Bahama Cruise

Mitch and I have been wanting to go on a cruise since...gosh, before we were married. Our amazing friend, Rebecca J, found a great deal on ecruise.com and invited us to tag along with them and another amazing couple, Shannon and Dave, on the Bahama Cruise Vacation of the Century!
We started our vacation off by sending Marshall to the in-laws (who are phenominal - we don't deserve them! They are way too kind to us! We can never repay them!) for an entire week. Early Sunday morning we piled into the J-van bracing ourselves for the 14 hr drive to Port Canveral, Flordia. It actually wasn't that bad. We spend most of the 14 hours talking, laughing, and chowing down on junky road trip food! We arrived a little after 8pm at the fantastic hotel that Shannon found for us. It was amazing. Talk about starting the vacation off on the right foot! The pool was too cool to pass up. Early the next morning Mitch and I enjoyed a relaxing dip in the hot tub and laid out by the pool until it was time to shower, check out and shuttle over to the BoAt!






Here is a group picture of the bunch of us. I just love how the stranger that I asked to take our picture took such a FAnTasTic shot of us. He went for the blurry, no one looking at the camera shot. Nice.

We Cruised on the Royal Caribean's, Monarch of the Sea! Here we are happily self-photographing as we bid "Bon Voyage! Bahama's or bust!" from the top deck of the boat!






The rest of the pictures on this post are of us just simply enjoying ourselves on the cruise. Relaxing on the top deck, in our room, arriving in the Bahamas...

Part 2 Bahama post

We docked docked in the Bahamas a day earlier then planned because we weren't able to go to the Cococay (Royal's private island) due to choppy waves...Mitch and I walked around the tourist shops, took a carriage ride (I thought we were not going to make it back alive or with all of our body parts, whatever, we made a memory) we walked around the port and just enjoyed ourselves. Early the next morning we did a group snorkeling excursion that Becca found. So cool! We went to three locations, the last location, we swam with sharks. SERIOUSLY! And YES - the carriage ride scared me more then the Gray Reef Sharks. Mitch and Ron won gold and silver place in the ping pong compettion. Becca, Shannon and I entered the sexiest bicept compettion (No, I don't take myself seriously, it's more fun when you don't!)...Shannon won sexiest bicepts! Wahoo! We rock climbed on the boat. We just had a good time. A really good time.















We had a FANTASTIC time! Both Mitch and I agreed that we would have had fun if we traveled by ourselves, but hands down traveling with other FUN couples is the way to travel on a cruise!

The First Day of Preschool!

I did it. I sent my little boy off into the real world. My little 4 year old is in preschool.


Last year I did a joy school type of preschool with another mother from our church. It was good. I liked it. I thought about trying to get a group together this year until I realized that I could enroll Marshall in kindergarten NEXT fall. I bout died! I still am about to die! He is my only baby! He can't possibly be old enough to go to kindergarten!


I have been having a serious debate with myself. I have asked every mother about her opinion so I welcome yours as well. Marshall has an August birthday, which means if I enroll him next year he will be one of the youngest in his class, or I can wait another year and enroll him when he is 6. What should I do???

That is why I decided that I had to enroll him in preschool so I could gage his progress. So far, he loves loves loves it!
He had no problem walking into school and waving me goodbye. He (nor I) cried at the departure. I did hold my breath as I watched his teacher point him to his hook. He looked puzzled and from the door I wanted to rush in and explain to him that he needed to hang up his backpack. But I didn't, I followed the instructions given to the parents by the teacher to not go into the classroom. Iwalked away knowing he'd figure it out.

We sure love our little Marshman!

The before, during and after pictures

I am not even going to make any sort of reference to my blogging absence cause that'd be about as lame as my absence...
Let's see, last you heard we'd purchased a townhouse. Alright, so we did in fact move into our very first "home". Not so much - renting, but moving as much as we have, we were very excited to move into our first home.
Now Mitch and I - we're not a afraid of a little work, we're not even afraid of a lot of work. SOOooo, we took about a month making our updates -you know, adding our personal signature to our home. Let me tell you, it was quite a bit of work but totally worth it! The townhouse wasn't in terrible condition when we purchased it, but it didn't look like our home. So we made a few major changes. Happy to say, "It's home." Here's some before pictures, the work in progress, and the after...

dinning room

front room

The work in progress...(even Marshall was put to work painting the basement!)

the basement

dinning room looking into the living room

tile work in front entry and bathroom

wood flooring in dinning room and kitchen

The after...

the basement/Marshall's territory

the dinning room

the kitchen

the living room

Well there you have it....(several months later.) Our first home.

Here it is... our first "home."

I'll make this brief because I should be packing but needed a break. So we're in the middle of the long and at times overwhelming process of renovating our new home so we can move into it. Now you see, this will make our tenth move in the almost six years of marriage. This is the first time we feel like we are moving into our "home". Very big deal for us. (I should capitalize that to emphasize just how significant it is to us) VERY BIG DEAL FOR US. (There, that's better.) We purchased our townhome as a short sale. It was left as is. Now it was not as horrendous as you might imagine, or like I might exaggerate at times. However, since this was our new house we really wanted to make it "Our Home" by adding our touch. Since we've purchased our home we've ripped out the carpet on all three levels, and removed the lynolium (ugh!) in the kitchen and bathroom, primed THE ENTIRE HOUSE, then PAINTED the ENTIRE house and baseboards, put new wood flooring in the kitchen and dinning room, tiled the entry, front closet and front bathroom, installed new lighting, new door handles, and blinds, and we are patiently (hm huh?) waiting for our new carpet to be installed on Thursday so we can move in of Saturday. Needless to say, this has been a lot of work! However, some people don't know that I use to watch Bob Villa with my Daddy-o on Saturday mornings growing up, AND I am a die hard fan of HGTV. So this has basically been a dream come true. Now I know what you are thinking, cause I would be thinking the same thing. Okay, so you can talk (type) a lot of work, WHERE's the pictures? I promise there will be pictures coming. Probably next week sometime. I've got a lot of packing and unpacking to do.