Green Belt!

Ryan has had a long-held desire to be a black belt and be awesome at martial arts. So about 2 1/2 years ago he decided to enroll in a Tae Kwon Do studio. They've got this great deal at Top Kick where if two people in a family join, the rest of the family gets in free. So Ryan's whole family decided to join shortly after he did. When we got married, I became part of the Nokes clan and therefore became eligible to join for free. This is something I never in my life thought I'd be doing, but I am now an intermediate belt in TKD. 

Demonstration of our blocks at graduation

I recently advanced from the gold stripe belt, which is considered a beginner belt still, to by green belt. I've been going to the intermediate/advanced class all along because that's where Ryan was anyways, but now I'm officially supposed to be in that class, which is great. The classes are actually a lot of fun, and a pretty good workout. I've done more push-ups than I ever thought possible!

Here's a demonstration of our form:

Never mind that I messed up a little bit in it. Also, contrary to how it looks in the video, I am NOT the only female adult in the class. We have several women who come. This particular graduation ceremony we seemed to be missing quite a few of the women. At the end of the demonstrations, we received our new belts. Happy to be moving up the ranks!

What's Your Color?

Color says a lot about a person. How a person uses color in their home can reflect their personality and affect their mood. That's one reason I believe in our company! Last weekend we did our first home show for our painting company! It was a huge crunch getting it pulled together, but it worked. Friday at 3 pm the location for the show opened for vendors to begin setting up, and we still didn't have a booth display. We'd ordered it 3 weeks before, and we'd been told it would arrive probably Wednesday or Thursday. Then we had a crazy snowstorm on Wednesday. The "snowquester" as it was named here in DC. Well, Virginia freaks out at the mention of a weather problem. So they closed schools preemptively on Wednesday and started 2 hours late on Thursday. I think they probably grounded the planes too. Anyways, we were getting nervous about our booth getting in. We got a tracking number at last and found it was on the truck to be delivered, so I was a little nervous all day to leave the apartment because I didn't want to miss it! Finally about 4:30 our booth arrived! We were at last able to get over to the center and get set up. It turned out looking great. Here it is.

All kinds of awesome brochures on popular paint color trends and palettes. It was fun discussing color with our future customers!

The proud owner in his booth

Not only did we have great success off the show, we had a great time talking with people and our good friend Rachel even came out both days to see us. On Sunday afternoon she even brought us the most delightful homemade cookies. And they were even still warm. They were super incredible, just like she is.

Entrepreneurship has been an exciting ride. It's fun to work on the business. It's something we are both really proud of. But it's also a lot of work with a lot of challenges and road blocks.

Iron Chef Cookoff

We've been plotting this activity for months now, but there were too many holidays and business trips in December and January, but we finally got pulled together our first Iron Chef battle. We got together with 3 other couples, the Dows, the Nearys, and the Wildes, and had ourselves a culinary competition. There were some special stipulations on our event. First, you could use whatever you already had in your house, but buying new ingredients was limited to $20. (Two were able to do it, two went over by a little bit.) Second, no use of the internet. Cookbooks you already owned were legal, but no searching for something online last minute.Third, you must produce both an entree and a dessert containing the secret ingredient. So the day before, we sent out a list of about 10 possible ingredients for people to consider. Then at 3:30, we picked an ingredient at random and texted it to everyone in the group. Food had to be to our place by 6 pm. The missionaries were invited to dinner to be the final judges. The secret ingredient: Ginger.

The spread. Everything was good. Some were just more good than others.

The array of food that arrived at our house was incredible. From the Nearys we had sushi and a cranberry pear upside down cake. From the Wildes, mashed butternut squash/potatoes surprise, and a dessert they invented and called "ginger lovin from the oven." The Dows produced sea bass with five chili ginger sauce and apricot ginger scones. Lastly, we presented kabobs with a citrus ginger marinade and a pear raspberry ginger crisp. Hands down, the Dows whooped us all with the sea bass. It was phenomenal. As far as desserts go, the winner was actually given to the Wildes. It was really good, though I thought our crisp was pretty delicious myself. Everyone had a great time and I would love to do it again with some of the other ingredients on our long list of possibilities.

Just Cruisin'

Another cruise? Didn't we just do one last April? Yes, in fact, we did. We went for our honeymoon. And we went on another one in January! It may seem crazy, yes, even a little to me. Ryan lost his job in November, and so we go on a cruise. Well, sort of. We bought Five Star Painting and they have an annual conference every year. This year it started in Tampa, and then we all got on a cruise boat and held the rest of the conference on the sea. So it was for work? Absolutely. Work, with a fair amount of play time. :) That's what I'm talking about.

After we finished visiting my friends in Sarasota, we drove back up to Tampa. We had a couple events for the conference on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Then they shuttled us all to the port to get on the Norwegian Dawn. (With the recent events on Carnival's boat, I'm so glad we were on Norwegian!) It was a nice boat. More elegant than the Carnival boat we were on for our honeymoon. That one had a lot of Vegas style neon lights. This was for a bit more upscale crowd I think. Also, the average age on the boat was probably 65. So, a lot different demographic.

Here's our boat. We are docked at Roatan, Honduras. 

