What a month!!

So we're coming to the end of July 2010. We bought a new car (after a wreck, sad), celebrated Kate's 26th with a great house party, celebrated our 2nd anniversary with a great trip to Fredericksburg, & booked our next vacation. Oh, we also went to the Dallas Lady Gaga concert on the 23rd. Geeze, all in one month!

Fredericksburg was a huge success with us discovering a great little getaway only a few hours away. We enjoyed wine tasting at 5 different vineyards & discovered some delicious Texas wine. And, we had a great time walking around downtown Fredericksburg, window shopping, & tasting all the great food their restaurants had to offer. Seriously, every meal we had was excellent. We definitely want to visit more often. Even just to get away from the Dallas hustle & bustle, & enjoy a slower pace.

Our next vacay will be in Mexico, at Secrets Maroma Beach near Playa del Carmen. It's adult-only & supposed to be awesome. We'll let you know. We'll be going at the end of August & both of us can't wait!

I'd like to end by saying I love my wife, Kate, more & more every day. What a great 2 years it's been & I can't wait to continue this great adventure! Thanks for everything you do for our family, hun! I love you!

--Josh

Coming up on year 2

Quick recap since the last blog. The Murano (Pearl) is doing great & we love it.

We're both really, really looking forward to this weekend. We're gonna work a half day tomorrow then go to Austin. We'll stay the night at Kate's folks', leave the kids (dogs) with the grandparents, & head to Fredericksburg for a weekend of relaxing, wine, food, & shopping. It's a much needed getaway weekend. We hope to visit some interesting vineyards & drink some good Texas wine. Oh & BTW, it's all to celebrate our 2nd anniversary of our fabulous marriage. I'm also looking forward to driving Pearl more. Kate drives her on a daily basis so I don't see her in action that much. It will be fun to take her on the road trip, & we'll be driving cautiously the entire way.

--Josh

The Decision

LeBron is about to announce his decision on ESPN on where he's gonna sign his next contract with. My insider prediction: he stays in Cleveland. You heard it hear first. Take it to the bank. Call me after the show.

--Josh

New Car Wednesday

So, after multiple test drives, financial applications, emails & phone calls from too many dealers, & negotiating, it looks like we're about to buy a new Nissan Murano from Courtesy Nissan. I think we're getting a good deal......if they in fact follow through with the deal I just talked to them about over the phone. It will be nice for Kate to have a car of her own again, & this car has everything she wants & needs. So, once she gets home we'll go up to finish the deal. Keep your fingers crossed for us & say a prayer. I've had enough of car dealers for about the next 3-5 years (until I get my Chevy truck!).

God has blessed us. We're very fortunate to be in a position to be doing what we're doing & living the life we're living.

--Josh

Car sizing-up

Today we're gonna go check out some cars but I wouldn't call it car shopping. Today is more like car sizing-up. We're tall people & we're also thinking ahead to a future family, so we're considering SUV's that we've never been in before. Therefore, we need to see how we fit in the various models & then decide which one we wanna go after. WE ARE NOT BUYING A CAR TODAY. But we will in the near future. I also think we'll finance through a bank, & hopefully get a better rate & take a little of the hassle out of buying a car. Today we will look at:

Nissan Murano
GMC Acadia
Ford Edge
GMC Terrain


We know what the Altima is like so no need to test drive that (if we decide to stick with a car). Going to dealerships & dealing with those lying vultures sucks, so wish us luck!

--Josh

the "slow down process"

Wow - we are officially terrible bloggers. I feel like I've failed my blogging family because I made a promise to blog more. UGH! Life has just been really crazy lately...actually, when I say "life" I mean work. Work is busy. I got in a car accident yesterday afternoon (not a big deal, no one was hurt), but it really got me thinking about LIFE and how I've really failed to enjoy it lately. A job is only a source of income, not a LIFE and I really need to remember that.

