2 YEARS!?!

How has it possibly been two years since we got married? Sometimes it seems like it was a month ago, sometimes it seems like it was 10 years ago (in a good way :) ). JJ and I are so blessed with wonderful role models of what a godly marriage should be, and hopefully we can help set that example for others.

To celebrate our 2nd anniversary JJ's parents were generous enough to treat us to a staycation at the Royal Palms. I have always wanted to stay here and the resort did not disappoint. The room was beautiful with a great soaking tub, the property was lush and green (even in the summer, yay!) and the cocktails by the pool were just what we needed to feel like we were on another honeymoon (JJ gives me a hard time because I refer to every vacation that we take, just the two of us, as another honeymoon). Whatevs, just keeping the romance alive, haha!

The Royal Palms

We spent most of the time in the pool, but on Saturday night we had dinner at the Wrigley Mansion, another Phoenix classic. We had a table by the windows to watch the sunset, a great bottle of wine, gorgeous view and a champagne toast to end the evening. The food was so disappointing, but we were really there for the view!

View from Wrigley Mansion

A little dark, but I think you can tell that it's us!

If you ever get a chance the Royal Palms is a great destination for a romantic weekend or just a romantic dinner. The lounge and the restaurant, T. Cook's, are fabulous...try the sangria!

Day of Fun

Date night/day this week was an interesting experience. Unlike the last two weeks, I hadn't planned everything out so we were just winging it.

The day started out with me taking two Valiums...no it was wasn't because I was stressed or worried about spending an entire day with JJ, it was because I was panicking about my scheduled MRI. Not so much a fan of loud enclosed spaces for prolonged periods of time, call me crazy! (Update: Everything came back clear, but I thought I re-injured my shoulder when Barney pulled me down a flight of stairs chasing after another dog). So after coming out of the Valium haze, JJ took me to brunch at Terrace Cafe (my new favorite brunch place). I love brunch, it has to be one of the best things ever invented.

Next, JJ and I decided to visit the mall and pull the trigger on a purchases we had been debating over for about a month. We succumbed to peer pressure (the good kind) and bought an iPad. It is pretty awesome. For the longest time, I thought it was silly to have if you had a laptop, but I think its fun and I'm glad we got it. Now JJ and I won't be fighting over the Mac laptop either. Also, in an effort to entice fall to come faster, I bought a pair of Uggs. I usually buy the knock-of Target brand, so I will be interested to see if I can even tell a difference. I justified it because they weren't the standard ones, they have a split down the side fastened by a big button. Super cute.

We spent the rest of the day playing with our new toy, enjoying Thai take-out and watching all the season premiers on TV. Not a bad date day for not having anything planned!

Mary Poppins

This week we took date night in the opposite direction of the last one. Last week we enjoyed hiking in the great outdoors, this week we enjoyed an NYC-style dinner and a show in uptown Charlotte.

The Broadway show, Mary Poppins, has been in town for a few weeks and I kept hearing great things about it so I talked JJ into going with me. I know musicals aren't his first (or second, or third, or...) choice for entertainment, but I guess he knows how much I love them and he decided to humor me for the night. (This is also a benefit of being the planner, getting to decide on the activity.)

Knowing that we would be downtown for the show, we decided to finally use the gift card to Fleming's we had sitting around. The difficulty is the gift card was for $50 and sadly that isn't even enough for one person to have a whole meal. Luckily, I found out about their happy hour specials (6 different appetizers for $6 each) and burger (around $12 each) specials at the bar. We had an appetizer, two burgers, dessert, and two drinks for right around $50. Probably going to do that for date night again soon.

Loved dinner. Loved the show. Date night #2 = a huge success :)

Lake Norman

In an attempt to get out of our regular "dinner at the same old restaurants and/or a movie" routine JJ and I are getting creative. Once a week we are going to have a fun date to look forward to and we are going to take turns planing the excursions. Although, let's be honest, I will probably end up planning most of them because I tend to like to control things. :)

Last week, we (read: I) did some research on hiking around Charlotte and discovered Lake Norman State Park just up I-77. I found a trail that went right along the lack shore, and as a bonus, it was dog friendly! We packed up the car and started out on our big adventure. Sadly, even with all the research I did, I failed to take note of exactly how far up on I-77 it was. About an hour later we finally reached the park and found the trail head.

Like I said, the trail was right along the lake shore, so we thought this would be the perfect way to reintroduce Barney to the water. He refused to swim in our pool in Phoenix and panicked every time we tried to teach him. I really thought he would do much better if he was able to walk in instead of having to be carried/figure out the pool steps. Well, that didn't work. He refused to go anywhere near the water and even managed to slip out of the leash and try to run away.

The hike was a little over an hour and Barney was exhausted so we hopped back in the car and hit up the Subway in downtown Troutman, NC for lunch. A true metropolitan area if I've ever seen one.

Baby Shower

The main reason for our trip to Green Bay was to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Baby Crosby! I really wanted to throw a baby shower for Molly and Mason and was so happy that it all worked out!

Seeing as how this was my first time to hostess a baby shower, I really wanted it to turn out well. I decided to make it a couples shower so Mason could be involved, and I thought it would make it more interesting. We had drinks and dessert and played a few games. I was really proud of the games I came up with because they seemed like fun ways to keep both men and women entertained.

For the first game, we blindfolded Mason and made him try to identify 4 different types of baby food. I tried to be nice, by picking reasonable flavors, but they were still pretty terrible tasting according to Mason. He was 3 of 4, the only one he missed was Mac and Cheese.

As a reward for playing along with the first game, the second game involved trying to drink an entire beer out of a baby bottle. Mason had to compete against his brother, Rees, and JJ. The bottle lasted about 30 seconds before the boys took the tops off and just chugged the beers. So funny to watch!

