About Us

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The purpose of our blog is to share our journey through life with family and friends while we leave our mark on this world. Our 20's have been very kind to us and as we enter the 30's we are hoping to continue to enjoy our time in this thing we call life. I should have called this blog "Traveling through Life".

Monday, December 24, 2012

Antigua

This vacation couldn't have come at a better time. We have both been really busy and stressed with work lately and we were ready for some time off. I went there with the intentions of relaxing 100% of the time and not worrying about a thing.

Antigua was beautiful and the weather was perfect. We were beach bums every day which is not typical for us but it felt so right at the time. We kayaked in the ocean which was pretty awesome. We were able to see other islands from the beach and kayaking with the scenery made it feel like we were in a dream.







We are usually asked if we would go back to a place we haved vacationed and my answer is always no because we always like to go somewhere different (except Italy though, would love to go back). I would recommend it to someone though. The flight was pretty expensive and almost as much as flying to Europe so save money on a middle of the road resort. We didn't go for the resort.....we went for the beach and it was absolutely worth it.

At the end of the vacation per our usual routine we started discussing our next destination. Hopefully 2013 will be another big travel year for us.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Toes in the Sand

Finally! I decided almost a year ago that for my big 3-0 birthday that I wanted to go somewhere warm and lay on a beach. I'm having a hard time with 30 approaching and I kind of wanted to skip the day and there is no better place to forget things than in paradise. It also works out that my birthday falls during my least favorite climate so it is a perfect time to go away and celebrate.

It tooks us a long time to decide but in 3 weeks we are going to Antigua. It's a little island in the line of southern caribbean islands. They average 85 degrees in the middle of December......yes please!!!



And we are staying on the west coast of the island (my favorite side for the sunsets).


Here's to another stamp on our passport!

Monday, September 3, 2012

For the Love of the Dog

I guess there was one more homemade thing I wanted to try this weekend. I hate buying dog treats at the store just because they seem so expensive at the time of purchase. We have a large dog so we buy a lot of them.  My dog gets at least one dog treat every morning so he will forget that we are leaving him to go to work. It was my way of training him that it is good for us to leave him for a while and I have been doing this for years. It helped with his separation anxiety and he stopped tearing up random papers and books!
I found a couple easy recipes that I like and picked out the ingrediants I wanted. These were really easy.They add a lot of stuff to dog treats so they will keep for a long time so these homemade ones will need to be used in 3 weeks but I don't think that will be a problem for Cody. They received his approval already.
I used this recipe but used 2 1/2 cups all wheat flour and 1/2 cup of oats.Dog Treats
 
 
 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Long Rainy Weekend = Kitchen Time

This long weekend was going to be used to paint our garage door because it is the one thing we have neglected on our house. The weather ruined our plans though and when I heard how often it was going to rain I planned to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. We have produce that needed to be used and a lot of cooking ahead I've been wanting to do. Our freezer is now full of the following:
  • 7 bags of cooked black beans. We use a lot of beans in this house and buying and cooking in bulk did save us a little money but not as much as I thought. However the amount of sodium it is cutting out of our diet makes it worth it.
  • Homemade pizza dough. Every friday this summer has become homemade pizza night but I have yet to make my own dough. I've been using the Jiffy mix and spicing it up. I'm pretty proud of the dough in my freezer now.
  • 3 loaves of strawberry banana bread. I love baking, especially breads and this is delicious. I made so much because I initially had a freezer full of bananas. I used this recipe and modified it a bit.Strawberry Banana Bread
  • Veggie burgers made from scratch. We eat a lot of these but I never think to make a lot of them and freeze them for a quick dinner.
A big bowl of Tomato and Feta Salad is in the fridge. Our garden hasn't been the greatest this year but we do have a ton of tomatoes. I will probably add basil to this because our basil plants have also survived the drought. I use cherry tomatoes for this or even grape tomatoes sliced in half. Drizzle olive oil on the tomatoes and top with feta cheese. Delicious!

Last night we made a big Italian feast. Homemade Gnocchi and homemade white sauce and we polished off a big bottle of vino.

Needless to say the kitchen has been a wreck all weekend but I'm hoping to give it a rest tomorrow.
I wish I had one full day a week to do this amount of cooking because I really do enjoy it when I have nothing else planned.

(Shout out to G-ma b/c I know you are reading!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sunday, June 17, 2012

One Tough Mudder

After months of training Matt lived through Tough Mudder! It was 12 miles of 25 military style obstacles. Thankfully we left with only minor scrapes and bruises.







At this point they were only through the 4th obstacle and had a few hours ahead of them still.




This is the finish line where everyone got shocked when they ran through. A lot of people fell to their knees after getting shocked but not my husband. He ran through this like a champ.


Today he feels great so he must have trained properly for this.

I think we have a summer of races on our hands................Triathlon and Warrior Dash in the works.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Ireland in Pictures

 Our trip to Ireland was wonderful and it is another beautiful place in Europe to visit. It was as green, friendly, and rainy as they say it is. The scenery was spectacular and very humbling. We are so glad we chose to conquer Ireland on our own because it was much easier than Italy would have been. I will try to summarize our time there in photos but like I always say....they just don't do the justice Ireland deserves.


