Today was another crazy day full of a million errands that we needed to get done before we leave on Vacation on Tuesday. This morning we realized that it is less than 48 hours until we are hiking across Utah and we have not even attempted to break in the hiking shoes we bought last weekend. So amidst running errands all over town, we stopped at the arboretum to do a bit of walking, and check their lost and found for my camera bag. Can you believe we found an entire area at the arboretum that I have never been to? How is that even possible? It was a beautiful day for a mid-morning stroll.
We had a crazy busy day today. Mom came over at about 9:30am to go with me to Calloway's to buy flowers for our front walk area. I, of course, went a little crazy. How can you not with all of the beautiful, brightly colored choices? Juan, Mom and I worked on planting everything until almost 4:30pm. Juan was our official hole digger and Mom did the majority of the planting work. I just supervised...what a great job! It looks beautiful and I can't wait to post pictures. Then Juan hung my anniversary wind chime and we headed off for a co-workers birthday party. It is so nice to come home to a brightly colored landscaped yard. Thanks again, Mom....you ROCK!
Coloring is so underrated. What a fun, creative pasttime! I went over to Vanessa's this evening to work on our Project Life Albums. Jakob was getting ready for bed, but wanted to color first. Apparently this is one of his new favorite pasttimes. We let him color for awhile and when Vanessa took the last crayon away, he was definitely not happy. I was amazed that he was able to do so well with the crayons. He is also great at sharing and wanted Vanessa and I to color with him.
Juan and I babysat Jakob this evening and after he inhaled about 1/2 a pound of turkey, he was ready to burn it off! Juan played soccer with him out front, in the grass, for about 45 minutes. Jakob would try to run away from Juan with the ball and Juan would try to take it away from him, soccer style. Jakob was laughing uncontrollably the entire time. He was definitely persistant and even managed to wear out Juan. Jakob was on the offensive in this photo and trying to attack Juan to retrieve the ball. Juan might just make a little soccer star out of him yet. This week was the first time he has actually kicked the ball to us and not just picked it up with his hands. What a cutie!
Check out how Jakob get's Tio back, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWcpP92v0XQ
Abby, Danna and I headed to Panera's for lunch today. It has been weeks since we went to lunch together and just chatted. I got all caught up on their kiddo updates.
My lovely desk at work. I get so much use out of the dual monitors. I constantly have 10-20 items open at any given time. Typically it is a mixture of emails, cad, word, excel, and lots of project tree directories. Also typical is all of the post-it notes on my monitor and a "to do" pad with all sorts of scribbles...usually multiple "to do" pads.
We stopped by my sister's this afternoon as we were in the area. Juan and Jakob were playing in the front yard and Juan decided to climb the Magnolia tree (he really is a 12 year old stuck in a 40+ body). Jakob was in awe, first pointing and then stretching his arms out to Juan signalling that he wanted to come up. What's an uncle to do? He came down a little ways and I lifted Jakob up to him. They both sat in the tree cheesing it up. Jakob thought it was absolutely great! Vanessa, don't be surprised if you find him trying to climb trees in the near future. If you do, blame Tio!
Juan and I are head to Utah for vacation in a couple of weeks to spend 6 days hiking the Moab and Arches National Parks. Neither of us has good hiking shoes, so we headed to REI to download all the scoop on what we need. I ended up with a pair of non-waterproof Merrell's ($110) and Juan ended up with a pair of waterproof Oboz's ($145). We each got liners and wool socks. We also got Juan a new backpack. He wanted something larger and ended up with a full backpacking type with rigid supports and everything. It is way more then we need for day hiking, but he is planning on carrying everything we need for both of us, including all water and my camera bag, so I wanted him to have which ever type he wanted. If we get stranded, we'll be set! Now watch, I'll end up so sore the second day I won't be able to hike anywhere.
