ten years

Back in May, Michael and I celebrated our ten year anniversary. It's crazy to think that we've been married that long. We've done a lot together.

Marriage
A house
Vacations
Two babies
Laughs
Giggles
Cries
Good times
Hard times
Lots of memories

To celebrate,we did this...

Yep. I squeezed back into my wedding dress (Well, not really. I couldn't zip the back up all the way.) and we trashed the dress. I love our cheesy cruise wedding pictures, but I really wanted something a little more professional to mark this moment and hang on the wall. So we took a few pictures pre-paint.

Then I let the kids have at it.

  

Then Taryn, our fantabulous photographer, captured these of me and the girls.

Everything about this session turned out exactly how I imagined it. Paint, glitter, laughs, and a whole lot of love.

To my hubby. You're my partner in crime and my biggest supporter. You make me smile big and my heart happy. I couldn't imagine spending my life with anyone else.

Happy 10th Anniversary. I love you more today than yesterday and even more tomorrow. Thank you for loving me.



Hair and makeup by Danelle Wood from The Key to Glam
Pictures by Taryn Lewis from Sugartree Studios

merry christmas

From our house to yours...

Merry Christmas!

out on the town

One night we conned the underage kids into watching our little ones and headed down to Key West for a night out on the town. I love hanging out with my peeps.

 There was a little drinking, some dancing, and a few other shenanigans.

Oh, and then there was this.

It's so fun to be an adult and act like a kid sometimes.

fl keys vacay, continued

We woke up the second day ready for fun. See...

The girls spent all day on shore with friends. They took them snorkeling, swimming and even fed them lunch. Morgan was so excited to show me her prized treasure she found while snorkeling. That would be a full bottle of Corona. I was told that she even went back looking for more.

Michael and I spent the day diving. Our first ocean dive. The reason we took scuba lessons in the first place. Sadly, I do not have any pictures, but the memories will stay with me forever. There was the moment we came out of the channel and started the 5 mile trek out to sea. That's when I realized I might get seasick. I tried to talk myself out of it, but it wasn't helping. Once we got to American Shoal Lighthouse and anchored I was in a little bit of trouble. Getting your scuba gear on is a process and not a short one. I couldn't get out of those waves soon enough. Once we were underwater I was fine, but then it all started again when we got back in the boat. I just sat there, ate an apple, and let everyone else do the repacking of the gear. I stole this picture from Mark. I promise you the seas were not this smooth that day.

We had a great time though. There are some pretty cool things under the ocean. Michael and I spent some time on our own looking around. I had no trouble clearing my ears this time and we surfaced and went back down with no problems. For a second there you forget that you're out in the middle of the ocean and could spot a shark at anytime. Lucky for us the reef is only 15-25 feet deep so it wasn't a hangout for them.

Dinner that night was easy. The campground was doing a fried chicken fundraiser and for $5 we got a huge plate of food. That's a win.

Then the girls and I took a little stroll around the campground to look for crabs. Instead we found the playground and a lot of bugs. The no-see-ums were horrible! You had to keep moving or you were getting bit.

Maybe it was the super moon that brought all the bugs out. We hoped it would bring the lobsters out. We went for a little night excursion to see what we could find with our flashlights.

We found nothing, but it was worth the trip. Look at the super moon. Just amazing.

The perfect way to end the day.

scuba diving, part two

I felt better the next day. My ears bothered me a little, but I was prepared for that. I was ready to tackle those last two dives so we headed off to Devil's Den. I lived around Gainesville my entire life and have never been to this place. You start at the top of a narrow and steep staircase...

And then you go down a little further...

Until you get to this. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this place? It's incredible!

I loved everything about it, except for the cold water part. We finished up all of our skills on the first dive so the second dive was all for play. Mark took his camera down there and we got some cool shots of us pretending like we knew what we were doing.

 All we had left to do was to log our dives and have Mark sign off on everything. That was the easy part.

None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for Mark and April. We've been neighbors now for 10 years. But honestly, they are so much more than that. We've been through all kinds of highs and lows with them and they truly are some of our dearest friends. I love this lady.

And there you have it. We are now certified divers!

And let's not forget about Timmy. He curled up in our bags and hung out with us all day. I really wanted to bring him home. He was the sweetest thing.

Now we're all ready to dive the Keys in August.

scuba diving, part one

I thought to myself, there is no way I'm ever going to make it through this. When our friend Mark said we could become certified divers, Michael was thrilled! Me? Not so much. I have this little fear of drowning that caused me to almost hyperventilate every time we talked about it. But I figured I give it a shot. The lessons start out in the pool that is only 4 feet deep so what's the worst that can happen. I can just stand up. 

Those first few breaths underwater were pretty terrifying. Breathing underwater is great for fish. Not so natural for humans.

I had a whole new level of confidence the next time we got in the water. And I figured that by the time we got to our open water dives I would at least feel like I wasn't going to die. 

The time had come. We drove over to the springs outside of Gainesville. I had to make it through four 20 minute dives in two days. We walked down to the entry site at Blue Grotto and my palms were sweaty just looking at this hole in the ground. 

I was really worried about two things: my breathing and my ears. Much to my surprise I had no issues with breathing. I jumped in that freezing water with three layers of wetsuit on and not once was I nervous about drowning. I did have some trouble with my first descent. Learning how fast or slow to go down is something we couldn't practice in the pool. At a max depth of 6 ft you don't have to worry about clearing your ears. On our second dive I went down face to face with April. I modeled her pace and how often she was clearing her ears. It helped me tremendously! I realized that it wasn't a race and I could go as slow as I wanted. It's so nice diving with people who have been doing this for 20+ years. You learn a lot just by watching.

Two dives down. After all the required skills were complete we spent a little time just looking around. We saw a neat school of fish and Virgil the resident turtle. That thing is friendly, but scared the crap out of me when he came up on me from behind, swam under me, and came up near my face. April got a good laugh out of that one. I got a good laugh every time we entered the water. That 72 degree water rushing into your wetsuit and down your spine is no fun. All sorts of girly screams came out of us. That night we had a nice dinner with Mark and April and took our final exam back at the hotel.

For the record, I scored higher than Michael.