Nature at Home

We live on a preserve pretty much so we have all sorts of nature, deer, tons of armadillos and opossums, lots of bugs, and of course my favorite .... turtles.


So Omar brought me home a turtle that he found. I let it go in our back yard...




isn't he cute?

An Alaskan Visitor

So my old Alaskan roommate Tiff Hanks, now married, came to visit her husband's family 2 times this summer to buy her house. The first trip I drove up to St. Mary's, Georgia to visit her and went to eat at Ruby Tuesdays and spent the night talking. Her last trip was closing on her home and she came and spent a whole day with me. We went to St. Augustine's Fountain of Youth. I didn't remember that it was a whole theme park thing. It was pretty cool, especially since it was FREE for me being a resident of the county.

The water tastes like nasty well water....don't I look younger already?


We watched them do the cannon...of course there was no actual ball inside, but it was very loud.

The Timicuan were the Indians of the area. Unfortunantly there are none that are surviving today. This guy is an actual Indian and taught us about the Timicuans.

We walked around downtown and looked in a few shops. She wanted to find the oldest school house, but it cost like $10 to go inside so we just took a picture outside of it. I don't know if I ever really noticed it before. It is literally right in the middle of the main shopping area near the castillo.

We then went over to the Castillo de San Marco fort. I also had not been there since 5th grade. It was okay, it has a nice view of St. Augustine from the top, but it was brutally hot. I was super glad that we were in our swimsuits. There wasn't too much to see left anymore.

Here are what the living quarters would have been like. There would have been 4 soldiers sleeping on the top and 4 on the bottom bunks. The end of the bunks is the place for their guns.

I have always loved the coquina, which is what the whole fort is made of. It is basically ground up shells. Incredible.

Bri: My Super Creative Friend

I know so many people that are creative in so many ways. I just wanted to give a shout out to my super creative friend Brianna.

Creative people just amaze me and I want to aspire to become like them. I think it is the matter of a few reasons that I don't...

1) my schedule - I don't make time for it
2) my lack of confidence that I could create something interesting
3) my perfectionism hinders my creativity
4) my impatience
5) this list could keep going

She has a business where she plans Disney vacations and creates these amazing itinerary planning books as part of it. Her website is www.easybreezyplanning.com.

She also makes this super cool soap made out of fresh ingredients - love it! Check them out http://www.breezybeachyclean.blogspot.com/

She always has a cute idea ... I think everyone needs a friend that can help people like me with stuff like that.

Tragedy to Beauty: The Tomato Plant

So earlier I blogged about the Tomato Plant Tragedy. Well you can see now what happened to my tomato plant...the birds nest cut it off! Sad day, and I had no tomatoes for me to eat.

Well the beauty of it all is that we have had 2 or 3 nests of Blue Birds come out of it...here are some of the babies. I guess we will have a few nests every season as Blue Birds always come back to the place where they built the nest.

Aren't they cute? But man do they chirp at night time!

July 20th the Big 2-7

So all I wanted was for Omar to plan something for my birthday. He didn't, despite my begging. typically for me, if I don't plan it, nothing ever happens. So I ended up planning my own birthday last minute because no plans were made.

Although, my friends Erica and Candice were so nice to invite us over for a delicious meal and company this past Sunday evening to celebrate my birthday. We had a wonderful time together as usual.

I bought a groupon to go kayaking and so I dragged Omar along with me. We went kayaking through the marshes at Amelia Island. He steered the kayak which was quite the frustrating adventure. It ended up for the first 10 minute of the 1.5 paddle of our kayak nose ending up in the oyster mud. Once we got the hang of it we went all the way out to the ocean. We stopped on a big beach sandbar in the middle of the ocean for lunch. Thank goodness we brought a sub with us to eat. We got attacked by this bee that I honestly have no idea how or why it would come out to that sandbar with nothing there.





When we left the sandbar the tide was low and we were paddling and suddenly I heard Omar jumping up in the kayak yelling, "Shrimp, Shrimp, they're attacking me!" I had no idea what he was taking about, but sure wanted him to not tip our kayak. I turn around to see these shrimp flopping around in the kayak. We had seen little things jumping in the water ahead of us and thought they were little minnow fish or something. We kept paddling and as I did more jumped in on him. I realized that the water was getting more and more shallow! It looked like a few yards away that there was no more water. I told Omar that we must have gone the wrong way and we should turn around. I was grabbing all the shrimp as he didn't like them and throwing them out of the boat. We learned that every time I paddled the shrimp would jump in on him. There were so many that they were flying into his swimsuit even. It was CRAZY! So he paddled us back and were able to try to get away from the shrimp.

Can you see all the little shrimp bodies in the bottom of the boat?

Check out our video below.



