White Christmas!!

Most of you are know that we had a lot of snow in KC over Christmas, however, since I use this blog as a time capsule, I thought I needed to share the photos of the snow at our house.

View from front porch


Jordy's 1st snow


View from deck. Nice snow drift!





Something very cool about snow on adirondack chairs. Bet I will regret leaving them out all winter when I am sanding and staining them this spring!

Home for the Holidays

I meant to share with you my holiday decorations before X-mas, however, I never found the time to do it, so.....before I take it down, here you go!

Our tree!! The picture doesn't do it justice (in my opinion). There are over 1000 lights on this bad boy personally strung by yours truly and her roommate. It is over a 4 hour process! I add more each year, I don't really know what I am thinking.


Dining room buffet


The living room overview.


Kitchen - look at the back wall at all of our cards! I love X-mas cards - it is so fun to open the mail for the first few weeks in December as there is more "mail" than bills!


Kitchen desk area - no, I didn't put out food for the picture....we were having people over!!


Me and my first born. He is too cool for the camera these days.


Look what I got in my stocking this year!

Did I do that????

I was a huge Steve Urkel fan so I have to apologize to my Mom for greatly overusing this saying during my middle school years. I don't know what was worse, the saying, or me laughing at myself for a good 2 minutes after every time I said it.

Anyway.....I was being a good little wifey cleaning and getting the kitchen all cleaned up after many, many rounds of cooking. I sat on the couch for a few minutes to rest....and turned my head and saw this:




What the hell happened??? Did I do that???? I forgot that the day before I decided to be a really good wifey and clean the dishwasher. I used dish soap and rinsed the soap(so I thought) with water but I guess I now know not to do this. The store sells dishwasher cleaner for a reason, and this would likely be the reason.

Old San Juan

First, just because I am so proud that someone found my blog...I need you to go the Vieques post and read the comments. I am so excited that my post ruffled someone's feathers AND they took the time to tell me so!

On to Old San Juan. This is one of the best parts of San Juan. The buildings are neat, the blue cobblestone roads are unique and there is a great charm to the area.

I thought this was the neatest bathroom door ever!!!




We did almost all of your X-mas shopping this day and my roommate spoiled me with one of my presents....can't wait to get it!! (yes, I know what it is, but I am not able to use it until after x-mas.)


The blue cobblestone was so unique.


If one of these were my houses, I would paint it fire engine red!! Not for any reason other than I just like red. As a a side note, I wanted a red Kitchen Aid mixer when I was getting married but my roommate said I would get sick of red so I chose black instead. For the record, I am not sick of red yet.

Vieques

Vieques (think of the word Vegas, with an i before the e, and turn the g into a k)is an island about 1.5 hours away from Puerto Rico. The only way to get there is by ferry. There are actually two islands like this, the other is called Culebra. We didn't have time to visit both islands, but from my limited one-time experience, I would say to try Culebra first.


We start out the day very early, about 7:30 a.m., leaving our hotel and driving to the marina to get our ticket for the ferry. It was only about 15 miles but due to PR's horrible interstate system (there is none) and the bad drivers, it took a good hour. We arrived too late to get on the Culebra ferry so we settled on Vieques.



The problem with Vieques is that you cannot walk to the places you want to explore. You have to rent a car or hire a guide. We thought that there would be taxis in the area but not so much. The taxi system is plain clothes people offering to give you a ride - scary!!! Right when we got off the boat we had several people approaching us telling us they can give us a ride to the beach for 30 bucks. This seemed pretty high, but then this one guy gave us a "deal" and told us he would stay with us all day for $75. OK, sounds good, then he takes us to his "taxi" and it is his junky 4-Runner. I got nervous, so did my roommate, then when we questioned him if we was really a taxi driver, he got mad and told us no deal. Fine. So, we walk up the street (and let me be honest, I was a total B this day. I will get to that later.) We find a car rental sign. The guy wants us to pay $100+ to rent a car for 4 hours. Geez, that is a lot of money.....then the guy tells us he has a friend that will take us around for $45. Great.

His friend arrives in his taxi.





This picture does not do this car justice. It was nothing that you would really ever want to drive. He then tells us that he has to leave, so we need to go to his house to sign the contract and we can drive his car around all day by ourselves. Interesting.....we got to his house, sign this "contract" and leave. This man is trusting two complete strangers with his car. Doesn't this sound strange to you??

We then follow the maps to the beaches. We are driving on dirt roads, then all of a sudden you will see a little opening that you drive down, and you see this. These beaches are in a completely natural state. They are beautiful, but I would prefer if someone would kill off the sticker bushes. Stickers don't go well with flip flops and swimsuits.




Ok, so why was I a total B? (more so than usual, that is!) Well, this was the day I became really sick with a bladder infection. I was so completely miserable and I had to pee about every 10 minutes. Here is documentation of the misery. I know, I don't look miserable here but I was in so much pain I really wanted to be anywhere but here.


On our way back to San Juan, beautiful sunset picture taken by my roommate.

The Artist

After one of the KSU basketball games, we decided to meet some friends at a local San Juan bar. I went to the bathroom, came out, and I see our group talking to this frazzled lady. She immediately hugged me and told me she was an artist and she and her boyfriend had a fight so she left.

She obviously was in a hurry to get to the bar.




