I Heart Florida!

Many people don't know (and I did that on purpose) that we tried in vitro fertilization in March to get pregnant.  Unfortunately, it didn't work and we'll have to try again.  Not long after we started the process I started to worry how I would handle it if it didn't work, I pictured myself curled up in bed crying for months.  So I decided that if it didn't work I wanted to go on a trip, go somewhere and do something I wouldn't be able to do if I'd been pregnant.  I chose swimming with dolphins.  I've done it in Key Largo and in Jamaica and I thought it'd be great to go somewhere else in the Caribbean, but I couldn't find a place that sounded as nice as the place we'd been to in Key Largo.  And since this trip was all about me having fun, we went back to Key Largo.  We stayed in a different hotel and went to a different dolphin place and added a swim with a sea lion.  It was exactly the fun, relaxing therapy I needed. 

The first night at the hotel they had a fire on the beach with s'mores and live music - very fun

We got to hold all kinds of parrotts

This is the rarest macaw in the world!

Swimming in that beautiful water!!!!

A day trip to Key West is a must

We tried stone crabs claws - slightly bigger than blue crab claws!

I'm going to do seperate posts of the sea lion and dolphins so I can put as many pictures as possible up! We decided we really enjoy vacationing in the Florida Keys and might make it a habit, but we'd never be tempted to buy a house down there that we'd have to repair every time a hurricane hits.

100 Years Young

Next week my great grandmother will turn ONE HUNDRED! She's amazing, she lives in an assisted living center, but has her own apartment, a cat and a boyfriend.  She occasionally needs a walker, but can do just fine without it.  I'm so glad to have her genes, I hope I get to celebrate my 100th birthday! We had a party for her this past Saturday, several family members flew in from Arizona and California and it was really nice.  I really enjoyed being with my extended family who I don't get to see much and meeting a cousin for the first time.

My cooky brothers, I told at least ten trying to get a decent one and they would NOT cooperate. 

This one is cute, but not what I'd wanted.

My grandmother with her two daughters, I don't know why we didn't get a picture of her

 with all three of her kids, since they're hardly all in the same state.

Four generations!

We're only missing one girl cousin!

With the birthday girl!

Chris' 35th!

I had a lot of fun planning Chris' birthday.  I had some help getting ideas from some of the girls at work.  I started the day making his favorite breakfast muffins and giving him a new shirt and tie to wear to work.  Then I had set up a scavenger hunt to get him from work to dinner at Liberatore's.  It was only three clues and everything worked perfectly.  I also had cupcakes waiting at the restaurant.  It was a lot of fun!!!

My New Year Resolution

I don't really like making resolutions because I know I'll never keep them.  So I tend to not make them at all.  I didn't realize until today that I had kinda made one for this year.  The background - my house is filled with CRAP.  It's everywhere and sometimes I feel like it's going to swallow me or that I should be on one of those hoarder shows.  It's not that I don't try to keep things organized, but there is SO MUCH that I don't know what to do with, stuff that I should keep, but I don't know what to do with it.  It's mostly random stuff, but it drives me CRAZY.  I'm so embarassed, I feel like I can't have friends over, I feel embarassed when people randomly stop by, I hate taking pictures in the house.  Now, I know that you'll say I'm exaggerating how bad it looks, which I may be.  But the point is it bothers me.  It's such an overwhelming thing to try and organize the house, especially when my husband doesn't seem to notice or care.  So my resolution this year is to do one non-maintenance thing a day, even just a tiny one.  I classify a maintenance thing as laundry, dishes, dinner, all those things that HAVE to be done.  I only started it yesterday and my thing yesterday was gathering all the shower gels that people have given me that I never use and giving them to a friend who will use them.  It didn't take long and, cleared up some space in my bathroom and bedroom and it made my friend happy.  I haven't figured out what today's thing will be, I still have a couple more hours! I shared this goal with Chris in hopes of him joining me, but I won't hold my breath.
I decided to share it on my blog in hopes of keeping me motivated, so please feel free to check up on me and ask how I'm doing! Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve

Chris decided to try roasted chesnuts.  We didn't have an open fire, so that took some of the fun out of it.  And they weren't that great tasting, so that took the rest of the fun out of it.  But we tried something new and it felt like a good Christmas Eve thing to do.

Chris putting slits in the chesnuts so they won't explode in the oven.

The first bites! 

 You can see Cameron Diaz in the background, I was watching "The Holiday"

They were very dry, so we washed them down with coke.



That was our exciting Christmas Eve, mixed with some last minute wrapping and cleaning.  But it was really fun having the afternoon off of work and just hanging out at home.  Here's to sleeping in tomorrow, having a fun Christmas breakfast and spending the afternoon with my family!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Two of my friends have done this cute post, so I thought I would follow.  I was lazy and didn't go back further than what I had easily accessible.

Christmas 2006

The first Christmas in our new house! We had just gotten the living room furniture from my grandparents and we got to have our joint custody dog spend Christmas with us.  He always chews bones very quickly, so we thought we'd get him a super huge one that would last awhile, but I guess it was too big, he didn't want anything to do with it.

Christmas 2007

This is the picture we put on our Christmas cards that year.

Christmas 2008

We took turns taking pictures of each other opening our presents.  This was the year we both "cheated" and bought each other an iPod touch.  I hadn't remembered being able to squish a tree in that small space!

Christmas 2009

This picture isn't at Christmas, we were in Utah at the beginning of December and played around trying to get a cute Christmas card picture.  We ended up not using this one, but I think it's cute and funny.  Can you tell we're freezing??

Christmas 2010

This is the "prom" picture taken at Chris' work party.

We usually don't take a lot of pictures at Christmas because it's just the two of us and there's not much to take pictures of.  Hopefully this will be the last Christmas without any kids and then we'll take millions of pictures every year!

Turning 30

So far, I don't hate being 30.  I might change my mind after a couple months, though!  I'd spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to make my birthday fun, so that I would have fun and not focus on the fact that I'm 30 and still don't have kids.  So I took the whole week off of work, just to hang out at home.  I got a facial and got my nails done.  The on my birthday Chris and I went to New York City to see Blue Man Group.  It was pretty awesome.  It was my first time driving in the city and my first time spending the night there. Our hotel was a couple blocks from Times Square and the theater where Blue Man Group was playing was near NYU.  

Dinner at a little pizza place, complete with an Italian speaking family

Meeting one of the Blue Men after the show, which was amazing!

After the show we went outside to find a cab and there were several guys standing around with signs that said "limo available" and since we had really over estimated how much a cab would cost we went ahead and took a limo back to the hotel! I love fun random things like that!

Wednesday morning we walked around the city a little and found the LDS temple!  We also spent way too much money at the M&M World store!

Our hotel room was very Ikea-inspired and trendy.  I had reserved a king size bed and they upgraded us to a suite for no extra charge, I'm not sure why.  I didn't think about the bed until we climbed in to go to sleep.  It was a double! And with all the pillows on the bed neither of us really fit on the bed.  It was funny!

This is my little birthday shrine!