Honeymoon Part 4: For Every Sunset, The Sun Also Rises

After our crazy-early wake up call of 1:00 AM, our nap-less bodies were ready for some more action. Sunset dinner and cocktail cruise, it is! I won't go into many details, but the cruise wasn't exactly what we were expecting. Like, we thought we would be sitting down at tables and relaxing at the sun set. In reality, it was balancing our plates of ribs in our laps while trying stay warm as the chilly breeze blew around us.

Okay, that's not fair. It really was nice. It was nice to have a prepared meal since we could still barely afford one. It was nice to spend the time with each other. And it was nice to relax and watch the sunset, which ended up being worth the cold breeze.

The sky ended up turning an amazing array of pinks and oranges, and it was one of the most beautiful sunsets we saw the whole time. I would have taken more pictures of it, but we only had the tiniest bit of battery left on my camera, so I was trying to chill out on my camera usage. Besides, it was one of the first times in over 24 hours that I felt like i didn't have a care in the world. Brian and I were pointing out shapes and animals in the clouds and I felt so incredibly in love.

Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel. We had just laid down when the phone rang. We were both suspicious. It was already after 9pm local time. Anyone that would have called us from home would have been fast asleep- especially on a Thursday night. So we let it go to voice mail.

Low and behold, it was an officer from the Maui Police Department calling to let us know that some of our belongings were recovered and to call him back as soon as possible. We were both pretty skeptical. The "officer" sounded very unsure of himself and even sounded like he forgot the Maui PD phone number. But as we discussed whether or not this might be legit, my mom also called us to tell us that this same officer had called their house. I checked the phone number, and sure enough, the number he gave my mom and managed to half-way sputter out to us was in fact the Maui PD phone number. Long story short, they had my phone, Brian's camera, and Brian's kindle. More story short, I was excited that we would get all of our pictures back (APRIL FOOLS ON ME- he had deleted everything), Brian was slightly bitter (sorry babe, it's true) that all I was worried about were my pictures when at least I had my phone back, and the bastard tried to get on Facebook with my phone (his email address was still in it- idiot). All we were told is that a suspicious vehicle was pulled over and he had those items and some other iphones and bags in his possession. All I know from his Facebook is his name, his email address, his hometown (Paia, Maui, in case you were wondering) , and that he is a fan of Cheech and Chong.

***EDIT*** Since we've been back, we both got letters in the mail saying that he is being arraigned and we can fill out some paper work to try to get him to pay us back the value of everything he stole (if he hasn't spent all of his money on crack can afford it, that is.) Oh, and we can also have him write us letters of apology... that alone might be worth it.

Honeymoon Part 3: Pump the Brakes!

If you've been following along during parts 1 and 2 of the Honeymoon Saga, you'll remember that Brian and I made a conscious effort to continue to have fun on our trip, despite having our money, IDs, phones, and camera stolen. One of the activities that we had already paid for was a bike ride down Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui.

I had been wanting to do this ever since I first heard about it, about 4 or 5 years ago. Brian agreed to take on the challenge with me, despite the wake up call of 1:00 AM. If we hadn't already booked and paid for it, I'm not sure that both of us would have still wanted to be startled by an alarm just a measly 12 hours after being robbed, but Brian was definitely a trooper, and we bounced out of bed, ready to make this island our bitch.

Now, you might be thinking, "Kristen, you sucker, the sun does not rise at 1:00 am in Maui!" And you would be correct. This is what that morning looked like:
1:00-1:30 = Get up, get dressed, get on the road
1:30-2:45 = Drive from the west si-eeeeeede of the island to the middle-ish base of Haleakala
2:45-3:00 = Wait in the parking lot with a bunch of other crazy mainlanders
3:00-3:45 = Check in and get fitted for bikes and warm weather gear.
      *Side note: We were the second ones to finish signing our waivers that we will probably die or at the very least inflict serious bodily harm on ourselves as we rode speeding, run-away bikes down the blind curves of a volcano on a 2 lane highway where the locals have no regard for the rules of the road. However, the douchebag accepting the waivers Bill wouldn't take ours because we didn't have a credit card to give him as a deposit or to purchase insurance. I told him all of our stuff was stolen and even offered to show him our police report number for him to record, but he just said to wait off to the side and he would let us know if we would be able to participate. I was MAD... nobody wakes me up at 1:00 in the morning for no reason! So we waited around for the better part of an hour, and then realized that we wouldn't need a credit card- we only had to purchase the stupid insurance for $3.95 each. So we put those purchases on one of those life-saving credit card gift cards.
3:45-4:45ish = driving up the volcano on a tour bus with a silly, dope-smoking, mullet-wearing Hawaiian brah named Brian C. (LOL) He kept talking to me because I was either the only one still awake, or the only one to give a shit.

