jeno deployed to afghanistan with jon. while they were there, they talked about how fun their wife's are. upon their arrival, we all got together and had a great time. ever since then, we've been laughing at bridesmaids quotes, discussing the fact that not only is burger lounge the best burger place in the world, but how it's ruined every other burger out there, and talking about vacationing together. obviously hawaii would be ideal, but we don't really have the time for that. lynn is expecting in september (no plane rides after a certain point in the pregnancy) and i am a full time student (year around school). about a month ago, we decided that st. george needed to be our vacation destination. they've never been to utah and haven't experienced the beauty and amazing...ness of it all. it took some persuading, but they finally agreed to it. when we got to my dad's condo last night, they realized that the drive was worth it. when they saw the mountains this morning, they realized that we are right about everything and that they will never doubt us again. they also told us that we are the dominant couple and so it's officially okay to call us as a group of four the "hager-J's."
(as I'm reading this to them, jeno says "that's a bold faced lie.")
it took us nine. hours. to get here.
we had a huge breakfast including pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and then spent the day at the pool and playing tennis.
then these two came home and just passed. out.
we climbed up to the top of the mountain and took in the view. it looked so beautiful. it's fun being here with people who have never been before. it's like seeing st. george through new eyes.
for dinner, we had jeno's famous lasagna. it was excellent, as always.
tomorrow, we plan to spend the day at zion and then treat ourselves to some Texas Roadhouse! Yeahh....
remember when i told you that my WHOLE family was coming into town?? after weeks of excitement, they finally came. and it was as fun as i'd imagined.
we usually hate having a playground directly behind our house, but, for once, we loved having it there! the little ones could go out and play while we stayed inside playing cards or getting dinner ready. we just left our back door open so that we could still hear them. audrey loved the swings so much that she cried every time she got out of them. and on the last day, robbie and i took the hose out onto the playground and ran through the sprinklers, turned the slide into a water slide, and made rivers in the sand.
katie, sam, robbie and audrey got here on friday. we all went down to coronado to walk along the beach and get dinner. robbie and i decided to roll up our jeans and put our feet in the water. well....that turned into robbie going further and further out! we took his shirt off before it got wet so he wouldn't splash on it. good thing we did, because after 45 minutes or so of running from the waves, robbie fell and a wave washed over him. it was so sad, the water was freezing and he was now covered in sand. katie had him take off his jeans, put his dry shirt and jacket on and sit in the stroller with a blanket (or sweater) over his legs. it was so funny. we went to panera bread for dinner, and just pushed the stroller up to the table so he could eat from there. he didn't seem to mind!
the next day, jon joined us for some fun at sea world. we saw the shamu show, star fish, sharks, and did lots of other things. my sister was 26 weeks pregnant at the time. she looks really great and her belly is still small, so i don't think i realized just how pregnant she was until she said that walking all day was starting to get painful. she didn't complain at all though, such a good mom!
the last thing we did was go on atlantis! robbie had never been on a big roller coaster like this before, and he didn't even get nervous for it waiting in line! no one else wanted to go with us, since its a wet ride. when we got to the very top (right before the drop), i expected robbie to get scared. instead, i heard this: "awwwwww YEAHH!!!!!" with his hands up in the air! jon said that he looked a little bit alarmed when they saw us passing here after the big drop, but after the ride he said that it was awesome! he is the cutest little boy.
saturday was sam's birthday, so we got a babysitter and all went out for dinner. at this time, gary, mei, and amanda had joined us! we went to barrio star in bankers hill for some mexican food. it was such a cute restaurant and the food was delicious! we picked lizzie up from the airport late that night for a full on family reunion!
the next day, we celebrated easter (one week early) by having an egg hunt and finding baskets filled with goodies for the little ones! we had a ham and potato easter lunch and then ate cake and ice cream for robbie's birthday (and sam's birthday the day before). he got lots of legos! that night, they left for orange county for the week. they spent three days at disneyland and one day with amanda in huntington beach!
