10 Things I'm Thankful For

Alright friends, Thanksgiving is just around the corner and you know what that means...it's time to write about things I'm thankful for. It's what everyone else does and I want to be cool like everyone else, but mostly because it's an easy blog post idea and I'm really low on those lately so I figured I should just do the dang thing.

Things I'm Thankful For

1.) I'm thankful that I can be open with my husband, about having a boyfriend. Nate is really understanding about how much love I have for Paul Goldschmidt. Sometimes, when we're at a game together to watch him play and they announce him as he comes up to bat Nate's like, "Rissa look, your boyfriend's up." Like thanks, Nate; I really appreciate you bringing this to my attention. One time he even bought me a photo of Paul to show how much he really understands:

They both sit next to each other on my desk at home and they never fight and it's a wonderful thing.

2.) I'm thankful for Twitter because that's how I learn things. Like when someone goes HAM, for example (that stands for "hard as a mother f***er), or even GOAT (that stands for "greatest of all time." Literally, never knew that until last week).

3.) I'm thankful for emojis because really, how else can you so accurately portray an emotional reaction via text. You can't. Emojis can. Emojis for President 2015.

4.) I'm thankful for wine cause, duh

5.) I'm thankful for autocorrect because sometimes it changes "Nate" to "hate" and it always makes me laugh a little. I like to laugh a little.

6.) I'm thankful that sometimes when I type something in the Google search bar, it auto populates the rest of what I was going to type. Like, it makes me feel less alone in life you know? Like oh good, I'm not the only one who's Googled "Donald Trump corn on the cob hair."

7.) I'm thankful for Gunther because without him I would never have any snuggle time. Cause no one else in this house snuggles with me. ...yes, you read that right. But Gunther, man he's thee best snuggler. Thanks for loving me, Gunther.

8.) I'm thankful for candles and Scentsy's and Glade plug-ins because without them my house would permanently smell like dog.

9.) I'm thankful for Youtube because where else can I find endless videos of screaming goats, puppies playing with babies, and bad lip readings while simultaneously procrastinating my life away?? Thanks Youtube. I mean it.

10.) Lastly, I'm thankful for my life cause hello - when you're a human you get to eat mac and cheese and drink wine and snuggle with dogs and write blog posts and stuff. 

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Ode to Rock out With Your Emoji Out

I've often mentioned how my favorite thing about the blogging community is meeting new people. Not in like, a creepy way of course, but the kind of way where you find awesome girlfriends that become life long friends. This happened to me about a year and a half ago when I met Kailey and Brianna.

Since we met in real life in April of 2014, we've spent time not only hanging out in the real world, and in blog world, but also in this other world called Rock Out With Your Emoji Out (herein after referred to as, ROWYEO). It's our group text convo and literally, that's what we named it. Ever since we met in real life we text message all day erry day. I tried explaining that to Nate one night and he couldn't understand it. He goes, "Why do you text about stuff all day like that? That's exhausting." ...men, I tell ya.

So, I've decided to give you a glimpse into the world of ROWYEO and share some screen shots of actual conversations that Kailey and Brianna and I have on a daily basis. Cause sometimes you just can't make this stuff up.

TYPOS:

I think sometimes (read: all the time) I think I'm funnier than other people think I am. Which is fine...

Thanks, guys.

Sometimes, we have real heart-to-hearts about pets. Pets are people too.

Sometimes we drink together on weeknights, cause why not?

We sometimes give each other valuable career advice,

Other times, it's guidance on how to effectively manage our time.

This one began with, "You guys wanna hear how lazy I am?"

However I would say the majority of our text messages are about what we should eat for various meals throughout the day, and making healthy choices:

Common theme: wine and mac and cheese. I'm a simple girl, really. 

Sometimes we swap life stories, cause that's what relationship building is all about, right?

Life stories, and then also some life hacks. Some tips and tricks, if you will:

I went ham on all these screen shots didn't I (see what I did there)? Don't ask me why I have all of these...I don't have a good answer other than maybe one day I thought I'd put them into a book or something and it'd make for a cute Christmas present...but then I realized we talk wayyyy too much shiz and 80% of our conversations I wouldn't want published in a hard copy anywhere. Ever.

Love them.

My Veteran

I always struggle a little on Veterans' Day, about whether or not I should write something new, or continue to recycle the first post I wrote on my blog for Veteran's day. The thing is, I just really really like this post and I kind of feel like nothing I try and write will ever top it. So I keep posting it again. And again. And I think this year, yet again. There's probably some unwritten blog rule that says you can't recycle posts, but whatever, I don't even care. Cause I love this post so much. And I love my husband so much. 