Some cool highlights- I saw a deer on the side of the road. (Apparently Maui is way over run by deer. No natural enemies on the island and Hawaiians are "more about Aloha than guns.") Brian C. told me I had a good eye and warned the other Brian C. that he better be careful because I must always be watching him... yeah... Anyway, we also saw a white rainbow, which was creepy and awesome all at the same time.

Not the one we saw, but you get the idea...

White rainbows are awesome- they appear at night (or reealllly f*cking early in the morning) and are created by the light from the moon, so they're really faint and colorless. They're like ghost rainbows. You're not even sure if you're really seeing it, like you're eyes are playing tricks on you. It's really cool, and apparently very rare, so we were pretty lucky!

Anyway, we pulled up to the top of Haleakala right as the sun was starting to turn orange. And it was freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing.

  This is the self portrait that I attempted with my beat up camera (which was the only camera we had- I had ironically left it at the hotel the day before because the battery was about to die and it sucks, so I didn't want to have the extra weight). See the weird shadow across the top of my head? Not sure why that's there... Then a nice girl offered to take our picture, so we got this one:

This whole time, I was afraid my camera would die, but I snapped away, as many pictures as I could...

Finally, the sun came all the way up, but Brian finally agreed to put his warm weather gear on. And we took another picture...

Self portraits are not my strong point... 
Anyway, since the sun was up, we were on top of a volcano, and my camera was still chugging along, we had Brian C. take a few more pictures of us up there...

 And then it was time to descend... Our only warnings were to stay as far to the right as possible, and when you squeeze your hand brakes, squeeze both at the same time, or you will flip over your handle bars. Schweet.

This bike ride was scary! You're basically gripping the brakes the entire time, which isn't easy when your hands are frozen. Even when the road felt flat, as soon as you let up, your bike takes off! Cars are constantly passing you and there's no bike lane or anything civilized like that. Every time you hit a bump in the road, you're pretty sure it's asphalt for breakfast. And then some little fat 12 year old flies past you and makes you feel like a loser.


I exaggerate... but only about the bike lane- there was one for about 1/3 of the way down. (According to Brian C.)

It was pretty cool though. Brian and I stopped twice- once to let a group (including the fat 12 year old) pass and again to shred off some of the extra gear because it was starting to get warm. Towards the end, it started raining pretty good and I asked Brian if he wanted to stop at this park and wait it out. He declined since we were almost back to the bike shop, so on we rolled. It sucked because water and wet gravel kept flying into my eyes, and it stung and it was hard to see. But we finished and we felt awesome afterward! 


****************************************************************************
After we got back to our side of the island, we ignored our scheduled nap time in favor of going over to the police department and picking up those police reports. These reports would serve as our identification to get home and our proof that we were not scam artists looking for hand outs, in case people like Bill the douche bag waiver collector didn't believe us. We also ended up researching and locating places where my incredible in-laws could wire us some money for the rest of our trip. Thank you Tom and Pennie!

Honeymoon Part 2: The Incident

Day 3 of our honeymoon started off really nice. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the Pioneer Inn right on the shore of Lahaina. We had the full day to ourselves with nothing pre-planned. We explored the banyan tree and the old Lahaina courthouse. We talked about what we wanted to do, and finally decided to rent some snorkeling gear and snorkel around the island.

We sat riiiiight there!

We went to Boss Frog's, got our gear, and off we went! The snorkel guy told us we should go to Honolua Bay because it was really good around there, especially "this time of the day."

While Honolua Bay is beautiful, it sucks for a couple of reasons. 1, there's no real easy place to park. The five parking spots that exist are along a highway, and on a blind curve. 2, You have to hike down the side of a cliff to get there. Not terrible, just not ideal.

