nancy... under the influence of paul

Day 3 of the Curacao Chronicles

2012-02-02T20:31:00.002-05:00

DAY 3

On the third day we rested and enjoyed our time at our place. We ate breakfast by the ocean and read and just enjoyed listening to the waves. That was probably one of my favorite parts of this trip. Just soaking up the sun and enjoying time spent by the ocean with a nice breeze. Then we were finally able to go to the grocery store and get some substantial food to last us the rest of the trip. By the way--butterscotch chocolate there is actually coffee flavored chocolate and very strong at that!

After we unloaded and got it all settled we were off to Adrenaline Tours for a JetSki Snorkel Tour. We stopped at a Quiznos (yes--American food again what can we say) for some delicious not-too-heavy sandwiches before our trip out onto the ocean. It was the most beautiful weather that day. We of course got lost on our way there but we had assumed that we would so we had left early. :) A bunch of us were waiting for the tour to start and the guy who was doing a kayaking tour came out and called out everyone who was on that tour and everyone but us walked away with him.

Then our guide came out and told us that we were the only ones on the jetski tour! So we were going to receive a private tour. Just the two of us :) He said that he would go as fast as we were comfortable going. So we set off from Caracas Bay and went into the ocean! We had the wake of his jetski and the wake of the large boats passing by and we were just trying to keep up with our guide so we were flying. I came out of my seat more than once. It was almost nerve racking. Actually one time on the way back to the bay when we were on the ocean again I almost fell off! I got a little nervous after that but recovered pretty quickly.

The trip was very diverse. We went out on the ocean and then to a beach by the Hyatt hotel and then we went to the bays inland and saw the golf course where Paul was going to play in a few days time and we saw all of the very fancy and expensive houses that were in the bays there. We even saw one that had it's own private island! Very fancy shmancy. We were going full speed, as fast as the jet skis would go when we weren't on the ocean, which was about 55 mph.

On our way back we stopped at a sunken tug boat and went snorkeling. Our guide had accidentally forgotten our snorkel masks so luckily the kayakers were there and we borrowed a few from them. :) The fish surrounding the tugboat were beautiful. The sun was shining so we could see clearly and the fish just flocked to the tugboat. It was something to behold. Our guide would swim down INTO the tugboat and then out the side hatch. It was impressive. Paul went down to the ship and he said that the pressure was intense and he didn't even go down as far. It was a great excursion!

After our trip we went home and cleaned up. I checked my email out by the table by the parrot and what would you know I almost ALMOST got pooed on by the bird. It fell about 2 inches from my hand and the iPad. iPaul would have freaked :)

For dinner that night we went to The Ribs Factory which is in such an interesting part of the town. Kind of ghetto but the food was delicious. It was so very tasty. After dinner we headed over to The Movies, that is what it is called which is interesting, and we watched "Tin Tin." I had no desire to see the movie but I ended up really enjoying it! It was very fun. It was like an Indiana Jones movie. Very fun. Ahh. So beautiful. Isn't it beautiful where we were? Truly was beautiful. Sigh. We loved it.

Beautiful Day

2012-02-02T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today was a beautiful day. The weather was unbelievable. It felt even warmer than upper 60s. It felt more like low the 70s. Beautiful day. I was glad I wasn't in an office today :) I will miss being able to experience the nice weather whenever I want, it's been nice for the last month to go on vacation, visit my family, and enjoy two weeks at home.

Thank you North Carolina. xx

Whoppin' Wings, Sneaky Squirts and Miniature Movies

2012-01-30T18:48:00.001-05:00

So I hurt my neck this morning--basically a whiplash effect so I've been sort of disabled today. I'm amazed how some people are in pain all the time and manage to be productive and positive!

Last weekend we took our last trip to Charlotte to visit our friends who live there. They will be moving in March so they will be coming to visit us in February and then we'll be going on a trip with them in March, before they move. That evening when we arrived we went to Buffalo Wings and Rings (delicious and cheap!) and ordered 50 wings and some onion rings. See the plate of bones? mmmm. Paul had like 20 or something haha. It was very tasty. Alyssa was smart and got a salad to help balance it out. We always eat so healthy when we hang out with Jordan and Alyssa...except we don't :)

After dinner, we decided to act on our inner children and play with the CLAW---oooooooo. Paul, of course, has skills when it comes to this so he was legitimately pretty excited about his pick. He was nervous and anxious but pretty sure that he had snagged what he had set out to snag (two skittles packs). When he got them he was SO excited and ran to the corner and back--but he shouldn't have left his post, because do you see the two kids in the corner of the picture? When Paul ran to the corner to celebrate with his hands in the air, these two kids snagged his treats!! They ran away saying "We won! We won!" And their parents said "What do you say?" And they said "Thank you!" Umm...what??? I don't remember us giving you the CANDY! After that we guarded the drop door and wouldn't allow the kids to steal anymore. Sneaky little kids.

The next day we ate the most delicious pancakes I've ever had :) We went to the Original Pancake House...tasty sweet. We also of course played a bunch of Rockband with them and had a plentifully good time. We also went to a movie that afternoon and when we walked in I couldn't believe how TINY the theatre was, it was like 4 rows with an aisle in the middle, 6 seats per row. And the screen was small and the quality was very poor. It was kind of ridiculous. Miniature movies. And then afterwards we went to get a drink of water at the miniature water fountains, pictured below. The best part was that it looked like they'd LOWERED the fountains.

Thanks Jordan and Alyssa for the fabulous weekend :)

Day 2 of the Curacao Chronicles...

2012-01-29T15:17:00.000-05:00

DAY 2

So this might take some time to write it all down but it'll get there eventually :) We made the trek to Denny's that morning since we had no food! It was really full--one of the only places open. And it wasn't just full of tourists, there were quite a few locals there. We had some delicious food and fruit. Since we couldn't use our phones it was nice to just sit and chat over all the meals we had there and while we waited for movies to start, and in the evenings since we didn't have a TV. We just got to talk a lot and hang out and play games. It was great :) I also worked on my direction-giving skills.

After our American breakfast, we spent the morning soaking up some sun at our place while we just relaxed and read our books. It was so nice. We got ready to go out for a swim and as I was about to head down to the water, I saw this little friend and I raced back in the house whispering, "get the camera! get the camera!" And we snagged a picture of the guy:

Iguanas there were like squirrels in the US, okay maybe not as common but still pretty much everywhere. Squirrels come and grab the acorns that fall off of trees in the US but in Curacao, Iguanas come and grabs (with their mouths) the apple/nut things that fall of the trees there. In fact, while we were sitting there reading all peaceful like, a hard little apple thing fell off the tree and landed on my head really hard! I felt like someone had thrown a rock at me! Paul and I laughed about it for some time because it bounced off my head and into his lap and he had jumped a bit thinking it was a bug of some sort. Later on I saw an iguana come out of the bush and pick one of them up in his mouth and I was wondering how he was going to eat something that hard. Who knows! Maybe it was some sort of nut. Shows you how little I know about reptiles huh? Yep--NOTHING. I'm awful.

Later that day, we found a small mini mart and were able to get a couple of snacks to hold us over until the next day when the store opened up. I'm telling you--those pringles saved our lives! So tasty. We ate the whole container while we drove around the island that afternoon. We headed West and drove up to the tip of the Island. The Christoffel National park was closed but we stopped by the Shete Bloc State park and got to see some of the sites there and see the power of the Northern coastal waves :)

We went out to the "Natural Bridge"and the cave that was out there. It was beautiful and of course the weather was pretty much perfect, although it was very windy.

The landscape was so interesting. It was barren with lava rock but it other places had a lot of brush and then you could see the mountains which had heavy vegetation and were very green. It had a more diverse landscape than I would have thought.

The ground out by the water was SO sharp and rough. If you were to fall it would hurt VERY bad. It's just all lava rock, but different than what I've seen in Oregon. Much lighter and very jagged. That might be due to the constant wind in the same direction and the water breaking or something, I'm not sure. My foot slipped off my sandal once and that was not fun--it was pretty painful. Paul braved the walk out there in his flip flops in order to feel the power of the water crashing behind him. WOOO.

At the cave, you get to climb down in it and then you can see out to the ocean where the waves are coming in. The waves come all the way in to your feet, I wouldn't want to be down there when the waves were big or when the tide was high. We could tell where the water had filled the cave entirely. It was really steamy down there, and we got this sweet photo of Paul gazing thoughtfully into the distance:

Truth be told I wasn't feeling 100%, I think I was just hungry since we had had Denny's and Pringles that day and it was dinner time. As we were driving to another site the road was SO rough and I flew up in my seat, with my seat belt on, and bonked my head on the side of the car...so we decided to call it and continue to drive and find some dinner. Good choice Paul :)

We had no idea where we were going to eat, we were at the tip of the island and we came across Jaanchies which was an experience we were glad we did not miss. We felt a bit like we were in the jungle and got to sit right next to the window/opening in the wall leading to the garden. We were confused for a bit because they didn't give us a menu and just started bringing some condiment stuff out as if we had already ordered. Then this little old man showed up and said, "hallo hallo, this is a walking talking menu and everything is served with quite a lot of TLC." He then proceeded to tell us our choices, including Iguana which apparently is good for honeymooners--"it-a makes the heart go-a pitter patter" wink wink. Haha. So we ordered a "taste" of iguana and some shrimp and groupa. It was interesting eating the iguana after having been so close to one that morning...while it was tasty I couldn't eat much because I kept thinking of the actual animal. And then they gave us an ice cream sandwich with raspberry sauce on it for dessert HA. It was great. While we were eating our dessert we noticed a visitor had arrived on the ceiling...with his friends :) Yep, the lizards had arrived! On our way out, they gave us a small change purse as a souvenir. Thanks JAANCHIE!

By then it was dark so there went our plan to go to a beach on the south side of the island on our way home...we just got distracted on our way there. :) So we just booked it back, got lost (of course) but finally made it back to our place. We got lost almost everytime we went somewhere. That's is what happens with this generation. I'm hooked to my GPS and when I have to figure it out for myself and it doesn't say it's a one way street on the paper map??? COME ON! Besides, giving directions is not my strong suit.

Once we got home, we read our books for awhile (we read a lot in case that hasn't become apparent) and then we played Pass the Pigs and I whomped Paul--the only game I beat him at the entire trip! Sad day. But at least I truly beat him. After that, we headed back in and I was putting ice in the water bottle at the freezer and Paul comes in and says "Don't freak out" which is code for "there is a massive bug by you" so of course I freak out and run a psycho highknee version of the Michael Scott run out of the kitchen. I looked pretty ridiculous I'm sure. I had to have Paul go back in and get the water bottle and close the freezer while I kept an eye on the bug to make sure it didn't jump on it. They have some large critters there who quite like the kitchen and who only seem to come out at night. Did I mention we had a mosquito net on our bed? We did--thankfully. I slept much more soundly knowing that.

That night Paul grilled me with a bunch of questions while I gave him a back scratch. Would I rather..., what is my favorite..., what do I think about..., which would I choose..., etc. One question he asked me was who my favorite actress was--Meryl Streep hands down. She's fabulous. Another question he asked me was which actor I thought was the most attractive. At the time I couldn't really think so I just said that it was probably Brad Pitt or something. But while I was home a couple of week ago, we watched "PS I love you" and I found my answer--Gerard Butler. Especially when he's walking with her in the national park.

It was a great day 2 of a great vacation :)

The Quilt

2012-01-27T11:24:00.004-05:00

I went home for a week after we got back from Curacao which my family was very happy about. While I was there my mother and I decided to make a quilt. We had talked about making a quilt for me ever since I was in High School but we just never did it...until now. So we went to Joann's and picked out the fabric for the quilt. I changed my mind quite a few times but finally found one fabric that I really liked and then built a quit around that. We were both pleasantly surprised with the fabrics we found. It's always interesting because when I first go in to a fabric store I don't see anything I like, it all feels too crafty but the longer I look I find so many I like! Aren't they lovely? :)

While my sisters were at school my mom and I busied ourselves with the creation of the quilt. The cutting of each square, the sewing of it all together, and so forth. I was cutting all of the squares until I sliced my finger open so my kind mother finished the cutting for me :)

We moved the sewing machine down to the living room so that I could hang out with anyone who was home while I sewed.

The girls could do their homework and I could work and we could all still feel like we were hanging out together. I loved just hanging with my sisters, even just being in the same room. They're amazing young women and I'm proud to be their sister. Genna in this picture is writing her speech for the next day when she presented on how she won all her awards for her stop sign picture. My sisters are so talented! On a separate note, since I was home my family got a fabulous new couch, obviously not pictured here. But it is a lot like the one that we used to have which means it's pretty awesome.

I wasn't going to lay out each piece of the quilt but then I realized the wisdom in my mother's words and laid out each piece in order to avoid duplicate squares being right next to each other. of course more than once I sewed the wrong squares together and had to relay them out to figure out how they would best go together. Let's just say that I can get rather distracted while I'm doing repetitive things. My mother was instrumental in making sure I did things accurately and in picking out my seams when I messed up or sewed the wrong lengths together :)

Once the quilt was all sewn together we had to set it up on the quilt stand and we set it up at like 1130pm and we were not in the best moods. I don't know if you can tell but we have less than genuine smiles in this photo.

As you may also notice, I have the same shirt on in everyone of these photos haha. It was my quilting shirt for the week. It was really the only lightweight shirt I had brought that wasn't meant for a nice outfit so it makes it look like we did the whole quilt in one day--we definitely did not :)

The girls were kind enough to help me quilt! It was pretty hilarious since not one of us had ever before quilted. Luckily for us you couldn't really see any of the stitching haha. Genna was probably the funniest in her stitches at the beginning. She was the most talented but just had some funny stitches. Stephanie had the most casualties.

She even sewed her finger to the quilt once--she didn't bleed but she got some of her skin HAHA:

This is me laughing hysterically at her predicament. I laughed so hard that I almost popped my contacts out. Stephanie was in a little bit of shock. She was like "umm..umm. errmmm. I don't know what to do." and the thread was moving by her pulling it with her skin. haha.

The stitching hurt my fingers and we did not have any thimbles so we ended up borrowing from a lovely woman in our ward Sister Hermann who let us borrow her mother-in-laws thimble that was beautiful! It turned my finger green haha bit it worked like a charm. :)

After we had all the stitching done my mother and I sat and sewed the binding on while Stephanie read to us from The Princess Bride which might I add is very amusing and entertaining.

Genna napped by the fire during this. My dad napped in the chair. Lots of napping :) Stephanie likes to read aloud and I love to listen to her. When I was there a couple times ago she read Flipped to me which is also very enjoyable. We didn't quite finish it but she got about 150 pages or so into it.

Once I got home, I finished the stitching around the outside and then washed it to give it the crinkly quilt look. Yay! It's done! Lots of memories hehe.

The Curacao Chronicles-Day 1

2012-01-22T19:31:00.001-05:00

DAY 1

Okay. The chronicles of Curacao finally begin. We arrived in Curacao on December 31, 2011. We got there at about 3pm and assumed that we would have plenty of time to go to the store and get dinner before we enjoyed the festivities to ring in the new year. Well, it isn't America, they don't cater to visitors in very many ways :) We had thought we'd try to just eat locally and stay away from American food, but that didn't last long. Everything was closed or closing by the time we got there and after wandering around for quite some time trying to get someone to take our money to provide us sustenance we ended up at....drum roll please...PIZZA HUT. And may I say that I have NEVER had pizza taste that good. It truly was delicious. We begged water cups off of them and hydrated ourselves while we gorged on the life-saving pizza. mmmm. tasty.

But despite the struggle to find food, we had a wonderful welcome to the island. When we got there we decided to go for a little swim. Right from OUR deck! Check it out, pretty sweet huh? The water was warm and beautiful, so clear. We had a lot of little fishes right by the rocks by our place. This just went straight out to the ocean. The ocean was so calm on the south side of the island as well so we didn't have to worry about anything like that. And it was shallow enough right in front of our deck that we could stand. So beautiful. We stayed the first 6 nights in a bungalow right on the ocean, as you can see. It was a 2 bedroom and it was the last one in the line of bungalows. It was called "Snapper." When we met the owners they told us that they used to live in Snapper for 7 years! We could believe it. It was a two bedroom house with a kitchen and living area, a covered porch with a long beautiful table, a patio with a in-ground grill from which you can just look over and see the ocean. I'll put more pictures up later of the place. It was PERFECT. I want to take that house with us everywhere we go. It was awesome.

No big deal :) Just hanging out in the Caribbean! This is the perfect place for a honeymoon, it's called Sun Reef Village. The island was a not super polished and some people might not like it but if you want nice weather, perfect water, great fish, and a perfect place to stay--this is where you want to go. If you want a fancy vacation or honeymoon, this wouldn't be the island for you :)

When we first got there, we were welcomed by the house parrot. When we walked up we were a loud "HELLO" from the trees and what do you know but this little beauty was welcoming us :) It was fun to see an exotic bird right when we got there. Sometimes we'd also hear a "GOODBYE" as people left. Sounds like it could maybe be fun to have a bird...but only if I lived in a tropical place where I didn't have to keep it inside :D

That night while we were searching for a place to eat we crossed the pontoon bridge which is a bridge on boats that floats open when big boats need to come through and we walked over from Punda to Otrabanda where all the colorful buildings of Willamstad are. It was fun to see them all lit up with multicolored lights while we were down there. People were already lighting fireworks in the middle of the streets downtown and all over the island and they were so loud that car alarms were just going off constantly, usually multiple car alarms at one time.

After we finally found a place to eat we were pretty tired because we had gotten up at 445am to get to the airport and it was only about 830pm. They wouldn't be shooting off fireworks until midnight and 3 1/2 hours was a bit too long to wait. So we decided to give up our perfect parking spot and go back to our bungalow for a nap and come back at 1130pm. We were so glad we did. We both slept for 2+ hours. It felt so good. Then we came back for the fun and it was packed! There was no longer anywhere to stand or park, whereas when we had been there before it was empty. It cracked us up how many rules did not exist. People could park wherever they want; they were on roundabouts and in the wrong directions, in the medians, on sidewalks, you name it and a car was there.

At 1159pm a big tugboat came out and blew its horn until midnight when all the fireworks went off and then it blew its horn a few more times. There were people there from all over the world and it was quite a site. Sure it wasn't NY but it was pretty awesome. There was live music while we waited and a review of 2011 on a big screen--I kind of forgot that all the natural disasters happened last year. 2011 had a lot happen. But we had a blast. It was warm and beautiful and we were in the Caribbean on a vacation, what better way to start off 2012?

WELCOME 2012!

We went back to our place and slept peacefully to the sound of the ocean...zzZ.

Vandre Family Christmas

2012-01-22T15:15:00.002-05:00

I am very very far behind, to say the least. That is just what happens when you get busy having a good time. From hockey to Christmas. This is Christmas part 2.

As I said before, we drove up with Christine and Kenneth and Owen in the backseat. We managed to fit everything in our Accord only because Kenneth and Christine forgot the stroller in Raleigh. We had a great drive up. I got to witness first hand Owen's fantastic trick--he held his feet up for you while you changed his diaper and held perfectly still. And when you put a new diaper on, he'd lower his feet right back down. He's a happy baby who LOVES his mommy. He followed her with his eyes wherever she went.