After kayaking were tired and it I was of course sunburnt even after reapplying while on our trip. We then drove home to wash up and take a short nap. After the nap we went and had pedicures. Omar will probably kill me for writing this but, it was my birthday and so he went with me to get a pedicure. If anything my birthday present was the fact that I didn't have him bug me for a while to clip his toenails (which I just think is weird and disgusting that he asks me that in general).

Following the pedicures we went and ate at Aqua Grill. SO delicious! I would totally go there again.

When we came home, Kelly made me a birthday cake and they sang to me and I blew out the candles.


It was a good day after all, even though I planned it.

Michael Buble Concert

So I always wanted to go to Michael Buble's concert but could not bring myself to cough over the money. My girlfriend Erica bought tickets for her and her husband to go. He ended up getting deployed because of the oil spill and so she didn't want to go without him. Omar and I bought the tickets from her last minute. I'm glad we did. It was funny because we ended up sitting right next to one of the guys I graduated highschool with, Chase Hulon, and his recent bride. I hadn't seen him since graduation. What a small world.


Every girls dream...well he is actually taken, engaged to a girl from Argentina which is why he wears a ring on his finger (that is how they do it in Argentina)

The opening act for the concert was "Naturally 7" which are an incredible accapella group. We really enjoyed listening to them...

This was the DJ guy in the group...


the guy who did the drums was amazing...



The opening of the concert:


My favorite song by Michael Buble: "Home"

I love that Michael walked into the crowd and interacted with the people at the concert, he is a very real, down-to-earth guy.


Probably one of my favorite parts of the concert was the very end encore where he just stood and sung accepella with NO microphone. It was incredible and gave me goosebumps, he has a super powerful voice. I would for sure go to another concert of his.

Getting Older Blues

This has been a different birthday for me. I think maybe I am going through a getting older slump. This is my 2nd year being married and I am getting closer to being 30. Not that being 30 or getting older means too much to me, because I don't feel like I'm getting older, it just means that the older I get the further away it seems like I will be able to accomplish some of my dreams/desires.

I think my #1 right now is the desire to go and travel. I know that now is the best time to do it, without kids, but my desire before that is to become and stay debt free. Going to some of the places that I want to go would not help me to become debt free.

Some of my dreams are:
Travel to Peru, Thailand, Greece, New Zealand and many other places
Sing with/for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Write and publish a book

okay I think my amnesia with getting older is beginning to creep in because I can't remember anymore of my dreams. Wah!!!

Decorating our home

So we have been trying to do some things to our house so it wouldn't just be such a blank slate and empty. Part of it started with just the fact that Kelly was going to be staying with us for the summer and figured it would be good to get an actual guest bed so she wouldn't have to sleep on an air mattress.

I had a friend that I met through Big Brothers that sells mattresses and was able to get us a good deal. We used Omar's old bedding that he had when he was a bachelor but are in the process of getting some new bedding to make that room a little more bright and airy. Now that Kelly's last day was this past Friday we will start to work on that room by picking out paint and doing some work to the furniture that we have there.

We finally bought a sofa. We found one on discount at Ashley Furniture. It took about a month for delivery, but now we have a sectional so we can have more people over and have a place for everyone to sit.

We painted the living room, kitchen, and my office. We made one of our 3 other bedrooms into an office for Omar.

All we have left is to purchase a chair, side table and a set of bookshelves for my office.

We are discussing putting a day bed into one of the other 3 bedrooms so it could be used for someone to sleep on, or whenever we decide to have kids we can also use it for a nursery.

Omar worked on cleaning and organizing the garage and put in some shelves there.

We have been getting some art work. We did a canvas copy of one of our favorite wedding pictures for our family room, and placed out the Turkish rug we bought in Mexico. Kelly created the idea for my office of turning a picture of the St. Augustine lighthouse into art for my office. I still need to finish it.

Slowly but surely we are making our way to having a completed home.

Blue Crab Festival Memorial Day 2010

For Memorial Day I thought we could go to the Blue Crab Festival. It was down in Palatka which is basically this small po-dunk town where everyone is related to each other (seriously). I had never been there before.

Kelly stayed with us for the summer and so she came. Casey and Victor were supposed to come with us to the festival along with their baby and Victor's brother Manuel. However, they both were not feeling well so Manuel was the only one who came with us.


Palatka

Omar was so excited to park on the bridge. Here is Kelly with Manuel.

The Bridge was a neat view, however, we got drenched walking back to the car at the end of the day.


There of course were tons of booths with food and other random things to buy!



Omar and I both went on our first helicopter and camel ride! It was fun and only cost us $30 for both - can't beat that.




The Camel was actually not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be.


Kelly took pictures from inside the chopper.






It was neat to go to a different area in Florida.