katie, sam, robbie, audrey, lizzie and amanda came back to our house late thursday night. on friday we just hung out at home. there are some huge airplanes on base that you can walk under and look at, so we all went on a walk over there. i think robbie thought they were pretty cool, and both robbie and audrey especially loved throwing rocks around. (hmm)
we had fajitas for dinner and then went to the bigger playground by our house to play tag and other run around games. it was such a work out! those kids can run forever without getting tired. except audrey kept imitating us saying "i'm so sick!" and "i'm so tired!" because we were all STUFFED from dinner, and then ran around on full bellies and kept saying we felt sick.
when the sun went down, we watched robbie and jon give us a cool show with the light up light sabers robbie got from disneyland. after that, we played nighttime tag on the playground. it was so dangerous, i don't know how many times robbie hit his head on bars he couldn't see, and how many times each of us almost got clothes lined on a low hanging bar.
robbie paid amanda and i the biggest compliment when he told us that he thought we were the same age. he thinks we are twins!
the rest of the night was spent watching anastasia and playing cards. they left the next day at about noon. i was so sad to see them go, and our house felt so small for just jon and i. i wish they could have stayed forever!!!
when jon got home from deployment last year, we went on a staycation. we stayed at the nicest hotel we could find and went out for fondue at the melting pot. ever since, i've been getting emails from them. luckily for us, i got one last week about a free cheese fondue! i don't have a problem with 'free', so i made reservations for us on thursday night.
we ate dinner before we went (....yep.) then got spinach artichoke cheese fondue and "cookie's and cream marshmallow dream" for dessert.
our waiter (who was pretty cool, i guess) lit Bacardi 151 on fire and poured it into the chocolate.....it made for a really cool show, and he didn't ask us if it was okay, so that must mean that the alcohol burns off...it does...right?
this makes me want to go back right this second. doesn't that look amazing??
afterwards, we went shopping and almost bought ourselves some new backpacks for school. doesn't jon look sooo cutee in his plaid shirt and backpack? i think we each need one...
saturday. the day before i'd be reuniting with my spouse after a long/short 7 months.
it seems like so long ago...i've already forgotten some of the funny stuff that happened while being filmed. good thing i wrote about it here. ah, the joys of blogging.
i could write more about what happened in the days leading up to his arrival with the show, school, and the actual day that i picked him up, but reading through this blog again helps me realize that there isn't any more that needs to be said. i was, and still am, so relieved to have him home. and reading through it again reminds me of how nervous i was to see him again. so much has changed since he's been back. we have officially been together for our first uninterrupted year. that's crazy. we seemed like such babies when we got married, and when we were reunited again. i'm sure i'll look back at this post next year and think that we were babies at this time, as well.
(who am i kidding? we constantly feel like tiny toddlers given money and a house to live in. who trusted us to live out here alone??)
we've had our ups and downs, but i couldn't be happier about my life and our life together.
(though a little more money would be nice. ;) )
we have this picture framed in our bedroom. jon loves it because you can read the time and date on his watch. It blows his mind that it was exactly 17:19 and zero seconds.
i love it because you can see the metal bracelet that i wore from the day he left to the day he returned with his name and branch. towards the end, it started to feel like a handcuff. i hated wearing that bracelet, though i didn't know it at the time.
i don't know about you, but i have so many pictures lying around the house just waiting to be framed. unfortunately, matting is so. freaking. expensive. so i came up with this clever idea of making your own matting, very inexpensively!
i bought jon a couple andy warhol's from a street vender (they're so obviously original.. ;) ) and wasn't sure what to do with them. we bought this huge frame from ikea for the print i bought before we got married and hung it above our bed. i hated the way i looked, so we took it down and it was just sitting in our laundry room. i thought i could hang both prints in the huge frame for jon's downstairs bathroom.
i went to blick and bought a nice sheet of 20x30 poster board. they had different colors, but jon requested black.
the first thing i did was cut it down to fit in the frame.
here i am, modeling how it fit the frame just marvelously.
then i measured where both of the prints would go. i drew a line halfway down the poster board, and halfway down both pictures. then i just decided where i wanted the bottom picture to go. when matting stuff like this, you should have more space between the bottom of the picture and bottom of the frame than the top of the top picture and top of the frame. that made it easy because i didn't need to have the exact same measurements above and below the pictures. i figured out exactly where the pictures would be, and i started to cut!
