Make way for the Segway!

George and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary a little early (we were married June 7th) but we won't be together on the actual day so we decided to have a pre-party!

This past year has been quite eventful and has flown by for both of us. We've really enjoyed 'married life' and look forward to the many years to come! Here are 7 highlights from the past year, not in any particular order:

1. Our honeymoon on Kauai...the closest we've come to paradise.
2. Taking George to Colorado for our autumn cider-pressing tradition.
3. Helping out on the Melling farm, George especially enjoyed getting his hands dirty for branding.
   
4. Rafting the Deschutes in Oregon.
   
5. Celebrating our first Christmas together in Crescent City, CA.
6. Helping Jody & Alison (George's bro and sis-in-law) work on their new home in Canada.
7. Getting George into heli pilot school!

To celebrate our first, we drove up to New Smyrna Beach (if you watch Hell's Kitchen, that is where the winner Danny used to live and was head chef there at Flip Flops Grill and Chill). We started the day by taking a nice stroll on the beach.

After that came the segway tour! For those of you who don't know what a segway is...it's basically a self-balancing two-wheeler. It has four gyroscopes inside and you use weight on your toes or heels to propel the segway and there is a 'steering stick' of sorts to go right and left. They are REALLY easy to drive and George only wished that he could have gone faster. It was pretty fun, although I don't think we're ready to spend the $5,000 to buy one!

We then enjoyed burgers on the beach and ended the evening watching Night at the Museum (Smithsonian), there were definitely funny parts, but we liked the first one better.

It's hard to believe that a year ago at this time we were preparing to get married. What a wonderful year it has been! I'm so glad that George is my husband, he brings so much happiness into my life and I love being married to him! We are truly so blessed and feel very grateful for our little family.

$15 Beauty

I got a beach cruiser! Good ol' craigslist lead me to this beauty...she just needed some new tubes and tender lovin' and viola! It's kinda nice to have a 'comfy' bike where I only need one gear because Florida is so flat. Now if we could just get this 'liquid sunshine' to leave us alone... We've had rain every day, all day since Monday, and the weather man won't tell us when it'll leave us alone so I can ride. George has roller blades and can go just as fast as me on a bike, so it works out perfectly. Bring on the sunshine!

My hunny helping me fix 'er up.

Any suggestions on names? I was thinking the 'Black Widow' due to her red 'belly' and the spokes look like spider webs and uhhh I am a killer rider too!

Seesters are the best!

So I've been 'commuting' from Florida to work in Utah since the beginning of April...two weeks in UT, one week in FL. It's been a blessing to have at least one income while transitioning to Florida and George being in school. The last two weeks in Cedar were incredibly busy thanks to the previous renters in our house in Cedar. If the American dream is to own a home, I think I'd rather rent for the rest of my life! I suppose 'owning' a home usually means that you live there though :) I would have cried and been SO overwhelmed if it wasn't for the help of Sara. She was there with me the whole time; scraping nasty grease off of the stove and the rest of the kitchen, emptying moldy food from the fridge, pounding nails, spackling and painting the walls, scrubbing everything, cleaning hair out of the bathroom...SICK, installing and replacing various things, hauling LOADS (we took 3 truck loads of stuff to DI, the local thrift store, and 2 truckloads to the dump), testing chemicals on different stains (muriatic acid didn't even work in the shower downstairs!), mowing the lawn, bagging thousands of leaves, you get the idea. Despite the grossness of it all, we had some great sister time together. She was the most AMAZING help staying up all hours of the night just so I wouldn't have to work on my own. And her kidlets did great running around wild finding treasures like a blow dart gun, small hammer, a tractor key chain and millions of small little plastic balls all over the carpet that kill the vacuums! Our poor hands got beat up the worst...I'm gonna call the renters and demand manicures for Sara and me! No more being nice, relaxed landlords...it just doesn't work. The house looks SO much better now...empty and clean...in fact I would love to live there now. But instead, we just have to find some good renters or better yet, SELL! That would be so amazing if we could sell...any buyers out there? Thanks for all your help Sara, you're the best!!

just a glimpse into the Before

and After

Shuttle Launch

Howdy! Liz is really excited to get me to post something on here so here goes...

I skipped a bit of class today to go and watch this. Everyone says the space program is almost over, so I figured I'd better see it while I have the chance. The video doesn't do it justice. It looks really far away but it is not that far. The best part was that it didn't make a sound as it lifted off. After the video ends (because the memory card was full) the sound waves got to us and it sounded like a big thunderstorm or something. I thought is was cool.

School is going great! In the next week or two I will be going solo. That means they will trust me alone with a helicopter and that's cool because a month and a half ago I really didn't know anything about them. There is a lot of information they throw at you in a short time but I've been getting it. A lot of studying and a lot of praying!

This is how we roll...

That's right PBJs and chocolate milk by the pool :) If you squint your eyes and look really closely you can see our house right behind the tennis courts. Life is quite delightful and we are loving this sunshine!!