The days we were at sea, Ryan had classes pretty much the whole day. Most of the wives didn't go to any of the work stuff, but I went to most of it. I cut out sometimes though when I felt to tired, or too sun-deprived. :) Most of the cruise it was overcast and even a little rainy, so the last day when we had sun, I wanted a little of that. The classes were great and we learned a lot about our new business. The days that we were in ports, there was nothing structured by the company and we had 4 days of playtime! Although, we usually were doing our adventures with other franchisees as well. It really was a great thing because we got to know people on more personal levels and there was a lot of informal opportunity to learn from the zees (short for franchisees). We could ask individual questions and get experience, ideas, opinions, and advice from many different people. It really was invaluable. Now when we have questions, we have a ton more resources because we are friends with people in the business all over the country.

 Ok, so the business aspect was great, but let's get on to the fun stuff! That makes for a much better post than a recap of paint products or marketing tactics. Our first stop was Roatan, Honduras. I think it was my favorite of the ports. It was super poor, but just so beautiful. It's pretty mind-blowing to see how people live. I'd love to just make tons of money and then come down and help the people learn how to improve their lives. It's a tiny island 40 miles off the coast of mainland Honduras, and it is all jungle. We took a van up to the top of a mountain and did a zipline trip through the rain forest  almost to the beach. it's over 2 miles of zipline.

Places like this made Ryan and I long for the day when we to can build a sweet treehouse. It's kind of a lifelong goal we've both always had!

Our guides taught us to do some sweet tricks, like hanging upside down!

On the second to the last line they clipped us in together and snapped a "couples picture" for us. 

Once we made it to the bottom, they took us in the van the rest of the way to the beach. We had an amazing lunch there (I've never had rice and beans that tasted so good!) and then strolled the beach until it was time to head back to the ship. 

Our guide here was a 16 year old kid, who we both thought was actually 11 or 12, he was so little! But he shared with us a lot of interesting things about the island, (pirate stories!) and gave us a great tour as we drove. He suggested we try the iguana, apparently an island special, but we opted for something different. Maybe next time.

The next day we went with a huge group of Five Star people on an ATV and cave tubing adventure in Belize. To get to Belize City from the cruise ship you have to take a tender (small boat) a couple miles to the shore because the water is too shallow for the cruise ship to dock. The city is pretty run-down. We saw the Church building there and it was by far the nicest building in the town. No wonder I've always heard about how in South and Central America the church buildings are often surrounded by a fence and barbed wire. That was true here. It's really just to protect and preserve it. We took a bus for an hour or so to "the palapa" where we rode ATVs In this case, it was actually a great thing that it had been rainy. It meant the jungle was mud-tastic! We were going through HUGE mud puddles and came out a wonderful mess.

Some of our Five Star friends. This is for reference to show how muddy it was!

Look how muddy we were after riding through the jungle!

The "Butts Up" van that took us on our adventures. 

We hadn't really planned on the ATV trip, be kind of got peer pressured into it. We thought we were just doing the tubing, but then when we were on the bus, found out everyone else was doing both. Rather than get separated from our group. We joined up. I'm glad we did because after ziplining, it was my next favorite activity we did. When we finished up, we boarded the bus again and headed to the river for tubing. This river goes through limestone caves that are pretty cool to look at. Pictures of this aren't great because it's so dark, but here's a few anyways.

Here's half the group as we are getting ready to push off. 

Ryan loved it. We are just coming out of the cave. 

We got to the end and were blinded by the sunlight. The caves were cool, but the beautiful jungle was incredible too! 

When we got to the end, several of the guys jumped off this point. Ryan and I opted not to because it was kind of windy and so we were freezing after having been in the water already. 

They took us back to the palapa for lunch and they fed us tamales. I love tamales so much! Then we headed back to the boat and boarded the ship.

The next day we docked in Costa Maya, Mexico. I'm glad Ryan speaks Spanish, because our van driver there spoke very little English. We took a big group of Five Star people to the Chacchoben Mayan ruins. Our guide found that Ryan spoke Spanish, so he asked him to sit up front with him. That was fun. We asked him all kinds of questions that other people on the van had about stuff. My college Spanish is a bit rusty, but I was able to understand probably 30-40% of the conversation between him and Ryan. Here's the ruins.

Here's one of the biggest temples at the ruin.

This cool tree was in a central area between some of the temples. The way the area was, it looked like it was kind of a common area at some point. 

The last day we docked at Cozumel, Mexico. We actually didn't take any pictures there. It was the first day that way actually just really nice and sunny. We decided to just go to the beach and not be big spenders on any more excursions. I tried to get a tan, and Ryan tried to hide under a towel. And yet, he got burned a bit, and I got nothing. We went to the same beach as we had gone to the previous year, so there wasn't too much new about it, but it was super relaxing.

We also really enjoyed our evenings on the ship. Company sponsored cocktail hour provided us with some nice virgin pina coladas. (Actually funny because there's a large contingency of LDS members who are in the company, so I think the bar was serving way more virgin drinks than they were used to!) The boat put on some great shows. The best one by far was the aerialists. It was kind of cirque du soliel style performing, and it was absolutely phenomenal. There was just one man and one woman, but they did some incredible things. It amazes me that one can train a body to do those things. We also really loved just walking up on deck in the evenings. At that time, it's pretty empty. Most people are at dinner, at shows, or in the casino, so the upper decks are pretty deserted, which makes for a wonderful stroll. I was so relaxed on the trip I almost hated to come back and jump back into the stress of real life. But now it's time to put into practice everything we learned. Wish us luck!

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.