getting sucked out to sea
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
All this loot for less than $40
2 making memories gameboard alphas
2 packages of pop dots
1 bottle of prima flowers--small, multi colors
provocraft silent setter kit with eyelets
bazzill really big chipboard letters --letter K x2
Heidi Swapp chipboard arrows and chipboard theme set (girl)
Bazzill really big buttons (2 pkg)
scrapworks metal photo corners
karen foster metal 'taglines'
2 packages of label accents (girl), by Marecella by Kay
EK success ribbon belt,
EK success metal rimmed tags (self adhesive)
Making memories sheer acrylic frame
leeza gibbons black glass typewriter alphabet
6 yards of sweetie ribbons in pink shades
3 yards of Frills ribbons-red/yellow/black
3 yards of Frills ribbons in pink/lime/purple
embellished tag with a quote and a vellum pocket
silver sentiments charm letter to spell 'Princess'
K&Co metal 'birthday' tags (2 packages)
K&Co metal 'girl' tags
12 rolls of ribbons (3 yards each, ranging from 1/8" to 1 1/2" wide)
MIMI carrying bag to fit 12x12 pages with pockets inside for supplies and a 12x12 file folder with dividers for pages or other stuff
All for me!! Problem is, there is no longer enough space in my scraproom. Or it needs organizing again. EIther way, I no longer can fit in there with the stuff. I need to get going!!
2 packages of pop dots
1 bottle of prima flowers--small, multi colors
provocraft silent setter kit with eyelets
bazzill really big chipboard letters --letter K x2
Heidi Swapp chipboard arrows and chipboard theme set (girl)
Bazzill really big buttons (2 pkg)
scrapworks metal photo corners
karen foster metal 'taglines'
2 packages of label accents (girl), by Marecella by Kay
EK success ribbon belt,
EK success metal rimmed tags (self adhesive)
Making memories sheer acrylic frame
leeza gibbons black glass typewriter alphabet
6 yards of sweetie ribbons in pink shades
3 yards of Frills ribbons-red/yellow/black
3 yards of Frills ribbons in pink/lime/purple
embellished tag with a quote and a vellum pocket
silver sentiments charm letter to spell 'Princess'
K&Co metal 'birthday' tags (2 packages)
K&Co metal 'girl' tags
12 rolls of ribbons (3 yards each, ranging from 1/8" to 1 1/2" wide)
MIMI carrying bag to fit 12x12 pages with pockets inside for supplies and a 12x12 file folder with dividers for pages or other stuff
All for me!! Problem is, there is no longer enough space in my scraproom. Or it needs organizing again. EIther way, I no longer can fit in there with the stuff. I need to get going!!
Back from Cabo
We are back!
A bit crispy, but not too bad, amd quite well rested.
The resort was okay. The room we were in totally sucked. It was a studio,with a Murphy bed. A really short murphy bed that had Ethan's legs hanging way off the end, and mine as well. Not cool. AND....it was just cheap. Really cheap. Crappy furniture, cheap furnishings, just not the luxury condo we were expecting. And there is no maid service unless you pay $25 a day. Could not believe that. Our bed had only a sheet and that little fuzzy blanket they give you in most hotels, but no bedspread. I like a bit of weight on my when I am sleeping, so we called for another blanket, and got another ratty fuzzy blanket that was all unravelled. I mean, this is fine if you are staying at a cheap hotel, it would be expected. But at a *luxury* resort?? Kinda surprising. BUT...we still had a great time. And after all the crap at this resort (they couldn't find our reservation when we checked in, ants everywhere, etc...), would you be surprised to learn that we purchased a time share?? We did.
But not here.
