We're baaaaa-ack.

So we've returned from our week-long hiatus to California. (A note about California freeway drivers. Those guys are INSANE. I fit right in there.) Spent the first three days at the Disneyland Grand Hotel and park-hopped for those three days (thank you discounted tickets from the army, THE one and only perk to having your husband shot at in foreign lands) and then we made our way to Hollywood. I blogged about that previously, so no need to revisit that subject except to say this: L.A. is a hole. Hollywood? HOLE. I don't care how awesome your celebrity memorials are. I HATE YOU L.A./HOLLYWOOD.

There. That's done. Cheerily moving on!

The last three days were spent lounging around in San Diego. I adore Disneyland, but I gotta say this was the highlight of the trip for me. There's something about the constant ocean breeze, large blobs of seagull poop flying through the air and *juuuust* missing your husband's head, the smell of salt on your skin at the end of the day, and the lack of 100+ degree temps that turns my mind to a lovely and welcome mush. San Deigo melted my brain so much, in fact, that I completely forgot to put on sunblock the day we went to Sea World and I ended up with a second-degree sunburn on my CHEST of all places. Complete with tiny blisters. Frickin' yeowch. (I was also talking to an awesome group of Canadians in the hotel spa one night and may have accidentally and stupidly asked if we could trade a Canadian quarter, which we somehow ended up with at Disneyland, for "real" money. Spoken like a true American with pudding for brains!) We've been home for three days and the skin on my upper chest is now coming off in charred chunks. Attractive. Chad's cousin, who lives around the corner, stayed over at our house with the dogs while we were gone. She's coolio and we love her for doing that for us. Thanks Aubrey!

You can go here (click!) to visit the rest of our pictures from the trip, but here are a few. (I recently discovered the awesomeness that is Flickr. :D)

Emma baits the seagulls with dried banana treats just so she can run at them (RAWR!) and scare them away.

We now enter the next stage of our lives: The Deployment. We had a mandatory family meeting the day we left for our vacation that was supposed to be informative but in true army fashion it was more of a "here, stand in this line for two hours and then when you're done with that go stand in THAT line for another two hours and oh yeah army wives are also expected to take orders" meeting. (Let me just tell you how well the "army wives will take orders" thing went over with me. It didn't.) I'm also trying to decide whether working part-time in the NICU would be an option for us financially. Let's be honest: the thought of Emma spending all of that extra time with her dad and That Stepmother makes me a little nauseated. Since I work 12-hour night shifts it'll be really hard for me to work full-time anyway, since I'll need to be sleeping most of the week when Emma is awake. What to do what to do? I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Tomorrow? Emma's ninth birthday. Every mom says this and I can't believe I'm saying it but here it is. How did my baby grow up so fast? And why has she taken to calling me "dude" lately?

As a final P.S. - CONGRATULATIONS to all of you pregnant people! I love you guys and I can't wait for all of the new family members. (Including those of you I consider family even though we don't have a speck of shared DNA. You know who you are.) Some of my friends/family worried that I would be all weird with pregnancy announcements since Chad and I can't have kids, but I'm not that type of in-vitro woman. Maybe it's because I get paid to work with infants. I love newborns (except for the ones that shoot projectile poop at me and the ones that yank out their ET/breathing tubes. Those little people go on The List. Eh, who am I kidding. I love the naughty ones too!) and I get excited when people make announcements. You can even whine about your morning sickness. I don't mind in the slightest, as long as you will excuse my inadvertently doing a full assessment on your baby the first moment I get my hands on them. Don't be alarmed if you observe me feeling your new little junior's fontanelles and cranial sutures. I'll try to restrain myself from checking femoral pulses or pulling out my stethoscope, but no promises.

Over and out.