Finally, remodel pictures

I've been a belated blogger. Our kitchen-great room remodel has been done for months now and I have failed to post the pictures on my blog. I have had several people ask, so sorry, but here it finally is. I was stupid and posted the 'after' pictures first, but it takes too long to delete and reload them all so you get what you get. As you can see it is a dramatic transformation. We went in a totally different direction than what we previously had. The old room served us well for 10 years, but it was time for an update. Thanks to Josh for all the great ideas, and for humoring me with stupid questions like "what kind of lights should I buy?", and "does the accent chair have to be the exact same height as the sectional?". The stupid things you stress about when you're dumping a huge chunk of change into something.










My favorite parts of our new space are the glass fronted cabinets with lights behind them, the double ovens, the dark new floors, the countertops Wade picked out, and finally having seating for 7 in front of the T.V. Our cabinet guy did a fantastic job also, and was patient with us wanting everything done RIGHT NOW! It's hard not having a functioning kitchen for months and months. Also, thanks to Wade for humoring me through all my little fixations and being a terrible quality control monitor while he was doing the tile backsplash. We adore the new light, airy coastal feel of our room. So much more to do on this house though. If anyone knows of a $ tree let me know. I will let you all know what our next big project is soon, and hopefully be more punctual in posting pictures of the results.

Zoetry at Paraiso de la Bonita

Time to blog about our latest adventure. Wade and I were lucky enough to spend a glorious week in Mexico last week. Thanks to our wonderful parents who are always willing to watch the boys. We went to the Zoetry Resort & Spa in Paraiso de la Bonita, which is located halfway inbetween Cancun and Playa del Carmen. Here are our favorite highlights. There are quite a few pictures so bear with me.

We spent an entire day sailing. We sailed for about 2 hours, dropped anchor on a sandbar next to a reef, then went snorkelling for about 45 min. We then hopped back aboard, sailed to shore where we got to play on a beautiful beach for about an hour, then sailed home. They staff was awesome. Food, drinks, and dry towels a plenty.

Do we look relaxed or what? They had beautiful little beach palapa's that were great during the day, and also for sunset watching in the evening as we are doing here. The sun went down really early, about 5:00 so that meant to get in enough sun time we had to hit the beach around 9 AM! What a rough life.

This was by far Wade's favorite part of the trip. (other than me in a swimsuit all day, tee hee) Fresh Pico De Gallo and Guacamole anytime he asked for it! He would have it at 10 in the morning, with lunch, and for an afternoon snack around 4 PM. It was sooooo good!

We took a cooking class one afternoon from the Dessert chef on staff at the resort. We learned how to make a bittersweet chocolate sauce to dip fresh fruit in, and Bananas Flambe'. It was pretty fun! Don't we look hot in our hair nets?

Daily walks on the beach in triplicates fulfilled our exercise needs for the week. The beach was filled with these HUGE conch shells. Yes I did manage to get one home. I'm my mothers daughter.

This was the pool. We spent alot of time here. When you would approach the pool area, you're assigned waiter would meet you at a chair, lay towels on it for us, fetch me an umbrella because I like my face shaded, and bring us our favorite drinks. I felt like Ivanka Trump! At meal times they would bring you a menu which included everything from burgers, steak, sushi, ceviche, wood grilled fish, etc. If you wanted it, they would find it.

Every morning we would roll over in bed, order room service for breakfast and it would be delivered 30 minutes later to our private lanai. Here we are having kick butt waffles and macadamia french toast. Yumsters!

Here is a pic of the other half of the lanai. I am looking out over the ocean in my bathrobe. Tough life, I know.

One of my fav's was the twice daily room cleaning. They were thorough too! At night they would come freshen up you're towels, turn down you're bed, spray you're linens with lavender spray, spread fresh tropical blooms on you're sheets, and leave you the love message for the day along with the schedule for yoga, spa treatments, sailing excursions for the next day. So many decisions...

This was our re-creation of the Corona commercial. We both love those commercials, so we thought we would make our own version and print it off to look at when home during the dreary month of January. This is now my screen saver for good reason. Beautiful!

It was bar none the best trip we have ever taken in a field of tough competition. Thanks sweetie for finding us such a beautiful place where I was treated like the queen I know I am! JK. Love ya babe... until next time...

Sweet, Sweet, Cali

It's time to blog about our fabulous trip to Cali. Lynsey, grab you're tissues. Our annual Fall break trip to Capistrano Beach was another great success this year. We did all the things we love to do, plus added a few new traditions. Besides having to make the drive down without Wade due to a busy week at work, I had all my family with me. Luke tried his hardest to try to stay behind for a few extra days to participate in a golf tournament and 3 soccer games, but life is going to get really serious with him quickly. I thought we needed to take advantage of his last Jr High year and just go.

Wade and I being goofy at San Clemente Beach
A rockin' photo of underneath the pier

Wade makes a mean sand castle. I think he attempted the perfect sand replica of Delicate Arch about 10 times this trip. He is determined!

My boys sharpening up their boogie board skills


Standing in line for the Haunted House at Disneyland. It was all dressed up for Halloween as a cross between Halloween and Christmas with lots of Night Before Xmas stuff. It was awesome!

Me forcing the guys to go on It's a Small World with me. What can I say. It's tradition!

