Princess Birthday

Thank you all for the birthday wishes! 

Have you ever had that moment when you can't get the day of the week right? For example, for some reason your mind won't let go of the illusion that today is Friday when in reality it's a Wednesday? That's how my birthday went. Sean must have spent a good 5 minutes convincing me I was 22, because I was sure I was 23. And then he had to keep reminding me. Why on earth would a girl as young as myself not be able to acknowledge her 22nd birthday? Is it the pregnancy brain? Do I secretly wish I was older? No. The blame lies entirely on Taylor Swift. For the entire year I've flipped on my radio and listened to T-swizzle sing about how 22 is all about dressing up like hipsters, falling in love with strangers, and partying with your girlfriends all day. For an even better image of how I should be spending this year, check out the priceless video.

Anyhow, you can understand my confusion. Highlights of my typical day include choosing what color of tent to wear with my yoga pants, checking the mail, and musing over how we're gonna dress kiddo for Halloween (Pinterest has some GREAT ideas.) I was thinking about it, and in the context of the world today (and by "world" I mean everywhere but Utah) there are many who would think it's an insane mistake to "throw my life away" by getting married young and having a baby so fast, when I could be enjoying my Taylor Swift time. But as I sat down just now to blog about my birthday, I just wanted to share with all of you (and anyone who happens to come across my blog) how incredibly blessed I feel to be in this awesome place, with the awesome guy, having this awesome baby! I don't think I could possibly be happier doing anything else. And the way I see it,  I'll have plenty of time to join the hipster movement as soon as I can fit into skinny jeans again.

So about my birthday. 

It really started on Friday when I got my first card from my parents! It was so sweet of them to send a monetary gift on top of the maternity clothes my mom has already gotten me. My mom reminded me in the card that I could use this to say, buy a treat for my birthday. What a concept! In my mind, in order to accomplish spending instead of saving, this money had to be gone before my bank account ever knew it existed. So, I just let the pregnancy cravings take over and we immediately ran over to the nearest Twisty Treat and bought the biggest, cherry-dipped ice cream cones on the menu. Thanks Mom and Dad!

On my actual birthday, I enjoyed some nice phone calls from family and a great skype session with Ryan, Steph, and the boys. Sean made me a nice brunch and that was about all I expected of our day, since he was threatened not to plan any activities or dinner until next month when we actually have the money to do so. I should know by now that Sean's interpretation of "don't spend money on me" is "tread extra carefully as you spend money on me". After telling me an hour in advance that I had to be ready to leave, he avoided my fury by refusing to tell me what we were doing so that I couldn't gauge the monetary value. Then he assured me that not only did he get a deal, he spent the money weeks ago, so it won't be missed now! Then he made sure that whatever we were doing was gleefully nerdy enough that I couldn't resist compliance once we got there. Darn him. It worked. Before I even had time to get angry we were pulling into a castle.

Sean decided to take me to Medieval Times so that I could be a princess on my birthday. For those of you who haven't heard of this place (there are a few locations throughout the country) allow me to walk you through this experience. 

First, there's the village.

This is basically a replica of a bunch of Medieval buildings full of actual medieval artifacts from Spain. We thought the blacksmith's house and the torture chamber were the coolest parts. This is really only to pique your interest in case you get there too early to be admitted into the castle.

When the time is right, you can enter the King's gate. The entrance is complete with a drawbridge and moat. 

Everyone gathers in a large entryway, where a herald welcomes you on behalf of the King. You are given crowns which designate you as lords and ladies of certain realms of the kingdom. Each realm is then invited to be seated in the banquet hall. 

And when they say banquet hall, they mean THIS

Because this is Medieval times, the place settings are made out of metal and there is no silverware to be found.

Your server will introduce himself and explain that the serfs and wenches would be bringing out the feast shortly. There is a set menu with several courses that are served throughout the night. But that's not all.

While you are busy tearing away with your bare hands at the entire chicken that's been placed on your plate, you are invited by the king to enjoy a tournament in which the bravest knights in all the land would be competing to the DEATH.

