Thanksgiving

El had to work this year on Thanksgiving, so I drove home Thanksgiving day and went to my Aunt's house. We took our annual "cousins" photo which included Addie this year. It was Addie's first Thanksgiving so we of course had to get her in her cute bib that says "1st Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving evening, my mom, sister and I drove back to Columbus and started shopping at 10:00 p.m. at Toys R Us. The line was wrapped around the building so we decided to head to Wal-Mart for some pre-Black Friday shopping. We ended up shopping from 10:00 p.m. until about noon the next day. We were really tired after staying up all night but it was def a good time.

Catch up

I'm trying to catch up since I haven't posted since June. In addition to our trip to Jamaica we've been busy doing alot of other things including visiting family, and friends and getting away here and there.

Let's see, in July we went to Yougstown/Poland area for Monica and Joe's wedding. We went on Friday to stay with Danielle and Kevin and Campo and Nick met us at a baseball game. We had a great time catching up with everyone. Then, on Saturday we went to the church to see Monica walk down the aisle, she was stunning. The reception was alot of fun. We've never been to such a big wedding before.

We also went camping with friends, participate in the Crawl for Cancer, tailgated for an OSU game and hosted our first boche ball tournament.

We went to Nashville to visit Matt, Anne, Jaden and Jillian. We had a great time. The kids are getting soo big. It was great catching up with them and seeing downtown Nashville. We def want to go back soon.

We also went to Put-N-Bay for a little getaway, we had a great time. We went to the winery and tried some new wine. We recently (this summer) discovered that we both like wine. We went to Camelot Cellars, thanks to my coworker Sarah and did a wine tasting. It was great because we never liked wine before, however, after the tasting we found several wines that we loved. Since then we've been back several times and usually purchase our favorite bottle. We've also talked about making our own wine at Camelot.

We went to Bryan's Halloween party where we dressed up as Snookie and Pauly-D from the MTV show, Jersey Shore. We had a great time with all our friends. Kristen Clark and Misty and Ricky brought over the girls so I could see their outfits, Addie and Ella looked adorable.

Last weekend we went to Toledo to visit Shayna, Randy, Tori and Tripp. Tripp was just one week and one day old. He was adorable as was Tori. We had a great time catching up with them and are already scheduling for them to visit Columbus.

We've also spent alot of time with our niece who will turn one in acouple weeks. She is just soo adorable. I feel like every time I see her (at least once a week) her hair is longer, she has another tooth, she's taller and is saying another word. Some of the words she can say include: "Hi Mom," "Hi Dad," "momma," "Nanna" (which my mom thinks is Nana), and most recently (today) "helloooo" while she's holding a phone. She's soo fun to be around. I posted acouple pictures. I've been working alot on her scrapbook which includes her first year of life including her first Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patty's Day, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and different life events including the first time she ate carrots, getting her ears pierced, swim lessons etc. It's been alot of fun scrapbooking. I made so many page (45) that I have to get some new screws for it so it'll hold them all. :)

2nd post

Soo alot has happened since my last blog in June. First, Elliott and I went to Jamaica. We had a great time. The resort, Grand Palladium was amazing. It had ten different restaurants including Poseidon's Sunset Cove (American), Jerk Hut, Xaymacia (Creole), Lotus House (Asian), Bhogali (Indian), El Mariachi (Mexican), Bubba's (Steakhouse), Pastafarian (Italian), The Blue Lagoon (Buffet) and Negril (Buffet). We really liked El Mariachi, Bubba's and the Italian. The restaurants were great, however, the swim up bar and infinity pool was amazing. This was the first resort we've visited with an infinity pool. We also liked all the beaches including Coral Beach and Sunset Cove as they were away from everything, however, still had their own bars.

We met a couple from Texas, Sarah and Justin who we shared most of our week with. They were great and alot of fun. We didn't go off the resort, which we normally do only because we weren't there for a full week. Instead we spent our days by the beach or in the pool. The weather was great, it only rained one day so it was nice to be out of the sun for a little bit. In addition to the beach bars the resort also had a sports bar with ping pong, and other various games. We spent acouple evenings battling in ping pong, El of course won. It also had a casino so we tried our luck acouple times but never won.

The vacation was great....until the last day. We woke up, went to the breakfast buffet, El had a huge plate of bacon which wasn't out of the ordinary. Then, we went straight to the beach. I pulled my chair into the ocean and El chose to rest under a shaded tree. I went to check on him about 30 mins later and he said he was super hot. I didn't understand why he was so hot because he was in the shade. Our Texas friends met us acouple mins later, we chatted, then El said he was going back to the room because he didn't feel well. I had a drink or two with our new friends, then went back to our room and El looked terrible. At this point it was lunch time and I was starving. He said he couldn't go to lunch so for the first time ever, I went to the buffet and ate alone...it sucked. I then went back to the room and hung out with El. We took a nap thinking it would make him feel better but he couldn't stay out of the bathroom. Our Texas friends called acouple hours later to see what our plans were for dinner. El said he couldn't go but told me to go instead so I wouldn't have to eat alone. Before I went to dinner I called the front desk to see if the nurse was in, once I found out she was, I walked acrossed the resort (which was huge) only to find that the nurse left 30 mins ago. So I went back to our room, got El some Sprite and called the front desk and explained El's situation. They said they could call the doctor but it would cost us acouple hundred dollars. El said forget it. I met our friends at the Indian restaurant which was my first time ever eating Indian and I of course hated it. Before leaving I asked for some bread for El. Then on our way back to our room Justin wanted to get El some soup, so he got him some soup and we went to our room so they could tell him goodbye. I told them to wait in the hall so I could make sure he was decent, I walked in and the room smelled from El getting sick. They still wanted to go in and say bye. After they left El got sick again because we all smelled like curry. He was sick the rest of the night. The next morning we woke up and had to leave for the airport, luckily El didn't get sick on the plane, however, he was sick for an entire week later. He thinks it was something he ate for breakfast or maybe something on the bacon.

Even though El was sick we still had a great time and were very thankful that he didn't get sick until the last day. If you're looking to go to Jamaica definitely check out Grand Palladium, its reasonable and a nice big resort.

First post

So, this is our first post and first blog for that matter. We (I mean I) wanted to create a blog to keep our friends and family updated about our life. Not sure how this will go but hey, I thought I'd give it a try.

First, I'd like to thank Aly Strapulous for coming up with our blog name. :) I personally think it's super cute.

Ok, now where do I begin and end? I guess I'll start with what we're looking forward to. Our trip to Jamaica!! We are getting excited to leave for vacation next week. We've always wanted to visit Jamaica and are finally getting the opportunity to go. The picture posted is of our resort, the infinity pool to be exact. We'll be gone for 6 days which never seems to be enough time. We're really looking forward to relaxing on the beach with a nice drink in hand. Hopefully we'll come back with great pictures and of course great tans. For those of you who know me, I already have us both packed and ready to go, now if only Thursday of next week would get here! :) We're calling this vacation our babymoon, yes, instead of a honeymoon since we've already taken one we're going on a babymoon which means our last "big" vacation before we start a family.

That's all I have for now.

Ashley