CROC Count

You know I love my CROCs. Before we went on vacation, I bought a couple new pairs of flip-flops. While in Hilton Head, we found a CROC outlet and I ended up buying a pair of golf shoes. I played in them yesterday. But I am still not sure how I feel about them. Traditional golf shoes give me an excuse to bust out the saddle shoes!

So, while I was cleaning today, I took a tally of my CROC collection. Looks like I am at 13 pairs now! Golf shoes aren't in the picture because I was too lazy to go to the car and get them.

Cleaning, Cleaning, and more Cleaning

It was a beautiful day out today, but I spent the entire day in my apartment cleaning and going through a bunch of junk. I needed some organization in the closets and tossed alot of items that I don't use anymore. I even spent 45 minutes cleaning the vacuum cleaner...pulling hair out of the brush and wiping the dust off of it. Yeah, I was totally feeling like Monica today!

I am exhausted! Here is a before and after of the closet.

BEFORE

AFTER

Holy Cow I need to update more

...so its been months since I have updated this blog.

So, I still need to finish my Puerto Rico trip, but here is the skinny from the last 2 months.

In June, we went to Hocking Hills. Ohio for a weekend. My little sister graduated from Ohio University....go Bob Cats! We stayed at Getaway Cabins http://www.getaway-cabins.com/. Here is a picture of the cabin we stayed in...so cute. These cabins are soooo secluded but definelty not primitive and we were able to take the dog. Each cabin has a fire pit and a hot tub. My parents cabin even had a pool table and fuse ball table! We didn't have cell phone service for 2 days! Awesome!!

Lori B and I went to Norfolk, VA for a week in June for work. We attended meetings during the day, but were able to find some tourist-y things in the evening! We had some fantastic seafood and took a cruise on the river. We got a see quite a few naval ships and a couple dry docks! How cool! We took some pictures on the USS Wisconsin. My what big guns you have!

The month of July was pretty quiet. Fourth of July came and went. We hung out with family and friends. This was one of the warmest weekends so far so we got plenty of pool time! The brothers set off some pretty fantastic fireworks and I tried to catch a few pictures.

K and I took a vacation at the end of July. We went to Hilton Head with my sisters. It was HOT and HUMID. We stayed at my parents condo (time share) while they went to Alaska. We hung out on the beach and played golf 3 times. We played Robert Trent Jones at Palmetto Dunes, Arthur Hills at Palmetto Hall, and Oyster Reef in Hilton Head Plantation. We have been going to Hilton Head for about 20+ years, so we tend to take less and less pictures every year. But here is what I have.

View from our condo balcony. This is the Marriot Monarch in Sea Pines Plantation.

Robert Trent Jones at Palmetto Dunes.

Other than that, I have been playing ALOT of golf. What an expensive hobby! I has a golf lesson last week and learned that my putter was too long....so that means I get to buy a new putter! I decided on an Odyssey Lady Divine Rossie. I usually don't like ladies clubs...but this one I liked. I was pretty happy with my putting today.

Finally, here are some pictures from the garden and the pretty flowers! The garden picture is a few weeks old, cuz the sunflower is way past the fence now. We picked our first green peppers this week and I made stuffed peppers for dinner...delish....Thanks LB for the recipe!

Puerto Rico - Day 3

Sunday, 3 May 09


We got up to gorgeous skies and went to the dining room for breakfast. Again, the fruit breakfast was great. Apparently, the Casa Cubuy is known for its fresh fruit breakfasts.


We both took showers and packed our bags as we continued with our Puerto Rican vacation. We decided to hike down to the watefall one more time before we headed out. The water was SOOOOO much clearer and calmer today. L took some time to climb around the rocks. I think she had WAY too much fun. We wished we had more time to hike today because it was such a better day for it. We took some more pictures and headed out.





We drove back down the mountain and were amazed with the crazy drivers. The winding road is barely big enough for our little car and these people were flying around corners. I couldn't wait to get to the bottom. We detoured in Naguabo and stopped at Ralph's (a local grocery store). We wanted to grab some big bottles of water.


We got back on the road and headed for Fajardo to catch the ferry to Vieques. Once we figured out where we needed to park and buy the ferry tickets we decided to go find some lunch. We followed the traffic and found a beach with a restaurant. We ate at Costa Mia Restaurant. We had chicken salads! Fantastic. We sat at the beach for a little while taking in the sun, sand, and water. I believe we were sitting at the Las Croabas Beach, which was very close to the Nature Preserve.


