Current Obsessions

Currently I have become obsessed with a few things that I'm excited about:

1) The Wood Connection where I get cute decorations such as:

My Christmas Grinch

My Valentine's Day Love

My Easter "Hop down the bunny trail"

I love these decorations and can't wait to do them for each season/holiday. They do have one with the letters H, M, and E and then the O (for "home") is a different thing for each month and they have a cupcake one for a birthday. I think that'll be my next one, it's so cute!

2) Pinterest  I am so in love with this site, I go crazy on it, in fact I try not to go on it unless I have time to really enjoy it. I love that you can find awesome new recipes, cute outfit ideas for your next shopping trip, fitness things to help when you're just not motivated, and so many funny posters/quotes that you can't help but literally laugh out loud!

3) My newest obsession is taking pictures with animals:

With the dolphins at Sea World, Cali

Lion cub in Vegas

and recently a bear cub (technically they are from Yellowstone, but this was done at the Expo Center in Utah). It's not as great a copy as the others because I had to scan it in differently, but you get the point.

That last one I was real excited about because bears are by far my most favorite animal and I've always wanted to be close to one (who cares that it was a baby and half asleep, I got to hold, pet, and get a picture with a bear!)

So those are my current obsessions that I'm always trying to add to, thought I'd put that out there for a new post.

I've been tagged!

Aw, I feel so special today, this blog was tagged to do a question and random fact thing from an old friend from high school, Thanks Shalay! I've never been tagged before so this is exciting for me ha ha!

THE RULES:

1. Post these rules
2. Post 11 random things about yourself
3. Answer the questions provided by the one who tagged you
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag
5. Tag 11 people

11 Random Things About Me
1-I absolutely love spring time, I'm sure almost everyone I know knows this about me, but I think this is the reason I hate winter, because it takes too long to get to Spring when it's so cold and sometimes it takes over spring entirely. 
2- I LOVE LOVE LOVE to plan everything, in fact they opened a Buy Buy Baby store in Utah (finally!) and now that I see how organized and helpful it is I can't wait to budget for a baby :)
3-  I love to be able to make people laugh, I hate being the center of attention, but if I can make people laugh I consider it a good day.
4-  I might be a mom to three kitties soon (I already have two, but a third might be joining our little family soon)
5-  I absolutely hate changes and goodbyes. Even if I am miserable with a job or coworker or class/project, the thought of things changing makes me dread moving forward.
6-  I could probably watch my cats all day, I know everyone out there calls me a crazy cat lady, I don't think I am, but I'm not ashamed to say I love my cats and they are like my babies for right now.
7-  My favorite weekend activity is walking around shops with my mom.
8-  I literally tell Larry everything. He's the only person on this whole planet that knows just about everything...I'm not even exaggerating or kind of kidding on this one, EVERYTHING!
9-  I really shouldn't be blogging right now as I should be getting ready to go grocery shopping and for dinner with Larry's mom tonight (it just says random things about me so this counts!)
10-I talk to myself...a lot...about things that have already happened or will happen soon or probably will never happen...basically if I'm alone I'm probably talking to myself. Especially in the car.
11-  I've been on the second tallest roller coaster in the whole world, and I can't wait to get the actual tallest on my list of ones that I've been on, hopefully within the next year or two.

11 Questions

1. What is your favorite vegetable? Blecht! I HATE vegetables, but if I have to pick one, I'd say potatoes. I love them mashed or baked, but that's about it.

2. What do you like to do when you have alone time? As mentioned before, I talk to myself a lot when alone, but I love to plan things. Currently I'm wanting to baby budget, budget for Larry and I to get some "family pictures" done, plan the next vacation we'll take (whenever that may be), help plan a wedding, and then plan some fun girl night things to do with myself (I love planning spa like days for nights when I'm alone, but I'm hardly alone at night so even though I figure out what I want to do, I almost never do it)

3. What TV show/movie do you watch by yourself because no one wants to watch it with you?  Probably Teen Mom for TV Show, and it's not that no one wants to watch it with me, it's that I only am able to watch it online in the mornings when I get ready. If it's a movie it's probably something cheesy like Drive Me Crazy.

