Pops In the Park

On Sunday night we met packed a picnic friends at Symphony Park @ Southpark mall to hear "music for lovers" performed by the Charlotte Symphony. This is one of our favorite summertime activities. The summer series is in danger of closing due to lack of funding. Click here to donate!

Mary Clare and Me

Mary Clare, Kathryn, & Me & a beautiful sunset

This humidity is definitely getting to me!

More Things That Make Me Happy

I'm just feeling very happy these days. More happy posts to come. Feel free to laugh at my sources of happiness as my sister already had a laughing fit looking through my camera and asking why I would take pictures of my refrigerator!

1. Grocery shopping with my neela bags. So cute!

From 2010-06-25

2. Fresh fruits, veggies, and bread from the farmer's market

From 2010-06-25

3. Eating healthy stuff. Chicken breast with arugula, tomato, and goat cheese salad. yum.

From 2010-06-25

4. All of my hundreds of dollars worth of tupperware filled to the brim with fresh food.

From 2010-06-25

Things That Make Me Happy

I've been sooo bummed out recently with all things graduate school related so on Thursday I decided to dedicate the weekend to sneaking in time to do things that make me happy, try to balance out the stuff I don't enjoy with the things that I do!

1. Buy fun NC STATE RED picnic basket for romantic lake dinner date with the husband.

From 2010-06-25

2. Be too lazy to cook a gourmet picnic for wonderful lake date with husband, so head to dean and deluca instead!

From 2010-06-23

3. Amazing Bottle of Prosecco

From 2010-06-23

4. One hot husband

From 2010-06-23

5. Beautiful Sunset

From 2010-06-23

6. Enjoy!

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

A Day At The Lake

Yay for summer and lake trips with friends. The following are a few pics from Saturday at Lake Norman. We had a great time soaking up the sun, drinking beer, and singing loudly.


I'm meeting my buddies out on the lake
We're headin out to a special place
We love that just a few folks know
there's no signing up, no monthly dues
take your johnson, your mercury or your evinrude and fire it up
meet us out at party cove
come on in' the waters fine
just idle on over and toss us a line

From 2010-06-26

basstrackers, bayliners and a party barge,
strung together like a floating trailer park anchored out and gettin loud
all summer long

From 2010-06-26

regular joes rocking the boat that's us
the redneck yacht club

From 2010-06-26

From 2010-06-26

From 2010-06-26

MC and Bo were even kind enough to be models for me so I could practice taking some shadow pictures and capturing the beautiful sunset.

From 2010-06-26

From 2010-06-26

when the party's over and we're all alone
well be making waves in a no wake zone

From 2010-06-26

Daily Devotion

Recently I've started to really feel the pressure from over-commitment. I've always been busy, always over scheduled and can usually handle it. Cheerleading tryouts took place last week along with graduate school registration and deadlines for my paperwork to keep up my teaching license. I felt really overwhelmed and I ended up giving up my exercise time last week in order to get everything accomplished. I really enjoy working out and hate skipping workouts because I take on too much. Yesterday morning I woke up to find the following devotion:

"I am afflicted with the cultural plague of busy-ness. Trying to find time each ay to write, walk, meditate, or make art and work makes it painfully obvious how busy I am. While I would not call myself a workaholic, I do tend to keep moving and I keep busy. " -Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions 2010


The devotion continued on to talk about God's presence in our lives and even though we are busy we can still find him in all of our activities. The author continued to discuss that his biggest spiritual problem is forgetting. Forgetting that God is with him all of the time. I too think this is my greatest challenge. At the end of the devotion the author provides several questions to ponder. One being, "When has God crashed into your life?" Just by reading that day's devotion, God crashed into my life. I've decided to take time each morning to read and pray and slow down. I can continue to stay busy and feel renewed as long as I remember that God is always there. If I make a priority to spend time each day, I know that things will fall into place.

Starting Again

So I've decided that I'm not so good at this blogging thing but am still going to keep trying! Maybe one day it will stick! So let's start with this past weekend...

May marks graduation time and we had two graduations to celebrate over the weekend. On Saturday we went to a graduation party for our friend Ben. We had a great time catching up with friends we hadn't seen in a while.

