Happy Birthday To Me

Okay, so my birthday isn't actually until tomorrow, but here's my birthday present anyways! It's SO pretty! It's pink and white sapphires set in a white gold heart. I love it! :)

Labels: birthday, gifts, Kimi, shopping

Being a World of Warcraft Widow

I started playing World of Warcraft in early 2005 with an ex boyfriend of mine. I played for a few months before the boyfriend and I broke up, and he took my account with him.

Fast forward to 2006, my husband bought me World of Warcraft to play in order to preoccupy myself. It wasn't long after we got married that I conceived our daughter and I was going to be staying home with nothing to do.

At first, my husband said that World of Warcraft was "stupid" and that he "didn't understand why anyone would play it". But that didn't take long. I'd been playing for about two weeks when my husband decided to give it a go. A week later, I lost my account to him as he'd begun to completely take over.

A long time friend of mine suggested we switch servers to play with him, and since we were still pretty new to the game, it was easy enough to just start over fresh on a different server. That's how we ended up on Thunderhorn. A few more friends I'd known over the years on another game called the Realm Online decided to make the switch to WoW and came to play with us. Because of that, I decided to start our own little guild called Divine Illusion (yeah, yeah...it was many months later that I discovered that Divine Illusion is actually another RPG oops!).

The guild was started as a place for us to just talk, keep in touch easier, level and have a good time. But my husband and I were still sharing an account and it became harder and harder to get any play time because of it. He was easily sucked in and would come home from work at 6pm and play until 2-3 in the morning! Needless to say, we've had many talks about his gaming habits. I eventually gave up on playing and let him have it. It wasn't worth arguing over.

The guild quickly grew in his control and morphed into one of the largest, casual guilds on the server (which is quite impressive since Thunderhorn was quite a large server to begin with). We purchased an account for myself and I began playing again when the guild was about six months old. But Thunderhorn was such a large server that queue times had grown unbearable and in anticipation of the Burning Crusade expansion, free transfers to new realms were offered.

We were hesitant, and didn't take the first offer to move to the newly created Ravencrest server. But once threats of simply moving accounts themselves was brought up by Blizzard, we decided to take our chances and moved the guild to the newly made Zangarmarsh. A good portion of our guild came with us - most of the officers and long time loyal members.

After the move, we instantly began to recruit to pick up any stranglers. Several servers were offered free transfers to ours - including the very large Whisperwind server (ironically, the server I had started out on back in 2005 with my ex). Things were great and our numbers were growing! We quickly became one of the stronger guilds on the server.

Today we stand at over 200 individual accounts - and that's a mighty lot of people. Of course, running a guild of that size takes A LOT of personal time - which is how I became a World of Warcraft Widow.

My husband has spent the majority of our marriage working 12 hour shifts at work - not including the hours spent on commuting, PT, extra duty, Platoon meetings and doctor's appointments. Needless to say, we don't always get a lot of time together. We get even less time because of World of Warcraft!

Don't get me wrong... I love the game and have enjoyed it. But it's always been more of a pastime and extra hobby for me rather than a responsibility. Running a guild is work..but I never wanted it to become a full time job. Heck, between being a wife, mother and running my online store - I've already got three of those!

It's no surprise that I tend to not log in very often. It's usually every few days. It's become hard to even play the game because as soon as I log in, I have to work - instead of just taking my character to wherever I want and actually playing. It should come as no surprise that my character is still three levels shy of the level cap and that's only because my husband took a couple of hours and blasted me through a bunch of quests.

My husband on the other hand, has been level 70 for quite some time now and has spent countless hours grinding reputation for whatever faction suits his fancy. This week, he's big into leveling up his fishing skill and is already up to 375. In fact, for his birthday, he purchased a set of WoW Trading cards so he could have the code for a fishing chair in the game. *Sigh* Way to spend money in a useless manner dear. Oh well, happy birthday!

My husband often comes home and talks to me for a few minutes, but the moment I step out of the room, he quickly logs into the game. I have to be prepared when he comes home to try to keep him occupied more than five minutes, or that's it.. he'll get on the game and I won't really see him again until the next day when we repeat the process.

Don't get me wrong... we spend time together. It just feels like it's few and far between these days. I blame the game...while he tells me it has nothing to do with it. I don't think he even realizes just how much time he spends on it. He'll come to bed at 3am when he has to get up at 6am for work. He'll sit there and play for 12 hours straight, without noticing. He's forgotten to wake me up from naps on many occasions because of it.

My birthday is coming up.. and part of his gift to me is supposed to be a World of Warcraft free birthday. We'll see how that goes...

Labels: birthday, gamers, gaming, life, marriage, shirts, world of warcraft, wow stole my husband

I'm Turning 22.

My birthday is coming up and I'm hitting the big ol' 22. Just five more days and we're there It's funny.. because when I was eleven years old, 22 seemed so ancient! And here I am, double that age now.