The interior designers at P+W participated in International Interior Design Association, Dallas Fort Worth Chapter, fashion show and auction. The theme was "OLD is New Again". 10 companies created dresses made of recycled products from vaious vendors each company works with to form a fashion show. The dresses will be auctioned off at an event next weekend to raise money for the organization, but this evening was the preview, dress rehearsal. There is a "best in show" award that is voted on by everyone in attendance tonight, so the P+W girls were seeking people to attend the preview show and vote for their dress. Denise Cunningham was the P+W "model" and the dress was held together primarily with staples and tape. There were quite a few great dresses, but P+W was my personnel favorite. This photo is just a few of the participates and supporters who attended from P+W.
I've always wanted to read all of classics....do you know how many classics there are? I'm not a huge fan of most of them, but I feel like literary classics expand my mind and it is a good break from all of the garbage that I usually read. For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in Spain and I bought the book on our honeymoon in Spain last March. I decided that since it had been over a year, I really needed to finish it. Today I accomplished my goal! I didn't know this was a book based on a war. It wasn't too bad, a little dull. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
Juan came to pick me up today and take me to lunch at Green Papaya. As we left my office we noticed all of the flowers blooming. They were huge blooms and the shrubs were just full of them! Spring is FINALLY here!
We got home from our weekend jont to find about a hundred flies in our house. I don't know what happened. Juan went to the store to find a flyswatter and came back with a spatula....said they didn't have any flyswatters. It was a little hilarious to watch him attacking the flies with a spatula. He is also convinced the neighbors are hording a dead body. Crazy man.
We were surprised that the wild flowers on the "Wild Flower Wine Tour" were so sparse until we hit the wineries farther north on Sunday. We drove into Blue Bonnet Heaven! I've never seen so many Blue Bonnets. They were huge and thick along the road. We stopped a couple of times and did the photo op thing with these beauties. We did notice that under all of the beautiful blue bonnet beds were rocks and bugs, but our efforts were not in vain. We got some great snapshots and laughed a lot at each other.
Juan, Vanessa, Mom and I went to Hill Country for the Wild Flower Wine Tour. Each winery had special tastings paired with cheeses and a couple even gave us wild flower seeds to plant. The wild flowers were all blooming and we had a great time. We hit our favorites from our Ornament Tour a couple years ago and then added a few we had not visited before. Juan and I ended up with 24 bottles of wine, which was significantly less than I purchased last time, but we were on a budget. This photo was taken at Singing Water Vineyards.
This photo was taken at about 5am Saturday morning, but was the result of the Friday night craziness, so I am using it for my Friday POTD. Juan and I were up until about midnight packing and preparing for our wine country trip with Mom and Vanessa. We only booked one night at the bed and breakfast, to save money, so we were driving to Fredricksberg EARLY Saturday morning. We wanted to be at the first winery when they opened at 10am, and it is about a 5-1/2 hour drive. When our alarm went off at 3am I really didn't think I'd be able to crawl out of bed....but I did. We were on our way to pick up Vanessa by 4:05am and at Mom's house by 4:30. By 5am we were off! Mom took the first driving shift, with Vanessa as her co-pilot to keep her awake. Juan and I slept in the backseat for the first 1/2 of the drive.
We are headed to wine country this weekend and Mom noticed that her privacy fence in her backyard had came apart at the corner. She was concerned someone would walk into her backyard and break into her house while we were away, so Juan and I headed to Mesquite after work this evening to help her "fix" the fence. I got there first, so Mom and I sawed and drilled all of the boards. This is probably not the "safest" way to drill a hole, but it got the job done. Juan helped us attach the boards with sheer brute force. Not the prettiest fix, but a fix none-the-less.
Juan and I have gotten into a routine of going to the movies on Wednesday evenings after work. It is a great mid-week break and we hate to fight the weekend mobs, man are we getting old or what? AMC theaters also have free popcorn on Wednesdays, so just another incentive. This week we saw Bounty Hunter with Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston, two of my favorite stars. It was a great movie and quite hilarious! I give it 5 stars. The funny part was that Juan was the only guy in a theater full of girls. It was not really a chick-flick though and we both enjoyed it thoroughly.