For Christmas eve in Maryland, we gathered at the church for some pizza and salad and prepared to be amazed by the thespian children in their rendition of the nativity. Charlotte who played Mary had prepared all year for her roll and very deliberately put the baby Jesus in the manger, Paul played the wicked(ly handsome) King Herod who directed the wiseman to find the child, wiseman Grant may have been distracted by his Uncle Paul's laser pointer dot on the ground. We had a generous set left by a previous ward at the church so it felt like the real deal. Thanks to the angels and the shepherds, and the star upon the ladder. It was a night to remember!

Even before we had the pleasure of the nativity scene, we had various games for the children. One included wrapping uncles in toilet paper as snowmen, another pinning ornaments on the paper Christmas tree, Depth Charge aka Manger Drop for our purposes (that was Paul's invention), and others. It was a fun filled afternoon for all :) We also made Gingerbread houses which is quite the Vandre pastime. You don't mess with these guys. Everyone made some very impressive houses, and Miles outlasted us all the decorating of his. He had a mailbox and even a water slide.

Mine had a pond for iceskating and a wood pile in the back. Paul's might look more like an Easter house or as our nieces said "a baby-shower house." He painstakingly cut each square for the roof from star-shaped marshmallows.

Christmas eve night, we skyped with my family and gave them the good news that we had decided I would come home for a week after our trip to Curacao! They were very excited to hear that. Woo hoo! (news about that trip later). Paul and I purchased some curtains as a small Christmas present for ourselves. How long have we been married and we finally purchased some real curtains? We're very happy with them. They don't block out all the light which helps us to get up in the morning but they do help quite a bit which helps us go to sleep at night. And they're pretty. yay.

Back to Christmas with the Vandres...Christmas morning came and Santa had paid us a visit. Haribo candy, hot chocolate, and treats. mm hmm. There was also a very big surprise waiting for me underneath the tree. It was a new camera lens! I had really been wanting a nice zoom lens, a good walkabout lens that could be used for pretty much everything--and I got it! Thanks Bob! It was such a shocker. He and Paul had been in cahoots on that one. I had been planning on getting a lens but then I dropped my 50mm so I had to pay to fix that so I figured I would wait until next year to get a new lens. I was super glad to get it this year! We took it to Curacao and it was all I used!

We had gone to church that morning so we had to wait until we got back to open all the presents and to eat bacon and scones. The scones were SO good. Marvelous tradition. Super tasty. I could have eaten them all day for the taste, but could only handle a few for the actual eating. Christmas day night we had a large delicious dinner with everyone except Jim and Erin's family (5 people) so we had 30 of us--it was cozy! We had prime rib and tasty side dishes. Of course there was plenty of sparkling cider to go around--in all different flavors.

After dinner began the game so thoughtfully and creatively put together by Melanie--Minute to Win It Vandre christmas style. I got chosen to so gracefully throw a red ball and make it stick on my nose like Rudolph. See below the picture of me attempting and Kenneth succeeding. Good times were had by all. It was a very clever game for such a large group, and then you can see the prize board in the back where we would punch through and get our prize. It was my first Vandre Christmas and it was very fun. LOTS of people and lots of fun.

The days following Christmas we also experienced frisbee golf, Beatles Rockband, Settlers, Perudo, and TakeOff. Thanks Vandre's for a wonderful time! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

I will be posting about Curacao soon. I have all the pictures uploaded and I wrote in my journal as we went so now I just have to get it on here. And then I went home and then we went to Charlotte. I haven't sat still for a month so I have lots to post about.

Hurricanes...hockey that is

2012-01-22T14:28:00.001-05:00

So to go back about a month ago, we went to a Carolina Hurricanes' game with Paul's brother Kenneth. The final score was 5 to 4 which made for a very entertaining game! Unfortunately the Hurricanes lost, but it was still a blast. We will definitely try to pick up one more game before the season is over this year.

Kenneth, his wife Christine, and their darling baby boy Owen rode up with us from North Carolina to Maryland for the Christmas festivities. Owen did SUCH a great job. It was his first car trip over a few hours--and he made it 5 1/2! He is such a darling little man.

We had fun hanging out with them while we were in Maryland since they were the only ones besides us who stayed at Paul's parents house. We rocked out to some sweet Rock Band, made gingerbread houses, played games, and got to play with Owen a lot :) Next post--Christmas in Maryland!

Still love it

2011-12-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

I'm a girl who still loves her engagement ring :) We updated the wedding band to match-- thank you Johnson's Jewelers in Cary, NC, for that! Best service I could have asked for! If you're in the Raleigh/Durham area they are the fantastic, so obliging, and such a nice family.

Still happily married, going on 3 years! Paul and I are getting excited to go on our trip to Curacao. It'll be the best vacation ever, especially since my last day of work is the day before we leave. What relaxing vacation we'll have.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! I'll be posting about Christmas part 2 once I get some photos but it might be awhile.

Happy almost New Year!

Christmas Part 1

2011-12-25T16:53:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas...part 1. This year for Christmas, we are having multiple Christmases. This post is dedicated to Christmas Part 1.

Twas December 19th in the Vandre, Paul house when we opened our presents and gave out our shouts:

Thanks mom for the pjs and meg for the treats, Santa for tissues and contacts and sweets!

Mr Kruger was played and the Mormon mo-tab with laughter and tears before we then grabbed

Our presents to take to our neighbors with glee, then we kept opening the presents under our tree

Thanks Smith's for the lantern, Mandy for the vase, it was almost as fun as the bird in my face...

From a wreath we had bought to prep for the day, a real one a fresh one, so real that a Jay...

Bird... flew from the branches right past my cheek, so close it was that I gave out a shriek! (a bird really did fly out of the wreath and right past my cheek! It was hilarious)

One last present from this Christmas part 1, a nativity scene showing God's precious Son

Being born to this world to save us with grace, to save each of us, the whole human race.

To celebrate the Son's bright light--Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Happy birthday to me, 18 days ago!

2011-12-18T14:17:00.000-05:00

This post it overdue. My birthday was on November 30, and I obtained the ripe old age of 24 years. I was born on Monday, November 30, 1987 in Sandy, Utah, at Altaview Women's Center. We were only there for the birth and afterwards we promptly went back to our home in Filer, Idaho. We moved from there to Twin Falls, and maybe a few other places in that area (I was too little to notice or care). After some time there, we moved in Boise, Idaho, where we stayed until I was about 7 years old, at which time we may have moved to Georgia for a few months for a stint at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) for my dad. Then we were off to Bend, Oregon, for a more permanent locale. Once in Bend, we lived in an airplane hanger until our house was finished on the East side of Bend. We moved into that house and there I stayed until I graduated from High School. My parents and sisters are still holding down the fort there.

I went off to college in Provo, Utah, for a few months anyway. Then I flew myself over to Paris, France where I stayed for the second semester of college doing a study abroad. I came back to Bend for the summer, and then back to Provo in the Fall, back to Bend with a European trip thrown in there that summer, back to Provo in the Fall, and then to London for the next Summer just to go and work. Then I was back in Provo for the next year or so until I graduated college and we (oh yeah, I got married in there after London) moved to Cedar Hills, Utah---still in Utah county. After a year there we made the commitment to move across the country, and here we now reside in Cary, North Carolina. I have to say that I would say the first 24 years have been interesting and full of learning experiences. It's been so fun, I've decided to stick around for another 24 to start. :) This is the picture of us on my birthday, 24 forever captured in this photo above.

For this birthday, we didn't do much the day of due to the fact that it was on a Wednesday. We decided that we would celebrate on the following Saturday when we would have time to fully appreciate my existence. But he is super sweet and wanted to still do something small on my birthday. So, when I came home, I found a small bouquet of flowers (which still look beautiful 18 days later!) on the table and balloons on the ground. The balloons were fun but kind of unlike Paul, especially since there was no note. He does everything he does with purpose. He doesn't just decorate things unless they serve a specific purpose...which purpose I subsequently discovered when about 10 minutes later I accidentally kicked one of the balloons and it bounced around oddly and sort of flopped to the ground as if it had something inside of it.

And it did:

Each of the balloons had a little note inside. 1/2 of them were things he loved about me and 1/2 were coupons for special things that I could redeem when I saw fit. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I was so excited as I popped each ballon and got to unroll the note. I LOVE to be surprised and the notes in the balloons definitely did that.

That night, I really was missing our go-to joints in Utah (Cafe Rio and Zupas) but since we have neither I found that I really wanted Honey Walnut Shrimp from Panda Express. So we looked it up and found that we had 1 Panda Express in a 20 mile radius and it was about 20 minutes away (which feels far away out here) so we drove the extra distance to get me some Panda Express on my birthday. And it was delicious and I stuffed my birthday face with that shrimp and Orange chicken.

It was a simple, yet very fun birthday evening. I know we came back and watched a movie or something.

That Saturday we went out to celebrate and we went to the Natural Sciences museum in Raleigh where they have Dinosaur bones, lots of bugs, whale bones, frogs, etc and we walked around and Paul was almost devoured by a massive shark....

Then we went to dinner at Sitte (a delicious Lebanese restaurant) in downtown Raleigh. We had a delightful meal that finished with us sharing a baklava. There was an event going on in downtown (as always in Raleigh) so we went to check it out and found that it was the Winterfest Children's Festival opening. So the ice skating rink was open, they had a carousel and face painting and even Santa made an appearance. There was a fantabulous santa band making some beautiful music for the evening. We had a good time walking up and down the street watching the children's eyes sparkle. When we were getting ready to leave, we stopped by Starbucks so I could get my birthday carmel apple cider--yummy! We then walked our walk back to our car before we drove to the dollar theatre (thank goodness we still have one of those close by!) to see "The Help."

Paul was kind enough to accompany me on what some people might feel is a chick flick. He said we could do whatever I wanted since it was my birthday extended, so while it may not have been his favorite movie ever he said he thought everything was great about it except the editing (a bit fat of a movie, which I agreed to). I enjoyed it! We just have to hope that the world has changed since then, for real.

It was a great birthday and thanks to my friends and family I got some grown up presents thanks to Cyber Monday deals (new pans, Lightroom) and some not so grown up girl presents as well (new pair of boots, candy, etc).

For my birthday, I also put in my notice at work. While I really like my team, the work and I were just not a great fit. I was doing a good job but I didn't enjoy it so it just wasn't a source of happiness for me. I'm working through the end of the year to finish up my projects and then I'll be looking for something else. Not sure what I want to do yet but I'm excited for a change!

I feel like I just had a birthday...it's amazing how time flies. Can't wait to see what adventures are in store for this next year. :)

Thank you to everyone for your well wishes!

A thankful day in Washington DC

2011-12-09T17:36:00.000-05:00

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to Washington DC with Jordan and Alyssa. While we loved visiting DC again, we were grateful for where we live aka not in a big city. It was Jordan's first time to DC and man did he get a treat, why you might ask? Because we rented BIKES. Best idea ever. If you have never been to DC and are fit enough to ride a bike, take a bike tour. It you are unable, the bus tour is pretty cool too it you can sit on top.There really weren't a lot of people there, surprisingly. I think most people thought it would be cold, but the weather was beautiful! It was in the mid 60's and the sun was shining. It was gorgeous. We started out at the National Archives. I had never before see the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence so I figured since it was my 3rd time to DC, it was definitely time to witness those first hand. I have to admit it was a reverent experience for me. I am so grateful to be an American and for the rights I have and for those who were brave enough to demand them. One day when I have a home, I plan on having a copy of all of those documents hanging on my wall in a hallway or something. I was surprised at how faded the Declaration was. I'm glad we understand how to preserve documents now.

Okay, back to the bikes. The glory of being on bikes is that you can go all over the Mall and up and down every which way without getting very tired. I will never again walk the mall--makes my feet hurt even thinking about it! Look how nice it was! Paul was in a tee shirt and shorts! And there were hardly any people!

Jordan and Alyssa and their sweet bikes riding by the White House that I STUPIDLY did not include in the photo, what??? I get nervous when I take pictures with my iPhone, it doesn't take right away! There is a delay and I let it weird me out. I know, real mature right?

For lunch we met up with one of my best friends from forever, MacKenzie. We grew up together and she just moved to DC from Oregon! It was so fun to see her, we ate at Good Stuff Eatery which really served good stuff. It was very tasty. It was up by Capitol Hill. Kenzie lives right around there! So fun for her. It was great to catch up and see how she was doing. I hope to see her on our next trip up North as well.

Paul took this sweet photo of the President's helicopter flying past the Washington Monument! Pretty sweet huh? He took it really fast with my iPhone. See, he doesn't get nervous. He has skills under pressure.

The Jefferson Memorial is my favorite monument on the mall and we got to it as the sun was beginning to set and we got his awesome picture of Jordan and Alyssa and just a nice shot of the monument over the water:

We ran out of time and sunlight to ride our bikes over to the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, but next time we'll make it! Basically we hit up all the monuments and the National Archives. We really need to do the museums. We need to go on a rainy day so we only want to see the museums because it's so unpleasant outside.

Thank you DC for another successful trip! 3rd time is a charm and I'm already looking forward to the 4th!

Harper's Ferry

2011-12-07T16:41:00.000-05:00

While we were in Maryland for Thanksgiving, we played a mean game of frisbee golf with the clan (about 8 of us went, of all skill levels--Adam may or may not have had to use a normal frisbee because we were short one, but he was impressive with it!) and I think the star of the show was my brother-in-law, Ben. It was his first time going and he was a natural! Very impressive.

The other close-to-home excursion we did was to take a visit to Harpers Ferry, in West Virgina. It's situated where the Potomac meets the Shenandoah. Overall it is a quaint town and it sits right on the Appalachian Trail.

Short history from Wikipedia:

"In about 1750 the English colonist Robert Harper was given a patent on 125 acres at the present location of the town. In 1761 Harper established a ferry across the Potomac, making the town a starting point for European-American settlers moving into the Shenandoah Valley and further west. In 1763 the Virginia General Assembly established the town of 'Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper's Ferry.'

On October 25, 1783, Thomas Jefferson visited Harpers Ferry. He viewed "the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge" from a rock which is now named for him. This stop took place as Jefferson was traveling to Philadelphia and passed through Harpers Ferry with his daughter Patsy. Jefferson called the site 'perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.'"

It served many functions during the Civil War and was also the location of John Brown's failed raid.

The little town just goes pretty much straight up. You keep walking up hill to get to the next set of buildings. The church is up high on the hill--it made for a picturesque view.

This is Paul doing a canon ball off of Jefferson's Rock. You may see Jordan's hand pointing at him on the left side of the picture. He just wanted to make sure you weren't looking at anything except Paul, obviously.

We went on a Sunday so we didn't get to sample the seafood in the train next to where we parked but we did enjoy a stroll through the lovely town. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-12-06T20:24:00.000-05:00

For Thanksgiving we went up to Maryland for the weekend. Our good friends Alyssa and Jordan came with us and we all had a grand time. All but two of the Vandre children and their children were there so we had a fun, large group.

I helped Sue make pretty centerpieces for the tables. It was my first time using the flower foam where you stick the flowers in. It was fun! We actually ran out of flowers so Sue went a pruning around the yard and came back with some fun speckled leaves that we used to fill the gaps.

Paul and Jordan went and played football with the ward and Alyssa and I made my apple pie and helped with various other pieces, but Jane is quite good at managing things and her daughters were helping so I kept busy doing other things :) While all the food was cooking and the older kids were having a pie eating contest--I got to hang out with this cutie--Mr Grant. He's such a darling. We swung on the swings and played on the playground and played with trucks inside. He loves the fire trucks especially.

We had a delicious meal and we all sat around the table and we had the kids' table as well, of course. After dinner and some digestion we set all the pies out. How many pies did we have? 26 pies. Yes, 26. Pretty much a pie per person. mmm tasty.

After dinner and dessert we were all stuffed (see Sue under the table) in the only free spot downstairs b/c it was kind of crowded with all the people :) Once we had recovered we had a fantabulous Thanksgiving Day Piano Recital where all the kiddos played a few songs and Miles even added a few guitar songs in there. We have some TALENTED nieces and nephews.

It was my first Thanksgiving with the big Vandre clan and it was very fun. It reminded me a bit of my Thanksgivings growing up. Thank you Bob and Jane for a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Tree Skirt, my love

2011-12-05T20:48:00.001-05:00

I made a tree skirt. This is really my first craft that I made that is long term and I LOVE IT. Check it out:

This was the beginning....

And this was two trips to Joann's, and a burnt finger, and a sore back later...TADA:

I'm in love. xx

Bowling

2011-12-04T20:47:00.000-05:00

So I have like 5 posts I need to get posted, so I'll just start with this one. Since we've moved here we've only been bowling twice. We aren't huge bowlers but we enjoy a fun game or two. When we first came out we went bowling with Paul's high school friend JT and his awesome girlfriend Erin. We went to this old school bowling alley in Raleigh across the street from NC State. It looks like the bowling alley I went to with my parents when I was a kid--same decor, you have to keep your own score, old lanes, just very fun. Paul struggled with it a bit because the lanes weren't all perfect and shiny like the new bowling alleys have--they were a bit more worn which favored me as a person who likes to bowl straight. So for the first time in my life, I won BOTH games we played. I've never beat Paul before, but I did--twice! My first game was pretty good for me--126 and then the second game we all did very poorly. But we took a picture because it was pretty memorable :)

The next time we went bowling was just a couple of weekends ago. We went with my good friend from work and her husband--Melody and Dan. This time we went to a newer alley where they kept the score for us and Paul could use his fancy spin and get those strikes he deserved.

Before we went bowling with them, we went to this restaurant in downtown Cary--really the only restaurant opened in the evenings--called Klara's. They serve Czech food which was a new experience for all of us, but we all really enjoyed our dishes! The flavors were very tasty.

So we played 2 games with them and the second game for me was my best score by 1 point--136! I had gotten a 135 long ago but this was a new personal record for me. I don't play much because (1) it's expensive, (2) well, it's bowling, and (3) it hurts my wrists. But we always have fun when we go! Paul has gotten a 220+ before so he's always shooting for the moon whereas I'm always shooting to just break 100 :)

more posts to come about my birthday and Thanksgiving!

End of Fall...Duke University

2011-11-22T15:04:00.000-05:00

The week after we went to UNC we went to Duke University to close out the Fall season and soak in the last of the beautiful leaves. Right after we parked, this was the first tree that we saw. Aren't the leaves just stunning? I gasped when I saw it. All so uniform in their yellowness :)

We again went with Heather and Jory and just enjoyed an hour or two walking through the gardens there and driving around campus. Duke really is a beautiful campus. It has a European feel to it, or at least a North East feel, didn't quite fit in in the South. All the buildings were beautiful stone and the reds were sooo red and so vibrant. I don't know why the colors were so much deeper at Duke but they were something to behold. The golf course was beautiful as well! Paul wouldn't mind doing a round there.

I know I keep posting about the leaves but I've always loved Fall and I've never really lived in an area where I could really soak it up and experience what a true Fall was like. This experience has been life changing. And the Fall has been so long and colorful. I never again want to live in a place that doesn't have colors like we've had here. God is such an artist and I feel so blessed to see that over and over again these past couple of months.