There were a lot of pubs.....

A lot of beer drinking......

A lot of tea time, scones and B & B's......

A lot of castles.......


A lot of driving in this small car on the right side and left side of the road.....by day 2 it was easy.


A lot of scenery...best part of the trip

And a lot of "taking it all in".... every day we had to remind ourselves that we were in Ireland. This was another trip that made us feel like a very small piece in a very large puzzle.

Every time we travel we have very deep conversations about the rest of the world and where we would like to go next. This was another opportunity for us to grow culturally and realize that there is a whole big world out there and the American way is not the only way. We love America but we also love to expand our horizons. In Ireland we crossed paths from people all over the world, mainly from Europe but this is what I love about traveling the most. At any given moment we were surrounded by so many languages that I wished I knew them all.

I can't wait to see what journey we can think of next.....I'm feeling the tropics calling my name.

(If you want to see all of the photos leave your e-mail address in the comments)

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Cabinets

Our kitchen cabinets are for the most part finished. We are waiting on more hinges and knobs to get in and we can finish the rest of the doors. It felt really nice getting the kitchen put back together this weekend although we did get use to having the doors off for easy access.

So here is the before pic again......


And here is the transformation!


We went back and forth over our options before doing this:
  • New custom cabinets $10,000- more than we were willing to spend at this house
  • New pre-fabbed cabinets $2,000- still more than we wanted to spend on cabinets at this house
  • Sand and stain ourselves- we attempted this but the grain of our wood made it look like Tiger stripes when we applied the stain and that would drive us nuts
  • Then Matt heard about Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformations. After reading several things on it and finding out if would only cost us $120 to do our whole kitchen we were sold.

This is a kit you buy at the store and it's like painting your cabinets but they look stained and you can still see the wood grain. After we tested on the first door we knew this was the most logical thing for us. You leave all of the cabinets on the wall and just remove the doors....therefore our kitchen was still fully functional. It can probably be done over two weekends as there is a lot of drying time in between. Also it takes a lot of patience and a steady painting hand.

Now that the cabinets are done we are going to start thinking countertops, backsplashes, and paint.

Oh and I really hate my WHITE stove now!

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Top of the Morning!

We are going to this beautiful place in May! I was hoping to announce the news on St. Patty's day but we were really dragging our feet with making plans but it's official now.

We are going to Ireland for 10 days and doing it on our own this time, no fancy travel group to fall back on. We still have a lot to plan but at least the flights are finally booked.



Photograph by Jim Richardson/National Geographic Stock

Monday, February 20, 2012

First

Here are some pics I was able to get of the kids at Carmen's First Birthday party. Happy President's Day......I'm going to enjoy my day off now :)






Saturday, February 18, 2012

Random

Random thoughts from today:

  • We got moving very early this morning so we are accomplishing a lot of things.
  • We have gone back and forth on kitchen ideas but are finally diving in today.
  • It makes me sick how fast money can be spent.....45 mintues of work = $600 for new tires.
  • I am soooooooooo ready for summer to be here.
  • We are going to our youngest niece's first birthday party tomorrow. It makes me sad that there are no more itty bitty babies around. They have all grown up too fast. Attention sis-in-laws......we need another baby in this family :)
  • Ok I need to keep moving before my energy levels crash.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Under Construction

It's been really quiet around here lately, just how we have been wanting it. We pretty much spent the month of January laying low and getting some R & R on the weekends. We planned on jumping in to our next house project but some unexpected truck expenses and new car tires had me hold off for a while. After evaluating the financial situation we are good to go and are starting our kitchen remodel. This will be our biggest and most expensive undertaking which is why we are doing it last. It will take several weeks as it will happen in phases. The cabinets are up first. I know they look fine in the below photo but they are very worn and starting to show their age. This will not be a major overhaul that involves redesigning, just a kitchen update. The appliances will stay for a while longer because they work perfectly fine. Although they do not match I don't plan on buying new ones until we put this house up for sale. Oh besides the fridge seen below. We did have to buy a new fridge last fall because our old one was on the outs.


Good-bye kitchen. Please come back to me soon!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Viva Las Vegas

My best friend turned 30 this week and she wanted to celebrate by going to Las Vegas. We discussed this trip a year ago and I'm glad we were still able to go and embrace 30 with a big party. We walked around and saw the sights, lost our money gambling, but most importantly had a great time visiting with each other. I went to Vegas when I was 14 but wasn't able to do much and only have small memories of it. I had a blast playing the slots with Sara and laughing at each other when we got excited about winning a couple dollars. The boys played the tables but were unsuccessful in making us rich :(


The Strip

Our Hotel




Inside the Venetian
I was amazed at all of the different hotels and how they represented different places like New York New York, Paris, Ceaser's Palace, or my favorite, The Venetian.
The Venetian did a great job of reproducing Venice, Italy. The outside architecture was great, the ambiance inside with the Grand Canal and gondolas was romantic, and the italian food and gelato was delicious.

Ceaser's Palace

The Stratosphere

View from the Stratopshere

Happy 30th Birthday!