Christmas 2009

Happy Holidays! How has this year gone by so fast? It seems like we were just getting married and now, we've been married 8 months already. Wow! Time sure does fly when you're having fun!

This holiday season was a little bit different for us because we both have shut down this year! Since Lance is now working with me at Northrop Grumman we both get to enjoy December 24th-January 4th off of work! How exciting! We ended up spending Christmas Eve with the Crist's in California and then headed East to spend Christmas Day with the Nowell's in Tucson.

This Christmas is extra special because the 2 Nowell boys and their beautiful wives (he he he) will all be in Tucson at the same time. It will also be little Ella's first Christmas and we are so very excited we will be able to spend it with her.

We had a wonderful time with my family on Christmas Eve opening presents and having a wonderful dinner. My parents got me a new camera for my birthday but they gave it to me early so that I could bring it to Tucson with me. That's why I only have a few pictures from our Christmas to show!

I'm not drinking two glasses of champagne! I'm holding Lance's I promise!! I am guilty of being dorky with a bow on my head! Everyone does it right?? hahahaha

Lance was playing with all the different settings turning Cat and Rachel black and white!

Early on Christmas day we loaded up the car, gave Murphy big kisses and told her we would see her soon and headed off to Arizona. We didn't hit any traffic but we did have to slow up in Phoenix because they have these horrible cameras that are on the freeway that clock your speed, take your picture and send you a ticket. Lovely. So, the speed limit we went! =)

When we made it to Tucson we had a lovely dinner that was made by Sherry and then opened presents!

These next few pictures are pictures Lance took while messing around with all the cool new settings our new camera has! *Thanks for the camera mom and dad we love it!!!*


I'm just absolutely in love with this little girl! She's perfect!

We are in Arizona for a few more days so I'm sure I will have more pictures to post!

Love,

Suzanne

Our Niece Has Arrived!

I went into Yoga last night as Suzanne and came out of Yoga as Aunt Suzanne! Our first niece for the both of us was born last night in Oregon. Ella Saige is her name and we are tickeled......well.....PINK that she is here! And it's so good to finally know her name! We can't wait to meet her and introduce ourselves to her. We can't wait to spoil her rotten!

We don't have any pictures yet, but hopefully her grandparents will be visiting her today and will take a bunch for us.

Lance and I don't have much practice holding babies so he decided to practice last night when we found out Ella had come into the world.

He's going to be such a good uncle! Ella is very lucky to have him looking out for her! Even though he probably won't want to hold her until she is 1 and he probably won't be standing in line to change any diapers either!

Love,
Suzanne

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone! Halloween fell on our 3 day weekend this year but we didn't have anything exciting planned. We decided to rent a DVD, watch the World Series and relax while passing out candy. We actually had trick-or-treaters this year which was so exciting to us! In all the different places Lance and I have lived in there have never been any trick-or-treaters. This year we had about 30 little kids.

We didn't dress up this year, in fact we haven't dressed up since the first year we started dating. Below is a picture of Lance and I the year we did dress up. I think it was 2004. Maybe next year we will dress up..............maybe!


Murphy doesn't let us dress her up, so we decided to take a picture of her when she's looking ferocious! Can you see her little fangs coming out? She was our little bat kitty this year! =)

We don't torture her I swear! She is very loved and cared for!! =)

We hope everyone had a fun, safe and relaxing Halloween!
Love,
Suzanne

6 Month Anniversary!

Well, 6 months ago today Lance and I said "I do"!! I can't believe it has already been 6 months! Where did the time go??
Here is one of the pictures we took from the hotel. It was taken in front of our beautiful flower arch. I LOVED our flowers! I can't say enough good things about them. I loved everything about our wedding. I wouldn't change anything!

On our 6 month anniversary we were really hoping for an Angel victory. That didn't happen. What an amazing few weeks of baseball though. The Angels swept the Boston Red Sox in 3 games and we were able to see 2 of those 3 wins in the ALDS. The American League Championship Series against the Yankees went 6 games and we were able to see all 3 home games for that series as well. I can't get over some of the games we saw! They were sooooo good! Here are some pictures of our last few games.

We sure did enjoy our baseball season this year. As always we are looking forward to Spring Training next year! Since the Angels didn't make it to the World Series we might actually be able to take a vacation now. We had tickets to all 4 World Series homes games which cost us a fortune. We used our vacation savings to pay for the tickets but now we can put that money into savings and watch the Phillies kill the Yankees!

Until next year Angel fans! And happy 6 month anniversary Lance!
Love,
Suzanne
P.S. Our digital camera died on us so we are left to taking pictures with our BlackBerrys. Not the best pictures ever but better than none right??? =)

Collision with the moon!