After lunch, we headed back to the ferry docks in Fajardo. We paid for the ferry ($2) and headed to Vieques for 4 nights. We stayed at the Casa LaLanchita Amazing place on the Atlantic! The owner sat us down and went over the best places to go on the island. Two thumbs up here! Here is a picture of the Atlantic from our balcony.





We quickly changed into our suits and went to sit by the pool while the sun was still shining. We went to dinner at the Barefoot Bistro, which was a restaurant in a woman's driveway. Terrific food. After dinner, we took a walk through the main part of the city. We ended the night early with a good book.

Puerto Rico - Day 2

Saturday, 2 May 2009

We both slept well at the Casa Cubuy. Overnight it poured rain (well we are in the Rainforest) and we slept through what we thought we birds....we soon found out that the sounds of the rainforest are cute little coqui's. Coqui's are tree frogs that live in the rainforest. It actually sounds like they are saying CO-QUI.

We ate a fantastic fresh fruit breakfast and then headed up highway 191 for a little walk. The views of the rainforest were beautiful that is until it started raining. We tried to keep going and hung out under some large trees for a little while, but the rain just kept coming harder and faster. We turned around and headed back to the Casa Cubuy to wait out the rain.




Once the rain let up, we waited a couple of hours and headed down to the waterfalls for a hike. Note to self: I am not a rock climber hiker like L. The first part of the hike was a piece of cake. We got to the Cubuy River and the river was flowing pretty steady from all of the rain. After some tricky steps, we managed to cross the river and continue on the hike. We came to a second river, bt the water was rushing a bit too fast for me. L went on ahead and I stayed behind. We saw some beautiful waterfalls and took some amazing pictures.



We stayed at the Casa Cubuy for dinner and met lots of fantastic people. We met a couple from Chicago that we saw throughout our trip. I called them our "chicago island friends." We met a couple traveling from St Marten and a group from San Juan. Most of the people that we met are from the States that are traveling or have relocated to Puerto Rico.

After dinner we played Monopoly for about 4 hours with the couple traveling from St Marten. Ridiculous...but so much fun!

Puerto Rico - Day 1

Friday, 1 May 2009

Travel day: L and I both had super early flights. We were supposed to meet up in Atlanta to catch our flight to San Juan. L's first flight was delayed and she didn't make it to Atlanta in time. She ran (even was losing stuff our of her bag) to get to the flight, but the gate agent had already closed the boarding door. I absentmindedly got on the flight for San Juan thinking she was already on the plane. Yeh, I little more stress than I needed AT 9AM. L wasn't able to get on the flight, but she did catch the next flight to San Juan. I only had to wait about 1 hour. In the mean time, I got my luggage and found that the zipper pulls had been ripped off of my bag. If I opened the zipper, the bag was useless. So, I took it to the Delta agent, and he is looking all over my bag for the zippers.....yeh keep looking....they are gone!! So, after 15 minutes of that, he brought me a brand new bag.

Once Lisa got to San Juan, we rented our sweet Hyundai Elantra and headed east to El Yunque (the Caribbean Rainforest). **Let's just say, Puerto Rico has some crazy drivers** We stopped and picked up some Subway (yeh we didn't look to hard for dinner) and drove up Highway 191 from the south part of the rainforest. We drove for about 20 minutes while our ears popped and stopped for a few pictures. We finally stopped at the Casa Cubuy Ecolodge http://www.casacubuy.com/for our 2 night stay. The Casa Cubuy was a clean, rustic, bed and breakfast type place. Meals are shared with all of the guests at a large dining room table. It was awesome to meet everybody staying at the Casa Cubuy. We checked into our room and ate dinner. We sat and marveled at the view of the rainforest and then decided we were tired and went to bed. Lots of reading and sleeping on this trip!

Here is the view from our room

Angels and Demons

Two thumbs up. We went to see the matinee show today.

First of all, I have to say that I haven't read the book yet and I still haven't seen the DaVinci Code. By the end of the movie, I was ready to plan my next trip to the Vatican.

We found the movie to be very suspenseful, but it didn't seem too long. Even though the story was fiction, there were some truths about the Roman Catholic Church.