Things happen in Threes....Well not with my family

Lets recap the mast few months. My Dad was deployed to Iraq, Rachel broke her ankle, Hovis (the dog) died, and Nathan decided to get 70 stitches in his head. The set of three did happen after my dad left but then of course my family had to break that saying like they always do. Our other dog Hunter started having problems walking on Sunday and he was whining about his left ear. We thought it was an ear infection and that is what was causing him to be off balance. We took him to the vet and he wasn't sure what it was, so he gave us antibacterial medicine for him. We were to return to the vet in 2 days. Well he only got worse in those next 2 days. When we went back to the vet he suggested that we get a CT Scan done to find out if it was tumors or something else. It turned out we had to drive him to an Animal Hospital 45 minutes away, where they took blood tests, spinal fluid and a CT Scan. He stayed there for the week and then my mom got a phone call today from the vet since the tests had to be sent off to be looked at. Apparently all the tests came back negative for bacteria, cancer and everything else they tested for and that it was tumors in his head. We drove over there around 7pm today to say goodbye before they put him down. He was much worse than when we saw him on Sunday. At least he's not in pain anymore and he's probably running around with Hovis in the farm in the sky. Do you think that God cries when one of his creations leaves this earth?

Travel Junkie

I did it. I started a travel blog. http://kgdeweij-traveljunkie.blogspot.com/  I only have 2 posts so far but it is still in the process of being edited. Let me know what you think.

New Blog Idea

So I have been thinking about doing this for a while but I am not sure if people are going to read it. I have been thinking about adding another blog to my current one. My idea is to start a travel blog and have a post about where I have been with information about the town and city. What do you think?

The Joys of Space-A Travel

One of my best friends got married a week ago in Pennsylvania and I was planning on attending. So I decided to take Space-A, which means it's free and I might not always get out. Well I got out the day I walked into the airport and was in the States last Monday night. I was able to see family, friends from HS in NJ and attend my friends wedding (which was beautiful). I was planning on flying out Space-A on Monday after 4th of July. The flight ended up being canceled an hour before I got there so I stayed with my friend from HS for the night because there was a flight the next day. Nope, that flight got pushed back to Wednesday. Wednesday came and the flights got pushed back to Thursday and then canceled completely. There were three flights on Friday though so I planned on those. I was able to get a seat on the second flight out, but then they told us that they would be stopping in Dover, Delaware because of maintenance problems but the plane was flyable. We arrived at Dover and were told we would be there for 30 minutes. Then we deboarded the plane and were told to collect out luggage because we were staying the night and that our roll call time would be at 13:45 today. Of course the hotel on base is booked through to Sunday and I have no idea where the hotels off base are. So we all pretty much bunkered down in the terminal and USO for the night. I think I have had a collective total of 4 hours of sleep so far. Now I'm hungry and the roll call is not supposed to happen until 19:45 tonight. UGGHHH!!! Kill me now. But I must say I have met some very nice people and if people see you walking on base with luggage they are more than likely to give you a ride. So I have to say I have been privileged to help and company.

An Accident Prone Family

With 5 kids, 2 dogs and a horse there were bound to be some sort of accidents. Well the horse is now gone and so is one of the dogs. They went to the farm in the sky. My older sister broke her leg when she was about 6 and then a little while later. She ended up with a cyst in her knee. My brother got stitches in his lip when he was 18 months and again about 18 months later. He then got stitches in his forehead when he was 7 or 8. I broke my pinky toe when I was about 13 (now 22) and we've had a couple sprained ankles and shin splints in between then and now. My dad recently got deployed and then my sister decided to brake her ankle playing Softball in May. She gets her cast off today though. Then the dog dies about 2 weeks ago. A week later my brother decides to try and scalp himself and ends up with 70 stitches in his head. He didn't really do it on purpose. He was walking under those wooden bridges at playgrounds and thought he had cleared it when he came up and hit his head. He had to of been coming up with such force to cause what he did. We are hoping that he is done because he has worked his way from his lip to his head. My sister's not so sure. There may be a few more broken bones and twisted ankles in the days to come.

How accident prone is your family?

Death of a loved one :(

Loosing a loved one is never a fun thing including when it is one of your pets. As many of you know I have two English Golden Retrievers. We have had them ever since they were puppies. One of them is 16 (Hovis) and the other is 13. The 16 year old has had many surgeries, broken legs and infections but has managed to last for 16 years. She almost died 4 years ago when we were in Stuttgart. The vet told us that if we had waited a few more days to bring her in she would have died of an infection in her uterus. She has slowly been getting worse and worse ever since 2004. She had arthritis in her back legs, especially on the left side and battled infections. On my trip back home my mum told us that she was not doing well and that they discovered a cyst in her throat so she was eating canned food.

