Ohio Trip

Jeff and I got to go back to Ohio to spend time with family, but more importantly, see my cousin get married. It was SO great to see everyone, I just can't get enough of Ohio!! Nothing like being at Grandma and Grandpa's beautiful house with all of us together. We don't get the chance to see each other a lot but when we do, it is so much fun. Plus, I laugh a lot!!

It was a little crazy the first night as storms delayed my brother and sister-in-law in Chicago. There's a joke now that if you want to go anywhere, don't travel with my sister-in-law. For some reason, when she travels there is always something that goes wrong and it typically is delayed or cancelled flights. This vacation was no different as there flight was cancelled coming into Ohio and flying back home (there flight was cancelled keeping them in Denver for the night). Anyways, there was a huge storm in Ohio the night we got in. All night long we listened to rain and thunder and saw tons of lightning.

I apologize in advance for all the pictures :). Here's a few pictures of G and G's house:

The front of the house

The pond, looking toward their neighbors house

The good ol' tire swing

The backside of the house

Just part of the backyard

Some pics of the wedding:

The happy couple

The wedding cupcakes

Jeff and I (one of the MANY weddings we've been to in the last year)

Before the wedding, my brother wanted to visit a few grave sites of my Grandma's family...since he hadn't been in awhile. This particular grave site is my Grandma's brother who fought in World War II. He died about 2 weeks after his 20th birthday.

So, my cousin's daughter Ava is super cute and is a Buckeye fan in training. Seriously, every time she comes in the house, she seeks out Brutus the Buckeye. This one plays music, which she just loves to the point that she cries when it stops. Oh, and the family is training her on giving Brutus a high five and kissing Brutus the Buckeye...which she does. We're so proud!!

What can I say.....priceless!

One Word.....SICK!!!!

So, I was finishing the last post about Arizona and I walked into the bathroom to see this!!! What the heck is this? This is sick! Jeff's got a mustache?!?! Or "pimpstache" as he calls it.

So, I guess he's actually going to go out in public like this. No pleading is going to change that apparently...I've tried. Soooo, hope you all enjoy!!

Mom turns 60!!!

We recently just got back from a surprise trip to Arizona. Surprise....for my mom, that is. It was my mom's 60th birthday, so Jeff and I flew out there to surprise her. Friday night, my brother, sister-in-law, Jeff and I drove to pick her up. She knew nothing of what was going on. So when she opened the car door, she was excited to see Jeff and I. We then drove to a murder mystery dinner theatre, which was a little shady, but fun. We each got characters; I was Mona Ballad, my brother was Hugh Mongous, Jeff was Lou Zerr and I can't remember what my mom and Barby were. Anyways, Jeff was the only "lucky" one to go up on stage. The rest of the trip was very relaxing; filled with swimming, movie watching, Mother's Day dinner making, and a little bowling. I of course had the higher score for both games against Jeff :).... It's always fun to get to see the family...I don't get to do that much.

I know, I know....

I am WAY behind on updating the blog (obviously) and I guess I don't have good excuses. But, now that the camera is found I will try to update it as often as I can. It may not be as interesting as others since we don't have any cute kids of our own running around...but Jeff and I are still cute, so I'll try to put up more posts. :)

Do you ever have one of those nights?.....

Those nights where you go to bed early but still take forever to go to sleep cause you're thinking about your day (what you did, what you still need to do, etc., etc.)? Then you get frustrated because you're not falling asleep yet you should be asleep. Well, that's a typical night for me but this one was a little different.

I finally fell asleep around midnight but woke up to a loud noise 15 minutes later along with a very bright light coming into the bedroom window. Now, i'm fairly used to the search helicopter flying around and shining it's bright lights, after all I went to school in Riverside. :) This was almost an every night occurrence there, so I wasn't immediately alarmed. Once I came to, I heard some more noises beneath our window, not to mention a few cuss words followed by fast cars screeching into our alley. When I got up to look, I saw 4 cop cars with 8 police....as the search helicopter slipped away in the night after locating the men who tried to steal a car.

Apparently, after straining to hear the cops talk...outside our window...a neighbor saw the men and called the police. The men went running and chose to hide down our alley. Such a safe feeling! Not sure how many guys, but definitely more than one. And I'm not sure whose car they were trying to steal but all I could think about was how these men were outside our window and being pushed up against our garage to be handcuffed. The night before, a car alarm went off twice, sounding it's alarm FOREVER at 4:00 in the morning. Hmmm....I wonder if there's any connection. I thought I moved away from the IE...

Poor Jeff missed all the action...didn't see the bright lights or hear the loud noises. He woke up when I got up to check to see if all our windows were shut and locked. Needless to say, it now took me even longer to fall asleep and I was a little tired teaching the next day.

I guess it could have been worse, I could have waken up, not fully cloathed to the S.W.A.T team banging down our door with guns pointing at me insisting I was someone I wasn't. Right Nathan and Kristy?

The Mission Inn!!

Some of you know that a few things went wrong at our wedding :( so we got a few things in return for some of those mistakes. The Mission Inn gave us an expensive Sunday brunch, along with an overnight stay for free for the two of us and a 50 minute massage of our choice. So, we thought it was a good time to go a couple of weeks ago, as it was our 6 month anniversary and Jeff's birthday. I can't believe it's been 6 months already!! And they've been a great 6 months! When we got there, they had informed us that they upgraded us to a Presidential suite, which was nice. I included some pictures of it which was a 2 story hotel room, with a big porch overlooking the courtyard. The two story was nice but somewhat annoying as the bathroom was downstairs and the stairs were steep so forget about any middle of the night bathroom trips.

We walked around on Friday night taking more pics of the beautiful hotel, as well as going to the courtyard where we got married. Saturday was the massage at Kelly's Spa at the hotel which is soooo nice. The massage was great and relaxing and well worth it! Nothing like a nice free massage!

It's New Years....and it's almost February!

So I was told by my brother-in-law that I need to update my post...and seeing that my last one was before Christmas, I guess it's about time. So here goes.

It's becoming a tradition for Kristy, her parents and I to decorate the floats for the Rose Parade. Ever since I was little I have always wanted to volunteer and decorate but just never did until recently. This was my second year and I already feel like a "pro." It's really fun and would love to continue the tradition for years to come. We did a lot this year which included some persistence on my part as our float manager doesn't always seem to be on top of it. :)

This year, our main float was the Manger scene; which included putting in carnation flowers all over. (Note to self: must bring gloves for next year, who knew poking carnation flowers into the float could hurt so bad). We worked a little bit on the silver leaf portion of another float (the submarine), as well as tacking on Christmas tree pieces on the back of the gigantic Indian float (for those of you that saw it this year).

I look forward to the many years to volunteer for the beautiful parade...who knows, as Kristy says, I should be the next float manager. :)