While we were at the grocery store stocking up for the week, we were approached by a guy who sucked us in to going to a timeshare presentation the next day. We were promised $500 pesos, a nice breakfast, and an additional amount of pesos equal to the amount we just spent at the grocery store ($1550 pesos). So, we went. Had a nice breakfast, toured an amazingly beautiful resort that was still under construction (the rooms were, but the pool and restaurant and things like that were all done and really nice), toured their demo unit, and were sold. Well, not that easy. Took a couple hours and some number crunching, but after all was said and done, we bought a package that gives us one week every other year, plus they threw in a bonus week (so we have one week EVERY year), plus they threw in 25 extra weeks (can be used all in one year, or one a year for 25 years or somewhere in between), plus if we wait to book a week within 60 days of when we want to go, we can pay a flat fee (max of $499 for the entire week), and not use up our banked week.....for example we (meaning the entire family) could go to the Oregon coast in December, get 2 3 bedroom units at, say Depoe Bay Worldmark (where we went the week before I got married), and pay a max of $1000 for the entire thing, thus spending less money on accommodations than we have the past few years, but staying at a place we already know to be awesome. The coast is really slow business-wise in November/December (except over the actual holidays), and will have lots of availability. And the price is for any size unit--1, 2, or 3 bedrooms. Wouldn't that be nice?!? Just a possibility.
We can also send friends and family places, we get an email once a week telling us all the places less than 60 days out with availability for cheap, not using up our week.
We like this much better than Worldmark, where you can get cheap accommodations if you book within 14 days, and we paid a TON less than the Worldmark offer, and feel pretty good about it. Our first trip?? Thinking about asking Justin and Kim if they have interest in going to Hawaii with us. Or maybe we will go to Vegas. SOmething.....the cool thing about the within 60 days stuff is that you can book only a week at a time, but if you want to show up a couple days late (stay only 4-5 days instead of the whole week), you can just call them and let them know, no problem. So there.
It will take about 45 days to get all of this set up, and we can't use our paid-for week until 2007, but that is only 6 short months away, and we can book the within 60 days travel as soon as our membership is all processed (around 45 days from now).
Pretty cool!!
So....Sabrina, if you want to travel, here is an option where you get cheap places to stay, a full kitchen to cook and save money on dining out, and only need to worry about actually *getting* there......
That having been said, we bought WAY too much food. We spent about $US 130 on groceries, and left probably half of it in the fridge. I would recommend just getting breakfast and lunch snackie stuff, because it is not realistic that you will eat dinner in very much. We had scrambled eggs with ham and turkey and cheese almost every morning, with some yogurt, and sliced cheese and crackers and sliced salami/pepperoni for snacks. It was nice to have our own drinks (and CHEAP), too. At the store, they have 10 liter bottles of water, so we bought one of those, along with a 10 liter bottle of orange juice. These things were enormous!
Okay, enough of that......for fun, on the 19th we went on a dinner/sunset cruise in Cabo San Lucas, saw the rock formations, had a nice time, got good pictures. The only other paid tour we did was a snorkelling tour, which was a ton of fun. Definitely the best we have had. The guides gave us bananas to feed the fish, and they would eat it right out of your hand! There was one enormous bright blue fish with a yellow vertical stripe that was particularly greedy. I am sure Sabrina would love him for her tank!! But I think he was a bit big......about7-8 inches tall and maybe 8-9 inches long, one of those vertical sort of fishes that are like 1-2 inches thick. But so pretty! We snorked around a bunch of rockie areas, and swam to a little beach afterwards, nice and quiet and secluded. The boat we used was cool, too. There were only 4 of us on the tour, which was nice. The boat is set up so that you are straddling a seat, like sitting on a horse. There are handles on the seatback in front of you to hold on to, and the boat goes fast and jumps waves, getting airborne. But you feel safe since you can squeeze with your legs to hold on, and your hands are firmly attached. They took us right up to the arch and gave us a nice tour of the rock formations and their names and history. Pretty cool. We wandered Cabo San Lucas on the days of both tours, took in the sights, had a few margaritas...
We ended up taking the bus both times we went to CSL--it is like $US40 each way to take a taxi, and only $US2 per person for the bus, and not hard to do. Our hotel was on the edge of San Jose del Cabo, which is like 20 miles or so away. You can't swim most places, since the waves are so big and the undertow so strong, but there is one area with really good surfing, which was close to us. Less undertow, and a longer break. Our waves just showed up out of nowhere enormously, and broke quickly. Cool to watch, though! Happiness is watching your husband giggle as he battles the sneaky waves and gets knocked over in knee deep water when they suck him out to sea (or try to...I suppose it would be a bit less happy if they actually sucked him out).
