Procrastinating on procrastinating

Haha, I really am just so terrible at keeping up with blogging. Big surprise right?!

So, I am excited to say that I am writing this blog while sitting on our new couch. I have a bad i-phone picture from the day that it arrived, but we have since procured a new coffee table ($10 on craigslist, wahoo) and arranged our home to accommodate the new, glorious, amazing, living room giant. :)

This picture DOES NOT do it justice. Would it be wrong to get professional couch photos rather than engagement photos???

So much more has happened since our last post... Chris' aunt came out for a lovely visit, where we hiked our local trails, traveled the 17 mile drive, searched for hidden treasures, and challenged our ability to prepare vegan friendly meals for 7+ days.

Preparing for the 20 mile John Muir hike. Nearby Sunol and Little Yosemite gave us a good run for our money!

Then, my family came into town. We explored the local Livermore wineries and just absolutely fell in the with the family friendly, horse loving, beautiful wine country that is hidden just 15 minutes away from home. After that, my brother Justin and his fiance Alicia came to stay at our house, break in the new couch, visit the Bay Area, and of course, join us on the kind-of-annual camping trip to Yosemite.

Pre-boulder climbing :)

Go climb that rock! I dare you :)

August ended with a harrowing trip up the deadly John Muir and Mist Trail in Yosemite to the top of Half Dome. I was not so anxious when we were stuck for 30+ minutes descending the approximate 90 degree downgrade on the face of the rock. Being my second time conquering one of Mother Nature's wonders, I was able to take in the sights, appreciate the burn in my calves and hiney, and, as Chris might say, recklessly ascend and descend the cables. Chris on the other hand has developed a new mantra for patience. Whenever facing a patience testing moment, like the lovely Fremont traffic, he simply says Half Dome and remembers the terrifying, perpetual wait, hanging from silly ropes and raggedy wooden planks on the face of the deceivingly friendly, granite mammoth called Half Dome.

No big deal!  :-O

Okay, so I might have passed out for a while after the hike. Hehe

Overall, life is good. We are really enjoying the journey towards our wedding date and trying to lay low while we save for the big event. Chris has started going to RCIA (on his own accord) and is really enjoying his expedition into faith and discovering all the wonderful mysteries that God has up sleeve. We've met once with our deacon and took the quote-unquote test for Catholic weddings. Hope we passed!!  Just kidding! Deacon Lance is great and I really can't wait to see what insight he has on our relationship and hear any words of wisdom he might have to offer. A lifetime of marriage most certainly can't be as easy, peasy as our relationship is now (or can it?). We welcome any advise that people have to offer. Can't promise we wont take it with a grain of salt though.

Pardon my abundant, and probably incorrect, use of commas. I just, , , love, , , them! ;)

Love you ALL!!!! Muah!

April Adventures & Sofa Dilemma 2011

Of course I would start a blog intending to make posts at least weekly and hardly get around to it monthly. I have no good excuse since I am still searching for a job and spending most of my morning searching the internet for new posts or a pediatric office that I haven't spammed with my resume yet. Regardless Chris and I have had some very fun weekends in the month of April.

The weekend after our engagement we hopped on a plane for one of many trips back to the Sunshine state this year. Our friends Dustin and Amber got married at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens. It was a beautiful wedding and a wonderful time seeing Fernandina friends. Since the wedding was in Palm Beach we were able to squeeze in a visit with Ilan & Stephanie, go to the beach and enjoy the warm sunshine. 

(We also decided to take a trip to Macy's with some of our free time to visit our couch that we ordered several weeks ago for some reassurance that it was the most comfortable couch ever. It was, but suddenly we started to question the configuration of the modular sofa we ordered. Oh no! Begin: Sofa Dilemma 2011! More later...)

(I think the boys were having some fun!)

One of the perks of living in California is that we are a short (6.5 hour) drive away from my mom's house in Southern California. We had been planning on Yosemite for Easter weekend, but changed our minds last minute and made the drive down kitties and all. The weekend was very fun and full of activities including Chris' first trip to L.A./Hollywood and a lovely Easter celebration with the family at my mom's. We have pictures that I will have to add later because per usual we did not bring our camera and had to use my mom's.

Finally, this past weekend we took advantage of our surroundings and took a trip to Big Basin Park, California's oldest state park. We went on a 7 mile loop around the park that included waterfalls, creeks, ocean views, a picnic in the forest and banana slugs (called banana slugs because they are neon yellow, not because they are as big as a banana like I thought). A little warm-up for Half Dome this summer. 

 Chris & a Sempervirens Redwood (a midget compared to it's cousin the Giant Redwood)

 Waterfall shot

 Our picnic location

So since I know you all are dying to know about the Sofa Dilemma 2011, I will elaborate. When Chris and I made the big move out to California we could only bring what could fit in a U-Haul trailer. Meaning that we needed to sell a lot of our furniture. We decided that the couches should go because they were pretty uncomfortable and of course they would take up half of the trailer. 