And I love our military, and our country, and our service men and women that stand on the front lines everyday to protect our homeland. They're way braver than I could ever be. And also way more bad ass.

.....................................

Today we celebrate Veteran's Day.

My husband is a veteran: Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom from 2007-08.

A couple weekends ago I went to the Eric Church concert. I know you're probably thinking "and these two go together, how??" but stay with me...

At the Eric Church concert he sang his song "These Boots," and if you haven't heard it...google it. But he sings about his pair of boots and all the places they've been, and what they've seen over the years, and it got me to thinking about my husband's boots. His Army boots. And all the places they've been and things they've seen.

Those boots were laced up every morning for over a year, to run missions all day that lasted well into the night, often times through the night. They carried an extra 100+ pounds of gear, and withstood the heat of the Iraqi summers.

Those boots have been dusted with the sands of Tikrit and the dirt of Mosul. They've walked along the gravel near the Tigress River. And they sat crammed next to bunch of other boots on a C-130 for hours to get there.

Those boots stood next to both Iraqi forces, and young locals; all in the name of a better Iraq.

Those boots spent Thanksgiving and Christmas, and rang in the new year overseas.

Those boots were there, on the floor of Saddam Hussein's mother's palace, when Nathan was planning our engagement.

  

Those boots have seen a lot, heard a lot; most of which, I'll never know. But those boots came home on the feet of my husband...alive and in one piece.

These days, those boots spend their time in the mountains of Arizona, chasing deer and elk, and anything else that has four legs. But they come back home at the end of each day. Just as they should.

Thank you to all those who have served, and are currently serving our Country over seas.

"Honor the fallen, thank the living"

My favorite soldier

I'm a Halloween Grinch, and Other Things

It's weird cause it's a Tuesday night at 9pm and I suddenly got the bug to blog. But I figured given the scarcity of posts around here lately I should probably capitalize on it whenever I'm in the mood to write. So here I am. 

This weekend was Halloween and we all know by now that dressing my dogs in costumes is my favorite part. This year Gunther was a spider and Maycee was a princess. I chose those because they were the only ones left at Target the day before Halloween...cause I plan ahead and am always on top of things and stuff. No matter the picked-over selection, I think this was Maycee's best year, I must say.

Please just look at that skirt. And those braids. And also how mad she looks.

Gunther could care less. He's just hangin' out like, hey guys yeah I'm a spider is that a problem?

I didn't end up passing out candy because Nate was out of town and I was home alone and I just didn't want to have to deal with the dogs going crazy and all that. So I turned my porch light off cause that's the universal sign for "I don't have candy," right? I dunno, maybe I missed the memo because people kept coming to my door and ringing the doorbell and banging on the door. Finally, there was a group of kids that came and rang my doorbell three times in a row and screaming "trick or treat!!" Then they rang the doorbell incessantly about two more times and kept yelling so finally I flung the door open and yelled, "I DON'T HAVE ANY CANDY KIDS!" ...Ugh,what is wrong with me?? This is why I don't have children though...because they're little assholes. Part of me feels a little bad but part of me does not because I could hear their parents out at the curb and I'm just like whyyyyyy do you let your kids behave like this??? Anyway, long story short I ended up having to put a sign out on my door and finally the doorbell stopped ringing. I know you're judging me for being the Halloween version of the Grinch but whatever.

So on a happier note, basketball is back and Steve Nash was inducted into the Suns Ring of Honor last weekend and it was the best thing ever.

Charles Barkley was there and Dan Majerle was there and Al McCoy was the MC, and it was cool and so nostalgic and the halftime ceremony turned into a 40 minute show because when Steve Nash talks, you listen. There was a video montage and I'm not gonna lie...I teared up a little. I try not to put too much stock into sports because it's just a game and I don't ever want to 'worship' or idolize a team or an athlete, but it's pretty cool to see how one person can have such an impact on a community. Steve did that for Phoenix.

You wanna know something weird. Nate and I were walking back from the mailbox the other night talking about how much paperwork he gets from the company that manages his 401K. He goes, "...I'm so inundated with paperwork that the last thing I want to do is read all of them." And then I said, "Can you manage it online and opt out of all the mailings?" and I just had this weird moment where all of our time spent together flashed through my mind really fast and I saw him with his bowl-cut in jr. high and I saw us fighting in high school, and I saw myself being too scared to talk to him in the 7th grade, and I saw us in Sunday School together and then here we are, in our late 20's walking back from the mailbox after work on a Monday night, talking about 401K's. Like, dang we've come a long way. It was a cool moment.

