ALMOST DONE!!

So yes as the post says, im ALMOST DONE with all of my training. When it is all said and done it will have been about 6 1/2 months of training all together! Geeze time has flown by and I am so glad it did because I am pretty sure id kill myself if I had to stay here one more minute than I am scheduled to. I cant wait to leave Sheppard and I feel for all the people that are stationed here and have to stay for a long time, my hats off to you, I couldn't do it. So yes I graduate tomorrow. My final graduation average is an 88, it's good but that was without hardly any studying. Looking back now I wish I would have studied and pushed myself to see what my full potential could have achieved but it's over now and their is no going back. I'm proud of myself and I know my baby is so im happy. I cant wait till tomorrow morning when I get to FINALLY suit up in my blues and graduate! My day has finally come. Thank you God.

So the next AND final step in this training is going to be at Little Rock, Arkansas. I have 2 weeks there and then I am totally done with training and I will be in the operational Air Force. I can't wait to get to Little Rock because a good friend of mine is actually there right now as well that I went through BMT with. So at least I will have somebody to hang out with. At Little Rock we do HOT training, Hand On Training. Basically we do the same thing we did here but with active C-130's.

So lets move to the future. It looks very very bright! I have about four months until I marry the greatest woman in this entire universe! Oh I can't wait to make Lauren Novatka Mrs. Lauren Volheim. That will truly be the greatest day of my life! Everything is setting up perfect for the wedding I hear, sorry I can't help to much right now Lauren but I swear I will when I get home! You are truly incredible and perfect, everything from your dorky sense of humor to your perfect bright smile, it's all I could have ever asked for and more. Thank you for sticking by my side through all of these hard times, I promise it will only get easier from here. Thank you.

I just wanted to give a quick thank you to the few friends that have also stuck through this with me, you guys are true friends for life. Thank you for all of your support and all that you have done, I greatly appreciate it. I will be home soon guys, soon.

To my mom, brother, and sister, thank you so much too. You 3 are a big part of the reason I have made it this far. Things have been very hard lately but I promise things will also get easier in this aspect of life as well, hang in there. I am very sorry I havent been able to be home and step up and be the family leader that I should have been but duty has called and I have had to answer that call. I promise though everything will get a lot easier, God is on our side. Be strong you 3, i'll be home soon.

Ok well im going to go set out my blues for tomorrow and get my room cleaned and start packing for Little Rock. Thank you once again to all of my friends and family. And a huge thank you to my wonderful fiance who I couldn't have done any of this without. You are my life, my world, and my better half. Thank you baby, stay strong, i'll be home soon.

-A1C Stephen "Goofy" Volheim

Holiday pictures!

Again, I always forget the post in reverse order! Oooops!--


My birthday!! 22 :( Downtown to check out the new bar, Play

Christmas morning! 12/25/2010 :) I made us take a bunch of pictures before opening presents hehe

Natty on Christmas morning, in his santa suit with his HUGE bone! (He's still working on that one, a new record for him!)

At Olive Garden the night he surprised me! 12/22/2010-- Merry Christmas to me!! :)

What a wonderful holiday season this year! Could NOT have been better!!!

Merry Christma.. Er, Happy New Year??

Oh my goodness, it has been awhile! Last semester ended beautifully and not a moment too soon! (A, 3 Bs, and a C!)- not perfect but i'll sure take it! Then it was time to get ready for Christmas! Thanks to my wonderful mommy we drug a live Christmas tree up the stairs to our third floor apartment. I did the balcony lights myself and i'm pretty sure you could see them from space! It was a wonderful year! I did miss decorating with Stephen because it's always more fun that way, but it was special to have him come home to a pretty house!

Speaking of him coming home.. December 22nd, Stephen came home for the first time since June 29th! Almost 6 whole months! :) He susprised me too, because he had me convinced he wasn't going to be home until the following day! His brother and sister were in on his little surprise and invited me to go to Olive Garden with them for dinner, while we were waiting for the bill he snuck behind me with flowers! Merry Christmas to me!!

It was a great 10 days having him home! We didn't do too much. I made a big lasagna dinner and had both our families over on the 23rd, that was a very nice time! Christmas eve we went to dinner with my family and to the midnight Christmas eve service and then enjoyed a very relaxing Christmas day.. well until I got the stomach flu! Not so much.. and unfortunatley I passed it on to Stephen the day after my birthday. So we ended up doing a lot of laying around and being lazy to recover! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed just laying around watching tv with him though! :)

New years eve was also pretty quiet for us. We watched our Noles win the Chik-fil-a bowl at my parents house then went to Mugs and met our good friends, Ryan & Whitney Seal for a midnight drink! :) (sadly, we were home and asleep by 12:30- we're growing up! lol) We got to visit The Seals' in Biloxi before Stephen left, too. We sure do love baby Annisten!!!

Having to say goodbye this time seemed extra hard. I cried more than normal. I had gotten so used to having our regular life together while he was home. I can smile now knowing we're pushing through and on the downhill slide, he'll be home the first week of February!! I have plenty to do to keep me busy in the mean time!

