UM Friends!

So, I must say it again. I LOVE it here :D. Lately, John and I have been hanging out a lot of with my co-workers and it's just been so much fun. I love these people. And the thing I love most about them is that they are all very inclusive of John. I believe I have said it before, but all of the people I work with and have met have included him in everything too- he truly feels apart of my UM friends, which I could not be more happy about.

SO, today John and I attended our first baby shower. LOL. It was great though! One of my coworkers, Nate and his wife Leigh Ellen, are having a little girl in October and Nate invited us to the shower he was throwing for Leigh Ellen. It was so much fun! John ended playing one of the baby games and won the who can change a baby the fastest first. It was TOO funny to watch. Then he also won guess the mom-to-be's waist size. He just met these people and took over. lol JK! Afterward, we went to go see Despicable Me in 3D. It was a really cute movie and my first 3D movie! I dont know if I'll be seeing many more movies in 3D though, it kind of gave me a headache and hurt my eyes. lol oh well. I want to put the little girl in my pocket she was so cute! IT"S SOOO FLUFFY!!!!! hahaha.

Anyway, I keep feeling better and better about our decision to move here. I love where I work and all the people I have met have been my kind of people :D So Happy.

The past few days in all their glory!

woooo! I must say that I have been busy but in a good way. I dont think that I've been able to relax this much in a long time! I want to start off by saying that last week on weigh in day- John and I both lost 4lbs! WooT! :) very proud of us.

then Thomas Chase came down to visit! We have had a great few days with him! It's been so nice having so many people come visit already, but I am afraid we will get real homesick after they leave. Our next visitors are not coming until September- which to be fair will allow us to get our routine going, but I think we'll also miss home more.

Anyway, Thomas here on Thursday night and we played Catan- LOVE that game. I could play it all the time :) The next day we got up pretty early and were planning on heading to the beach all day. However, we got a call that our car title finally got here so we went and finished registering our car with the State of Florida ($450 later...) and then we dropped off my passport stuff for my new passport. Thomas was very patient :) so then we headed to the beach and spent the rest of the day there! I must say, what is more relaxing than floating on noodle, in very clear blue, calm water, drink in hand, and no clouds to be seen. It was a perfect day at the beach. We went home and changed around dinner time and headed to Sarussis, which is an amazing authentic cuban sandwich place. Man vs. Food had a show there which is where we got the idea. GREAT food! We will be going back. lol. An amazing end to an amazing day if I must say :)

Saturday we went to the Miami RedBull Flugtag! We left really early and got a great spot. It didnt much matter though because people tried to fit in wherever they could and would stand right in front of you when everyone was sitting. A bit frustrating. We made the best of it though because the show was really cool to watch. If you dont know what the Flugtag is, it's a bunch of teams of that make "flying crafts." They are voted on how far the craft goes off the launch pad, creativity, and show. Most of them would just go straight off the launch pad and in the ocean, lol. it was fun. We ended up leaving around 1:30 because we'd seen most of them and people were getting really frustrating.

We ended up skipping lunch (not on purpose) because we went shopping for dinner ingredients and then were going to cook, so it didnt make sense to eat before then. Thomas had this wonderful idea to make a 5 course meal for dinner! So after all the ingredients, we did. It included bruschetta, mandarin and toasted almond salad with balsamic vinaigrette, shrimp bisque, parmesan crusted chicken with fresh green beans, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Can I say DELICIOUS? Needless to say we went off our diet a little, but well worth it! YUM! Everyone was in a food coma after dinner. lol we took naps and then got up and played more games for the rest of the night! SO much fun :)

Sunday, we slept in! YAY! and then we got up and went to a sports bar to watch the World Cup. Most of the rest of that day was just relaxing and playing more Catan and Mexican Train :) A very relaxing Sunday :)

Overall, Thomas's trip down here has been so much fun :) He leaves Tuesday morning. Sad. BUT we will be heading back to the beach when I get done with work today at 3. YAY! :)

iPhone 4!!!