I learned a lot about Ethan this trip. He is a poker. He likes to poke. He enjoys taking the corner of the sheet, and folding it all up so that the pointy corner is there, and poking me with it. He also does this with napkins. All folded up and pointy. I do not know where this comes from. But....I did get him good on the plane. After hours of waiting, as we landed in Seattle I got him to look out the opposite window and got him good in the neck with my pointy napkin. Yes, I paid for it with a quick wrestling match that I lost spectacularly, but it was worth it. A good poke in the soft, sensitive unprotected neck. Bwuuoohahaha!!!
A bit crispy, but not too bad, amd quite well rested.
The resort was okay. The room we were in totally sucked. It was a studio,with a Murphy bed. A really short murphy bed that had Ethan's legs hanging way off the end, and mine as well. Not cool. AND....it was just cheap. Really cheap. Crappy furniture, cheap furnishings, just not the luxury condo we were expecting. And there is no maid service unless you pay $25 a day. Could not believe that. Our bed had only a sheet and that little fuzzy blanket they give you in most hotels, but no bedspread. I like a bit of weight on my when I am sleeping, so we called for another blanket, and got another ratty fuzzy blanket that was all unravelled. I mean, this is fine if you are staying at a cheap hotel, it would be expected. But at a *luxury* resort?? Kinda surprising. BUT...we still had a great time. And after all the crap at this resort (they couldn't find our reservation when we checked in, ants everywhere, etc...), would you be surprised to learn that we purchased a time share?? We did.
But not here.
While we were at the grocery store stocking up for the week, we were approached by a guy who sucked us in to going to a timeshare presentation the next day. We were promised $500 pesos, a nice breakfast, and an additional amount of pesos equal to the amount we just spent at the grocery store ($1550 pesos). So, we went. Had a nice breakfast, toured an amazingly beautiful resort that was still under construction (the rooms were, but the pool and restaurant and things like that were all done and really nice), toured their demo unit, and were sold. Well, not that easy. Took a couple hours and some number crunching, but after all was said and done, we bought a package that gives us one week every other year, plus they threw in a bonus week (so we have one week EVERY year), plus they threw in 25 extra weeks (can be used all in one year, or one a year for 25 years or somewhere in between), plus if we wait to book a week within 60 days of when we want to go, we can pay a flat fee (max of $499 for the entire week), and not use up our banked week.....for example we (meaning the entire family) could go to the Oregon coast in December, get 2 3 bedroom units at, say Depoe Bay Worldmark (where we went the week before I got married), and pay a max of $1000 for the entire thing, thus spending less money on accommodations than we have the past few years, but staying at a place we already know to be awesome. The coast is really slow business-wise in November/December (except over the actual holidays), and will have lots of availability. And the price is for any size unit--1, 2, or 3 bedrooms. Wouldn't that be nice?!? Just a possibility.
We can also send friends and family places, we get an email once a week telling us all the places less than 60 days out with availability for cheap, not using up our week.
We like this much better than Worldmark, where you can get cheap accommodations if you book within 14 days, and we paid a TON less than the Worldmark offer, and feel pretty good about it. Our first trip?? Thinking about asking Justin and Kim if they have interest in going to Hawaii with us. Or maybe we will go to Vegas. SOmething.....the cool thing about the within 60 days stuff is that you can book only a week at a time, but if you want to show up a couple days late (stay only 4-5 days instead of the whole week), you can just call them and let them know, no problem. So there.
It will take about 45 days to get all of this set up, and we can't use our paid-for week until 2007, but that is only 6 short months away, and we can book the within 60 days travel as soon as our membership is all processed (around 45 days from now).
Pretty cool!!