I'm back to school, for *GASP* my very last semester of undergrad EVER!! :) I will graduate April 30th with my PR degree! I LOVE my classes this semester, i'm more and more sure I picked the right major for me! Even more exciting is my internship I was so blessed to get! I'm the Public Relations Intern for the Fiesta of Five Flags office. I absolutely love it! I look forward to going! I love my job at the doctor's office too. Between school, internship, work at both Dr. Major's office and the Civic Center, my schedule stays busy. Thankfully I don't work nights anymore, so I get to enjoy dinner with my parents now or more time at the gym.(And for a few more weeks it's nice to have time to Skype with Stephen every night now too!) :) Wedding planning has picked up substantially too considering we're only about 4 months out, but thanks to my incredible Mom, we've gotten a lot done and I don't think we'll get too stressed! She is amazing at these things!!

I'm so blessed! I wake up smiling every single day. No, I'm not happy all day, everyday, but i'm definitley happy at some point every single day! I love my life and the people in it. I seriously could not ask for more. I truly am blessed for all the opportunities and all the love and support from Stephen, my parents, Lindsay and the whole family, and all my great friends! Happy 2011, it's going to be quite a year!! :D Hope everyone has a wonderful one!

Pictures from Thanksgiving in Dallas!

I always forget these pictures post backwards! LOL So they're actually in reverse order from the way I intended them to be posted, but here are a few of the pictures from our wonderful Thanksgiving weekend in Dallas!!! :)


So on our first night in Dallas we found this great little Irish bar called the Idle Rich Pub... we had so much fun that's where we went every night! :) I think the waitress remembered us and our drink orders by the end!

On Friday morning we went to the Dallas aquarium! It was really neat. They had tons of wildlife and they weren't all confined in glass like most aquariums. The birds and monkeys roamed free and you had to duck frequently so you weren't dive bombed! I'm really glad we checked this out on this trip!

The Thanksgiving crew: Me, Mel, Munson, and Stephen. It was the next best thing to Thanksgiving with our families! I really enjoyed spending the weekend in Dallas with them! It was a lot of fun!! For Thanksgiving we all got really dressed up and went to a really nice restaurant down the street from the hotel, The Old Warsaw. It was delicious!! It was a lot of fun getting dressed up too! After dinner we put on warmer clothes(since it was below freezing that day!! and went for drinks and our first night at the Idle Rich Pub)

After waking up at 6am on Thanksgiving morning to make the drive from Witchita Falls to Dallas, at 10:30am the guys first stop was the hotel bar! Ha!

The trip was amazing.. kind of bitter sweet that it was my last adventure in Texas while Stephen is in school. He'll be home Dec. 23rd for Christmas and then for good the middle of Feb!! I've grown used to my monthly trips to witchita/dallas and might miss Texas.... but probably not! lol can't wait to have him home!!! Only 23 more days!

This is weather is matching mood..

After a long stressful day in the airport my plane landed at the Pensacola Regional Airport to an ugly rainy day. It matched my ugly mood.. I don't know why this particular time leaving Stephen was so much harder than usual? I woke up in tears yesterday morning over 12 hours before I knew we had to leave each other! I usually keep it together pretty well and can talk myself into being strong, but i'm having an extra hard time this go around. Every tiny thing makes me burst into tears. (And anyone that knows me knows i'm not a crier!)



We had an AMAZING weekend in Dallas for Thanksgiving. We got to spend the most consecutive time together that we have since June 29th! That's exciting and sad to think about at the same time.. you have NO idea how ready I am to have him back with me all the time! We got to do a lot of really fun things in Dallas and hang out with friends (new and old!) It was a blast. We went to the aquarium, ate an INCREDIBLE thanksgiving dinner, went out and partied it up with friends, watched our Noles beat the gators!! =), went ice skating, got massages because my amazing fiancee surprised me for our 3 year anniversary! Pretty much did all there was to do in Dallas(at least that we had time for!). I'll post some pictures next :)

I think it's hitting me the hardest because it's the holiday season. We LOVED the holiday season! Christmas music, going to the tree place and deciding on a tree, fighting to get it up, shopping for our families' presents together. It's my favorite time of the year, but this year it's a lot less fun. I'm not really excited to pull the decorations down or go pick out a tree. I'm struggling to find motivation to get Christmas shopping done.. I just want to hibernate until the 23rd so I can see him again!!

But then I think about my bad attitude and I feel guilt. Why? So many people don't get to spend the holidays with their loved ones. I will have mine for Christmas. A lot of girls I've talked to haven't seen their boyfriend/fiance/husband in 7,8,9 months and have no idea when they will see him next. This breaks my heart! I miss mine more than anything and i'm lucky enough to see him once a month. So as tough as it is and as sad as I am and as much as I just want to mope and cry until he's here..

I won't. I'm going to be strong and keep my head up. I'm going to enjoy spending a day getting a tree and decorating the apartment with my amazing mom. I'm going to get the Christmas shopping done and wrapped under the tree so Stephen has a beautiful apartment to come home to! I will be strong and I will count my blessings that I have him for the holidays!