I was the only one home on Wednesday and since my friend was coming the next day I was meant to clean the bathrooms. I cleaned one and then went outside to get rid of the stinging nettles because I didn't want her little girl falling in them when she came. As I was going outside Hovis went outside as well and she was breathing a little funny and heavy so I kept an eye on her. I gave her some water which she drank but then she dumped it over as she moved to a different spot. After  couple of hours she still sounded bad but she wouldn't drink any water, so I sat with her trying to pour water on her tongue. I called my mum around 4:30 to let her know and to reminder about going to the commissary. She asked me to come to the base to pick up the groceries and my siblings since she had to work that evening. I must have left around 5pm and got home around 6:30pm. I told my brother he had to pick up the dog poop outside. The next thing I know he's calling me into the back room to tell me that Hovis is dead. I check and she was. She already had flies on her. I was balling...couldn't get a hold of my mum so I had to call me sister to run to her work and tell her. My dad called later (who is in Iraq) and asked how things were, I told him about Hovis and he started crying (she was practically his dog). When my mum got home that night we started digging the hole in the back yard and since it started thundering and lightning we had to stop and finish it the next day. My brother kept his head on during the whole thing and didn't cry, which is a good thing because it was only me, my sister with the broken leg and my brother home at the time. The worst thing though is that she was alive when I left at 5 and dead when I got home. I felt terrible. I know there wasn't anything I could have done, but if I had just sat there with her longer instead of worrying about the weeds.
Hunter (13 years old) is having a hard time adjusting. He has always known Hovis being there. This morning our neighbor found him across the street looking into the butchers glass window, wagging his tail, staring at his reflection. My mum thinks that maybe he thought his reflection was Hovis. He locked the back gate this time and when I went out later I found him trying to get out again to go and look for her. He hasn't quite grasped the fact that she's not coming back. Not only is it going to be hard on him but it's also going to be hard on all of us. Hovis picked us. as her family, we didn't pick her. When we went to pick out a puppy, we all got out the car and all the puppies came running up. They then turned right back around and ran back. Hovis was the one sitting by my dad's feet looking up at him. It's funny how even though pets can't talk back to you and they have to soul, they can become part of the family.

Graduation...Jersey...Home

So Graduation was last Saturday and I can tell you that I was not paying attention during the ceremony at all. Well first of all my sister, mom and grandma came up on Thursday and then on Friday we went to Boston. While there we had to have one of Mike's Pastries cannolies. Then graduation was on Saturday at 8 am. Not sure why it was that early but it was. My uncle decided to drive up that morning from Jersey and arrived at 6am...again..CRAZY!!! He had to leave at 3:30am to be on time. I had found Leeta that morning at the Dunkin Donuts Center, that way I

knew someone that I would be sitting next to. During the speeches and stuff though no one was paying attention at all. On our left there was a group of people with blue hair and yellow t-shirts that said Team Kevin and during the ceremony one of them left and came back with nachos and cheese as if it was a basketball game. After graduation pictures were taken as usual and then we had lunch at Joe's American Bar & Grill. We then did a quick packing up of my things and drove down to Jersey for my Graduation BBQ at my aunt & uncle's house. It was great to see everyone, even though it wasn't for very long. We repacked everything on Sunday and drove down to South Jersey on Monday to take a hop back to Germany. For roll call for the flight was at 5:30pm and we got there and signed up at 1:30pm. This man who was a civilian and who looked like Morgan Freeman put our information in the computer and signed us up for the flight. We waited around in the terminal for 5 hours before getting on the flight although we almost didn't get on. We are so used to other places where they call you up to the counter by name to sign in. Well apparently they don't do that at McGuire AFB. So around 6 when they kept calling for people to check in for the flight we didn't think anything of it because we had already done it and then they announced that the flight was closed and that people should start moving to the gate. At this time we were confused because they hadn't called us and we still had all our luggage. My mom went up to the counter and they said the flight was closed and we explained that we had to get home and that we thought they would call up by name. They didn't want to argue so they took our bags (all 7 of them) without question and put us on the plane (there were 3 of us and 4 seats left). Once we got through security and we were waiting to get on the bus to go to to the plane the guys who had checked us in came out to give us our boarding tickets and said it took some time because we weren't in the system...which was weird because we signed in 5 hours earlier. They asked who it was and we said he looked like Morgan Freeman and they knew who we were talking about. Apparently he didn't put our information in right or something and he should have also taken our luggage when we checked in, which he did not do. So we were lucky to get on the plane. We made it to Germany by the following morning at 10am, went home and crashed (vegged out) the whole day.