Lemonade: July 2008

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Whats In a Name

For those who are undoubtly wondering about whats behind our blog name.
I was thinking about what I could choose for a title that would imply that we have to make lemonade out of lemons. Life at our house isn't perfect- far from it (I know, hard to believe) and I didn't want a blog where all I have to blog about is how perfect we are here. I wanted to be able to share about things, even when they go wrong, or the picture is out of focus, or there is nothing great to blog about, but thats life, right? So, I'll probably share some lemons on here, and mingled with some sugar (the good things in life), hopefully we can get some lemonade!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Happy Birthday Cameron!

This is the happy smiling face of someone who just turned 4! Cameron loves to wear the "Birthday Boy Badge" all day when its his birthday! He even insisted on wearing it to church!

The Birthday tradition in our home is to greet the Birthday person in their bed with sweet rolls and candles, and everyone gets to have breakfast together in their room.

Here is our Birthday Boy and his Power Ranger birthday cake. We had the Timmons Gang over for car races, present opening, cake gobbling...

Oh, and masks!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

July 16, 2008

On July 16th we celebrated our 10 yr. Wedding Anniversary. We got up early and boarded a little ship that took us out to a little island. We spent the day doing a few new things: snorkeling and kayaking.
After our return to the mainland, we got gussied up and headed to our reservations at the La Palapa Restaurant. They had a special package where you could get a dinner for just the two of you out on the beach. They put up tiki torches once it got dark. It was like a 6 course meal, and took like 3 1/2 hours from the time we arrived at 7:30pm. We loved the slow, leisurely pace, we like that sort of thing.

Here is a picture of me holding my strawberry drink.
Yummmmm...

Here is a picture of our raw tuna on one side, and slightly cooked salmon on the other side. They were both very good. This was like the 3rd course, I think. Notice that they had some chairs set out for us to lounge in after we finished dinner.

Well, after we had been enjoying our romantic sunset and feast, a storm kicked up, about 2 hours into it. The tide was creeping closer, but we didn't mind. The wind picked up a little, but we didn't mind. It was lightly raining off and on, yet we didn't mind one bit. They kept telling us, that they could move us up to the patio, but we kept saying, "No, we're just fine".
But when it got so windy that the flowers flew off the table, my empty glass flew over, and I was holding onto the umbrella that I feared would come crashing down on us, our waiter rushed out to us and said "I think we better move you in", and Ryan, being very determined said, "NO, we're fine." I looked Ryan right in the eyeballs and said as pleasantly as possible, " Yes, I think we should move in". So they gathered up everything and spread a new table for us on the patio- which we were the only ones even on the patio ( I called it a patio, but it was really an area on the beach that was right outside the restaurant that was covered with the thatched roof palapa). But, no sooner had we got all settled down there, than it began to pour! We were protected under the palapa roof of the patio, and enjoyed the rest of our lovely meal. Here is me showing my dessert. It was yummy, too. By this time it was about 10:30pm. We got up to leave and our waiter noticed a HUGE sea turtle making his way just about under our table. It drew a little crowd, and we watched it waddle on down the beach, right to the ocean and away it went in the water.
We had a very lovely evening, and everything just added to the memory.
Oh, and I'd be very ungrateful if I didn't mention that lovely bling, I mean ring, that Ryan gave me. What a sweetheart.

Vacation at Last

We spent six days on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico- just the two of us.

We are celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary and wanted to do something special.

Here are a few pictures of some of the things we did there.

Vacation at last!

Within moments of our arrival, we made our way down to a cozy spot on the beach

Collecting Shells!

On our mind always, was finding sea shells for the boys.

Unfortunately, the beach produced very little for our efforts, yet we never ceased looking!

The view of the pool and beach from our room

This is me standing on the balcony off our room, if you looked straight out, you saw nothing but ocean. We loved leaving the sliding doors open at night and listening to the ocean all night.

On our first night there, we had dinner at the Murales restaurant that was in our hotel. We were out on the covered patio, and had a great view of the sunset, fireworks and even enjoyed the falling rain.

There were a couple of suspended beds by the pool at our hotel that we loved to lounge on. We spent one whole day lazing on the beach and here, while we read, people watched and dozed. We sipped virgin strawberry daiquiris and munched on nachos.

Aaaaahhhh, those were the days.

Shopping at the Flea Market. Tiny shops piled high + lots of bargaining.

We spent a day on a Jeep Safari through the Sierra Madres. We went through the back lands of the area and saw many tiny towns and farms. It was amazing to see how little the people have, yet they are self reliant. The tour also included a nature walk, lunch and some beach time. Sometimes the ride was rather bumpy, yet our tour guide and the other couples were rather amusing, and they found us quite interesting when they found out where we were from and that we were LDS.

We Ate lunch under this palapa on the beach, in a very popular area of the beach called the Romantic Zone or Old Town.

On the Beach at our Hotel. We were usually the first ones up for several hours in the morning at our hotel and often felt like we were the only ones there. Our beach wasn't nearly as populated as the beach in the above picture.