I briefly talked about how much we like this area last time, but I can more firmly say that we love this area and plan on sticking around for as long as our circumstances will allow us to. Obviously, we don't always get to control where life takes us, but as long as we have a say--we'll be here. (unless of course we get an opportunity to live abroad but then we'll come back here for sure).

In the gardens/park you can walk right along the water around the large pond. Paul's such a good sport and makes a great model Always with a willing smile. I used my Canon 50mm F/1.4 for most of the shots since the lighting was pretty low because we went late in the day. I love that lens. I have found that others sometimes struggle using it because you do have to be careful about where you focus it since the aperture is set so low when the lighting is low.

So back to how much I love this lens--I do. It's perfect for portraits and for low lighting. I have never dropped any piece of my camera before ever. I am kind of OCD when it comes to taking care of my camera and how you hold it and store it etc. But, this one time, I did not zip everything back in correctly and I bent over and my bag opened and out crashed this lens because it I had switched lenses for just 1 shot of Paul in the stadium (shown below). I was SO bummed. You go to such great lengths to take care of your things and then you make one mistake and BOOM you ruin it. Luckily we just got it a year ago and it was partially covered under warranty so I sent it Canon and they're fixing it and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it works perfectly when I get it back. And I dropped it in front of our friends so I couldn't really react and get upset which is always super fun way to do things but it turned out for the best. It's getting fixed and it's not too expensive.

After our trip to Duke it was Heather and Jory's turn to feed us dinner--which they did and it was delicious. We got another picture of Paul in the Duke Stadium just because it was kind of a fun stadium, tiny but fun. Again, we couldn't get into where they play basketball, of course, since basketball is kind of huge out here. It is absolutely impossible to get tickets to a Duke game. It only holds 7000-8000 people and you have to be an alumni and donate an obscene amount to get tickets if you aren't a student. It's kind of crazy.

Goodbye to most of the leaves! The ground is covered and the seasons are changing...and even though it was 76 degrees today...and winter is coming! We have so many fun things going on in the next two months...and it all starts on Wednesday, Happy almost Thanksgiving!

Goodbye leaves, Goodbye Fall! and welcome, welcome to the Holiday season!

Chapel Hill excursion

2011-11-20T13:49:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago we went to Chapel Hill to the University of North Carolina and walked around campus and walked into the Football Stadium to just check it out and see the leaves and spend some time outside in the beautiful weather. Paul is interested in eventually going to school at UNC if he decides to pursue his MBA, so it was fun to walk around some and see what the buildings and the campus are like. The leaves were so pretty! It was interesting because in some places all the leaves were still green and in other places the leaves were already gone.

This is Paul loving the fact that we could just walk into the stadium. The BYU stadium is always locked and restricted so this was a treat. Paul likes large structures when they're almost empty, it's just a cool feeling to be the only one in there.

We tried to get into the basketball arena but since basketball is what they do out here, it was locked down pretty tight. The boys just had to content themselves to be outside looking in:

Luckily we have tickets to a couple of the basketball games this year, so one day soon they'll be able to walk in there like they own the place :)

We went with Heather and Jory and took some "family" photos for them, trying to grab a good Christmas Card picture. We got one that they loved but I'm not showing it, have to keep it a secret for them.

Paul took some pictures of his own this time. I love this one of the leaves! He also insisted that I lay down in the leaves and he take some pictures of me in my new red coat. He loves how the pale picture of me looking in another direction turned out so I promised I would post it on the blog even though having a picture like that without showing off some accessory can be kind of awkward :) I guess it is fun with the leaves and the RED coat. xx

There were these cool gardens and this archway that we were able to walk through. It was a fun part of campus. I think it'd make a great spot for pictures at a different time of day and with some preparation. But we still got a fun picture even though you can't see much of the archway thing, you can see some of it:

Look how handsome this guy is! He's a keeper. He's always good to carry my camera bag around while I have my camera around my neck.

After our excursion we all went back to our house for some lasagna which I should have thawed first. So they were there longer than they had planned but it worked out---the boys watched football and Heather and I looked at the photos from the day. The store-bought-Food-Lion-generic lasagna hit the spot and we were happy campers once we finally at the chance to eat it at about 830pm :)

We fall more in love with this area with each passing month. And I love that at this time of year there are almost NO bugs! We hardly see any, it is such a welcome change. Beautiful weather, beautiful leaves, and no bugs--perfect!

New glasses for a fall day

2011-11-12T14:42:00.010-05:00

I feel like I've posted this picture everywhere--Facebook, family website...I guess that's it but it seems excessive. I just have different people on each medium so I have to triple hit it. So for blog people, here is a picture of me in my new glasses! Early birthday present from my wonderful hubby. I got them from Warby Parker Eyewear. They operate a similar system to Tom's Shoes where for each pair of glasses they sell they give a pair away to someone in a developing country who wouldn't otherwise be able to get glasses. And a pair of glasses with prescription is only $95.00 which is very reasonable.

I also threw in a picture if some leaves right by our house just because I still am in love with all the Fall colors. Everyday I'm driving I want to stop and take pictures but that isn't safe so I just have to try and remember them in my mind.

Coming back from Charlotte today where we've had a splendid time with the A&J Rose familia.

Happy November!

Fall Weekend in Linville Falls, NC

2011-11-09T20:27:00.005-05:00

So we're about to hang out with Jordan and Alyssa again so I figured I should post about this before we have something to post about related to them! The 3rd weekend of October, we went to Linville Falls, North Carolina with our friends Jordan and Alyssa. We went to do some leave watching :) They came from Charlotte, we came from Raleigh and met at the campsite. Paul and I beat them there because they may or may not have accidentally gone to the wrong campsite and Paul and I thought it would be nice to have a fire ready by the time that they got there...an hour later and we hadn't gotten very far and I was beginning to doubt the Eagle Scout award displayed in Paul's home. Upon closer inspection we learned that the wood we had procured from the store was WET and DAMP and would not be lighting any fires until it had dried out. Paul was vindicated. See the water boiling out of the log? Pathetic.

We needed a fire because we had tin foil dinners to cook on hot coals! No fire, no coals, no dinner. So, Jordan and Alyssa finally arrived and attempted to help us with the fire with not much luck until our neighbor took pity on us and gave us a dry bundle of firewood. It may have had something to do with all of our comments of fire envy such as "See that fire? That's how fire is supposed to look." and "Do you hear that crackle? Pretty sure fire should sound like that and not sound like boiling water." We may have mentioned our fire envy multiple times and yet we were all surprised when they gave us some wood.

So we finally made our dinners and they were tasty! Then we had some smores, enjoyed good company and then went to bed. That night in our tent it was dark and we didn't have our phones so we couldn't read scriptures (Bible, Book of Mormon, etc) but I turned to Paul and I asked him to quote a scripture because I knew that he had a lot memorized from when he had been a missionary for our church for two years.

So Paul then quoted the scripture Alma 37:37 : "Counsel with the Lord in all they doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day." And it was just perfect and beautiful :) I sure love my husband.

The next morning we fanned that fire back to life and made some delicious bacon and eggs and bagels and some needed hot chocolate because it was chilly. We were pretty bundled because it was 70 degrees in Raleigh and 30 degrees at night in the mountains and no more than 50 during the day--it was an adjustment for us. After breakfast we were ready to go hiking and leave watching as we called it. We had all driven in in the dark so we hadn't been able to see any of the colorful leaves. This is us at our campsite, it was a nice and cozy fit! Good thing we had tiny tents.

We hiked to Linville Falls and Paul almost fell off as you can see :) It was a beautiful leisurely stroll.

There were lots of various lookouts that would open up and we could see down into the Falls and get a view of the gorgeous trees. I kept having to take my glasses off for pictures because they would get fogged up and then I looked like I was a zombie in the pictures. It was great to walk through the woods to get to the Falls because we walked underneath trees that were so vibrant in color:

Paul impressed us all with his cannon ball skills. We try to avoid doing these shots around young boys whom Paul might influence for the worse and freak out their parents. After we finished our excursion to the Falls and beyond we drove up to the end of the road and walked to Wiseman's view.

As you can see with us sitting on the log below, just the walk was gorgeous! We also gathered a few pieces of kindling since our fire could always use some help.

The view was beautiful as well. Whoops, I forgot to crop out the lady in the corner, oh well, she will be forever immortalized in this blogpost, or at least as long as it is kept live online.

There were multiple views up at Wiseman's view and there were jutting rocks that stuck out so we could hover over the trees and really get a good view.

Along the road that led up to Wiseman's view we noted tons of places we could have camped for free that would have been great! Primitive, but great. So now we know for the future! After our excursions up there we went back to camp and made some simple and tasty lunches before we set out again to the Historic Apple Orchard at AltaPass.

At the Apple Orchard we took the already fallen apples and used them for target practice, Alyssa and I learned how to put a blade of grass between our fingers and blow to make beautiful "music", we enjoyed the beautiful dancing talents of the over 80 group in the barn, and we tasted some delicious apple butter and apple turnovers. It was very fun to watch and listen to this bluegrass band play while these grandparents put on their tap dancing shoes and got out there and showed us what they were made of. They had some mad skills. It was so amusing after they were done to see them in the parking lot hollering out the window at each other "Now you stay out of trouble Glenda!" as they drove by. Paul also ran into a friend from BYU who was there with his wife and two kids. Small world!

These are our Blue Ridge Parkway photos. I finally understood it's popularity and all the hype around it. These are easily my best pictures from the trip of the leaves and I didn't even have to work for them, it was just so naturally beautiful. I remember looking at my LCD screen and thinking that the pictures didn't do the colors justice but then I got home and thought "Could they really have been more colorful than this??"

The last night we were there we had MREs (Paul's first experience) and Peach Cobbler. I might have ruined the pot but the cobbler was worth it--easiest thing ever, just make sure to grease the pot! :)

Our last morning there Alyssa and Jordan made pancakes and we cooked the rest of the bacon (no worries, we did have fruit at these meals as well). With the last bit of pancake batter and the last little piece of bacon, Paul decided it was time to break out the bancake (Bacon-Pancake). It was something to behold and it tasted of deliciousness. You've done it again Mr. Vandre, you've done it again.

Thank you Linville Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, and the mountains of North Carolina for a wonderful weekend and a reminder of why we moved out here! Thank you also to Jordan and Alyssa and the endless array of quotations and jokes that fueled our fun.

Morning Glory

2011-11-09T09:50:00.001-05:00

"I woke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fog rolled in this morning here in North Carolina and it made for a peaceful and beautiful start of the day.

NC State Exhibition Basketball Game

2011-11-07T21:48:00.000-05:00

Tonight we went to a NC State Exhibition basketball game with Heather and Jory. Jory is a Grad student in Engineering at NC State. We were able to get in with 3 cans of food each. I was amazed about how much canned food we didn't have. But we managed to scrounge up a few cans and it was good enough. We didn't really have any red clothes. We each only had one red shirt and mine was an undershirt so it can't really see it but I did my best.

It wasn't very full so we had fun sitting right behind the basket. Up close and personal.

State was playing the Florida Flaglers, try saying that ten times fast. There was a short white man playing on the opposite team who Paul nick-named Jimmer Jr. for his shooting and willingness to be beaten down for the sake of a shot. We had a nice usher take this picture for us. He was a jolly man :)

Today was kind of a rough day at work so it was nice to be able to get out and enjoy some sporting events with our friends. Let's just say that auditing is not my calling in life and it isn't really a very good fit when you look at it closely. So for now it is what it is and I enjoy my nights to make up for it :)

GO WOLFPACK! xx

"Fore!" A Nancy appropriate golf outing

2011-11-06T13:58:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we used a Groupon to experience the wonders of 401 Par Golf. We got 2 buckets of balls for the driving range and an all day pass to the 9-hole 3-par course. You can see all the holes from anywhere on the course. I think the whole length was like 650 yards :)

Anyway we had a grand time. The wind was a bit biting on the driving range but once we were on the course it was quite pleasant. It was a fun little slightly redneck/country course. The trees were changing some so the colors were pretty.

I'm very inconsistent since I never golf. This is the first time I've hit all my own shots. I used to walk with Paul and hit a ball occasionally. But I actually played this time. Nothing to brag about but it was fun for sure :)

On the 3rd hole I teed off and hit the green at 90 yards! (like I said, tiny course) but Paul was so proud and I was pretty excited so we took a picture of out balls equidistant from the flag.

I sliced a few and had my fair share of learning to chip--go sandwedge! I had 1 fantastic put and on the last hole I wanted to use the 8 iron but Paul said I should use the 7 and I hit it great but too far. Paul admitted my instinct was right with the eight. Haha. It was fun to be in his world for a bit and experience why he loved golf. Paul is really good and has been playing since he was 6 or 7 I believe.

When we were at the driving range, while I was just trying to hit the ball, Paul was practicing manipulating the ball to try and control which way it would fly. This experimentation combined with the wind blowing directly at us pretty strongly, he got more than one face full of dirt and it was always funny :)

This course was a funny place. When we were on the last hole, we looked back and saw this scene on the green of the first hole. Two ladies had walked up and just poured a whole bucket of balls onto the green and were practicing putting--I hope no one wanted to play!? And as they were setting up their shots...a cat walked across the green--how random is that? It just made us laugh because it was a perfect display of our experience on this baby course:

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon! Now we're both a bit sore from the driving range but it was worth it :)

"Sweet Baby Sqwirrrrrel"

2011-11-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

This morning we woke up to hear scratching on our bedroom window. We're on the second story in the back with a little bit of a cliff behind us so the odds of it being a person were very slim. Paul quietly opened the blinds so we could see who our visitor friend was and look at what we found:

He was performing all sorts of acrobatic feats on our window. He made his way to our window by a long thin branch that runs right into our house. It looks like they've trimmed it before but it touches our house just barely and it's right by our window.

Good morning to us! Paul named him "Earl the squirrel" and hopes to see him again sometime. I'd probably be okay if he didn't come back :)

This experience reminded me of this beauty of a video:

Pumpkin Carving 2011

2011-10-30T19:13:00.000-04:00

We carved pumpkins tonight! We always watch Harry Potter while we carve pumpkins, see our pumpkins from 2010, and 2009. This year we watched "The Goblet of Fire" and ate apple bites with caramel while we carved our pumpkins. We're very excited for the kids to come trick-or-treating tomorrow and we wanted to make sure our house looked inviting :) We were going to pick our pumpkins from this farmer guy but his pumpkins were minimum $10 so we decided to grab some at the grocery store for $4.50 each and we got these big ones! I love fat pumpkins!

Paul carved a creepy jack-o-lantern--muah ah hahaha:

And I carved a witch, her nose turned out larger than planned, but it seemed appropriate :)

Our pumpkins sitting on our porch:

Happy Halloween! I can't believe it's been a whole year! Time flies when you're having fun.

It's time for some corn-mazing!

2011-10-29T23:38:00.003-04:00

So, Friday night (last night) it was a bit misty but we still braved the cool weather and with Jory and Heather we went a corn-mazing. Well first we went to the church Halloween party where our candy bucket was cleaned out in seconds and we were able to partake of some delicious chili and THEN we went a corn-mazing. We got there only an hour or so before closing time so we missed out on some of the sweet activities, but as you'll see below, we participated in a few anyway.

When we went to the State Fair, Heather had expressed a deep desire to milk a cow but none of us were patient enough to indulge and wait in line for her then, so we were all pleased to find a suitable replacement!

Paul and Jory also showed off their manly muscle and rang that bell at the top. woo HOO. Notice the tiny maze behind him for toddlers hehe.

This was Paul's first experience going into a Corn maze, so we tried to make it kind of a big deal and grabbed some photos. The equipped us with a flag in case we got lost and a couple flashlights. They also gave us a sheet of paper with 10 numbers on it and told us that we would find each number in a different place in the maze.

We searched and searched and found all but the elusive number 3. You can see the troops punching our first number we found. Our original plan had been to find 5 of the 10...but then we were hooked and felt unresolved. We would have kept looking except it became silent and very dark... they shut down the party and left us behind and we were late getting out and there was NO one there. We just had to leave our flashlights and flag on the porch and hope they were still there in the morning when they came back!

Paul and Heather were the master finders--especially Heather, she came through when we needed it most. Jory also pulled a magic trick and conjured one out of thin air! I didn't help much...but I did find a LOT of exits, always good to know where the exit is.

The air was misty and the wind was biting but the corn provided pretty good protection. Paul had a great time--his first corn maze experience got two thumbs up! Thanks to Heather and Jory for coming with us!

Afterwards we all went to Starbucks--another first for Paul. We went through the drive-thru and Paul asked "What non-coffee beverages do you have?" Needless the say the guy was a little confused by us, but we ended up with some delicious caramel apple cider and hot chocolate to warm our souls :).

Happy Halloween!

A Reel-ly Scary Cary

2011-10-27T16:37:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday night we went to the Koka Booth Amphitheatre and watched the original 1963 "The Haunting" out on the grass. We went with one of my friend's from work and her husband. It was a fun little experience and it was nice to take advantage of a Fall night. Although it ended up being so dewy! Our sleeping bags were wet by the end from all the dew.

The first time I watched this movie I was like 13 or something and I watched in on Halloween night by myself in a dark house. No one was home except me. By the end of the film I had all the lights on and was sitting in the corner so that I knew nothing was behind me. I didn't have the same reaction this time, but those old movies can still give me the heebie jeebies :)

Halloween is around the corner! We're excited for the ward Trunk or Treat and we're also going to go to a corn maze. Woo hoo!

Beach Day!

2011-10-25T22:28:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I decided that we needed to suck it up and take a trip to the beach. We'd kept talking about it but never did it. The one weekend we had really planned it turned out to be a hurricane so we didn't go, for obvious reasons. So we decided to make a day trip. We left at 8am and went for the day and we were home by about 9pm. It was a wonderful trip.

Our first stop on the way to Wilmington, NC, and Wrightsville beach, was at the USS North Carolina. It was very interesting to learn about the history of the ship and to explore all lower 9 levels as well as the deck and upper levels. 9 levels below!! This ship was B-I-G.

It is always interesting to me to learn about various parts of American History. I'm very proud to be an American and I'm always touched by the service willingly given by young men in times of war when the rest of us run for cover. God bless America.

Paul took this next picture and he's pretty proud of it with the three guns and all. I must admit it's imposing haha. The ship really was monstrous. Just walking around the deck and looking at the size of the chain for the anchor--dang!

This is us in the Engine Room. It was fun because all the knobs moved and you could push buttons and such :)

Afterwards we grabbed some delicious Mahi Mahi pitas at Dockside Grill which is right across the bridge just before you go from Wilmington to Wrightsville beach. it was fun to watch the fishermen pull up in their boats, dock them, and then come for a bite to eat. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious.

We then went to the beach for a couple of hours! The water was chilly but the sun felt amazing and it was perfect for laying out and flying kites. We resurrected Nelson and took him out for a ride. We got Nelson on our honeymoon and he made the trip to Hawaii with us as well. He's a good kite. Here is Paul reading about the Marburg Virus. :)

That night we had some more good food at Bridge Tender and then went for a walk on the pier. The wind was SUPER strong so we definitely needed long sleeves by then but it was very pleasant to walk and Paul makes a great heater :)

Tried to get a new nice picture of us with Paul's new haircut and new glasses. We set the camera on a trashcan, set the timer and let it roll. It took 5 pictures and in each one my hair is in a totally different position because of the wind, but I think this one turned out pretty well :) Great weekend! Great way to send off the Summer!