Honolua Bay sucked for several more reasons than that on this particular day... we couldn't find parking close by, so we parked on a turnout. So we had to walk a little further. But again, no biggie. As soon as we get there, the sun goes behind a cloud and it felt COLD. But it's Hawaii, so still warmer than what we're used to. We snorkeled for maybe 20 minutes and saw 2 or 3 fish. Not good snorkeling.

We decided to move further down the beach, so as we swam in, I took my mask and snorkel off. We got up to the shore and moved down to the other end of the bay. When I went to put my mask back on, my snorkel was missing! I had no idea where I had lost it, so we went back down to where we had started, and went back out to scan the bottom of the ocean. We couldn't find it anywhere, and I felt horrible because I thought we were going to have to pay to replace the whole thing. How could I be so stupid???

Brian was really awesome about it though. He told me not to worry, and just to have fun. So I did. We hung out on the beach in the shallow water and played around for a bit. Then we decided to head back to the car and maybe try a different location. So we hiked back up and as we got closer to the car, I asked if we could still take a picture. See, since we parked on the turn out, there was a really good lookout spot that faced the north side of the island.

Brian popped the trunk with the remote and I ran up to the car to grab his camera from my purse. But when I got to the trunk, it was empty. "My purse isn't in here," I yelled back to Brian with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "What do you mean?' he asked. "Is it in the front seat?" I replied that I knew I had put it in the trunk when we grabbed our snorkeling gear, but I ran up to the front to check anyway. Sure enough, nothing.

Brian was starting to sound angry. We both went through a couple seconds of denial before we were ready to admit what had happened... somebody stole our stuff.

When I say our stuff, I mean EVERYTHING. We had both of our new iphones, Brian's camera, both of our wallets with all of our credit cards and cash, Brian's new Oakley sunglasses, and Brian's new Kindle in my purse. As dumb as it sounds looking back, we I made a conscious decision to leave all of our valuables in the trunk. It seemed safer than leaving it in the front of the car or leaving it unattended on the beach. But, oh yeah, I forgot the f*cking car was a convertible!!!

After doing a walk around the car, we discovered that the douche bag slashed a hole in the canvas roof and popped the trunk open.

We both realized that our hotel keys were in my purse, and this prick had our ID's. We also had left our new rings in our hotel room, and we were afraid this idiot was going to manage to get into our room and take even more. We hightailed it back to the hotel and told them what happened. They gave Brian new keys and he ran up there while they got me in touch with the Maui PD to report it.

As silly as it sounds, the next step while we waited for the cops was to log onto our emails and facebooks and change our passwords. Because our smart phones are so, um, smart, the asshole actually had access to all of that information too. We didn't want him to have even more access to our personal information.

The officers showed up pretty quickly to take our information and begin the report. The report is important because it is literally THE ONLY way we had to prove who we were in order to get back on the plane to get home. But I guess if you're going to be stuck somewhere, it might as well be Hawaii, right? One of the officers told us not to worry, they usually find a lot of this stuff because it's an island and these guys have no where to go. We kind of laughed that off. Hasn't the dude every heard of Craig's List? Or is that just a mainland thing?

Anyway, we went back up to our room after that and spent the rest of the afternoon canceling credit cards and turning off our phones. the whole day pretty much sucked. The only good thing was that when we went to return the snorkel gear, they told us not to worry about my lost snorkel. So we caught a break there.

We had $100 in those credit card gift cards, but we weren't sure how long we would have to make those last. Luckily for us, we had bought most of our activities the day before, so we still had things to look forward to. In fact, our bike ride down the volcano Haleakala was the very next day. We had an early wake up call- 1:00am, to be exact. So before we called it a night, we went to Wal-mart and bought some water, and then shared some Chicken McNuggets for dinner, and with each purchase, we prayed they would accept our gift cards.

At 8:00, we were in bed, trying to relax after our worst day on our honeymoon, in our marriage, and possibly even in our entire relationship.

*********************************************************************************
We did have the chance to contact our parents, who were concerned and upset for us, but they jumped right in and helped. Brian's parents wired us money the following day and my parents emailed us documents to help us get back on our plane. The situation would have been much more difficult without all of their help...