I think you get the picture now. If you have a Medieval Times anywhere near you, GO.

Anyway, before the tournament began, there was a nice little show with a bunch of horses. Between the lighting and the speed, we weren't able to get many clear pictures, but here are a few.

A knight demonstrating the bond between him and his horse

The King, the herald, and some knights

The champion of our realm was the Green knight. We cheered him on valiantly the entire night.

The jousting and fighting was awesome! Though there was some definite choreography going on for safety's sake, this was no joke! They brought down nets to protect from the splintering wood of the lances, and at times their swords would hit so hard there were sparks flying! It was pretty cool. Sean took a really great video of this, but I think it was too long because it wouldn't upload.

Sean made me wear this crown the rest of the day.

As if all of this wasn't entertainment enough, the nice guy next to us was drinking double vodka martinis all night, and took it upon himself to give us less-than-appropriate marital advice from his 27 years of experience. Ironically enough it really helped complete the primitive ambiance.

So ya, don't judge us, we had a blast.

We were also surprised to learn that my cousin Stacey and her family were spontaneously in town! We went over to their hotel after dinner for a swim and fun chat, which was so much fun! I think I just really really loved seeing family out here. Thank you everyone for making my birthday awesome even from far away! 

Oh! And if you're wondering how the bump is progressing...

Awkward selfie! I promise I'll clean my mirror as soon as we have Windex.

A Bug's Life

As a side note to my previous post, we've only been here 2 weeks and we've already become well acquainted with the wildlife. We've yet to see a gator, and I doubt we will until we are being eaten by one. However, there is so much more to see! There are lizards everywhere. At first I was afraid I was going to step on one, because they just run under your feet while you're walking. Somehow, they're always out of the way just before your foot hits the ground. They remind me a lot of quail crossing the street back home. 

We've also seen some pretty big, weird birds. There's these black vulture-like birds that eat dead things, all sorts of cranes, and Sean claims to have seen a flamingo fly overhead while we were driving to the beach. We walked out our door one day to see this big blue...something. Again, video the wrong direction, but it appears Blogspot tolerated this one.

My biggest temptation came as I was picking Sean up from his Disney orientation yesterday. I was on a small highway when I noticed a silhouette crossing the street. I thought it was a squirrel (those are also everywhere), but it was moving slowly...much too slowly...

Those who know me know that it took a lot of restraint for me to leave this guy in the wild. The only thing keeping me from bringing him home was the fact that he was over a foot long and that we are too poor to feed another mouth right now.  It was funny though, coming to a complete stop to allow a turtle to cross the street. 

But then, there are the bugs...While I'm enjoying the bigger things (yes, even the snakes) that we encounter often, I do not appreciate the war the bugs have raged against me. Yes, me. It's very personal. When we first arrived, our condo hadn't been inhabited in awhile, so we ran into a lot of little spiders and other bugs. For days we were smashing spiders and vacuuming corners. And by "We" I mean Sean did the killing while I stood on the couch screaming "Kill him! Kill his family! Destroy everything he loves!" or, "Break his legs off and send him out as a message to his friends!" I am not normally a violent person, but I can be pretty imaginative when it comes to my hatred for Spiders. This is largely thanks to the childhood torments of one Carson Walker, but I won't go there.

We went a few days without any bugs, and trying to keep the house as clean as possible seemed to be helping. Then, just as I was beginning to feel safe, the wild outdoors retaliated by sending in the super soldiers. First, there was the cockroach in the kitchen that kept coming back to life. He was a fast moving bugger and I was not ready with the camera. Then, there was this.

No, it was not the Costa Rica monster of 2006 (Walker family), but was it the biggest spider I've seen outside of a zoo in the United States? Possibly. That's a quarter, not a dime. And we've only been here 2 weeks. Now I lie awake at night jumping at every itch and tickle and wondering what I'm going to if a behemoth like this invades while Sean's at work, and what if it attacks the baby, etc.etc. Sigh. Game on, spiders, game on.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho

Well, we are here and settled now, so it's about time I showed you guys where we live. Sorry for the long post again, but at least it's pretty much all pictures this time. 