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in FOREVER! I'm back though! I just needed sometime off to recover from 2 weddings, moving, and settling into our wonderful new place.

This is just going to be a quick post, but I promise I have a bunch of posts lined up! I just wanted everyone to know that NASA has a satellite colliding with the moon and my (Lance's too!) company built that satellite! CNN did a write up on it and if you are up early tomorrow morning turn on the NASA channel or go online and check it out!

We are having a huge viewing event here at work but unfortunately Lance and I won't be attending. We will be going to Game 1 of the Angel game tonight and Game 2 tomorrow! 4:30am is just a little too early to be at work when there is an Angel game the night before!

Go Angels and good luck LCROSS!

Love,
Suzanne

Murphy and Moving

Since we don't have kids to blog about, I will be blogging today about our feline child. Now, whenever there is commotion going on in the house Murphy has a hard time dealing with it. For example, the Friday before our wedding, Tracy and I were running around the apartment packing two cars full of stuff we needed for the rehearsal that night and the wedding the next day. We wouldn't be coming back until Sunday afternoon so we wanted to make sure we got everything. With all the running back and forth and the hurry we still needed to get changed, and the 20 million reviews of the checklist, it was all too much for our little Murphy to handle. So, she puked. Twice. I'm standing there in heels, make-up, hair all done and in a beautiful rehearsal dress cleaning up cat puke. Lovely. So based on that experience I was not looking forward to the move that was about to be happening in a month. She actually handled the packing and the moving better than I expected. She didn't puke, but I mean really. Why would she? I wasn't all dressed up! While I was going through my drawers and purging things I didn't need anymore, Murphy decided she was going to go exploring.....into the hole where the drawer went.

I couldn't believe she jumped in there. It's not a very big hole and it was 4 drawers up! And Murphy is not exactly a spring chicken anymore! Crazy kitty for sure!

When we got to our new place we were very excited to see how she was going to like the stairs. Murphy has never climbed any stairs in her 11 years so this was going to be a new experience. We let her out of her cat carrier upstairs and she immediately took refuge in our closet. Which, as Cat learned when she kitty sat Murphy when we were on our honeymoon, is exactly the place she goes to hide. She spent all of Saturday rolled up like a ball in the closet deciding if she was going to come out or not. Finally Saturday night she did. As a proud mama, I took a picture of her first stair climb!

All these pictures were taken off my cell phone so sorry for the not so great quality! But these were her first stair steps and I was glad I got to take a picture of them. Now that we've been here almost a week, she loves running up and down them and playing on them. Who would have thunk it?!?!?!

So, maybe because this place is new or something she has really been exploring some pretty unusual spots. The other day I was putting some things away in the linen closet and she walked right up to it and went right in and sat down. Behind the towels.

She normally comes out once she realized you are closing the door on her!

She has also decided she is going to inspect any open box.

She used to sleep through the night. Not anymore. Too many places to explore and things to do. She really enjoys jumping on us early in the morning to see if we are awake. Is this what having children is going to be like??? We maybe reconsidering! =)

Love,

Suzanne

Moving

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.....we've just been moving! We moved into our new place this weekend and we are so excited to be there! We are slightly overwhelmed with where to begin unpacking, but slowly it's getting done!

We don't have any Internet yet, so when we do I will update with stories and pictures of our new place.

Oh, for any of you who like wedding shows, our friends Jared and Bindi got married in November and "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway" filmed their wedding! It is airing tonight (sorry for the late notice) on the Style Network. Their show episode is called Double Trouble. It's called that because they had two weddings in one day. One Hindu and one traditional. We went to both and they were both absolutely beautiful! I can't wait to watch it! They normally reply those shows a lot over the summer so I'm sure if you miss it tonight, you'll be able to catch again in the next week or so.

Have a great night!
Love,
Suzanne

Lightning and Thunder

Dear Lightning and Thunder,

Was it really necessary to come rolling through at 2 o'clock in the morning? I was still up at 11pm. If you wanted to show us your fantastic light show you could have done it then. Or how about 5:30am when my alarm went off? I would have enjoyed the thunder then. But 2am, no, I really didn't enjoy it too much then!

Lightning and thunder, you don't come and visit us often here in So Cal, and the next time you do, can you please keep the visiting hours to when I'm awake. Your little middle of the night wake up call has left me extremely tired this morning!

