2014 State of the Union Address: Stuff You Need to Know. Kind of.

It's that time of the year people. And I know what you're thinking: Super Bowl?! Awards season?! Winter Olympics?!...No, no, and no.

It's time for another edition of the State of the Union address! 

Brought to you by the United States Constitution.

You say you're not looking forward to the State of the Union Address (herein referred to as SOTU)?? What's not to look forward to? It's like, the Super Bowl of government and politics!

I would offer you a fantastic drinking game of sorts for the occasion but since drinking games aren't really my thing, I don't have much to offer you. I mean, you can only drink wine so many ways (drink, chug, sip, shot of, etc. etc.) am I right? Just, when you hear things like:

"Let me be clear" 

"Bipartisanship"

"middle class"

"fair share"
"Health plan"

...take a drink of your wine. Red, white, sparkling, rose, whatever it is, drink it.

And rest assured...if you like your hangover you can keep it!

...Cause you built that!

I've heard that the President and the First Lady can invite their own personal guests to the shindig, their own VIPs. You wanna know what else I heard?? BO was so impressed by a young kid who invented a marshmallow launcher, that he got invited to the SOTU. A marshmallow launcher. 

Umm hello?? What's a girl gotta do to get an invitation over here?!

I taught my dogs to high-five me. I cooked macaroni and cheese in my crock pot last week. I know all the words to the Barenaked Ladies' One Week; that's a lot of words and to sing them really fast is really impressive and I should get an invitation to the SOTU for it.

Whether my invitation was lost in the mail or not, there's a few things both you and I can expect to hear about in the SOTU:

Yours truly, BO will probably mention "Executive fiat" at some point or another. He's talking about executive order, and the bypassing of Congress in order to get things passed...not the tiny, European car.

Don't get it twisted.

Also, you'll probably hear BO talk about immigration, more specifically a "comprehensive immigration plan," and that if Congress can just bring him a bill, he'll sign it right away...which is a relief considering all the trouble Justin Bieber's gotten himself into and he's Canadian. What would the United States be if Bieber gets deported, or heaven forbid, can't get his work Visa renewed now that he's a criminal??

...better. That's what it would be.

BO might even bring back the climate change talk cause this Polar Vortex is turning out to be one heck of an ess-oh-bee, no?? Good thing I live on the west coast.

I'm pretty sure infrastructure and "shovel-ready jobs" were so 2009, but I'm thinking it might make a comeback in the SOTU 2014 in light of everything going on in New Jersey. Like traffic jams and stuff. Traffic jams, bridge closures, e-mail scandals, infrastructure, it's all kind of the same thing right?

Does BO concern himself with things going on in New Jersey?

If there's one important lesson to be learned here my friends, it's to always stay hydrated!

I'd hate to see another watergate in 2014.

Now go be productive citizens of your community and watch the State of the Union Address, and drink all the wine you can your paws on.
You're gonna need it.

My Veteran

I really wanted to write something for Veteran's day this year, but quite frankly, I feel like nothing I write will top my Veteran's Day post from last year.
It's my favorite post I've ever written.
So I'm posting it again.

There's probably some unwritten blog rule that says you can't recycle posts, but 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 and our freedom.
My heart overflows with joy when I think about these people, our country, my husband.
And it's from the bottom of my heart when I say thank you. When we, as a country, say thank you.

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

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 Nate 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

Dallas Part I and a Shutdown Solution

Alright guys, judging by my prolonged absences from blog-land, I have a lot to tell you.

Let's start with with my trip to Dallas (which might be broken up into parts, cause I'm starting this post late and I'm already starting to yawn...)

Soooooo if you follow me on Instagram, which by the way, I feel like I started my last post out the same way. Is anyone else feeling like Insta is kind of a spoiler for your blog posts? You already know what I did, why am I blogging about it?

Anyway, if you follow me on Instagram you know I took a trip to Dallas with a couple 

of my girlfriends.

Woop woop! Girls trip!

We rented a minivan (four women + four women's luggage really left us no choice but to go with the minivan) and road-tripped it out to Dallas.

Why Dallas you ask? Why are you vacationing to Dallas?

Well, the answer I'd been giving was, 

"Well, umm you know, ASU is playing Notre Dame at Cowboys stadium that weekend, and I have a girlfriend out there, and you know, just for a girls trip and stuff."

I have a confession, though.

That's not the real reason we went out to Dallas.

We went to Dallas to go see the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum that was just opened this Spring.

Woof. There, I said it.

I'd stopped giving that answer because whenever I did people would be like,

"Oh cool! But really, why are you going to Dallas?"  

I know, normal women in their mid-twenties don't go traveling around the country to visit Presidential Libraries. And then pile on the fact that it's Bush, and it's just not an easy task trying to convince someone that yes, this is in fact, how I want to spend my vacation.

Only problem is we didn't get to see the Library.

Wanna know why?

Cause the night before we left for our trip the Government shut down.

And since the Library is run by the National Archives, you guessed it, the Library was shut down too.