   
I will say this about us... we work well together, especially in a crisis situation. We balanced each other- he was angry at first and I was able to stay calm and help us figure out our next steps. Then I started to get upset and he was able to calm me down and cheer me up. We worked as a team, and helped each other as we both needed it.

         

We sat with each other and decided that since we were stuck in Maui for at least another 4 and a half days, we could either feel sorry for ourselves  and have a horrible time, or we could remember that we're on our honeymoon, we already paid for some activities that we were really looking forward to, and we could have the best time possible. We decided on the latter. We sucked it up and we were determined to have fun. Of course, that wasn't always easy. There were times that I wanted to look back at a picture we had taken but couldn't because we had no camera! And it was also very disconcerting not to have the comfort of the GPS on my phone. And I couldn't just text my mom to ask her how the dog was doing and have her send us a picture. We're actually still trying to sort everything out and it's a week later.

We came out of the situation stronger and smarter. We learned a lot about each other and about what's really important. We still had each other, we still had our love, and we did manage to still have a lot of fun, and that's something no one can take from us.

 

Honeymoon Part 1: Days 1 & 2, Before the Incident

You know how they say the first year is the hardest? I think Brian and I might have experienced all of that hardship in the first week.

A lot has happened in the months since the last time I wrote. I’m currently on a plane home from my honeymoon in Maui. Our wedding was picture perfect! I couldn’t have asked for a more magical night. And our honeymoon has been quite, um. Er. The adventure. We’ve had a good time this last week, but we are certainly ready to get home. The next entries I make are going to detail all things wedding and honeymoon.

I’m actually going to begin with the honeymoon, partially because it’s still so fresh in my mind, and partially because I think writing about it might be a good way to get over it. You know, like purging it from my system.

Sounds bad, right? So here we go…

We landed in beautiful Maui last Monday, so in love and ready to be on vacation. No more wedding stress, not a care in the world. We arrived and got our rental car (a 2011 Mustang convertible!) all before noon. We were starving though, so the first thing we did was find Cheeseburger in Paradise and ate. This restaurant is located right on the sand, overlooking the water. We had a couple of cocktails, our burgers, took a deep breath of Maui sea air, and R-E-L-A-X-E-D.

Early morning pre-flight!

Next it was onto the Royal Lahiana Resort to check in. I’m not sure what either of us expected, but the hotel exceeded it all. It was beautiful, and when we opened the door to our room, it took our breath away. Our garden view room had huge sliding glass doors looking out to the garden AND ocean. 

Then a man came to our door and dropped off a bottle of champagne, compliments of the hotel. 

We wandered a couple of hotels over and explored. I drew our names in the sand as the sun was setting. Perfect start to the vacation.

Tuesday was our first full day and it began with a complimentary breakfast through Pleasant Holidays. We were also able to learn about all of the great opportunities for adventure on the island, so we purchased our luau, a bike ride down a volcano, parasailing, a snorkeling excursion to another island, and a sunset dinner and cocktail cruise. We also had a couple of our own adventures planned, like exploring the Road to Hana.

 Everything was working out perfectly- we finished the breakfast just in time to make it over to the parasailing area. We went on a tandem ride at 1200 feet and it was fun, romantic, and so nice to just be the two of us. It was quiet up in the air above the islands, other than the loving jokes passed between the two of us. We saw a sea turtle that had to have been about the size of our boat. It was amazing! We took a couple of pictures and Brian video taped the whole ride. I'd show them here but I can't, for reasons I will explain later.

So we hung out on the beach and in various hotel pools before we headed back to our hotel to get ready for our luau.

We had a really fun time at the luau and met a really cute couple named Chris and Amy from Texas. They were a little older than us, but lots of fun to hang out with and chat over dinner with for those couple of hours. We took a really cute picture at sunset... but, yeah, we'll get to that...

To end the night, we went back to our hotel pool and laid in some lounge chairs to relax with each other for a while. Again, it was nice to just be us. No wedding talk, no crazy labrador to chase after. Just good conversation and relaxation.

 The picture above is the last one we took together before the incident...

Gym Time and More About Me!

