PVR - Part 3

Our final day in Mexico we woke up very early (we being me, Nicholete, and Vandy..Kelli passed on our adventure). When I say early, I mean the sun wasn't even up yet and we were the first ones at breakfast. We then hopped in a cab and took a twenty minute ride down to the marina where Puerta Vallarta Adventures was located. We checked in, signed a waver saying it was okay if they killed us, and then waited for the bus. Here we are patiently waiting.

We then loaded onto a truck that was open air (we realized post adventure that this was probably a good thing). There were 13 of us total plus we picked up a few guides on the way. It took about an hour to get up into the jungle. We did have a little mishap where our truck broke down and they had to bring us a new one, but it didn't take long at all. Once we got up to the site, we promptly put on our gear. It was slightly invasive but the tour guides were very nice and very complimentary (working hard for their tips I'm sure). Here we are all decked out in our very sassy gear.

In case you haven't figured it out, we did a zip line course through the jungle. It was really fun and a lot more work than I think any of us anticipated. Needless to say, the next day we were all very sore. Definitely a good workout. You aren't allowed to take your camera up which makes sense to me because I am quite positive I would have dropped mine. They do send someone with you to take the pictures. I didn't buy any because I am cheap and I never like pictures of my self. My beautiful friend Nicholete did though, so here she is free repelling.

I know it looks like she is posing, but all of her pictures looked like that. She is just a natural =)

After that we all loaded our sweaty selves back on the open air bus (this is why it was a good idea) and headed back into town. The three of us then got a taxi back to the resort and promptly fell asleep trusting that our taxi driver would actually take us back to the resort and not kidnap us. Obviously he was deserving of our trust. The rest of the afternoon was spent napping on the beach.

Unfortunately I started running a fever and did not feel so great, so our last evening in PVR was spent with room service and a movie. Luckily, it chose that night to have a torrential down pour, so I think I picked a good night to get sick.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip and I am already looking forward to my next one!

PVR - Part 2

Friday and Saturday were spent doing a lot of this

view from the adults only pool

A little bit of this

ready for my couples facial with Vandy

Eating a lot of this

guacamole every day....yum!

Drinking a few of these

Mango margaritas at the the fiesta

And overall just relaxing and enjoying some quality time with my friends. 

Our last and final day we decided to be a little more adventurous....stay tuned to see us in our very attractive gear we wore to fly through the trees.

PVR - Part 1

Time to finally post about the birthday weekend getaway to Puerto Vallarta. Charles very sweetly drove me to the airport bright and early (it wasn't really so bright since it was 5 am) on Thursday August 5th. I headed out of OKC and landed in DFW where I met up with the girls. Vandy flew in from Orlando, Kelli flew in from New York, and Nicholete just met us there since she lives in Dallas. We boarded the plan to head to Mexico and decided to start the trip off right.

After a short flight we landed at PVR. We picked up our bags and headed straight through the airport to catch our ride. Everything you hear about the time share people in the PVR airport is true! They really want to stop you and talk to you. We made no eye contact and kept a quick pace and we got through it pretty easily. We hopped in the van and took a 20 minute ride to our resort. We stayed at the Dreams Puerto Vallarta Resort and Spa.

We were greeted with a cool towel and a glass of champagne. This was very nice, however the check in process was not. It took at least thirty minutes, maybe longer. There was only one person working the front desk at prime check in time. After this, we were starving so we headed to our rooms, changed into our swimsuits and went straight to the buffet. There was a good variety on the buffet and it was fresh. After a good lunch, we went and lounged on the beach under the thatched umbrellas. The thatched umbrellas came in really handy since it rained every day for about an hour at around 4:30. 

After a relaxing afternoon, we headed to Il Portofino, the Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. This is the only adults only restaurant at the resort. The food, service and wine were all fabulous. We had a great day and we were looking forward to our first full day on the resort.

