The best thing we ever purchased

This has become our private sanctuary every night.

It's calm, it's quiet, and it gives us uninterrupted time to just sit and talk about our day.

 

We plan, we dream, and of course discuss Pizza Zone here.

 

It's like sitting in a nice warm bubbling bath each night before you pop into bed.

 

I really enjoy this special quiet and RELAXING time with my best friend!

Are we excited? Maybe a little.

We are way beyond excited about our upcoming journey.   

So now the research and planning has begun.  The first stop was the library:

But then......after doing some research, we came up with another brilliant idea.

Let's go here on a day trip from London:

So we are seriously considering taking a guided tour which will take us on a bullet train from London to Paris.  We will spend the entire day in Paris and the tour includes a double decker bus tour of the city, a 1 hour cruise down the Seine River, going up the Eiffel Tower, and going to the Louve Museum.  You then take the train back to London.  However, this entire tour is 16 hours so it makes for a very long day.....but what the heck -- we'll be on vacation!

We got a smoking deal with our airline tickets using our flight miles -- so our initial costs for 2 round trip non-stop tickets from Houston were 120,000 miles + $382.  We did upgrade our seats though because we really wanted the extra legroom and space for a 10.5 hour flight.  We didn't want to finance our house to pay for the little pod bed/seats.....but crossing our fingers we get a free upgrade  (haha......you never know).

We've spent the last 2 days (and way too many hours on deciding a hotel to stay in).  Our criteria was we wanted to be near things to do at night, had to be a London charm building with character (not some modern metal highrise), and conveniently located near subway.  We plan heavily on using public transportation and walking and want to be near things.

We splurged a little on this hotel because it's in the PERFECT location.....but still got an excellent deal at 50% off their regular rate.

Yay.....can't wait.  But now I have to get the house cleaned for company next week and I'm dying to go shopping for all the new clothes that I will need to go to London and Paris!  Seriously, a girl can't go on a vacation like this and not have new things to wear!

Sickness, Cleaning, and a new exciting secret!

Good old Paul started it on Tuesday and I'm lucky enough to finish off the week with it.  Hit me yesterday and I ended up staying in bed the whole day.  I'm up a little today, but only to attempt to get some things done.....but not much.

Good thing we decided to not travel this weekend.  Actually.....lots of things happened throughout the week that really stopped that from happening.

So we are still taking these next 3 days off (I'll believe it when I see it) and trying to give the house a good cleaning and get this dog housetrained.  We've got company coming and we want to impress them with a clean house.

Also, need to pull these things out and dust them off.  Looks like we might need them soon.

Hmmmm.............what crazy thing do we have up our sleeves this time?

It's one of those "life's disappointing moments"

Well......we had plotted out 4 days off that we could take beginning on Saturday.  We scheduled for it, we did all our work so we could freely go, and we got all excited that we were finally going to get some time off.

But then we got disappointed.

And it's Cris' fault

And Wrigley's fault

And the Houston Rockets fault.

It's Cris' fault because:  Cris is scheduled to be working 3 of the 4 days we would be gone, therefore, he would not be here to take care of our dog -- and she's not used to being home alone for more than 3-4 hours at a time.

It's Wrigley's fault because:  she still isn't housetrained, therefore, we couldn't leave her at someone's house to be boarded while we were gone.  I'm sure no one wants to put up with all that mess.

It's the Rocket's fault because:  they won their division last night and now there is a playoff game on Saturday night.  That means business will be extra busy and we really didn't have enough people scheduled as it is.....so we need to be here.

However, our plans are to go ahead and take Sunday-Tuesday off and just relax and get some much needed cleaning and maintenance done around here.  We have company coming and we really do have a bunch of things that need done here.  We can also take off and do fun things during the day as we feel inspired.

And while we are disappointed -- we hope to get lots of things accomplished.  Next plan is to wait until May when the college kids are out and we are going to take a NICE LONG 6 DAY VACATION.  We are so ready.

Welcome to our week in review

Busy Busy week!

Paul got sick.  Major bummer.  I had to work for him last night.  Can't tell you how much I hated that.  However, I know he bends over backwards to do whatever he needs to when I'm sick.  So I had to do it for him....because I care.

