Weekend Wrap-Up

This past weekend was a busy one! I hope everyone had a fabulous 4th and was able to enjoy the time off. I know Kelly and I sure did! Before you get started with this post, you might want to grab a cup of coffee--it's a long one.

Thursday My weekend technically started on Thursday night since our office was closed on Friday for the holiday. And what better way to start the holiday than with a little sand volleyball?? Kelly and some of the guys from his office met up to play a game of sand volleyball so Cooper and I tagged along for the fun. We met up with the Smiths and their pup Sidney, and Shiner and Gracie, two of Cooper's litter mates, were there as well. The evening more or less turned into a play date for the pups, but Amanda and I didn't mind one bit. After the game was over we all grabbed a quick bit to eat at Chick-Fil-A (YUMMY milk shakes!) and then headed home.

Friday I woke up super early for a day off (7:00 am) and got started on our upstairs bathroom remodel. **SIDE NOTE--The rest of this post will be filled with updates on the bathroom remodel, and it took ALL of our four day weekend to get this task accomplished.** I couldn't do too much by myself, but I did manage to take down the mirror, shower curtain, light switch plates, and hand towel rack. I removed everything from under neath the vanity and got the room ready for demo!



After that I met up with Jen and we headed to Downtown McKinney for a day-o-shopping! She'd been telling me about how cute the stores were in the town square and I decided I'd better make a trip out there to see for myself. We didn't do too much damage and we had a blast hanging out and catching up. We don't get to see each other as much as we'd like, so it was nice to have a day together.

Once Kelly got home Friday afternoon, we got to work on demoing the bathroom. We removed the sink top (1980s seashell sink,) wood cabinet, and yellow linoleum flooring. Then it was off to Lowe's for all our remodeling supplies. We picked up tile, grout (and all the crap that comes with laying your own tile,) sink fixtures, sand paper, primer, and anything else you could image we would need. AND, we did this all in time to catch a 9:30 movie. We were definitely on a mission!! Here are a few post-demo pics...

Saturday We woke up in excitement to get started on the bathroom! I was in charge of hand scraping all the linoleum adhesive (from 1987) off the floor and Kelly tackled sanding the walls (the previous owner left a TERRIBLE texture job for us to fix.) After hours of hand cramping and sawdust flying, we were finally ready to prime the walls and lay the tile. Just in time for the Smith's to show up to help! They were so eager to help us with our demo. Taylor helped Kelly cut the tiles for the floor and Amanda and I primed the walls. It was definitely a group effort and much more fun when you have the extra hands to help out. We were finally done laying all the tile about 4:30 and it was time to call it quits and enjoy the rest of our 4th!

After a quick shower, Kel and I headed to Wes and Brandye's for a dinner off the grill. Wes and Kelly cooked some delicious pork ribs while Brandye and I ran to Tom Thumb to buy dessert. There would be no cooking on her part...she's about to pop with the baby coming any day now! The oven makes her house too hot, and with the crazy weather we've been having lately, she can't take any additional heat! We wrapped up the evening with a few round of Guitar Hero, and then it was time to crash!!

Sunday Kelly and I headed to church as we anxiously waited for the tile to finish setting. We grabbed lunch from Chicken Express (YUM) and headed home to get to work! I painted the walls while Kelly...well, I don't really know what Kelly did. But by the time I was done painting he was ready to finish grouting the floor. That is...until we had a minor mishap.

I was downstairs cleaning out my paint roller when all of the sudden I heard a steady stream of water spewing in the upstairs bath. I frantically ran up there to see what happened and found Kelly in a panic trying to contain the spewing water from the wall. Spewing really is the only word to describe this incident. In his eagerness to test his new pipe cutter, Kel forgot to turn off the water to the house. Well, he didn't technically forget, but he turned off the water to the outside of the house rather than the inside. Minor oversight.

That's when the panic set in. We were helpless and had no idea what to do. I called my Dad immediately and tried to explain the situation--in a hurry because our floor was now flooding with water. I ran downstairs to try to turn off the water myself and couldn't get to the knob. So I ran back inside to get Kelly a towel when I found ANOTHER problem brewing. The water was now leaking into our closet and ON TO MY SHOES! HELP! I didn't know whether to leave my shoes and take Kelly the towel, or save my shoes and let the water keep spewing. I think the next picture speaks for itself...