4. What is your biggest dream in life? My biggest dream is to take a trip to Italy. Ever since seeing Under the Tuscan Sun I've been obsessed with it. I used to want to see a bear up close, but recently Larry and I got to take a picture with a cub, so that's off the list (I'll probably post about that in a couple days, once I figure out how to get the picture loaded).

5. What was the scariest nightmare you've ever had? Scariest nightmare I had was when I was younger, I had a dream about alligators terrorizing this little town I was in and killing the people in creepy ways, I woke up sweating and shaking and near tears from that dream and up until about a year ago had such a phobia of the animals that seeing them in person would make me get sick and almost start to cry.

 

6. What pet have you always wanted but never had? I've never, myself, owned a dog. When Larry and I moved in together I told him I wanted a dog for our first pet. We've only had room for cats in the places we've lived in so it was either a cat or no pet and I really wanted my own so we did cats first.

7. What is your guilty pleasure? Hmm..good question...probably sweets. I am like the cookie monster with sweets. I always crave them and always have to  have them around. If there are times I don't have them I go crazy looking for something chocolate or candy related until it drives me insane and I go to the store and get something.

8. Are you a Daddy's girl or Mommy's girl? Mommy's girl, this one isn't really tough at all since I was raised with my mom and didn't have good "dad" experiences until she got remarried (and then later when I met my biological dad).

10. What is your least favorite word? (Swear words don't count) The only word I don't like could be considered a swear word (the C word). I hate it so much, it makes me cringe. If I see a movie, the second they say that I'm pretty sure I hate the movie. I think it's demeaning and completely not needed in everyday talking. Other than that I don't think there's a word I don't like.

11. What is your favorite blog? Honestly, if you update it often enough it's my favorite. I love ones where it's just about their everyday lives or when it includes pregnancy stories. They are my favorites because I LOVE hearing other people's stories, even if they think it's pointless. Shalay, who tagged me, is a good one to read, the other ones on my lists (the ones that update regularly, as you can see) are ones I like reading. Of the ones I stalk the Bloxygen one is a good one because the lady is very funny in her writing. It can get a bit depressing at times, but overall one I enjoy checking on it. One of my favorite "hobbies" is blog stalking so when people put people they know off to the side I'm always going through them seeing which ones I will keep following.

 

Now for my questions:

1. What has been your favorite book/series of books that you've read so far?
2. If you could recommend one restaurant to anybody, what would it be?
3. What is the strangest talent you have?
4. What is one thing you want to accomplish in your life?
5. What is your favorite weird food combination?
6. What is your favorite body part?
7. What do you do to stay entertained when bored?
8. What has been your favorite achievement in life?
9. What do you think would be the hardest thing you'd have to give up?
10. If your house caught fire, what do you know you'd grab and save?
11. What is your favorite hobby?
 

I tag:
Cindy
Chontae
Traci (don't think she reads mine or even knows I have one, but just in case)
Jaynon
Danielle (another who doesn't know I have one or anything, but whatever)
Ariel
Becky (I realize hers is a training blog, so it might not apply, but I need 11 so she's on the list!)
Megan
Mom
Stace
Tracy

Those last ones (4) haven't updated their blogs in FOREVER so I'm not holding my breath that they'll do this, but again, I needed 11 so they go on the list. Anyone else out there who has a blog and reads this (for some reason or another) and you're not on the list...well first send me a link to your blog! and second, go ahead and do this and let me know if you did so I can read it :)

Quick Vacation Recap

So I decided since the vacation posts are probably too long for some people to want to read so I'd just put a few of the main points from the whole trip:

