and spent a week at the Amari Coral Resort in Phuket, Thailand.  We spent most of the week walking around window shopping or drinking fruity drinks at the lobby bar.  Pretty amazing, right?

It was really hot and sweaty in Thailand.  And we didn't trust any of the locals to take a picture of us and give our camera back.  That's my excuse for this terrible picture. --->

I didn't really think the Thailand vacation could be topped until  (dun, dun, DUN!) we met up in Buenos Aires.  I fell in love with South America immediately. 

Matt spent a year in Mar del Plata, Argentina his Senior year of high school and so I've been hearing about this country for the last 8 years.  While debating where to meet for Matt's mid-deployment leave, Argentina was a natural choice (even though I wanted to go to France).  We spent two weeks enjoying and exploring the huge city.  We ate more beef than I can really even comprehend.  And more good food than I've had in two years in Okinawa.  We went shopping and saw art.  Rode the subway and pet a pretty disgusting stray dog that just looked sad.  Mini-theme park!  Empanadas!  Eva Perone!!  It was such an amazing vacation and will probably go down in the books as "Best Ever."

Vacation, Part 2: Arizona.

Returning to Arizona always brings me a feeling that I never really thought would be possible. It brings me a feeling of coming Home. I always feel like I'm telling a bit of a fib when people ask where I'm from and I say "Arizona," but I suppose that's a story for another time.

We spent about a week in Tucson - hitting up The Gap (I went at least twice and touched absolutely everything in the store), relaxing at home, seeing old friends and making new ones. Mom and Dad-in-law took us to Tubac, AZ one morning for some Arizona centric shopping. It was like the Sedona area without the red rocks and the vortex-kitsch. It made me wish I had more spending money and more luggage space. And more spending money.

We spent Mother's Day in Phoenix doing something all mothers would love - going to a Diamondbacks game. Matt scored a sweet "Los D-backs Beisbol" tee shirt to support our Mexican brothers. Or maybe just to piss people off.

From there, Matt and I drove up to Flagstaff, probably my most favorite place ever. After a morning of Brandy's amazing Eggs Benedict, we decided to if anyone remembered us at church. We were excitedly welcomed home by Pastor Paul and made plans to meet for breakfast the next morning to catch up. I love our church family.

Crystal met us for dinner at Fratelli Pizza (a.k.a. the best pizza in the world, ever) and we spent the night at a casa grande she scored for the night. Hot tubbed it up in the cool, dark Flagstaff night. Amazing. Perfect. Best ever. (E-mail me those pictures, pls, Crystal? You know the ones I'm talking about... :D)

We bummed around the hometown for a while that day then early the next a.m., we hit the road to catch our flight to Tampa.

Vacation, Part 1: Getting There.

Well, due to a tiny hiccup in the government in Kyrgystan, Matt's return home was delayed about a week. Which was lame because: A.) It had already been 8 months, for Pete's sake, B.) We had tickets to fly to the US on vacation four days after his actual return date. Four days is apparently not enough time to tell Marines, "Hey, we've got resources to help you, don't be stupid." Because of the extended transition time, we had to cancel our tickets and Travelocity basically put us out $3800. (That is a story for another time, but needless to say, Travelocity is now on THE LIST, along with Best Buy.)

We needed another cheap way to get back to the States. Enter: the Secret Society of the AMC Flights. Pretty much everyone in the Military community knows about AMC Flights. Ask anyone exactly how they work and maybe one in one hundred can tell you. Basically, when there is a training flight or a flight taking equipment somewhere and that flight has some extra space, military members and their families can hop on for either really cheap ($30ish) or free. This was to be our vacation savior.

There is a lot of waiting for spots on flights in your desired general direction, lots of layovers and lots and lots of uncertainty. But there is also lots and lots and lots of Free Flight-ness. Which, I guess makes up for it.

The first leg of our trip back home was a commercial charter from Okinawa to Iwakuni to Yokota Air Base. We had to arrive at the Kadena Air Mobility Command (AMC, get used to the acronym, you'll read it a lot in the upcoming posts) at something like 4 in the morning. And then we had to wait a few hours to find out if we were able to get on the flight. Then we had to wait a few hours to get on the flight.

When we got on the plane, we noticed that the seats in the middle of the plane were cordoned off with caution tape. We knew we were in for an exciting vacation. Apparently, the plane cleaners had opened the emergency exit over the wings and now those doors were inoperative. Awesome. Equally awesome? When the plane took such a deep dip, less like turbulence and more like Chester fell asleep at the wheel, that the oxygen masks several rows in front of us came down. Waaay awesome.

Fortunately for us, the rest of our travels were significantly safer. We spent the night at the amazing lodge at Yokota (full sized fridge, dish washer, etc for $41), flew to Elmendorf AFB the next morning, got to see the midnight sun in Alaska, then got to Travis AFB by 6am Sunday morning. Which we learned was not a good time to get a ride to the airport in California.

We spent the day sleeping and exploring the base on foot. Pizza Hut for dinner, sleep by 9, then shuttled off to the airport to catch our flight early the next morning. When we finally got to Tucson, I was happy to see my in-laws, happy to not be waiting for flights and happy to finally be home again. Gotta love the military lifestyle.

DiaBirthday #6.

Every year, I try to celebrate the anniversary of my diagnosis in a special way. Diabetes themed parties in college, theme park visits, special dinners, etc. This year, with all of the excitement of my impending reunion, I completely forgot about my Diabetes Day until about 6 days before... I didn't make any plans and pretty much expected it to pass without much notice.

Enter the best co-workers in the world. I mentioned my special day to The Best Co-Worker Ever this morning as I was reading the e-mail Mom sent me about it. When she returned from lunch (after a few strange calls for our other co), she carried cupcakes and a bag full of Twizzlers, Good & Plenty's (the Official Candy of DiaBirthdays), other candies and a box of Truvia - quite possibly my new favorite sweetener. They both wrote wonderful things (I'm assuming, half was written in Japanese) in a fantastic card addressed to Adrenaline Andrea.

The first few years, I celebrated my DiaBirthday so that I had something to look forward to, so I didn't spend the day crying and lamenting my bad pancreas. Now it is a reason to be silly and over indulge and maybe even to remind people that I'm a little different, but that's okay. I'm still really cool.