Over Memorial Day weekend we took a road trip down to Arizona to spend some time with Jared's family and to enjoy the heat! This was the first road trip Jared and I have taken together! We were able to take Shy and Chan with us which was a nice change. Both dogs did extremely well in the car, no car sickness, just lots and lots of sleeping.
We rented a house with Jamie, Chelsey and Carter. It was so nice to have a place of our own and not have to stay in a hotel the entire time. We had our own private pool which was used every single day!
Jared was our dedicated pool boy during our stay. I must say he did a mighty fine job of keeping the pool bug free!
Chelsey and I did find some time to have some retail therapy! There's something about being on vacation that causes you to think you need to buy "vacation" stuff.
By mistake we happened upon an outdoor shopping mall that had great shops and wonderful restaurants. We enjoyed dining outside whenever we could.
As always our visit was too short, but it was nice to be away from every day life even for a couple of days.
Both Jared and I have been working a lot! Jared has been busy in HR rolling out a new system to our field countries. It amazes me how technical his mind is. I've been busy in marketing gearing up for our festival season and helping my team with anything they need.We just celebrated Jared's 29th birthday. We had a joint birthday party for Jared and his brother Jordan. We hosted a BBQ at our house and it was nice to spend time with the Leffler's. We were able to snag our nephew Jake so he could spend the night and play with Carter at the party. Those boys sure know how to have some fun!
The next night we hosted another BBQ for Jared's birthday with my family. We had a lot of fun just talking and laughing. You can't go wrong with good food, good dessert, good weather, and great family. I did bake 3 different desserts over the course of those two BBQ's and they all turned out wonderfully. What's not to like about chocolate, chocolate cake, strawberry and pineapple delight, and an apple crisp. YUM!
Jared and I have brought my mom into the 21st century with convincing her she needed to buy a laptop. I never thought I'd see the day that Jared, my mom, and myself would be sitting in our living room, each with our own laptop, surfing the web and emailing each other funny videos we found on YouTube!
I do have a confession to make. It's been haunting me since it's happened. I was unable to keep my new year's resolution of no Starbucks for a year! I did cave and have a Starbucks the day we left for Arizona. Something about road trip equaled the need for a coffee. Then once we got to Arizona and were enjoying the great weather, we all needed a cold frap to cool us down. I'm still struggling with the fact that I caved not once, but twice! I'm hoping I can get back on the path and refrain from any more Starbucks, but it is summer time and those skinny iced vanilla lattes are screaming drink me on those early Monday mornings.
-AKL
