Cancun Trip July 30th

Dad and Annette took us all to Cancun for a week. We stayed at the RIU Cancun. It was amazing! We hung out by the pool, went to Tulum and XelHa (literally means "mixed water" where the fresh water from a river mixes with the ocean and Mexico cashed in on the great snorkeling to make it a natural water theme park). We went snorkeling, jumped off cliffs, snorkeled around in a cave, floated down the river in inner tubes, and had a blast. We only took out the waterproof camera for that part of the day, so no pics here...but I did get one shot of these guys haning out at the park:

Below are the ruins from Tulum, a preserved Mayan city.



This one has some tiny red hand prints in it. I asked the guide what they were from and he didn't know. Maybe since they didn't have plates to record a hand-print on for mom to keep, they just had kids record them on the side of their ritual alter buildings.....maybe??


We had GREAT food the whole time. The RUI had a Brazilian, Japanese, and Steakhouse restaurant along with a huge buffet...can you tell we loved to eat on this vacation?


We also went deep sea fishing. I think between David and myself we reeled in four fish.

Here is our sea vessel


And yes.....we took the tradish pic in khakis and white shirts :)


And last but not least.....I must pay homage to my Dad's awesome pineapple colored traveling shirt. Can you pick him out of the crowd :)

Hint: he matches the weird flying corn thing??? What is that?

Thanks so much for the trip Dad! We had a blast.

Picking up where we left off..............Get ready!

A lot has happened that we need to catch you up on. I guess the "you" would really only be the three people who happen to look at their Google Reader account to see that we have actually posted because I know everyone has most likely lost hope and given up checking this site!

Anywho...as promised in July we had a visit over the 4th of July weekend from Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom. Here are some highlights:

1.We took a trip up Kennesaw Mountain (actually a battlefield site for the civil war), and even though you can't tell much from the pictures it is a pretty view!

David and Grandpa at the top


2. We got to enjoy the Marietta Square Fireworks show. We had pretty good "seats" for the event.


Our attempt at a creative pic:


3. We went to Stone Mountain....sadly we couldn't go up top because of the thousands of people waiting in line to do the same. Note to self: don't go to Stone Mountain on the fourth of July weekend if you want to do or see anything good! We did eat at this little restaurant there that had "throwed" rolls, which was fun.


4. We celebrated Grandpa's birthday by grilling out at home and going to the Square and getting some pretty tasty ice cream!

"Is That Your Apple Tree?"

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit us Fourth of July weekend (my mom came too for a week...more on that later). Anywho, David and Grandpa were touring the grounds and Grandpa asked, "Is that your apple tree there?" David looked over and saw this

If you blow this up you can see apples in the tree and some on the ground (actually when they first discovered the tree there were about 50 rotting apples on the ground...how this wonderful tree escaped our notice until now is beyond us!). So there you have it folks, we have an apple tree. That produces these little lovely things:

But it gets better........
We also discovered that these two trees that border our little garden are walnut trees that we can gather in the fall.


Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for pointing out our little treasures. And, Yes, (those of you who know David are probably wondering)an apple crisp was soon made :)

Our new home

Ok, David here. This is my first attempt at blogging, so don't get your hopes up about this one. We have recently moved into a new house in Marietta, and planted our first garden, which I am super pumped about, so I thought I'd share some pics. It's about 100 years old (the house, that is) and has a lot of character and we are having a blast fixing it up. That being said, I don't have some great pictures of it (I just realized), so you will all have to make due with these until you can come visit us.



Here's one with some flowers that just bloomed in our yard. Pretty cool.



(Maybe it's because I'm working with an insanely slow computer, but I feel like I did when Mom and Sarah used to take me out to buy jeans and I would get exhausted after trying on two pair....this blogging will wear you out!)
A couple of weeks ago our landlord let us borrow his rototiller to start a garden. Here I am working the beast.





I'm actually digging up bricks in the above pics. Apparently there were a ton of bricks in the garden, and they kept making the rototiller pop up and nearly take my leg off. I felt like a little weakling who couldn't handle a man's machine in front of my manly farmer landlord, but I'm hoping after he saw the pile of bricks I was trying to till through he cut me some slack (good thing he doesn't know that I sew and that "You've got mail" is one of my favorite movies).Here's the pile:



Here's the finished product. We planted tomatoes (a couple of heirloom varieties), bell peppers, egg plant, okra, squash, cucumbers, and something called a muskmellon (supposed to be like a cantaloupe).









Here's the garden two weeks later:





Also, since we had two trash dumpsters, we decided to cut one up into three parts and use it for cool "green" purposes. The top part is being used as a compost bin. The middle part is a leaf holder for use in the compost. And the bottom part is our new herb garden (mint, basil, cilantro, and rosemary).





Finally (I guess I caught a second wind here cause this baby is a marathon), we have a grape vine in our back yard!



Here are the beginnings of our grapes.

Whitney's Baby Shower Cake

I have decided that baby shower cakes are my favorite. There was one I worked on at cafe Columbine (well I think it was a baby baptism cake) where I made cupcakes with white calla lilies on top. There is just so much more you can do with baby colors and designs...that don't look too cheesy/ themey (I know, not a word... but there is just not a better substitute for what my friend Kristy called-- in reference to an elephant themed room she had seen-- like an elephant threw up all over the room).

And my latest undertaking was inspired by this Land of Nod bedding:





This was what I came up with:



The above pic is a back view, which I was not anticipating (for some reason I pictured it being on a buffet or something where no one would see the back...but I thought it turned out not too hideous from a 360 view :)

Me and the soon to be mom of "CHC"--love how the monogram looks! (I refrained from giving the name out yet in case she changes her mind on baby boy's name. Also, in case there are haters out there that have something to say about the name of an unborn child whose parents have every right to name him/her Green Bean Jones if they want...don't read too much into that one :).

Congrats Whitney, and cannot wait to meet your new addition!