Our Condo is actually normally a vacation rental. You can check out the website for our resort here to check out how awesome our amenities are. It's a beautiful place, we get a pool, fitness center, the works! Sean took a video of the apartment the moment we arrived. We were both surprised by how nice it was, even though it's small. Unfortunately, both of us made mistakes of recording videos the wrong way on our phones, and now we can't figure out how to rotate them, and blogspot gets confused with the dimensions. Since, I don't care enough about it to spend hours figuring out how to fix our videos, you guys will have to miss out on the tour for now. Please skype us and we'll show it to you! We'll probably post a better video later.

Because we don't have our free passes to Disney yet, and we live in a tourist area, it's been hard for us to find things to do. We spend time at the pool and fitness center, and we enjoy having cable for the first time ever, but we have none-the-less become pretty creative. One of the first things we felt we needed to do was eat Gator. 

Of course it was cut up into tiny pieces, covered in inch-thick breading and deep fried, which makes just about anything taste good. I thought it tasted like really tender chicken, and only hope it wasn't bad for the baby. (haha jk, it's totally fine.)

On our second day, we decided to visit Downtown Disney, because it's free, and I remember really loving it. Luckily, they had limited options for baby boy outfits, or I would have gone on a splurge at the Disney store. We mostly just walked around the stores and really enjoyed the lego sculptures.

Disney pillow pets

Prince Phillip, possibly the most underrated prince in Disney history. I mean, look at THIS!

 Dopey is not in this sculpture, he's with snow white next door. 

What a hunk. I mean, Hulk.

We also saw this glass worker, which was pretty cool. I actually remembered this from the last time I was at Disney world, like 6 years ago, and hunted it down.

Just yesterday, we went back to Downtown Disney for a car show. Sean loves cars, so he was all over this. We made sure to take pictures of our favorites to show Sam and Austin in particular. 

Naturally, because this is Disney, the car show had a "Cars" theme.

This monster truck was so much bigger than it looks in this picture. There's actually a run-of-the-mill ladder sitting underneath it, that's the only way the driver can get in and out.

More Cars stuff...

Lightning McQueen, Awesome!!!

Sean's thumb somehow got lost in this picture.

Every time we take a picture of something, we're likely to get someone else's kid in there too.

Lamborghini Gallardo

Not sure, but I think this might be a Gallardo too.

Ferrari F30

Actually, I kind of wish we took more pictures. I really enjoyed classic vintage cars like the Chevy Bel Air and stuff. There were so many cars! 

We've also explored Disney't Boardwalk. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures there, besides this cool picture Sean took of one of the resorts. 

And...we found out where Sean will be working! Exhibit A below. This job is awesome.

The sculpture in front of the building. You can't see it too well, but it's all seven dwarfs walking in the door.

Another fun thing we got to do was visit the beach. We can pretty much pick a direction, drive an hour, and hit the ocean. We picked east this time, and  ended up on Cocoa beach. We had a blast, it was my first time swimming in the Atlantic, and we both suffered for an entire week from the worst sunburns ever. In Utah, I only had to wear SPF 15 on my face, and 4 or 8 everywhere else. Here, I wore SPF 30 to be safe, and still got fried. Sean put too much confidence in his dark skin and wore no sunscreen. He is peeling something fierce.

We also found this great bar/grill by the water called "Coconuts on the Beach." We don't know if that name is supposed to be inappropriate or not, but we loved the fish tacos as well as virgin pina colada and banana daiquiri we ordered. We got to keep the glasses too!

So basically we've been on vacation this entire time. Sean starts work for real tomorrow, so we are going to have to settle down into a regular routine. We ready for visitors now! Come on down! 

Florida Road Trip: Days, 2, 3, 4, and 5

     Apologies ahead of time as this is going to be a loooong post. Notice that there is a fifth day to our road trip that was not previously planned. New lesson learned, when driving through the plains, plan on a fifth day, just in case you have our luck.

