Well thank you Ryan for posting such a flattering picture of me! Haha....my stomach hurt so bad from laughing at that tonight. And what made it even funnier is the fact that he mentioned nothing about it in the blog. Ryan, you are a true comedian.

Well yes, we are off to Atlanta tomorrow for a short visit. But I thought I would post some pictures of the demolition we have been doing at Malia's place and a few others. The renovation is coming along quite well. Ryan has put the first coat of drywall in the new kitchen and I have gotten most of the bedroom painted. We even went to IKEA to get the cabinets. I LOVE that store. The picture here is before we loaded up all the stuff in the car. Sherah and Oatie (our doggies) are having a blast here because there are 2 other chihuahuas here for them to play with. They run and play hard all day long and sleep so good at night. There are also 4 kids that love to chase them around and feed them treats-Taylor-12, Carter-10, Ethan-8, Sophie-7. They will be sad to leave for sure. Chihuahua party!


This morning I had my first true driving experience of LA by myself when i decided to go down to Santa Monica for a Yoga class by the famous Brian Kest. I was first introduced to yoga when a friend gave me his tapes about 8 years ago. I fell in love with it, but never really thought too much about him or his studio. Until...when we were telling people that we were going to be in LA, my friend informed me that Brian Kest had a donation stuido in the heart of Santa Monica. I couldn't beleive it....I was soooooooooo excited.

So I left Malias house and gave myself 50 minutes to get there, mind you its only 17 miles from here (on the freeway). But I didn't make it. So bummed. So i remembered that there was another studio down there I wanted to check out and the class started 15 min. after Brian Kests class. So i made it to that one to find out that the instructor had an emergency and had to cancel class. Argh. So I decided to wait around for the next class 2 hours later at a totally different studio (they are EVERYWHERE here), which wasn't a bad deal because I got to walk around the open air market and stroll alongside the beach. These pics were the view i had this morning from where I was. And the Power Yoga studio pic is Brian Kest's place, which i cannot wait to go back to!

Looking foward to visiting with family and friends in ATL this weekend! YAY!

Atlanta Bound

Tomorrow we get on a plane and head to atlanta for a few days! we have not been home since we left back in september, and we are really looking forward to catching up with friends and family. It will be interesting to see what it feels like to go home again. it feels like the people we are now are so different from the people we were when we left. so much has changed in regards to how we view ourselves and this world, and the possibilities are endless. we defineatley have a new sense of adventure, freedom, and not knowing about the future that we both are in love with.
We have been having a great time hanging out with Malia and her kids. They are so much fun, and Malia is an incredible mother. It is awesome to see how she relates to her kids, and they to her.
The renovation is coming along. we are onto mudding and sanding the drywall. anyone who knows me, knows that i HATE drywall. but i am taking it one step, and one 5 gallon bucket of mud at a time. After the drywall is done, then Kristen will be doing the painting, which i am looking forward to.
We are so excited to see everyone, but are bummed our time there will be short. we will be hitting up our old spot el myr saturday night and hope to shut it down, so if you can make it, come out!

the greatest day of my life

there are no words to describe today. so, i shall be forced to make up a new word. let me first start by saying this: i have been woken up by a cock or two in my day, but none as mennacing as the one who lives next door to malia. this thing is huge, angry and vocal. 4 a.m. on the dot every morning.
We got a lot of demo done this morning after the cock woke us up. We took out a wall, cut out a door, did some electrical, and a few other small things. Our plan for the kitchen is starting to come together. We will be putting up new walls tomorrow!
After some work this morning we met up with some friends from atlanta who just happened to be visiting near by. we met Brent and Amity at a near by nature park. The land was once owned by the one and only Will Rogers, and it is now a national park. amazing trails, with amazing views of the ocean and the down town area. what made the hike super sweet was the 5 foot long snake that greeted us at the trail head. then half way up we saw an even sweeter rattle snake!! seriously, it was a baby snake, but it was totally pissed at us for no reason and had a little rattle.
could the day get any better than that??? yes. Me and K went down to santa monica where we saw the freaking back to the futuer delorean fully equipped and just sitting in some random parking lot. it was still steaming from sweet time traveling. i have a strong feeling that it was in the mesosoic era earlier today.
could the day get any better??? yes!!! when we got home i decided to do a little work on the kitchen and started installing a ceiling fan. i accidentally left the power on and shocked myself! i screamed and malia and kristen came in running. after a few minutes of me explaining what happened, kristen looked down and noticed that the bed was on fire!!! yes, some sparks ignited the bed spread!! feels good to say "i set the bed on fire." fortunately i put it out with my shoe.
could it get any better?? yes! the plumbing got backed up in the house, so no one in the house could use the toilet. Malia picked up her son ethan from school and informed him of the plumbing situation at the house. later that day ethan came to her and informed her that it was no problem and he pooped in the trash can. totally awesome! give the kid a lemon and you get lemonade! unfortunately the trash doesn't get picked up till next thursday.
cant wait to see what happens tomorrow.