Welome Fall...

I miss Paris

2011-10-24T13:51:00.003-04:00

I took this from the top of Notre Dame on one of my last days in Paris during my Study Abroad. It's been 6 years since I bought my plane ticket to go and I miss it dreadfully. I revisited in 2007 for a few days and hope to go again soon. I hold out a very small hope that I still might one day be fluent in French... :)

The Smith Women minus 1

2011-10-24T11:49:00.002-04:00

In September, my mother and my sister Genevieve came to the East coast because my sister is A-mazing. She keeps winning competitions with this picture that she took...while she was walking the dog...and on her back...with one hand. Sorry about the overexposed photos--something happened, but you can kind of see her stop-sign picture behind her and my mom. "ART.WRITE.NOW DC is an annual partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to bring stunning teen-produced work to our nation's capitol." So, Genevieve's was chosen by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to be displayed for one year in DC. This committee is chaired by the First Lady, so it's pretty exciting :)

So they flew out for that recognition and the classes etc and then they came to Raleigh for a couple days before going up to New York to spend a day with Tommy and Amanda. While they were here we went to the Farmer's Market in Raleigh (pictures courtesy of my mom and genna):

And we ate at the Farmer's Market restaurant and had a grand ol' time. It was my first time to the Farmer's Market. I wish I would have gone more in the summer time! It had great prices and great selection.

That night we made a scrumptious dinner with all the fun and tasty food we purchased at the market--tasty tasty!

The next day we went on a nice little hike in Umstead Park. It may have been cold (considering it was 90 degrees the day before, 55 felt COLD)...but it was still very fun. After the hike, they experienced Chick-fil'a for the first time and I think they quite liked it. mmmm tasty.

After we ate and cleaned up we went into town and met with an artist friend Derek Toomes and Genna had the chance to talk with him about making it as an artist and what his path had been. Derek is the nicest guy and he was great answering Genna's questions.

After that we went to Father & Son's Antique store/thrift store. It is 3 stories of fun. We had Genna put on a fashion show for us of various formal dresses. Doesn't she look smashing?

We ended the night with some Thai food and Pass the Pigs. Overall it was a wonderful couple days and we were glad to have them! Come any time!! Love you both. And Stephanie of course I wish you had been able to come as well :)

The North Carolina State "A" Fair

2011-10-21T15:26:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we went to the North Carolina State Fair with our friends Heather and Jory. We had a grand time :)

We checked out all the animals as well as the prized produce. 500 pounds+ of pumpkin!

I loved all the colors of everything. Paul thought the apples were kind of boring but I loved the colors.

The food for sale was quite interesting...deep friend anything. Deep fried cheescake, ice cream, koolaid, brownies, oreos, twinkies, etc. wooooo hoooooo.

Heather and I enjoying the BEAUTIFUL day.

Busy day!! Opening weekend.

Paul decided to try the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheese Burger. Tasty looking huh?

He tried it and.....he liked it!! haha. Put bacon on anything and he'll eat it :)

The NC state fair, just another wonderful part of living in this area. We rode some rides and enjoyed people watching. Until next year!

Paul's got skills in the kitchen

2011-10-19T17:15:00.001-04:00

So last Thursday Paul turns to me and says, "I want to make dinner tomorrow night. Just me, for you." I said that that sounded great. Friday night came and I was confined to the upstairs while he worked his magic in the kitchen. I got a lot of reading done :) I may have had to come down and help a bit with the smoke alarm because our kitchen is NOT well ventilated and any smoke coming from cooking seems to cause it to go off. But after my time waving the towel and opening and closing the door to let the smoke out, I was again sent back upstairs. When Paul brought me back down, he had created a beautiful meal. (Not pictured: the amazing moist chocolate cake and ice cream. The cake had pudding, sour cream, chocolate chunks, devils food cake mix etc. SO tasty, so terrible for you, still slowly eating that :) )

Amazing tomato/sundried tomato/cheese/balsamic vinegar on baguette slices deliciousness for the appetizer (see separate picture below)
Pesto Chicken Pasta with whole wheat pasta
Ceasar salad with homemade croutons (the croutons were SO good)

The lighting was pretty dim so I just tried to snap a couple of pictures super fast. No fancy pictures but it was a very fun/fancy meal all made by Paul. What a catch.

This was my favorite part. They were SO good. The balsamic flavor just kind of popped in your mouth without overpowering your taste buds. mmm mmm! Paul doesn't even like tomatoes, but he liked these!

To really live...

2011-10-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”

Belated Labor Day Weekend Post

2011-10-01T12:32:00.000-04:00

A month late on posting, but better late than never?

We went to Maryland for Labor Day and we had a great time. Two of our nieces were baptized and we also had a birthday party for one of our nephews. We've really enjoyed living so close to Paul's family. It's so unique for us that we can just get in the car after work and arrive at family's house that same night! What a concept.

The pictures of the party are courtesy of Paul's dad.

Paul has 7 kids in his family, he is #6. 5 of the 7 kids have moved to the East coast so nowadays when we all get together it is a big party with lots of kids! Paul and I are the only ones in the family without kids so you can imagine how many there are. Currently there are 17 grandkids and there will be 18 by the end of the month. The kids are fantastic and we love spending time with them, but as you can see rom Paul's position, they can wear us out!

It's fun to watch how each of the kids are different and we really got to see that during the birthday party. It was a Star Wars themed birthday party and all the kids made pod racers out of cardboard boxes. They painted them, added piping and wings and all sorts of stuff.

These are all the kids lined up, getting ready to race. We did two heats, one for the little ones and one for the bigger kids.

The little kids went first and it was so amusing. Poor Liam tripped as you can see in the front but overall they did pretty well. It was funny watching the kids lift the pods up higher so they could run faster. Very cute.

After pod racing, they had a pinata that was Darth Vader's head--very clever. These are good kinds, not spoiled, and they are used to sharing but even these kids struggled with the pinata. I think if you do a pinata every kid needs their own! We had a few tears but they made it through all right.

They also had water guns and light sabers made out of foam piping and taped with green and blue electrical tape. So we had a few incidents of course. Below you can see the stream of water heading straight from the gun into Liam's ear :)

The next day we went on a walk to "Deaver Land" with Mike and Dessi and their kids. We were looking for Crawdads :) We had a great time. The girls are so sweet. We enjoyed getting out and spending time in the beautiful outdoors!

My sister-in-law let me borrow her old lens and I really enjoyed using it. I'm trying to figure out the best lens for me. I want a new walk-about lens that I can use for pretty much everything. I might start renting some lenses. I'm thinking I'll rent a nice lens when we go to Curacao.

Welcome to...America's Best City

2011-09-20T21:25:00.001-04:00

In case you were all wondering what America's #1 Best City is, it happens to be where we live-- Raleigh, North Carolina. According to BusinessWeek.com and their America's Best Cities Ranking, we came out ahead. You know what is even more amazing--they didn't take affordability into account when rating the cities. And guess what--it is VERY affordable living here.

Seriously, check out the article. Makes Paul and I feel pretty cool that we chose to move here not even knowing that. We were just drawn to greatness. In other words--you should all come to visit and we can show you around.

Golden Trinkets

2011-09-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

My mom and my sister came to visit the East Coast last week. I loved having them here. I'll post some pictures and talk about it soon. For now, I simply wanted to talk about a necklace my sister convinced me to purchase (my sister Genna). I wasn't 100% if I would actually wear it, but now I LOVE it. A splash of gold and Cleopatra. Just need some golden shimmer makeup...

When I'm 8...

2011-09-13T08:37:00.003-04:00

Two of our nieces and one of our nephews have just turned 8 years old! In our church that is a special age--it is the age when you get to decide if you would like to be baptized as a member of the church--The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The ordinances of baptism and confirmation are a way for us to show that we are willing to take the name of Jesus Christ upon us, which means to become Christians and do our best to always live accordingly.

We were so proud of them for making that decision and choosing that they wanted to be good. We were able to go to Maryland for the baptism of our two nieces a couple of weeks ago but not for the baptism of our nephew which is this weekend. We have a lot of nieces and nephews--almost 18! We have always lived too far away to attend special events, so we started the tradition of sending a card with $5 in it for those who were getting baptized. Because what kid doesn't LOVE to get mail that is JUST for them and that has MONEY inside of it? So even though we were able to go to our nieces' baptism, we still thought it would be fun for them to get a card in the mail. So last night was Family Night where we have a little lesson and activity and a treat and we decided we'd make the cards for the activity. I should have taken a picture of the card that Paul made for our nephew--pretty sweet artwork. Go Miles, Morgan, and Lydia :)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2011-09-08T13:13:00.006-04:00

From the author...

"I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life--in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful--is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us."

-Betty Smith, "Fall in love with life"

Sorrow can be a conduit to a deep joy if we are patient enough to wait. In her book "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" she has a passage where the heroine is talking and yearning for life--yearning to live each day no matter what--pain, hunger, sorrow or joy, fullness, and peace. She just wanted to FEEL and experience every moment of every day, even while dreaming:

"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Ch. 48

Charlotte/Noda, NC

2011-08-31T18:11:00.009-04:00

Survived Hurricane Irene. We were really blessed that we didn't really see any of it.

We actually had a thunderstorm last Monday that caused much more rain and flooding in this area. I was actually out for a walk and got caught in the storm and ran home--I was SOAKED. Drenched. Dripping. Soaked. Paul watched me run down the road towards the house and said it was quite the sight. I had my glasses on so they were fogged up and wet so I couldn't really see where I was going. It was an adventure. I would have called Paul to come get me but I didn't want to risk getting my phone out in that type of weather and there wasn't anywhere where I could go inside or get under enough trees to shield the rain---and I wasn't risking the poison ivy patch/forest on the side of the road. So I just ran. :)

The week before Miss Irene graced us with her presence, we visited our friends in Charlotte, North Carolina. Paul's long time friend Jordan and Jordan's wife Alyssa (who has recently become a friend of mine through analysis of the Bachelorette and getting lost while driving in whatever city we happen to be in) live there and we've taken to trading houses--they come here one month, we go there one month.

While the boys went golfing, as boys will do, especially our boys, Alyssa and I went to Noda which is just outside of Charlotte. We also went to Charlotte..but got lost a few times and ended up just driving around and through it instead of parking and walking. Noda was more our style, so we drove and parked there and then walked around and took some pictures, me with my Canon and Alyssa with her Holga.

Noda is a fun, colorful, eclectic, and hippy oriented town. All the buildings are different colors, art work is everywhere you look and the little shops and restaurants even have an artistic feel:

These little dancing ladies were all over the place:

After our trek around Noda, we decided we needed refreshing from the brutally hot weather, so we went to a French Bakery not too far away--Amelie's. I love bakeries, they bring back so many memories. So we got a couple eclairs and settled in for an hour or so and just chatted. It was fun getting to know Alyssa a bit better, she's fabulous.

The night we got there, we ate Alyssa's delicious curry, stayed up late and played Rock Band and went to see the X-Men prequel, a fun night all around. The next morning was Saturday and we treated it as a Saturday and all slept in until 1030am, which for paul and me is quite late. Alyssa made us Biscuits and Gravy and then we played some Rock Band. Jordan is totally classic on the mic, he lets it rip with no fear, boo yah.

After that the boys went golfing, we went to Noda as previously mentioned and then we went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. When we had passed it the night before, I knew there was no other place Paul would rather go, so to Roadhouse of Texas we went. mmm hmmm those rolls are delicious--don't look up the nutritional information. Just enjoy :)

Happy Labor Day!...Labor-Day-trip-to-Maryland post coming soon.

The East

2011-08-26T18:02:00.009-04:00

So my mother is having a heart attack... both her children have very recently moved to the East Coast and in the last week there has been an Earthquake--5.8 magnitude:

and there is a hurricane on the way...

Yeah.

Paul and I had plans to go to the beach this weekend. I don't think that is going to happen with the gale force winds and all. A foot of rain and 120mph winds at the beach--no thanks.

Life has been kind of crazy lately so blogging hasn't been on the top of list of priorities. I haven't decided if I will try and catch up or just start over.

But one more thing...Paul and I have decided that we're going to go visit the island of Curacao this winter. What a beautiful thing on the horizon. I cannot wait. We bought our tickets and reserved our bungalow on the sea. Our own little house on the ocean where we can jump in the water and snorkel right there :)

So, this is what we have to look forward to:

Willemstad, Curacao--what a cool little city:

And this is where we're staying--Sun Reef Village. love love.

mmmm...even a hurricane weekend is better than the week. hurray.

Intermission entertainment...

2011-07-25T22:49:00.003-04:00

I have no pictures of the last month or so because my mom and sisters took all the pictures...so I will have a LOT to catch up on once I get the pictures.

In the meantime...

I have one photo I can talk about. Just a crappy one from my phone, my mom has better ones. But you make do with what you got.

So I flew to Oregon on July 14th, I left Raleigh at 2:30pm but I had gotten up at 5:30am for work and other stuff and arrived in Oregon at 11:00pm and then went to the midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2" which means I did not get to bed until almost 345am (6:45am Eastern time). I was a TIRED lady.

For Harry Potter, we all dressed up. Stephanie was Hermione, Genna was Luna, my mom was a professor, and I was Moaning Myrtle.

I will say that I was pretty proud of myself. In order to create my outfit, I simply had to look inside my own closet and pick out some normal clothes...wore my glasses I got in the 8th grade and made my appearance. I was a bit embarrassed at first, but then something amazing happened, a girl about 15 years old said,

"hey, your outfit rocks, can I get a picture with you?"

yes, yes you can.

animal lovers

2011-07-12T19:21:00.003-04:00

We have absolutely NOTHING against animal lovers. We like animals, just not pets of our own. We'd LOVE to go on a safari or go to Yellowstone and see these animals in the wild. We have always known that people love their pets, but in moving out here, that love has gained a whole new meaning. No pictures of kids on the computer desk tops--but of dogs and cats in their seasonal outfits. No babysitter for the kids while you're gone over night, but a hotel for your dog where you can pay an extra $20 for them to have a 5 minute swim in the pool. And of course no food that might resemble an animal you might have met at one point.

Case in point...Paul is having a potluck at work tomorrow, previous work places had potlucks which consisted of hot dogs, ribs, chips, and soda...all of which cater very well to Paul's elevated tastes. For this potluck tomorrow a list was passed around his team of 5 and it came to him last and this is what he saw: vegan potato salad, mushroom stroganoff, hummus, and vegetarian tamale pie.

I laughed until I cried.

Independence Day

2011-07-10T17:46:00.009-04:00

For the long Fourth of July Weekend, Paul and I headed up to Maryland. We spent the first night in Bethesda with Paul's sister Susannah and her family in their new house. It is such a nice house! It was built about 50 years ago and they have been working on it since they moved in--redoing the original wood floors, repainting, etc. It's a great place for them to grow and we're so excited for them.

It's also in such a great neighborhood. On Monday, for the 4th, there was a parade right in front of their house.

Kids came from all over and rode their bikes, scooters, etc. There must have been hundreds of kids! No joke. And Susannah's house was in the perfect location. That was the only place I took pictures for the weekend. :)

Anyway--that first night, we stayed with them and got to have some really great conversation with Susannah and Ben. And of course, no night would have been complete with the Nelson's without a delicious treat. In this case--a variety of cheesecake, all chocolate flavors. Paul and Sue have always gotten along really well and we just really enjoy spending time with them.

Ben (the kids jumped out of the wagon hehe)

The next morning, Sue and Ben went shopping for a mattress and Paul and I took their darling children Charlotte and Grant to Paul's parent's house--about an hour away.

CHARLOTTE: haha, funny face for Charlotte on her decked-out trike.

SUE and GRANT: Grant is so cute. His smile will melt any heart, unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of it :)

So on the drive, Grant fell asleep pretty fast but Charlotte kept us entertained by insisting on track #2 on the CD and we sang it OVER and OVER and OVER again. It was fantastic :) We had a blast with it. She is so great.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out with them at Paul's parent's house. Paul's brother Mike and his kids came over for a late lunch and it was fun to play with them as well. The nieces and nephews just bring so much joy! They're super happy and energetic.

BRIANNE and LYDIA:

BETHANY trying to get the ring around the cone with her sister's watching as well as Mom Dessi and Grandma Jane:

That night, we went to the third Transformer's movie with Paul's dad. Pretty intense to say the least. ooof. It was better than the 2nd one that's for sure but still not that great. But ya know.

Sunday was a nice day at church and home. Morgan, Lydia, and Bethany all sat by Paul and I at church and it was fun to help them with their drawings and other creations. After church, Bethany even had drawn pictures for Paul and I in her class :) She is very generous. That evening at home we played games, Lights Out Luther, Sardines, and Book of Mormon Guess Who :) It was a nice day and evening at home with family. Morgan is especially fond of grabbing either Paul or I for some game. Paul got to play BYU Checkers. Pretty fancy!

PAUL and GG (Nadine, Paul's 92 year old Grandmother!):

And Monday--well we had the parade at Bethesda and a nice lunch as the kids ran wild. Sue made a delicious dessert that was like ice cream cake and it was made with ice cream sandwiches of all things. It was hilarious and delicious. We all sat around the table and just chatted. I love family. Paul had quite a fun time with the girls' scooters:

After everyone starts to leave, Paul and I head into downtown Bethesda to meet up with my friend Deise and her husband Calmann! They live in Arlington, VA and work in DC so they agreed to meet up with us. We grabbed some milkshakes and floats and talked for awhile. It was good to spend time with them. While we were waiting for them, there was a group of people in the square who read the Declaration of Independence and then one person rang a bell for each colony. I love the East coast. GO USA!

Overall, it was a great weekend! Can't wait to see everyone again.

We got back to North Carolina on Monday night and it was POURING rain, really pouring. They had to postpone the fireworks until the next night. Doesn't really happen in Utah...ever :)

Hope you all had a great Independence Day!

Tommy and Amanda are MARRIED!

2011-06-30T22:07:00.007-04:00

So, my grandma reminded me that I hadn't posted any pictures from the wedding yet. I don't have a lot of photos but I do have some, so I'll put some up. I would like to journal about it to which is why I haven't done anything yet. I've been too busy and too tired to do much.

So. Tommy got married on Friday, June 17, 2011, to Amanda Kaye Koch (now Amanda Smith).

We got so lucky, Paul's work flew him out to San Diego for a conference that started on June 14 and went through June 16 so we didn't have to buy his plane ticket and we got to park the car for free at the parking garage. While he was there he got to meet some clients and go to some faaaaancy dinners and parties. Then my mom picked him up on Thursday early afternoon and they and my sisters got to enjoy some delicious treats at Ruby's. I didn't get the chance to enjoy it for myself but I heard the milkshakes were to die for.

I flew in on Thursday later in the afternoon as did my grandparents and my dad. We all together went to the picnic/bbq that was a celebration of both Amanda's mom's birthday, as well as a celebration for Tommy and Amanda as well. It was just an informal celebration and get together. The BBQ was held down at the beach, so we had the waves crashing in the background. It was beautiful albeit chilly. Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of it but I did get a good one of my mom and her dad:

That evening, back at the hotel, we put the girls' hair in pin curls (which may I say FAILED miserably and they both had to redo their hair in the morning) and I fell asleep pretty fast. I was pretty jet lagged.