I finally did it... I joined the gym. It's not like I need a gym. It's not like I have tons of time and money that I need to spend. But I am on the porkier side and for some reason, nothing helps me lose weight like group exercise classes. So I did it. And I got my mom to jump on board too!


I started March off with a bang and I headed to the gym after softball practice. I did a Body Blast class- which was basically an hour off light strength training with dumb bells. It felt good! I wanted to stay for the next class which was a Boot Camp class, but I don't want to be so sore that I can't get back there tomorrow. So I hopped on the treadmill instead. I wanted to test myself to see if I could run a mile without slowing down to walk. (I still can. Whew!) I did half a mile and I wanted to stop. But I told myself to just get through a mile. And once I got to a mile, I decided to just keep going til I get through 20 minutes. So I did. And I burned just under 200 calories. So that about takes care of one of those damn Thin Mints I had earlier. As far as those other 8 go...


I do feel really good. I love working out. I don't know why I ever stopped!


Time for more question answering time!...


1. I am currently obsessed with my upcoming wedding. We are officially 102 days away. I'm pretty sure I'm right on track with where I should be, but I'm also pretty sure it's all I ever talk/think/dream about!

2. Today I am exuberant because I feel like I was pretty productive at work, I went to the gym, I'm getting to spend some good quality time with my boys tonight, and I have A LOT to look forward to in the coming weeks (and months!)

3. The age I am is 27 and the age I feel is old! I feel all these aches and pains that I never used to have, the kids are using terms now that I've never heard of before, I use terms that they've never heard before! Nah, I really feel about my age, maybe even younger. Life is good!

4. My favorite place is anywhere with Brian. Corny, but true. We genuinely have a great time together and pretty much any situation ends up being fun. Even when we're stuck in the emergency room all day on a Sunday!

5. Something I have been procrastinating is nothing, for a change! I always procrastinate, but this year, I've actually been on top of everything!

6. The last thing I purchased was a gym membership!

7. The thing I love most about my home is the love from my little family. It didn't feel like a home until Brian and Kevin got here!

ADD's and ABC's

I have been MIA for quite a while now, so I'm going to be jumping all over the place (hence the ADD)! But enough with the acronyms, I have exciting things to share!...

First of all, softball started and it has been COLD! It was supposed to snow yesterday, but it was a lot of hype for nothing. It really wasn't even that cold at all. In fact, I'm back in shorts right now. But during the week, I bundled myself up to brave the outdoors all day. Between the chilly breeze and my growing fear of UV rays (good luck with that, PE teacher!), I managed to create this monster:

Sorry for the bad quality... cell phone to email to blog... bad combo. Anyway, one of my 9th graders told me I look like an Antarctic gardener. I thought that was pretty hilarious.

Wedding Stuff
Moving on!... Biggest news... MY DRESS CAME IN! I'm going to go see it and try it on sometime next week... gotta get paid first!

I'm pretty sure I have my invites, rsvp cards, table numbers, escort cards designed, so my next step is to create some interesting and captivating programs. As far as I'm concerned, all the wedding stuff that I have left is all of the artsy-fartsy DIY stuff that I've been looking forward too. I think our last major task is to buy our rings.

Working Out & Eating Right?
So lately I've been working out more often than I was before (although if you follow this, you would realize that I've totally bailed on keeping a journal... I didn't mean too! I'll start again!), but it's still not as much as I used to. And that kinda really pisses me off. I mean, last year at this time, I had recently finished a half-marathon and was gearing up to run a full marathon. And now I'm scared to run even a mile because I'm worried I won't be able to and I don't want to find out. Blah. I've been doing my Turbo Kick, but I feel like I need more. With that being said, I just printed out my free 7 day pass to 24 Hour Fitness, and I'm planning on using all 7 days for group exercise classes. Effective tomorrow. I need to sweat and apparently I need extrinsic motivation. We'll see. I hope I like the classes, and I also hope I can talk the gym into giving me some sort of discount because $45 a month kinda blows.

I'm going to add another tab to the top and call it "Eating Right?" (...cue confused Ron Burgundy face)

I want to keep myself accountable for the food I eat (just like I'm not doing for my workouts. Ha!) Now if you know me, you know that my diet consists of chocolate, pepper jack cheese, Nutella, diet Coke, and currently, Girl Scout cookies. The plan is to actually eat more healthfully (healthily? healthy? healthier? Idk.)

