More Pictures of Elden's BMT Graduation (but not THAT many since I suck at taking pictures!)

I'm terrible at taking pictures!!!! The whole time at Elden's graduation I was trying to take a picture and see him at the same time since they were so far away and hardly ever standing still-so not many of my pictures turned out and NONE of my videos turned out. Luckily I took so many pictures that a few were ok. 

He's behind the tall guy in the front

This one-if you zoom in-you can see him towards the left side.

Mom & Dad Warner at the Alamo

Elden & I at the Alamo (I may regret posting this picture since i look like a cow-but it's a good one of Elden-I not only can't take pictures, I'm not very photogenic either!! UGH!)

Elden's BMT Graduation

I'm not going to lie....my husband is such a stud!(when I get home I'll post more pictures) Elden graduated from Air Force Basic Training this week. AND he graduated with honors! I'm so proud of him!

Elden's parents and I flew to San Antonio on Wednesday morning and the graduation events started Thursday.  They did the Airmans 1 1/2 mile run, then the Honor Graduate ceremony (that's what this picture is of-i didn't take very good pictures), after that, the coin ceremony, and then he was given base liberty so we could hang out on base until 8.  It was REALLY hot and all of the graduation events were outside.  I always felt bad for him knowing how hot it was because he was in his uniform all the time, but holy cow! It was terrible!! He has lost quite a bit of weight! Our first stop on base was for an extremly large pizza (Elden loves his pizza!), and then we went and shopped a bit and walked around the BX, and then went and saw Harry Potter (I slept through most of it however).

Today we went to the Graduation Parade, and then we went to the squadrons to see where he's been living the past 8 1/2 weeks, and then we were able to leave base.  He gets off base tomorrow also, and then because his flight got warrior flight AND because he got honor grad he's able to get off base Sunday instead of base liberty whch is awesome since we ran out of things to do on Thursday after about an hour.

I've met a lot of the guys in his flight, they all call him Papa Warner or something like that because he was the oldest in the flight.  When we were in the squadron someone passed by us and pointed at Elden, and said to his family "this is Papa Warner-this is who we come to for all our financial advice." It was funny.  He said one night several of them came to him with pens and their notebooks, some with the top labeled "Papa Warner's financial advice". Apparently after their financial planning class they took and the comments he made, they all realized he may be older, but he's smart... :)  They also said that he "won" BMT because he got 4 ribbons, and that's the most you can get here (the two extra he got were for Honor Grad and Expert Marksman).  I think there were only 4 guys in his flight that did.  Once again-I'm so proud of him!!

On Tuesday, he found out he is leaving for Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi on Monday for tech school for 70 days :(   Luckily I can talk to him more and go visit periodically, but the military life will definately take some getting used to! I sure do miss him when he's gone! But i'm excited to see where we'll end up for our first adventure!

Did I Mention?

No, we're not having a baby! (everyone asks me that whenever I say "guess what" or if I don't feel well, or if they haven't asked me in a few weeks)

Elden enlisted in the Air Force!

He met with a recruiter last August and has been waiting for one of the jobs he chose to open up, but it's definately official now.  He's leaving for basic training July 5th-for 8 1/2 weeks.  Then he has his technical school for a few months (we'll find out how long he has to do that once he gets to basic) and then we'll move to who knows where.  So if anyone wants to come keep me company while he's gone, I would love it!   

I've had mixed emotions about him joining-but mostly I'm excited-and he is too... I'm looking at it as an adventure. 

Funny Kid!!!

I'm in Oregon right now visiting my sister Penny.  I came to watch the kids while Penny & Todd went to the Bahamas. Since I was going to have to come back a week after I went home, for my nephew Carson's birthday/baptism-I decided to stay for a few weeks and just work from here.  Plus, I love spending time with my sister!!!  

I may be the only one who thinks this is funny....but today-I was on the phone after the kids came back from School and Penny said to Carson that I was on the phone and that he needed to go upstairs and play...his response was "it's ok mom, i'm just going to be here in my box"  (the pictures are a little bad-it was on my phone and kind of far away)

I love this kid!! He has quite the sense of humor!!!! While I was taking care of them last week, as I drove him to school he was trying to persuade me to take him out of school early because at 1 o'clock he had computers and then reading, and that he knows how to use a computer and he knows how to read.....I couldn't argue with that logic! So I got him out of school....I had to maintain my favorite Aunt status :)

Elden's new "toy"

I think I did really good this year picking a Christmas gift for Elden!!! (of course-Elden's brother-in-law & Sister Julia are the ones that told me which one to buy-Thanks guys!)

He thought he wasn't getting anything else since he had already gotten an Xbox a few weeks before and so I told him THAT was his present-but really I have wanted him to have a gun for a while.  He was pretty excited!!!!! (Though-in this picture-he's trying to act cool) :)

Visiting the Stettlers in Peoria Illinois....