Cris is in Dallas for training this week.  He left on Sunday afternoon and doesn't get home until Friday night.  I've been taking care of his wild cat and his adopted cat.

I've been going over there 3 times a day and playing with them and trying to keep them company a little bit.  What a pain.  But he takes such great care of my animals when I'm gone.....so I owed him.

Since it was such a glorious beautiful morning, Paul decided to started chopping down the jungle of bamboo in our yard this morning.  Can you see him?

 He did make a pretty good dent on it. 

Bamboo is majorly hard to get rid of.  You have to chop it down and within 15 seconds of cutting you have to pour some strong killers in the stalk or it will just grow back.  We'll have to post a picture of the yard once we get it all down.

Normally Wrigley would love to be out running around the yard.....but she didn't like all that activity and chose to watch us from inside the house.

The garden is looking awesome and we've got buds on the Pecquin peppers and the tomatoes!  Now I've got to find some time to plant all the seedlings in the house.

But our main priority is getting all our work caught up by Friday.  We might be going on a secret adventure on Saturday.....don't know yet......but we'll have to see!

I'm so tired and my list is so long!

Dragging my feet today.

I'm just so tired and don't really want to do anything except lay in bed.

Not going to happen though.

I'm supposed to be taking Cris out tonight to get him some clothes for his training in Dallas next week.  But we both agreed to postpone until Saturday -- just got too many things to do.

Here's the proof:

I had to start another list because my paper was too small for all the things that need done.

Oh well......can't wait until I can take a picture with all those things crossed off as being done.

Oh yeah.....there's another issue today as well.  We thought we were going to be really prepared early for next month's Pizza of the Month. 

Well yesterday we picked it out.  Today we find out that the hummus we were going to use on it was recalled today for containing Listeria.  Just great.  However, it's better they did it this month instead of next month when we were already selling them.  So now we need to either pick a new pizza OR make the hummus ourselves.  Why is everything always so difficult?

Day 4 - St. Augustine, FL (Part 2)

Well finally taking the time to get the 2nd half of our day in St. Augustine in the record books.  If you can't remember what happened the 1st half of the day.....go back a couple of posts and refresh your memory.

Our first stop after lunch was the Fountain of Youth.  Seriously, you couldn't come to St. Augustine and not see it.

 However, I imagined something more glamourous other than a cistern well with a spout.

But hey.....in case it really works, we helped ourselves to a glass full.  Actually, the smell of sulphur was really hard to overcome and I quickly drank my glass and moved on down the road.

After getting our share of this magical water.....we spent our time at the park watching a cannon shooting and getting our picture snapped in front of a beautiful spot.

  This guy is the BEST travelling buddy!

We left the park and headed over to the Lightner Museum.  This was a museum filled with all sorts of trinkets, jewelry, furniture, toys, collectibles, and all kinds of other stuff that had been collected by this man for years.  The museum was in an old hotel that was built and designed by Henry Flagler....the father of St. Augustine.

Do you see me standing in front of the building?

It was a beautiful old building and a beautiful collection of interesting stuff

 Another old hotel designed and built by Henry Flagler is now the current Flagler College.  What a beautiful place to be able to study and learn in.

 We were now headed out of St. Augstine on our way back to Orlando.  But we had one more stop to make before we got out of town......the St. Augustine Lighthouse.

My first time in a real lighthouse.  And I climbed every one of those 219 steps.  It was hard and difficult......but so worth it when you got to the top.

It was about 6pm and we had a 2 hour drive back to Orlando.....so off we went.  We ate a nice dinner at a stuffy restaurant where the wait staff and hostess were rude -- but the food was great.  We'll never eat there again and I don't even want to give them any advertising by publishing their name --- but the restaurant is named after a familiar professional golfer.

We had wisely selected a hotel 2 minutes from the Orlando Airport.....because we had a 5 am flight...which meant getting up at 3am.  We checked in the hotel around 10pm and chilled for a little bit....before trying to get some sleep.  Of course, those early mornings always come so fast and we are just NOT early morning people.

Another safe, fun, and a little somber time spent in Florida on December 6-9, 2014. 

P.S.  We have now determined that this was one of our most favorite cities ever to visit and that we would love to retire here when that day and time comes.  We absolutely loved it here and hope to be able to spend some more time there in the future.