• We walked a whopping 10 miles and climbed 300 stairs.
• We learned don't have a "just wing-it" day when needing to drive 3 hours/170 miles in a strange new area with dead phones and no printed off directions.
• We also learned toll roads aren't cheap
• The Bahamas are beautiful, amazing, and warm. They drive on the left side of the road and love having colorful buildings. (Side note: They also don't have any alarm things by their doors, so when you ACCIDENTALLY walk out with something you forgot to pay for, there's no reminders till you start moving your arms. But just so y'all know I did take it back and put it back on the rack)
• We got to swim in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, I didn't realize it tasted so salty and would get in EVERY orifice.
• In Florida, winter means 80 degrees...I loved every minute of it! Larry liked the A/C.
• They really do have a ton of orange groves in Florida.
• Universal Studios, while interactive and have those fun rides with the moving screens that feel like you're IN the ride, is more of a family park than roller coaster junkie park.
• Taking naps after a long walk and day at a park is just about the best way to spend an afternoon, especially when you can have pizza delivered and watch old movies on the Starz channels on the TV!

And here are some random photos I didn't add to the other posts:

Santa was on the cruise with us!

Had to take this for my mom! A Nascar Grill.

Hmm...something to remember for
 The next time we go?

It was so cool!

As I mentioned, here's our tradition of him sleeping and me taking the picture :P

A mini ship of our ship

The kids play area

I want this house, I bet it's SO expensive!

Our scuba tickets (so what if they were useless?)

The ONLY time the hot tub wasn't FILLED with people!

Part of the island as we were laying on the dock

The ship I want to go on next time (Carnival)

The island

The island...again

It was way beautiful. This one shows the entrance to the resort

The police station on the island

There is a sea gull on the edge of the pool here ha ha

Part of the island again.

More island pictures

Their license plates

Our VERY small room on the ship

One of the nice passengers offered to take our picture as we were leaving

I missed our chance to have the people take our
Pictures as we entered the park so I took one of us.

There are so many swampy areas in Florida, I thought this
"dip" area on the way to the gas station was solid enough
To walk on...I was wrong and this is how I came out!

Universal Studios...officially

Our last day before leaving. As much as I missed our cats and home, I really wanted to stay. The sun sure made it hard to want to go back to 40 degree weather.
Just like the day before, we took the shuttle from the hotel to the park. I didn't realize how different the two parks could be. I loved the real Universal Studios, seeing how they created the twisters in the movie Twister, disasters in other movies, horror makeup, and we got to ride the Simpson's Ride (probably my favorite), Terminator 2: 3D, The Mummy, and the Shrek 1.5 4D rides. They also had this roller coaster where they record you throughout the whole ride-we laughed so hard at our reactions, well, mine, mostly. I almost wish, now, that we had bought the DVD (I didn't even want to look at prices, knowing how high they tend to be). I think I liked this side a bit better, it was more interactive. We also found this way cute 50's diner to eat lunch at-it was SO good, a bit pricey, but good nonetheless.
Once again, we ended up finishing the park early, and we were SO tired at this point, we decided to walk back, it was a bit more warm this day so it wasn't as "easy" as the previous day, water and hats probably would've been a bit more helpful.
We added it all up and we found out we walked a total of 10 miles and climbed up well over 300 stairs on this trip, so we definitely got some exercise in, which is good because we countered it with a TON of junk food!

Some pictures/video from this day:

At the Terminator 2:3D ride with our
Way cool 3D glasses :)

The Universal rotating planet!!

The cute diner we ate at.

The ride that recorded you.
That straight up and curve down
Was more scary than I thought it would be!

They had a Hollywood Star Walk of Fame there, thought that was interesting since I made sure that was a spot we stopped at in California. It was a dirty part of California so I wonder if I had skipped that part. Maybe we'd have actually seen all the San Diego Zoo!

Overall, we had a lot of fun on this trip. It was a bit more stressful during some parts though. I learned a lot about why I like planning things, and we got a good idea of how we want a real cruise, with our own control over room and activities, to be like for the next time. I think I still like road trip vacations over flying and using taxis/shuttles vacations-we usually eat better and get from point A to point B easier that way, but I think this trip was worth the trouble and we certainly made plenty of memories.