So obviously I'm having a little trouble with the pictures and the text aligning correctly. Sorry about that. Here are some pics from the Grand Canyon!

Found the camera cord....in the camera case! Haha...imagine that. And tried to add some photos to an old blog post, but as you can see some of them overlapped. Opps. I'm still new at creating a blog, so hopefully I will learn as time goes on :) But if you click on the pics they will enlarge.

So Vegas was a blast. We really did have a great time. We spent the day Monday just walking around the strip and going into various hotels. I must say that once you see one casino, you've seen them all. They got old fast, especially when it was such a beautifu day outside and the casinos make you feel like you are trapped inside a time warp where you don't know what time it is. While walking down the side walk we passed this old (about 75) , oddly dressed couple. They were wearing peach slaks, white turtle necks, tweed jackes, and gold chains. Right as we passed them the old mad said to Ryan "You need to buy your girlfriend some new clothes!" I must say I was taken back, as I was only wearing my favorite pair of ripped jeans, a t-shirt, and a trucker hat with pig tail braids. But we laughed so hard about that. I guess thats not acceptable attire for a woman in Vegas. Sorry old man.............

We found a little booth that was selling show tickets for 1/2 price and we decided to treat ourselves to a Cirque de Soleil show. We had been debating it all afternoon, thinking that this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. So when we found them at such a great price, we went for it. And man was it worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was called Le Reve, and it was the water show! I didn't realize it until we got there, but I have ALWAYS wanted to see that. It was hands down the best show of any kind that I have ever seen. It was a beautiful story told in a mix of incredible dancing, trapeze arts, synchrnoized swimming, stuts through fire and into water....the list could go on. I am soooooooo glad we saw it.

So the show got out at 9. We decided since we were in Vegas we would gamble just a tiny bit of $$$. So we went to a few tables (only Ryan knew how to play the games) and spent less than 2 minutes at each. Vegas won (suprise suprise) and took all our money. But in that short time we were at the tables, the waitress came around and offered us cocktails! I didn't know you got free drinks if you were gambling. But it makes sense! So we got the night started off there....long story short, we eneded up meandering around and playing slots at various places (I think I spent $3 total) and getting a coupld more free drinks. Then topped off the night with a gigantic ice cream sunday at this place called serendipity. They have a sunday on their menu that is $1,000 because it actually has flakes of gold in it!! They have sold 7 of them since they opened last year. Nuts!!!!!!!

It made for a fun night, not a terrible waste of money (hey, free drinks!) and some good memories. One of my favorites being when I went to the cashier to get my money back, he carded me and told me that they only card people that look under 30. I said, ok well...I guess thats a complement? He said I could pass for 20 (which i think is a big fat lie) but I was so excited (and a few drinks in) that I stuck my hand under and through the protective glass window to give him a high five. He said "please don't hurt me!" HAHA!!!!!! We walked away laughing so hard...cuz little naive me totally broke the law by sticking my hand under there. I was so excited about the complement though!

Anyhow, we left the next morning and ended up at our friends place in LA. It's great to see her again and her 4 kids. Its going to be a fun 6 weeks! We are going to be building a kitchen in her garage and putting a new floor in there too. I love before and afters!

We are finally in a place where we can use the computer...the city that never sleeps! Yup, thats right. We are in Vegas baby!! Neither of us have ever been here before, so driving in tonight was quite an experience and we can't wait to walk around town and explore some more tomorrow. Unfortunatelly though, I have misplaced the camera cord, so I will be unable to post all of our latest pics until we unpack some more of our stuff and find it! (hopefully) ;)

But our trip to Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon were awesome! Let me start by saying that the drive from Junction to Durango (the biggest town before Mesa Verde) was BEAUTIFUL. We got to drive through Ouray, a cute little tiny mountain town about 2 hours south of G. Junction that is nestled in these super tall, craggety mountains-so rigid that theres no way they could even put a ski resort on them. But its beautiful because they are still covered in snow and melting icicles (sp?), and this mountain range seemed to go on forever and ever, so the drive seemed so short due to the lovely scenery we had the whole time!

We used our new little tent for the first time at a KOA campground that night. Unfortunately the Mesa Verde campground doesn't open til middle of May. But the KOA place was super nice, and we slept well and got up at sunrise to pack up and start the adventure in the park. It was really really neat to see all the cliff dwellings. I mean, these pueblo indians started building their little dwellings there in 500 A.D.!!! They stayed there through about 1300 A.D. then migrated somewhere else (they aren't really sure where). The museum had tons of artifacts that they have uncovered over time, so many of them still in tact. I will post pics when I find my camera cord.....