i had to cut each line a few times to make sure it went all the way through the board, and was very careful with the corners so i wouldn't cut too far and have an exposed rip.
here it is! so it turned out to just be a frame for both pictures to sit behind.
unfortunately, one of the pictures was smaller than the other. i thought i accounted for that, but not enough. you can barely see the white edge though, so it's alright.
i taped the pictures to the back of the poster board on all four sides, to ensure that they won't slip.
while i was putting the frame together-THE GLASS BROKE!!!! i was so furious. all that work, and in one of the last steps, the glass breaks.
i hung it up anyway, and you can't even see the break in the glass! it's like an optical illusion. the frame looks really big in the bathroom, but i think the size is pretty cool. i've second guessed it, but for now it's nice. i hate everything else about the bathroom. the towel racks. why? why are there towel racks in a half bath? just put a small one near the sink, that's all you need. also, the fact that the toilet is hugging the vanity instead of being centered on that wall. the metal toothbrush and cup holder. i could go on and on.
but, this is an improvement since we've been here for almost two years and i've just done nothing with this bathroom. now i want to find an interesting boy rug to put in here that isn't plain black and boring. i'm glad that i now know how easy it is to put matting around things you want to frame for cheap!
guess what?? my sister, her husband, and her two little ones (three if you count the one swimming around in her belly!) are coming to visit me in a couple weeks! a girl in one of my classes was telling me that she has a chalkboard wall in her house, and she said that when she babysits, the kids love it! so, when the dates of my family's visit became official back in february, i knew just what to do. i want my niece and nephew to have fun here. i decided to make a chalkboard wall for the renter! we can paint our walls as long as we paint them back white when we move out, but our walls are textured, so i took the easier route.
jon and i measured the wall that we wanted the chalkboard on and decided on a size for the board itself. we wanted it to take up most of the wall, and still look okay and somewhat centered even though there is a weird light switch in the way. then we went to home depot and bought a $9 sheet of plywood and a $15 bucket of black chalkboard paint. the worker cut the plywood down to the size we wanted and we brought it home.
it was so easy to paint. i just propped it up on a bucket, opened the garage and painted a coat every time i had a spare 10 minutes. i think i did about 5 coats. i wanted it to be thick because, as you can see, the plywood is very textured. it felt smooth enough at the store, but when i brought it home, i realized that it would be weird to write with chalk on it. i would recommend getting a nicer, smoother piece of wood instead of plywood. we got that because it was the cheapest!
a few coats later, i put a piece of chalk sideways and colored the entire board, then erased it. it worked! here is my cute guy hanging it up. you can see that it isn't centered on the wall, but it still looks good.
i was going to frame it with molding, but i like how it looks with no border. I'm glad that i painted the edges even though i wasn't planning on having them exposed. it brings interest into our front room and gives guests a little area to doodle on. it has been fun! surprisingly enough, the grooves and imperfections in the plywood haven't proved to be a problem! it's not as smooth as a school chalkboard, but it's easy to write and draw on it.
can't wait for my favorite little kidlets to come and try it out for themselves!
remember when i said i started working out for my new years resolution? well, 2.5 months in, it's in full swing. it was a rough start, but thats alright.
jon has started working out with me. for the past month we've been consistently going 3-4 nights a week to the gym right behind our house. (literally. it's >100 yards away from our back door.)
it's going well. i honestly wish that my body would reflect all the hard work that i've put in, but i have to keep reminding myself of this:
i do notice differences and feel SO much better than i did at the beginning of the year. i constantly felt like i was trying to fit into my little sisters clothes. lizzie and i are training for a 5k using this schedule. we are on week three. it's been so good for us to be doing this together, it is such a good encouragement and gives us another reason to talk to each other besides about the bachelor! ha ha.
look what jon got me! i have been wearing the worst looking running shoes for over a year, so he helped me pick out these cuties and got me nike plus! i've only used it for a few days, but i love it! technology is something else, isn't it?
hopefully putting this all out there will help me stay on top of my workout resolution. we are training for a 5k, but don't have a 5k in sight...it is mostly just a way of getting in shape. jon and i DO have tentative plans for running a half marathon in august........wish us luck!
