Weekend Getaway

Now that the weekend is halfway here I figured I'd write about last weekend! Steve & I had a great time getting away for a few days. We decided to go camping!

We left Friday afternoon, got to our campsite, set up our tent and everything else and were just in the middle of grilling up some steaks when we heard the sound of rain. It came VERY quickly....along with lots of lightening and thunder. We rushed back to the car. Luckily we had brought our outback rather than the accord so we put the seats down, ate our half raw steaks and spent the next 2 hours watching the rain come down from the back of our car with a bottle of wine. Fun times!

Once the rain finally stopped we decided that maybe we should just call it a night and scampered back to our tents to spend the rest of the evening trying to sleep enough though it was still raining a bit and we were freezing!

We woke the next morning to none other than the boy scouts......lots of them! Apparently it was the weekend for their camping outing and unfortunately for us they decided to set up camp not too far from where we were camping. After having our yummy percolated coffee and a nutra grain bar we decided it was time to do some hiking.

We hiked up and across pickle creek and down around whistling pines trail. It was a perfect day and a beautiful hike! We had such a great time! Growing up in Montana I spent a lot of time in the outdoors, my californian husband didn't so much though so this was actually his first hike. I decided to mess with him a bit and warned him of all the bears that could be there (even though I don't think there's really any bears in Missouri, that's okay). I tried to scare him but for some reason he didn't buy my whole bear routine.
My best bear impression

After we got back from our hike we had some lunch and decided we'd check out some of the local wineries that were in the area. We cleaned up (as much as you could for camping) and headed off.
I'm a planner....I like to know what I'm doing, where I'm going and for the most part am very organized. Because of that I not only rely on our GPS but many times print off directions from google maps as well...you know, just for a back up.
We decided to start out with the Chaumette Winery. We closely followed our little google map as well as our GPS for about 5 miles down a dirt road. I thought it was kind of odd that a winery would be located down a dirt, but then again I've never been to any of the wineries in St. Genevieve, so I thought maybe they just did things a little differently out there. We came upon a dead end sign and some guys on 4 wheelers who looked a little ticked that we obviously were trespassing on their property. Once we told them we were looking for the winery and got directions from our GPS they simply rolled their eyes and and told us which road to follow.
We headed back and Kelly (that's what we named our GPS, long story, but Steve likes that name and wanted to name our first daughter Kelly, so I figured my best compromise was to let him name the lady that shouts out directions to us in the car Kelly) started recalculating some new directions. We still weren't too far off from the google map either. We drove about 15 minutes and found ourselves on another dirt road. It was beautiful, but it sure did seem like we were in the middle of nowhere! We actually crossed a road that had a creek running over it if that tells you how far out we were.

We were frustrated and finally decided we'd try to just get back to our camp when we stumbled upon a man in a truck. He had that same "your trespassing on my property" look and got our to talk to us. He laughed pretty hard when we told him where we were trying to go. He told us to follow him and got back in his truck. After making lots of turns on dirt roads we ended up at a gate (obviously the entrance to his private property). It was there that we saw the signs for Crown Farms. Apparently the directions we had were right, only the roads had been shut down for over 5 years. He was very nice and told us the best winery that we should be checking out...of course it was none other than the Crown Valley Winery. We were planning on going there second anyway, but figured since we were trespassing on the winery's personal property we might as well just forgo the other places. He gave us directions and off we headed.
Five minutes later we were lost.....again! Apparently our friend figured out we'd be lost and came to find us and told us to follow him once again. Like before, he took us through lots of winding back roads, but it was gorgeous! We actually got our personal tour through the entire winery grounds. As it turns out this nice man owns the crown valley winery and his lived in the area for over 20 years! After driving through rows of grapes we got to our destination! We never got the name of the very nice (and probably very rich) man that helped us out, but we are very grateful for his kindness and have to look back on the situation and laugh now.
We had such a great time at Crown Valley and were glad to give them our business after how nice this man was to us.

I'm not usually one for sweet wines, but the Sweet Redbird they make is probably my new favorite wine! If you go there check it out!

After listening to some good music and enjoying the beautiful country side, we decided it was time to head back and hang out with the boy scouts.
It was a miracle, but we actually easily found our way back to our campsite and it didn't even take driving on any dirt roads!
We made our little campfire and had a nice evening relaxing!

2 years.....