Today we went to Nauvoo to visit the church sites (really-there's not much else to do there)

Crossing over the Mississippi River

We went to all the old shops- And Carson learned how to use a newspaper press

Then we learned how to make our own hemp ropes & got to keep it.  This is Emily chasing after Carson trying to get the end of the rope.....

 The Nauvoo temple is very beautiful! Hopefully I can go back when I have time to be there longer!

Update

I've been a slacker at updating our blog....nothing really exciting to post about I guess.

We went to Pompano Beach, Florida August 6th-13th with Elden's parents, Carrie & Michael.  It was AWESOME-I wish we lived closer to a beach!!!! We went to the beach almost daily and ate a ton of Blue Bell ice cream (Thus-no pictures) :) Seriously-I personally only took 2 pictures while we were there and it was while we were waiting on a bridge to close in Key Largo.

It was a perfect vacation other than when the old guy ran into our rental car... we're still waiting for his insurance to pay us back since the rental company took our deductable from our credit card and then his insurance tried to stick us with a $300 bill. Luckily we have an attorney in the family who coached Elden on what he needed to say (Thanks Dave).

Exciting for us-we're ALMOST done with the big room in the basement.  Over the past year Elden's been putting up new drywall and re-wiring down there (which is a lot of work and he did a great job! I'm lucky I married someone so handy!).  We finished painting it last Friday night and now we're just waiting to put the floor in. I'm SUPER excited because I can move my office back home and try to re-organize everything since i'm running out of space for all the stuff i'm not really sure how i ended up with :) I've been trying to get rid of things every weekend but it doesn't seem to make any difference....how does that work?

I started "selling" Mary Kay....so if anyone wants to buy any from me you can go online to www.marykay.com/gretchwarner or just call me :)

Elden's Brother Dale & his wife Stephanie had their little girl Claire in July...she is SOOOOO cute!

I think that's it...

Busy June!

June has been a busy month for me! Yesterday I realized I've been doing stuff non-stop and much to my relief, I don't have anything else planned for a while! Which I'm sure will make Elden happy so I can cook and clean the house every once in a while!

My mom and I flew to Oregon on the 8th to visit my sister Penny and her family.  The trip to Redmond was HORRIBLE!!! Full of missed connections because of delayed flights, crappy customer service and ghetto hotels!

The first day we were in Oregon was Blake's last baseball game.  Blake even got to pitch for the first time. 

A few days later was Caylyn's dance recital. It was fun to see her dance-I hadn't seen her dance in several years and she's really getting good! (For some reason-I only took videos of her entire dances and didn't get ANY pictures of her)  Her dances were really good, but there's nothing more entertaining than the little 4-6 year olds "dancing".  A couple of them had the whole auditorium almost rolling on the floor with laughter!

The rest of the trip we mostly hung out at the house (I worked some), Penny I did our normal shopping excursions, I got an eye exam from my brother-in-law Todd and I got some new sunglasses :) Mostly though, it was nice spending time with the Sheldon's! I really miss them!

The Sunday I was there, Kiley, Caylyn and I made "Hamburgers" out of cupcakes, brownies and frosting.  We tried to make french fries out of sugar cookies but they didn't turn out very good.

Our trip home was easy and un-eventful. I had one day to recover/catch up on work and then I had to go help at church with Cub Scout Day Camp Friday & Saturday.  Friday was absolutely insane and unorganized because the lady who had planned it, hadn't really asked anyone to help her so she was trying to run the whole thing herself resulting in near chaos.  Saturday was a TON better because I helped her delegate the activities and told her to just oversee everything so she didn't kill herself.  Of course, it's always a near death experience when there are about 30some 8-11 year olds all together! :)

Then Monday at work, my dad, brother and I had a meeting, and Will informed me that I needed to start driving up to Monument again every day to work with him and so I could teach Brandi (his wife) to do my job and I would be his personal assistant basically.  Anyone that knows Will and I, know that we don't work well together because we're too alike (not that he'll admit it-he thinks I'm just un-rational because I'm a girl or something).  We both like to be in control and we both speak our mind (which can result in some nasty fights) and I knew that working in the same space again wouldn't be an ideal situation for us to continue to get along!  The stress from that seemed to cause a near emotional breakdown :) I think I'm getting over it now though-or I guess I'm just half expecting to get a good system working with Will and I, and get Brandi trained, and then I'll get to move my office back home.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Lastly-the past several weeks I've been planning a baby shower for my sister-in-law Stephanie who is due next month.  I've never thrown a baby shower before and I was stressing out about it! I spent probably around 12 hours making 50 of the cutest invitations EVER! (Without my Cricut it might have taken even longer!)

  

Yesterday was the baby shower and it turned out great! There were like 14 people that came and I think everyone enjoyed it.