I read a blog the other day where this girl lost 12 pounds for her wedding by going on the Paleo diet. She said she followed it very strictly and didn't even have to work out, and the pounds just melted off. (Nice, right??) I googled it. Apparently, you cannot eat any dairy products, any starchy products, any sugars, and it didn't say it specifically, but diet Coke and Nutella are probably off-limits too. Basically- it's all hunter-gatherer food, i.e. fruits, veggies, and lean meats. Hmmmphh. I don't think I'm strong enough for that business. But I would like to follow something that isn't too far off. (With maybe a cheat day for some cheese. And chocolate. And diet Coke.) We went to our favorite farmer's market today and got a bunch of fruit and vegetables. I'm going to make some chicken to put into salads for lunch this week. And I'm looking forward to it! And some thin mints!

So I know I won't be the epitome of a healthy eater over night, but I will be trying. And documenting!

*************************************************************************

ABC's
Like, every other blog I read is doing this, and it brings me back to the fun times of good ole Myspace shenanigans, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Here we go, the ABC's of me...
A.  Age:  27. Oof, that's like, almost 30.
B.  Bed size:  We were on a Queen, but it was like, the most uncomfortable bed ever, so we switched back to the double that we put in the guest room. And hopefully after the wedding, we'll graduate to a King!
C.  Chore you hate: I'm not really a fan of washing dishes. Luckily for me, Brian is!
D.  Dogs:  I love them! Especially yellow labs named Duke, Chloe, and Kevin!
E.  Essential start to your day:  Cuddle time. The best part of my morning is hitting snooze and cuddling in closer to Bri for 8 more minutes. And then again for 8 more minutes. And then again...
F.  Favorite color: Yellow, turquoise, pink... I kind of have a lot. ;-)
G.  Gold or silver:  White Gold... which is a silver color...
H.  Height: 5’5"ish
I.  Instruments you play:  Tambourine, maracas, and I play a mean triangle
J.  Job title: Physical Education Teacher and Assistant Varsity Softball Coach
K.  Kids:  Looking forward to having some someday!
L.  Live:  So Cal
M.  Mom’s name:  Darlene
N.  Nicknames:  K-Rod, Hot Rod, Rodzilla, Rodsky
O.  Overnight hospital stays:  I've never had one (knock on wood)
P.  Pet peeve: I guess right now it would be people who think they can be PE teachers when they don't know how to play any sports and then don't bother to show up to practice the teaching skills that they so desperately need to succeed in a career that they thought would be easy but apparently is just too difficult for their pea-sized brain to handle, and upon receiving suggestions from seasoned veterans for increasing their potential for success, they say, "No." Ugh.
Q.  Quote from a movie:  "Who wants a Mustache ride?"
R.  Righty or lefty:  Right
S.  Siblings:  Jeffers!
T.  Time you wake up:  Well. The alarm goes off at 5:00. I usually hit snooze for like, an hour and 15 minutes or so.
U.  Underwear: Under where?
V.  Vegetables you dislike:  I'm not really a fan of corn.
W.  What makes you run late:  Sleeping in... damn snooze button!
X.  X-rays you’ve had:  Teeth, my head (softball), probably a finger here or there
Y.  Yummy food you make:  I'm actually pretty good at cooking, but my favorite is lasagna!
Z.  Zoo animal favorite: MONKEYS!!!! And although they're not usually at zoos, I really enjoy sea otters! Brian has taken me to 2 aquariums to visit them and they're so cute and playful and fun to be around!

 

I've been MIA for a while now, but for good reason... I've been knocking out wedding tasks left and right! Well, that, and after-school softball practice started last week. Our first game is tomorrow- busy times!

So one of the last MAJOR things we had left to do was pick a honeymoon. From when we first started seriously looking to the time when we finally booked, air prices went up soared! (No pun intended!) I really want to experience Italy with Brian and when I started looking at the end of 2010, airfare was around $750-850 pp. Recently when we looked, I couldn't find anything under $1450. Needless to say, Italy was out.

We tried to look into some Sandals vacations which sound really good because everything is included. BUUUUT, a Sandals trip for both of us would have been at least $5,000 when all was said and done, and for that much money, I'd rather go to Italy and explore ancient lands than sit around drinking my honeymoon away. But that's just me.

