Show us your life: Where you live!

've been a little busy, so I'm backposting this.

This week on Kelly's Blog she is doing another "Show us your life" this time its the town you live in! We move so much that I thought it would be fun to do it for where we live now!

So I give you New London/Groton Connecticut. Submarine Capitol of the world (Seriously, we have the sign).

Here it's not uncommon to be driving down the road and see this.......

Subs are always coming and going down the river (This picture was taken 2 days ago when my husbands boat left on deployment). It's really neat watching them come and go.

We have some of the most amazing parks and beaches here. I'm from Washington state and most of our beaches are just rock! So it was nice getting here and they have fine white sand.

We even have a few huge casinos (the biggest one in the United States if I believe) that have some really great food inside.  It's called Fox Woods and it's beautiful! We have our Submarine Ball there every year.

We also have REALLY great food here! Bobby's Burgers and Paul's Pasta are two of our favorites! I want to eat at as many of the different food places here before we move again and have turned it into a quest to get it done!

We live only a couple hours away from Boston and NYC and have gotten the chance to visit both quite a few times! These pictures are from this Thanksgiving when we got the chance to go to the Macy's Day Parade! It was so much fun and something I never thought I would get the chance to do!

My husband and I both grew up in Washington State, land of the rain. With navy has moved us to New York, South Carolina and now Connecticut. We've loved everywhere we've moved but I think one of the best thing about living here is the snow. I love it (not as much as I love the rain). After living in the south and all that heat, it was nice to get back to the cold!

I hope you've enjoyed my little tour of where I call "Home".

Show us your Life: Books!

Today over at Kelly's Blog shes doing another "show us your life". Today its about your favorite books! It can be Children's books or books you like now.

I'm a huge reader and if you've read my blog before then you more then know this. Hehehe. It even resulted in me starting a blog book club (the BBC) .....(if anyone wants to join us, please do! Click on the top book to the left and/or click on the link above that says "about the BBC" We love getting new people in on the action!)

I'm going to share my top 5 favorite books, starting with when I was younger to now.

I remember laying in bed and my dad reading this book to me, as I got older I would read it to myself over and over again. It's a huge book with about 400 pages and maybe 100 different stories. It's the book I'm most possessive over and when asked what I would grab if my house was burning, this book was one of the first things I said. It's an old book published in the 40's so it's seen better days, but my best memories are with this book and I'm excited to read it to my own child.

I loved the book Madeline. When I was little I dreamed of going to Paris and this book was where I was when I dreamed, later I loved the show that they had on in the mornings.

This was one of my first "chapter books" that I read. I would read it over and over again and I even remember in 5th grade doing a book project on it. It was a project that you could do whatever you wanted and be as creative as you wanted. My dad and I built a doll house from scrap wood. It was so much fun and by far the best project there if I do say so myself!

In middle School I read this book for the first time. I remember it was the first time I realised how real books could be and that they weren't always a made up fairy-tale. It touched me and will forever be one of the best books ever read.

I love Mitch Albom books. They make you think and always have such a deep message. This was the first one I picked up of his and since then I've read them all. This book is what made me become the huge reader that I am now.

What are your favorite books? Go to Kelly's blog and join in!

Show us your life. Vacations.

Head on over to Kellys blog to see who else is showing off their vacations!

My favorite Vacations.

Bahrain

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I flew to Bahrain to see my husband (He was deployed and was in port for a little over a week). Now the place wasn't AMAZING but it was fun, different and I hadn't seen my husband in months!

My friend Stephanie and I flew out to Bahrain from NYC. It took us 13 hours to get to Dubai where we caught our next (1 hour) flight to Bahrain.

It was hot. REALLY hot. It was October but it felt like mid august in the South.

We got our bags and headed to the hotel. Once we got there we got settled and went to go eat. When we got back from eating we checked our e-mail to discover that the boys were already there! We waited all night. I got woke up by Justin banging on my door.

We spent the rest of the week exploring the Island.

Justin and I at the Tree Of Life. No other plant life for miles...then this massive green tree.
Stephanie, Jimmy, Justin and I at the Tree Of Life.
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The we looked over and saw a herd of Camels! We walked down and the guy was so nice. He let us pet and ride on them. They were sooo big! I loved it!

This was the most memorable trip we have ever taken. It had been months since I had seen him and I knew leaving him that it would be months before I saw him again. Whenever given the chance I will fly to go see him in port.

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I never thought I would go to the Middle East for any reason. Crazy what you do for love.

Niagara Falls

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My Husband is a good sport. He puts up with all of the random ideas that I get. I really wanted to go to the Falls before we moved from the East Coast. We had a great chance to do it over a 4 day weekend. So we did. We had so much fun. It was really cold, but worth it. The hotel package we got gave us free tickets to the butterfly conservatory, the Niagara sky wheel, the tunnels under the falls and a free movie in our room and a pizza delivered right to us!

This is us on the drive and in our hotel room. It was a VERY long drive.

Every new place we go we check to see if they have a Hard Rock Cafe and the Rainforest Cafe if they do, we go. Niagara had both!

If you ever get a chance to go, go to the Butterfly Conservatory. It was beautiful! It had tons of butterflies and the plants and flowers were amazing. It was so much better then I expected. I think it was almost the best attraction to do besides the falls.