I hear you are supposed to be visiting us again on Friday. Twice in one week. How did we get so lucky? Keep in mind, Friday's visiting hours are only between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

Love,
Suzanne

Heartbroken

This is my 100th blog post and as I type this I am heartbroken. This is not the witty, funny, cute post I had anticipated writing, instead I am grieving. Grieving for my friend, and American hero, Blue Rowe. Army 1st Sgt. Blue Rowe was with the 426th Civil Affairs Battalion and a co-worker of mine here at Northrop. Blue was killed Tuesday while on his way home for a two week leave to see his family. An i.e.d. exploded near his vehicle killing him.

Blue had been in Afghanistan since July 2008 and was rebuilding schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. We would get emails from him periodically talking about all the good he was doing there. I know he would rather be home, but if he had to be there, helping the people of Afghanistan is what he wanted to be doing. Every email he sent to us detailed all the positive things going on there. He last emailed us on April 28th to tell us he was coming home! He wrote, "I am due to take Rest and Recuperation (R&R) leave in June. I will only be home 15 days until I have to come back to Afghanistan. The good news is I am the last one to go on leave and will be redeploying to the US in late July!"

I can't believe he is not coming home.

Our management team pulled us all together and told us the news last Wednesday. I've been trying to write this blog unsuccessfully since then. Trying to type while crying is pretty pointless. I've been keeping pretty busy with packing up the apartment getting ready for the move. I found a box on the kitchen table that was all ready to go to be sent out to Blue. I had planed on doing it on our upcoming off Friday. I had been sending him care packages since he left for the Middle East. The day of my wedding shower, I arrived back home and there was a package sitting on my door step. It was sent from Afghanistan from Blue. It was a thank you/wedding gift for me and Lance. He was grateful for the care packages and his note read "may all your hopes and dreams come true." He was such a great, caring amazing man. I am so angry his life was cut so short. He had already done so much good in the world, but I know he had so much good to give!

There have been a few articles posted about Blue that you can read here and here.

I've decided I'm still going to send my care packages to the area Blue was serving. I'll just address it to "soldier". I know that they will still appreciate the things that are coming their way. It's the least I can do to honor a true American hero, and a friend who will be greatly missed.

Love,
Suzanne

Happy Memorial Day!

I just thought I would check in briefly to let everyone know we are still alive! I've decided though if I can't blog about Hawaii, then there is really nothing to blog about! LOL Just kidding!

My next post will be my 100th blog so I am coming up with something witty, and cute and funny, so this post is just filler. It's post 99 and it's just really not that exciting! I don't even have any pictures! So, here is the filler:

We had a very restful holiday weekend which was really nice! We didn't do much Saturday and Sunday (well, Lance worked, so that means I didn't do much!). On Monday we had a BBQ at my parents house then headed to a HORRIBLE Angel game after that. We lost 17-3. Pathetic. We left early which normally never happens. But how much salt in our wounds could we take? We waived our white flags and headed home.

Thank you to all of our men and women serving in our military. You guys rock!
Love,
Suzanne

Honeymoon Finale

Update: We were just at the beach that was named top in the nation!!! AWESOME!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20090522/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_best_beaches

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It seems like all the TV shows are having their finale's last week and this week (yeah Shaun Johnson!!!) so it only seems fitting that we have our own finale!

Saturday was the last full day on the island for us. We didn't do a whole lot on Saturday, we did do a lot more driving. It was so nice and relaxing!

We did end up driving to Waimea to go to Jo Jo's Shaved ice. It's supposedly the best on the island. We had some other shaved ice earlier in the week that was no where near Jo Jo's. So maybe they are the best!!

After Jo Jo's we decided to head over to the Kaua'i coffee farm. Lance was in heaven there.

Notice the little shot glass in his hand. He was doing coffee shots. They had this whole station set up outside so you could taste all the different coffees. He would have stayed all day if I would have let him!

I even did two shots of coffee myself! hahahaha

For dinner that night we were going back and forth on what we should do for dinner. We decided on sushi, started looking through magazines to see where the best sushi places were. We found a place we decided to take a chance on and headed over. This place was the coolest place ever. I'm so bummed we found it on our last night there because if we would have found it earlier, we would have gone back more than once that's for sure! This place has a conveyer belt that goes around all the tables with all different kinds of sushi flying by you. You just grab the plate of sushi you want and you eat it. It's so much fun.

At first we just watched all the sushi go by trying to decide what we wanted. It didn't' take us too long though. As you can see below, we were stuffed!

Now, before you think we are total piggies, most of these plates only had 1 piece of sushi on it. Sheish! hahahaha

Well, this concludes our honeymoon. We had a wonderful time. Aunt Kathy and Uncle Don we can't thank you enough for letting us stay in your condo! It was absolutely and totally awesome!! And we want to go back. Today. Right this second!