Unfortunately on our way to Ben & Alice's, my phone got crushed. Concerned I would be without a phone for an entire two days, my wonderful father headed to the apple store only to find out that the phone was two weeks shy of my contract renewal date and could only be replaced at full price... yikes!

On Sunday, Jay and I packed up and headed to Winston-Salem to celebrate my little sister's graduation from Wake Forest. Still concerned about my phone, I spend the morning at the at&t store convincing the sales people to let me renew my contract early and get a new phone. Thank goodness it worked! Unfortunately my visit to the store was not in our plans for the graduation weekend itinerary and we ended up leaving Charlotte much later than expected (although, what's new? my middle name should be Late). We missed the first party of the weekend, Allie's HES major's reception, but made it in time to check into the hotel and meet my Grandpa and Susan. We hurried to get changed and freshen up and headed to Allie's house for a cookout. We had fun meeting Allie's boyfriend's sisters, drinking keg beer, and playing corn hole.

Next up on the list of events was her sorority party at the Graylyn Estate. We had a great time celebrating graduation with her sorority sisters and their families. They had a band and Allie and I had a great time dancing. I miss college!!!

The actual graduation took place on Monday morning. The weather was rainy and dreary and the graduation had to be moved inside for the first time since 1995. I'm not going to lie. The ceremony was long and boring. Good thing I had my new phone to keep me occupied :) After graduation ceremony we headed to yet another party. This was for all of the Wake Forest athletes. We had fun meeting Allie's athletic/academic advisor and touring her study hall area (her second home). The weather cleared up for just a bit and we were able to take some cap and gown pics.

After the party we headed to Allie's house to start packing her things.


A celebratory dinner with our family and Ryan's finished out an awesome graduation weekend. Jay and I were exhausted and happy to return to Charlotte.

love love love

I've been using Picasa (free from google) to manage and edit all of my pictures. This morning, 30 minutes before leaving for Asheboro to visit with his family for mother's day, Jay informs me that he needs a picture of us printed for him to take with him. ta da- picasa. I could easily choose the picture and sync it with cvs' online photo ordering and it will be ready for him to pick up on his way, all before the coffee was done! Ya for technology! Anyhow more pics to come from our mother's day celebrations :) Happy Mother's Day!

Trying out the *NEW* old camera!

Sophie & Boomer Pics plus a few of my handyman painting the new trim around the garage doors. I <3 Saturdays.

Trying out the *new* old camera!

Sometimes its the little, err um big things....

Today has been a GREAT Friday. For one, its spring break for grad school and I get to enjoy a project/homework free weekend. Next, after the most boring faculty religion in service, I enjoyed a lunch of champagne and hibachi with my favorite teacher friends. I came home to find two brand new garage doors installed at my house. Now this might now sound super exciting to you but Jay and I cannot contain ourselves. Our old garage doors were original to the house build in 1966, a yucky blue color (the same color as our shutters, which are on the replacement list also), wooden and rotting. They were old, heavy, and MANUALLY operated! We have a huge garage but never parked in it due to the annoying garage doors. We now have pretty white garage doors with electric openers. I sat in my car in amazement pressing the button putting the door up and down. Bliss. Now I just have to practice not wrecking my car into the side of the garage. My Dad suggested the bumpers that people with babies put on their brick fireplaces. I might just look into that idea :)



Friday concluded with my parents taking me out to dinner while Jay hung out with some college friends. I enjoyed the BEST peanut butter ice cream from Lorenzo's Pizza in Ballentyne. It's peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter and caramel swirls and chunks of peanut butter cookie dough. YUM! Jay and I decided to hang out at home tonight and prepare for our "cornhole day party" tomorrow and Sara's birthday dinner tomorrow night. Hope your Friday was as good as ours!

Catching up

Soooo its definitely been a long time since I've blogged so I thought I would do a quick update of our lives since returning from vacation last November!

November

I turned 25 and celebrated at Press Wine Bar with the girls, my mom, and my aunt who flew in from Texas. We had a great time over a few bottles of wine!

