Florida Day 1

I know that there are probably those of you out there who are not at all interested in hearing a day by day account of my trip to Florida. You may find "first I did...., then I did....." posts to be boring. If you are one of those people, you may want to excuse yourself over the next several posts. My blog doubles as a journal/scrapbook and I want to remember what I did day by day, so I am going to write about it. If you stick with me, kudos to you.

Our first day in Florida (Monday) was easygoing, which was nice because the day before was long. I still had to go to work, then we caught a flight and got into Florida around 11 PM. So we were tired and grateful for the chance to sleep in a bit. We drove about a half hour from where we were staying to watch the Phillies play some spring training baseball. The park was packed full of Phillies fans even though it wasn't the Phillies park. I believe it was the Astros place. Zack will correct me if I am wrong there. Anyway, the weather was just gorgeous.. 80 degrees and sunny. And the Phillies won. I didn't get any really great pictures but here's one of Z and his dad at the baseball park.

That evening, we went with Zack's dad to Downtown Disney where we ate some dinner at a yumy (but way too loud) restaurant, and then just looked around. Again, I didn't get many pictures, but I did get this one of a dragon that was in the water--

it's made out of Legos, which is pretty cool. I also got this picture of Woody made completely out of Legos. I promise we didn't just look at Legos the whole time. That's just all I have pictures of.

All in all, a delightful and relaxing day.

Have you played pandemic?

We have. The Becks were wild about the game, so we played with them. I was excited to try it but also a little reluctant because I'm not usually a big fan of strategy games. I ended up really liking it. It's a cooperative game, which means everyone works together to beat the game. It is also not as long as most strategy games. It only takes about 45 minutes to play. Anyway, the object is to cure 4 diseases before they can outbreak across the game board. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, it's hard. Really hard. We played probably a half dozen times or more before we finally won. We were 1 card away from losing, but we pulled it off. Way to go guys! Here's our winning game board.

And here are the triumphant disease conquerers.

Oh yeah!

Here's my fancy certificate thingy

What we've been up to

-A few weeks back, the Becks invited us to celebrate O's birthday with them. Since we don't have any kids, and even when we do, we are probably not capable of producing kids as completely adorable as him, we absolutely adore him and think he's just darling. We got him a Thomas the Train toy for his birthday, which he seemed to like. Here he is playing with it.

-We also got the chance to babysit him one Saturday while his mom and dad went on a date. We really had a blast. First we watched Mulan, which is a favorite of mine. Then we played with toys for a while. We tried to eat lunch but O just played with his food the whole time. So we went to the library then he took a nap. He was a perfect angel the whole time. Isn't he just a cheeseball?

-For Valentine's Day, my friend Michelle and I decided to use my love cookie cutter and try and reproduce the Love Park statue, seen here:

Here's what we came up with. It's okay to laugh.

-I know I already wrote a little bit about Valentine's Day, but here's a picture of the lovely roses and chocolates that my husband got for me.

I think it was so sweet. Thanks babe. And here's a picture of the hotel room that we stayed in that night.

-I'm still shopping away. Got some great deals lately. Check out this cereal.

I went back and got 8 more boxes because the deal was so good. I actually made a bit of a profit off this, and since we eat cereal so much, it was awesome. I am really into bargain shopping on toiletries mostly, but this past week, I decided to try my hand at some food/grocery "extreme couponing". It was stressful, and I'm not going to keep doing it week after week like I do with toiletries. There's no place here to store the stockpile. It was fun to try though. It's pretty much the same concept that I use with toiletries. I swear my heart fell into my stomach when I saw the total at checkout (something in the neighborhood of $95), but I felt a little better when I got $85.75 back to spend on future grocery purchases, 7 reusable shopping bags, and a coupon for a free gallon of milk. Here's what I got. Not pictured is the chicken, roast, and milk that we bought.

-We've been working on our taxes. I hate filing our tax return. It's stressful.

-Not to toot my own horn or anything, but at work the other day, I got the Nurse of the Year award. It's not as big of a deal as it sounds. It is based on nominations instead of on some actual measurable criteria. And I was the only one nominated. So of course I won. Hee hee. But I'm not complaining. I got a monetary bonus for winning, which was nice.

-We have been watching TV shows about hoarding lately. It's crazy. And it makes me want to throw away all of my stuff.

Aren't you glad I finally wrote on my blog?

I promise I'm not becoming one of those people who never writes on her blog.

Love Day

I know some people hate Valentine's Day. It's too commercial. Why do we need a day set aside as an excuse to show our love? Yadda yadda yadda. But I love it. I kinda always have, even when I didn't have a Valentine. But now I'm married and I have someone special to share it with every year. And I don't need a special day or excuse to show him that I love him, but I think it's great that there's a holiday to celebrate love.

I was lucky enough to get Tuesday (the 15th) off work, so we decided on a romantic overnight getaway to celebrate the holiday. Z picked me up after work and we drove to Atlantic City, only about an hour away. We made it just in time for our dinner reservation. So just in time that I had to change out of my work clothes in the car. So I probably wasn't the hottest date around. My clothes were wrinkly and my hair and makeup were work-ified, but it was still fun. We ate at PF Changs. I think we pretty much always eat there when we go to AC. It's really yummy. Of course we finished it all off with The Great Wall of Chocolate, which I think is my favorite dessert of all time. Mmmm. We stayed in the Harrah's Resort, which was very nice. The room was pretty. Everything looked new. It was nice. Tuesday, we got up and shopped for a while at the outlets and then came home. It was a perfect, relaxing getaway with my man.

Oh, and did I mention that he got me a box of chocolates. And another box of chocolates later. And roses. Spoiled little me. Love you babe.

A quick update

Hi guys. Sorry about the long absence.

I have been transferred back to a skilled unit at work, which I am thrilled about. I was getting a little bored on the intermediate unit. I moved from skilled to intermediate because that's what I needed to do to get a slot on the day shift, and it was totally worth it, but now I can have the best of both worlds-- day shift and skilled unit. It has been a lot of work and I definitely stay busy, but that makes the work day fly by.

Zack has started school up again. He is taking all his classes online this term. Between that a work, he is one busy guy.

We are looking forward to some exciting things in March-- a trip to Florida and a trip to Utah. Surprisingly, we were able to find very affordable plane tickets for both trips. I am personally looking forward to getting away from this cold, wet, snowy, icy winter. I HATE winter and I am so sick of it all. A week in sunny Florida can't come soon enough.

I promise a more exciting blog post is coming soon.