Speaking of cool. ASU had their "Salute to Service" game last week honoring military (please don't make me talk about the actual game...still salty about it) and in doing so, they wore throw back jersey's with Pat Tillman's name on the back of every jersey. I found this picture on Twitter and it gave me chills:

BAD ASS.

Anyway, I think I've run out of things to talk about for now. Have a happy hump day friends! 

A Lot of Things in One Post Because I'm Too Lazy to Break it Up Into Two

Hi hello friends! I've been sitting here watching this cursor blink for a while now trying to think of a clever way to start this post, but since I can't think of anything I'm just gonna go with "hi." It's been a couple weeks since I've last posted and since I've had couple fun things go down so let's talk about them shall we? ...mostly because I can't really think of anything else to blog about.

A couple weeks back I had the opportunity to travel for work, which on the surface doesn't sound fun, but A.) having to travel for work really makes me feel like a grown-up and that I'm like, important enough to have to go places where people want me to participate in things, and B.) anything is fun when you have the best coworker ever and you always make lemons out of lemonade. ...figuratively that is, we didn't actually make lemonade or anything.

We had the most packed itinerary and meetings and team dinners back to back to back, so my coworker, Bernadette, and I were left with no choice but to take an Uber 30 minutes into Chicago at 9pm when all the 'work' activities were done. The bad: all my pictures of the city of chicago are at night time, mostly hanging out of the side of an Uber. The good: our Uber driver was THE BEST. We got in the car and he's like "So where are you headed tonight?" and we go, "Well actually we need your help!" ...probably every Uber driver's worst nightmare but whatevs. He drove us around and told us what we needed to see and he even got out and took a few pictures for us.

We went to Millennium park and saw "the Bean,"

It's kind of cool how you can see the reflection of the skyline in it. 

Then we walked down a few blocks to the river and the Trump tower and we stopped and enjoyed a beer underneath all the city lights. It was quite perfect if I do say so myself.

We were running on fumes by the time it was time to go home, but totally worth all of the missed hours of sleep.

By the time I got home it was time for my last baseball game of the year. Which is sad because the Diamondbacks miss yet another year of playoff baseball, but it was also happy because please just look at how close I was to Paul Goldschmidt:

I'm almost positive we almost made eye contact. I love it when my husband takes me to go see my boyfriend. It's a win-win, really.

Until next year, Chase field.

While baseball was winding down for Arizona, so too was my husband's class at the policy academy. After 20 (TWENTY) weeks, it was finally time for him to graduate and become a real-live police officer. 

We were able to go to the Academy in the morning for a few festivities, a tour of the campus, and an orientation for friends and family. 

Then the actual ceremony was off-site later on in the afternoon. He was presented his badge, and then his badge was pinned, and then they were sworn in, and just like that he was too legit to quit.

I remember him as a kid stirring up trouble and riding his skateboard everywhere and now he's a police officer all protecting the community and stuff. Life is so crazy. 

We celebrated Nathan and his graduation the next day with a big 'ol party with so much food and so many friends and family and lots and lots of cornhole. It was the best time.

So good in fact that I was so busy eating food and hanging out and having a good time that I hardly took a single picture. ....how very un-like me. And very un-blogger of me. But I suppose those are the best kinds of parties right?

You wanna know who else is a pretty dang good party? Garth freakin Brooks. I saw it first hand this weekend when I went to his show - the first time in some 19 years he had been back to Phoenix. I went with two of my favorite Lindholms, Kenny and Kayla:

I love third-wheelin' it because all my friends like me more than their husbands. At least that's what they tell me ;)

Anyway, the show was absolutely amazing. Like, probably the best live show I've ever seen (maybe with the exception of George Strait cause George is king). That guy just doesn't stop and he literally runs laps around that stage and he's out of breath and he keeps singing and you would never even know and he sounds so good and omg I didn't want it to end. Garth is life. Please never stop touring.

So I think that wraps up all the fun things that have been happening lately. I organized my guest bedroom and cleaned off my desk and shredded a bunch of papers today but since that's not as fun as all of the aforementioned items, I didn't include it here. Although I will say it was an impressive amount of papers that I shredded. ...shredded is a word right?

Happy Monday friends!