Happy New Year!!

Yes, it is New Year's Eve 2008 at 9:50pm and I have decided that I would finally update my blog! What party animals we are this New Year's Eve huh? I know that it has been almost 4 months since I have updated, but I am trying to stay awake until midnight, and this should do the trick.

I think that I will go ahead and give you a rundown of everything that has happened since September, sparing you all the pictures to make it shorter. So let's see...there was Halloween, didn't really do anything except decorate the house to make it scary and passed out candy to the Trick or Treaters. In November we went up to Utah for one of Eric's cousins wedding. While we were there I got to see by best friend that I grew up with that I haven't seen since our wedding and that was great!!!! It's always nice to remember the "good old days" and tell stories from the past. In fact she is planning on coming down here for her birthday in May, can't wait for that! We also got to spend some time with Ryan, Brittany and the kids while we were there and that is always a good time. Then there was Thanksgiving which we spent with Eric's parents this year. It was great! Ryan, Brittany and the kids came down, I made an apple pie, we played games, ate tons of yummy food and hung out. Oh, and during the week of Thanksgiving I finally decided to join the Twilight world. I started reading the first book the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and had all four of them finished by the next Thursday!! I was completely hooked by the first chapter of "Twilight" and once I finished them all I wondered why I hadn't read them sooner. In fact I have read all four of the books twice now, and still can't get enough! Thanksgiving weekend I went and saw the movie and LOVED it!!!! And I have seen it again since then. Now I will sit and wait until the DVD comes out (I think in March) and then I will wait until November 20th, 2009 when "New Moon" comes out in theaters. YAY!! =) Can't wait!!!!!!!!!!

And then we come to Christmas...Ryan, Brittany and kids came down and we spent the time with Eric's family. We went out to dinner on Christmas Eve for our traditional Mexican food! YUMMY!!!! Then we went to Ethel M to look at the lights, they were pretty but it really was too cold to look for too long. After that we all went back to Eric's parents house to open gifts. It is so fun to watch the kids open their gifts. I think Dax was more excited about tearing off the wrapping paper most of the time, but once he figured out what was inside he started to get the hang of it. Then Eric and I went to my brothers house to open the gifts that my mom had left for us (she was out of town) and to both our surprise this is what we found in the box...A Nikon D60 digital camera! AWESOME!! Eric spent all day playing with it and ended up annoying all of us, oh well, that's Eric.

Then we ended the night by sleeping over at Michelle and Eddy's. It was too far to drive home and come back in the morning. We got to watch Dax open his presents from Santa on Christmas morning...he was so cute! And then we went to Eric's parents house for their traditional Christmas morning breakfast. This was the first year for me to join in on the breakfast and Eric's first year after getting married. It was so yummy....especially the bacon! ;) Then it was time to sit around and veg. We played games, Eddy got the new Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas so you know we all had to play that!! It was a great Christmas and I am very thankful for each and every part of it.

And now it is New Year's Eve and is now 10:36pm and soon 2008 will be behind us and I couldn't be happier for that! I am hoping that 2009 will bring good things for all of us and with that said....HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

#1 Blog Slacker

I'm baaaack!!

So I know I have been the all time #1 blog slacker lately, so I am making up for it right now. Be prepared for a MAJOR photo over load as I catch you up on all that has been happening with us since July...

Eric and I took a short, get away from it all, one nighter, camping trip and while we were there we saw Tina the Llama

We went on a 3 night camping trip for Labor Day weekend with Michelle, Eddy, Dax, Ryan Brittany, Ashton, Annika and Chris. We went up to Utah near Panguitch and had a nice spot near the creek. Everyone took a turn at fishing and caught quite a few, but we released them all but one. Ryan kept one of his and decided to cook it. Well, he cooked it and no one including him ate it. Eric caught the snake that was under Ryan & Brittany's tent and thankfully we never saw another one. It was a good trip with everyone and I can't wait until we can all do it again!

We finally got a new bedroom set for our room!! We upgraded from a queen platform bed to a king double pillow top super comfy bed!! It is so nice and WAY more comfortable then our other bed! So now we will try to sell our old one so we can have our spare room empty again.

