Tough Love

I feel like such an evil pet owner.

I mean, yes I love my puppy - sooo much.

But I keep reminding myself - this is so I can love her forever and not worry about her & a car meeting.

See, for the most part - she's pretty good.

But when she gets outside -

And she sees the little Pug playing in his yard across the street -

Or sees the neighbor kids riding their bikes up and down the sidewalks -

Caution and obedience are thrown to the wind -

And next thing we know, she's trotting out of the yard to pay visits.

We can't have that.

So, after work today, I stopped at the store and picked up one of these.

I feel so awful.

Youth Group Pizza Night

"There's no such thing as luck."

"But there is such thing as lucky charms!"

-youth kids' random quote of the day

Last Friday night, we had a pizza party for the youth group at our house.

And not just for the whole youth group - only for a select group.

See, we challenged the kids to read the book of John within a certain period of time.

And the kids who finished got to come to our house for a pizza party.

WOOT :)

And, all of our "regular" kids accomplished the goal!

So, we had them all over and we ate pizza and played games, laughed and had a fabulous time.

Here's a whole bunch of photos I took :)

Anniversary Holiday

Last weekend, after Easter dinner with D's folks, we headed out to Watkins Glen, NY for a little getaway time in celebration of our one-year anniversary.

We had never been there before, but heard lots of great things. So, we booked a fancy hotel room - 

[Mom: notice the floor - hard wood! no worrying about nasty carpets! haha]

[also notice the two beds, that's because we've adopted the Lucy & Ricky way of sleeping]

Just kidding :) But, for some strange reason, the only rooms that came with a jacuzzi tub had two beds.

So, we weren't going to rent the room with the jacuzzi tub.

Until D's parents upgraded our room for us and thus we got the jacuzzi tub!

[and two beds :)]

Being Easter, most everything in town was closed down.

Including the fancy restaurant inside the hotel.

So, we had a romantic dinner in our room - courtesy of the bar downstairs :P

I think we spent about 4 hours in the pool & hot tub in the hotel that afternoon.

And then spent another 2 hours in the jacuzzi tub that evening.

It was sooo relaxing.

After weeks and weeks of going and going nonstop, it was so wonderful to simply . do . nothing.

Monday morning we woke up [rather late - oops] and even though the weather was quite dreary, we were bound & determined to do a little hiking & sightseeing.

So of course, the main place to see at Watkins Glen, is, Watkins Glen :)

So, we got there. And realized the bottom entrance was closed due to some construction they were doing.
No problem. There's an upper entrance.
So, we drove up there.
Parked. Got out. Started hiking down the trail.
Got to the point of looking over the fence down into the gorge.
And it's really pretty.
And then we realize - see in the above picture where it looks like a waking path along the water?
Yeahhh - that's where we really wanted to go.
Unfortunately - it was also really closed.
Boo.

But there were several of "upper" trails to walk on, so we decided not to write it off as a complete failure yet.

From what we could see - this place is amazing.
And super gorgeous.
We just couldn't go too far without running into a dead end - with a fenced off area of the trail marked "due to hazardous winter conditions, this portion of the trail is closed".
Ugh.

We hiked everywhere we could, but honestly probably didn't even cover half of the trails through this park. It's huge. And, unfortunately, we were probably just a week or two ahead of opening season.
Oh well.
That just means a return trip sometime this summer is in order! :D

Oh, and definitely a highlight of the day - was getting close to this little guy who was singing his little heart out. Seriously. I could have sat & listening to him all day long.

One of the unique thing about the Watkins Glen area too are the waterfalls.
And not just any waterfalls.

I don't know about you, but most of the waterfalls I've ever seen, you have to hike a bit to get to them. They're buried in a park somewhere, right?

Not in Watkins Glen.
These things are literally, right on the road.

We were driving into the area and just kind of taking in the scenery, and next thing we know we're beside this huge waterfall - WOAH DERRICK! Did you just see THAT?! haha

It's incredible - right beside the road.
Beautiful.

And this one is just a little bit off the road - notice the small patch of green grass in front of it.

What was so relaxing about out trip though was that we had no agenda.
We didn't really have a timeline or a list of things to do.
So, we just roamed around the area and looked for cool things [with a little bit of help from our handy dandy tourist map of course!]

And one of the things I wanted to see while we were up there was the Belhurst Castle.
Which, when we got there, Derrick complained that he's seen houses bigger than this "castle".
I still thought it was pretty cool.
And, apparently it's pretty amazing on the inside, but we didn't venture in - maybe next time.

Did I mention it was super dreary?
Because it was super dreary.

Anndd I'll end with one of my favorite photos of the day - this tree.
Seriously, you can't tell me this tree is amazing!!

And, the moral of this tale is - we're going back to Watkins Glen.

Sometime when it's warmer, and sunnier, and more open :)

I Heart Faces - Soft & Sweet

This week's challenge on I{heart}Faces is "soft & sweet".

And the first thing that came to mind was my new twin cousins :)

They're both soft & especially sweet.

And I love this photo of my baby sister holding one of my baby cousins :)

Be sure to check out I{heart}Faces for more soft & sweet photos!

Ghetto Fabulous :)

D&I have invited people over to our house on numerous occasions - and when inviting people over it's traditional to give folks who have never been to your house directions.

And so, I have described my house in many ways.

"We're like the 5th or 6th house on the right."

"Big yellow forthysia bush in the front yard."

"We're the house that looks haunted."

"It looks really scary on the outside, but I promise its fabulous on the inside"

"Two-story, blue house with all the paint peeling off the cedar shingles."

But when giving directions this past week for a Mary-Kay party I had here, I came up with the best indicator of our house yet.

"We have a super ghetto mailbox - think: dirty mailbox, on a pole, in an orange bucket of cement, leaning against our house."

BINGO.

She found our house super easy :)