Visiting my Peeps in Florida

Lido Beach, Sarasota, FL

Ah, back to Florida. What a wonderful thing, especially at the end of January. When it's cold and wet in Virginia, it's feeling like paradise in the Sunshine State. I feel like it was really a blessing to be able to go. I've of course wanted to visit my mission again, but didn't really see that happening anytime soon, until we bought the business and found out that the annual conference this year was being held out of Tampa. It provided the perfect opportunity to visit my mission with my husband.

We had quite the ordeal getting there. Our plane took off as scheduled from Dulles airport around 8 am; however, about halfway into the flight, they said a brake sensor wasn't working, so they had to go back to Dulles. Now the crazy thing is, we were over halfway to Charlotte, our destination for the first leg of the flight! Chaos ensued when we got back to the airport. Everyone was trying to change their flights to get where they needed to be. We ended up spending the entire day in the airport and flying out at 5:45. Luckily we got a direct flight and it felt so good to be back in Florida!! I loved it. Ryan and I both had very different experiences living in Florida, so he doesn't have as fond of memories as I do of being there.

We arrived in Tampa, rented a car, and drove down to Sarasota. It was my most favorite area of my mission. We stayed with Harold and Barbara Wilson, a couple I taught while I was there, for two nights. It was so fun to visit with them. Friday we went to lunch with Eddie and Donna. They were a couple that it just felt like home to go to their place. I adore them. The rest of that afternoon I took Ryan down to St. Armand's Circle to do some window shopping and walk on the beach. It was in the 60's when we were there, so for the locals, they were all freezing. But for us Northerners, it felt great. The locals were not at the beach that day. :) There's not much better than strolling the beach hand in hand with my true love on some of the most beautiful beaches I've been to. I was grateful to get to share this with Ryan.

Saturday morning we got up and visited Sister Daniel and her family. Allison's family was sick, so they couldn't come, but Bo was there and it was fun to see him again too. The best was to hear that Allison and her husband and the kids and getting ready to go to the temple soon for their sealing! Wahoo! It's awesome. We hit the beach one last time while we were there for a short walk, and then headed back to Tampa just after lunch.

They had had a red tide the day before, which is a type of algae that can occasionally wash in and it kills all the fish. It was crazy trying to walk on the beach and avoid all the nasty rotting fish that speckled the beach. 

Daylight Exploration

Remember the two times I've already written about the hobo camp and our explorations? Well, on New Years Day we went back in the daylight for some quality photos. This is really a continuation of the Thanksgiving Day excursion.  We also had our friend Alba staying with us for a couple days, so we took her to see this craziness too.

Tons of abandoned bus seats? Or possibly train seats more likely. This site is right next to the W & OD trail, which used to be a railroad line. 

The jalopy. I think this had to have been a fairly nice car when it was in its prime. it's now all rusted out and filled with bottles. Ryan's mom has the license plate, though I can't remember the date on it. 

Alba, Tina, Ryan, and me next to the jalopy. Look how there's a house right behind us. Crazy how there is so much old debris here, and yet new houses are so nearby!

Another very interesting thing we discovered is an old building foundation. We think maybe some kind of house. There's now a huge tree trunk that has fallen on it, so whatever had been standing has been significantly reduced. But there is a very distinct brick/stone foundation, and steps going down, I would imagine to a cellar of some type. Here's some of the household things we found.

I think this is a metal bedframe?

Here's the refrigerator!

And this was my most favorite find! An old bicycle!

It's super fun exploring out here. It always feels like no matter how many times we explore, we find new things.

All the Nokes down in Nokesville like Christmas a lot...

