The Nolan's on Island Time: A much NEEDED UPDATE!

So I know I know..I am a horrible blogger, terrible, I should be punished! So here is a massive update blog of the things I can remember.

The month of June was not spent on the "rock" we caught a Space A flight home to Travis (after 4 days of trying). We flew out on a KC10 which if you Space A and have a choice, I highly recommend! We had tray tables, the seat reclined and you had more leg room then on a commercial flight..oh and it was FREE!! i love free! I of course have no pictures of this...i know slap me now.
We spent a day in Lodi, CA which is about 45 minutes from Travis. My mom's uncle passed the day she picked us up, so we needed to go over and get a few things settled. Then I drove us the 7 hours back to Orange County. Usually I am a non-driver. But when the opportunity to drive 85 on the freeway presents itself you gotta take it! Plus I was itchin' to put the pedal to the metal! Here on the rock we can only go 60 on H-1 and it is sooooo slow!

We spent 10 days at home just hanging out, shopping, eating, eating some more oh and there was more eating. Seems to be all I do when I go home! Steve joined us on day 11 after returning from his first official mission!!! It took him 6 months to get on a mission, craziness! He flew commercial because he got an awesome roundtrip ticket the night before. I picked him up at the airport and from that point on it was non stop on the go! We Disney'ed with his Mom 2 days in a row (I should add the kids had already been to Disney 1 day already) My parents joined us for one of the days too. They actually had to leave and go to my nieces 14th B-Day dinner and Audrey left Disney to go with them...can you say MaeMae's girl! SHE LEFT DISNEYLAND TO EAT AT CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN!!!

Steve and I traveled for a quick getaway to Vandenberg AFB in Santa Barbara to visit with out fabulous friends the Bowker's. Love them! They let us stay at their house for a night and what ended up being a whole day because someone couldn't handle his margaritas the night before!!! AHAHHAHAHA! Once he was able to motivate his body we left and drove down to Santa Barbara and checked into a uber nice hotel. Thank you Hilton Points! Free hotel room and breakfast, yes please! We had dinner at a cute little Thai restaurant called Zen Yai, very good I highly recommend it. We walked around a bit and then headed back to the hotel. The next morning after we almost missed breakfast because we didn't have our usual alarm clocks with us, we went back and walked around Mission Santa Barbara, did some shopping and then headed back out on the road to get home to the kids. They could care less that we were gone.

Pretty quick after that Steve left to head back to work. Only to find out that he would be headed back out on another mission! Random! He spent all of 3 days of the month of June home. The kids and I putzed around, they spent two fun nights at Gramma Kelly's house and go to go to Disney 2 more times (can we say spoiled!) My mom and I did lots of shopping and updated my sad wardrobe. Got some great deals! I love a good deal! Ate more food and just lounged around. We headed back up to Travis to start the game to get home...

Aiden was happy to be with Miley (she will be here soon!)

My kids confiscated my ipad!

Crazy cousins on the beach in Balboa.

While in Travis we shopped some more, ate (are you sensing a theme) at restaurants that I had missed since we left there 6 years ago, and did some more stuff in Lodi. One of the highlights of Travis is the JELLY BELLY FACTORY TOUR!! The kids loved it. You get free jelly bellies and then you can load up in the gift shop, which we did of course :)

So remember how I said Steve was on another trip...that trip just so happened to go through Travis on its way back to Hickam :) Totally not planned but oh so good! Steve landed Friday afternoon and we got to do one of the best things EVER!!! We had dinner with some of our favorite people from Charleston. Michelle, Brandon and Conner Tellez! WHOOO HOOO! Michelle made a fabulous meal for us and we sat around and talked. It was great. I have missed MT so much and I know S had a great time talking with B. It doesn't matter how much time has passed, good friends will always be good friends! We headed back to lodging where the kids stayed in our room with my mom and I spent the night with Steve. I didn't want to wake the kids up coming in late ;)

