California...once again!

Yes! Yes! and YES! Okay, okay so I am excited, but bummed at the same time.  Why bummed you ask? Well, because me coming to California again so soon only means one thing...D is off to boarding officer school for 5 weeks.  Which yes, you are calculating right, means he will be there through Thanksgiving.  We were pretty sure that since the government had shut down, his chances of going in November were pretty much slim to none.  But, I guess now that things are back, the schools are back open and they couldn't wait to slap him with orders.  It's bittersweet...it's something he has been putting off for years and hasn't really needed to do but because it's such a small station, they need him to go.  It's a great school, actually one of the best in the CG, and helps him for future career routes but it's just kind of yucky timing.

However, while he is gone, means I get to spend about 1.5 - 2 months in California.  My mom will be coming out and we will be driving back mid-November! :) This also means I'll be making it out for one more visit with some friends before they move.

Happy road tripping! :)

Our busy days

Life has been so amazingly busy lately that blogging has been one of the last things on my mind. Even now trying to do this I have found myself getting up multiple times and distracted by other things after writing just the first sentence...ay yi yi! Anyway, lately we have been up to a lot!

Life in general:

At the end of last month...our friends Jess and Josh finally arrived from Texas. I really can't believe how fast 3 years flew by for them but I am so excited to have them back here with us! They live across the complex from us but it's perfect regardless.

For the fourth of July we hosted a bbq here and invited our friends over and of course, Jess and Josh. :) Kayla and Jerome came with Jake and we hung out by the pool all day long. It was a perfect day.

Work has been going well for me and I love my job just as much as when I started. I have recently sent one of my little ones on her way to the older Toddler room and acquired myself an adorable new little boy. He is just perfect! Also, our head teacher is moving to another room, which I am totally bummed about, but that gives me the opportunity to step up and plan the classroom with another one of the girls in the room. We are so excited to have this chance and I can't wait to get started. This all starts next month. I also finally have one early day (that is NOT 5pm "early") to get off. My new schedule will be till 5 mon-thurs and till 3 on Fridays! yippeee! :) Having that early day is going to make things so much easier when it comes to making appointments and getting stuff done.

We spent last weekend at Kayla's parents' cabin in Arnold, Ca. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing. They live in the forrest where their nearest neighbor is not RIGHT next door and it was so fun to watch the deer and animals come so close to the house to feed.  We hung out for the weekend and BBQ'd and went to two different lakes both days. It was an amazingly relaxing weekend which is exactly what we needed.

Danny has also gotten a bug up his butt and is looking into buying me a new car...YIKES! I'm not sure where this came from but apparently he's done a ton of research and thinks that since I'm getting so high up in milege that we should consider trading my car in before things start going out (something that never crossed my mind and now I'm worried that he has jinxed me!). I can't say I neccessarily agree that this is the best time to do this since we are still planning a wedding...I'd like to wait until after the wedding but now I'm worried things will start going wrong. I hate that he said that.

This weekend we are heading down to Southern California for his brother's wedding! It's going to be lovely!

Now on to the fun stuff....

Wedding updates:

Ladies and gentlemen...we have a color! LOL it was the color I started out with a year ago...Navy Blue. I have decided on navy blue dresses for the girls and it worked out that my mom bought her dress a few weeks ago and it happened to be navy as well before I even made my final decision. Kayla found her dress yesterday at Nordstrom and Becca put one on hold. Missy knows what style she wants so it's just a matter of her finding it and Jess and Meghan still need to find dresses. I am very happy that this is getting accomplished. I also found a flower girl dress I loved for the girls! I need to take Rylee to try it on.

As for flowers, the girls will probably have bouquets of ivory flowers (maybe with some color, that is undetermined right now) and I will have a different one that I found a while ago that I loved...actually, a year ago! haha! Go with your gut about things you like. Navy and ivory...classy!

Changing back to navy also means I must switch the color of the overlays I am renting which was an easy decision...ivory! or champagne...I need to go look at the colors before deciding. My mom is in the process of gathering up all the lace she has so we can play around with them and see where we can use them at the lodge.

We are pretty sure the guys will be in a darker gray suit. Danny is throwing around just purchasing one rather than renting because in the end, the price ends up being pretty close and dark gray is a good color and a nice suit for everyone to own.

I already sent out our save the dates and I love how they turned out...I was very happy with them. Last night I happened to log on to the website where I bought the save the dates and found that all invites were 60% off!!! I have already ordered samples and they haven't arrived yet but since I ordered a sample a while ago and just messed up on the paper type, I know I like the invite, and as long as the paper is right I will like them completely. We added our own special unique touches to the invites and I really am happy with the design. It's a great website because you can really personalize the invites they just give you a base to go off of.  I am still in need of RSVP cards, rehearsal inserts, and a couple other inserts that my amazing and talented friend Becca is working on. She wanted to make my invites but I figured it's easier just to buy them for how good of a price I got...if I don't end up loving them they do money back guarantee and she will continue to make them for me.