Haha, subtle reference? Actually, there happens to be a town about 45 minutes away named Nokesville and we've considered moving down that direction one day... This Christmas has been a very busy season, but we are really enjoying it. When Ryan left for our business training I got busy getting the house ready for Christmas.  I made a cute Christmas wreath for the front door, set up all the decorations we had (which was small), and I had the idea that it would be fun to make gingerbread houses with my brother Dan and this wonderful girl that I'm pretty sure you could say they are dating. :) Sometimes it's hard to get him to say things how they really are. :) We had them over to our place and we made some wonderful creations. Ryan was a little nervous about this activity, especially after our gingerbread men making/decorating while in Utah. He really doesn't like doing things with his hands that require fine motor skills or attention to delicate details. Nevertheless he agreed to the activity if we could work together to build something and he didn't have to do it on his own. I told him that's exactly what I had in mind. (Plus we were hoping to help Dan along in the dating process and get to know his girl more!)

I think Dan and Erin probably win for creativity on this one. They created a very cool truck and the wheels were gingerbread cookies! (The sprinkles and holding the truck up while the icing dries and hardens.)

Ryan and I created a fortress and we were both pleased with how it turned out. Ryan said it was the first time he has ever been able to transform his vision into what actually got made. That's the power of a true love marriage, my friends. We are better together than we would ever be alone! The evening was great and we can't wait to have them over again.

Here's our very first Christmas tree! We love it, although it may be a little sad. We had some people cut it down for us in southern Virginia and bring it to us fresh. It smelled wonderful in our little place. We were a little stumped at first where to put it in the house, but we ended up moving one of the bar stools into another room and we were able to put it on the tile between the kitchen and living room. We didn't have quite enough lights, so instead of wrapping them around the tree, we just strung them back and forth across the front of the tree. Luckily it's a little hard to tell that in the picture. Also, we were able to get some of my Christmas ornaments from my parents when we went to Utah at the beginning of the month, otherwise we may have had a very bare tree!

We stayed in Virginia for Christmas and had a perfect first year together. We slept in until 10, then we got up and opened presents. We started a tradition that we intend to continue of making Christmas morning crepes. It was just perfect. I was so happy to have the time together that was just "us." Then around 2 pm we went over to Ryan's parents' house and spent the rest of the afternoon over there with them. It was so nice. We were glad to be able to spend some time with his family on the holiday. I started a puzzle over there, which was pretty funny because his family are NOT puzzle people. They seemed almost a little mystified at how it can be an enjoyable activity. But I love doing them, especially at the holidays. And that's a tradition I'm not willing to give up. :) They even ended up joining me on part of it and together we were able to tackle it by the end of the next day.

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

Ryan and I love that we get to celebrate birthdays all through December. With his just 6 days before mine, and mine just 9 days before Christmas, it's a treat filled time. Even so, for his birthday I did my best to recreate the P.F. Changs Great Wall of Chocolate cake. Unfortunately I bought the raspberries for the sauce and forgot to make it! The cake was awesome!

Five Star Painting Training and Family Time

Putting this painting company together has been a lot of work! Before the training, the company sent Ryan all kinds of training materials that he worked through. Lucky for him he doesn't have a job right now, so it's given him a lot of time to do it. The training was Dec. 3-7. Ryan went out for the whole week, but I couldn't take all the time off work, so I flew out Tuesday after work and joined him for the last 3 days. The great thing about all this---the training was in Utah. Can you believe it? The company happens to be located in Spanish Fork, UT, of all places. The guys who started it are all LDS, which we found out during our validation process, and they are all great. We were lucky because we had family to stay with, so we didn't have to pay a hotel, my brother Matt let us borrow a car, and we flew out on plane vouchers from when we got bumped on the flight to Cameron's wedding in AZ in August. So for us, it was a low cost trip, which was great because we are totally in budget mode right now.

The training was great. We learned TONS! All about paint, setting up the business, how to estimate a job, how to present the sale. And that's just for starters. Ryan's got another training he'll go to in January to fine tune the estimating and sales training. I think learning the estimating was the most fun part of the training for me. We went to Scott's house, the CEO, and Chad's, another exec. and put together interior and exterior quotes for painting their homes. There were 3 other guys out there for training also, so we'd all compare quotes and usually we were within about $100 or less of each other on price.

