Spring Break 2012!

John and I had the most amazing spring break this year.  For Christmas my parents gave us tickets to join them, and most of my family, on a cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  My middle brother, Nick, and his family wouldn't be able to join us since his wife is 8 months pregnant, but everyone else would be going.  We were so thrilled and looked forward to it for months!  My methods classes ended the day we left so I was definitely stressed and ready for a break!  We left on Friday around noon and drove to my sister in law's where we dropped off our dogs.  We owe her more than one favor for watching our crazy girls!  We arrived in Vegas around 8:30 and met up with my parents, brother Ben, sister Vanessa, baby Sebastian, and Nick's family.  It was so fun to get to see them before we headed to Mexico.  I was pretty sick by the time we arrived so I headed to bed while John, Ester and Scott went out on the town.  Since I had been so stressed, I had a mouth full of cankers that made it hard to eat/sleep/talk.  Luckily they went away after about 3 days.  Saturday we spent more time in Vegas with the family before we headed to San Diego on Sunday.

We boarded the cruise Sunday night and just relaxed.  Monday was a sea day so we enjoyed a day of relaxation and entertainment from my dad.  He did two concerts that day which was really fun for all of us. It was also formal night so John and I dressed up in our best for dinner.

Tuesday was my favorite day.  My parents signed us up for an amazing excursion!  We got up early and disembarked the ship.  We then headed to a dock where we boarded a huge boat where we spent the rest of the day drinking pina coladas, whale watched and even had a little dance party.  We saw so many whales!  We also saw a few schools of dolphins and even a shark!  The boat stopped after a couple of hours to give people a chance to snorkel.  John went and I stayed on the boat with some of the kiddos.  We then ate the most amazing Mexican meal.  When we got off the ship Ester, John and I payed some people to let us hold a baby tiger!  Her name was Luna :)  We did a little shopping after that before heading back to our ship for the night.

Wednesday was also amazing.  My parents offered to sign us up for a para-sailing excursion.  I have to admit, I was not thrilled, since my worst fear is drowning and heights come in a close second.  Anyway, I decided to sign up and go to watch John, since he didn't want to go without me.  I told everyone not to pressure me into para-sailing because I really didn't want to do it.  When we got on the boat and were out to sea the little Mexican man in charge asked who was going to go first.  John raised his hand and the man said "single or double?".  John turned to me and said "Will you go with me?".  Somehow the idea of going with him sounded much more appealing than going myself so I said okay!  I was SO scared!  They just strapped us in and in a matter of minutes we were up in the air!  I must have stopped breathing because by the time we were stable in the air I was hyperventilating.  Once I calmed down it was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.  So peaceful and beautiful (as long as I didn't look down)!  John had a blast and we would both love to do it again!  After para-sailing we did a little more shopping before heading back to the ship.

Thursday was another sea day.  My dad gave a concert that morning and John and I sang with  my siblings.  It was a lot of fun.  That afternoon the sea became extremely choppy and I got extremely sea sick.  I spent the next few hours in bed, missing my dad's afternoon concert.  John and I did make it back for the "farewell video" however, which was fun.  We ordered a copy of the pictures so hopefully I'll have a few more to post on here soon!

We disembarked Friday and spent the day walking around San Diego and visiting the Mormon Battalion museum.  We also went to see "John Carter" which was....ok.  We slept at my uncle Ned's house in Escondido that night.  Saturday morning we got up early and went to Disneyland.  It was POURING rain, and apparently one of the biggest storms of the year.  That definitely did not stop us!  We had such a fun day and got on to all of the rides fairly quickly, since there weren't too many people in the park.  Going to Disneyland together has been something John and I have wanted to do since before we got married, so we were excited!  We stayed at the park til around 10:30 and then drove through the night til we arrived home around noon on Sunday.  John was such a trooper for driving!

Overall it was one of the best weeks I've ever had.  I've been on many cruises, but it is so much more fun to finally have John with me!

Ok I have been terrible about updating this thing since school started.  I am up to my eyes in school and homework so John and I have done very little worth updating (unless you count the day I cleaned my carpets).  Anyway, yesterday was a special day.  John is in charge of Valentine's Day so he knew he'd have to plan something good.  On Monday (Feb. 13th) he went shopping and let me know that he wanted Valentine's Day to last for 24 hours this year so we needed to start celebrating that night.  I think this was a sneaky way to get me to open my gifts ;).  Anyway, he gave me some beautiful pink roses and two darling shirts.  He seriously has the best taste!  We were both busy until Wednesday evening so we didn't do anything fun til then.  He made me dinner consisting of lasagna, garlic bread, salad, sparkling cider and key lime pie for dessert!  We ate, then rented the dumbest romance movie we could think of (one of the Twilight movies), which was good for a laugh if anything.  It was so nice to just have the night to ourselves and think about how lucky we are to have each other!  I couldn't be more blessed!

14 Days of Valentines

Ok many of you probably saw this on Pinterest but I wanted to post it anyway.  I am doing "14 days of Valentines" for John this year to make our month a little more exciting.  We are both in such a rut with school and work right now, we barely have time to breathe!  Anyway, I went out tonight and got 14 little treats and will give him one each day til VDay. I've been wanting to do it for a while, but thought it would take more time than I have. Then I found this; http://www.mommybydaycrafterbynight.com/2012/01/14-days-of-valentines-free-printables.html.  I especially loved this site because it came with FREE printable tags!  Yay!  So the total process took me about 2 hours.  (Mostly because I had to go to two stores looking for "Crush" soda, which I did not find). Super cheesy but fun, especially if your hubby loves candy as much as mine does!

Finished!

Ok here is a picture of the finished product.  I made the pillows this morning.  They didn't take too long except I wanted to reuse the zippers on the old pillows so I had to unpick those.  Other than that it was smooth sailing!

Almost Done!

Ok I finally have a picture of my almost finished couch. It took a long time only because I took a 2 week Christmas break but I think it took well. I took off the old fabric, laid it on the new fabric and cut it out like a pattern. Then I stapled all of the fabric back. That only took a couple of hours. Then I had surgery and went out of town. We got back last night so my project today was the cushions. They were a little tricky since the size of the fabric had to be exact and I had never sewn a zipper by myself. But I did it! Hopefully I can get the throw pillows done tomorrow and can move on to couch #2!! Here are a couple of pictures.

Slice

Ok I have so much to update but no pictures on this device so I will post about something that doesnt require pictures. Last Monday I went in to have surgery. I will be honest I did not want to do it. For the last six months or so I've been having issues that my doctor thought were signs of endometriosis. But the only way to diagnose it is to go check things out inside. So I finally decided it was time to check things out. They made two incisions, diagnosed the endometriosis, and burned/cut it off all in one surgery. I was pretty miserable for most of the week but was glad I had cleaned the apartment before I went in. This Christmas I was thankful for good doctors and good health!

Upholstery Step Two

I'm finally ready to post a couch update after a long week of finals, preschool parties and doctors appointments. Today I spent about 7 hours removing the old fabric from the smaller of the two couches. It had about a million staples and my fingers are raw! Also, when bringing the couch into the apartment John had told me he thought there was a tennis ball inside. Much to our surprise, after removing the back fabric we found it wasn't a ball, but a potato. I don't even want to know how long it had been in there! The only way it could have gotten inside the couch is from a small whole on the underside. I'm guessing the person who owned it before had a pet ferret. Apparently they collect potatoes. Anyway, here is a picture of the couch and one of the potato!