My birthday is throwing a lot into perspective for me. Staying at home with a child, running my CafePress store and being married, aren't exactly things I expected to be doing right now. Don't get me wrong..I LOVE my life. This just isn't what I saw myself doing.

I had plans. They are very different from my plans now..but I did have some. I imagine if life hadn't lead me down a new path four years ago, I'd still be in college working towards law school. Yikes. I shudder to even think of that. Law school is FAR from any plans or ideas I have for my life. Why in the world did I ever want to go to law school!?

What are the new plans? Well, I'm following a 5 year goal (it's more of a set of goals to accomplish in the coming years..not really a plan lol). Well, actually it's a 4 year plan since my husband and I came up with it a year ago. A lot of the plans hang in the balance. I have goals...I just have to wait for them. That's what makes being a military spouse so frustrating! The hurry up and wait is annoying. I want out of Georgia. I want my husband out of the military - two things that WILL happen.....it's just going to take a lot of time, surgeries, paper work, patience (something I have less and less of these days) and what have you in order to get there. I don't know if it'll happen in three months from now, or a year from now!

1. I want to go back to school. I don't even really need a degree. I don't care about that right now. I think that's why I wasn't very successful with college the first time. It was boring and I dreaded going. If I'm going to spend a fortune on education, I want to spend time learning what I want to learn. Right now, that's graphic and website design. Everything I know, I learned by tinkering around for the past 3 years. No one taught me any of that. If I can learn all that I know by trial and error the past few years, just imagine what I can learn in a class!

2. I want my own home - something that's probably at least a year away. I know I have to wait until my husband is out of the Army. That's a given. I know that we will immediately move up to Connecticut where he's from. We'll probably stay with some of his family for a little while until we're settled back into the state and he gets a job. I don't think we're going to bother with renting again. We've been renting our current town home for a year and a half...and it has definitely taught me the ups and downs of renting vs owning (owning coming out very much on top too).

3. We want more children. Actually, we tried to conceive for a little while, but some some physical issues weren't allowing for it (and still aren't). I'm not sure if we should even try for a while. I feel like this is a bad time..although really, is there a good one? I don't know when Joe's med board will be complete or when we'll be moving. Will I be pregnant then? Will I be waddling around 8 or 9 months along? lol What will Hailey think? If I were pregnant tomorrow, she'd be about 19 months old. Would she be ready then to take on the role of big sister? Would I be ready to take on the role of mommy to toddler AND baby? lol

All of these.... and I'm about to turn 22. lol Like I said.. not even close to the plan I thought I'd be following right now. Four years ago, I would have been content to just not be living under my parent's roof! haha I imagined I'd be living in my own apartment with a room mate or something right now. Well, I guess I kind of am..except I'm married to one of my room mates and the other one drools a lot.

I wonder what's to come for our family in the coming years. I wonder what my goals will be when I hit 25. Yikes!...25!? lol

Labels: babies, birthday, family, goals, Hailey, Joe, kids, Kimi, life

Ankle Surgery

My husband had an appointment today (yes, on his 26th birthday) to talk to his doctor about his ankle. He's been having problems with it for years now.

His last MRI showed an 11x10x5 MM chunk missing in his ankle. The tissue is gone and the bone is simply rubbing up against each other every time he moves it. One of the bones is also pulling something else in his foot when he takes a step (sorry, I'm not a doctor and don't know the proper terminology for that lol). His doctor said "There are only 3 reasons why a person would need this surgery...and you have them all". <- Fabulous.

On Monday, Joe has to make an appointment for the actual surgery. The doctor said that it would be "sometime in the next month". After the surgery is done, he will have 21-36 days for recovery - it depends on how much they give him. He now has a 3 month profile, forbidding him from doing anything in PT that requires walking (which is funny, since walking was pretty much the only thing he had left that he was allowed to do).

It scares me that my husband is 26 years old and already beginning to undergo surgeries. He has a lot of physical issues - a lot of which are simply genetic and others are from wear and tear being in the Army for six years. But what's going to happen when he's 30? 40? 50!? :(

Labels: ankle surgery, birthday, family

Cute Dress!

So I decided last night that Hailey needed some new clothes. Well, actually her growth spurts decided this for me. She's 9 months old, and her 6-9 month clothes are beginning to get rather tight.

My husband took us all to Sears and I picked up some more fall/winter clothes for her. We spent about $50, which wasn't too bad considering we got her a pair of cute jeans, little khakis, socks, a 3 piece outfit (shirt, skirt and bloomers), a little pjammies set and probably the most adorable dress I've ever seen!



I'm so excited over this dress. It's actually more of a chocolate brown. My camera was apparently being rather funky last night when I took the picture. Anyways...It's size 12 months. She could probably wear it now, but it's definitely more of a fall/winter dress. I'm hoping to put some cute little white tights on her and have her wear it for her birthday pictures in a couple of months. :D She's going to look SO cute!

Labels: birthday, clothes, dress, fall, pictures, winter