So....Sabrina, if you want to travel, here is an option where you get cheap places to stay, a full kitchen to cook and save money on dining out, and only need to worry about actually *getting* there......
That having been said, we bought WAY too much food. We spent about $US 130 on groceries, and left probably half of it in the fridge. I would recommend just getting breakfast and lunch snackie stuff, because it is not realistic that you will eat dinner in very much. We had scrambled eggs with ham and turkey and cheese almost every morning, with some yogurt, and sliced cheese and crackers and sliced salami/pepperoni for snacks. It was nice to have our own drinks (and CHEAP), too. At the store, they have 10 liter bottles of water, so we bought one of those, along with a 10 liter bottle of orange juice. These things were enormous!
Okay, enough of that......for fun, on the 19th we went on a dinner/sunset cruise in Cabo San Lucas, saw the rock formations, had a nice time, got good pictures. The only other paid tour we did was a snorkelling tour, which was a ton of fun. Definitely the best we have had. The guides gave us bananas to feed the fish, and they would eat it right out of your hand! There was one enormous bright blue fish with a yellow vertical stripe that was particularly greedy. I am sure Sabrina would love him for her tank!! But I think he was a bit big......about7-8 inches tall and maybe 8-9 inches long, one of those vertical sort of fishes that are like 1-2 inches thick. But so pretty! We snorked around a bunch of rockie areas, and swam to a little beach afterwards, nice and quiet and secluded. The boat we used was cool, too. There were only 4 of us on the tour, which was nice. The boat is set up so that you are straddling a seat, like sitting on a horse. There are handles on the seatback in front of you to hold on to, and the boat goes fast and jumps waves, getting airborne. But you feel safe since you can squeeze with your legs to hold on, and your hands are firmly attached. They took us right up to the arch and gave us a nice tour of the rock formations and their names and history. Pretty cool. We wandered Cabo San Lucas on the days of both tours, took in the sights, had a few margaritas...
We ended up taking the bus both times we went to CSL--it is like $US40 each way to take a taxi, and only $US2 per person for the bus, and not hard to do. Our hotel was on the edge of San Jose del Cabo, which is like 20 miles or so away. You can't swim most places, since the waves are so big and the undertow so strong, but there is one area with really good surfing, which was close to us. Less undertow, and a longer break. Our waves just showed up out of nowhere enormously, and broke quickly. Cool to watch, though! Happiness is watching your husband giggle as he battles the sneaky waves and gets knocked over in knee deep water when they suck him out to sea (or try to...I suppose it would be a bit less happy if they actually sucked him out).
I learned a lot about Ethan this trip. He is a poker. He likes to poke. He enjoys taking the corner of the sheet, and folding it all up so that the pointy corner is there, and poking me with it. He also does this with napkins. All folded up and pointy. I do not know where this comes from. But....I did get him good on the plane. After hours of waiting, as we landed in Seattle I got him to look out the opposite window and got him good in the neck with my pointy napkin. Yes, I paid for it with a quick wrestling match that I lost spectacularly, but it was worth it. A good poke in the soft, sensitive unprotected neck. Bwuuoohahaha!!!
Friday, June 23, 2006
This is all you're gonna get (for now), so no whining.....
Ethan not spilling his beer despite enormous sneaky wave attack
Me in **the bra** after bad hair day and need for covering up (and it matches my shirt...)
Really big scary waves that you don't swim in, even if the timeshare lady says she does it all the time and gives you tips on how to get through the monstrous waves to the calmer *open ocean*
Me at El Arco (the arch), on the CaboRey sunset dinner cruise (I am also wearing **the bra**, but, alas, it is not in this picture because I had the zoom lens on and Ethan would have fallen off the opposite side of the boat trying to fit the boobs in too, and I kinda like Ethan too much to have him make that sacrifice)
El Arco.No pictures have been edited yet, so expect mucho betterness whence next you see them...
Friday, June 16, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
First, let us discuss my new bra. It really is cool. Sabrina raved and raved a couple months ago (maybe longer, I really don't remember) about a bra she bought at Victoria's Secret that was spendy but the best bra ever. I had that in the back of my mind as I wandered the mall.