Selling the couches was the easy part. The hard part was finding a new couch. We went to every furniture store in the East Bay area and couldn't find a single couch that was good looking and comfortable. That was until we went to Macy's and found the most comfortable couch in the world. It felt like it was made of memory foam and it was microfiber. We looked at the price tag and immediately jumped off the couch knowing it was not in the price range that we wanted. After days of talking ourselves in and out of buying the couch, what shape we wanted, what color we wanted, etc. we decided to go for it. After all, this couch better last the next 10 years (maybe 20, haha) and you get what you pay for. We ordered the couch based off of what we could remember the dimensions of our living room being and started the 12-16 week wait (order placed March 9; earliest estimated delivery date June 9). 

A few weeks later after measuring the living room, living in it for a while and of course that visit to Macy's, we started to question the size of the couch we bought. Maybe we should have gone bigger? Maybe we need two arm rests instead of 1? I wonder if they will let us change the order. We called customer service and "Peggy" said of course you can change your order, no you won't loose your deposit, it will be a piece of cake as long as you go to Macy's right now to change the order because your couch is scheduled to be ready in a week and a half. (Aye-yi-yi, why did you have to tell me it was going to be ready so soon??)

One visit to Macy's later we changed the configuration of the sofa, supposedly for only $100 more. (Order date April 23, estimated delivery date June 9).  April 28, phone call from Macy's, "Your sofa is ready to be delivered today!" Me, "Ut-oh. We changed our order, it isn't supposed to be ready until June." Customer service, "Wrong, you get 2 couches now! :) The last order wasn't canceled. Too late to get your deposit back for either of them. Have fun!"

So, I will spare you all the phone calls to customer service that have followed, but we are now in a battle to get our deposit back for whichever sofa we don't actually receive. We aren't sure if we will have a sofa in a week or in two months and whether it will have two arm rests or one. 

What ever it is it will have to better than the current set up:

Yes, those are camping chairs for a sofa. Yes, we are using bar stools as end tables. Yes, that is a microwave covered with a curtain serving as a coffee table.

I can't wait to post the after picture with our beautiful couch. When ever that may be :)

Big Steps

Over the past weekend Chris & I decided to take a few big steps: #1. Start a blog to share our adventures with friends and family all over the country...and #2. Get engaged!!!

So what better way to start the blog than to share our engagement story (a.k.a. virtual candlelight to all my Kappa sisters)

The set up: 

Over the past couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of nothing, or so it seems. Applying for jobs, going to job interviews, cleaning the house, etc; not so much nothing, but not working or spending time with friends. Chris just came back from Las Vegas for our friend's bachelor party and I was being a little sulky, "I'm bored, whaaa, whaa, whaa" so he casually mentioned that we go up to Napa for some wine tasting this weekend. The drive is a little less than an hour and we can get 2-for-1 coupons on our I-phone. I love wine tasting so there was no way I was going to refuse. Chris also suggested that we dress up because, "People get dressed up for wine tasting in Napa." Again, I'm not going to refuse an excuse to wear a pretty dress and get gussied up.

The proposal: 

The first of the wineries on our list was Artesa, where the wine tasting room is literally built into a hill and the views are breathtaking. As we are walking up the stairs there is a quiet lawn with fountains and an amazing view and I think to myself, "this would be a great place for someone to propose," having no idea about what was about to take place. We went in, started the wine tasting and went out to the back patio to enjoy our wine. I started to get suspicious that something was on Chris' mind when I noticed that he was being a bit quiet (totally out of character for him). I asked him what he was thinking about and he said, "It's just beautiful out here." Okay...10 minutes later (and one entirely spilled cabernet sauvignon on my shoe - no broken glass though) still very quiet. Me: "Whatcha thinkin' about?", Chris: "It's just beautiful out here." I then think to myself, "he could not possibly be that speechless." So we finish up our wine tasting, take some pictures and head back out to the front lawn. Chris told me to take my sunglasses off because he wanted to take a picture of me with the fountains and kind of nudges me off towards the fountain, I turned around and there he was on one knee. The proposal started off with,"Here were are on a hill again. I knew that day that we rolled down the hill when we first met that you were special..." I can't repeat it verbatim because I was too busy jumping up and down and shaking. He pulled out the ring, I said yes (a little early), and then he asked me to marry him. I said yes again. 

We spent the rest of our weekend wine tasting, calling friends and family, fondue dinner at home and then off for a drive down PCH. 

Just after the proposal

The ring (Chris picked it out with absolutely no help! Such good taste!)

Fondue dinner, yum!

Half Moon Bay

Pigeon Point/Light Station

Thank you everyone for all of your congratulations. We are very excited about planning our wedding and giving our family and friends a good excuse to come out California. No worries though you will have plenty of time to save and plan for your trip. We are thinking summer of 2012 or 2013.