Camping!!

Ahhh, fresh air, in harmony with nature, the smell of wood burning, nothing to distract us from each other!

Yeah... one long cold night later, lack of sleep makes us both grumpy! I think the first sign that I'm not meant to be an outdoors girl (at least in the sense of the woods) is that we forgot to bring anything to light our campfire with. We camped at a site that was just a couple hundred yards away from a river, which was pretty cool. The water wasn't too cold - which is probably a good thing, since Rico fell in!$10 later (a $10 min charge on any credit cards at the local camp store and a 5% fee on top of that all because we forgot matches and silly me, I don't bring cash to the woods!) we have a camp fire:

And a campsite:

And the new Rico: No Gotee!


On the way there, we saw a truck straight out of Wanchese!
Ahh, a little slice of home!

End of Summer

I read today in a blog that I follow that it was a brisk 48 Degrees in Colorado Springs this morning. As much as I hate to see summertime leaving, the thought of the leaves changing colors, pumpkin harvests, snugglie hoodies and Thanksgiving makes me want to the Fall to be here already. I would love to be able to go to Colorado in the fall to see the Aspens changing colors (see pics above).

A Camping We Go, Hi Ho Hi Ho!

We're going camping at Cougar Flat in Wenatchee National Forest near Bumping Lake this Saturday. We decided to only do a 1-night trip just in case I don't like camping all that much. This will be my first official camping trip (I've been told that sleeping out on the porch when I was young does NOT count, haha!). We still have to set up Rico's tent and spray the water proof stuff on it and we have to shopping for the last minute stuff (like Marshmallows for Smores -- because I will not go camping without Smores!!).

This past weekend, we went to the Renissance Faire (another first for me) with Amanda, Shane and her daughter. Here are a few pics:

Haha "Walk The Plank"

At least I know he'll be entertaining for our kid!

We also saw The Time Traveller's Wife on Sunday and I boohoo'd like a baby. I wasn't really impressed with the book (too many weird things happen and it kind of made me over think it) but since I like Rachel McAdams, I wanted to see the movie. I definitely enjoyed the movie a lot better than the book. And Rico even admitted to tearing up too. So, if you go see it, bring tissues!

Hurricane Billy is in the Atlantic churning away. We're here on the West Coast crossing our fingers that it doesn't target the Carolina coast. A hurricane before Labor Day (or anytime really) would throw both Mom and Bucky's business's off-track for the season. We all need the help this year (even if it is only cooperating weather) with the economy the way it is. So, here's to hurricanes fizzling out and not coming anywhere near the East Coast!

Wet Weather Already?!

So a reminder that this awesome weather is not here to stay appeared in my mailbox yesterday. Apparently the dam near us has been progressively getting worse and was reevaluated recently. They mailed out notices to people within a 50 mile range (we're around 30 miles) that there may be a dam break this fall/winter when we get our notoriously wet weather and that we would have about a 7hr warning when it finally does break to get the hell out of dodge. We luckily are up on the Muckleshoot hill so I'm not worried about it too much. If we flood, then the whole Auburn valley will be gone and we'll have a new lake view.

Last year, I was at Jess's house babysitting when the river in Fife started to overflow its banks. Havoc ensued and the towns near the river were evacuated. It didn't end up over the high way so we got lucky. I expect something similar to happen this year since something crazy with the weather has happened every year since I've been here - I've been here 3 1/2 years now. The 1st year it was a 4 day power outage due to the wind and everything in my fridge and freezer was spoiled. 2nd year, I got stuck in a snow storm, heading up to Rico's work. My windshield wipers stopped working so in addition to sliding down hills (I was in my Xterra), I had to drive leaning sideways so I could see through partial windshield where the other wiper was working. Yeah...not easy judging how much gas and break to give the road in that position. Last year was the near river flooding. Maybe I'm just not meant for this state... come on, Rico, we're moving before the next wild weather incident!!!

I guess I'm a scalper...

So we decided that we should put more money towards paying off the wedding so we sold our Nickelback concert tickets on Craigslist last night (yes I brought my husband with me as a bodyguard;-) and made a little profit. I told my mom that and she called me a scalper, lol. But whatever - it's a sold out concert and people are willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for tickets. Considering for the 2 hours I had my listing up last night, I got 4 responses, I'd say I didn't sell them for high enough!

