Looking forward

I decided to make a list of eight random things I’m looking forward to. (I know, I normally stick to "high fives" but that just wasn't enough for this blog entry. Plus eight is great!)
Here’s what I came up with:

1. Getting our puppy

2. Giving soccer another go (fingers crossed that my knee agrees with this decision)

3. Trying to snowboard for the first time ever*

4. Learning a new job*

5. Becoming an experienced wine taster*

6. Driving across the country with my husband (and puppy – see number 1)*

7. Seeing Matt graduate

8. Getting a full size couch*

Notice those asterisks? There are five of them. That’s because five of the eight things I am looking forward to involve a very exciting change for Matt and I…a move to Sacramento, California! On November 25, Matt verbally accepted a professor position with California State University Sacramento (or Sacramento State if you’re hip). He has to be on campus on August 2 so we’ll move sometime before then. The moving details are very much up in the air but we are very excited for that day to come (especially for Matt because that will mean his dissertation is complete)! I’ve never been to Sacramento so feel free to tell me what you know, love and/or hate about it. For now, I’ll expand on the five things I asterisked above:

3. Trying to snowboard for the first time ever: IN TAHOE. It’s a quick drive from Sacramento. Feel free to visit us and ski/snowboard!

4. Learning a new job: I will not be bringing my current job with me to Sacramento. While a job search is daunting right now, I am still very excited to see what opportunities await! Know of any?

5. Becoming an experienced wine taster: in NAPA VALLEY! It’s just a quick drive from Sacramento too. Again, feel free to visit us!

6. Driving across the country with my husband: I’m excited for this adventure. Who knows where the drive will take us! We do plan on driving through Kansas to see Josh & Lacy, my Grandma and my aunt. We are open to suggestions on where else we should pass through.

7. Getting a full size couch: we only have a love seat as it is and it doesn’t make sense to buy furniture when a move is coming so soon. As much as we like to snuggle up on our love seat, I really look forward to having a couch that I can actually sprawl out on!

So that’s our big news. Sacramento here we come! There are so many other things we look forward to about this move, like living closer to and being in the same time zone as most of our friends and family. And we hope to get lots of visitors so feel free to start planning your trips now! I am so proud of Matt for going around the country interviewing with schools and landing a job with one of our top picks.

Honeymoon -aka- Total Relaxation (part 1)

Matt and I honeymooned, as you may already know, at an all-inclusive, adults-only, beach resort in the Mayan Riveria called the El Dorado Seaside Suites. Many people before us have said it, and we'll be telling any engaged couples we come across: "Do an all-inclusive honeymoon, it is SO worth it. You will never regret it!"

We were so exhausted after the wedding and all of the traveling -- we left Spokane at 8 am on Sunday after the wedding, arrived in Nashville at 5 pm, drove back to Knoxville and got home at 9 pm. We left the very next morning at 9 am and arrived in Cancun around 4 pm and got to our resort around 7 pm. We were SO ready to relax. And relax we did! Here are some photos to show off the wonderful, very low-key resort we stayed in.

Here's the beach:

Here's how the beach looked from my point of view at the main bar (cleary with wine on hand).

Matt's view of the beach from a lounge chair.

Matt loves me thiiiiis much:

These beds were everywhere. For several of the days there, Matt and I claimed a bed like this on the beach in the morning and pulled up two lounge chairs too, so we had our choice of sun or shade. Then we relaxed there until it was time to trade a beach bed for the bed in our room for a mid-day siesta. See? Total relaxation!

A cute well.

A little random cabana right around the corner from our room (and one of the bars as you can see from Matt's double-fisting action).

The boardwalk. Matt is pondering life...or maybe he was just impersonating the seagulls from Finding Nemo and yelling "Mine, mine, mine, mine!" at the seagulls and chasing them away...you guess which one was true.

A random statue - check how green and lush everything on the grounds looks!

Of course there were also pools, bars and restaurants around the resort. I'll be sharing more photos of the pool outside our room, the bar outside our room, the main bar and our favorite restaurants in some of my next posts. Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Matt!

Matt turned 28 on August 25th – his last birthday as a bachelor! I was really excited to surprise Matt with a new adventure. In May I saw an ad for Wahoo Zip and knew that’d be the perfect birthday activity. I kept the idea in my back pocket for 4 long months without giving any indication – I was proud of that!

The ziplines are located in the Smokies which is only 45 minute drive from Knoxville and very scenic. If you visit their site you can see how they promote it with selling points such as “over 2 miles of cable.” I was sold!

So I told Matt we were going on a surprise outing and we had to leave the house at 11:15am. He asked what to wear and I basically said anything, just not flip flops so he started thinking we were hiking or something. And then we started driving towards the mountains and he was really thinking something outdoorsy. We were driving on some random back roads and the first sign for the zipline appeared. He was definitely surprised – he didn’t even know the place existed! I was so happy to pull of a surprise because normally I am so excited about something like this that I give to many hints and can’t keep it a secret. (Don’t worry, he still doesn’t know what my wedding dress looks likes even though I did slip up and tell him the designer.)

The ziplines were awesome. I definitely recommend going sometime, somewhere. At first we thought it might be scary but it really wasn’t at all. We got to go on 6 different lines and they mixed it up for us:
*We got to hang upside down
*Ride tandem
*Race each other on side by side lines (Matt won)
*And they grabbed the line and bounced it as we were zipping
I wish I could have taken pictures of Matt while he was going, but I had no where to hold the camera and he did. You can bet he was yelling WAAHOOOO as he zipped!