The next morning we got ready (quickly redid BOTH of the girls' hair, totally different from my hair), and set off to the temple! When we got there I was so pleasantly surprised to see both of my cousins Orrin and TJ! They were both groomsmen. I'm such a nerd to not know they were coming. But they did come and the groomsmens' suits were fabulous! Tommy did such a great job picking them out. Also, the Joplin's came!!! We had such a blast hanging out with them.

The weather was actually pretty cool that morning so while the adults went to the sealing, Stephanie and Genevieve just waited in the waiting room.

It was so wonderful to go to the sealing! They were just glowing and were so happy and so excited to get married. My big brother. It kind of surprised me out affected I was. I sure love him, and I love Amanda too.

We all went outside and waited, pinning flowers on lapels, receiving fabulous bracelets, and corsages for the moms, and then they came out! beautiful beautiful Amanda and handsome Tommy :)

After the ceremony, we had a nice luncheon at The Chart House. It was a beautiful view!!!

While we were waiting for Tommy and Amanda to finish their pictures and come, we were just leaning on the railing at the top where the door was and Just dropped his temple recommend and had to walk down there and pick it up. He was posing like a gymnast, I just didn't quite catch it:

The luncheon was very nice, all but 3 people made toasts! So there were like 17 toasts. :) Tommy and Amanda are very very loved. The snickerdoodle cookies were the best part--and they were made by Amanda's family!

After the luncheon, we had a 30 min respite at the hotel and just crashed before we got back up and went to the reception. The reception was held at Amanda's parents' house--they have a beautiful backyard and a beautiful beautiful home (they live in Laguna Niguel). They did such a great job decorating, it was so beautiful.

They made a stage over the pool! Dane and Grant (The Brocks) played live music for the reception and also were the DJs. Dane is Tommy's best friend since they were little, so that was special. By the way, Dane's story he gave during the toasts was my favorite. Dane said that he met Tommy when they were about 9 years old and Tommy was about a foot shorter than me and they were riding their bikes and they started to race and even though Tommy was pretty short, he rode SO hard to try and beat Dane and he beat him to the bottom of the hill, got off his bike, threw his hands in the air, and then doubled over and threw up, and Dane thought "This guy is my BEST friend!" hahahaha. I love it. Dane is so great.

The reception was great. Everything was great. My dad's brother surprised us and came down with his wife and little boy Alexander! It was great to see them. I don't have a lot of pictures of the festivities from the night, but my mom does, so when she sends them to me, I'll post them.

We sent them off into the night! Very fun. We were so happy for them!

The next day we went to Knott's Berry Farm. I'll post about that later :)

Last House Picture

2011-06-20T09:07:00.002-04:00

Okay, the couches:

Just got back from California watching my big brother get married. I will do a post about that soon, have to get the pictures uploaded etc.

Happy June :)

for my mom

2011-06-09T23:22:00.004-04:00

Dear Mom,

I wanted to wish you the happiest of birthdays today. What a time to have a birthday huh? In all reality, it seems to me to be the most appropriate time to have a birthday. In the midst of tragedy and the busy-ness of life, what better time to celebrate life and all the wonderful things about yourself that make you just that--you.

Did you know that on June 9, 1934, Donald Duck made his debut in The Wise Little Hen?

And that in 1973 on June 9th, Secretariat won the Triple Crown?

And that on June 9th in 1978, (our church) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened the priesthood to ALL worthy men?

And that in Uganda, June 9th is National Heroes' Day?

And that on June 9, 1968 a young girl broke her arm after riding barrels on a Sunday because it was a her birthday and birthday girls should get to do what they want?

And that on June 9, 1959 a miracle was born who had no idea the amazing effect she would have on the world?

Let me tell you a little bit more about this miracle. She loves all things grape, well grape flavored anyway. Grape lime rickeys, Grape jolly ranchers, and Grape chapstick (seriously when the stopped making the kind she loved you would have thought the world was falling apart). The interesting thing is that she doesn't love grape juice but her children do, even though they despise all those other grape things she loves because they associate purple and grape with Robitussin. Association with grape flavor is not the only connection this miracle has to fruit. She also has an obsession with raspberries. She buys raspberries from Costco by the pallet, adds them to salads, eats them plain by the handful, puts them in cereal, and even makes jam sometimes but only because she had to freeze them before they went bad--to her, fresh is best.

But she doesn't love everything grown in God's good earth, in fact there is something she truly hates---mint, to the point that the gum she chews has to be cinnamon, usually Trident, but as she has grown in her life she has branched out to other brands such as Dentyne Ice and other aspiring young gum companies just trying to make a place in the world. Even with this aversion to mint she does still manage to brush her teeth without using bubblegum flavor toothpaste.

Another thing this miracle will tell you about food--Nuts are delicious, unless they're on desserts. Then they are poison.

Her skills are endless and they start with the heart, and by heart I mean stomach. People from all around will request her famous baked goods, specifically rolls. Dinner rolls...with butter and homemade strawberry jam, hot and fresh from the...but I digress. Her cinnamon rolls and breakfast cake and sour cream enchiladas also made the neighborhood mouths' water.

Her talents don't stop in the kitchen, they continue on their way to musical melodies. This miracle I am speaking about plays the French Horn in a symphonic band, a guitar in the privacy of her home, and teaches piano to the young budding maestros of this generation. She can arrange music and write songs and inspire those around her to use their creative abilities as well.

Her sense of rhythm has carried her through many adventures, skits, and performances...one more memorable than mos would be her jaw-dropping rendition of "Why Not Me" and the demonstration that followed that showed just why not.

This miracle is the life of the party, the spontaneous combustion leading to a whole new world of creativity and curiosity, the surprise of a concert or painting a wall to say Happy Birthday..backwards... for her kids, a leader at Girls' Camp who giggles into the night being more rambunctious than the girls she's leading--just as she should be. She'll be the most fantastic grandmother except her hair is way too cute and she looks much too young for that.

Her talents continue, shown as she searched high and low to find the missing two pennies in my 10th grade Trial Balance for accounting, studied for and passed (with flying colors) the CPA exam-- as a single mom with two kids, perfected the stitches of my 3' tall Babs Bunny and the dress I was married in, and made every experience special by making the creation of memories first priority.

But most importantly, the miracle of this miracle is the size of her heart. She is my best friend who has cried with me when I have cried, convinced me to give it all to the Savior when I could no longer bear the pain, given me her bed when I was sick, laughed with me until we were both in tears because our sides were going to burst, stroked my head and listened to me and everyone else in her life when they have had troubles, dropped everything she was doing to run to the aid of a friend or her family, driven cross country three times to spend more time with the ones she loves, and she is the master of forgiveness and has sacrificed more in her life than any one else I have ever met.

This miracle is my mom. Mom. This miracle is you. Happy Birthday, thank you for everything.

love, nancy

The House (INSIDE)

2011-06-08T21:14:00.011-04:00

Okay, people keep asking me to see the INSIDE of the house. So I finally have some pictures. The pictures of the couches and such will come later once we receive our Comfy Sack. Oh yeah. pretty excited about that. But I have pictures of most of the rest of the important things. Most of these pictures are dark or yellowy because it was nighttime and I didn't have natural light.

The floorplan is on an earlier post, but I'll repost it here for reference while I describe the house, keep in mind that our home is flipped:

As I've said before, we live in a townhome neighborhood. There are 3 townhomes on our cul-de-sac. We are an end-unit and it's great. We have a nice lap pool that Paul and I quite enjoy swimming in:

And we have our house....here we go!

You walk in and you have the entry(if you turned around):

And as soon as you open the door you can see right through to the living room, around the corner to the kitchen, or up the stairs to the bedrooms:

And if you walked up the stairs and looked back you'd see into the kitchen:

When you got to the top of the stairs, you'd walk straight ahead into the Master Bedroom or turn to your left and see the laundry closet, the spare sink, and the spare bedroom:

Laundry closet with our lovely NEW OWNED washers, they are awesome and so quiet and so efficient, the washer hardly uses any water, it's amazing to me:

If you walked into the spare bedroom you'd see two windows facing the street and a sewing machine and bicycle, but those are boring. If you opened the closet you would see it all nice and organized (I really like organizing now), and you can't even see the secret compartment hidden on the left--a lot of storage!:

If you came back out and went into the Master Bedroom, it is laid out like this with an opening to the sink (this picture is before anything was moved in really):

And the new king size bed (terrible iPhone picture, sorry, makes it look blah) with the nightstands--matching for once! We really do like our bed. We got it from the Original Mattress Factory where you can get a great deal because they manufacture them. We were pretty impressed and now we're super happy with our purchase:

If you turn around and look at the closets, yes you will see a Middletown Soccer scarf above Paul's closet haha. I might move it to a different wall. I haven't decided if I will always feel like that wall is off balance because the painting is in the middle, you know? But the scarf needs to be up :) It's a piece of history. And I love this dresser. I found it on Craigslist. There is this couple that takes old furniture, restores them, and then paints them fabulous colors. They're called ScribbleSense Art, isn't the dresser beautiful? :

Continuing the tour...If you turned back around and went toward the sink (my sink):

And then if you kept walking into the bathroom where we have a full sized tub and shower, a toilet, and some shelving around the corner on the right. If you walked through the other door pictured you'd walk into Paul's sink/guest sink and back out the door into the upstairs hallway:

Once you walked out that hallway and down the stairs you might decide to go through the opening to the kitchen pictured above, come out the other opening a turn around and look at the kitchen:

Or instead of walking into the kitchen you could just come down the stairs and walk towards the living room and first pass the dining area which houses the most sturdy table of all time. I picked this table up on craigslist as well. It is GORGEOUS wood and it weighs like it is. Ooof! The girl I bought it from and I somehow got it out her door and onto a truck--I was amazed that we did it. Paul and I had trouble getting it into the house. If you have to carry it at any angle other than flat like normal is it SOO HARD to move. It comes with 2 leaves as well, so we could have this table forever! :) I love it:

And if you just looked to your right and opened the door you'd see the 1/2 bath:

But if you continued walking and sat on the couch, you'd be in the living and see the TV (Paul's favorite new piece of furniture I would imagine) and it is sitting on a tv stand that I put together! It had about 50 pieces with all the screws and joints and shelves and blah blah blah, but I felt so accomplished afterwards! Also, if you were to continue walking you could walk out the back to the fenced in area out there:

Tada! This is our home. Mostly anyway. There are corners not pictured, but those are still part of our home too :)

Thank you for viewing, I hope you enjoyed your visit! Come see us soon!

Making do with what you have

2011-06-05T13:27:00.004-04:00

So in moving from Utah to North Carolina we sold everything we had, moved here and then re-purchased all the things we had sold. In that process we upgraded important things --like a good bed so we won't have back pain, an actual dresser where the drawers don't fall out (craigslist), nightstands that actually match (craigslist), and most importantly in Paul's eyes--a new TV. Also I'm trying to be more organized. For the first time, the tennis rackets are hanging up, the frisbees, and golfballs, and tennis balls, and golf gloves, etc are in these cool fabric buckets hanging from the wall. Paul has a tie rack for the first time in his life, and other things like that. So, as you can imagine it has been an EXPENSIVE couple weeks as we have replaced everything and paid for gas to move across the country.

In light of that I've been trying to find ways to do things withOUT having to buy something. The problem is that we got rid of all the "junk" that you normally would FINALLY find a use for! So on Friday, I was perplexed over what to do about my earrings. I didn't have a place for them anymore. I didn't want to buy something to sit on the counter and I didn't want them in a drawer b/c I had limited drawer space and then they get all mixed up and tangled. So I thought that I could spend a bit and buy some wire mesh and put it on my wall and hang the earrings from there. Then I looked at my shopping list. I had so many other things on there we were already buying that we kind of needed--like lamps for the living room, dining room chairs so the dining room table wasn't just an extra large coffee table in a different room, pillows to sleep on, etc. So I put my brain to work to figure out if I had ANYTHING in the house I could use. One again, no junk so not a lot to look through.

Then the lightbulb.

I had a brand new loofa that had kind of fallen apart. It was still fine but some of it had come undone so it just hung loose. It was a nice red color and I decided I would make it work. I cut off the excess and made a holder for my earrings:

I'm kind of proud of it. I'm not the most crafty, I am to the point where I really only like crafts or souvenirs etc that are also functional. Go ORGANIZATION on a budget!

Tidbits on North Carolina

2011-06-04T20:14:00.006-04:00

A couple of things you should know about North Carolina...

1. The thunderstorms out here are real storms. The first storm we experienced woke us up in the night--the thunder crack was so loud it SET OFF our car alarm! Additionally, trying to drive during a storm is not recommended. I had my wipers going as fast and they could and I could BARELY see, even going 20 MPH.

2. The humidity is real humidity. I got out of my car to walk into work and my glasses fogged up. You step outside and within minutes you're dripping. This occurs only on the really humid days. In all reality I love the weather here unless I want to stay dry and not have to change my clothes and I happen to be moving around outside, at any speed.

3. The bugs are real bugs (and other non-bug creatures as well). There are centipedes, millipedes, snakes, lizards, big spiders, small spiders, big ants, small ants, earwig type things, and many others that I have yet to identify. I have finally stopped the yelps/screams...well almost...depends how surprised I am. I am no longer running away from then as I have panic attacks over the fact that there is no where I can go where I will be safe. I am now pretty good at either (a.) vacuuming them up, (b.) smashing them, (c.) picking up the squishy ones and taking them outside, or (d.) just leaving them alone because I'm late for something. Yeah, that last one creeps me out sometimes. It's a case-by-case thing.

4. The pretty leaves are real Poison Ivy. We have Poison Ivy about 10 feet from our front door. Good thing my father-in-law gave me the run-down and showed me what poison ivy looks like last week! I have never really lived in an area where it was very prevalent so I've never absorbed the knowledge. Now I know, thanks Bob! While I may not yet be allergic since I haven't been exposed, I'm sure that it wouldn't take very long before I would be in big trouble since I have issues with hives and other allergic reactions as it is. Are these poison ivy? Pretty sure, I could still be wrong but I'm sure that SOME of the plants out there are.

5. The potato salad is real potato salad...if you do it right. North Carolina takes its potato salad very seriously. Does it use Mayo? Mustard? Is it more yellow than white? Is it mashed? Is it cubed? Is there relish? etc etc. Answers to these questions are VERY important for your acceptance into society among the natives. :)

Part 4 :) Maryland

2011-05-25T19:26:00.003-04:00

MARYLAND

We went up to Maryland while we were waiting to move in. It was so fun to see his family. So many of them are coming over to the East coast so it's so nice that we can see them on a more frequent basis. It was just a low key weekend, playing outside and relaxing, but on Friday we were able to go to DC for the day. We rode the tour bus and sat on the top--very fun.

The line for the national archives was much too long but the building was awesome :)

My favorite was the Jefferson memorial. I have always wanted to see it. The quotes really are inspirational and the structure is beautiful. The one on the top is one of the best:

"I have sworn upon the altar of God,

eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

This country is based off of something phenomenal. Something more than man could create. I only hope we don't throw it all away. I feel so blessed to have grown up knowing what it is to be free.

We also stopped by the Capitol, my first time being there, it was so cool. A gorgeous building. I'm kind of a fan of architecture. I love this chance we have to be so close to American History.

Go East Coast!

Where in the world are Paul and Nancy? part 3

2011-05-23T21:07:00.007-04:00

THE JOBS

So this post will be pretty fast because I'm pretty tired. But Paul started his job last week at Channel Advisor where he is an account manager. They do Internet Marketing, Google Search Optimization, and focus on e-commerce specifically. He's had one week there so far and he really likes it. He likes the people a lot and he likes the work and he also really likes the company (and might I add that the benefits are FABULOUS!?). Every day a different food truck comes to the office and so he gets to experience those delights. He works just 15 minutes from our place in Morrisville.

This is Paul's desk/area:

I work at DexOne at the corporate location in Cary and it's just 8 minutes from our place! Paul and I are in the same industry. DexOne helps local companies help local customers--helps connect them. (Commercial: http://www.youtube.com/user/DexLocalRhythms#p/a/u/0/mh3Znuq0uns)

I'm an internal auditor again and I just started today! It's crazy starting a job that I am already supposed to be qualified for. First time for me! Today was a good day, that's all I really have to go on so far for my job. I have a 5 other people on my team and I really like them so far...from one day. They give you a lot of responsibility and a lot of autonomy right away, which is humbling and very exciting!

My office looks pretty posh from the outside and the entrance and lobby are pretty fancy. Where the cubes are it's just normal, nothing fancy but still plenty nice... but the toilets are pretty cool and private--they wouldn't be good if you were claustrophobic because you close the door and it's its own little room. :)

My mom really liked this picture because it made it look like the white house, ha ha:

This is my desk/cube area, well only half of it is pictured:

next time...Maryland and House stuff...

Where in the world are Paul and Nancy? part 2

2011-05-22T18:43:00.005-04:00

THE NEW PLACE

On Tuesday morning, we got up and went searching for our new home. I had done a lot of research before we got there and Paul had looked at some when he came out for his interview so we had a good list to start with.

The first one we looked at was a townhome that was less than 10 min from my work and about 15 min to Paul's. It set a pretty high standard and all the rest that we looked at couldn't quite measure up so we went back and put down a deposit! We found our place in less than a day! Because they were repainting and putting in new appliances and new countertops we couldn't see inside the actual apartment so we went and peeked through the windows :)

It is on a small cul-de-sac with only 3 units so we always have parking spaces right in front of our home. It is a 2 bedroom, 1.5 european bath end-unit townhome. It has a little fenced in area in the back with a small yard on the side. Here is a picture of the floorplan, ours is just flipped:

Here is a picture of the side of the house, we have a nice little side yard we can use:

So this is our new home! So far we love it. I really like having only someone next to me on one side and I love having no one above or below me. It feels more like a house :) We have plenty of space and we love having the woods in our backyard.

We live in a great area, we have a state park just 3 min from our house that has trails and lakes. We have paved greenways that I can ride on and Paul can bike on just a few minutes from our house as well. We have everything we could want within 15 min. We're even 15 min from downtown Raleigh! This area is so great. So many parks, so many cute little stores, so many fabulous restaurants. We can walk to the grocery store. This place has everything I feel like I've been missing. I absolutely love it and I am so glad we came. The people are very hospitable too and I love the diversity. Utah is very monochrome and I love that it isn't like that out here. I love seeing kids playing together and they are all of different races and religions.

After we found this place we couldn't move in until Monday and it was only Tuesday! So we decided we would go to Maryland to visit because we could finally! So we drove up on Wednesday and stayed through Sunday. We played with the nieces and nephew, saw the family, and even took a day trip to DC! We are going again next weekend for a baby blessing. It's so nice to be close to some family. I do miss mine very much though. :( Luckily my brother is getting married and I get to see them all soon.

More to come on the furnishing of the house and our brief trip to Maryland...

Where in the world are Paul and Nancy?

2011-05-22T14:12:00.008-04:00

THE WRAP UP

It's been a 4 week hiatus and for that I apologize--we have been very busy! I finished my last week at JCPenney on April 29th. I will really miss the people I worked with there, I'm glad I had the chance to meet them all and work with them! Goodbye Utah! We will miss so much with the dry heat, the beautiful parks, the wide open spaces, all the wonderful friends, the great landlords, our fantastic couch, cafe rio, Zupas, and so many more things!