Yesterday was my anniversary, and I spent the day (while Ethan was at work) doing a bit of shopping. I really only needed to pick up a piece of artwork I had framed for mom at JoAnns (whole other story....), but I went over to the mall looking for some fancy lingerie in anticipation of my anniversary evening, and my week of tropicalness in Cabo.
I bought a fancy schmancy black silky thing at JCPenney (I am cheap. Really cheap. I bought a thing with broken straps, because I knew I could fix it and make it look nice, and it was marked down in price drastically. Yes. Cheap. Whatever.....), then wandered over to Victoria's Secret and perused their selection of gaudy icky lingerie, with a couple nice things in between. Then I remembered Sabrina's bra. I looked at a likely suspect, and opend up the drawer containing my size, and found it to be completely empty. Not just a couple orange or ugly green ones, NONE at all. And I am a common size!! Apparantly, too common. Just then, a saleslady came up and asked if I was finding everything okay. I explained my predicament, and said my sister had told me of a spendy but wonderful bra I must buy from Victoria's Secret. She knew exactly what I was talking about.
I was whisked away to a dark little hallway with floor to ceiling drawers all labeled with strange markings of letters and numbers. She asked my bra size, then whipped out two flesh colored (MY flesh color, to be exact. Well, not EXACT, but close, anyway), and I tried them on. Heaven! Both were very nice, but I am not a demi girl (bra straps feel like they are always about to fall off my shoulders), so I went with the uplifting one. One seamless piece of material, no tags, no itchy parts, just pure foamy bliss with slightly scalloped edges.
I have had on all day today, and it feels so nice! I have never noticed a bra before unless it was itchy or scratchy or not comfortable. This one is just so silky and foamy and comfortable I just want to hug myself!
So. The bra.
Our third anniversary went well. Ethan worked until 4:30pm, then came home and we hung out a bit. I left him downstairs with some music, then went upstairs and surprised him with a fancy dinner of king crab legs (those things are enormous!!) with garlic butter and rice, all served on our fancy blue china with silver edges. I, of course, had chicken fingers (it was just thin slices of chicken breast seasoned up....I wanted it to cook fast, since the crab only needs a couple minutes to be all done). I bought the crab at Pike street, along with some enormous raspberries, which I served on the side with french vanilla whipped cream to dip them in. I also bought a pink/white/green bouquet of flowers, not sure what all kinds, but it was quite nice and I had it on the table too, with a single taper candle left over from our wedding. A bottle of wine the same as that we served at our wedding (and from 2003) was chilling in ice in my mixing bowl from my mixer (hey--it looks nice if you just cover it up a bit). And to top it off, we had a nice table runner that was actually a Sonics scarf we got as a free giveaway. A very nice dinner indeed. And all this stuff was hidden behind the counter, so Ethan was surprised when he came up to eat. He thought it was gonna be hamburger helper or something like that.
All in all, a good evening, although Ethan has sworn off wine. Lets just say his night ended earlier than he had anticipated.........
So.....we have made it a whoppping three years. We were talking and trying to remember where we were last year on our anniversary, and neither of us had any clue. I finally searched through my blog for last June and found that we were here in Seattle, and went to the Melting Pot for dinner, and off to Reno a couple days later for a mini-vacation.
We are off to Cabo San Lucas, actually closer to San Jose del Cabo, first thing tomorrow morning. Owing to the extensive telephone fees, I will not be able to call anyone on Fathers day, but I do want to wish Steve, Matt and Papa a happy Fathers day, so please pass that on if you happen to see Steve Matt or Papa. And to any other fathers who read this (are there any??), the same. Just because I happen to think it is a bunch of bunk and a Hallmark created holiday meant to squeeze money out of our wallets doesn't mean that everyone thinks that way......sorry....did I say that out loud??
Yesterday was my anniversary, and I spent the day (while Ethan was at work) doing a bit of shopping. I really only needed to pick up a piece of artwork I had framed for mom at JoAnns (whole other story....), but I went over to the mall looking for some fancy lingerie in anticipation of my anniversary evening, and my week of tropicalness in Cabo.