Day 2: Denver, CO to Topeka, KS

 This picture pretty much sums it up. Though, upon arriving at the Hoyos home in Topeka, we did notice this little hobbit hole that we found extremely amusing.

Driving through Kansas was 7 hours of uninterrupted bliss, and we began to believe that the remainder of our trip was going to go very smoothly. Hahaha.

Day 3: Topeka, KS to St. Louis, MO

   We did not get very far this day, due to the mid-west just being itself, which I'll get into later. It was, however, probably our favorite day of the trip. We absolutely loved Missouri! It was so pretty to drive through, and we had fun in Independence and St. Louis. 

The day began, after about an hour of driving, at the Kansas City Temple (we actually had to go backward to get this picture, since we forgot about it and accidentally passed it up.)

 Independence was only just outside of Kansas City. Sean had never seen it before, and I couldn't remember if I had. Though I wasn't feeling well that day, we decided to stop at least at the visitor's center. We are so glad we did, since we got the chance to run into some old friends!

 It was so exciting to run into Sister Zito from my home ward! I had no idea she was serving here, and it's pretty coincidental that she was working in the visitor's center this morning. 

Brother Brenchley was not only Sean's stake president at BYU, but is apparently good friends with my Dad from olden times. (You'll have to ask him about it). Long story short, where Mormons are concerned, the world is very, very small.

After discovering that we would not have time to go up to Liberty Jail, we decided it would be cool to visit the Community of Christ temple in Independence, because at the very least, they have the original Liberty Jail door. Unfortunately we were not able to take a picture of it because photos apparently endanger the artifacts in their museum. Their Temple is actually not a temple by our standards, but is more of a worship center and museum. They use it for some prayer ceremonies, but other than that it functions a lot like an LDS visitor's center. There is a tour guide who took us through and explained all of the art and more or less what their church is about. It has some really pretty art work and architecture, so this turned out to be a cool experience. I'm also pretty nerdy and really enjoyed comparing similarities and differences between their beliefs and ours. 

 The Community of Christ Temple, which sits directly across the street from the future Independence Temple Lot.

The tour guide explained that they don't have too many symbols, but this is sort of their logo (other than a cross). It depicts a child with a lamb and a lion to represent peace.

A three-layer tapestry of the burning bush

There is no picture that can quite depict how beautiful this was. It's a two-layer glass pane that has been sand blasted to create a three-dimensional look. It is a depiction of the Sacred Grove, and goes around an entire doorway. Easily the coolest thing in there. 

Once you get into the chapel, or auditorium, you can look straight up the spiral. It is really high up and beautiful. It's supposed to represent drawing closer to heaven, but also spreading their message outward.

The organ in the chapel.

And, just around the corner, we have the Independence Temple lot! We decided to count this as a temple stop, so I stuck Sean in the picture for good measure. 

We had a lot of fun in Independence, but spent way more time there than we had planned. We realized that at this rate, we were not going to make it to Nashville (where we planned to stop that night) until at least 9:00. So we jumped back on the road, only to be distracted again 3 hours later with St. Louis! We only planned to stop at the temple, which was outside of town.

 But...as we began to drive through the city, we kept commenting on how pretty and awesome it looked. We had not planned to stop there at all, but then we hit major rush hour traffic. We slumped our shoulders and waited in a near stand-still for about 5 minutes, before looking to our left and seeing the gateway arch. We decided it would be way cooler to be up there than to be in this traffic, so we got off the next exit. This turned out to be a fateful decision.

I love this picture of Sean at the arch, but I got a lot of stares for lying on my back to take it. I'm beginning to feel a bit more pregnant now though, because I needed help getting up.

My least favorite part was this tiny ball you ride up in.

View from the top

The Mississippi

The Cardinals game was just starting. I figure this is cheaper than a ticket to the game. I'd hate to be there though because the game was about to be canceled anyway.