And here are the pictures of the remodeled quest bathroom that seem like it has taken me a year to post. But here they are and I couldn't be more happy with the way it all turned out, Sometimes I just use that bathroom to get ready in instead of ours just to enjoy it. Can't wait until we can do ours!!

And finally we come to my birthday!!!! It was on the 19th and Eric took me out for a fun-filled night. He started off by suprising me with a room at the Venetian, my favorite hotel on the strip! The room was beautiful and it had a good view! Then we went to Ceasar's Palace for dinner with friends and family at Bobby Flay's restaurant Mesa Grill. Very good food, a little different in the way the flavors are combined but VERY good!! I got a platter of all kinds of different desserts with a candle in each one. From there we went to the Palazzo (my second favorite hotel on the strip) and then back to Ceasar's and then it was off to bed. And then the day after my birthday we went to Cafe Rio for lunch, yummy! (much better than Chipotle...shhhh) Then we went to my parents house for my birthday dinner with them. Good weekend!

I had a GREAT birthday, thanks Eric!

That is pretty much everything that has happened lately, oh and we FINALLY got our replacement screens for our big screen that broke when we first moved into our house. What was it like 2 years ago I think? Well, we finally got them and Eric is putting them in as I type. That is really it for now. I have to say though that I am so excited that the weather is starting to cool down, but we have to make a couple more camping trips before it gets too cold. Who's coming? I am excited for the holidays that are rapidly approaching (can you believe that next month is Halloween?), I am excited to be able to get out all of our decorations and decorate the house. **Pause** I am going to get cheesy for a moment so prepare yourselves......Why do I like the holidays and get so excited about them when most people dread them? Well, maybe because it seems that it is the one time out of the year where the house feels warm and cozy, it always smells of cinnamon, cookies, turkey or what have you. There is just that feeling that you get when you walk in the door and the pumpkins are out, or the fall flowers are on the table, or the christmas tree is up and the lights are on the house that I just feel comforted and that my house is really a home. Its the time of year where you get together with your families and nothing else seems to matter but that your together and you get to make and eat those recipes you've had every year but for some reason they just seem to get better with time. So yes there is the hustle and caios of the shopping that will soon be starting, but that is only the half of it.

So I know most of you are probably rolling of the floor laughing or thinking that I have become the cheesiest person you might possibly know now, but I have to say that I feel a lot better now!

Vacation Part II

As you all saw below Eric and I had a week of vacation and the first half we went camping and then second we got to do what I wanted. Well, I told Eric I wanted to go to California; I didn't care where I just wanted to go. Of course I gave him a couple of ideas in the beginning and then when it came time to plan it he said not worry he had everything planned. I thought ok cool where are we going? Well, he wouldn't tell me and left it a surprise. He ended up surprising me with a trip to Catalina Island. Neither one of had ever been there before, so he thought it would be fun to check it out. It was great, the weather was perfect (in the mid 80's), our hotel was beautiful and there was tons of shopping!! Thanks Eric for a great trip!!

Here is the boat we took from Long Beach to Catalina and back

On the ship to Catalina (nice hair right?)

Here is the view from the balcony of our room

We even had turn down service and they put chocolates on our pillows

We rented a golf cart and took a ride around town, this was the view from the top of the moutain we drove up

This is a house owned by the Wrigley family, the same people that own Wrigley chewing gum, and Wrigley Stadium

Here I am pretending to drive our golf cart because I wasn't allowd to drive it because you have to be 25. How sad is that?

Eric in front of the "famous" casino

And here we are at the top of the mountain overlooking Catalina

We got home on Thursday night and on Friday night Eric's cousin Michael and his wife Kelli arrived to stay with us for the weekend. We had so much fun with them, they are so fun to hang out with and Eric and Michael are so much alike it's scary! We all agreed that they are twins that got separated at birth. They were the first guests that have stayed in our house and the first ones to use to new bathroom (I will post pics of the bathroom soon). While they were here we did lots of shopping at the outlet mall downtown, and of course had to vistit the COACH outlet!! We went to the strip and saw all the newer casinos, had a nice dinner, went to the strip some more, ate at Grand Luxe Cafe (yummy), got to see a $170,000.00 cell phone that we all agreed was a little much but Kelli and I decided we would settle for the $75,000.00 one, and we even got to visit with Ryan, Brittany and kids while they were here. Thanks guys for coming!