Blah

Since I have been back from Mexico, I have not been feeling so great. Some kind of stomach bug. I think it is working its course, I just wish it would hurry the hell up. Anyway, my sweet husband has been feeling sorry for me, so he went and bought me cup cakes from a new place in Edmond. It is called Cupcakes To Go Go. All of their cupcakes have a travel themed name. He bought me Route 66 Red Velvet, Cookies and Cream Capped Mountains, and Leaning Tower of Peanut Butter. I think the cookies and cream one was my favorite, which is a bit of a surprise, since I love chocolate and peanut butter. Overall, they were good cupcakes. I thought the cake part was a little dry, but the frosting was pretty good. Presentations is definitely good. Take a look:

I love the fact that they have a drive thru, and I definitely want to try the Emerald Isle cupcake (mint chocolate), so I know we will try it again. 

Rehearsal for Rachel's Wedding

It is becoming apparent that my blog posts will not really be in the most logical order. I am back from my wonderful birthday weekend in Puerto Vallarta and will be sure to post details and pictures soon. However, I thought I would post some pictures of Rachel and Brian's rehearsal and dinner as well as a tutorial on how to make the rehearsal bridal bouquet. I had a hard time finding this so someone might actually find this part helpful.

The rehearsal took place at Heritage United Methodist Church on July 30th. This is where the ceremony and reception were both held.

Here is Rachel with her wonderful dad, David. This is the first practice run down the aisle.

These are the groomsmen and the fellow bridesmaids, minus me since I was the one taking the pictures.

Practicing with the imaginary bridesmaids bouquets =)

The bride and her maids.

L to R: Angela, Sara, Rachel, Me, Keri

Here are the bride and groom. This was after the full run through. You think they were starting to realize they were really getting married the next day?

After the rehearsal, we all headed over to The Lighthouse for dinner. The food was fabulous. I love their fried pickles. Truly the best I have ever had. The dinner options were grilled tilapia, fried shrimp, some sort of red meat, and a veggie plate for the vegetarians. Everything I had was really tasty. Unfortunately I was a bad blogger and didn't take any pictures of the food. I did take a picture of brother of the groom/best man Brent making a toast. He hates public speaking, so it was really sweet that he did this.

After dinner, some of us headed out to MoJo's, which is the new piano bar in town. It is a really nice place and the piano players were very entertaining. Rachel and and I were roommates in college with Angela, another bridesmaid, and Suzanne, who did the guest book. The four of us never seem to get a picture of just us anymore, so we were pretty excited to finally all be in the same place at the same time and to have a camera.

L to R: Rachel, Angela, Me, Suzanne

Now on to the tutorial of how to make a rehearsal bride's bouquet. I think this may be a southern thing, but believe it or not, it is a very helpful prop during the ceremony rehearsal. It gets the bride used to holding something and helps her and the MOH get the timing down of when to pass it back and forth.

Here is what you need:

Bows and ribbons from all bridal gifts (you will not use them all, but you will definitely want them all so you can have a good variety to choose from)
Paper plate
Hole punch
Hot glue gun and glue sticks for the gun

I started by weeding out all the ribbons and bows I didn't want and was left with one really big purple bow and a whole bunch of smaller white ones. I got a paper plate and cut off the rim so that the plate was completely flat. You will definitely want to use a sturdier paper plate so that there won't be any riping. I then punched holes in the paper plate. One directly in the center, then three more around the one, then five around the three. I pulled the purple bows strings through the center hole and then continued that process with all the white bows. You will now have a pretty bouquet on top, with lots of loose ribbon on the bottom. I gathered the loose ribbon together and cut to the desired length (you want to make sure it is long enough to hold). I then used some extra purple ribbon to hold all the loose ones together. You might need an extra set of hands for this part. I had my sister hold the loose ribbons tight, then I hot glued  one end of the extra purple ribbon to them and then wrapped it around the loose ribbons hot gluing at random intervals until I had covered them all. I think it turned out really cute!

Hola!

I am headed to Mexico this morning! Puerto Vallarta here I come! Can you tell I'm excited? Three of my favorite ladies will be meeting me at the DFW airport to head to Puerto Vallarta for 5 days and 4 nights of fabulous. What is the occasion you ask? My milestone birthday! Some of you might be wondering why I am jetting off to celebrate my birthday without my husband. Charles is studying to take his Internal Medicine Boards on August 16th. He is going to use the quiet weekend without me as a distraction to study study study!

Now, since these lovely ladies are taking time away from work and family and spending money to travel and be with me on my birthday, I have made them little gifts. These bags are my own version of a survival kit for an all inclusive resort (did you know you needed one of those? because you totally do).

