My Sister, the PhD!

I don't know what's wrong with me that it takes so long to blog things! I love blogging and I love reading other people's blog updates, so that should be enough motivation to keep up with it!
The weekend after we went to Florida my sister graduated with her PhD in History.  It's been a long road for her, being a mom, teaching, and helping with her husband's company.  I wouldn't have gone if I'd been pregnant, so in a TINY way I was glad I wasn't pregnant so I could go.  Chris and I drove up with my parents for the weekend and stayed in a hotel while my sister's mom and her husband stayed at my sister's house.  We got checked into the hotel and went to my sister's house for dinner.  While we were there a storm started and there were flash floods that washed out part of her road and started to flood her basement! We had to wait several hours before being able to get back out and we were very glad that we'd brought our SUV! Luckily the weather for the day of the graduation was perfect and everything went well.  The graduation was for all the PhD and Master students, so it was long and my sister got her diploma at the beginning, so we all got up and walked around at least once!  Then we went back to her house and had a fancy celebration dinner.  Chris and my parents and I drove back on Sunday and were back to work on Monday! It was a long drive for a quick visit, but we were all glad we got to go.

My nephew running to hug my sister after the graduation

My sister and her advisor

My sister and her family

My sister with her dad and stepmom

My nephew trying on the robe

My sister with her mom and her mom's husband (not her stepdad, though)

Cooking dinner in her hat

Jessica, Bob and Zoe

On our last day in Florida I spent about about an hour and a half swimming with dolphins, the whole point of our trip.  For half an hour I did the structured swim, where the trainer tells the dolphin to do specific behaviors with you.  I was with another girl, from England, with three dolphins - a mom, dad and ten month old baby.  The baby didn't do any of the behaviors, except for jumping, she just hung out next to her mom.  But she was awfully cute! The time went by MUCH faster than I'd remembered, but it was a lot of fun.  The dolphins were really energetic and seemed to be having lots of fun.  So here are some of my favorite pictures!

Belly rubs are always fun

I love getting dolphin kisses!  It was actually hard staying next to him

(I think this was Bob), there were other dolphins swimming and making

waves and I had to really work to stay next to him.

This was the funniest part, the foot push.  They each put their nose on one of my feet

and pushed me backwards.  When they stopped the trainer said she'd been working

with them on pushing people farther, so she wanted me to put my feet up again and

they would come back and push me again..........

As you can see, one dolphin got to me first and started pushing, before

the other one got there, so I started going in a circle.......

So here comes the other dolphin, trying to reach my foot........

I tried so hard to help them out, but one dolphin was still pushing

and the other dolphin was almost in front, so I'm bending my knee trying to

get my foot on his/her nose.  It was quite funny and the trainer finally

let us give up!

Jessica dancing with me!

Bob bringing me a hoop.

Poor Jessica, I had a lot of trouble holding up a pretty heavy

hoop while treading water.  I was supposed to hold it OUT of the

water so that she could jump UP and through it, instead she had to

kind of jump vertically, poor thing.  She was a good sport about it, though.

This was my favorite part, getting kissed by both dolphins, I got to

pet their chins while they were there.  I loved it.

I got a face FULL of saltwater as they pulled me, they pulled so fast!

I was amazed they didn't crash me into the wall.

Here's the little baby, Zoe, jumping with her parents.  Obviously she can't

jump as high as them yet, but it was very cute to see them all jump together.



Mimi the Sea Lion

I didn't think it would take me this long to get around to posting more pictures, but alas life happened.  When planning this weekend, even though the whole point of it was to swim with dolphins, I wanted to make it extra fabulous and fun, hoping that soon I'd be pregnant and not able to do any of these things.  I thought swimming with a sea lion would be pretty cool and different and I actually had to talk Chris into doing it! We ended up being the only two in the water with 168lb sea lion, Mimi.  She was very sweet and lots of fun.  It was quite different that swimming with a dolphin, a little more relaxed, and dare I say, almost more fun.  With the dolphins, you hang out treading water and wait for the trainer to tell the dolphin to come to you and do whatever behavior.  With the sea lion, we were standing and she was hanging out right next to us the whole time and interacted more with us.  We did the typical hugs and kisses, but a couple of the more fun things we did were swimming around the enclosure with her and "holding" her in the water.  She was cute while we were swimming, if she got too far ahead of us she would look back to make sure we were still there.  And my FAVORITE part of the time with her was at the end, we were still in the water and just kind of chatting with the trainer, she was hanging out next to me and randomly gave me a hug, it was so cute! There's not a picture of it, unfortunately, but it made my day.  So here are a bunch of pictures of us with her, I don't think many of them are very good of me, which I'm sad about, but there were a couple I liked.

This one is hilarious - Chris looks like he's stalking her!

Here's one of her "checking" on Chris, so cute!

This is me doing the command for "say cheese!"

Chris telling her to do her shark impression

"Holding" her

My favorite picture

She was just told to hug Chris, but she wouldn't stop kissing him!

Then the trainer told had her kiss him on the lips, he had to

wash his mouth before kissing me again!

This is her hug - basically just putting her flippers on us, but still cute.

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!