Tuesday, March 31, 2009

What we have been up to..

(Our pile of "who knows what" out on our porch)
More like what Chris as been up to:)  We have been keeping very busy with working on our home.  Especially Chris.  He goes from school to work to the house and then starts all over again the next day.  Poor guy.  He has already done all of the demolition, all new plumbing, and is almost finished with re-doing all of the electric in the whole house!  He is doing such a great job and I really appreciate all that he is sacrificing for our family.
Here is Chris's Valentines present from me.  I knew he needed one and what better thing to get for Valentines day:)  That wheelbarrow has already come very handy to have.
Down in our basement we have a lovely sump pump..  It is going to have to be moved but that is for another day.  That should be very interesting.  I am amazed how much water is under our house.  I hadn't ever seen one before we got this house and it kinda makes me nervous, but it seems to do it's job good enough.
Here is Chris working on the plumbing!  It went very smoothly. Thanks to my Dad for helping Chris get going on it.
This is part of our family room. It had wall paper on half of the wall which wouldn't have been to big of a deal, get it wet and peel it off right? No, it was painted over.  So Chris decided it would just be easier to rip it out and then put new sheet rock there.  What you can't see in this room is that half of the ceiling ended up getting torn out too, so that he could do the electric work easier. 

Our beautiful stairs:)  If you look really close you can see the lovely flooring that was underneath our quality green and pink carpet. 

These three pictures are from the living room upstairs.  This is looking out into our backyard.  The big window in the middle is going to be replaced because there is moisture in it.  
Here is the fire place upstairs.  It took Chris FOREVER to get all of the plaster off of it.  In this room there was paneling on all of the walls, which we would have kept, but it was bubbling up so we took it off and then found some interesting wall paper... We were laughing so hard when Chris took it off this wall.  There was a "lovely" wall paper picture that was put on above the fireplace.  We thought about keeping it but then Chris ripped it out ..:)
This is the wall between the kitchen and front entryway.  Before, it had this huge piece of glass right where you can see there is no wall built.  It was pretty ugly.  So with the help of my Dad and brother, they got it out safely. Since then Chris has rebuilt that wall.  
Here is our poor torn apart kitchen.  There use to be a pinkish looking tile in here.  

It has definitely been a learning process with all we have done already.  We still have so much to do!  It is crazy how fast time has gone by.  It might not look like much has been done, but trust me, it looks better now than when we got it:) Demolition was fun and exciting but it feels great to  finally be starting to put it back together instead of tearing it apart:)  

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Our Cruise to the Eastern Caribbean ( Warning: picture overload)


At the end of January we went on our cruise with the Johns family.  We all had a blast together.  I love it when we get to spend time with just the family:)  The Eastern Caribbean was so beautiful and the warm weather made me never want to go back home.  Here Chris is about to get on our ship.. He doesn't look excited at all does he?

The first thing that we did when we boarded the ship was head up to the Windjammer Cafe for some food.  This is us in Fort Lauderdale before we took off!

Our bedroom:

Our first stop was at San Juan:  
We just shopped and went sight seeing around.  It was kinda nice to not have much planned so we could just wander around.




Second stop St. Thomas:
We got up really early and took a taxi to Magens Bay.  It was so pretty.  The water was so warm and clear!

Then off to our first excursion.  Snuba diving.  They took us to a different beach which was pretty much just as amazing. I coudn't believe how clear the water is! 





Third stop:  St Maarten
For our excursion here we took the Rino Riders (pretty much the same thing as a jet ski)  to a private beach and then snorkel around there...  Little did we know it was a nudest beach!  It was so pretty and there was only a few couples that were there.  And yes they were butt naked:)  We decided not to join in..




Last stop: Labadee, Haiti:
We got of the ship as soon as it arrived at Haiti.  They don't havc a port for this island so they had little ships to taxi us to the beach and then back to our boat.  We did this zip line that took you over the ocean.  The view from up there was awesome.   I think that I would have been terrified to do these if I hadn't experienced them before.  (we rode much scarier ones in Mexico!)
Going down the Zip line!


Sunset pictures from the ship:
Our dinner time was right at the same time as the sunset so we only got out there to see it a couple of times and both times it was a little cloudy.  It was really windy so I just got use to my hair being out of control the whole time.


At Sea days were a blast.  There was so much to do on our ship that we never got bored.  Chris spent a lot of time on the flow rider and he got really good at it by the time we went home.

Here I am ice skating on our ship.  It was hard to believe that we were in the middle of the ocean ice skating:)

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD...  We ate so much..  And it was all delicious.  It maybe wasn't a good thing that there was food avalaible 24 hours a day!
These are our waiters: Stephan and Vedo.



It was so nice to wake up and head upstairs to anything you could think of having for breakfast already prepared for you!  And the view wasn't to bad either:
There was 2 super formal nights while during our 8 day cruise.  So I decided it would be fun to wear some of my old dance dresses from high school!  It was so fun to put them on again.  I wore under shirts under them so they were a little more modest.  I have more to cover now:)  But i thought it still looked cute!  I was just proud i could still fit into them.  They were a little snug.
Well that is our cruise in a very short version.  It was awesome.. Thank you Brent and Becky for such an amazing week.  This was both of ours first cruise.  And we can't wait to go on another one... Hopefully soon...