She didn't remain lonely for long. She very quickly found this woman(?) who was more than willing to go for a ride with her.

I know, she(?) is sort of hard to see, but trust me, it was not really a she.





Only problem was, the artist had to move her art out of the front seat.






...and they rode off into the sunset, woman, man acting like a woman, and art. This is a Hallmark story if I have ever heard of one.



This is another exciting aspect of vacation....you just never know what you are going to see!!

A Trip to the Rain Forest, El Yunque

Today is a very special treat followers. You get to come on a virtual tour with me to the only rainforest in the US. It is called El Yunque (yoon-K). I kept calling pronouncing it as unique. Me so silly.




Tree roots - looks like it could fall over



The waterfalls are the spectacular part of the rainforest.



I am so proud of myself. I got in the freezing cold water and went underneath the waterfall to touch the other side. This was not without a lot of prodding, however. My roommate kept telling me that it would take 5 years off of me (25 sounds good!) and then this other lady got in the water and I just would not let myself be shown up by her. So, I passed her up, got all the way in the water and went underneath the waterfall. Let me just also acknowledge that one of my personal romantic dreams went by the wayside too. THERE WAS NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT FREEZING COLD WATER PELTING YOU LIKE HAIL STONES. Good news is that I am now again 25.





I just had to throw this one in here to show my hair is wet - PROOF that I got in the waterfall!

Our Hotel - Intercontinental Puerto Rico

My roommate allowed me the luxury of NOT sightseeing and spending a few days at the pool. It was awesome and truly the way I define vacation. In my life, there is vacation and then there is touring. I like to do a little of both, but boy do I enjoy one good day of not doing a darn thing but asking the pool boy to go get me another pina colada. Don't worry ladies, you didn't miss out on any cute pool boys.

View of our hotel from the street. Notice anything purple??



Closer view.

Little sidenote here: My roommate put this out on the balcony the first day we got there. We were there for eight nights and guess what, they didn't notice it until the last day we were there! They called and said we needed to take it down for security reasons. Don't see how it could be much of a risk if it had been there for 7 days already!!

One more sidenote: I decided to go up to our room earlier than my roommate so I could get a head start on getting ready to go to dinner (I don't think my hair every fully dried out for 8 days!), but we only had one room key with us so I told him I would prop the door open with the security latch. I am in the shower and I hear someone saying security, security. I yelled back for my roommate to be quiet and stop scaring me. Then 30 seconds later I hear a knock on the bathroom door, Security!! My roommate does not have a Spanish accent so I was convinced it wasn't him....I open the door, buck naked, trying to hide behind the door obviously, and he said that our door being propped open causes an alarm with the security desk so he wanted to make sure everything was OK. Whew!! Learned my lesson, I will not do that again.


View from our room. We had more of a city/bay view, however, you could catch a really pretty sunrise or sunset. Not that I ever saw a sunset....I was on vacation and that means sleeping in!!




Our hotel was right on the beach.


View of Pool and Swim Up bar. Pretty neat set up they have here. We watched a few football games while at the Swim Up bar. If I had a pool, it would need something like this.



Hot tub



View of the bar at night. Nice ambiance.



Don't look at the dork in the picture with the flower in her hair - look behind her, at the waterfall. It was pretty at night as they had all sorts of different lights to light up the water.



...and just because I can't resist sharing.....

No, this is NOT my roommate!!

Seriously Tiger

Admittedly, I had a little crush on Tiger. I don't think his face is overly attractive, but I enjoyed his physique and his image. I know I am gullible, but I really thought that all this crap about him cheating was made up. I actually had began to think his wife was a little crazy (sorry, just can't imagine chasing my husband with a golf club. I am a redhead, but not that crazy) Well, after hearing the latest voicemail message (if you haven't heard it, here is a link), I know he is a cheater and that really sucks. Elin, if you are reading this, I know a good divorce attorney. I pray you didn't sign a pre-nup.

On another note, thank you Tiger for allowing me to have a little excitement to my day. I enjoy nosing into other people's business and you celebrities make it all too easy.

Puerto Rico Day One and Two

We left KC at the early hour of 6 a.m. in order to get the most out of our first day. This requires leaving our house at 4:15 a.m.!! We arrived in cloudy Puerto Rico (PR) at 3:00 p.m. and headed straight down to the pool. No sooner than we ordered our lunch, the cloudy skies burst into a downpour. We were determined to not let a little rain ruin our time, we had our swimsuits on, however, this was a downpour that would not let up, and the lightning prevented us from actually getting in the pool. For dinner, we went to the hotel next door, El San Juan Hotel, and proceeded to spend $100 at a "happy hour special" restaurant!! HA! Only the sliders were happy hour, the drinks were still $10! Oh well!

Day Two: We toured old war forts (sorry roommate, I can't remember names)and Old San Juan. I will post Old San Juan pics later, we took a ton of Old San Juan.

This is a Sentry. I remember what this is called by associating the company, Sentry Insurance. Don't know if this works for you or not, just thought I would share my weirdness.


Pretty tight quarters that the guards endured on their lookout!


Canon
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Me in front of a canon hole. I saw two men making out in one of the canon holes. They didn't evoke that kind of affection for my roommate and I.....


This is the second fort from a distance. Look at the middle of the picture -see the red roof?? This is a cemetery. Kinda creepy.