We made our way down there anyway, since the restaurant and the gift shop would be open, and since we love both shopping and eating, we figured we'd make what we could out of it.

At least we knew the Library was closed ahead of time, there were other folks walking up thinking it was open. We chose not to say anything to them, but rather, see the looks on their faces
when they read the signs.
So sad. Turn on the news people.

So needless to say, this was as close as we were gonna get.

Thanks a lot Congress.

So you know, we got a good view of the outside.

...And that's about it.

We were hoping the Government would open before we left Dallas so we could see the Library before we had to head home.
And when that didn't happen, we hoped the Government would stay closed, cause I was gonna be reaaaalllly mad if we got home on Monday and the Government was open for business on Tuesday.
But now, since that didn't happen, I'm ready for the Government to be open again.
You know, just like they're legally and constitutionally bound to do so.

Since Congress can't seem to figure out a way to make it work,  I've figured I'd help them out. I've basically come up with a list of solutions on how to make our politicians get along better and so that they can re-open the Government.
I'm like, 87% sure they'll work.

I call it:

Operation: PBFFs

(political best friends forever)

(cause Washington loves acronyms)

Democrats and Republicans (and Libertarians too, for good measure) should do the following in order to get along, and take care of business so the government can open up again and tourists can go see the Bush Library (too bad that won't be me):

-Attend floor sessions dressed in Halloween costumes...cause I bet you'd feel really silly fighting with your fellow congressman dressed as a Teletubby.

-Change the party mascots (or whatever they're called)...cause quite frankly nobody wants to be called an elephant or a donkey (or the other word people use for donkey), so right off the bat I'm sure it puts people on the defensive.

-Text message each other pictures like this:

Cause you can't really be mad at someone after this pops up on your phone.

-Play with puppies together.
People bond over puppies.

Take mine for example:

Bond over puppies, bond over the debt ceiling, and bada-boom-bada-bing you've got a productive United States Congress.

-Share good jokes
People bond over good jokes too.
And plus, I always look at someone with a little more respect after they tell me a good joke.
Example:
Q: What's Forest Gump's password?
A: 1forest1
...Funny right?! I could totally hash out a budget and avoid Federal default after that kind of a doozy.

-Do a ropes course together
The kind where you do all kinds of team building activities and the classic "trust fall."
Nothing says let's make a deal quite like,
"I'll bring your bill to the Senate floor for negotiation if you catch my body falling 
from 20 feet up."

-And last but not least...
Uncle Si 2016!!!

Part of me feels like it's my fault the Government isn't open by now.
I should've given them these tips a long time ago. Like, before we left for Dallas so that they didn't
ruin our vacation.
I hate it when the government ruins your vacation.

Good thing we had other fun things planned...which I'll tell you about later.
Ugh, so lame I know. But this would be one mother of a blog post if I didn't stop now.

This post originally posted on Hayley's blog

Mid-Summer Catch-up: 4th of July Weekend

Oh hey guys.

Remember me?

I'm the author of this blog, and holy cow am I way behind on writing on it.

Like, waaaay behind.

So for the next few posts I'm gonna do my best to catch you up on fun things.

Let's back up to the 4th of July weekend shall we?! 

For the 4th, we hung out at my parents house with my sister and her fiance, and a few of their friends. We BBQ'd, swam, drank sangria, ate watermelon, and took pictures with American flags.

So you know, the usual 4th of July fare. 

Don't be mad at all the pictures, I'm too lazy to upload them to PicMonkey and make collages, so you're just gonna have to scroll through all of them.

#sorrynotsorry

Btw I totally made these ice cream sandwiches.

Yes, I want credit for it.

After we had our way with the food and the pool, Nate and I headed out to watch fireworks.

I was glad we made the effort, because if we're being honest here, going somewhere to watch fireworks on the 4th of July is kind of a pain.

Traffic, crowds, it's freakin' hot...rinse and repeat.

It's so much easier to just crash at home after a day of swimming and gluttony, but what kind of a blog post does that make?

Not a very festive one I tell you.

We seemed, however, to stumble on the perfect solution to the aforementioned:

We got to the park early enough for Nate to pick out his preferred parking spot (he's picky about his parking spots, they have to have the "quickest egress"), and after a minute or two he's like, "Wait. I'm gonna do this the smart way," so instead of parking closest to the field where the viewing area was, he parked closest to the exit.

AND THEN 

right when we were about to turn off the truck he's like, 

"We could probably set up our chairs in the bed you know. Then we wouldn't have to go down by the crowds. And we could have the radio on."

And just like that, in a matter of 60 seconds my crowded, hot, inevitably traffic-jammed 4th of July got a million times better.

Fastest egress out of the parking lot, no crowds around, and our own personal seating area.

I knew I married the guy for a reason.

And the 4th of July just isn't the 4th of July without Sparklers.

So we made that happen too.

It was a fun day, followed by a fun weekend!

...That fun weekend will have to wait to make its blog appearance though, 

cause I'm yawning and it's bed time.

Laters.