Hi There!!

Well the countdown to Okinawa has begun! I can’t believe I’ve already stopped working!! I really miss going into the office. It was so nice working again and learning a new skill. I never realized insurance was so interesting! I’ll be forever grateful to Brad and Nicole for giving me such a wonderful opportunity and working with my needs for an ‘odd’ schedule.

It’s only 35 short days until we head to South Dakota to meet up with Natalie and Jeff. They are so excited about getting Kate and Tess from us. I haven’t told Natalie yet, but she is also getting one of Grandpa LeRoy’s heirloom Fern Peonies to plant in her yard that we obviously can’t take with us. When we get back from Okinawa, I’ll be heading her way to split it and planting what I take back at our homestead in South Dakota. Eventually that one plant will get split and planted at all of our children’s homes. I love cool legacies like that. The best part is that LeRoy never thought I’d get it to grow because of the time of year he dug it for me (November). I’m persistent and something that special definitely got extra TLC!!

We are about in the middle of our wild travel schedule and it’s been a blast! We started with a weekend trip to Lava Hot Springs for Lavapalooza with our Harley chapter. I’m the Chapter Photographer and I couldn’t wait for the chance to snap a few pics of everyone having a great time. It was a total blast! We stayed the night up in Pocatello and then Sunday we rode up to Idaho Falls for breakfast at Smitty’s, a favorite restaurant of ours.

We finally managed to go through everything in the house and storage for the mega yard sale we had with our friends on May 31st. We barely had anything left to take to the thrift store – yeah!

The first weekend in June, we rode up to Idaho Falls with almost 30 of our friends for our annual Beer Fest getaway. It was a pretty wet and cold ride on the way there. Sure was glad we had our rain gear with us!! Friday night we had in incredible time at the Sandpiper Steak House. They know we get to be a pretty rowdy bunch and always give us a private area where they don’t have to worry about us bothering other customers. They sure know how to mix an awesome margarita not to mention the 22 oz. mugs of beer on tap! Steve didn’t even eat his dinner. He was having such a good time it just kind of got forgotten – well that’s his story at least. ;-)

Just a couple of days after getting back from Idaho, we took off for North Carolina to attend Krista’s, my niece, high school graduation. It was a lovely graduation except for the few morons that couldn’t follow the rules and yelled when their child/brother/friend crossed the stage. The sad thing about that is that the students graduating would have gotten a mural in the school they all would be able to sign. Also, the student graduating got their diploma pulled and had to do service at the school before they could get their diploma back. Some people are such inconsiderate idiots!

The day of the graduation, we rented an Ultra Classic and went on a ride with my brother, Ken, and his friend Luke (we were staying at Luke’s place). It was an unbelievable ride! They dropped me off at a restaurant for lunch so I could meet my 8 month old nephew, Sebastian. He is SO cute! I took a ton a pictures and he loves the little stuffed dog I took him (his mom loved the clothes – lol). The day after the graduation we took off for western North Carolina to the little town of Franklin about 45 minutes outside of Asheville. On Saturday, we went to the Sheffield mine to search for rubies and sapphires. We got there at 10:00 and didn’t leave until almost 5:00! We had a great time sitting at the flume going through our many buckets of native dirt. Steve found 10 carats of rubies and one little lavender sapphire. I found 7 carats of rubies and one iron garnet. Even though we didn’t find any “big ones” we had a really nice time. We got back to Ken’s/Luke’s Sunday evening and then flew home late Monday.

This weekend (6/20-22) we’ll be riding again to multiple locations. Sunday is our HOG Chapter’s Meet the Officer’s Ride to Bear Lake and should be a lot of fun.

I can’t believe that just next Wednesday we are heading to Great Falls, Montana for the Montana HOG Rally. Time is honestly just flying by! After we get back from Montana, Sarah flies in the next day for a week – hooray!

We finally received our departure date – August 18 to Seattle and August 19 to Okinawa. Our flights and hotel are scheduled, so I guess it’s pretty official now. We jumped through all their hoops and now just need to schedule the movers to come in the beginning of August as well as Missy’s vet appointment on base for her health certificate.

I guess that’s it for now. I’ll post more as events unfold as well as more pics.

Bernice