Waiting in another line. This time for the Matterhorn. Zac looks a little nervous. It was his first time.
Beachcombing after our fabulous breakfast at the 'Beachcomber' restaurant ironically. A little chilly that day hence the sweaters. We loved this new little find. Thanks Stew and Annie for the tip!
This is the house that 'Beaches' was filmed at. Can you believe how run down it is! Mom and I are in the middle of the chorus of 'Wind Beneath My Wings'. Wade hates that song because everyone plays it at their funerals. Lol.

We had a fab time. It's great to get to spend quality time with Mom and Dad. We were sadly guacamole free due to Lynsey's absence. It just didn't seem right to make it without her there! I especially treasure my morning walks with my parents, shopping with my teenager, watching my kids explore new ocean sports, sunsets in the sand, evening Mocha at the coffee shop, Josh's weekend visits with new friends, among many, many other things. Sweet, Sweet Cali. I miss you already. Sniff Sniff. :(

blogtarded

Ok, so I recently tried to download some fancy shmancy template to jazz up my blog (thanks alot Lynsey) and it totally lost all my widgets including all the blogs I love to follow. If you regularly check my blog, and know that I also like to follow yours please comment to this post with you're URL so I can re-add you to my list. I feel like I lost my library in a house fire.
PS. How did you get that to work Lynsey? Please tell me Nick helped you, because I was completely lost.

Dream Come True

Tomorrow is the one week anniversary of the best day of my life, so I thought it high time I blog about it. Last Wednesday was the Keith Urban concert. Now don't go getting all judgemental on me. I am not a back country hick. Keith is the least 'country' of all country artists. Besides that he is smoking hot!!! Wade and I went to his concert a few years ago and were equally blown away at the pure talent this guy has. His guitar, keyboard, and singing skills were amazing and we were sold. Since then I have acquired quite a lengthy collection of Urban music, and am proud to say that I love it. It makes me happy when I am sad, and I can frequently be heard singing it at the top of my lungs from my car or living room.
Back to the concert. We had pretty decent seats, though not floor seats, and were having a great time when there arose a buzz around us. Everyone was pointing down a few seats to our left. Wade turned to me and said "Hunny, their putting up a stage right there!" The look in his eyes told me he was serious. Here comes the not so proud moment in my marriage. I quickly pushed Wade aside and told him to MOVE!!! I then proceeded to trample about 5 perfect strangers to secure my position right next to the stage. That wasn't good enough so I climbed up on the 2 inch hand rail and balanced myself there. No sooner did I look up and there he was. I swear he glows just like you would expect a god to. He stayed right there on that 3ft x 3ft stage and sang "You look good in my shirt" all the way through.
I was in heaven. Being that close to someone you have idolized for years is pretty cool. I admit to copping a feel here and there, and I was almost brazen enough to steal a guitar pick from his stand. After the concert several people I knew that were there said they saw me on the bigscreen 'head banging' away with Keith. I was in such a daze that I never looked up to the big screen for my 3 minutes of glory! Wade, being the awesome guy he is, was about 5 people away, in our original seats snapping away pictures with his phone and trying desperately to get my attention so I would turn around and have my face in a few pix. Again, I was lost in the moment and didn't hear a thing. What a dope. So here are the best of the blurry phone pix of the amazing Keith Urban and the back of my head.

Time to catch up

Wow, a month and a half since a post. I definitely have not felt like bragging about my life lately, but I am slowly pulling myself out of the ditch and moving on. Most of you know our tragic house story but for those who don't here it is. Que the violins. We had sold our house, and put a considerable amount of Ernest $ on the house of our dreams. The buyers of our house wanted to be in quickly so we proceeded to start moving our stuff into a storage unit quickly because we couldn't get into our house for about a month later. House close date was scheduled for a Tuesday, loan close date was 5:00 on a Friday. We received a phone call from our Realtor at about Noon on Friday saying that they buyers were pulling out stating loan denial. They had already been pre-approved for the home and had put $60,000 down so we were shocked. I quickly jumped into the pool of crazy people because I couldn't believe that this could happen when just a week earlier they were begging us to move up the close date a week. It took 11 months to get a decent offer, 1 month to move all our stuff into storage, and 5 minutes to have it all come crashing down around our ears. After all of this we decided that this was God's subtle way of telling us we were not supposed to move, so we decided to sink all of our extra money into a major remodel. This brings us to this point. The house is a complete mess, but things are coming along nicely. Out with the old, in with the new. Josh has been unbelievably knowledgeable and helpful through this process. We are hoping to have our new kitchen/great room completed within the next two weeks. I will post some before and after pix when it's all done to see what you all think. After that we are moving on to bathrooms.

The summer has completely gotten away from me with all the stress, but we did manage to do a few fun things here and there. Here are some of my favorite pix from the season.

Childrens Museum:

Lake Powell:
Payson Pool:
Lake Powell:

oh baseball, oh baseball

This is my post dedicated to that summer time-sucker I like to call baseball. Ya, Ya I know it's 'America's favorite pasttime' but one can accomplish so much more when there are not 3-4 games a night to attend. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch my little guys have hard sphere's whizzing past their faces at 30 mph. I just get seriously tired of greasy hamburgers, overbearing parents who think they are the coach, and even worse, kids who don't really want to be there (would rather be at dance or theater class) being forced into it by their P.U.'s. Here are my favorite pix from the season.



My Jake does indeed love it even after a full season on two teams and being hit by that ball several times, which literally knocked his 50 pound frame to the ground.
Zac also thoroughly enjoys it although he is still in the 'experimental' phase of the game. He likes to play whatever his big bro's are playing at the moment.

No we move on to the spring-fall time sucker AKA soccer. Go Shooters!