After throwing all the shoes I could grab into the vicinity of bathtub, I ran upstairs to give Kelly the towel. He went back downstairs and outside to try to turn off the water and FINALLY was able to stop all the madness. My dad and brother showed up a few minutes later to help us "repair" the damage. Fortunately for us, we dodged a MAJOR bullet and didn't have any damage to our ceiling, floor, or tile that we had just installed. After a lot of cleaning up and drying out, we were able to finally grout the bathroom floor and call it a night.

Kelly's re-cap of the night: "That's the most stubborn thing I've ever done. I've never felt so helpless in all my life."

Monday I woke up and immediately sealed the grout and touched up the paint that had run down the walls the night before. We let the grout seal and headed to the gym for a workout and some pool time! Once we were home, we installed the base boards and waited for my Dad to come back over to install the vanity and toilet. A mere 3 hours later, we were looking at our final product!! What a relief to be completely finished with this project we've been meaning to do since November. We didn't have long to stand around and admire our work--we had to be at the softball fields for Kelly's double header by 7:45! Fortunately, they won both games! After an exhausting weekend, we were ready to climb in bed and crash!!

On the left is the look we were going for. I think we accomplished it, don't you?

Fully Recovered!

In the middle of jetsetting across the country and hosting a bed and breakfast at our house we found some time to take Cooper to the vet to have THE operation! You know, the one where they take his manhood from him...Yeah, well we decided it was time we have it done since he's already 6 months old! Here are a few funny pics from his recovery (by the way, he's all healed up!)

Uh oh...the cone is too big...



Can't jump on the cabinets anymore...



"Don't I look pitiful!"



"Somebody play with me..."

These next two pictures are my favorite. The past few weekends while Kelly cuts the grass on Saturday mornings, Cooper will follow him around. It's so cute!

I also got in on video the next weekend!!

Cooper and Kelly

OK, so I can't get this dumb video to upload to my blog, so you'll have to click on the link below to check out one of our nightly rituals!

http://tinyurl.com/d27r75

P.S. I don't know why I sound like I'm reading a Dr. Seuss book while I'm narrating the video.

San Diego, CA

For our two year anniversary Kelly and I decided to head back to sunny California! We went to San Francisco last year for our anniversary and loved it! We both love the sunshine and wanted to go somewhere warm where we could layout and enjoy the weather. So, San Diego was our choice! (I also had a little encouragement from this lady. I have to pause for a moment and give her a little shout out! She's the one responsible for introducing me to the blog world, San Francisco, Twitter, and San Diego. Thank you, Susie! What would I do and where would I go without you?)


We headed out west last Friday afternoon. As we waited for our flight we spent the first couple hours of our trip doing this:

Thank Heavens for the iPhone!!

The first stop on our trip: El Paso, TX! Exciting, I know. But really it was because we got to visit with our beloved Thad! (We're so ready for him to move closer and we miss him terribly!) He picked us up from the airport and then we headed to dinner at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, Jaxon's.

(WHOA--Just discovered the ability to upload multiple pictures at a time. Thank goodness! Hopefully it will make this post so much easier/quicker!!)

OK, back to our trip. It was already getting late, and we had an early morning curtain call at the airport the next morning, so we headed back to his apartment to watch some TV and get ready for bed. Saturday morning we set out on the second leg of our trip: San Diego, CA! As we flew over the harbor, we were able to sneak a couple of aerial-view photos. In the picture on the right you can see the bridge going across the harbor to Coronado Island. You'll see a close up picture of the bridge later...

We made it safely through security, over the sky bridge, on to the car rental location and in no time, we were all set and ready to discover the city! Our first stop was Carl's Jr. Kelly had been talking about the Six Dollar Burgers at Carl's Jr and he couldn't wait to get his hands on one! After all, we were on vacation. Why not splurge on a fast food hamburger?!

(Just look at that grin on his face. He was a happy camper!)

After we had our bellies full of Carl's Jr. we headed on to our wonderful hotel! We stayed at Liberty Station right by the airport and it proved to be a central location for all of our outings! San Diego is an easy city to get around and everything seemed to be 10-15 minutes from our hotel. Great location? I think so! The two photos on the right are taken from our balcony. You can see the harbor and just on the other side of the water is the Naval base. (Side note: I promise not to post EVERY picture from our vacation.)

After we settled into our hotel we headed to Ocean Beach to soak up the sun. All along the coastline in San Diego you will find dozens of tide pools. Ocean Beach had several tide pools you could walk down to and later in my post you will see the famous tide pools in La Jolla, CA.

(Note: It is difficult to take "couple" pictures when there's just two of you on vacation. So, you'll see a lot of "single" shots from our trip.)

