In case anyone still reads this mess of a blog...

I just wanted to make sure that if anyone was still checking back here every now and then, that you know I'm going to close it down. I just don't have the stories to tell like I used to. And the ones I WOULD like to tell might get me into trouble! ;) So I'm sorry, but the blog is going to go 'way.

Thanks for reading! I'll delete it at the end of the month...(March, that is.)

Got away from me...

It's been a while, so I'm sorry! The on and off of being at work through the holidays kind of threw off my game, and now I have all this catching up to do! Woops...

Christmas was great. The travel was a little exhausting, to say the least, but the time spent at home with the family was well worth it in the end. Jesse relaxed, I had fights with my older sister, Laura gave us the flu, we all ate and drank to our liking...it was perfect. (Except for the flu part, of course. At least my 24 hours with it didn't happen until I was home on Friday, so I was able to work from the couch. Jesse never caught it, thank goodness!)

On Monday, we went down to Carlsbad to visit with our friend Lyn and to have some breakfast and possibly do a little shopping at the outlet mall that the restaurant was at. It was great to be able to show Jesse where I had lived for a short while back in 1998, and we also found him two great sweaters on sale at Calvin Klein for only $25 each! That was nice.

After we were finished there, we headed back up the coast to Laguna so I could show him dad's condo on the beach there. Here's Laura and Jesse right after I tried to catch her pushing him over the railing! He turned around, though, and she wasn't able to go through with it after all...

On Christmas day, my older sister Wendy, brother-in-law Sean, Jesse and myself went for a hike on the horse trail near dad's house. There are several trails around him, actually, but this one led up to a water tower on the hill across from his place, where we'd heard we could see some pretty amazing views. The initial climb up almost killed me...I thought I was in pretty good shape, but apparently I was wrong! My sister and brother-in-law went on from the top of the hill over around the golf course below and then back to the street that leads to dad's after we were done catching our breath (or trying to catch our breath, as was the case for me at least!) and looking at the pretty view from the top. Here's a picture of dad's house from the top of the hill. It's hard to see...but it's right in the center of the photo, behind all the trees. That big house that's prominent in the photo is the newest neighbor who built right across the street from dad.
And here I am on the way back down the hill. Off in the distance is the main part of San Juan Capistrano which lies across the 5 Freeway and the railroad tracks from dad's house. I think I was pointing at Capo Beach, but I can't remember.
I'd been taunting Jesse with a "surprise" I wouldn't tell him about until it arrived on Monday night. Every year for the past 6 or 7 years or so, I think, we've gotten a bouncy house for the kids to play on for the day at some point around Christmas. This year I was able to convince my sister to order it for Christmas day so Jesse could benefit from it as well. I saw a pirate ship one on the website and I was all, "Ooh! Get that one!" It was a success! Somehow, it manages to keep the nieces and nephews busy from just about sun-up to sunset when we have it. Even though there isn't much to it, they play and play and play. (Where do they get the energy? Bleh!) Here we are on the starboard side of the ship. Or is that the other side? Oh, I don't know...
Once I'd gotten myself up and into the bouncy part of the ship, I realized what a huge mistake it was for me to be in there. Jesse bounced around, and I think he even slid down the slide once, and I tried to avoid being careened into by my nephew who had taken to jumping from the top of the slide directly onto the bouncy portion of the contraption, and I seriously thought that if he didn't break himself in half, he would quickly work his way to snapping one of my appendages with his reckless abandon. So while the look on my face in this photo isn't exactly a flattering one for me, it gives a good idea to you of my feelings about being any part of the bouncy ship at that point in time...
It was a great time. I wish we could have stayed longer, and relaxed some more, and spent more time with dad and Yvette and everyone. With the Twin being sick a good portion of the time we were there, we didn't have a chance to play half the games we'd wanted to, so that made me sad. But we did get to spend time together, since she drove us around while we were there, and everything. That was great.

More to come later this week! I've got bunches more pictures to share...hope everyone had a great and safe New Year!

Just a quick note...

I don't have much going on right now, outside of trying to get through this last day of work before a little holiday we're going to get to have (Jesse and I will be going to my dad's house for Christmas, thank goodness! I can't wait to spend a bit more time with dad and everyone for a couple of days...), and that sort of thing.

I did want to point out that I have added a "blogroll" that links to other sites that I love, love, LOVE, and will be adding to over time. They are wedding related and/or party related, and have GREAT tips and ideas for how to decorate for a party, or what to give a hostess/host at a party you attend, or just sharing pretty dresses that they've found in online searching. A couple of them run contests now and again that are fun to compete for, but for the most part, I visit them just to look at pretty things and get ideas for decorating and entertaining.

Hope everyone has a happy holiday, and I'll be back next week to share some stories of our trip home. Yay!

Okeydokey smokey...

Alright, all ye (hopefully) happy people. Not much to update on today, except to let you know that the photos of the wedding are up at the photog's website.

