Sunday, August 30, 2009

Sandals Grande Antigua 2009

I am so sorry that it took so long to post pictures of our AMAZING vacation. I wanted to wait for our pictures from the underwater camera to come back so that I could include those as well. We had such a great time on our tropical getaway and can't wait to take our next trip. I won't bore everyone with a narrative of what we did each day since I know what everyone REALLY cares about are the pictures :)

Basically each day started with breakfast, ended with dinner, and between we were either relaxing on the beach, relaxing at the pool, playing games around the resort, kayaking in the ocean, snorkeling, scuba diving, sailing the Hobie Cats, eating at one of the 9 restaurants on the resort, laying out in the sun, or sleeping. We had a fantastic time and are SO glad that our friends John and Angela invited us to join them on this dream vacation. We are happy to report that we are STILL friends after spending a week straight with them and would even do it again sometime!



You may have noticed that their were no underwater photos of Travis and John scuba diving :( That is because we got separated due to some technical difficulties that Angela and I had with our gear at the start of the dive. Travis and John ended up going with the main group and Angela and I had our own personal guide for just the two of us. He was extremely patient and attentive to us both.

I would HIGHLY recommend a Sandals vacation to anyone interested in visiting paradise! All-inclusive is definitely the way to go and we were treated like gold the ENTIRE time we were there. The hardest thing now is deciding WHICH island to go to next!

Friday, August 7, 2009

Break Time...

4 cans of continuous spray sunscreen $26.00
2 new swimming suits for each of us $70.00
1 tube of 45 SPF lip balm $4.00
A vacation to the beautiful island of ANTIGUA...PRICELESS!!

Sandals Grande Antigua Resort (aka our HOME for the next week)

Honestly...can anyone think of a better way to unwind and relax? After everything that we have done in the last couple of months, I TRULY feel like we have earned this trip! Who knows, maybe we will decide not to come back?! :)

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

As Promised, our Home Sweet Home!


I know it took a LONG time to get these up, so now here are LOTS of pictures of our new place! Keep in mind it is TOTALLY a WORK IN PROGRESS...we have all sorts of ideas of what we want it to look like eventually...we just haven't been able to find a money tree to make it happen all at once! I think we have a good start anyway...it's just funny that we go into our guest bedroom the LEAST and it has the MOST hanging on the walls! We are really enjoying our new place and each day we are here it feels more and more like HOME. Last night we gained a whole new appreciation for our garage/driveway when we were able to wash and vacuum our cars without having to find a car wash nearby!



Office...set up just enough for Trav to work from home



Master bedroom...nothing special yet



Master Bathroom..here's a little color


Master Bathroom again...


...and again


Main level from dining room angle...still a lot of clutter and nothing on the walls


Living room...our blinds match PERFECTLY and we were happy to get them after a week without anything on the windows!


Living room from above


Laundry room...it is SO nice to have a place to hang wet clothes!


Kitchen...we LOVE our bar stools...we eat every meal there!


Half Bath...look close at my cute hand towel!


Half bath again..this picture doesn't do the rugs justice..they are this cool brownish grayish color


Guest bedroom...thanks to Julie for helping us come up with the picture arrangement and to Travis and my Dad for having the patience to hang it up! Our guest bedroom, like everything else, is a work in progress. It is going to be a "Vintage Paris" theme


Guest bedroom again


Guest Bathroom. These rugs are SUPER soft on your bare feet. No guest of ours is going to have to stand on a cold, hard floor to wash their hands! :)


The COOLEST garage in the community. Travis (and I) are quite proud of our first garage. This thing is 100% finished. When my parents were here, Travis and my Dad would open the garage first thing in the morning just so all the workers (and anyone else that happened to walk by) would see how COOL it was! :)



Sunday, August 2, 2009

Patience is a Virtue

I just wanted to take a moment to apologize to our far off friends and family that have been patiently waiting for me to post some pictures of our new place. I WILL POST PICTURES THIS WEEK...I just have to take some first :) As you can imagine we have had a crazy week since we moved in. We had the BEST moving crew on Friday and TRULY appreciate all of our friends and family that spent some of their holiday moving us up north. Things went quickly and we were only left with a couple minor dents and scratches in the walls...nothing a little touch up spackle and paint won't fix. :) My parents were here until last Wednesday to help us get more settled and to break in the guest bedroom. They were a tremendous help to us and I KNOW we wouldn't be as far along as we are in the settling process without all of their help. Unfortunately they only got to relax for about a day and a half of their 5 day vacation! I think that we officially have the COOLEST garage in the neighborhood thanks to a 12 hour day my dad and Travis spent on it last Saturday (my mom and I helped paint, but they did the rest) BOTTOM LINE: Rest assured that pictures WILL be posted before we leave for our week in paradise on Saturday :)