I did a total walk of shame the next morning when Steve kicked me out so he could get ready for the flight. I headed back up to my room gathered the children and our carry-on (steve took the other bags.) It wasn't looking good for us to get out so we broke down and bought one way tickets out for Sunday just in case. I wasn't going to be checking 4 bags and PAYING for 4 bags! highway robbery! So I just packed the kids and I a few days of clothes in a carry-on and headed to the PAX terminal. I will save you the stressful 2 hours I spent there and the long boring story, but we made it on with Steve by the skin of our teeth. PHEW! Only to have an inflight emergency and have to turn around and go back to Travis :( UGH really and of course I had already called Delta and cancelled the tickets (got a full refund!!) Luckly it was an easy fix and we just had to sit on a bus for 30 minutes. We got back on and off we went! Steve came down and talked to us for a bit, but no special treatment...pssh! We were very happy to make it back to the rock! PHEW I was glad that trip was over! I had a great time, but it is always nice to come back to your home!

kids laying on Steve's bedroll and the quilt I made while home, watching a movie on the IPAD, spoiled much?

Once back things didn't slow down. We spent Sunday lounging around the house and cleaning, putting a month's worth of stuff back in place, lots of laundry and organizing. Monday was the 4th of July and we were all still pretty bushed from the traveling so we just played it low key and went to see Transformers 3. Highly recommend. My only complaint was the random use of curse words throughout the movie. They weren't needed and added nothing to the dialogue. Audrey slept through almost all of it, but Aiden sat on pins and needles the whole time! Steve took the kids to watch the fireworks and I stepped outside for a few minutes to see what I could from the house. Tuesday started back the work week for Steve and with this exercise that he is doing in Australia right now, we hardly saw him. He worked long hours and came home after the kids were in bed, but not on Friday night...oh no because Friday night started the intramural Softball Tournament!

Oh how my husband likes to play any organized sport! Friday night was the beginning. It was a double elimination touney, but no one likes to lose and Steve was determined that they would go all the way. He and Blaine Baker are hardcore...hahahahha....well as hardcore as a bunch of "old" guys can be :) Steve hit a walk off 2 run homer Friday night to win the game, and start the Tigers off on the right foot. Saturday we had to change some plans around which I wasn't all that thrilled with, but it ended up alright. I had a sitter already lined up so she watched the kids and I went to the game with JBAKE and we cheered (very loudly and to the other teams displeasure) and the boys won the first game. So they played another game, which they lost, this is also when JBake started taking pictures and then we stopped...it was bad luck! But oh that didn't mean we were done with the games oh no.....they played again! Which they won! Then I had to run back pick up the kids and bring them back to the field because they were playing again! By the end of the day we were sunburned, sore from the stress and hoarse from all the cheering. We were pretty impressive at heckling and rooting for our team! Oh but wait we aren't done yet...they had to play on Sunday too! EEEE GADS more softball! Needless to say the boys were very sore when they rolled themselves out of bed on Sunday morning. They won the first game!!! But had no break inbetween and got steamrolled by the Navy team. So they were out! BOOO! They did get 3rd place in the league which we were pretty impressed with. They did great! We stayed and watched the championship game and rooted on the Air Force Security Forces team which was called "Pound Town". They had very inappropriate names on the back of their jerseys! They beat Navy which was great! Air Force took home first place! WHOOO. Can we go home now? Needless to say Steve was useless the rest of the day.

He passed out on the couch for the majority of the rest of the day.

Aiden started Summer Camp the next day and had a blast. A whole week of doing fun ocean related things! He went boogie boarding, to the pool, to the waterpark and then on Friday to the tide pools where he held a little octopus. Craziness! Audrey and I shopped and had lunch with Daddy the first two days and then S left on the BIG trip on Wednesday morning. He was nervous but so far so good everything has gone according to plan. He is now lead upgrade complete!

Aiden starts a tennis summer camp tomorrow which he is very excited about. Then one more week of summer camp and wait for it....SCHOOL STARTS!!!! August 1st is my favorite day of the summer ;) Audrey will start Jr Kindergarten and Aiden will start 1st grade. So hard to believe both of the kids will be in school. I am at a loss with what to do with myself all day! I am sure I will figure it out :) Steve has mentioned the "job" word, but I don't think that will happen just yet!

Well there you go. I full update on what the Nolan's have been up to. There has been some beach days scattered in there too. Lunches with friends and such. It was nice to go home to California but it was nice to come back to Hawaii. Different types of nice but you know what I mean. I will try harder to post. I just feel like everything is so mundane. Hope everyone is having a great summer! and didn't fall asleep reading this post!