I'm in a terrible mood today, so I won't go into the way I feel about the photos much. I will say that I was expecting more of a professional photojournalistic style out of them, and I don't think that's what we got. I also asked specifically that they avoid taking pictures with the angle thing going on in them, and that didn't happen.

Oh, and don't even ask what the deal is with the pictures of the food at the cocktail reception is about. It was very hard to stifle my laughter when those popped up in the slide show when we saw it at the photographer's studio on Wednesday night, and when I looked at Jesse's face, he had a serious "WTF?" look that I hope Lori didn't see! They're weird...I think we can all agree on that point.

Otherwise, there are some fabulous shots in there, and I'm mostly happy with the way they turned out. If we can all just ignore the way my eyelashes looked throughout the "Bride" section of the photos, I'd appreciate it. The one on my right eye wasn't put on correctly when my makeup was done, I think. It came off of the corner of my eyelid during the photo session, and Miranda had to put it back on when we got back to my room to eat some lunch after we were done with those photos. Thank goodness my stepmom had some false eyelash glue with her! (Although I really wish I could have just taken them off. I feel like such an idiot looking at the photos now...)

Anyway, go to Van Deusen's website, and enter to the main page of the site. From there, you go to "Viewing Online", and then choose "View Wedding Images." Click on the drop down list and choose our wedding (not posting the names here because they work through last names on the site, and I don't generally release that info via the internet), and then the password is our wedding date: 10/27/07.

Have fun! Talk to you all next week...

Y'all are peachy, you really are...

Ok, I know there are still some of you out there reading this thing now and then, and I have to thank you for bearing with me when I have the downtime between posts. I know how sucky that can be, being an avid blog reader myself, so I plan on updating the blog soon to include some regular wedding/decor/party-throwing blogs in what we call a "blogroll" that I also love to read, and which will give you some material to look at between my posting here. Hopefully. Look for that update sometime next week.

But now, what you've been waiting for! (Ok, maybe not...but still what I promised to post earlier this week!) Here are the photos that document the big change to the little room in the house that we did on Sunday and Monday/Tuesday.

Here's Jesse as he does his fabulous cutting job around the doorway. See what I mean about reaching high places without the stepladder? The only thing he used it for was when he was cutting along the tops of the doors and the window in the room, so he was sure he wasn't totally missing spots or painting all over the top of the molding.

And here's the one wall when I was done painting it. You can't see in this picture really, but I did a terrible, terrible job. I'm just not meant to paint. I'm pretty good at scrubbing dishes, though! So I'll stick to that...(Jesse also wound up painting that door white. It needs another coat, but even in it's uneven whiteness, it looks worlds better than it did when it was cream!)
Here is the room after we finished painting and were able to move furniture into it on Tuesday night. Yay! (I've ordered curtains for the window that should match better than the older ones that have been in that room for the past 4 years. They should arrive today at the house, I hope I hope I hope...)
Love the new carpet, though! We ordered it before the wedding, so we could use it in the kids' section at the reception. It worked out perfectly with our color scheme for the evening, and it also worked out perfectly for the paint Jesse picked for the small room! Yay!

Here's Jesse over by the desk after we put everything together. He wanted to be in all the pictures, for some reason. He's so funny!
And here is what the old office used to look like. It's not usually THAT messy, but it's close. We had piled everything in there from the little room, so it was more messy than usual. I can't wait to finish the project by painting this room and getting it set up as (a) our additional "media" room for now, and then (b) our additional bedroom in a couple of months when it's time to put the house on the market. Woohoo!
I'll take more pictures of the bigger room once we've completed that transition as well. And now, as it's closing in on 5 p.m. my time on a lovely somewhat snow-covered Friday afternoon, I'll bid you all goodnight and good weekend. Later!

Taking breaks!

Sorry for the delay on posting around here. I've been thinking that I don't have much to post, but I've also been working. And then trying to fill out thank you notes here and there. And that takes up a surprising amount of my time, I've found! Tomorrow or Thursday, I'm hoping to have some photos to show the home improvement project that we're (hopefully!) finishing up tonight. We finally cleaned out the little bedroom and got it painted (I helped a little, but Jesse did most of it. It's so much handier being able to paint a whole wall without having to use the step ladder half the time!), and tonight I'm hoping we can finish it off by moving the furniture in there that we intend to put in. We're trying to envision different layouts with the desk and the little couch, or the desk and just a chair and a lamp. Or the desk and me lying on the floor in a puddle of frustration because I wish that room just had an extra foot and a half added onto it! (Seriously, the yard is huge...why didn't they just make the house a teensy bit wider when they built it? Makes no sense...) Anyway, I've taken before and during-the-painting pictures, so I just want to get some after photos, and then I'll be ready to post some stuff about it. It'll be fun.

In the meantime, how 'bout some more honeymoon photos? Here is a (very, very dark) photo of the "activities room" we tended to hang out in at the resort at night. It's also where we took the Yahtzee game from for the week, since that was our main source of entertainment in our room, and all. Hopefully no one else wanted to play it! Not that I care, because if we didn't have that? I would've been a wreck by the end of the week! Anyway, that's me on the big couch in front of the t.v. If you can squint a bit, you can see that I was busy watching the end of the game that was on before the KU game came on that night. I can't remember what it was...Ohio State, maybe?


