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!