I met with the lady doing our flowers and I was so happy to find out just how affordable she is making this for me because she is good friends with my godmother. I am so happy!

My bridal shower is a little over a month away...I can't wait! I can't believe it's almost here. It's all coming so fast. Kayla, Becca and my mom are planning it and I have no doubts that it will be nothing short of amazing and perfect.

Now that we are about 3 1/2 months away from our wedding I'm feeling confident in the decisions and things that are happening. Everything will be perfect. It has been easier to make decisions because I know I'm getting down to the wire. I am having an easier time envisioning things that I want and am going to make another trip up to the lodge hopefully next month so I can make a final long detailed list of things I need to do and bring up the lace to see where I am able to use it. I need to order my veil and go in for my alterations here soon which I am hoping won't be too costly...I'm excited for this day to be here...I'm excited for the stress of all the decisions to be done with...I'm excited to live a normal life after all the wedding planning that I've been doing for the past year...I can't wait for November 4th!

Hiking in Napa

This past weekend we decided to take full advantage of the lovely weather and head to Napa for a hike! Sunday morning we were sitting at home thinking hmmmmm what shall we do today? How about a hike...it was Earth day afterall. It was gorgeous! It was a 7 mile trail through the woods. We had to cross a creek a few times on rocks and saw a small but pretty waterfall! It was a lot of fun and it was much prettier than our previous hike at Berryessa. The weather was perfect and it wasn't too hot because the trail was mostly shaded with trees. There are so many awesome places around here to go hiking...many of which we will check out very soon. It seems as if we have a lot of nice weather coming our way so we will have plenty of weekends to see new places. This one was at Rothe-Napa State Park in Calistoga so there is also the option of camping there and I have heard nothing but good things about camping so we will more than likely be going back to camp as well.  We thought maybe we could go wine tasting and camp. It would be perfect.  Napa/St. Helena/Calistoga are all beautiful! I can't wait to go back. I think this year for our birthdays we have decided to do the wine train again and this time during the day. Should be fun.

I was a bit hesitant when we first got there and saw signs for ticks found in the area and poison oak! Needless to say I was VERY careful about what I touched! The director at our school went hiking a few weekends ago up in that area and went off to pee and apparently squatted near an unbloomed poison oak plant and ended up with it all over her lower half YIKES! Hard lesson learned!

this was a fallen tree...I was so gung ho on going out on it for a photo...I got this far and chickened out LOL.

Cold Canyon Trails

For a while now we have been talking about going hiking.  There are so many places around here to go, from Yosemite to SF to Tahoe and all in between there is just so many opportunity for outdoor adventures! I have been mentioning Lake Berryessa a lot lately because of how close it is to us and how I figured it would be a great place to start.  Last weekend we had a cocktail party at the Forest House Lodge.  We had mentioned how hiking on Sunday after the party would have been a perfect idea, but Sunday morning we just wanted to come home and relax! So we agreed that "next weekend" (this weekend) we would go and I was in charge of looking up where we would go and planning it.  I had already been researching places around here for a while so I knew of the hiking trails up and around Berryessa.  I went back and found a 4 mile loop which actually is 5 miles after all the zigzagging and backtracking. It said it was a "strenuous" trail but I figured..."how strenuous could it be?" HA! lol it was strenuous climbing up the mountain! There were two options to start the loop...one to the East and one to the West...the most common starting point was to the East but you were able to start to the West they just said it was harder because it was a steeper uphill climb...we thought we had chosen the right direction until we started getting higher and it was literally straight up...we began to wonder if we made the wrong decision but by then, it was way too late to turn around...so we just kept climbing.

Once we made it to the top, the view was gorgeous! It was of lake Berryessa and a resort just off the lake.

We found some rocks to climb out on and we stopped there for our snack break...ok well Danny did...and he went first to check it out because I was scared. haha

Our view for lunch



After our break we continued up a little farther

Then down, down, down we went! The trail got a bit rough as we got closer to the top...

On our way down we looked up and realized we had just come from way up there! It was a nice feeling to be heading down...FINALLY. At this point we were about halfway down...we still had some way to go but we were definitely on our way down...

It was a really fun day and I'm so happy we decided to go...we are planning (weather permitting) to go venture up to Foresthill next weekend to hike around there so we can actually put stuff on our wedding site that we know is doable for our guests.  Like I said, this hiking trail said "strenuous" but I took that a little too lightly I think...haha. It was a tough one but we made it in one piece! We ventured off the trail a few times to get better views and have a little extra fun. It was a blast! And surprisingly, as much as I thought I was going to be dying and sore today, I'm not! But I'm not going to lie, climbing up wasn't easy by any means!