And here's a picture from the path that we were on when we were at The Baths on Friday. Very pretty! But there were very few places where it wasn't single-file. We were alone on the path at that particular moment, but there was a lot of waiting in certain spots when we ran into groups that were coming from the opposite direction...
Oh, this picture is out of place, but it was the picture I took of myself as we left the resort FOREVAH!!! I was very excited to be headed home.
And this is me in one of the grottos at The Baths on Friday. Yes, that's me in a bathing suit, and I don't care what anyone thinks about it. My sister-in-law said I was brave to send out photos of me in a suit. She's skinny, and she doesn't seem like she'd do such a thing. I don't give a flying fig. That's mah belly. Love it or leave it! (My personal trainer does NOT love it. He's currently working on eradicating the belly, and I don't like him much for it.) You can't really tell all that well due to the shadows, but my ass looks fabulous...:D
And here's Jesse at the foot of one of the little path-helper thingies that are sprinkled throughout the path at The Baths. We had to climb the stairs, crawl through that hole in the rocks, and then climb down the stairs on the other side to continue on the path. There was a way around this path-helper that was a bit more treacherous, but we did it one of the times in order to avoid the massive amount of people waiting in line to get through the hole. Believe it or not, this was one of the easier path-helpers! My favorite was the slab of rock we had to climb up with the help of a rope...it was fun.
And that's it for now! More pictures this week, I promise. Hope everyone is having a good one!

Virgin Gorda, and other things...

Ok, so the home project isn't going too well. Nothing has changed, which is sort of disappointing to me, but I'll deal. I need to call the cable company to come out and switch the lines under the house for us, as Jesse isn't able to switch them himself. (He didn't want to crawl over to where the line is for the cable modem, and we're not sure if the other cable line for the t.v. will be able to reach as far as we need it to, anyway. He didn't want to crawl under there and try it all without being able to complete the process, seeing as that would leave us without a computer for several days...)

So! In the meantime, I will post pictures from the honeymoon in order to make things right in the world again. This is the beach that belonged to the resort we stayed at:

The beach was a 15 foot walk from our room's back door. Weird fact about Little Dix Bay Resort and Spa: We didn't get a key to our room...no one does, apparently. When you leave during the day, or whenever, you leave the room unlocked. Strange, no? (There was a safe in our room that we kept all our "valuables" in, so that helped a bit with the oddness of it all.) Here's a picture of our "king sized" bed:
It was really 2 full beds pushed together, which we thought was very klassay. Also, it rained super-hard on Wednesday night while we were there. As we played Yahtzee in our room and drank rum and Coke/Diet Coke, we noticed that there was a sizeable puddle on Jesse's side of the bed. By the time we went to bed, it was all the way over on my side as well. We called the front desk twice about the issue, and they seemed not too worried about it. The next day, and the following two days after that, they worked on finding the problem. Fortunately, we didn't get another rain like we had on Wednesday while we were there, because I really didn't want to find out if they'd managed to actually fix the problem.

Wednesday night before the rain moved in, we went out on the sunset cruise the resort offered to guests for a "small" (read: not small, but sorta worth it) fee. It was hot, but the views were lovely. And once the breeze was able to get to us inside the boat (the back end that was open to the ocean was full of guests, so Jesse and I stayed inside the boat and enjoyed the breeze coming through the windows, as well as the easily-accessible appetizers that were part of the cruises offering to us), it felt really nice in there...

On Friday, we went out to The Baths for a visit, taking advantage of one of the free things that the resort offered us in their boat-taxi to the area. We also took along a picnic lunch to eat while we were there. Oddly enough, chickens and roosters roam free about the island, and one in particular has made his home there on the beach we were dropped off at and on which we ate our lunch. Jesse was really bothered by this rooster. I decided to snap a picture of them together, since I wanted to remember my husband behaving in the way I usually do when people annoy me on the road or in the supermarket. It was awesome!
Sorry for the finger in the picture. We'd bought a disposable camera for that trip so we didn't have a chance to ruin our digital one, and it was hard to tell when you had your finger in the shot!

Here's a picture I managed to take that didn't get my finger in it...

Those rocks are the end of a trail through The Baths called The Devil's Bay trail. I have pictures from inside of it, but they'll have to be put up in another post! (Bandwidth, etc...) It was a gorgeous day for a visit there, as you can see, and I enjoyed it tremendously. I think Jesse would have enjoyed it more if he hadn't gotten a sunburn a couple days before from snorkeling without putting on sunscreen first. His back was really red, poor thing!

Anyway, more to come in the future. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for bearing with us when it comes to our lack of ability to fill out thank you notes! (I don't think we're the worst offenders when it comes to this tradition, but man, we aren't the best on the list either! Sorry for the delay on them!)