The Traveler's Life

Both David and I have some travel required for our jobs.  Luckily, it is not full time and mine is somewhat flexible.  David's is mostly within the state so that makes it a bit easier too.  However, it sometimes works out that we won't be able to see each other for days or weeks at a time because of our schedules.  This happened to us last week.  


David had to be in Gainesville for the week, while I was in San Fran and Orlando.  We saw each other Friday night, but then David was off to Jacksonville for a boys weekend while I stayed in Orlando.  


While left to my own devices, poor Jangles had to pay the price: 

There are also certain things we like to always do together that get difficult when one or the other is gone.  One of these things is opening packages or fun mail.  When we started to receive wedding gifts in the mail, we quickly decided that it was totally not cool for one of us to open them without the other there.  This then translated into any fun mail (e.g., wedding invitations, party invitations, cards, anything addressed to both of us).  So, with it being Christmas Card season and all, I had a big pile of cards stacking up that I was DYING to open!  I have a cute wreath that I'm using to display all the cards we get (pictures of holiday decorations to come!) and I really wanted to be able to add some more cards to the display (at this point, it only had 1 there!).  So, I convinced David to let me open the cards and text him pictures.  He got a ton of text messages like this:

On Sunday, I was off to NYC before David was home.  Luckily, David had to go to Stamford, CT for work that same week.  We worked it out so that we could meet for dinner in White Plains, NY (half way between me and David) on Monday night.  It felt so weird to go to meet at a mall, go to dinner, and then each get into our respective rental cars to go back to our hotels.  I felt like we were in that movie, "Up in the Air".  We realized that his hotel was really only about 45-50 minutes from my office, so I canceled my second hotel night and went to stay with David.  It was great that it worked out for us to see each other.  I have a feeling that we're going to have to get creative like this more often! 

Thanksgiving in Chattanooga

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving in Tennessee with David's family.  What a fun week!  We left here on Monday after Jangles went to the vet.  He got a new toy for the car ride - a lobster: 

He was REALLY good in the car.  He slept 90% of the time and just kept himself occupied in the backseat.  We borrowed Uncle Booker's Sling so that Jangles could have the whole backseat to roam around in. 

It is an over 8 hour drive to get there, so he had lots of energy on Tuesday that he was able to work off in the backyard with his Uncle Sammy: 

Jangles loves being under our bed.  I guess it is like his own little fort under there.  Now that he is getting taller, he doesn't really fit that well anymore.  Plus, we store stuff under there so he only has a little bit of space to play in.  At Shirley's house, all the beds are taller and there is nothing underneath them so he has lots of room to play! See a video of him here having a ball: 

Jangles also learned a new trick: how to climb into the toy basket so he can get whatever he wants.  We found him like this one afternoon:

We all had a fun time there visiting with family and enjoying the holiday.  We were wearing ourselves out with all the fun!  

On Thanksgiving, we had David's parents, David's grandma, David's sister and her boyfriend, David's aunt and uncle and two cousins and us.  It was a great night filled with cornhole, beergaritas (a drink we learned about at homecoming in Tallahassee when we went for homecoming), good food and lots of playing with the kids.  David found a fun new game called, "let's find clips of Disney Princess movies on YouTube to show the kids" that lasted for quite a while.  It was pretty cute! 

On Saturday, we all decided it was time to work off some of the food we had been eating all week so we loaded up all the dogs and went for a nature hike at a nearby park.  It was so fun and Jangles loved it!! He had to have been a landscaper in a previous life because he just loves anything to do with the outdoors.  

We got home and David's sister decided to give us our Christmas gift early since we will be here for Christmas.  It was these AWESOME FSU themed Cornhole boards!! We can't wait for tailgates next year with these bad boys: 

Of course, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is always the biggest football game of the year for us: FSU vs. UF.  I don't care if we lose every other game of the season if we win this game! Sorry Gator-fan friends! You know you all feel the same way about us!  


Jangles of course got into it and had on his jersey and had to destroy a gator toy.  We can't help that being a Nole is in his genes! 

Sunday meant that it was time to go home.  David had to go to DC for work so from Atlanta on, it was just Jangles and me.  We enjoyed our time together until we hit Gainesville.  I guess I was hitting that town right at the time that all the fans who went to the game decided to leave too because what is usually about a 1.5 hr drive, took me over 3 hours!  Not fun when you have already been in the car for over 6 hours at this point!  Jangles was starting to get antsy and spent sometime watching the exciting cities between Gainesville and Orlando go by...