The birthday party weekend survival kits include personlized insulated cups (to keep our fruity frozen drinks cold), sunscreen, lip balm, nail files, bug spray, band aids, alcohol wipes, advil, gossip/fashion magazines, hand sanitizer and hair bands. They are all packaged in cute little reusable bag that can double as a beach bag for the trip.

I decorated these myself. I am very proud of my zebra letters!

I am super excited and will post lots of pictures when I get back.

Rachel Getting Married

My friend Rachel got married last weekend (July 31st at 2pm to be exact). She and her new husband Brian are hopefully enjoying their honeymoon cruise of the Virgin Islands. Definitely someplace I would like to go. Anyway, Rachel's favorite color is orange. It has been her whole life, or at least since I have known here, and we met in the 6th grade. So needless to say, I have known that an orange bridesmaid dress was in my future. If you are like me, the thought of an orange bridesmaid dress is quite scary. I can gracefully admit when I am wrong....occasionally. This is one of those times. The dresses were actually really cute. See for yourself.

And the accent colors of purple and lime green for the flowers were lovely. My friend Rachel has a degree in interior design. She is quite talented and she loves to do it, she just didn't love the business side. She teaches preschool now and loves it. Here are some pictures of the centerpieces.

The little bags are the party favors. Lemonade mix...tasty.

The food was fabulous. Rachel is pretty thoughtful and made sure there were lots of options for her 3 bridesmaids that are vegetarians (me included). There was a bruschetta bar, cheese bar, watermelon salsa, and these tasty little veggie/cream cheese/croissant things. She also had bloody mary shrimp which was a hit. The caterers were Ambiance. They did my wedding, my class reunion, my sister's wedding, and both of my parent's surprise 60th birthday parties. They make fabulous food and you can't beat their prices. I wish I had pictures, but somehow I didn't manage to take any. This is shocking because we always take pictures of food.

The cakes were tasty. The bride cake was lemon with raspberry filling and the groom's cake was red velvet. They were made by sweet boutique. I learned in the last couple of years that a groom's cake is only common in the South. Leave it to us to find a way to get to eat more cake!

Yes that is an armadillo cake. He is holding a Mountain Dew can. Rachel did a great job of stabbing cutting the groom's cake.

It was a great wedding weekend. I really enjoyed getting to be her MOH (Matron of Honor) and her DOC (Day of Coordinator). I think I missed my calling as an event planner. Charles and I are in negotiations of when I can pursue this as a new/side career. I'll keep you updated.

I am going to end this post with my favorite picture and true representation of who Rachel is. This is the lovely bride with her cute apron over her dress enjoying some pre-wedding chicken nuggets with BBQ sauce from Chik-fil-A. Love it!

Hi there!

I am a newlywed (10 months and counting!) who loves her husband (Charles) and her dog (Holly). Traveling, reading, cooking, and shopping are some of my favorite activities. I have recently started running and think I might be getting addicted. People start blogs for a lot of different reasons and I have several of my own. Here they are in no particular order:

1: I feel like I don't remember things as well as I used to. Little things that aren't important or I should have let go of a long time ago (Ex: Remember my graduation honey? Oh that's right, you overslept and weren't there) are easy to remember. But I have a hard time remembering dates of trips I went on or when big events in my life happened.

2: I can't start a diary or a journal. My handwriting is so poor, I can't even read it myself sometimes.

3: I love to cook and end up tweaking recipes to fit what I like, but I am horrible at keeping up with the successful changes. If I blog about them, I will always be able to go back and find my winning recipe. 

4: We have family all over the world. I think this will be a super easy way for everyone to keep up with us without actually having to talk to us. I know this sounds bad, but everyone is so busy these days and sometimes it is nice to be able to read a quick update instead of making a phone call.

5: I hate to exercise and I love sweets and coke (the drink, not the drug). I am hoping that this blog will help me stay accountable. I started running back in February using the couch to 5k program from coolrunnings.com. Since then I have been doing it on a semi regular basis, but I would like for it to be more consistent so I can build up my endurance and work on my speed. 

So there are my 5 main reasons for starting a blog. Random and unrelated, but there you go. Enjoy my ramblings and likely not important to you activities! Comments, recommendations, advice, etc are always welcome.