The Sky wheel was great! I was told to do it at night because it was so beautiful with the lights. We went up and boy were they right! The lights they use turn the falls all different colors. I think it would be nice during the day, but at night it will take your breath away.

The Falls! Wow. I have seen falls before and even swam under a few back home in Washington. But I have never seen any like this. They were huge.....(well duh, Kim) and so loud. We went during the winter months so most of the falls still had ice all over them.

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I would recommend the Niagara Falls to anyone! But I would go on the off season, check different packages and get the most for your money.

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These are just 2 of the amazing places we have been in the past few years. Check the left side of my blog to see the whole list of places we have been since 2006!

Show us where you live!

It's Friday! I know I haven't been blogging this past week. Sorry. Justin was only home for about a week and a half and now he's out to Sea again. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with him while he was here and the fact that we both got sick didn't help anything!

Head on over to Kelly's Blog to see who else is showing of their kid(s) rooms today!

Remember- We live in Military Base Housing. We make due with what we are given. My house might not be the most amazing space in the world but for us, it is perfect. I do not paint walls for the fact that I would have to take the time to get them all back to white before we leave and sometimes when you are only given a months noticed that you are moving painting is not something you want to do.

This is Landon's Room

When Landon was really little I knew I wanted to do a Bug theme in his room. We had bought a really cute duvet cover and I wanted everything else to match it. For the LIFE of me I couldn't find anything. So I gave up. When we moved to Connecticut I decided to try again. We got Landon a bigger bed (Full) so using the old duvet cover (that was a twin) was out of the question. I was online looking at all of the different kids bedding that comes in a full and I found this! AND IT WAS ON SALE!!!!! So The hungry caterpillar bedroom was born.

The Leaf we got at Ikea. The big 4ft caterpillar I got in NYC at F.A.O Schwartz. I love that his headboard is a book shelf. It makes bedtime reading a lot easier.

Hundley sleeps in there every night so I guess it's his room to.

His sheets are my favorite part of his bedding. I know I'm crazy for giving my 4 year old white sheets. Lol.

Even his curtains match! I love that he has curtains mostly because the sun comes up right into his windows. He knows how to pull them back once he's awake.

The View from his room. His room is on the 3rd story of our house so he gets a nice view of the "valley".

Koda the dinosaur. He got this for Christmas and he just loves it! He plays with it almost every morning.

His chart. I love that the apple fits his room theme but I love that he's getting more responsible and knows he needs to do all of these things before bed.

Landon's closet. It's a huge walk-in. I took the door off and hung the cool green thing (lol) that I got from Ikea. He loves that most of his toys are in there and I like that it doesn't seem like a closet since it has a window and everything in it.

See! Nice window in his CLOSET!

His dresser is also in his closet. It's out of the way and easy to get to.

His Sailor duck he got while we lived in New York.

I had to get the whole set when I bought his furniture since I want him to have it for a long time.

Here it is open. I'm picky of when he gets to watch movies in his room. But I like that when he wakes up in the morning he will turn one on and play for a little bit before wanting to go downstairs.

Show us where you live Friday! Living rooms!

It's Friday again! Head on over to Kelly's (click the button) to see who else is showing their house. This week everyone is showing off their living rooms! Once again we don't really pick our houses so it's not the most amazing thing you have ever seen!

This is Moxee. She doesn't like the camera when the dog is anywhere near her. Sorry I tried.

Part of my living room. Like the AC unit? I guess New England doesn't believe in Central air.

Living room. I love our couches. We bought them when we lived in South Carolina and I think they will be with us for a very long time. If anything gets on them Huggie's wipes takes it off (even black shoe-shine!). I think the coffee table is my absolute favorite...it's padded! So it was great having a toddler. He would fall and hit and I never had to worry about a cracked head.

These are the pictures Justin brought home from Deployment. I took two from each place and framed them. I love it!

And these are our homecoming pictures. I like to change the pictures in these frames every three months or so...But I can't seem to bring myself to take those out.

I like our lamps. I could do without the tables but for some reason my husband loves them. We keep our dogs toys under there and I swear he makes more of a mess with his toys then Landon does. I'm framing all of Justin's awards he's gotten this past year and I need to hang them but I never have the time!

Looking into the living room from the main hallway.


Kitchen to the left hallway and stairways to the right.

My husband's baby. Also his chair. When he's home I have to push it back into it's spot every morning.

We love watching movies. Can you tell?

Our basket-O-shoes. We always go outside so we have most of our shoes in the second floor. The green bowl has random outside things for Landon (hats, gloves, scarf and socks).

My chair. Justin and I fight over this spot when we are watching movies. It was in our bedroom for a while but after the x-mas tree moved we needed something to fill the spot.

This is the doors out to the backyard. I like that they bring in so much light during the day.

Living rooms from the past!

South Carolina
Long but not very wide. I could move the furniture anyway I wanted and it would fit, which was nice. This was taken just a few weeks after we bought the couches.
Tiny TV. I'm so glad we got rid of that entertainment center we had way too much crap on it.

New York

This living room was so small we could only put the furniture one way. Back behind is my chair, our old computer desk and the door to the backyard.

There is that entertainment center again!
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Random side note. I've been looking at all the great things lately on Rue la la (it's a members only kinda site thing...lol. They have certain boutiques that are only open for 2 days with REALLY great sales!) . Go here if you want to check it out! http://www.ruelala.com/invite/krowan01 They have the best stuff!