Hello! :) So guess what I got today!? lol...an iPhone 4!! whoop! :) Thank you University of Miami!! :-D So needless to say that I have been playing with it all day. It is great! Since I am not on UM's account (they are going to pay for my phone :D) John and I had to go to ATT today because I dont want to have 2 phones and there is no sense in paying for one, when I have everything I need on my "work" phone. We were really worried because my contract for my part of our package isnt up until NEXT August that we would have a huge cancellation fee, BUT we got an amazing sells rep at ATT and got it all worked out! We are going to be dropping John's part of the plan in August when his runs out and giving him my part and switching it to a single user plan. Saves us a ton of money! The worst part about it all- John will have to switch phone numbers :(. The best part about it all- NO FEES- at all! It's crazy and wonderful all at the same time! :) So that was a blessing in our day today!

On the diet/exercising note- it's going great! Gym today went well. John convinced me to swim laps with him today. Of course that was after some ridiculous argument on my part- to be fair I dont like to swim. Yes, I know I was a lifeguard and all but I am just sick of it and hate to put my face in the water now. NO idea why. Ridiculous, I know. Anyway, it wasnt half bad and I wouldnt mind doing it every now and then. I am SO sore now!! So funny story to this work out extravaganza: I wanted to do the elliptical before swimming so I left and went before John. Well, I told him to text me when he was on his way so I could change into my swim suit. Alright, so I am exhausted from the elliptical and head to the locker room when I get the text. Well I stop to get water and then head for the women's locker room. Or so I thought. I went to round the corner and there was definitely a guy standing in front of some lockers starting to change. My face dropped and I was like OMG this is the men's locker room and ran out. He started laughing and I heard him calling someone over as I was leaving. SO embarrassing. I am sure I was a good dark red in the face. LOL. Leave it to me to not read the sign that well and walk in the men's locker room. haha. oh well. another normal day in the life of Anna.

Happy 4th of July!!

YAY! Independence Day! :) What an amazing country we live in :) Thank you SO much to all those who have fought for the freedom of this country :)

This weekend has been awesome! John and I have done a whole lot of NOTHING! :) We went grocery shopping so we could get healthy food to help us stay on our diet. He even helped me put all the food in little baggies to make them 1 serving size each. He is just great :) We've been running and then have just watched a BUNCH of movies :) I recommend: The Book of Eli (AMAZING), Shutter Island (not what I expected at all, but good), and From Paris with Love (Good!). Did not really care for Hot Tub Time Machine all that much or Youth in Revolt- however I liked them only because I like bad movies, but I dont think other people would care for them very much. :) Anyway, we also spent part of the 4th visiting my GBF (Grad School Best Friend) in Boca Raton!! :) She made us a VERY yummy dinner and then we watched fireworks and hung out :) It's so hard to believe that I moved 13 hours from home and I can still go have dinner with her like we were back in Raleigh. crazy. It is very nice to have her close by though. I would miss her too much if she were elsewhere :)

Today, we are headed to the beach! YAY! people keep saying I'll get sick of it- but I dont think I will. lol. It's my favorite place! Our diets are going well too! We took Saturday off because we ended up going grocery shopping and getting really hungry, but we went running outside in the rain yesterday! I am SO out of shape it isnt even funny. Ugh. It's hard trying to get back into shape too :( I also lost my ID card. ALREADY. What is wrong with me? lol So we couldnt go to the gym yesterday (hence running outside) or today (we'll probably run outside again). But at least we are not letting that hold us back. Anyway, I hope everyone has a great day! I am going to continue enjoying my VERY relaxing weekend :)

Time to get skinny!

LOL! :) It has been past time for me to lose weight! SO, July 1st marked the start date of my diet! As my last blog mentioned, yesterday was our first day at the gym and we worked it hard :) I am so sore today!