December

Busy as always! We hosted our first Christmas in our new house. Jay's Mom and Grandparents came and stayed with us for a few days. My sister's both spent the night on Christmas Eve and we even slept in the basement on an air mattresses for old time's sake :) We had a great time celebrating together with our families.

New Years

We celebrated the new year with friends and family with a night out uptown. We had fun with everyone but decided that we're pretty much over the going out thing and are planning to host our own party next year!

January

The new year has brought about much craziness in our home. During the peak of the cheerleading competition season I decided to take on my first semester of graduate school by taking on 6 hours of classes. Needless to say, school and work are pretty much consuming my life! I didn't realize how time consuming it would be. I'm thankful that I have an AMAZING husband who keeps our house clean (dusted and vacuumed!). After shrinking a few of my dry clean only sweaters, he has learned how to do laundry and now even knows which jeans get dried and which need to be hung! It's so nice to come home and all the chores are done!

We also enjoyed our first snow in our new house. Sophie, our Wheaten Terrier, is so funny in the snow. She tries to attack it while eating it at the same time. Unfortunately, during the first snow she got loose while I was taking her out in Jay's snow boots and my bathrobe. Our neighbors got a good laugh watching me chase her around the neighborhood.


We had hoped to get away together for some skiing at SnowShoe but unfortunatley that didn't happen as most of our weekends were spent out of town at cheerleading competitions. While Jay spent time with his family, I did manage to sneak in a quick girls ski trip with Mary Clare and Kathryn. Unfortunately, the wind chill was 4 degrees and we FROZE... Here we are doing the only thing we could to endure the cold!


Determined to keep our new years resolutions of spending more time together and exercrising, we did take up a new hobby together. spin class. We've been pretty faithful about attending 5:30am spin sessions at the Y and would love to start training for the Breakaway to the Beach Ride for MS in September, a 100 mile ride that starts in Charlotte and ends in Myrtle Beach. We'll keep you posted!

February

Another busy month. I think the highlight of the month was getting out of the house to see Valentine's Day. While I've been busy with school and work, Jay has enjoyed his management role at Norfolk Southern. His employees work four 10 hour shifts and they all get to enjoy Fridays off. Jay's been great by spending his time off improving our house. My favorite new improvement is the installation of new doors in our upstairs hallway. Finally the original hollow wood color doors of the 1960s are gone! Jay's also gotten very good at making "real" fires. After growing up with gas logs, this took us some time getting used to but we love it! We've enjoyed making smores in the fireplace.

March

Jay turned 25 on March 9th. He was able to spend the entire weekend with his family in Asheboro and I was able to escape my graduate school group project for a few hours and spend one night with him in Asheboro. Jay is just like a kid on his birthday and he makes me laugh. His favorite gifts were his new cell phone and blueray player (his list sounds a lot like my middle school kids!). He has been playing on his phone ever since and has stopped telling me to get off of mine :) A highlight of the month has been our decision to get netflix. Jay, the avid movie watcher, is in heaven. His first blueray disk came in this week and he was so excited to show me the "amazing life-like" picture.

Both of my sisters were on Spring Break last week and my Mom surprised us with a girls long weekend cruise to the Bahamas. We were lucky to spend one night docked at the port in the Bahamas and able to enjoy an entire day at the Atlantis Resort. Even though the weather was cloudy, we had such a fun time playing on the waterslides. We will definitely have to return for a longer stay.

Looking Forward

We've get a lot of fun and exciting things coming up. I'm competing in my first sprint triathlon at the end of March and training for a half-marathon in April. Jay is getting ready to take the GMAT and hopes to begin graduate school in the spring. We've got some great vacations planned in the next few months and are just enjoying spending time together with our pups. Check back for updates!

Verana Day Four 11.1.09

Good morning! I know we're a little behind in blogging. Having too much fun! We'll try to catch you up quickly before we head to breakfast. After breakfast we're going in to stay at hotel lagunita and we doubt we'll have internet access. So you probably won't here from us until we arrive in PV.

So anyhow, Day Four:

We woke up early and enjoyed our tea and juice. They bring it up every morning before you wake up. We then got our suits on and went to breakfast. I had the a bagel with cream cheese and lox while Jay ate maple walnut pancakes. We also split our favorite dish, the breakfast tacos. YUM! After breakfast we went up to get all of our hiking stuff and went into town. It was a 45 minute walk to get there but we had fun along the way.