While it looked like really nice weather while we were in the arch, it was beginning to cloud over when we got out. We thought nothing of it and decided to get some dinner. We ate at a really cool Old Spaghetti factory. I thought it would be just like any other one but now I wish we had taken pictures in there. Anyway, by the time we got out of there the sirens were going off in the city and our phones were buzzing non-stop with tornado and flood warnings. This is the storm that came in.

We ran to our car in the pouring rain, and waited in the parking garage for a half hour while listening to the radio. The storm was really bad at that point, with high winds, tons of rain, and possible hail. Two tornadoes had already touched ground nearby. The lady at the parking garage did not recommend leaving at all. Since the storm was moving east and only getting worse in Illinois, we decided Nashville was out, and stayed in St. Louis that night. Luckily, the most dangerous part moved out by morning, and all we had to deal with was the rain. 

Day 4: St. Louis, MO to Atlanta, GA

We only drove 4 1/2 hours on Day 3, so by this point we were way behind. We decided to split our trip into two more days so that we wouldn't have to drive 15 hours. This landed us in Atlanta, Georgia by the end of day 4. It was still pretty stormy on the route. I think we were behind the storm in Illinois, because we only had to deal with light rain. Kentucky was not stormy, but we were in stop and go construction the entire way, which was maddening. It took over 3 hours just to cut through the smallest corner of Kentucky. Construction was gone in Tennessee, but it was then that we caught up to the thunder storm. The rain was so heavy at times that every car on the road had their hazards on just so the car behind them could faintly see them. I've never driven in such heavy rain! Luckily, this part of the storm was not solid, so we got breaks now and then from the rain. Our picture at the Nashville Temple was taken from the overhang of the church next to it, with me in the car. If you look really close, my face is plastered against the window.

We rally liked that this temple was all marble. It was really pretty and I've never seen a temple like that before.

We did not stay directly in Atlanta, but directly outside of it, in a really downtrodden travelodge. This was the only time that we felt extremely worried about the stuff in our car. There were homeless people wandering the parking lot all night, and every little noise during the night caused one of us to jump up and run to the window. We should have gotten a picture of this hotel room.

Day 5: Atlanta, GA to Orlando, FL

By now we were so so ready to get home! Because we were only planning on four days of driving, we were both out of clean clothes from our bag, and couldn't dig through the rest of our stuff because the car was too tightly packed. We were also both really tired from not sleeping well the night before.

 I don't know how many of you have heard of the Waffle House, but if you ever drive east, it is impossible to ignore. The first time we saw one, it was just a small, ghetto looking diner that we thought was a local business. Then, suddenly, they were off of every single exit, no matter how remote. According to wikipedia, they have over 1700 stores in only 25 states, founded in Tennessee. They are all tiny and do not have the feel of a large chain. It's an absolute southern phenomenon. We decided that we couldn't ignore the Waffle House any longer, and ate there for breakfast. Upon entering the place, we discovered that it was even more awesome than we thought. Case in point: 

This was my meal at 10:00 in the morning (typical waffle and sausage).

This was Sean's (T-Bone steak with hash-browns and Texas toast). 

This is the only place that has been able to accommodate our different tastes so completely.

After breakfast, we made sure to hit up the Atlanta temple, which for whatever reason was closed that day. 

After only a few short hours of driving, we arrived in Florida, and were at last welcomed with the first glimpse of the sun we had in days!!! We love that they offer free fresh squeezed orange juice at the Welcome Center.

We still had a few hours to drive to get to Orlando, but we made sure to eye all the signs at the side of the road. That's how we found the Florida Citrus Center, where a nice man sold us an orange peeler and a weird contraption that allows you to drink directly from an orange. He then graciously gave us two free oranges and pointed us to the building next door where we could look at some baby gators. (Florida has not yet ceased to entertain me. I hope it's always like this.)

We made it to Orlando at last! It was a longer trip than we had expected, and bad luck seemed to follow us wherever we went, but so far we love it here. 

The Orlando Temple (Yes, it's raining again)

We are really excited to show off our new home, so pictures of that to come.