Island of Adventures Day

After experiencing what we did the previous day I was so excited to get to Universal Studios. We decided to do the Island of Adventures first since it had more outdoor coasters and I thought I read Monday would be worse weather and I didn't want to miss any.
Lucky for us our hotel was close enough to the park grounds that they had a free shuttle to and from the park, but only one time there and two times back, but both of these were after the park closed. When we got there the park was nice and cool and breezy (almost a weather theme for this trip it seems so far), pretty nice weather for us! I thought for sure the Harry Potter rides would have the longest lines so we started at the front and worked our way back to that one. The Hulk and Dr. Dooms Freefall were way fun, but Harry Potter "land" was done up so amazingly! It was extremely detailed. Only two rides were ones we were interested in, so we did those and they were so fun we decided to do one twice (the only reason we didn't do the other ones twice was because it was a kind of indoor ride and the other one was two rides on two tracks riding simultaneously so we wanted to ride both tracks and the indoor one was pretty memorable enough). The lines were so short and the day was so dead that I think we ended up riding all the "high-thrill" fun ones twice and still got done around noon. Instead of waiting 7 hours for the shuttle to come get us we ended up walking (yes, more walking) back to the hotel, only took us about 45 minutes. I joked with Larry if I'd have known how much walking we'd end up doing I wouldn't have volunteered to do that big one on the first day.
Even though it was short, we got in a nap and had a lot of fun still and I know, at least, I didn't miss a thing at the park!

I took more video than pictures, but here's what we got from this day:

The entrance to the whole park

Island of Adventures entrance.

In the background you can see a loopy roller coaster-
That's The Hulk..so much fun!

This was from our walk back to the hotel,
I thought it was pretty.

The Universal Orlando sign I saw on our walk as well.

Look! I finally got a video on this!! Yay, this one shows the Harry Potter Land (though it's just a small section of it). Sorry if it's loud, but I'm glad I finally got one up!

Coming back to Florida

You know you're on a real "family vacation" when you have the moment where everything goes wrong, in our case it was pretty much ALL of day 4! I think this may have been worse than our day we lost Larry's wallet and my car keys in California.
It was our last day on the ship and, as sad as we were to leave, we were also kind of excited to get to Orlando as soon as possible and start the second leg of our trip. We couldn't leave the ship till 10/10:30 so we just sat in our room watching court T.V. and The History Channel (we had about 6 channel choices and, sadly, those were the best ones). Finally, around 10 ish we got packed up and stood in line to get off the ship. I had NO idea getting off and going through customs took SO long! It took us an hour to get off the ship and about half and hour to get through customs, which was especially pathetic seeing as how they don't go through your bags-they just ask you what you bought and send you on your way. Once we finally got off and back onto American land we got a taxi to take us to the closest Enterprise, not knowing it closes at noon and we pulled up at 11:58! Since the taxi guy had already left, we had no idea what to do. After much thinking we finally decided to use the wi-fi of the nearby hotel (which coincidentally was the same one from our first day) to find another rental spot that would be open. We found the one at the airport, made a reservation real quick, and hurried to call the taxi guys again to get us to the airport. We thought we got lucky, I should probably mention both phones were dead at this point, so we couldn't use them for anything. We drove the 3 to 3 1/2 hour drive on a lovely toll road to Orlando-yeah we aren't used to toll roads in Utah and they aren't cheap when driving 170 miles.

Our rental car, very spacious and a much bigger gas tank
Than in my car back home. Larry thought I might want
To take a picture of the car for memories.

Orange groves we saw on our drive to Orlando.
These are the ONLY pictures I got from this day.