These past couple months have been so crazy! We went on our vacation to the Dominican - it was amazing! Josh says Jamaica is better, I'm not quite sure still. I mean, they were both awesome trips, but I'm wondering if Jamaica was "better" because we were on our honeymoon and everything was so blissful. My solution: go to Jamaica again so we can compare. :)

After we returned from the DR we completely re-did our front flower beds - dug out all the current shrubs, tilled, soiled, planted, mulched, etc - it was a HUGE job, but the house looks much better now. Our alley neighbor, Cheryl, says holly bushes age a house more than anything else...well, we still have our holly bushes b/c those suckers are STUCK, but we took out everything else. We planted more monkey grass, azaleas and sweet broom. Looking back, I wish we would've included more colors and more flowers, but I think the perennials will grow more and more and really look great. Since we didn't put any flowers in the beds, I decided to add a small planter around our front tree, mainly for annuals and it looks great!! It really helps our house stand-out and look beautiful. I'm hoping to replant every season to really personalize the house.

We watched several of my sister's softball games, at OSU and Baylor, both series were great - mainly because we got to see my family and especially my sister!! I've really missed her since she's been going to college in Iowa.

We celebrated a wonderful Mother's Day with Josh's mom and family at Joe T Garcia's in downtown Fort Worth. That was such a great dinner. Then we spent time with my mom, on her way back from the Big 12 tournament, Josh made his famous burgers and we just caught up. Overall, Mother's Day was a huge success.

Then, we spent 4 days with my sister on her way back home from Iowa. The big news this season is my sister will not be returning to ISU. When my sister first presented this option I was pretty upset with her - why would you transfer before your senior year? You've spent 3 years with these girls, why not 1 more? Its your senior year! Turns out my sister was much more miserable than anyone would ever have thought. "The grass isn't always greener on the other side"...unless the grass you're sitting on is DEAD...then anything is better. Ultimately I agreed with her, and she's now a member of the UTSA softball team - GO ROADRUNNERS! :)

We recently spent the weekend in Austin, celebrating Father's Day. It's been a long time since we've been with my family on these type of holidays, it was SO nice, especially since my sister was there. I met-up with one of my best friends from high school, Lauren, at a precious wine house in Austin. It was so great seeing her, and spending some quality time. We went out to the lake on Saturday - ate some yummy BBQ, relaxed, got some sun, drank some beer - overall it was a great day! On Sunday, we took my dad to lunch at Iguana Grill on Lake Travis, the site of our rehearsal dinner. The view, food and conversation was so great - I really miss my family and wish we could see each other more often. Overall the weekend was a total success - I got to see my beautiful family and my beautiful best friend!!

Yesterday, I got in my car accident. I left work early for a doctors appointment, was heading north on Preston Rd (in the far left lane) and was approaching McCallum Rd. About 50 ft from the intersection, a car heading south turned left directly in front of me and I t-boned her. THANK GOD no one was hurt, just our cars. The girl later apologized, saying "she thought she saw a left arrow". I was just upset because I love my car so much. Today, I'm pretty sore and tight in the neck/back areas. My car is at the repair shop, waiting for insurance to sort out, and I'm driving some crappy VW (no offense F-I-L). After the wreck, I called my doctor to let them know I wouldn't make it and then informed me that "we don't have an appointment on the books for you today". Wow - I'm.Moving.Too.Fast.Bottom line.

Like I said before, work and life can sometimes stress you out, but it shouldn't take a car wreck for you to SLOWWW DOWNNNN. That's my goal for the rest of the year - enjoy life, celebrate little accomplishment, love my husband too much and SLOW DOWN!

Thanks everyone for reading, I'm so sorry for ignoring you for so long. As part of the "slow down process", I vow to blog and reflect on life more.

Love you,

Kate

Josh & I in the Dominican Republic - defeinitely recommend it!

Josh's 29th b-day party!

ISU games vs. OSU

ISU games vs. Baylor

My sister came to visit us!

My bestfriend, Lauren, and I

Father's Day lunch at Iguana Grill

Ahhh, Saturday morning......