Here's one of my favorite aspects of the training. So like I said, almost all of the guys at Five Star are LDS. On Monday one of them told the crew (none of them LDS), "Hey tomorrow night at my church a bunch of guys are getting together to play basketball. You should come!" One guy spoke up and said he'd read about Mormon church ball on the internet (no way!) and he understood it could get pretty brutal. Haha! Well, I think most of them went and played. (Ryan did not as he was picking me up from the airport that night.) Wednesday night, the company took us to dinner at Tucano's. Oh, I love it. Well, of course none of these guys drink, plus we're in Utah, so no one even asks really. All the execs order lemonades, as do Ryan and I, so the other guys mostly follow suit. Later the one that didn't order lemonade and just had a coke or something, asked if there was alcohol in the drinks. The CEO was like, "Nah, of course not. It's lemonade!" Then after dinner, the CEO invited everyone over to his house to watch a movie in his theatre room in the basement. Ryan and I passed because we were seeing family that night, but the other three guys went. The next day we asked them how the movie was. One guy said, it was great, but they started late because on the way over, Scott (CEO) remembered he needed to set up chairs for the church Christmas party, which was the next night. So he just took everyone with him and put them to work for an hour setting up all the tables and chairs for the party! And then of course, the next night everyone was invited to the party. I love how natural it was to just involve all the guys in church stuff on this 5 day trip they were in Utah. So funny. Welcome to the Kingdom.

The trip was also great because we got to spend time with may family and also see Ryan's brother Cameron and his wife. It was so fun to have my parents come down since we were so close. We all had some time to spend with Matt's family and with Grandma Stewart. Jason is such a cute little man. He was pretty excited about his "Neeeuuuwww Uncle Rynan!" I think he loved playing with Ryan. We were only missing Dan at this get together, but we had fun with having as many as we did together. 

Thanksgiving

So, I didn't remember to take many pictures at Thanksgiving this year. We went to Ryan's parents' house and had several friends join us. A few from the book club came since they don't have family in the area and our friends Jordan and Jenny brought their cute baby and came from Penn State to spend a few days with us. 

Thanksgiving day we took everyone for a little exploration. This was a continuation of Ryan and my exploits last spring. The woods get too dense in the summer to see anything, so we needed to wait for the winter when all the plants die. We found the old jalopy we'd heard about, but we found untold treasures in those woods! I forgot to take my camera, and it actually got dark pretty soon after we went out, so we did most of our exploration with flashlights. We found old bus seats, thousands of old bottles, and old refrigerator, tin mess kits, and tons of other old stuff. Now that we found so much more than we knew was there, we are planning a return trip in the daylight.

On Friday we took Jordan, Jenny, and Tanner to the National Zoo. They had it all decorated for Christmas and it was the first day of zoo lights, but we didn't stay long enough to see it all lighted. We loved seeing the animals and the lion even stood up and roared for us. It was a good show. 

National Zoo zebra

 We learned that cheetahs are the only variety of the large cats that can be domesticated. Ever since then, Ryan is looking forward to someday having a yard so we can raise some cheetahs. We figure that will require some land so they can run. :)

We thought they were going to feed them while we were there. They were all prowling around the feeding area. 

The Thanksgiving break was really great. I'm so grateful for the time to relax and spend with people we love. I have so much to be thankful for.

Ahhhh.. Thai Massage....

A couple weeks ago, Ryan found an awesome deal on Living Social. It was a full day class where they teach you Thai massage. That's right. Not just one of those where you pay $50 to GET a massage, but you actually learn the techniques to give a Thai massage. What was even better, it was a deal for two. It is one of the BEST things we've ever purchased. The class went from 9 am to 6pm, so it really was a full day, but it was a full day of relaxation in our pajamas.

By the time we left, we were feeling so good, and we got bona fide laminated certificates that certify our completion of the introduction to Thai Massage course. We came out of the class with a book of Thai massage techniques and we went over enough moves to give a 30 minute massage. It was an experience that just keeps on giving!

Certified!