On that same note, today makes our 3 year anniversary! I can NOT wait to be married to him in 6 months. We have come a LONG way, we were just kids when we started dating. Now he is my best friend and has my whole heart :) I've been getting into our wedding planning and i'm so excited. I can't wait for the next few months to finally have him with me to do normal couple stuff and have date nights again and then to say our "I do's"!! Here's to speeding up time.. Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is my airman home with me safe, sound, and quickly

Pictures from bday trip to Dallas!

We got soaked trying to get to the trolley in Dallas!

Finally on the trolley. Too bad it was pouring down rain and we didn't want to stop to sight see!

All the guys outside of the museum in Dallas while we wait for the trolley. The rain let up for a few minutes!

The gardens at Nature Works, the Nature conservatory in Wichita Falls, TX

Don't they look thrilled?! The guys inside nature works, checking out the fish!

Finally catching up!

I realize it's been FOREVER since i've written. I know, i'm a slacker. But for the past few weeks i've been crazy busy. Not the fun kind of busy either, the work 3 jobs and take 5 classes kind of busy... There were days when I thought about writing, but didn't want to bore anyone with my mundane day-to-day stuff, so I figured i'd just wait til I had something to write about!

I started a new job! I LOVE it! I'm a receptionist at an eye doctor's office and it's such a cool job. Very nice change from waiting tables! Unfortunatley it's only part time right now, so i'll have to keep Kooter Brown's part time too. The money from doing both is good, and it is nice to stay busy so time goes by faster, but some days it can feel a bit overwhelming!

So I had a whole new kind of adventure this weekend! It was Stephen's birthday on Thursday so I had made plans to go see him. (He thought we were coming Friday though so it was a surprise that we made it for his birthday!) This time though, we DROVE to Texas. All 12 and a half hours in one day. It was an experience. Honestly, the drive wasn't too bad and very worth it.

We had fun. Spent Thursday and Friday night in Wichita Falls, and went to Dallas Saturday. Unfortunatley it rained all day while we were in Dallas, so we didn't get to really see all that we wanted to see. The hotel was beautiful and Dallas is a really fun place. Hopefully at Thanksgiving we'll actually get to see more of it! I don't really care what we do honestly, these days only getting to see Stephen once a month just a weekend together is nice even if it's rainy! We ate at some cool restaurants, did a little sight seeing in both Witchita Falls and Dallas, and just had a chance to relax.

I've met several his friends in the AF now. I can say honestly that's the best part of the whole Air Force experience. It's so cool to meet people from all over the country. Even though these guys came from all over the country they now have a bond that links them together. It's fun to listen to them talk, you realize that all there are vast differences in where they grow up, being so close in age, they all can relate pretty well. Besides just meeting his friends, it's been awesome meeting other girls going through the same thing. I may have written about this before, but through many different facebook groups i've met other fiances/girlfriends/wives, whose husband is in the same stage. It's nice to have that kind of support system. To ask questions, to compare airline ticket prices, to just talk to someone who understands how it works. Meeting all these incredible people is by far the best part of the whole experience!

As much as I love the experience, and I'm so proud of Stephen. This isn't easy by any means. (Those of you reading this who have a loved one in the military, you know what i'm talking about!) I got home last night from a long weekend and a long drive home, I had laundry to do, the dog needed walking, and my homework is piling up. I think ahead to the week ahead, I have class and homework to do all day today, Wednesday I work both jobs back to back, Thursday I have 2 tests, class, and work a closing shift. I need to get ahead on some homework, our wedding plans are in need of some immediate attention. On top of all the things that have to be done everyday, the dog needs walking, apartment has to be cleaned, bills paid, car cleaned... I was already tired and grouchy from the long weekend, and now all these thoughts crashing in. I felt so overwhelmed! I just wish Stephen was here so I could say, "Honey, can you take the dog out while I finish this online quiz?" Or," Can you please put the clothes in the dryer while I run to the store." Or "Would you mind calling the Officer's Club tomorrow so we can set up an appointment for Friday." But he isn't here, so I don't have that option. That to do list is all mine! It's exhausting at times and very overwhelming. But in the end, I can handle it. I felt like I was going to burst in to tears, but after a shower and some dinner, i was ready to tackle the laundry and homework. I walked the dog before climbing into bed for an early nights sleep. It wasn't so bad. Yes, I want him here with me. Always. I miss having date nights, and rare free days getting to curl up on the couch and watch a movie together, I miss being able to come home at the end of the day and vent over dinner. But these days, those things are just different. I get date nights, once a month. I get to vent, but it's on the phone or over Skype. I count days until the next time I see him, but it's all worth it in the end, I just have to constantly remind myself of that! I lean on my amazing family, close friends and God. And I take comfort in knowing i'm one of the lucky ones now that can just pick up the phone to talk to Stephen when I need his support. I count those blessings because I know for some their significant other isn't somewhere they can visit or call... So for all those who are serving both in the military and as their support system, Thank you!! :)