 What we ended up picking is a week long trip to beautiful Maui! We will be celebrating our first week as husband and wife driving with the top down in paradise! I'm so excited!

Another thing I'm pretty excited about is another DIY project that I was able to get started- and practically completed- this weekend...

I purchased photoshop through Amazon last week and it finally came last Thursday. I tried to figure it out on my own, but it's unlike any program I've ever really used, so I was feeling pretty hopeless on my own. Luckily for me, we had some friends over for a game night on Friday, and one of our groomsmen (Kevin) is almost finished with his masters in web design, so he was able to give me a quick tutorial. Saturday morning, I was off and running!



I've come up with a couple of designs and I like each new one more and more! Without giving too much away, this is the latest:

I made the background neutral colors and the flowers bright- which is what I'm hoping the actual wedding will be like. I really like it, but I'm going to work on making an even better one. And then after I've come up with a design I like, I can make rsvp cards, table cards, escort cards, programs... it's going to be awesome.

So that's what I've been busy with... and that's what I'm about to get back to! I'm going to try to check in more often this week.

Exhaustion

I feel like this:

But a little bit chubbier and not as cute.

I don't know what it is, but lately I feel like I hit a brick wall. Like I just don't have energy. Like my legs are made of lead.

I'm yawning by 6:45 and I want to be asleep by 8:30....

I don't know why, but I don't like it one bit.

I've been managing to tough out some work outs anyway, and I'm hoping that eventually, my workouts will start to pay off- size-wise and energy-wise.

On a side note, I've determined that it may just be more work to have a student teacher than to not, and that the average person cannot be a PE teacher. Oh, and I should get paid more.

Off to research more honeymoon stuff!

Las Vegas and Falling Asleep on the Couch Before 9... Cuz I'm Crazy Like That

This week felt L-O-N-G... and it looked something like this:

and this:

... but there wasn't as much beer involved as you might think.

Here are some of the highlights of my last week:

1- Las Vegas!
A week ago today we were heading to Vegas with Kevin and Rachael. We stayed at the MGM and had a blast. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the weekend:

Me and Rach getting cabin fever in the car... caffeine, much?

Cutest dinner date ever!

At the Aria for dinner

There was a special- 5 beers for a dollar... diet coke was like, $4.50. Um, beer, please! 

Like I said, beer wasn't involved as much as you would think based on these pictures. Those five glasses were small, and it was practically the only alcohol I had the whole time. I know, I know, I have to cut back.


Considering those five beers were the most I've had in quite some time, I was feeling pretty silly by the end of dinner. I even proposed a question that everyone but Brian thought was funny (but I think they were laughing at me, not with me)- "If you drink a lot of beer, will you be better at basketball? Ya know, because of the hops?"


Haha, I still think that's funny!

 

Saturday night, I managed to convince everyone to walk over to the Bellagio and watch the water with me... it's one of my favorite things to do in Vegas. Clearly I'm not the gambler/drinker/party animal that is typically found traveling to this part of the country. You now, like the guy we saw jump into the Bellagio water. Like, for real. And it was cold. I can be an silly doofus from time to time. And I rarely turn down a dare. But I would never, ever do that. What a douche.

But I will dance in front of the Bellagio... like I said, I can be a silly doofus...

 2- My Mother
I'm so proud of her! I stopped by her house in the morning earlier this week to discover that she had just completed a workout! And it was her second week of consistent exercise! Woo-hoo mom! Keep up the good work!

3- The Lost Symbol
Brian finished reading this Dan Brown book on Saturday night in Vegas, so I started it. And LOVED it! I reinforced some personal philosophies that I have been trying to live by for the last couple of years. 

I'll do an entire post devoted to how a fictional suspense thriller relates to my PE teaching-5 mini beer drinking- falling asleep on the couch before sunset-life.

Oh yeah. It's been hard to get much else done this week because Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I was fast asleep on the couch well before 9:00. I keep telling you, I'm pretty rad. And like, my apartment smells of rich mahogany. 

So, that was my week in a nutshell... with a little bit of work thrown in!

We actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time.


But really.

Except maybe not the wallpaper. ;-)