I bought a fancy schmancy black silky thing at JCPenney (I am cheap. Really cheap. I bought a thing with broken straps, because I knew I could fix it and make it look nice, and it was marked down in price drastically. Yes. Cheap. Whatever.....), then wandered over to Victoria's Secret and perused their selection of gaudy icky lingerie, with a couple nice things in between. Then I remembered Sabrina's bra. I looked at a likely suspect, and opend up the drawer containing my size, and found it to be completely empty. Not just a couple orange or ugly green ones, NONE at all. And I am a common size!! Apparantly, too common. Just then, a saleslady came up and asked if I was finding everything okay. I explained my predicament, and said my sister had told me of a spendy but wonderful bra I must buy from Victoria's Secret. She knew exactly what I was talking about.
I was whisked away to a dark little hallway with floor to ceiling drawers all labeled with strange markings of letters and numbers. She asked my bra size, then whipped out two flesh colored (MY flesh color, to be exact. Well, not EXACT, but close, anyway), and I tried them on. Heaven! Both were very nice, but I am not a demi girl (bra straps feel like they are always about to fall off my shoulders), so I went with the uplifting one. One seamless piece of material, no tags, no itchy parts, just pure foamy bliss with slightly scalloped edges.
I have had on all day today, and it feels so nice! I have never noticed a bra before unless it was itchy or scratchy or not comfortable. This one is just so silky and foamy and comfortable I just want to hug myself!
So. The bra.
Our third anniversary went well. Ethan worked until 4:30pm, then came home and we hung out a bit. I left him downstairs with some music, then went upstairs and surprised him with a fancy dinner of king crab legs (those things are enormous!!) with garlic butter and rice, all served on our fancy blue china with silver edges. I, of course, had chicken fingers (it was just thin slices of chicken breast seasoned up....I wanted it to cook fast, since the crab only needs a couple minutes to be all done). I bought the crab at Pike street, along with some enormous raspberries, which I served on the side with french vanilla whipped cream to dip them in. I also bought a pink/white/green bouquet of flowers, not sure what all kinds, but it was quite nice and I had it on the table too, with a single taper candle left over from our wedding. A bottle of wine the same as that we served at our wedding (and from 2003) was chilling in ice in my mixing bowl from my mixer (hey--it looks nice if you just cover it up a bit). And to top it off, we had a nice table runner that was actually a Sonics scarf we got as a free giveaway. A very nice dinner indeed. And all this stuff was hidden behind the counter, so Ethan was surprised when he came up to eat. He thought it was gonna be hamburger helper or something like that.
All in all, a good evening, although Ethan has sworn off wine. Lets just say his night ended earlier than he had anticipated.........
So.....we have made it a whoppping three years. We were talking and trying to remember where we were last year on our anniversary, and neither of us had any clue. I finally searched through my blog for last June and found that we were here in Seattle, and went to the Melting Pot for dinner, and off to Reno a couple days later for a mini-vacation.
We are off to Cabo San Lucas, actually closer to San Jose del Cabo, first thing tomorrow morning. Owing to the extensive telephone fees, I will not be able to call anyone on Fathers day, but I do want to wish Steve, Matt and Papa a happy Fathers day, so please pass that on if you happen to see Steve Matt or Papa. And to any other fathers who read this (are there any??), the same. Just because I happen to think it is a bunch of bunk and a Hallmark created holiday meant to squeeze money out of our wallets doesn't mean that everyone thinks that way......sorry....did I say that out loud??
Monday, June 12, 2006
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Meet the new Mr. Merritt! Kael David Merritt arrived at 1:54pm on June 8 and weighed 8 pounds 5.3 ounces and was 21 inches long. (the hospital clock said an earlier time, but my camera clock which is set exactly to the exact correct time said 1:54 at the moment of birth. And yes, I DO have the moment of birth caught on film, so I AM sure of the time.......)
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
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