Hello to everyone, and first post overall

We're both very new at the blogging thing, so welcome us to the 21st Century whenever you see us. I'll try to answer the one big question from the get go...

Why are the two of us doing this? N and I both want to share our experiences with those whom we care about, and we love involving all of you in our lives. This blog is for our friends and family--not for ourselves. I would say it is a lot easier for us to put our thoughts and experiences on a blog site that you all can view (if you want to) than it is for us to cram forced, mass e-mails down everyone's throats.

To sum up the theme of NiCasey's America, we're very happily in love. Also, we love to have fun, travel together, and experience the world as a team, and we've been lucky enough to share our fun with many of you on numerous occasions. However, both of us have great friends that we haven't seen in a long time, and we were seeking an outlet to let you all know what we are up to in our lives. So this was our solution. I know that I love hearing from my awesome friends on a regular basis, and this blog is meant to prolong our friendships further. So, that said, I'll get on with what's going on...

I'm getting on the boat for a month starting Tuesday morning. It will be the first time taking off and landing on board a carrier, so I'm very, very anxious and very, very nervous as well. However, it is the first part of a long and tenuous work-up cycle that will progress to a full deployment, and it's mainly meant to re-cage everyone's minds to safety issues, so it won't be too stressful overall. Hopefully. Either way, I'll have two nights in San Diego to get the fun out of my system (and maybe a Padres game tomorrow?). That'll be great.

I've been told that N will be updating the site with her inputs tomorrow, so I'll let her give you the lowdown on all of that because she'll certainly describe it better than I will. For those of you who haven't seen the NiCasey team in action, we've been together for 10 months now, and she's a dream come true. We've spent time together in (deep breath, everyone) DC; Norfolk; Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (the TRIANGLE!); St. Louis; Chicago; Ventura County and LA; Reno/Tahoe; Monterey/Carmel, CA; San Diego; and Omaha. We are hoping to add San Jose slash San Fran to the list in October, and we're always up for a trip to visit any of you. Well, I'm always up for a trip as long as my girl is with me. Being with her makes everything fun.

More to come, and I hope everyone is interested in what we have to say. Welcome aboard.

--C