What did you all do for Thanksgiving? 

Homecoming in Tallahassee

David and I had not been back to Tallahassee for a football game in Doak Campbell Stadium since we graduated in 2006.  As soon as we knew we were moving back to Florida during football season, we knew we had to get back for a game.  Luckily, the homecoming game was our last game of the season this year so we would be back in time for it.  We still have some friends who live in Tally and we knew that a lot of people would be going back for the game.  Our friend Chris had always wanted to sit in the front row at a game so he wanted in too!  He found us AWESOME seats in the front row on the 20 yard line!  It was great because we were right by the student section so we got to be where all the action was. 

Here are the Noles getting pumped for the game: 

There's Jimbo! 

Renegade and Chief Osceola!! 

It was senior night too so it was extra special.  Here is when the players are about to come out: 

It was exciting to be back! We really missed that place!!! Unfortunately, we lost, but it was still great to be back with friends in a place that we love.  

The whole weekend was fun.  We stayed with Peter, went to some of our old hot spots like Po Boys and Momo's.  We did some shopping at the bookstore, went to tailgates, saw the homecoming parade and, of course, went out.  

Thanks to our friends for a great weekend!! 

Puerto Rico!

Back in October, we were lucky enough to take a trip to Puerto Rico for our good friends' wedding! Check out the bride's blog! Viviana is from Puerto Rico so that is why the wedding was held there.  It was right around our 1 year anniversary so we treated it like a mini vacation for us too!  


The wedding and all the other weekend events were at the Ritz Carlton San Juan.  That hotel is amazing! It is right on the beach so it makes it so easy to enjoy the tropical location.  

While we were there, NYC was getting hit with that crazy snow storm in October.  This made us realize we left just in time! 

Here was the spot for the ceremony! It was BEAUTIFUL! They were lucky and had amazing weather:

This is what they got to look at when they said their vows! Gorgeous! 

I was just loving the beach.  I could have stayed there forever, sipping Pina Coladas! 

Here we are before the ceremony.  It was a black tie affair so we got to dress up a little more than usual! 

Everyone kept talking about the iguanas they were seeing everywhere.  When we were in San Juan on our honeymoon, I had seen several too so I knew that it was possible that people were seeing them.  However, we had been downtown in Old San Juan then and I hadn't seen any at the hotel! 


On our last morning, on our way to the farewell brunch, I was commenting to David that we hadn't seen any iguanas still! Luckily, I spotted this guy our our way out :)

We had such a great time in San Juan and at the wedding! We were so happy to be there to help V and K celebrate their new life together! 


Congratulations to the happy couple!!

Our New Apartment

Now that we have been here for over a month, we are FINALLY pretty much settled into our new apartment!  Do we have everything unpacked and put away? No.  Is the house perfectly picked up? No.  Do we feel like it is our home? Yes!  


Even though we still have some pictures to hang, some random items to find a spot for and some cleaning out still to do, it really feels like ours now.  I know I have been telling my friends and family for weeks now that we are almost done and that, "by the end of this week it will be", but I really mean it this time!  


Really, the worst of it is my office.  You can see here that it is kind of a mess!

It is partially because I haven't finished organizing, but I like to think that it is partially because of the way the office is set up.  I mean, how can you have an office with a built in shelf like I have that won't turn into a complete mess?!?! Any organizational tips would be greatly appreciated! 

If you read my post from yesterday about my Pinterest Obsession, you know how many projects I have done thanks to that website! You can see here one of those - I created labels for all of my fabric bins that I have around the house! They are super cute and have pink, purple and blue stripes on them.  The best part? They have a quatrefoil design! I just tied them onto the handle of all my bins using pink linen cord.  

The living area is probably our most finished part of the house.  With Jangles, it is has been hard to get organized in rooms that we don't want him in until we have everything put away.  He demands a lot of attention!  Since the living area is where all his toys are, it was easy to keep him distracted while we put things away.  Here's a view of the front door area: 

On the left, you can see the entrance to my office.  

One of the features that we like best about our apartment is the balcony!  We really missed having a space like that in NYC.  As you can see, Jangles loves it too! It's one of his favorite places to be in the morning:

Here's the view from our balcony:

The other very well used area is our kitchen.  It is a little messy at the moment, but that's just life! 

I'll be glad to finally have everything put away!