Finally, thinking we were all good, we checked into our hotel, after getting stuck in some major traffic, and drove the car to Orlando's airport to return it.We decided a shuttle would be the easiest and cheapest way back to our hotel so we went to find them in the airport. We told them we were at the Days Inn by Universal Studios (how many could be that close, right? Wrong!), we didn't have the paperwork  so we told them it was 5858 something, we heard back 5827? Sure, sounded close enough, but HOLY HELL! We ended up being stuck on that shuttle for over an hour while the driver took everyone who got on after us to their hotel whilst filling us in on Florida history, I just kept thinking "we'll get to the hotel soon, in the comfy a/c'd room and in our soft, big bed!" Wrong again! Apparently there are two Days Inn within a mile and a half of each other by Universal Studios, Ugh! And guess who was wearing flip flops, carrying a heavy bag (because I though I might want something in it at some point in our night)?! This girl! A mile and a half over freeways, in weeds, in a strange area, looking like hippies. I. was. pissed!!
Needless to say by the time we got back to the hotel I was SO SO happy to finally relax and cool down, and also to get a shower! I know this was all our fault for not planning properly and really looking around before cabs or shuttles pulled away, but it was still a bad day. Larry kept telling me it's all part of our adventure, but in my head I was thinking THIS is why I like having a year to plan these things...now we know for future vacations. Plus it can only be downhill from here right? Guess we'll see
As an ending note, now that I'm much more calmed down and can see this from the outside it really did make it an adventure and I can laugh at it as much as it sucked at the time it made the day/night interesting and it is something we learned for when we have real family vacations. No way we could've done that walk with kids!

Bahamas Baby!

Our day on the island was the most beautiful day! Even now that we're back I wish we had more time to enjoy it, I would've traded all our days in Orlando for more time on that island. I definitely want to go back. We had our scuba tickets, but we couldn't meet and get off the ship till 11:45 for that, so we decided to sit out on the deck and enjoy the scenery, sunshine, and comfortable breezes. After about an hour we decided playing table tennis would be fun to pass the time so we started that (Larry said that was one of the things he remembers from when he went on cruises as a kid and it was the funnest things he remembers so I wanted to have a game between us so he'd have new memories with me). On our way back to our room to get our tickets and medical releases for the scuba diving we found out it got cancelled because the wind was blowing too hard. I was really disappointed, the one thing I said I needed to do on the island was scuba diving, so to find out it wasn't going to happen was a bit sad. They ended up saying they'd refund those tickets and offer us a day at the Lucaya resort for free (this normally did cost money, but since they cancelled everything last minute they didn't charge us). They even had a bus waiting to drive us to the resort on the beach where we could swim in the ocean (something I've never done), and we could shop, eat, and walk around their market area nearby. As much as I really wanted to do the scuba diving, I can't say I hated this trade. The beach was beyond beautiful. We walked around the marketplace, where I learned how pushy the little store "owners" can be...whoa! We eventually found this cute little cafe that had sandwiches that were just about the best food I had on this whole trip! Major plus, they had sodas with real sugar in it too. Larry wanted to get a Sprite, but they were out so he ended up getting this cool Bahama soda stuff in a crazy cute can, of course I took pictures of that! Side note: the houses, shops, everything are so freaking colorful in the Bahamas, AND in case anyone is looking, they said a single-family house with 3 bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, everything was average $85,000 AND they drive on the left side, too bad I couldn't live outside the U.S. I'd almost want to start looking there!
After lunch we just got back on the ship to relax before dinner. It was an awesome day on the island, leaving was hard to do. We did make new friends at dinner who were really nice, didn't get their names, but they make you share tables so we were lucky to sit next to people who didn't make it awkward.

Pictures (until I can figure out how to load my videos) from the island day:

One side view from the ship

Our lounge/breakfast area, so comfy and such a pretty view

Again, CAN'T get enough of that water!

This was a view of the island once we were one
(Also, that's the Carnival ship I want to try next time)

The Atlantic Ocean!!

Showing our love in front of the Ocean :)

This is how colorful EVERYTHING was on the island

The cute little juice they had on the island (it looked and kind of tasted like Mtn. Dew)