Road trip

After an incredibly long deployment and an amazing vacation, it was finally time for us to leave Virginia and move to California.  We were splitting up our trip into three parts.  The first part we would drive from Virginia to Florida to visit family (and pick up Annabelle!).   Second part we would drive from Florida to San Diego to visit our friends, Katie and Beau (and their daughter Anna Cross).  Third part we would drive from San Diego to Monterey.

We were both very excited to leave Virginia.  It wasn't a bad place to live, we were just ready to move on and experience new places.  And we were excited about seeing Annabelle again.  My parents were nice enough to take care of her while we were in Europe and preparing for our move.  I hadn't seen Annabelle in 6 weeks and Rob hadn't seen her in 7 months!

We stayed in Florida about a week.  Here are a few pictures from our drive and visit.

I will post more about the rest of our trip later!

Europe

Rob was supposed to be deployed from January '10 through August '10, but his Captain was nice enough to let him off of the ship 3 weeks early!  We decided to take this opportunity and spend two weeks in Europe.

I met Rob in Rome 6 months to the day we last saw each other.  Rob flew in from Cyprus and arrived at the airport first.  We weren't sure if we would be able to find each other, but I saw him as soon as I walked out of customs.  It was my favorite moment of this year!

Rome was amazing!  It was so neat to see the Collosieum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain...really just being there was unbelievable.  You see these sites on TV, never really thinking you will have the chance to see it in person and when you do, it's breathtaking.  I'm sorry I'm not a very good writer, I really like for my pictures to speak for me.  So, here are some pictures from Rome.

 View inside the Vatican

 Saint Peter's Basilica 

 The Collosieum

 How we spent most of our time in Rome

 View from the dome at Saint Peter's

 Trevi Fountain

The Pantheon

One word of advice, don't visit Rome in July/August.  Yes, we had a really good time, but we were EXTREMELY hot and sweaty and stinky.

After Rome, we took a train to Florence.  We stayed in Florence for about 4 days.  During that time, we took a day trip to Pisa.

 The Baptistry at Duomo, this was literally right around the corner from our hotel.

 The Duomo tower

 The Ponte Vecchio

 Rob eating some yummy gelato!

 The Leaning Tower of Pisa

 At the top of the Leaning Tower

 At the top of the tower at the Duomo.  Rob HATES heights!

How we spent a couple of days...

From Florence, we took a 15 hour train ride to Paris.  The train ride was long and miserable, but worth it!  While in Paris we took a day trip to Versailles.

 The Louvre

 The Mona Lisa

 Venus

 The Eiffel Tower

 Versailles

 Arc de Triomphe

 Statue of Liberty

 Notre Dame

Rose Window inside Notre Dame

We have a lot more pictures, these are just a select few.  I can't wait to go back!

For those of you who were wondering....

For those of you who were wondering, here are a couple of links to the type of things Rob did while on deployment.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2010/08/13/mme.a.piracy.gulf.of.aden.cnn.html

http://www.wavy.com/dpp/military/USS-San-Jacinto-rescues-Yemeni-mariners

Rob's ship was featured in the story on CNN and his Captain was interviewed for the piece.  Rob was really upset with CNN, because they took a lot of footage of him running a drill, but none of that footage was in the story.

The story about the rescue of Yemeni mariners was exclusively about Rob's ship.

We're Baaaaaack!

Okay, I know it's been awhile, almost 6 months to be exact, but I have my reasons.  I don't like to advertise when Rob is on deployment.  It's just not safe.  I don't advertise it on Facebook and I don't advertise it on our blog.  Our blog isn't private, so ANYONE can jump on here and easily figure out Rob is gone.

For those of you who didn't know, Rob left for deployment in January.  It's hard when your spouse leaves for 6-7 months at a time, but I can't do anything to change it, so I have to accept it.  I can't sit around and cry that he's gone, I have to continue my life and keep busy.  So, I did!  I had various visitors, visited friends and family, met some of the characters from Twilight, participated in an 'Amazing Race' type charity event, and made a trip out to California to get a feel for where we might live.

 My friend Diana came for a visit and we met up with our friend Ed.

 Characters from the Twilight Saga.

 Amazing Race Chesapeake.  Think scavenger hunt, not actual running!

Visiting Diana, Nicky and Melanie.

CALIFORNIA!!

What?  You didn't know we were moving to California?  Yep, that's right, we now live in Seaside, CA, about an hour south of San Jose and two hours south of San Francisco.  While Rob was on deployment, he found out he had been accepted to the Naval Postgraduate School.  It was such a great deal.  Go to school, FOR FREE, for eighteen months and that's it.  That's his job.  No night school.  Just go to school during the day and still get paid his normal salary.  Who can turn that down?  Not us, that's who!

Since Rob has gotten back from deployment, we have been going non-stop.  Vacations, moving, driving cross country.  We are exhausted!  I just wanted to let everyone know that we are still alive!  I will update our blog soon with pictures from our vacation and move.