Ok, so here we are at Grand Luxe Cafe and Eric had this "brilliant" idea that we should all do "sugar shots" to keep us all awake. Basically you take a packet of sugar (in this case it was Sugar on the Raw) and eat the whole thing all at once. Well, it was really gross, and I don't think it helped to keep up our energy since none of us felt an energy boost.

Here We Go!

Well, are you ready for one big post?? Prepare yourselves it will be long and full of pictures...

Eric and I were off this past week for our yearly week of vacation and it was decided that we would split it in two and the first half we would do what he wanted and the second half we would do what I wanted. So the first three days we went camping up in Zion National Park in Utah at Kolob Resevoir. It was perfect weather, luckily all the rain happened before we got there, we were right next to the water and we had our own little spot that no one else could drive through. We took the two dogs with us and they loved it! They were in the water everytime we turned around and Eric even ended up in there too. We did all dutch oven cooking, we did biscuits and gravy, chili and corn bread and breakfast burritos. It was great and such a pretty spot. Here are some pictures...

This is the road that people would keep trying to drive through and they would end up getting stuck. Honestly would you look at this and think you could make it in a mini van or a little Kia? We ended up having to pull one guy our with Eric's truck.

This is Eric jumping in the lake to go get the freesbie for the dogs, he threw it too far for them to swim out and get, so he decided to jump in and get then the dogs decided that they had to follow...(there's no sound but you can still watch it)

On the second to last day we went up to Camp Del Webb (the scout camp that Eric use to work at during the summer). Eric wanted to go say hi and check things out since we were only about 20 min down the mountain. So we went up and ended up getting taken on about a 2 hour tour of the whole camp. It was a lot of fun and it was really pretty, and we even got taste some fresh mountain spring water...

I'm Working On It...

Ok so I know I have been slacking on posting lately. I really have no good excuse except that I forget our camera everywhere we go including the 4 birthday parties we have been to this month, ya no pictures from those! Plus I have a new job now where we are not allowd to use the internet for personal use and I usually forget about posting when I'm at home, so I guess that shows that I'm real busy at work huh? So let me just catch everyone up on what's been going on with us lately, not much really so be prepared to be bored. Let's start with memorial day weekend because that's about as far back as I can remember at this point. So went out to the lake for our annual first trip of the year, we went out on Friday with Eddy, Michelle, Dax, Ken, Chris and then we were joined later on Saturday by Ryan, Brittany, Annika, Ashton, Marianne, mike, Kathy, my parents and anyone I might of forgot well you know you were there. Anywho, the weather was a little ugly but we all had a lot fun and Eric did the cooking so it was yummy even the "3 hour stew"ha ha ha! Then we went to a birthday for our friends little girl who turned 3. It was in the park and was a lot of fun. Then I went to one of really good friends little girls b-day party who turned 1 and three days later it was my niece Aundraya's 5th b-day party, and then this past Saturday was Dax's 1st bday party which was great!! There was a jumper, food, cupcakes and even cake in the face...those of you who know him will have to ask Eddy about that one. Ha ha ha! Other than all of that there was Father's Day this past Sunday which turned out good and I hope everyone had a good time. And after all the craziness Eric and I have decided t go up to Mt. Charleston this weekend to camp for the night to get away from it all and I promise I will bring the camera with us so that I can post the pictures. Oh, ya on a side note...I am posting this using my cell phone since I can't use the computer!!

I Have Curtains

I am so happy to say that I finally have curtains in our living room!! I got them last weekend when JC Penny was having a huge sale. I am still playing with them a bit to get them just right but here they are...

Remodel

As promised here some pictures of bathroom remodel. I don't have any of the finished product because it isn't quite finished yet, but here are a few of the process...

Here is a before picture of the vanity

Here is a before picture of the shower/tub area..."safety first guys, safety first"

Let the demo begin

And "ta da" here is the new vanity top...isn't it pretty?

Well, that is it for now. I will post the rest later when it gets done.