Two years ago on this day I married the nicest man in the whole world. Every day I fall more and more in love with my wonderful husband.
It's been kind of a rough two years.....a lot has changed in our lives in unexpected ways. Even through some of the curveballs that have been thrown at us life always seems sweet because I know I can come home every day and hang out with the one person that knows me better than anyone and will always love me no matter what.

My husband truly is a gift from God and I never want to take him for granted. Two years is just the beginning and I'm looking forward to many more years of adventures together!

this crazy life

I've been kind of incognito with the blogging lately. Life has been pretty crazy this last week!

After a computer crash, funeral, trip to fast eddie's and many frustrating hours at the mac store, I'm back. I'm still not quite in business, but I'm alive and at least part of my computer works again.

I'll update more later. We had a great weekend celebrating our 2 year anniversary and had lots of adventures!

And the earth shook....

I experienced my first earthquake this morning!
Steve & I both woke up from the shaking and it was so weird.
It was pretty small and only lasted a few seconds, from what i've read on the news websites it measured a 5.4.

We have a wooden giraffe figurine from Africa that sits on the mantle in our living room that fell off, as well as a bottle of shampoo fell off one of the shelves in the shower.

We live relatively close to train tracks and sometimes when a big train will pass we'll feel our house shake, but this felt way different. I've never experienced an earthquake, so it was more weird to me. Steve said it just reminded him of when he used to live in Southern Cali.

There's a first time for everything!

Weekend fun,,,,

We finally had a weekend that I can feel good about! Not only did we make a lot of headway on our house (moved a whole pickup truck full of stuff out, Steve finished up the flooring, I picked out a new paint color for the bathroom and I got our whole bedroom organized and ready to go) but we were able to squeeze a little fun in too!
Steve had a bunch of his guy friends over on Friday night to play rockband and when I came home at 12:30 they were still going strong. It looks like a fun game!

Saturday we spent most of the day working on the house and then yesterday Hannah turned 3! I can't believe she's 3 already. Missy had planned a pink tea party for her. All the guests were asked to wear pink (you can see from the pics that my husband didn't oblige, and I didn't do so well either) and Missy had the whole house decorated in a pink theme. It was really cute and Hannah loved every minute of it! She's turning into such a little diva! This is how she decorated her uncle Steve:


It's been a lot fun watching Hannah grow. Steve & started dating just a week after she was born, and then got married the day before our 1 year anniversary, so it's fun to see Hannah's life as she grows and to be able to correlate Steve & I's life together on the same timeline.
I'm getting much better, but I'm still really having a hard time with moving away from Dale & Missy and their kids. It's been so great to be able to be apart of every monumental moment of those girls lives as they're growing, and it breaks my heart to know that we won't be around to see them as they continue to grow up. A picture can only do so much when you're watching a child grow up from miles and miles away.

So that was our weekend. Only 2 weeks to go and Steve thinks our house should be ready.....I'm a little more doubtful, but I'm crossing my fingers nonetheless!

The weekend events (or lack thereof)

We've had a frustrating weekend! I started on Thursday when Steve's back started hurting. He called in sick to work on Friday and has pretty much been out of commission the entire weekend. He's not going to work today either and I'm making an appointment for him to go see the chiropractor this afternoon.

It's so frustrating as this is such a pivotal time with us as we're spending every minute we have to put into getting our house ready to sell. We were actually supposed to be out of town this weekend but we decided last week that we should cancel so that we could put that time into our house. Instead though, Steve hurt his back and somehow also ended up with food poisoning (or some horrible illness) that has pretty much restricted him to the couch or bed for the last 4 days. It's SO frustrating and I feel so bad for Steve.

On another note, we heard of a family that's getting ready to adopt a child from China that will be having a garage sale pretty soon to raise money and it has really motivated me to get on the ball with getting rid of more crap! It's made it so easy to part with stuff that I normally would have a hard time giving up because I know it's going towards a good cause! In less than an hour this weekend and I had already filled two boxes of stuff that I want to give to them for their sale - good stuff too, most with the tags still on it and never used! It's really been quite a blessing to me to be able to get rid of this stuff and not have any remorse.

I also attacked our closet this weekend and got rid of a few garbage bags full of clothes as well as cleaned out underneath our bathroom sink and threw away probably at least 10 bottles of half-filled lotions from Bath & Body. Yes, I really am that bad!
It doesn't help that my husband is a pack-rat and thinks that we should save everything to save money because someday we'll actually need it and then we won't have to go buy it. I'm done with this! I want to get rid of this clutter and I'm at the point where I really don't care if we have to go buy a new curling iron (I've probably never even used it once since I bought it 6 years ago!) some day for when our un-conceived daughter is a teenager and needs to fix her hair for prom or something. Once we clean out this clutter and get rid of all this crap that we don't need I NEVER want to live like this again!