Juan and I watched the Barcelona vs. Arsenal soccer game and Leonel Messi scored 4 goals in one game. He became the first player to score four goals in a two-legged series in the competition and with 25 goals matched Rivaldo as Barcelona's career Champions League scoring leader. The 22-year-old Messi, expected to lead Argentina at the World Cup, has eight Champions League goals this season and moved one ahead of Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo for this season's scoring lead. It was an amazing game to watch and he is truly an awesome player. He is the reigning world player of the year and nicknamed the "magician".
We left our little cabin, named 'OZ', this morning and headed back to Dallas. It was a lovely weekend full of laughter, smores, food, and crazy kiddos. It was great for most of the Navarro family to be together for once, although we missed Thelma, Gaston and their families.
Today we took all of the kids to ride the train and then to a little park to hide Easter eggs. Juan and I were the official egg hiders while the kids opened their Easter baskets. Then we had 7 little ones running across the grass gathering colorful plastic eggs filled with candy and coins as fast as their little feet would carry them. Afterwards Gracie passed out cartons of eggs to the adults with decorated egg shells full of confetti. The Mexican tradition, Cascarones, is to break these egg shells over each others head for good luck. There was a lot of chasing and craziness as confetti and egg shells flew all over the place.
Juan and I took Orianna and headed out for a hike this morning. We found a little trailhead and started off. It was a 5 mile hike to the spillway. After about an hour we thought we were probably half way there, instead we learned we had only gone 1 mile and we were all exhausted so we turned around and hiked the mile back. Our 2 mile hike ended up taking us about 2 hours and all three of us were totally exhausted. We are obviously out of shape. The scenery wasn't even great. The highlight of our hike was the dead armadillo at the end of the trail. YUCK.
We arrived at the cabin in Broken Bow, OK at about 7pm tonight. Suprisingly, only Gracie, Anna, Isabella, and Alexander were there. Apparently the rest of the family had all followed in caravan and Monica's car had broke down along the way. Everyone else stayed with the vehicle and tried to fix the vehicle and then wait for the tow truck. It was almost 10pm before everyone else arrived. While we waited, Juan fixed Gracie, Anna, and I blue moon beverages with orange slices.
Juan's brother, Felipe, Felipe's wife, Anna, and their son, Alexander flew in today from Los Angeles, California. Tomorrow the entire family is headed to a cabin in Broken Bow, OK for the weekend to celebrate Juan's parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Tonight the family met at Bucco De Beppo for a family style dinner. I have only met Felipe and his family once, at Alexander's baptism a couple of years ago. Alexander loves to say "Cheese" for the camera.
Last night, when we arrived at the Hilton in downtown LA, the right lane infront of our hotel was blocked by a film crew. We learned that they were filming an episode of the TV show "24" in the building across the street. This morning, as we left the hotel to walk to the architect's office, we notice they had the same lane blocked off and they had changed all of the street signs to replicate 46th street in New York. This was for an episode of "Sons of Anarchy" Season 2. We watched all of the extras in halloween costumes and pedestrians fake walking the street back and forth, all infront of a fake book store, very interesting.
Yes, I am headed off to California again today. This time it is to Riverside, CA to meet with the design team on redesign options for an expansion we have already completed a design on. I'm here for three days this week.
I must have been an amazing wife this week, because my husband came home with yet another present for me today. This time it was earrings to match the necklace that he brought me last week. It was just an "I love you" present. Ahhhhhhhhhh, how lucky am I to have a man like him? Very!
My husband is so sweet! He went to the bookstore today and came home with a present for me...little chicks to put on our mantle for Easter. He knows what a sucker I am for brightly colored little holiday decorations. It definately made my day.