Paul worked for 2 more weeks (up until the day before we left) at Orange Soda where he will be greatly missed. He will miss playing ping pong and laser tag with his work buds, playing hockey with his brother, playing golf with his friends, and going to REAL Salt Lake games with Matlock.

My mom flew out to help us drive because I'm pretty much a narcoleptic when I drive. She came out a day early so we had the chance to go to a nice breakfast at The Park Cafe--so delicious and so affordable! I definitely recommend it. I had a wedding to go to as well at the Salt Lake Temple for Alison and Travis! (Congrats!) So after that we went back to my place and finished everything up. Amanda came over and showed up her wedding dress-so lush, I love it. and her and my mom were kind enough to go get us food while we continued to pack the car. Here is a picture of them, my mom and her only daughter-in-law she'll ever have :)

We had packed up all of our stuff and we were selling the rest of it. I was so nervous that we weren't going to be able to fit everything and that we weren't going to be able to sell everything. We couldn't believe it but we sold pretty much everything! And my dear friend Tara helped take away a lot of the rest :) Thanks Tara! This is a picture of most of the stuff that we had, not pictured are the 3 suitcases we flew out beforehand when Paul and his brother flew out):

Looking at it in the photo I think "oh, that's not too bad!" but at the time looking at it in that room and knowing that we had a couple more small suitcases and my mom's stuff, I was pretty concerned that it wasn't going to fit. But guess what? It ALL fit with room to spare so we grabbed a couple extra things and brought them with us (printer, christmas ornaments, etc).

These are our cars early Sunday morning as we prepared to take off:

And here is a picture of Paul and I in front of our basement apartment, sort of. Thank you Cedar Hills for all of your beauties! It was a good year:

We did unfortunately leave a few things like some socks and TV cords but we got pretty much everything else, packed it up and drove it across the country!

THE DRIVE

We left Cedar Hills, Utah, at 6:32am on Sunday, May 8th, and arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 11:45pm on Monday, May 9th! We made the drive in just 2 days. It was quite the feat. Couldn't have done it without my mom! Thanks mom for being the 3rd driver so that the quick trip could be possible.

The first day was spent leaving Utah, briefly visiting Wyoming and then driving the entire length of Nebraska which is just as exciting as it sounds. I will say that I have never seen so many different kinds of roadkill on one trip though-- wild turkeys, raccoons, squirrels, some sort of dog/wolf type thing (yes, I realize that is sad), possums, deer of course, and the list goes on. It was almost always something different.

The first night we stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, at a hotel. We got there just after midnight and went right to sleep and then got up at left and were on the road by 6:12am. I must say that the weather those two days was PERFECT. We only had some light rain for about 15 minutes on day 2 in the morning and the rest of the time it was partly cloudy, perfect.

My mom chastized us for not enjoying the trip :) We didn't feel too bad because the only monument of notice that we passed was the St. Louis Arch which my mother expressed at the last minute a desire to see...but it wasn't soon enough, but she did grab a picture! :

I know I'm a terrible daughter. We just had everything we owned in the car and an apartment to find that we just wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Sorry mom!

Day 2 took us through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina! The further East we went the more and more green it became. Kentucky was where I really noticed how gorgeous it was. I have always lived in dry and slightly brown places and have always longed for the lush greenery without the drizzly rain (England was lush but cold). Now I have it! Everywhere we go is green, it can almost be claustrophobic and I love it. You'll see when I post about our new home how we are just surrounding by GREEN. There are parks and lakes all over the place. This park is 10 minutes from our house and it has a lake in the middle, what?!

So night two we stayed in Paul's brother's in-law's apartment because they were gone (so nice of them to let us stay!) and the next day we got up and went house-hunting!

April Showers of blessings

2011-04-24T16:23:00.006-04:00

On Friday, April 22nd, 2011, my life-long hero and one my best friends walked the walk with all the pomp and circumstance--my brother Thomas Michael Smith officially graduated from Brigham Young University with his BS in Management with a Strategy Emphasis (I think that is the official title).

My mom, my two sisters, Tommy's fiance Amanda, my grandparents, and my uncle Jerre and his son were there at the ceremony. It was plenty long because Tommy was one of the last ones to go of the 700+ but at least he didn't graduate with me last year. We had 1200+!!

After Tommy's ceremony, I immediately went over to my cousin Larry's convocation at the Smith Fieldhouse where I had the opportunity to listen to another 500+ names. Go graduates! Larry had a lot of family show up to support him graduating from the school of Engineering and Technology with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. It was good to see his parents and siblings as well as his most darling fiance Kathryn and HER family! Great in-laws-to-be. She really is perfect for him (they just got engaged last weekend).

My cousin Orrin was ALSO graduating so my mom went to that one while I was at Larry's. Needless to say it was busy and exciting. I also got to see a lot of my friends who were graduating. It was lovely to see them all. GO ALICIA! GO MARY! GO SAM! GO STEVE! GO MACKENZIE! GO TARA! Congratulations to them all!

Because Orrin's parents were in town (they now live in Alaska) they took the opportunity to get a photo of my mom's family (the 5 kids and my grandparents). So we took some other photos while we were at it:

(Larry, Grandpa Tews, Orrin, Grandma Tews, and Tommy)

It was so lovely to see my family for the weekend. We had a great time. Tommy and Amanda made us all dinner on Thursday night and we had the opportunity to sit around the table and talk about all sorts of things, it was so fun. On Friday, after the graduations, we all went to my cousin Amy's house for a late lunch/social. It is crazy how old we are all getting and how we're all growing up!

Rachel has 3 beautiful girls, Amy has 2, Andrea has 1, Josie will be having one in August, Orrin has a little boy and is going to go to Med School, Tommy and Larry are getting married and Tommy is moving to New York, TJ moved to Colorado and is working full time, Cameron is starting at Goldman Sachs this year, Stan is getting his PHD, Jessica is graduating high school, Kevin is going on a mission to Madagascar, Stephanie is dating and driving, Genevieve is going to New York because she won a contest for her photo, and Paul and I are moving across the country. Good group of kids.

After all the graduation celebration, we had all day Saturday to ourselves! Tommy went to CA to get his marriage license and go with Amanda as she went through the temple the first time (SO EXCITING!) So yesterday, Paul, my mom and my sisters, and I went to play laser tag. My mom and sisters have never played (?!?). They LOVED it. The funny part is is that Paul has a Pass of All Passes so he goes and plays laser tag on his lunch break almost every day so the laser tag facilitator greeted him by name. :) hahahaha. I love Paul. He's awesome.

Afterwards, Paul went his way and us girls went shopping for outfits for Tommy and Amanda's wedding and you know what! Everyone found most of what they needed! The girls just need shoes and my mom just needs another shell shirt. I just got shoes from jcpenney of all places, got to use the discount while I still can! (They're fabulous shoes I might add from the Call it Spring collection by Aldo):

--I already know what I'm wearing. But everyones' outfits are so cute! Really darling and so their personalities, especially Stephanie and Genevieve--Genevieve the most. Love it.

So yes, yesterday was super fun and exhausting. I'm a wimp when it comes to shopping. Makes my legs hurt! On the way home I introduced them to the Cafe Rio/Costa Vida craze. They agreed it was delicious. I will really miss that sweet pork!

I loved having them here, they left shortly after the first hour of church because they are driving all 12 hours today. I can't wait to seem them again at Tommy's wedding! And I can't wait for my mom to drive with me to North Carolina. She's so sweet.

---------

Also, HAPPY EASTER! Strange this year because it's just Paul and I. Not really anything going on. We had leftover Thai food for our Easter linner/dunch.

On the Easter note, I want everyone to know how much I do believe in my Savior, Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for his atoning sacrifice and his ability to rise on the 3rd day and be resurrected. I am so grateful that he has prepared a way for all of us to change our lives, become better people, repent, and live good lives so that we can live with our Heavenly Father once more. I have a testimony that God will never forsake us and that God and his Son Jesus Christ love us more than we can ever comprehend and they will help us along the way. I am so grateful for Christ and all that he's done and for Heavenly Father being willing to sacrifice his Son. Here is a video by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Easter.

Enjoy this marvelous day, go read The Living Christ and remember what Easter really is about.

BIG NEWS

2011-04-14T17:54:00.003-04:00

It's official. We're moving to North Carolina in 3 weeks! We're selling everything we own and stuffing what will fit into our two cars and driving from Utah to North Carolina the first week of May!

Paul got the job he was applying for and hopefully I will get mine as well! I had the final interview today.

It all happened so much faster than we thought itwould but we're so excited to go. Paul is hoping to go to school next fall in North Carolina for his MBA so that'll be another exciting adventure.

We will miss Utah and everyone here that we know and love but we are ready to start the next phase of our lives. Wish us luck!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that...

2011-03-26T13:17:00.003-04:00

Kind of some random stuff...

Last weekend I went to a baby shower for my visiting teaching companion. She's having a little girl! I'm so excited for her. I got her a darling outfit at Baby Gap--a little pair of jeans and a little green cap sleeve shirt. I was trying to figure out what to wrap it in and I remembered that I STILL have bags and tissue paper from my bridal shower 2 years ago! Thank you Jill and Jill's mom for ironing the tissue paper and for saving all my bags for me. I haven't had to purchase any wrapping since then. Saved a lot of money.

So, after we got back from Hawaii, we left our tree up for another week or so because we did have much time to enjoy it before hand and as we were taking it down I took this picture of a Christmas ornament my cousin Larry had made for us. Isn't he talented?

A couple of days ago the sun finally came out! I love when Spring really arrives...it hasn't yet but we got a glimpse of it. We opened the blinds and let the sun flood in and Paul noticed that the sun shining through the ball we had made on our honeymoon. It was projecting the colors onto the wall and it looked so beautiful that I had to take a picture.

For those who don't know. We went to a little shop where we could blow glass and made this ball on the last day of our honeymoon. It was so fun! Someday we'll actually hang it up by it's hook, but that'll be later, for now it sits in a bowl.

Today I'm going to the Health Expo at Thanksgiving Point with my to-be-sister-in-law Amanda. My visiting teacher actually organized the entire thing! 800 people went last year! Impressive. I do need to really pay more attention to my health and the health of my family.

But exciting news from my family!

Tommy got engaged! To the amazing Amanda Koch from Laguna Niguel, CA. They will be getting married on June 17th, 2011 and be living in New York, New York. By the way, her wedding dress is BEAUTIFUL!
Stephanie turned 16! She got her driver's license and got asked out on a date :) WOO HOO.
And Genevieve got best in grade with one other 8th grader (so 2 people in the grade) in a national competition where 300,000+ people entered from 7th grade - 12th grade across the nation! Also, she got a gold medal for it. So she's going to New York to receive an award at Carnegie Hall! She's 13! Honestly, she's so talented! She used her Stop Sign photo for anyone who knows about it. She's seriously awesome. GO GENNA.

And that's all for now...but stay tuned in the next little while we might have some big changes on the home front.

Happy Saturday!

Sunday Post

2011-03-06T20:44:00.003-05:00

So I realized that today was Sunday which means I need to make a post! I was trying to decide what to write about because I'm no longer writing about things that happened 3+ weeks ago. So I just decided to write about this weekend, that's what we do right? We write about what is going on. No pictures though, I guess I need to get better at that.

On Friday night, Paul and I went with some friends to the Lehi/Saratoga Springs hot pots. So easy to get to and just the right temperature! Usually we go to the ones in Spanish Fork which require a good hour hike to get to--beautiful scenery though! But the roads were closed up there so we decided to give these ones a try. They were great! It was plenty large enough for the 15+ people that were there. Afterwards, we went and got slushies or hot chocolate. I was the only one who got hot chocolate which also meant I was the only one not freezing (Who gets a slushy when it is 30 degrees outside? My husband and others, that's who).

On Saturday, I got to go skiing up at Snowbird with my fantastic cousin and his old roomie James and his wife Erika (sorry if I spelt that wrong Erika!) James and Larry were roommates my freshman year when I lived across the way from them--close enough that they could launch water balloons at our kitchen window. The snow wasn't totally fresh but it was pretty soft and we found some nice runs as well as some way fast groomers that we bombed. Awesome! It was a great way to end the season...although I only went twice so I'm not sure what kind of season that qualifies as. I did take a big spill, totally surprised me! I was in complete control and caught an edge and lost a ski and was sliding down for about 50feet on my back because I couldn't get my ski around to stop. I slid past Larry and just kept going! Larry was awesome enough to climb back up and get my ski for me :D He's the best.

So on Saturday afternoon Paul and I had tickets to go see "A Tale of Two Cities" the musical, it was on broadway for awhile, at the Hale Center Theatre in West Valley. So that meant that I didn't have time to go home after skiing to clean up. So we only skied until about 1pm and then we all stopped from some $.88 crunch wrap supremes and then they dropped me off at Gold's Gym with my bag #2 full of shower stuff and nice clothes. Such a genius idea on my part. It gave me almost a full hour to get ready and Paul could just pick me up and then we'd be off!

I didn't quite plan as well as I could have...I may have forgotten a towel and had to use my fleece jacket and I may have forgotten a bra (I wore a sports bra skiing) and may have been grateful that I was wearing an snug undershirt for the outfit! Needless to say it was an interesting hour getting ready...at the gym...where I walked in fully decked out in my ski outfit.

WOO HOO!

But I was ready and we went to the play and it was SO good. I've never read the book but I quite enjoyed the storyline and they did a wonderful job--they always do.

We were going to hit up Outback afterwards but I was pretty beat so we grabbed some Costa Vida and finished watching Goldeneye while I promptly fell asleep and remained so until this morning at 8:03pm.

Today we had dinner with my cousin Larry, his fantastic girlfriend Kathryn, another of Larry's roomies--Devin, and Kathryn's roommates. It was DELICIOUS! And we had an excuse to make the amazing caramel brownies that Paul's sister introduced us to. Super tasty! A must have.

I thought about posting them on here but I feel like they deserve some photos. They're terrible for you but they are delicious.

I hope everyone has a great week! I know I plan to.

(oh! By the way, new computer tomorrow! moving back into the Mac world, I'm SO happy. No offense Dell, actually, yes offense, I can't wait to leave you BEHIND! Welcome new MacBook PRO!)

Staycation February 2011

2011-02-27T15:37:00.002-05:00

The Kauai posts are finished, it's back to the cold world of Utah. After Paul and I got back from Hawaii, we knew we were going to need a break sooner rather than later because the contrast of Kauai to Utah and working and life was just so drastic. We had planned a fun weekend away in Vegas for the first weekend of February, but as it got closer we just had more expenses than we had planned (new tires for the car, higher taxes, new computer, etc.) Since we both already had the day off, we decided to pull a "Staycation" instead.

Friday morning we got up and we went snowshoeing in American Fork Canyon! It took us 10 minutes to drive there. It is so nice and close, sometimes I forget how fortunate we are to be so close to things. I had never before been snowshoeing and I loved it.

The snow wasn't as fresh as we had hoped but it was still very exciting and it was so nice to be outside in the winter and not wishing I was inside. Snow sports are essential to surviving in a cold climate. We hiked down to this stream and basically followed a lone pair of tracks over this stream and up the side and back down. Then we had to hike back out of the little ravine the stream was in. We felt so isolated and like such adventurers, corny maybe but so fun.

We just had our little point-and-shoot that I got when I was 17 so the pictures may not show how beautiful it really was. The view was gorgeous, see the mountains in the back? It's always such a wonderfully humbling experience to be in the wilderness. God is great, God is good.

Paul's first time snowshoeing was with his brothers a couple of years ago. His favorite memory of it was jumping down hills of snow and having no fear...so we reenacted:

It was a great way to spend a morning of a day off. mmm mmm!

After snowshoeing we grabbed some lunch at Barbacoa and then rented a red box. We curled up on the couch and watched the movie, then we both took nice long naps, then we went to the library and got new books to read. We love the library and Barnes and Noble. We went to Zupas for dinner and has some refreshing salads and sandwiches, we really like that place. So nice to have a healthier option.

After dinner we went to a musical at Pleasant Grove High School (PGHS). What musical you might ask? "The Phantom of the Opera" would be the answer. This musical was only recently released to be performed off of Broadway. PGHS has a history of doing very impressive plays (last year they did Les Miserables). For the Phantom set, they went in with a school down in St. George to purchase it. It was so professional! Paul works with the father of the kid who played the Phantom so it made it extra special, especially since the boy went to try out for a much smaller part and they called him back and asked him to play the Phantom--in his first musical! Quite the debut! He did a phenomenal job. We were so impressed. We've both seen it in London, and for high school students, it was unbelievable. I'm so glad we went.

The next day we went out for breakfast to this darling bakery called "Flour Girls & Dough Boys" in American Fork. We got some fruit and breakfast sandwiches which were very tasty. I loved watching them bring out all the decorated cookies and cupcakes. I'll have to buy some. mmm mmm!

After breakfast we went to Barnes and Noble and got hot chocolate and read various books on the comfy chairs for a few hours. We really are loving reading. I just finished reading, at Barnes and Noble, "The Secret Lives of Dresses." I thought it would be sort of corny and it was but I really loved it and it made me want to reevaluate my wardrobe and made me wonder why I have no vintage dresses. Really? What a shame.

Anyway. After Barnes & Noble we got ready and went up to Salt Lake for a movie and dinner. We went to see "The Way Back" which is based off a book called "The Long Walk" by Slavormin Rawicz which is a true story of a group of men walking from Siberia to India after the escape from a camp up there. My mother had me read that book when I was in high school. I remember sobbing on the last page. So good. I had a friend who read an updated version later that had the story of what happened to the man afterwards. I was glad to see he found happiness. Anyway--go read the book. It's short and fantastic.

After the movie we went to a very nice dinner at Cucina Toscana. I like to experience food, so about once a year we go somewhere nice and just enjoy it, get all the courses, and take our time. When I walked in, the owner all but hugged me and welcomed me--very Italian! The food was very good and it was fun to see all the pictures of celebrities who had come and be in the atmosphere and take a few hours to just spend together. Paul got a delicious duck dish and I got this amazing salmon. mmmmmmmm. So good.

As we were walking out, Paul was looking at all the photos to see the famous people and in walks this super tall man, I do not know who he is but I'm sure he's a basketball player or something because he's at least 6'7" and is being escorted by the owner to his table and his suit was fantastic. I'm trying to get Paul's attention to see the real-live famous person in front of us and to stop looking at the pictures on the wall. I finally got his attention and he turned to see Mr. Andrei Kirilenko from the Utah Jazz. The Jazz had a game that night and he hadn't played so 15 min after the game was over he was there, ready to partake.

All in all, it was a great weekend! The superbowl was the next day so we had fun watching that as well, and watching the Steelers lose :) I know, we're so nice.

Happy Staycation! I've decided that they are very underrated. It was fabulous.

Final Part 9, Kauai

2011-02-20T17:30:00.003-05:00

This is the last post about Kauai, and you know what? There aren't any pictures!? (Post edit: I found some) Crazy I know. But hopefully someone besides myself will enjoy the record of some interesting events.

Getting to Kauai...

