checking back in

aaaannnd i'm back to blogging again.

RECAP
I finished my finals. passed my classes-with amazing grades I might add :)

Packed up my belongings into 3 suitcases, a cat carrier, and a "personal item"

just call me a magician/super packer

Flew to Houston on Christmas eve with kitty-no accidents on the plane (thank goodness!). I drugged her up before flying so she wouldn't freak out while traveling. I was nervous that the sedatives wouldn't do much because the first time I gave them to her to test them out before we flew she didn't act any different. Well let's just say they worked on the plane. She did not move or peep once the entire 7-8 hours of travel it took to get from my house in Madison to our house in Houston. She didn't sleep either. She just sat there.

 Since she hadn't gone to the bathroom since the morning we left I was really nervous she was going to make a mess at some point, but she never did! As soon as we got to our apartment we slid her into the litter box...she must have thought that was her bed or something because she hung out in there just starring out the window of the box for about an hour. Didn't pee or poop. just sat there. kitty was super stoned haha.

 We spent Christmas as our own little family. We went to a lovely Christmas movie, relaxed, unpacked, and went out for Chinese.  Extravagant Christmas dinner...very similar to the one in Christmas Story ;)
I am currently getting settled by unpacking and buying odds and ends that I have no idea how joey has survived without for 4 months...dishes, utensils, cooking equipment, ahem....
Our 4th wedding anniversary was two days after Christmas. We went out for tacos to celebrate. After tacos (which were utterly delicious) I made a fort (for our fourth anniversary...yes I know so clever.) and we watched a Woody Allen documentary. Pretty chill. 

 Here's to our new adventure sweetheart.

Here in Houston we are starting from scratch. When Joey moved he only took what he could fit in his car. I mailed a few things to him from Madison while I was still there, but we got rid of A LOT of stuff.
It was kinda crazy and maybe foolish to get rid of all our things, but we see it as a way to simplify our lives and only have what we really need.
I am currently in the job market which SUCKS. I am applying for jobs like its my job...hehe. hopefully something pops up soon.
Houston is huge...no. Houston is ginormous. Not like NYC big where it is all concentrated in one area. Houston is really spread out and just never ends. Downtown has big buildings etc, but there are like two other areas that seem just as big that are away from downtown...I still have a lot to learn of this place and I can't wait to get it all figured out. There are shops, malls, restaurants, strip malls, and franchises every two feet.  Which is cool, but I think I am going to miss the more personal/locally owned atmosphere of Madison. I will just have to look extra hard for the cute little ma and pa shops wedged in between the slew of Whataburgers and Chase Banks.

now if you excuse me I need to write another cover letter. 

lake geneva...wisconsin

after the temple my dad and i took the wrong freeway for a little while and realized that we were going to go home the really long way by driving up to milwaukee then over to madison which would have added another couple hours to our drive. boo. luckily we live in this awesome age of technology! seriously i don't know what i would do with out iphones. we remapped our route to get home. it turned out to be the best part of all of our driving that weekend. instead of the big freeway...which wasn't free we took county highways rolling along the hills and farms in the beautiful countryside. totally gorgeous. i realized that along the way we would be passing lake geneva which is one of the most touristy spots in wisconsin. we stopped there for dinner and walked around the cute sleepy town. the lake was gorgeous and the little shops around town were adorable! after dinner at a cute little nautical themed  joint we hit the road one last time. the only unfortunate part of the drive was it was dark by then so we couldn't enjoy the countryside view the rest of the way.

least to say that weekend with my dad was so wonderful. i love being with my dad and going on adventures with him. he is the best and i love him so much! so excited to be seeing him again in a couple weeks for thanksgiving!

mad dash magnolia

i love big cities. i love the architecture, people watching, shopping (duh), and amazing food EVERYWHERE. i love eating the local fare at cool trendy places and little bakeries. magnolia bakery has been a place i have wanted to go to for a long time and now there is one in chi town! my dad and i wanted to get back up to wisconsin at a decent hour so we didn't leave much time to check out magnolia.

we were on state street (the one with the famous chicago sign) which is really busy approaching magnolia bakery. of course there is no street parking on this street so my dad pulls over fumbles through his wallet, throws me a $100 bill, i jump out of the car with my camera and dash in to absorb the whole experience of this famous bakery while my dad  drives around the block...yeah it was probably a funny site to see.

while waiting in line i am wildly snapping pictures while deciding what i am getting. i picked out a few cupcakes, cookies, some bar thing, snagged a cook book and a jar their famously cute sprinkles...in my favorite color, mint :)

I paid while snapping more pictures, dashed out the door with a bag full of goodies. snapping pictures. this place was adorable all decorated for halloween and i wish i could have spent more time there. i walked outside snapped some pictures while i waited for my dad to pull around the corner, jumped in the car and we booked it out of chi town!

next stop? the lds temple!

cougar for a day

This post is much delayed. My bad. If you know me then you know I am NOT a BYU fan. I can't explain why in any sort of logical way and this post isn't for me to rant about "God's University". While in South Bend, Indiana I set my opinions aside and put on my cougar face to root for BYU at the Notre Dame game last weekend. The last time I was at a football game for the Cougars I am not sure if I was even fully potty trained...which was a really long time ago I swear.