So the night we got to the campground the guy asksed Ryan if we had come to go to "Phil's World." Haha...sounds kinda funny huh? I thought so. Apparently the guy saw all our bikes on the back of the car. "Phil's World" is a world famous mountain bike trail that was exactly in between our campsite and Mesa Verde. So...we went and rode it after touring Mesa Verde and i must say that it was the most FUN mountain bike trail I have ever riden. Ryan agrees! The best word I can use to describe it is rollercoaster. It was up and down the whole time, not too technical, not too mellow, but a perfect blend of everything a trail needs to make it sooooooo much fun! We both hope one day we can go back and ride there again, and we would ride it over and over again until we coudn't ride anymore. SO FUN

The drive to the Grand Canyon was BORING. Very desolate desert land, mostly Indian Reserves. But finally we got into the park and got to see a beautiful lookout point at sunset. We got nervous though because all of the camping signs were marked as closed...and there was nothing at all within hours of where we were. But we kept driving through the park and luckily found another perfect campground tucked into the Grand Canyon Village! When we woke up we did almost all the lookout spots, hiked a little bit on a trail on the edge of the cliffs with the doggies, and ate lunch at a closeby lodge. We did about all we could there (considering we had the dogs with us, which limits us quite a bit), and headed to Vegas. We rolled in over the Hoover Damn (super cool) and drove through Lake Mead (very pretty) all the way onto Las Veagas Blvd. We found a hotel and crashed, we needed showers bad, and needed a place to put the bikes and dogs while we roam the streets of this odd town tomorrow.

We plan to be in LA by Tuesday afternoon and hopefully then I can post more pics. But for now, I think this is a super cute silouette even though the quality is no good. But its our doggies waking up in the tent after the first night of sleepin in it. They are loving this trip! Goodnight to all and to all a goodnight! :)

Well, the car is packed with plenty of extra space. Thanks to Brandon, he is letting us leave some of our stuff in his basement! We are off to Mesa Verde! We plan to set up camp tonight, then explore the park all day tomorrow. We had a very fun night last night riding our bikes around town with friends, and every time I hear Sweet Carloine by Neil Diamond I will think of you all with the fondest of memories! Good times never seem so good!!!!!!!!

We are excited about our adventure but leave Grand Junction with heavy hearts, as we will dearly miss each of you here who has made our stay an experience of a lifetime. We love you all. Thanks for everything! WE WILL BE BACK! :)

Thanks Caleb for being the one and only person to join our blogspot! I am honored to have you as a guest. :)

So I promise, Ryan and I will be leaving Grand Junction tomorrow. It seems that we have had like 5 going away parties, dinners, etc. Its been a good time here the last month...lots of good times but the time has come for us to move westward. Ryan ended up having to work the last 2 days, but tomorrow is the day we are headed to Mesa Verde. Check out the website for this place:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/meve/home.htm

I cannot wait! And we will get to use our new tent too! Sherah and Oatie are going to LOVE camping. Thanks to everyone in Junction for an awesome time the last 7 months. We love you and will miss all of you.

The Rest of the Adventure has Begun!

After spending a day in Apsen and the rest of the weekend in Boulder, we are back in Grand Junction to gather the rest of our things and head WEST!!! We had a great time visiting our friends in Boulder. They are super fun, and what a cool town! Ryan and Jason got to ride their bikes the whole weekend, visiting all the local skate parks, dirt jumps, and in-town riding spots. We got to spend some time in the coolest hot tub ever, meet the cutest ever pug puppy, and wake up early for an Easter Sunrise service on top of a giant mountain. Ryan and I rode our mountain bikes all around town yesterday, then up into the Boulder Canyon and ended up on top of a mountain. It was beautiful! We both agreed that we have missed the green trees and green grass. Junction is beautiful, but in a very rocky kind of way.

Yesterday as we were walking to our car, Ryan said "oh look, someone smashed in our passenger window." As we got closer he decided that it was just water on the outside of the window. Then when we got right up on it, it in fact had been smashed in! We had 2 mountain bikes, ski gear, snowboard gear, and one lonley old school ipod nano. Amazingly enough, the only thing the burgler took was the ipod! We couldn't beleive it. Our hearts were racing when we realized that the window was actually broken. We feared that all of our toys would be gone (and they are not covered under any insurance). But no...just the ipod. Luckily we had a broken glass policy with our insurance company and didn't hardly have to pay anything to get it fixed. So we left last night after picking up our car from the glass place and drove home in a terrifying snow storm.

Two things I learned this weekend: 1) Double check the weather before driving anywhere
2) Don't leave ipod in front seat