So in getting to Kauai-- Tommy, Paul, and I were driven to the airport by Tommy's girlfriend Amanda nice and early in the morning because she had a final to get back to. We were plenty early for our flight. I checked out bag and we went to sit by our gate for the flight we were 2 hours early for. As we waited Paul bought some headphones, we treated ourselves to some breakfast, and read our books. We might have talked some too.

When it was close to board we learned they had delayed our flight 30 min. So we sat back down and waited, and waited, and waited. Why wasn't our plane boarding? And if they weren't boarding why didn't they change the time to say it has been delayed more? I finally convinced Paul to go talk lady at the desk. He came back with a confused look and I asked him what the new time was for the flight to leave. He looked at me incredulously and said, "Our plane already left! It took off 5 min ago."

Please, tell me. How is that even possible that three college graduates, 2 hours early for the flight, and sitting next to the gate didn't notice it boarding and taking off?

They sent us to the phone lines and we talked to another Delta representative at the desk who said he had been working that flight and knew that it was confusing but that he called our names multiple times!??! What? As the man looked for other options, he made small talk and learned how we all went to BYU and he said, "I've heard it's hard to get into BYU." And Paul said, "well, apparently not." And we all laughed. Paul's so good at easing the situation. The man waived the $50/person rescheduling fee and booked us on the next flight to LA (Luckily it was just our flight from SLC to LA and luckily we had a 3 hour layover in LA).

We made the next flight and got to LA where I proceeded to sit right next to the gate, just to be sure, because if we didn't make this flight we'd have to stay the night in the airport instead of in Kauai--I don't think so.

We got to the gate and Tommy went to the restroom while Paul and I sat with the luggage. I looked at the luggage and asked Paul if Tommy was changing his outfit, Paul said he didn't know and why did I ask, and I said because his bag isn't here so he must have taken it with him. We both looked at each other and said, "Well, I HOPE he took it with him!" Tommy comes back and I ask, "Tommy, where's your bag?" He looks down at his side bag which he has with him and this look of terrified recognition comes across his face and he starts running back to the plane we got off.

He didn't check a bag so without that bag, all he had in his side bag were a couple books and a sweatshirt. He came back 15 min later...with his bag in tow and a huge smile on his face! He told us that when he got off the plane he was just thinking about how great it was that he only had to carry his side-bag and that it wasn't heavy, and totally forgot his overhead bag! I laughed so hard. It just cracked me up that he even THOUGHT about how little baggage he had and yet he still forgot it. Nerd.

We did make the next flight and through some clever scheming/very nice people we managed to switch our seats so we could sit next to each other on the 6 hour flight (who wants to sit by a stranger on that long of a flight when I could sleep on my husband's lap? Exactly, only women with children).

So we made it to Kauai! HURRAY.

Interesting Conversation...

Our second night in Kauai we were relaxing in the hot tub while we waited for my parents to bring the pizza back--yes, takeout pizza in Hawaii, we were on vacation and wanted large amounts of food fast and cheap. While we were sitting in the hot tub we met a fascinating man from Barrow, Alaska, the northern most city in the United States of America.

We were 30 min late for dinner because we were so enthralled. He was fascinating, to the point that I'm positive that if he ever drank beer, it must have been Dos Equis. Mr. Barrow Alaska was the most interesting man in the world.

I had Paul jot down some facts that he remembered from our conversation with the most interesting man in the world which do not give any justice to how interesting it really was to talk about what he did and where he was from, but it's better than nothing...

1. The city exists because some of the residents discovered a tax code that allowed them to tax the oil companies who were drilling in the area. They simply had to designate themselves as a borough of Alaska, which allowed them to then tax the companies drilling there. That is how the city survives, the only "jobs" are those that are necessary: doctors, teachers, etc. I wish I could explain it better. He and others were instrumental in building roads, a school, and in moving people out of sod huts and into real homes that they built. They civilized it and brought it up to the 20th century from the seemingly dark ages. Along with that, his own home is so well insulated that even in 80 below weather he can heat his whole house for less than $150 a month.

2. He met his wife at a college in Alaska. She is a native of Barrow, her family has lived there for thousands of years. Like he said, "If you marry a Barrow girl, you're staying in Barrow."

3. He has a son that he shares a lot of adventures with, who is an excellent shot. His son can shoot a whale from a moving boat and kill it with one shot. His son is allowed to hunt whales because he has native Barrow blood running through his veins from his mother, but the most interesting man cannot hunt whales because he is a transplant.

4. They have snowdrifts that tower above their doors.

5. They are unable to leave the town by car, but are forced to fly because the roads are impassable.

6. There are times when the sun does not go down at all, and when it doesn't come up at all. He says that it's not really dark when the sun never comes up, it's more like its always twilight, because of the reflection of the snow.

7. It gets to 80 degrees below zero routinely (OH MY GOODNESS)

8. His wife is one of a handful of people (less than 20 people) left in the world that know how to sew a certain stitch used in sewing seal pelts on to boats to make the boats waterproof.

9. He takes extended hunting trips with his son and daughter, who is also a better shot than him, into the wilderness where they will have tread (like a tank) instead of tires. They only hunt what they will eat or use, however.

10. He spends a month of the year in a tropical paradise (Kauai), and the rest of the time in the harshest climate known to man.

Christmas in Kauai...

So, we were in Kauai from December 16-December 26th and my dad was only staying until December 22nd so we decided to celebrate Christmas early. We actually celebrated on the first Sunday we were there --December 18th. It was a very simple celebration. My mother had bought a ham at the Costco next to the airport in Lihue and we stopped at the store the day before to get some potatoes, corn, and some pies, and POG of course. We had our very own Christmas feast:

But we had a delicious dinner, we read the Christmas story--first Paul had it on his iPad and the scriptures were being READ to us by a British gentleman. It was very amusing but not very spiritual. Tommy read it out of the scriptures and then sweet Stephanie played "Silent Night" on her new ukulele (impressive girl to have learned it so fast) and it was a special moment. A very special moment where we all really felt the Christmas Spirit...we were just all singing as a family without big gifts under a tree or the expectation of presents in the morning, we were just together celebrating the birth of our Savior on a Sabbath day. And of course, afterwards, we played some Scum (we are the Smith family after all).

We also watched "Invincible" that night, but that doesn't add to the story.

It was a very Merry Christmas.

the end.

Part 8 Kauai

2011-02-13T18:44:00.007-05:00

DAY 9

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Or as the Hawaiians would say, "Mele Kalikimaka!"

Christmas day in Kauai was relaxed--that is the only word for it. It was the last day for my mom and my sisters; they flew out the next morning. This last day we packed up and left the Shearwater Condo on the North Shore and drove down south to stay in a condo really close to the Lihue airport by the Nawiliwili Bay, right next to the Kalapaki Beach, where we spent most of Christmas day:

In the picture above, there is a little river that flows out to the ocean; it was the only way to get to the beach from that side. One problem with that--my mom had a boot on her foot! So Tommy carried her. Piggy Back ride over the stream to get to the beach. Go Tommy and Mom!

See that AEROBIE on the beach mats? Paul and I purchased it that morning and it was a hit. My family is frisbee challenged so an AEROBIE was perfect because it pretty much flies straight. It was basically Paul throwing to us 4 kids and us trying to not lose it or let it hit someone else even though he threw it right to us. After awhile, Paul's confidence in us increased and he would throw us more daring throws. This continued for awhile with us digging the AEROBIE out the sand triumphantly until one time it went too far and too deep. 10 min later, they wrote it off as lost. SAD DAY. But it was as if we had rented it, like all the other things we had rented right?

So, we had a guest on the trip, his name is Stanley. He is a friend of our nephew, Ethan who lives in Oregon. He sent us Stanley to take with us to Hawaii, after Stanley came with us to Hawaii, we sent him to Paul's brother who took him to Los Cabos!

For lunch, Paul and I met up with his friend Jesse and Jesse's new bride--Jocelyn. Jesse had been living there for 9 months or so working for his construction company. We went to a little Mexican place next to the beach. It was fun to spend time with them. We also spent most of the next day with them. Since it was Christmas day, most things were closed or not many people working. So it took over an hour to get our food, but we got a free dessert out of it and it was tasty.

For dinner, the relaxation continued as we went out for dinner. We went to Duke's Canoe Club and we were able to sit outside (covered but outside) and enjoy a delicious dinner! They had great seafood and everything else. Honestly, I wish I could be outside all the time. Covered maybe but still outside.

Also, the boys got ribs. mmmmmm! I love how tan Tommy is in this picture. Paul is too...not that you can really tell ;)

After dinner we went to get ice cream--at the famous Lappert's Ice Cream! When we got out of the car it started to POUR, as in tropical rainfall! We were drenched. Ooof. Genna and I choosing our ice cream:

That night, being the last night for my mom and my sisters we stayed up until 2-3am and played games. The last game we played was the one requiring the least about of brain power--Kings. I was a colossal failure but we had a good time nonetheless.

DAY 10

My brother took my mom and sisters to the airport in the morning and then the three of us went to church. After church we packed up our stuff and checked out and drove up to Waimea canyon, after first stopping at a McDonalds for some necessary sustenance. It had been raining so we weren't sure what the view would be like but the bottom of the canyon was quite pretty:

As we got further up, the clouds got thicker. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful lookouts in Hawaii, not just Kauai...yeah. Maybe next time?

For the rest of that day, we hung out with Jesse and Jocelyn. We laid out on the grass next to the beach next to their apartment by Poipu and then went snorkeling and saw some huge fish.

After that, we drove to this waterfall that has a rope swing and Jocelyn and I watched while the boys got in the water and swum across to the rope swing and climbed up to swing off. Usually, you would just jump off the waterfalls into the water and swim over but the water level was so high because of all the rain and it was too dangerous (part of the reason I didn't go--I'm not a strong swimmer). The boys did it a couple times, after that they were too exhausted because the current was so strong. Once again, glad I didn't go--besides, the water was brown from all the flash flooding.

When they got back, I looked at Tommy's back and it was COVERED in bug bites and hives! It was pretty bad. We loaded him up with some benadryl and just hoped he wouldn't be hating the flight home that night. We went back to their place and showered and changed so we wouldn't be disgusting on the flight home and then we all went to Bubba's Burgers for one last hurrah.

We drove ourselves to the airport and then boarded our red-eye flight (we didn't miss it this time! more about that later) and we were off, back to the mainland. We left at 950pm, so we had the whole day there.

Goodbye Kauai!

The only things I have left to say about Kauai I'll do in a later post. I'll talk about how we celebrated Christmas, the coolest man from Barrow, Alaska, and how our trip TO Kauai was an interesting one to say the least.

Until then...aloha.

today was a good day

2011-02-07T22:23:00.004-05:00

not to digress too much from Hawaii but I wanted to talk about today and how fantastic it was...

I had a staycation this weekend with Paul so when my alarm went off this morning before 6am I was so disoriented and then I realized it was Monday and I wanted to cry. But I got up and got ready. My bangs were greasy and I couldn't find my shirt. I was running late, because I'm not important enough for the bus to wait for me, and I went outside and there was snow all over! Whoops! I cleaned the car off as quickly as I could and drove super fast to the bus stop in the freezing cold car as my window and glasses fogged up. I made it just in time and ran threw the snow to the bus.

I sat next to an incredibly broad-shouldered man who couldn't help but take up 1.5 seats and studied for my Certified Internal Auditor exam--managerial accounting was what was on the menu. I was so tired and wasn't feeling 100%. I got to work and started working on my new project only to realize that multiple things were wrong, spent all day fixing it with a co-worker, studied though half of my lunch and worked late.

I was so ready to go home and I looked outside. Oh my goodness. Winnie the Pooh said it--Blustery Blustery! It looked like a snow tornado. Oof!! I wrapped myself up and headed out to the bus, which of course happened to be late. I sat out there and froze my butt off and got soaking wet.

I studied on the bus and then drifted off to sleep for awhile. I woke up just as we were pulling off the freeway...at the time we were usually getting to my bus stop. Not a good sign. The next 45 min were spent traveling less than a mile up SR92 towards my house.

I was car sick, I had to go to the bathroom, I was tired, I was hungry, and so annoyed with Monday. I finally got to my bus stop, got off the bus and headed to my car.

I was so shocked to see that it wasn't covered with snow! How weird right? And then there was this guy next to my car with his own car with his door open...it was PAUL!! As I got closer he walked up to me and kissed me and said, "hey sweetie, you take the warm car."

As I drove home so nice and warm I couldn't stop smiling. When I got home, Paul asked me how my day was and you know what I said?

"Today was a great day." And it was.

I love my husband.

Part 7 Kauai

2011-02-06T15:47:00.006-05:00

Day 8

Day 8 was Christmas Eve and Tommy had the great idea of us children treating my mom to a special day. We decided to send her on a helicopter ride. Obviously, she wouldn't want to go alone so Tommy was the lucky one who got to accompany her. This was special for her because she was able to see where we had hiked and able to experience the island even though she had a broken foot. Both Tommy and my mom said it was the best part of the trip and that it was just breathtaking.

The helicopter they rode in had open sides! So they could just hang out, awesome huh? Tommy said that the people were so nice to them and to my mom especially. They gave them free shirts because of my mom's foot and when the weather wasn't perfect, they flew them to some other special places they don't usually fly to. They had a really great time!
I let Tommy take my camera, he was going to be seeing much cooler things than i was.

Beautiful, beautiful. Better than a postcard!

While they were experiencing those delights, Stephanie, Genevieve, Paul, and I were at Hanalei bay just hanging out. We got there at about 11am. We read our books, played in the water, got some delicious tacos at the little taco trailer there--sorry I don't know the name! And we rented some surf boards. Paul and Genna took them out first. I hadn't seen Paul on a board before but he has done it before and he picked it right back up. Genna did a good job too, even though the waves were weird and sporadic and the riptides were strange. Steph and I tried to surf...but we didn't really. Evidently, we forgot our lessons? More so that the waves were weird and yeah...basically no excuse. We were just awful.

I relinquished the surf board and tried out the boogie board. That was awesome! It was so fun to ride all the way in because your head is right next to the water the whole time compared to being 5 feet in the air on a surfboard.

We played in the water and it was great, it was warmer than sitting on the beach by that point. The sky had begun to change colors at about 2pm but it was still alright. At about 330pm it was raining, a lovely drizzle. We were all lying down on our beach mats and covering ourselves with our towels. We drifted off for a bit but eventually we were back awake and freezing. At about 430pm it began to rain...a lot! My mom and brother said they'd be there about 5pm so we weren't too concerned. Also we really wanted to see the sunset because it's supposed to be so pretty right?

We stupidly stayed out there for awhile talking about our options and if we should walk back to the town, but we had the boogie boards, etc etc. At this point the beach was empty. There was NO one in the water. Nice hint huh? The only people walking on the beach had ponchos on and were headed back to their car. As the sun set in its greyness--the clouds were too thick for anything even remotely pretty--we finally picked up all our stuff and walked towards the parking lot and stopped and took shelter underneath the life guard station.

We were completely drenched, we were wringing water out of our towels. At this point it was about 515pm. We were sure my mom and Tommy would be there any time to get us. At that moment we received a text from them, "Hey guys! Stopped to see the Wailua falls and did some shopping we'll be there in about an hour!" An HOUR?! Merry Christmas Eve to us. We were salty, cold, wet, and just plain miserable, sort of. We couldn't help but laugh that it was Christmas Eve and we were starving and freezing. Made us grateful for what we had I suppose--shelter from the rain, not the wind, just the rain :)

My mom said that as they got closer they could see the clouds and were worried that the bridge to Hanalei bay would be flooded over and they wouldn't be able to pick us up! Good thing that wasn't the case, I don't think we would have really been feeling much of the Christmas spirit if that had happened.

They finally picked us up, we threw out our beach mats and crammed the 4 of us in the back seat--which for once was great since we were freezing.

We all got back to the condo and showered and tried to warm up. We decided we would try a couple nice restaurants for dinner since it was Christmas eve. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. We went from restaurant to restaurant and joked that we felt like Joseph and Mary on the first Christmas Eve, "I'm sorry, there is no room here." It truly was Christmas Eve! :)

Not to be deterred we went to the grocery store, every man for himself. Stephanie and I got salmon sushi and macaroni and cheese, the others purchased Pizza, chips and salsa, candy, donuts, and IBC drinks (rootbeer and mango). And of course a Hawaiian meal would not have been complete without POG (Passion Orange Guava juice)!

Each time you finished a carton, the one who finished it had to slam his/her fists on the table and say triumphantly "I HOG POG!" I didn't make that up. It actually says, among other things, on the side of the carton:

"With a big shake here and a big shake there, you may pour, drink, and experience a fruit beverage that can only be described as POG-o-licious. Perhaps tempted to save no juice for the rest, we urge you to finish the carton, pound your fists on the table, and chant with pride: I hog POG. Go on you POG hogger - drink til' your heart's content - cheers! 10% Fruit juice. Pasteurized."

That night we watched "The Dark Knight" but most of us just feel asleep on the floor. It was Merry Christmas Eve.

(the actual Christmas celebrations were done a week in advance, I'll talk about those later)

to be continued...

Part 6 Kauai

2011-02-02T11:45:00.009-05:00

Day 7

Day 7 was another amazing day. We decided to hike along the Napali coastline that we had just seen from the boat the previous day. The full Kalalau trail is 22 miles round trip, 11 miles each way. We only hiked 2 miles in to the Hanakapi'ai beach and then another 2 miles into the Hanakapi'ai valley to the Hanakapi'ai waterfalls. The weather was perfect! We were sad that my mom couldn't come but as you'll see later, she spent some quality time on the beach.

Check out this view! It was the most gorgeous hike I've ever been on. The colors were fantastic, the water was SO turquoise. I didn't do anything to these photos, they were just taken with my sister's point and shoot:

Not only was the water beautiful, but the scenery looking inland was just as breathtaking. Nature so often humbles me. I was especially humbled by the beauty here. Notice that us three girls all wore our tye-dye shirts that they made. Steph made mine a couple of years ago. We were representing Oregon, proudly!
The first 2 miles to the beach were great, the trail was dry so it wasn't slippery like we had been warned it might be. The trees and vegetation were fascinating. It really did feel like Jurassic Park (rightfully so since Jurassic Park was filmed in Kauai).
The Hanakapi'ai beach was beautiful but we had been forewarned about the dangerous currents. And as you can see, they wanted to make sure you didn't forget:

While we were sitting on the beach and eating some lunch, we actually saw a few people go out surfing. They had carried their boards all the way in! Crazy locals :) The waves were monstrous and we couldn't help but think of the sign we had just seen. But we didn't see anyone die, just royally biff it. Also, while we were there, Genna lost her sunglasses in the little river that ran into the ocean. Paul clambered on the rocks to try and find her glasses without falling in...no luck. Paul fell in on his butt. And he joined the rest of us that had gotten wet from the tide coming in etc.