It's Saturday morning, Kate is still snoozing in bed, & the dogs are eager for her to wake up. Almost every weekend this is the time I have the house pretty much to myself.......to eat a quick breakfast, watch whatever I want on TV, or surf around the Internet. Kinda just my quiet time. We're two weeks & two days away from our next vacation, this time to the Dominican Republic. I had a dream last night about laying on the beach. We're both excited to go to a new place & unwind for a while in warmer weather.

I feel like I have a ton going on right now. I am going to start helping with one of our sales teams at work this coming week & that could lead to other opportunities, maybe. I have to go to jury duty on Tuesday, which is the same day we're going to get our new coffee table & side table. We've had two estimates for gutters on our house & will have one more this Monday. So we have to decide on who to go with & when to do that. We're looking around for a love seat for the family room. Then, as the weather warms up we'll be looking at re-doing our front flower beds & I want to install good landscape lighting. So all this, & the money it all costs, is on my mind. Oh, & maybe a new washer & dryer. See, a lot of stuff!

I gotta say how proud I am of Kate for working toward her goal of running the Cowtown 10k. The race is a week from today & she has done a great job in her workouts, & she has already surpassed the race distance in her workouts. Not just that, but she has done it & felt good at the finish, & properly addressed any soreness. Good job babe!

--Josh

Homeowners for one year!

So tomorrow will be one year since we closed on, & moved into, our lovely house. It seems like it was yesterday, it all went by so fast. We made some customizations & in the meantime became experts in several areas: painting, tile work, furniture, yard work, cooking, & other domestic items/issues. I think we've done fairly well. We might have started off on a rocky foot, locking ourselves out of the house the day we closed, & then with mis-adventures in painting the kitchen wainscoting, but we learned a lot with each day & our house really feels like our own. So congrats to us on one year in the house! I hope we see many more!

--Josh

Wrapping up the holiday season

Hello 2010. We have wrapped up the first decade of the 2000's & are starting a new one. It's weird to think that 10 years ago I was a Freshman in college, because it seems like yesterday. A lot has gone on in the past 10 years. Heck, a lot has gone on in the past one, two, and three years. We have just concluded the Christmas & New Year season & Kate & I are on our last weekday of time off. We had a great Christmas, spending most of the time in Austin at Kate's parents' house. We also saw my folks & Emily & Aaron. It snowed a lot up here on Christmas Eve & it was verrrrrrry windy on the drive down to Austin. It was the first white Christmas in Dallas in the past.......75 years or so. I was kinda wishing we were staying home for Christmas because of the weather, & it's also nice to be home on Christmas. But it was good to be with the Monroes. I keep telling everyone, we're staying here next Christmas & I know it will be 85 degrees and sunny. In summary, we had a great Christmas, we got way too much from our generous fam, & we are blessed many, many times over.

Once we got home from Austin we visited my dad in Fort Worth the next day, & settled into our week off. Each year we work our butts off at work (err, mostly Kate works like crazy) & we look forward to the week we have off to stay at home, sleep in, & do whatever we want. It's sad to be at the end of our week, but it has been awesome. We built some fires on cold weather days, cooked great meals, got our shopping fix taken care of (hello Eddie Bauer!!!), & generally hung out together & enjoyed our time together. We also decided this week that it's about time we retired & did this all the time. Now if we can just figure a way to do that & still have money coming in.

We did our New Year's dinner at Capital Grill in Dallas. Reservations were at 6:30 & we learned that earlier is the way to go........we walked right in & sat down. Dinner was superb, from the atmosphere, to the staff, to the food, everything was fantastic. Kate ranked it the #1 steak in Dallas. I say it was great, but I would still rank Ruth's Chris #1 & Bob's Steak & Chop House #2. However we had lobster macaroni & cheese at Capital Grill that was my #1 side dish anywhere. Try it. We took our time & got out of there in about 2 1/2 hours, in time to get home before all the drunks got out on the roads, & enjoyed champagne at home with the pups.

So now on to 2010. As Kate said, 2009 was excellent. It's gonna be hard to top it. Thankfully we have our vacation in about 2 months to the DR, which will help us keep our sanity. Look for more on that at a later date. Hope everyone is well.

--Josh