July Updates

Since I've been so behind on posting, I've decided to do one post for all the July happenings. 

Josh and I have been gone for most of July; its been a busy busy month!  At the end of June we traveled to Sedona, Arizona for my lil' sis, Mara's, wedding (lil sis from my sorority that is).  It honestly feels like just yesterday that we met during sorority recruitment and now she's all grown up and getting married!  Cole (her now husband) and Mara are pretty much perfect for each other and to see them so happy, so in love and getting married now is just the icing on the cake.  The ceremony was BEAUTIFUL!  It took place on a cliff overlooking the beautiful red rocks of Sedona.  The wedding ceremony (a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony) was even more beautiful than the picturesque location.  I literally had goosebumps even though it was like 110 out... I was that moved!  Mara and Cole incorporated a lot of personal touches, including advice from their family members and vows that they each wrote.  Being at the wedding definitely brought me back to my own wedding and made me reminisce about the feelings I had on that day.

Gorgeous ceremony site overlooking the red rocks of Sedona

Gorgeous Bride & Groom

View from the ceremony site... take my breath away!

Loved seeing my fellow Chi O Vice Presidents!! Just missing Melissa Beaver!

Family!! My lil sis and gran lil!! Love you both!

All the Chi O girls with the new Mr. and Mrs. Hirschfeld

After the wedding, Josh and I road tripped up to Lake Tahoe, California.  We decided to split up the normally 10 hour drive by stopping in Vegas for a night.  I'm not a big gambler, but I do like all the glitz and glam of Vegas.  I think I'm just too cheap to waste good money on gambling.  I'd rather spend my money on shopping and get something good out of it :).  But despite this, I did decide to "splurge" on the penny machines.  However, my patience ran out quickly (after losing $2) and I forgoed the penny machines I was on.  My mom swears by the Monopoly machines so I took my crack at one and won a couple bucks (BIG WINNER!).  Someday I may get up the courage to bet more than $2, but until then I'll stick to penny slots.

$2 richer, Josh and I hit the road again and headed up to Lake Tahoe to meet my parents and friends at their cabin.  I don't know how it happened, but we ended up taking the backroads the entire way up to Tahoe and for about 50-100 miles I swear there was nobody or nothing around.  We saw a few ranches with some "happy cows" grazing, but that was pretty much it. We were so "backroad" that there were even a few times when we (well probably more me) thought we would run out of gas.  I HATE this feeling and I hate those "No gas for the next 60 miles" signs even more.  We were doing all our calculations to figure out if we would make it.  By the grace of God we did make it!  Alleluia.   We did take advantage of the open roads and Josh decided to test the limits of my car (also read, Josh decided to see if my car could do 100 mph).  Don't worry mom and Uncle Bryan (who is also a California Highway Patrol), we were very safe about it and we won't be doing that again anytime soon.

A ranch in the middle of nowhere (Josh's dream, not even kidding)

Open Roads

 
After many many ours of backroads, we finally made it to Tahoe!

Tahoe in the summer is almost, if not more beautiful than Tahoe in the winter.  The weather is gorgeous, you can boat on the lake, hike, camp, picnic; its paradise.  Well, paradise quickly turned into anything but paradise when I was woken up from a nap in the cabin by my mother who said "Sasha wake up there is a BEAR!".  Immediately I jumped out of bed and said "What? Where? What am I supposed to do??"  Looked out the window and there was a brown bear; yes, a real live brown bear!  I've never really been a fan of bears.  When we went to the zoo earlier this year I couldn't bring myself to stand by the bear exhibit long because I swore they were going to jump out of their cages and come hunt me down.

BEAR!  Only feet away!

So, back to the bear.  I guess he had managed to roam around the open garage and found a closed container full of food.  He pulled the container out and smashed through it to get at all the food.  This bear had no fear!  Luckily we were above the garage in the balconies watching it all.  Although he did charge up the balcony once to try to get my parents' dog!  The house is on the main road that runs around Lake Tahoe, and people had stopped on the walking trail to watch the bear.  Seriously people?  I would have started to walk as far away from that thing as I could.  Eventually the sheriff came with his rubber pellet gun.  He had to shoot the bear a few times to get it to finally go away!  Apparently, this same bear has actually come into the house before to raid the fridge and he has broken into cars to get food!







After the bear encounter I was a little less excited to go hiking in the woods, so we opted for a day out on the lake instead.  For me, a day on the lake is a little frightening because I have a slight fear of boats (I have crashed/sunk too many boats for my liking; if you ever have time I can tell you all about the houseboat crashing, the Catamaran sinking; those are just a few) but I braved the water and ended up having a GREAT time on the lake.  Josh and I even ended up kayaking later in the day.  All and all, Tahoe was a great success (as it always is).  Hopefully I'll be back again this winter for skiing (fingers crossed for some good snow).

Our boat captain for the day!

Boating around Lake Tahoe

July, also means...  my birthday!  I'm not a huge birthday person, but my birthday does happen to fall close to my Poppop's which makes it special.  This year Poppop and I had a joint birthday party and celebrated a combined "100th birthday" (my 25th and his 75th).  All the Sullivans got together and in true Sullivan fashion we had BLAST!

It wouldn't be a party without a little icing fight!

Some of the cousins with Poppop

Oh, so I usually wouldn't do this (brag) and I'm not a big gift person, but I did happen to get spoiled this year with a lot of pretty awesome stuff.  First of all, since Josh was going to be gone for my birthday (more training), we celebrated early.  Josh took me for a day at Balboa Park and then dinner and at the end of the evening he surprised me with tickets to "Wicked".  I was SOO surprised and so excited!! Josh also surprised me with a GORGEOUS closet which I now can't help but just sit in and stare out.  Seriously, he did such a good job and I'm currently trying to recruit him and his talents for other parts of the house.  I knew he was going to do this, so I gave him a few ideas, but he pretty much did everything himself.  AND... my parents got me a Giada cookbook, but not just ANY Giada cookbook.  That's right... it was a SIGNED Giada cookbook.  My mom had waited in line for over 2 hours to meet her and have her sign the book just for me.  I'm not one to be starstruck or have celebrity crushes.  But... if there is one celebrity I would just die to see it would be Giada.  I pretty much would love to be her or just be her friend or just meet her; I'd be ok with any of the above.

Birthday Presents!!

This month Josh was also gone a lot doing a few training exercises on the ship he'll be deploying on.  He has a total of 3 training exercises before the deployment each lasting between 2-3 weeks.  He's been training a lot and working hard.  When he comes back from his last training exercises in August he'll have 2 weeks off and then he'll leave for deployment.  This is Josh's 2nd deployment and he'll be on the U.S.S Green Bay serving on the 15th MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit).  He'll be sailing around the world and their ship will serve as a "disaster response team" essentially.  I am so proud of what he does and all the hard work, time and sacrifices he makes.  They really don't pay these guys enough for what they do. 

My Marine hard at work briefing his Marines before a mission

As I was helping Josh pack for the field, I couldn't help but try on a few things :)

So until Josh's deployment, we'll be trying to make the best of our time together.  We'll be visiting family and going on a few mini vacations.  Hopefully I'll post again soon, but I may have to do another "month" update in August.