We walked through the town to the waterfalls, which were very impressive! Jay didn't want to get in but was glad he did the end. The water was chilly (Jay says 45 degrees, I say 68...) but it was fun nevertheless.

After the waterfalls we continued through the village and onto the beach. Along the way we saw all of the children getting out of school. They all have to wear uniforms here, plaid pants for boys and dresses for girls. It was interesting to see a middle school aged girls wearing a hollister hoodie over her uniform. Another girl was carrying a Hannah Montana bookbag. Funny how americanized a small fishing village has become!

We layed on the beach in our favorite chairs at Chico's restaurant. Jay had the yummy fish tacos for lunch and I wasn't super hungry. I began reading twilight, and I am now hooked... After a few hours at the beach we began the hike back to Verana. Its long and uphill. We hiked straight to the pool and dove in! After swimming a bit we went to the room to get showered. At 6pm we had a couples massage. It was great and very relaxing.

No time to finish anymore. Must eat. See you soon!

Love,
Jay and Anni

Verana Day 3

Hello! Sorry no blog yesterday, the internet was down for most of the day. We're getting ready for a hike into the village but we wanted to update you all on yesterday's adventures. We'll post pictures from yesterday when we get back this afternoon.

We slept in a little and went down to the restaurant for breakfast. Two couples were checking out and so there were only three couples here yesterday. We pretty much have the resort to ourselves! Along with our new friends, Rachel and Max, we took the Verana boat into the village for the day. The hike to the village beach takes about an hour but its only 2 minutes across the bay by boat.

Once in the village we went to visit or next hotel, Lagunita. The pool there is amazing, sort of like a natural infinity pool overlooking the bay. Our room there is definitely not 5 star but I think we'll be ok. After viewing the hotel we walked along the beach. A man with an iguana came by and placed it in Jay's hands while I snapped a picture. Later did we find out that each picture was $3. Fun fun. We warned the other Verana guests to stay away from iguana man.

We continued down the beach and surveyed the scene. We decided to walk back towards the hotel to a restaurant called Chicos. They had these really cool lounge chairs that had screens to shield your face from the sun. Take that wrinkles! Rachel, Max, Jay and I layed out for a good three hours and drank mucho cervasas. At $2 a beer this was a steal compared to the resort prices. Rachel had a spa appointment in the afternoon so we headed back to enjoy the rest of the day at the Verana pool!

We swam for awhile then went back to the Palapa to get ready for dinner. Dinner last night was just ok. The executive chef had his day off. You wouldn't beleive the things I'm trying! Stuffed chile peppers anyone? After dinner we toured all of the other rooms at the resort. They are all sooooo unique. I think we made a good choice with the Palapa. We went back down to the bar for a nightcap and then everyone retired back to their rooms as we were exhausted from the sun!

We after the day in Yelapa today, we are going come back to the resort for a couples massage! Can't wait! Hope everyone is doing great! Don't forget to email us or comment on the blog!

Love,
Jay and Anni

Verana Day 2

 







Today we woke up to the most amazing view.








I went up to the library to sit in the sun and read before breakfast while Jay slept. Around 10:30 we headed down to the restaurant for breakfast. We had the BEST breakfast tacos and fresh fruit. After breakfast we went back to the room and I read while Jay went back to sleep. He is really taking this relaxing things seriously! Around 3:00 we went up to the poolside restaurant for lunch. We had the best shrimp ceviche followed by thai beef salad. We finished with kiwi sorbet.


After lunch we decided to hit the pool. Our margaritas were made with local moonshine... and they definitely tasted like it :0 We enjoyed laying around and planning our day tomorrow. We tested out the waterproof camera and it was a success! Here are several pics from the pool.








We're going to head to dinner in a few. Another guest went fishing today and caught a huge mahi-mahi. The chef has been slowly grilling it all day. Yum! After dinner we've talked with some other guests about heading in to the "dance" club in town to hang out with all the locals. Its supposed to be really fun however its a 45 minutes hike to get there! We'll see :) Hope your having fun! WE ARE!