My dad and I drove from Chi town for a couple hours to Notre Dame's INCREDIBLE campus. It took us about an hour to get off the freeway with the traffic...crazay, but once we were parked we explored the campus with what felt like the rest of the state of Utah. I wasn't expecting seeing as many Cougar fans as we did. They were everywhere! It was kinda nice actually I felt like I was back home instead of the middle of the Midwest. We saw a few people we new, and there was this amazing feeling of community as we walked around sharing smiles to those with a big Y on their hat or sweatshirt.  Also Notre Dame people/students/ fans are the NICEST people ever! They were so welcoming to the herds of BYU fans tromping around the campus. I think I was told "Welcome to Notre Dame" about 20 times.

The game was super fun...BYU lost but that didn't dampen our spirits! After the game we met a few players on the team that my dad's Hawaiian friend knew from back home and oh yeah one of those players was Manti Te'o. 

the picture I have of Manti and I isn't as good as the one my dad has on his camera. We actually are posing together in that one lol.
After that dad and I drove all the way back up to Chicago and ate amazing soul food at a New Orleans style restaurant with LOTS of hot sauce, fell into bed and slept like babies.

Costa Rica: getting there

ok I decided to recap the trip, but I won't bombard the posts with billions of photos and I will keep the posts short. I'm mostly doing this so I have this trip documented somewhere. Our journey started out with breezing through check-in and security at the Madison Regional Airport. We had a hotel in Orlando booked to spend the night for our overnight layover which wasn't ideal, but no problem....but our luck decided that we couldn't get to Costa Rica that easily.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 5:30. 5:30 passed, 6:30 passed, 7:30 passed...still in Madison. We had boarded the plane only to be kindly asked to deplane because the flight crew honestly had no idea when we would be actually leaving Madison. There was only one mechanic at our little airport and we needed him to pass off the aircraft so we could have the clear to go. APPARENTLY there was another plane that needed his assistance more...for about 4 hours. We got food vouchers ate some bar food, and kept on waiting when finaly we were called to board the plane!...again!

We made it to Orlando around 1:30am. We cancelled our hotel reservations because we didn't want to pay to stay in a hotel for 4 hours. We didn't feel like sleeping on the floor either. We ended up getting a room at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando airport. I was pretty excited we got to stay here because growing up going to Florida every summer I have been in this airport LOTS, and have always wanted to stay in this hotel!...I was a weird kid.

MURPHEY! We were so tired at this point haha.

 Joey tried to get a deal since we were only spending half a night in a room. The concierge gave us a conference room for cheap. Inside the room they opened up a Murphey bed for us. It was awesome. The conference room had everything a regular hotel room had so it worked out perfect.

We slept for 3 hours and got up around 4:30am to go through security for our flight to Miami, then finally to San Jose Costa Rica! When we got there we met up with Joey's parents and his younger sister Kimmie. From there we got our rental car, and I was desperately trying to find some wifi so I could turn in my homework. I didn't realize we still had a 2 hour drive to the town we were staying in, and I needed to get my paper in by 5:00 Madison time (stressed). Luckily there was a Denny's just up the road from the car rental place! I camped out there while submitting my Rhetoric of Religion final.

so happy to have homework while on vacation!

After what seemed like forever getting our rental car we were on our way to Manuel Antonio! If any of you have driven in Costa Rica you know what a crazy adventure that can be! Luckily we had a GPS to guide us along the way. There were crazy bends and steep hills on super narrow roads. All of a sudden we would whip around the corner to find ourselves at a one lane bridge...or be going up a road that would have been a freeway exit in the States, but here it was both an exit and a road you could drive up? It was crazy but made it really fun. Getting to Manuel Antonio was only supposed to take a couple hours, but there was construction along the way that made the drive take FOREVER!

It is winter in Costa Rica right now so we experienced a few showers. It was coming down so hard at one point I thought we were going to get washed off the highway.

When the rain stopped we saw the most beautiful sunset behind us. I was deciding at this moment that this trip is going to be amazing.

After driving through the most curvy, steep, and narrow road I have ever been on somehow we showed up at this beautiful place. Finally we could say we made it! The hotel staff scooped up our bags and gave us some delicious mango juice stuff and scented towells.

 We got a tour of the resort grounds and got to our room. There were chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us! They were delicious...until I saw that hundreds of little bugs thought they were delicious too. We got the treats out of our room ASAP. After all this traveling I was ready to crash, but I had to get some more homework turned in before the midnight deadline rolled around. I did my homework on a porch over looking the pool and ocean...not too shabby. As soon as my homework was turned in I crashed. We slept like babies.

Sorry it was still a long post. meh don't read it if you're bored lol. That was day 1!