Now for the rest of the summer I've got nothing (hopefully other than work) to stress out about! Only things to look forward to! Trina and I are going to see Twilight next week (excited 1 because it's the new Twilight and 2 because I've not hung out with my good friend Trina in a few years!) and then in August, Elden and I are going to Florida for a week.  Elden's parents, little sister Carrie and little brother Michael are coming with us also.  My parents gave me a week to their time share-so I'm pretty stoked! A week on the beach...need i say more?

Coupons

I'm not going to lie-I'm an excellent shopper! Yes-sometimes I spend WAY too much money on things I don't necessairly need, but when it comes down to it, I know how to save. Growing up in a big family, my mom used to shop with coupons for groceries (with 9 kids she kind of HAD to).  My job was to cut out the coupons, organize them and ocassionally go through them and get rid of the expired ones.  For some reason I always enjoyed it.  About a year ago I decided to try couponing myself-even though it's just Elden and I.  I had to make a game of it otherwise it can get kind of hard-so my goal was to see if I could save more than I spend- specifically more than 1/2 off (which i've been able to do plenty of times)
The purpose of this post is because I'm pretty impressed with myself today.  Since it was slow at work (and since I work from home) I decided to go grocery shopping to get some pork chops for dinner and see if I could find any chicken on sale.  I came home with 6 boxes of cereal (the good stuff too! Froot Loops, Cookie Crisp and Cheerios) 4 boxes of pop tarts, 2- 12 packs of Charmin TP, an 8pack of Bounty Paper Towels, 2 large bottles of Dawn Hand Renewal Dish Soap, 2 cartons of Bryers ice cream, 2 packs of porkchops, and a thing of sprinkles I found on the discount cart in the back of the store to add to my baking stash.  Total Spent-$34.03 .  Total Savings of $67.77 (between store sales and coupons)
Not bad huh?

My Granny

I wish everyone had a Granny like I did! She passed away yesterday morning after battling cancer for several years.  My whole life she's been close by and it's strange thinking about not having her around anymore-and now when I have children they won't know what "gimme some sugar" means :) 

I know I'll see her again, but I sure will miss her until I do! 

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we spent it in Florence with my parents.  My little brother Dan and his roommate Ben came from BYU, Will and his family came down, and my grandparents came over.   After we ate, we went and shot a couple of Will's and my dad's guns.

Brandi

Daniel

Hailey-this little girl is WAY too cute!

 Elden & Hailey

Wednesday night we went and spent it with Elden's family and had a pre-thanksgiving. All the Warner kids were at home, so we all just sat around talking and playing with the babies

Our Cruise to Mexico

Last week Elden and I went on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. It was wonderful! The weather was perfect, hardly ever a cloud in the sky.

We didn't take a lot of pictures-and the ones that we did they mostly look the same since it was just Elden and I and something in the backgroud, and elden taking the picture with his arm stretched out. We took a few pictures with an underwater camera when we were snorkeling-the coolest fish I saw that we took a picture of looked just like my swimsuit top. It was blue with white dots.... Maybe in 10 years when we take the rest of the pictures on the camera and develop it, I'll show you.

We left from LA on Saturday and were at sea on Sunday. Monday we stopped at Cabo San Lucas-which is probably one of my favorite stops we made. We tendered into the marina from the ship and took a water taxi for a 45min tour around lovers beach and then we snorkled for a few hours which was a lot of fun.

Tuesday we were at Mazatlan....we weren't very impressed (Kind of how I felt about Acapolco last time I was in Mexico). We got off the boat and got a map of the touristy places to go and so we thought we could go downtown where there was a market and a cathedral. So we took a taxi downtown and yes, the cathedral was probably the nicest building around, but wasn't really what we were expecting. So we could see the beach and we started walking towards it, and it wasn't very appealing so we kept walking to see if it got any nicer, so we kept walking...and walking...and walking. What felt like 7 miles later after I had blisters on my feet from my flip-flops, we took a taxi to the "golden zone" where they were supposed to have nicer beaches, after walking around there for a while we took another taxi back to the ship and swam in the pool.

Wednesday we went to Puerto Vallarta. I really enjoy Puerto Vallarta! We took a tour up in the Sierra Madre's and we stopped at a resort and snorkeled a bit and then went to see how they make tequilla (not by choice-everyone else on the tour with us wanted to go) Then we went back to the resort we had stopped at before and ate the best fajita's I've ever had and swam a little more.

Thursday and Friday we were at Sea...we slept a lot and spent time on deck in the sun...and eating. They had shows every night, so we went to those most evenings. They had musicals, comedians, magicians-and they were pretty good, but Elden was most excited to go to them so that when we came back we had towel animals on our bed with andes mints for eyes.

It was an awesome vacation and I think I'd like to make November Mexico trips a tradition!!!

Wedding

Last Friday was Elden's brother Dale's wedding. A lot of Elden's family came to visit, and we were able to spend a lot of time with everyone. It was fun, since I've not really spent much time with any of them. So now I feel like I know the family a little better.

I don't think we got ANY pictures of Dale and Stephanie, but we got some of the rest of the family-but not that many-so here they are.