Right after I took this photo I walked down to where Kelly was standing and promptly slid down the hill. I landed on my elbow and scraped it up pretty badly. An immediate bruise formed causing it to be a tender spot for the rest of the trip. Thankfully, I'm healing quite nicely.

These purple flowers were growing everywhere. On the rocks, on the sides of trees, on the hills...everywhere. Please excuse the crooked picture. This is a result of an uneven camera surface -- the hood of the car. Once we were finished with the tide pools, we headed up the coastline about a mile to the public beach. After we spend the afternoon laying out, we headed back to the hotel and got ready for a night out on the town. Our first stop was La Jolla. The pictures below are taken at the top of a very steep hill leading to the ocean in La Jolla. At the bottom of the hill is where you will find the famous tide pools. We didn't make it down into the tide pools because it was getting chilly, but they were cool from a distance just the same!

We spent the evening walking around the expensive shops and art galleries and then watched the sunset from the beach. There was a wedding going on and we could hear the ukulele playing Bob Marley songs.

For dinner we headed to a restaurant located in the harbor on the edge of an inlet that was completely surrounded by water, Bali Hai. It was such a pretty view of downtown San Diego and the food was delicious. The pictures I took inside the restaurant didn't turn out, but here's a pic of the sign outside.

The next morning we checked out our hotel pool and the large remake of the USS Recruit that was located right next to our hotel. Apparently, the Navy used this ship as part of their training course for their recruits.

Then it was off to the famous San Diego Zoo! We had all access passes which allowed us to see everything we wanted--and more! They included rides on the 35-minute guided bus tour and the Skyfari which was kind of like a zip line over the park. I'll spare you the boring pictures of all the cute animals--you'll have to visit to get the same experience--but I'll give you a quick run down of what we did. First things first, we took the guided bus tour around the park to get a feel for the lay of the land. You can see us standing in line waiting on the bus to pick us up. After the tour was over we made a quick dash through the Children's Zoo (sorry, no pictures) and then it was off to experience the Skyfari. You can see the four pictures I took of the park in the air! So cool! Kelly looks thrilled, huh?! The Skyfari took us straight to the Polar Bear exhibit (hence the reason I'm posing with the stuffed polar bear.) In the next picture if you look close you can see the mama Panda Bear taking a nap. We had to use our "inside voices" while walking through this exhibit. Apparently, Pandas have sensitive ears. We spent most of our time watching the monkeys, apes, orangutan, and gorillas. I think Kelly was hoping they would throw their rocks at him. No such luck, but isn't the baby gorilla adorable?! We did make it to an exotic animals show, but then we tuckered out and headed back to the hotel to rest.

That night we got ready and headed to this historic part of San Diego, Old Town. There were merchants lining the streets and mexican food restaurants all over the place. Of course we had to check out the historical markers for good measure. You can see photos of the graveyard where many of the settlers are buried and near the center of the town was a catholic church. We didn't know it at the time, but while we were taking pictures of the church they were having Mass--given it was Palm Sunday and all. Glad I didn't open the doors and barge in. Oh that would have been my luck.

After a yummy dinner at one of the mexican food restaurants we decided to call it a night! The next day we set out for Coronado Island. But before we actually made it to the ferry, we stumbled upon the famous USS Midway. We quite literally stumbled upon this historical marker! Kelly missed the turn for parking at the harbor (probably because I didn't give him very good directions) and we had to make a u-turn in the parking lot of the USS Midway. We didn't take a guided tour of the aircraft carrier, but we did take a moment to pose with the statues. I took the first picture so you could see the height of this magnificent statue! The other statues were soldiers listening to Bob Hope, holding up signs of gratitude. The attention to detail was amazing--the felt almost life like when you were standing next to them. And in the last picture you can see my crazy husband up to his usual antics--looking up the nurse's dress!

After our brief detour, we were finally on our way to Coronado. You can see the picture of the bridge I mentioned earlier in my post. When we landed on the island it felt like we were in a play city. The buidlings were colorful, and with red pointed roofs to reflect the feel of the famous Hotel del Coronado. We rented bikes to tour around the island and there were all sorts of rules on where you could and couldn't ride your bike. I found that out the hard way after getting scolded by a hotel security guard. Oops. But touring this beautiful island on a bike is definitely the best way to go! By far this was the most fun part of the trip. Well, it's a close call with the Zoo. But back to the island...we biked around the edge of the water on our cruisers and stopped along the way to soak in the scenery. After lunch we spent some more time on the beach, toured the hotel, and then headed home to crash! But not before we made one last stop at Carl's Jr. You can see by the last picture that we were worn out! San Diego is such a beautiful city and I hope we get to go back soon!!