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering how Murphy is doing, she's doing great. She didn't even hide from us when we got home. We aren't calling her Murphy right now though, we are calling her Shadow. She will not leave us alone! If one of us is home, she is stuck to us. Our first night home she slept on my head. Yup, she missed us. And we missed her!

Love,
Suzanne

Honeymoon, almost done I swear....

On Friday of our honeymoon week we finally made it to Scotty's. We ate at Scotty's for the first time when we visited Kaua'i in 2007. They have the best BBQ food on the island! And a killer view.

This was the view from our table. I heart Kaua'i!

After eating at Scotty's we headed over to see some waterfalls and the river that I kayaked when I was here in 1999.

When we were heading back to the condo we stopped at Spouting Horn. When we were there in 2007 Lance kept calling it spitting horn because it was pretty duddy! This time however it was spouting off a storm. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I took some video of it, so I'll try and upload that later.

That night we went to Tidepools for dinner. Tidepools is very special to us because that's were we got engaged December 30, 2007. We had this great hut with nobody but the family around us and it was just perfect. Perfect for a proposal. When I called to make reservations I knew we couldn't ask for the hut since it was just the two of us this time, so I didn't bother saying anything. When they took us to our table, look where they sat us.

Our table for two was only a few feet away from our hut! And to make things even cooler, the same waiter we had back in 2007 was still there and he was our waiter this time too. How crazy! And he remembered us! He took a picture of us in front of our hut, and he gave us a free desert. This guy rocks!

Tidepools is awesome. It will always be such a special place to us. If you're ever in Kaua'i and you want to taste some of the best food ever, go to Tidepools!

I'll be finishing up our honeymoon tomorrow! See you then!

Love,

Suzanne

Coming Home

We don't want to leave.......we really don't. We would stay longer if we could......but we just can't. We have to come home because it looks as though this one here is having a melt down without us.She has been in the capable hands of Wendy, Rachel and Cat while we were gone, but she just won't be content until Mom and Dad are home. She's done everything from throwing up, hiding for 45 minutes and biting her care taker. Oh the life of a parent of a kitty. I thought we taught her better than that! I hope our human kids don't act that way when we leave them with our 3 favorite baby sitters (yes, I'm talking about you, Wendy, Cat and Rachel!!!!)

This will be my last post until sometime on Monday. We are pretty much flying all day on Sunday. I still have a few more honeymoon posts saved for next week.

We are coming home our little Murphy. We can't wait to give you big kisses......if you come out of the closet. I'm sure you won't be mad at us for too long........maybe! hahaha

Love,
Suzanne

Beautiful Sights

**I posted two posts back to back, so make sure you check out the post from yesterday!*

We are heading into the tail end of our honeymoon so I'm going to do today's blog about Wednesday and Thursday of our trip. We didn't go to the pool on Wednesday (shocking I know!!!) we decided to relax around the condo in the morning and then head over to the Marriott to eat at Dukes for lunch. Dukes has a GREAT view! I could just sit here all day and soak up sun.

After eating at Dukes we headed back over to Poipu to the Hyatt to get massages. Oh.My.Goodness! The Hyatt has one of the best spas I have ever been to! If anyone ever comes to Kaua'i, going to the Hyatt spa is a must! I can't believe I've been here 2 other times and haven't been to this spa. I really wanted to spend all day there! This next picture is when you enter the Hyatt! Beautiful!

We made dinner at the condo Wednesday night but we did go to Keoki's for some Hula Pie! We love Hula Pie!!!

On Thursday we decided to go rent some snorkel gear at Snorkel Bob's and go snorkeling. Dorks!

Look Mon (aka Mom *inside joke*) we took your camera into the water and it worked great! Even better is that it still works after taking it into the water!! ;-)

So, remember that fried skin I was talking about the other day? Well, here it is. Now, let me just state that I put A LOT of sun tan lotion on before getting into the water. And this was not my first day in the sun.

I only spent 30 minutes in the ocean snorkeling. 30 stinking minutes did this. The back of my legs are burned too. So, the lesson I learned was, next time I go snorkeling, I need to wear a shirt! hahaha It's actually not that bad of a burn, unfortunately, I've had worse! It probably would have been worse if I would have spent longer in the water!

After snorkeling we went over to the Poipu Beach Broiler for some happy hour! Luckily no pictures from happy hour. They have $2.50 beers though! That's the place to be!! After happy hour we headed back to the condo to look for some sea turtles!

We saw a bunch of sea turtles!

Well that concludes Wednesday and Thursday! Hope you all our enjoying the honeymoon blogging!

Love,
Suzanne