Paul, in his creative wisdom came up with a great idea to commemorate our trek up to this point. He wrote the trail name in the middle and we put our footprints in the sand surrounding it and then wrote our names. We added my mom's name since she would have been there.
Then my creative juices flowed and we took the resident shadow picture with the gorgeous ocean. Have I mentioned I miss the ocean and that I think it's gorgeous? I miss it. And it's gorgeous.
After we finished eating and being creative, we turned inland and began hiking along the trail into the falls. This trail isn't kept up so it's basically muddy and somewhat confusing. When I say muddy, I mean muddy! The first 1/2 mile I thought I might lose my shoes and fall flat on my face into the mud. It got better after awhile. The bamboo and dense vegetation and smells were fantastic. We felt like we were in a jungle/rainforest.
We had to cross the river multiple times on the hike in. On this crossing I just fell right in! Oh well, I was so wet as it was it didn't matter. Paul and Tommy were kind enough to help people across, including this one older lady who was out there all by herself! And she was kind of frail. After this point, she stayed pretty close to us and Tommy and Paul helped her multiple times again to get across the river and over rocks. Then she sat by us once we got to the falls, it was quite amusing.

We got lost once and people followed after us. We ended up down by the river with nowhere to go! Finally, I backtracked and found a small trail going up and ended up on a tiny trail about 50 feet above where they were. I waved to them and they backtracked and came up...along with 20 other people! It was as if everyone got lost and figured it out at the same time because up to that point we had only seen one other couple.

It was exciting to see the falls as we got closer. It just felt like we were in a dream.

Once at the falls, Tommy, Paul, Genna, and Steph stripped down and swam out underneathe the falls and then climbed up behind. The water was SUPER cold apparently and clouds had rolled in. I stupidly hadn't worn my swimsuit and I couldn't really take out my clothes and wear a sportsbra like my sisters ;) So I was the photographer. Don't pity me, it was still fabulous.

Apparently, while we were at the falls, it had rained along the coastline because as we hiked back to the beach and then back along the coast trail it was SO muddy, just as we had been warned it might be. We slipped multiple times and we were just covered in mud by the time we were done. No one was hurt thankfully.

As we got closer, we could see Ke'e beach which is where the trail begins. We looked down and what do you know! We could see my mom on the beach! Sitting on a rock! Can you see her? She's waving and sitting on a red boogie board with a turquoise shirt on the rock on the left hand side. She kind of knew when we would be back and had positioned herself there so she'd be able to see us. She has great eyesight. We had our binoculars and cameras so we could see her but she knew it was us. Impressive. Also impressive that she got herself out on the rock with her boot and everything.
This picture my mom took, she had some setting on her camera to make it brighter. We were muddy and tired! But it was great :)
The hike had been so wet--wading through rivers, the mud, the beach, etc. that our feet pruned! Not just a little, but as if we had taken way too long of a bath! Check it out! Kind of freaky, good thing we didn't step on anything sharp!
This was probably my second favorite day.

That night we went to a nice restaurant in Hanalei-- The Dolphin. We rewarded ourselves with some well deserved spoils of deliciousness. Stephanie and I got sushi--mmm! Genna and Paul got shrimp and my mom and brother got the Ahi--very tasty and tender. It was the first time Genna had had shrimp. She was a big fan!

to be continued...

Part 5 Kauai

2011-01-30T16:19:00.009-05:00

Day 6

Day 6 was another fun-filled adventure. And by this point we were really loving Kauai. We knew our way around and were even picking up some of the local customs and hobbies:

While my dad was flying over the Pacific on his way back to Oregon, Paul was golfing and the rest of us were surfing...with a devoted cheerleader on the beach (my mom). Of course I loaded the photos backwards, so please enjoy them in reverse!

The after photo: Nephi, me, Stephanie, Tommy, and Genna. Apparently, I had the easiest board because it was the longest? It wasn't too bad so it must've been pretty easy. Just so you know, we all got up, multiple times. Genevieve and Stephanie got up the most. It's interesting though because we well tell people we took surfing lessons, their first question is "oh, did you make up it?" Yes, we did.

Tommy paddling to catch the wave:
Genevieve on her way up. She was probably the most natural in the group.
Stephanie finishing it out to the shore. Hard core hehe.

Me getting ready to stand up:

Genna, triumphant for us all. You can see Steph and Tommy in the background with Nephi. For the first 45min of the lesson, he would tell us which waves to take and give us pointers etc. After that we were on our own. It was hilarious b/c he just kind of walked out of the water without saying anything to us and let us go for another hour and a half. Genevieve says "What?" a lot. As in, at least once every three sentences if you're talking to her. The four of us get back out to Nephi with our boards and he says, "I'm going to do an impression, 'Wha??'" And we all laughed :) Genevieve is so sweet.
Getting prepped so we would know how to stand up, the right way:
Yes, we had to carry our own boards. My head hurt after doing this. Here's Tommy showing us the ropes:
When we made the appointment with Learn to Surf the guy on the phone said, "Okay, surfing lesson for 4 at 11am. Just go down to Hanalei and a guy named Nephi will meet you there with a silver Toyota." First of all there were tons of silver Toyotas, but eventually we found it. Secondly, his name is Nephi? Hmm, what are the odds that he is also LDS? Pretty high. So he was LDS and he teased me about being married before graduating and for having poofy hair--that day I had thrown it into a very messy pony tail and apparently it was poofy on top? For the rest of the week we had Nephi jokes. Since Paul wasn't there he would make up his own and say things like "I bet you Nephi would have liked that!" har har.
So I did my "last" wave and it was my best ride up to that point, but then Nephi told me to do one more. Tommy and I were too close to one another and after we stood up his board took out mine so I went down and then his board wacked me in the back of the head...ouch! Should've stopped on my first "last" wave.

We had a really good time. Nephi was a good teacher and the weather was beautiful. Lovely lovely. Unfortunately, us chicks were not wearing board shorts (we now truly understand why they're called board shorts) and ended up with rashes from the boards on our thighs. Genna and I weren't too bad, but Steph had pulled herself forward too quickly on the board once so she ended up with an intense rash on her legs. This after her intense sun burn just the day before. Wasn't her best stretch of luck to be sure.

When our lesson was over, we packed ourselves back into the Dodge Charger. When my dad was there we had 2 rental cars, and after he left, we only had the one 5 seater. So the 5 of us went to pick up Paul at the Prince Golf Course (luckily we went when we did or Paul wouldn't have been able to play there because of all the renovations!)

He ended up golfing with another gentleman who was from Texas. As they were golfing, this man received a text from his family telling him that Pierce Brosnan was at Hanalei Bay surfing. Paul texted us because we were at Hanalei bay surfing! We didn't see him but we asked Nephi about it to see what he knew. He said that he knew Pierce, that he had actually taught him how to surf and so had some other surfing companies but that he still wasn't that great. Additionally, he said that Pierce wasn't the nicest guy, especially when kids asked for his autograph. The fame must have gotten to him. FYI, Pierce Brosnan lives in Kauai, at least most of the time.

Back to the golf, the scenery on that course was so pretty that I would have had to pay $25 just to ride along in the cart as an observer, so Paul had to make do with the Texan for company. Pretty isn't it:

Because we only had the one car, we pulled up and Paul laid his clubs across our laps and then squeezed in with us in the back seat. Super cozy we were. When we got home, there was an awesome rainbow over the ocean that we could see from our condo, so we ran out on the grass to get a photo:

Paul and I also wanted a photo, but Paul wanted it up on the pillar thing, so we went through great lengths to stand on top of it:

Once we were up, Genna took a couple pictures with the rainbow but didn't get our feet and the pillar! So we just looked like we were giving each other a ridiculously huge hug. So we had to get back up and take a few more pictures. Unfortunately, by that point the rainbow wasn't strong enough to be seen in the picture, but we still like it anyway:

To be continued...

Part 4 Hawaii, Kauai

2011-01-23T14:25:00.011-05:00

Day 5

So, keeping on with the Kauai, Hawaii recap, this post is about Day 5, which was probably my favorite day as well as Paul's favorite day! It was fantastic. We woke up at 5am to drive down to the south shore to Port Allen where we were scheduled to take a 6 hour boat tour up the gorgeous Napali Coastline.

We went with Holo Holo Charters. We would really really recommend them. They put on such a good show for us. The captain had been doing tours like this for years and years and the "tour guide" or whatever you want to call him grew up on Kauai. He said that growing up his friends would call him and say, "You wanna holoholo?" Which for them meant go catch some waves, the ultimate relaxation for them. So, we went on the Holo Holo Charters and went out to find some waves :)

Early morning faces:

They did such a great job telling us stories about all the movies that had been filmed there and the history of the island, as well as, finding nautical wonders for us to see; whales, dolphins, fish, and turtles. Yay. It was so fun to watch the dolphins swim right by us and jump and play. They are so humanlike! No pictures of the whales, but they're such grand creatures. So Paul has a hidden skill. He is the whale spotter of the century. He spotted the whales before the boat guys did! Honestly, he has a knack for spotting those whales. Which is weird because he wears glasses and so you would think his peripheral vision wouldn't be that great, but he saw them all. Good job baby :)

Okay, so we got off the boat and they let us snorkel for awhile. I was so glad we had been snorkeling before or else I would have had a panic attack in the water because it was pretty deep and it was the ocean...and I don't like deep water in the ocean. I was stung by a jellyfish as a kid and so I always have baby freakouts in the ocean as is, but when it's deep...ahh. Yeah, not going to talk about it anymore. But Paul stayed close by my side and the longer we were there the more comfortable I was.

We saw some beautiful fish and such. As were were swimming back to the boat, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, it was just far enough way that it wasn't totally clear, but I looked more closely and realized it was a turtle! I got so excited that as I tried to get Paul's attention I swallowed a bunch of water and almost had an ill moment in the ocean :) I finally got his attention and we were both so excited that we swam over to it. By then, everyone on the boat was yelling to us that there was a turtle over there (yes, I know, remember how I almost drowned when I saw it because I was so excited?).

Thankfully Genevieve had also heard the people on the boat and swam over and was able to get a photo of my with the turtle! I'll be honest, it was a little freaky having this turtle swim right at me. It wasn't going to deviate from course so I actually had to move out of the way, but it was so beautiful! Honestly, I don't have words to explain how awesome it was. I'm so glad we swam on that side of the boat on a whim and stayed just a little longer than we had planned. Such a neat experience:

Steph, the mermaid:It really was one of the most beautiful coastlines I've ever seen. The pictures don't do it any justice. The water was so blue/green and the view was just spectacular. It's really easy to understand why they filmed so many movies here (Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, South Pacific, etc.)

Stephanie was by far the most photogenic person on this trip. I'll post a picture of her later playing her ukulele. The last hour of the trip the sun came out in full force. Only Genevieve and my parents had sunscreen on, so the rest of us got fried, especially Stephanie. Luckily for Paul he had his shirt on but Stephanie and I were in our swim suits with shorts. We all got rosy. Poor Steph couldn't move the rest of the day:)

After the boat trip, we laid out in the sun for awhile and then Tommy really wanted to buy his darling girl friend some beautiful pearls. We were on a mission and we found some ones that were perfect for her skin tone. I got so wrapped up in it...that Paul and I bought some for me! They're a very gentle pink and they're perfect. I've never had a pearl necklace, just earrings, so it's been a great souvenir. That day Paul also bought a tiki-tiki creepy face magnet. That night, my generous parents treated us to a Luau. So nice of them. The performers had some amazing tricks. This guy and his fire act, blew our minds, they put a net around him just in case, but he was in perfect control. Very impressive:

Stephanie and Genna learned how to hula dance at the Luau as well, Genevieve especially looked the part:

The Luau was the first time I used my new 50mm lens in suuuppppeerrrr low lighting. I think it worked pretty well! Check us three girls out:

This day 5 was my dad's last day in Hawaii. He flew back early to spend time with his mom on her birthday (Dec 23rd) and to spend Christmas with her. My dad's mom moved in with my family just over a year ago for those of you who don't know. This day was the perfect day to end the visit on since he did have to leave. We missed him when he left but were so happy he could be there for part of it at least.

to be continued...

Part 3 Hawaii, Kauai

2011-01-19T22:12:00.003-05:00

Day 4 has basically no photos...we kind of forgot about that. And what I'm realizing is that I'm already forgetting about the trip! About all the details. So sad.

So, Day 4 was Monday and we went snorkeling at Poipu Beach down on the south side of the island. It rained for half the time and the waves were big...but we were underwater so it didn't even matter! We saw some beautiful tropical fish...we didn't take our camera in the water but I found a picture online that was my favorite fish (It's an awful photo but it shows the COLOR!)

The girls went boogie boarding...and it was hilarious. It was their first time ever and they attached the straps to their wrists HAHA. It was so funny to watch them because it stretched the cord so far that the board kept sliding out and dumping in them the water. Oh good times. They were too far away for us to tell them how it should work. Luckily they figured it out. But, they didn't grow up on the beach so paddling out wasn't their strength, didn't make it too far. They had fun though!

We're a good looking group huh? We stopped by the Kilauea Lighthouse but it was closed! So we just took a shot from far away:

On the drive home, we had two cars so Paul, Genna, and I stopped to each some much craved BBQ. It was SO good. The ribs and the pulled pork were delicious, and after all the swimming it hit the spot and was perfect. We ate at Scotty's BBQ in Kapaa. Mmm. Beautiful view too. We were able to watch locals fish and just relax. Genna was excited she chose our car because she got a free delicious meal!

After we ate, we continued driving and stopped at Wailua Falls. Super pretty...even though it's kind of brown in this picture. It had rained so much that there had been flash flooding so it was a bit brown :) But still gorgeous. Kauai had so many waterfalls. It is the Garden Isle after all, it rains more on this island than anywhere else in the world. Mt. Waialeale on Kauai is the wettest spot on earth with an average of over 472 inches of precipitation a year. That's 39 feet! Mucho rain.

Honestly, Kauai is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. The most average, every day scenes there are all paradise. The colors are so rich.

To be continued....also I forgot to talk about something that happened on Day 1 and the Christmas we celebrated on day 3! So we'll get those next time... Aloha!

Part 2 Hawaii

2011-01-16T16:24:00.019-05:00

So I'm using the blog to journal about Hawaii because talking about Hawaii without the photos seems pointless since it was so beautiful, so bear with me as I give more pictures and detail than readers will want :) Additionally, it may take me some time because I stare at a computer screen all day every day so writing a blog post doesn't always appeal to me if you know what I mean.

DAY 2

Second day we decided to try out Snorkeling, Kayaking, and a bit of hiking. It was the first of our 3 days of snorkeling.

Unfortunately, my mom broke her foot just weeks before we went to Hawaii so she had a boot the whole trip! Luckily she could walk on it and she didn't have to use crutches anymore, but still, it meant she couldn't come on the hikes and other things.

My mom is the ultimate trooper though. She may have been limited from some things, but she did everything she could, like snorkeling. With just 1 fin! We went to Lydgate beach over by Wailua. We had to help her hop to the water, it was pretty funny but she was pretty impressive:

We saw some fun fish, it wasn't amazing but still very fun to get out. My dad came out for a bit too...but we had to give him a couple pointers on snorkeling after he swam back to shore doing freestyle.

After snorkeling, we grabbed some sandwiches and then departed on our Kayak adventure. All 7 of us kayaked up the Wailua River up to where we could tie up our kayaks and hike to Secret Falls. The kayaks were paired as follows: Paul and Genna, Tommy and my dad, Steph and I, and then my hardcore mom in her very own kayak. It was so beautiful and fun to kayak though a jungle basically and feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.

Tommy tipped the kayak I was in at one point and I am not proud to say that I freaked out because I had my camera in a dry bag, but even dry bags when submerged for long periods of time let water in. I couldn't get the kayaked flipped back over to get the dry bag out of the water....so I was upset at Tommy and made him help me :) whoops. Felt kind of silly but not at the same time...that camera isn't a cheap one. There was a bit of water in there but not enough to do any damage. On the trip bag, we put all valuables on my mom's kayak because no one is going to flip a cripple.

It was about 45 min to the trailhead for Secret Falls. My mom couldn't come unfortunately, but the other 6 of us hiked up to it. It was about a 30 min hike--nice and short but very pretty. Seriously, to live in paradise...what a thought. Paul's friend is currently living there so it just makes it even more of a thought.

We almost lost Genna over the side of a small ridge/cliff into the river but Tommy caught her. Genna is an avid photographer which also means that she is always looking at everything else except where she is going. So sometimes she ends up on her butt from falling. I also fell because I stepped on a slippery root. Those roots are wiley things.

Should have had the aperture set differently so you could see the background, whoops!

We decided that Tommy should have some photos by himself, isn't he a great looking guy?

My dad took this photo, the other one we have of this is us all posing like models and it's zoomed out so you can see it all...but let's just say I look too much the part for me to want to put it on the blog :)

We rented from Wailua Kayak and Canoe. They may not have the best equipment ever, but they are right next to the water, so the convenience was unbeatable.

DAY 3

The third day was a Sunday, so we just kept it chill. We went to church in Hanalei and tourists made up most of the congregation. The people were very nice and they had a nice Christmas song sung in their native language.

Later in the afternoon, Paul and I went for a drive along HWY 560 to the end of the road and saw some nice views and sweet caves:

Tommy and Genna helped my mom hop down to Lumaha'i beach. You can't drive right to it, you have to hike down to it a bit, so it was a real treat for my mom to be able to go down to it. Apparently this beach was featured in the film "South Pacific."

And we played games, mostly Bananagrams--it was a big hit with my family. First game Stephanie pulled out "dandelion" as a word. Impressive.

to be continued...afterall we were there 10 days and it was a great trip.

Part 1 Hawaii

2011-01-09T15:45:00.010-05:00

A little face-lift for the blog for a new year. How does it look? You can't see the flowers on Paul's iPad, but can everyone else see them?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. From what I can see from various blogs, it seems like people did have a wonderful time. We had a fantastic Christmas, the first of its kind for us and definitely worth repeating.

We left on December 16th and flew to Lihue, Kauai Hawaii and we were there for ten days. We went with my parents, my two sisters, and my brother. All the kids were old enough that we no longer placed a lot of value on presents but more so on family time. Of course, being somewhere awesome didn't hurt. I guess this would be our Christmas family photo for 2010:

Honestly though, we spent so much more valuable time together on this trip than we ever did at any Christmas. People weren't off playing with their new toys or playing video games or getting bored and annoyed. We did so many fun activities together, had a great time doing them, and made some lasting memories.

I already posted 2 pictures from our first day in Hawaii but we spent some time playing at the beach--swimming, napping, Frisbee, and flying the kite-- at beautiful Hanalei bay. Paul and I actually brought a suitcase full of games and toys to enhance the vacation. The kite we actually got on our honeymoon and Paul named it Nelson :) While we were hanging on the beach, we also planned a lot of the activities we were going to do while we were there (later on, Tommy made a spreadsheet like the financial nerd he is and of course I was excited about it...afterall, I did major in Accounting) :

The beauty of going for 10 days is that you don't really have to plan very much before you go.

Afterwards, we hiked to Queen's Bath. As you can see from the last post, it's a small pool of water that is perfectly clear and calm and it's right next to the ocean:

Before I talk about anything else, I should mention the constant companions we had accompanying us on this trip...the roosters. There were roosters and chickens EVERYWHERE. Like squirrels in the Pacific Northwest or cockroaches in Florida. They were all over the place and they didn't understand the difference between night and day. If you turned on the lights in your place in the night, they would have at it thinking it was morning! Those were some noisy roosters. I wish we had more photos, but we do have a couple:

to be continued...