So that was our weekend, I'm feeling discouraged because of our situation, but encouraged because I at least got a little bit done. I guess even a little bit of progress is still progress, right?

People that come and go....

Do you ever have those days when all the sudden it just seems like all these old people from your past keep on popping into your head? That's how my day's been.

All day long little random things will remind me of people that I forgot even existed and it’s really weird when I stop and think about all the people that I’ve met through my short little 28 years of life. What’s really sad though is that most of those people I’ve forgotten. Of course there’s the few that I’ve kept in contact with and even those that I haven’t kept in contact with that have made such an impression on my life that I could never forget them, but there are also those who I’ve spent significant amounts of time with whose names I wouldn’t even be able to remember if I ran into them on the street.

Is that a reflection of me? Am I really that self-absorbed that I can just forget people like that or is that normal? Anyway, so today has been a day of thinking about great people that I haven’t thought of in a long time. It makes me sad, because these are people that I always thought would be a part of my life, but now I struggle to even remember their last name.
I guess it seems kind of real because I’m getting ready to move and there’s a lot of great people here that are a part of my life that I’m really sad to leave. Reality tells me that down the road in a few years I won’t even hardly remember them anymore either, but right now I couldn’t even imagine them not being a part of my life.
I guess this is all part of life right? It just seems odd to me that I place such a high value on people and relationships, but then just forget those people that I value so much. I think I feel kind of bad about moving on and letting go because I feel that I'm doing an injustice to the people that I'm letting go of.

As childish and selfish as it seems I really like the friends that I have and don't really have a desire for new friends. I guess you could say I'm comfortable. What scares me is that I know that all of that comfort is about to change and in just a few months my world won't be the same.
I want to embrace the change and the new people that come into my life and learn a lot - about life, people and myself through this season of change!

Pics of our visit to Madison....

Steve & I in front of one of the big lakes over by the capitol building

Inside the capital. Apparently it's good luck to rub the badger's nose



Hanging out downtown at a very cool Irish Pub


Too bad he's squinting, otherwise it would have been a great pic!

Adventures in Madison.....

We had a GREAT weekend in Madison! The city was so great that it immediately put all of my “what if I hate it here?” fears to rest. It really is the perfect city for Steve & I! We had a great time reconnecting with an old friend of mine from YWAM that I haven’t seen in years as well as just checking out the city.

I had been talking to a Realtor there for the last few weeks about housing and was finally able to meet with her and we all just loved her! She took us around the city to get a feel for some of the neighborhoods so we could more narrow down where we wanted to live. We didn’t expect to actually see anything that we’d actually be interested in buying at this point since it’s still awhile until we plan on moving there, but Steve & I actually found a condo that we most likely will purchase!

It was listed for a lot more than we could afford, but the condo manager had to meet us with our Realtor to let us in the place and happened to let it slip that he knew the investors that had purchased and rehabbed the place would take $20,000.00 less than what it was listed for! I couldn’t believe he told us this! He also told us how much the investors had actually purchased the condos for and it was just a measly $48,000.00!! In my years as a Realtor I have NEVER seen someone trying to sell a property leak the kind of information to potential buyers that could end up saving the buyer over $20,000.00!!! All in all the number he gave us was a total of $40,000.00 less than what the condo was originally listed for back in December! He also told us that the investors would take a contract contingent up on our house selling here in St. Louis, so that was good to know as well!
This condo is SO nice and more than what we wanted! It’s right next door to a big park on the west side of town (which apparently is the best place to live) and less than a mile away from the mall, walmart, starbucks, guitar center and the mac store! What more could folks like us need?
Did I mention that the condo also has a clubhouse with a fitness center, sauna, rec room, outdoor sand volleyball courts and a tennis court? Yep, hopefully it’s where we’ll call home in just a few months!

We haven’t made a final decision on if we want to purchase this condo or not. As much as we love it we really want to live closer to the UW campus which is near downtown. It’s really only about 10 – 15 minutes away, but parking is horrible downtown and we would kind of like to find something closer to downtown so we could just walk everywhere.

Anyway….so our trip was good! It was so great to be able to check out Madison and we are so excited to move there now!

I’ll post some pictures later!