It's raining in Seattle - shocker! But we haven't had any significant rain in 83 days I think the news said the other day, so we need it. And surprise, suprise, nobody knows how to drive it in it. It's like as soon as the sun starts shining, people around here lose any common sense and forget that 9 months out of the year, the roads are wet! I'm just hoping for a dry weekend on the 22nd for our camping trip. I don't think a rainy weekend will be a great first impression camping trip for me.

Btw, it's $7 steak night tonight (it sounds horrible, but it's actually pretty decent!), mmm!

On Hold

No puppy for us:-( At least not yet...

We had a serious talk and decided that moving to an apartment/house just for a puppy isn't the smartest thing we could do right now. Not only would it stretch our finances even more, it wouldn't be very healthy for the puppy either. Since we both work 8-10 hours a day, coming home to let the dog out just isn't practical. And winters here in Washington suck, so I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving them outside for that amount of time. Boo! So, we tentatively decided that maybe when I get pregnant and have the baby, we could looking into getting a puppy so the baby and the puppy could grow up together.

But the good news is, since we won't be getting a puppy anytime soon, we can continue to pay off our credit card debt from the wedding. Eh, win, win, I guess. Yeah, yeah, the responsible adult thing to do and all that jazz. But that also means, possibly, that we'll be able to save a little faster and put that extra $ towards buying a place in Colorado! Sometimes, I just wish we could pack up and go, kind of like I did when I moved here. I can't complain, look how that road trip turned out (I met and married Rico by moving out here!!).


On the school end, Rico is starting his last year of school this quarter in September. I'm so proud of him for pushing himself through this. I know it's not easy going to work full time and school full time. I went to school and worked part time and I hated it, so I can only imagine what he's going through.

This weekend, we got to spend some time with Rico's mom, before she heads down to Texas for a couple of weeks to see her mom. We saw the new GI Joe movie (pretty good movie) and had dinner at Applebees (one of the worst dinners I've had in a long time!). I ordered the steak and portobello plate. The potatoes were soggy and the steak tasted charred even though it wasn't. It tasted like they hadn't cleaned the grill from before and whatever they were cooking before mine got burnt. Yuck! The best part of the meal, sadly, was the broccoli!

How to Make A Baby!

I just finished reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility and we've been talking about babies a lot recently, so when I found this, I thought it was too cute!!

I so totally stole this from Melody's blog - so...thanks, Melody!!

If only it were this easy, haha!

Get Ready, Set, Go!

Well, August is off and running!

The concert Saturday night was ok...the idea was cooler than the actual concert - 5 bands coming together to play at a major city stadium in a 7hr concert. Yeah well, I was cheap and I bought the cheapest tickets available, which were nosebleeds. But what I didn't take into consideration was the fact that Qwest Field is known for it's noise level (there's speculation that they pipe in the noise during football games so the opposing team gets distracted - but from what I can tell, it's just the dome like coverings echoing). So basically, after waiting outside the stadium for 2 hrs (we came early because we didn't know what parking would be like and the last time we were there, the parking nazi's were charging $50 a car!!), we get inside and can't hear anything. Granted, I knew most of the songs by the bands so I could pretty much figure out what the song was by lipreading the big screen on the side of the stage, but Rico, the poor guy got the first 3 words of the songs and then rest just bounced off the roof above us. We actually left after seeing Sugarland and didn't stay for Kenny Chesney (oh the shame!). I think the most fun we had though was people watching and seeing how far people would make up the stairs before huffing and puffing and taking a break before heading up past us to the higher level seats. We were kind of half way up the highest riser. A true testiment to how out of shape we all actually are.


On Friday, we rearranged the living room somewhat and have come to the conclusion that our sofa is just too damn big. Since it's a sectional, it has it's metal attachments on the front pieces where the other sections connect, so when you disconnect them, all we see is bright shiny chrome metal against the dark brown couch. So the sectional is still a sectional and the only real difference in the room is we moved the extra chair to the garage (which we, by the way, cleaned out and donated most of our crap to GoodWill or the garbage cans!). AND, we didn't kill each other - I'm very proud of us!

Sunday, we slept in a little bit, I made Rico breakfast in bed of scrambled eggs and ham with a bagel. We went to a local park (I think it's a school team park because there were all these abandoned soccer goals but nobody on the field at all) and tossed around a Nerf football and the ball that you catch with the tubular scoop -- I have no clue what it's called! -- to get a little bit of sun.