Fun Times!

Last weekend I went down to the LA area to visit with my college roomies. My actual roommate, Kirsti, and I drove down from Northern California and met up with Katie, Cass, Whitney, and Michelle. We hung out around Third Street in Santa Monica, went to the farmer's market, and walked along the beach. Then we spent the rest of our time visiting and talking and discussing our lives now that we are married or in serious relationships. We sat in Whitney's living room from about 3:30 in the afternoon until midnight just yaking it up...it was great! We had every intention to go to a movie or at least to go rent a movie, but we never made it. We just got to sit and veg and eat and talk. My parents were down in the area visiting as well (with my brother, sister and law, and their baby, Norah, and my sister) and my parents took Sammie for all of Saturday evening and night. I haven't had such a relaxing break from mommyhood ever! Michelle is my only other college friend from our group that has a baby so it was neat to chat with her about parenthood and baby stuff. You can see her and her super cute son, Tommy, in the photo. Unfortunately I didn't get a group picture of all of us, so I guess you'll just have to believe me that they were there! It was a great time to catch up with my girls. :)

It seems to be a tradition that when Jim is deployed, I buy furniture. When he was deployed to Iraq we lived in Germany and I couldn't stand the hard, Euro furniture that our landlords left for us to use in our house. So, I marched myself to IKEA to find a comfy armchair. Well, now is the time for some grown up furniture. Ever since we moved back to the states, land of comfortable furniture, we have been planning to buy nice couches and/or armchairs for the living room. For some reason, this didn't happen while Jim was home. Our next plan was to buy new stuff when he came home from this second deployment, after we had saved up a lot of deployment money. This was a good goal, but I couldn't wait until Jim came home to buy things. I'm sitting here in California in my parents' house, watching HGTV and twiddling my thumbs and thinking about all the stuff I want to buy and/or do to my home in Oklahoma. I decided to pick out and buy our living room furniture out here in California, because the army will be moving me back to Oklahoma anyway. Whether or not this was a good decision, I don't know, but it gave me something to research and shop for and think about, and that made some of the time apart go faster. Now my parents' living room looks like a new and used furniture store. It's a mishmash of my mom's old couches, a coffee table and a piano, and my new couch, recliner, and cool hi-legged recliner chair thing. This hi-legged recliner is the one in the picture and it was my spontaneous purchase. It is also my favorite purchase! I'm sure it doesn't look like much in the picture, but it is super comfortable and it reclines and it has a unique look to it. Anyway, I'm excited, so I thought I'd share it with everyone! Don't worry, Jim gave me the go ahead to go shopping, and I came in under our alloted new furniture budget. I can't wait to have it all set up in my own living room!