For decorations, I tried to figure out something that I could put together ahead of time that would pack easily. I came up with what is probably the most creative thing I have ever come up with. If you can't tell, I am quite proud of myself. I had some help from Carla coming up with the logistics and the execution.

I bought a bunch of onesies, bibs, socks, burp clothes, and sleepers in fun colors and then took clothes line and wooden clothes pins and hung everything up around the room. That way, the decorations doubled as part of the gift! Look how resourceful I am!!




The shower was a success if I do say so myself, and I can't wait to meet the little one soon!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

On Saturday, JJ and I celebrated 1 year of wedded bliss (Get it? I love puns.). We decided to try out our version of a stay-cation. We got a puppy sitter for Barney and went to the Ballantyne Hotel, which is about 20 minutes away from our house.

Our room was on the 4th floor, overlooking the 18th hole

It was fabulous. We slept in late, ordered room service, and spent the majority of our time sitting by the pool drinking pina coladas. It was just like our honeymoon on the beaches of Jamaica...minus the beaches. But still enjoyable :)

Perfect way to spend the day when it is 97 degrees and HUMID!

JJ also had a little surprise for me and got us tickets to the Rascal Flatts concert at Verizon Amphitheatre. It was a bit warm out, but it cooled off as the sun went down. We had great seats and had so much fun. The first (and only) concert we went to together was Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift up in Green Bay with the Crosbys and the Nelsons, so it was fun to go to another one. They are so fun in concert and it is crazy how many amazing songs they have.

Chris Young

The newly engaged Kellie Pickler

Rascal Flatts

Neither of us can believe it had been a year since our wedding. I think the thing we miss the most is having everyone we love in the same place at the same time. We are truly blessed to have so many people loving and supporting us. Now we just need to come up with an excuse to plan another party weekend that gets everyone out to visit us...maybe a two year anniversary party???

Blonde Moment

I got my hair highlighted yesterday with a new guy that I really like. He went a little bit blonder than I would have wanted, but I still like it and afterall it is summer so I think I can get away with it.

Aparently, it is too much blonde for me to handle based on what I did this morning.

Tomorrow is our one year anniversary and I was trying to do something nice for my dear husband. I wanted to make him pancakes to surprise him when he got home from his workout. So I got the pancake mix (which is in a plastic bag) out and set in on the stove top. I grabbed the tea pot and filled it with water, set it on a burner, turned it up to high, and headed upstairs to grab some laundry. When I got back downstairs I saw smoke coming from the stove top.

It seems I had turned on the wrong burner and had heated up the bag of pancake mix instead of the tea pot. So I turn off the burner and try to grab the bag of pancake mix. Too bad all of the plastic on the bottom of the bag had already melted off and I was left with a mountain of dry pancake mix on a hot burner.

Keep in mind, the entire thing is still smoking and I am just waiting for the smoke alarms to go off. I had to find some kitchen tools to scrape the burning mound off of the hot stove and into the garbage without melting the garbage bag. So I dug through all of our cabinets and drawers to find something and finally managed to scrape most of it into a glass bowl. I had to let the burner cool down completely before I began the joyous process of scraping melted plastic off.

So much for a sweet surprise. At least everything was (for the most part) back to normal by the time JJ got home so I was able to save face a little.

I swear, I am usually pretty good in the kitchen. I blame it on the highligts.

Rearranging

My husband has spoiled me. Due to his ridiculously high TV standards, I too have come to expect a certain level of technology for our viewing pleasure. So after 6-ish months of dealing with the 7+ year old itty bitty TVs for ants that came with our rental house, we have had enough. Enough of the teasing from our friends, the lack of HD, the squinting to see the screen...although, that might actually just be from my need to get glasses. Whatever. Enough is enough.

We upgraded. To a 42 inch, 1080pi, 120hz yada yada r2d2 xyz Vizio. Who Hoo. I was honestly just happy to get out of Costco without a headache from all the letter and number combinations the sales associate was throwing our way. JJ, on the other hand, was loving it. Totally in his element. He might have stayed in there for hours going back and forth on the merits of each and every TV in stock (and even those not in stock) had I not dragged him away from the little man with all the TVs.

But with this new TV comes its own set of complications. Where the heck are we going to put it??? We had, for the most part, mapped it all out before going shopping so we new how big we could go. But there was still lots of furniture to be moved. We put couches in different rooms, chairs at different angles, tables in different places and finally...success! We have achieved the perfect combination of TV viewing quality and couch sitting comfortability. (Yes that is a word now).

So if you needed any more reasons to come visit, come see JJ's new toy.

Adventures in Plumbing

Our downstairs bathroom has always been a bit temperamental. Pretty much any time you put more than 2 squares of toilet paper in, it clogs up. So we have have both had our fair share of plunging it until it starts working again. No big deal.

Well, today was different. I was standing in the bathroom getting ready to fix the problem when my loving, well-intentioned husband swoops in to "help me". Normally, I am happy to let him handle any bathroom related repairs. But since this was an easy fix, I explained that I had it under control. He wasn't having it. He insisted on jumping in to take care of it, so I took a step back and watched while he proceeded to explain how to fix it (as if I didn't know). He stuck the plunger in, flushed the toilet, and whoosh! Water overflowing everywhere.

After about 30 seconds of yelling he was finally able to turn the water off, but not before the entire floor of the bathroom (and his socks) were covered in about half an inch of water. I was safely out of harms way standing in the hallway, watching the master plumber. Lucky for him, it was "clean" toilet water.

Now, the bathroom is clean, his socks are in the washer, and all is right in the Jansen house again. But don't think for a minute that I won't use this against him, the next time he tries to teach me about household repairs.