Anyway, my plan is to keep track of what I eat every day and make it to they gym 6 days a week- I know that's a lot- but July is the month I am really pushing and hopefully that will set the tone for the rest of the journey! I would really like to lose about 50 pounds, so it's time to get serious! My weigh day will be Thursday, so I'll let you all know how it goes! Wish me luck because it is SO hard to lose weight!

Now, I am off the gym for day 2 :)

The pains of becoming a Florida resident....

So this week has been divided into 2 categories (with a little work thrown in):
1) becoming a resident
2) spending time with Johns parents

The first part of that is FRUSTRATING! John and I went with some of my coworkers to get our drivers license this week. It took us about 4 hours. UGH! I already hated the DMV and pretty much expected this, but it still doesnt make it any better! However, I am officially a Florida resident now!- SO glad the DMV part is over! We also got John's Cane Card and joined the gym! YAY! We ended up spending the rest of that day at the beach :) Great way to spend any day in my book! The beach we went to has a lighthouse- supposedly the oldest structure in Miami-Dade County, built in 1825. We tried to go up in it, but of course it was closed. the kinda neat thing is that it was closed for a photo shoot for a Venezuelan actress/model. We saw her posing for the shoot- pretty neat. Anyway, for dinner we tried The Big Cheese- DELICIOUS! I definitely recommend it!

The next day we spent most of the morning getting car insurance and renter's insurance- YIKES! it doubled :( both of them. ugh. at least we were warned and budgeted close to what it would be. However, it still hurt my heart. lol Then we headed down to Homestead to visit John's Aunt Vicky! We got Cuban food and caught up with her. She was really excited because that many Martin's have not been in Miami at one time before. lol

Thursday we then spent part of the day getting a bank account. I picked up my check and was thrilled! first paycheck! Whoop! Thursday morning was a very frustrating other than that tho. Everyone seemed like they were in a bad mood. We decided to run our frustrations out at the gym. So we made our first trip over there! BOY was I exhausted and already sore when I was done. lol I did 30 minutes of intense cardio and then lifted weights working on arms. However, when I got back I was out of my bad mood! then we made a yummy dinner and played a game with his parents- good ending to what started out as a frustrating day.

Today, we headed off to do tags and registration for our car- again frustrating. they have to fax a letter to the bank that has our title and then the bank has to mail it here. when that happens we go back to the tags agency and get everything done. the title then goes to Tallahassee so it can be made into a Florida title and then sent back to the bank- ridiculous if you ask me. but whatever, I cant wait until it's all done.

It just seems like it's so much hassle to get it all done :( We'll celebrate when we are done! lol

HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY!

So, Sunday we took Chris back to the airport (after an amazing visit!) and said bye :(. We spent the rest of the day catching up on True Blood :) and cleaning for our visitors that were coming the next day!

Johns parents got here the next afternoon! It was their 30th anniversary! We picked them up and showed them around a little bit and then headed off to dinner. We took them to this place called Bayside which is AWESOME! It has tons of restaurants, an open market type thing, a mall, a harbor, a stage for people to play music outside, and just tons of fun stuff!

We walked around for a little bit and then headed to Bubba Gump's for dinner. It was delicious and mighty good company :)

Then we walked around more and checked out the area. We decided after that to stop by the grocery store on the way home for ice cream. On the way to the store a fruit or something fell out of a tree and smacked our windshield- it was HILARIOUS! and disgusting! lol. And of course with our luck our windshield wiper fluid tank wont hold any fluid, so we were out. LOL! we had to drive around like that. too funny. Overall, it was a great trip and it's great to have my in-laws here!

Key West!

So, I know it's been awhile since I blogged- but I've been a littttttle busy :) You'll hear all about that later.....

While Chris was here we decided to go to South Beach and Key West on his last two days- so that's what we did! I'll start at the beginning. The night before South Beach we found out via facebook that it was Chris's birthday- WHAT! boy did he hear it! LOL. So I got him cookie cake and we sang to him :) then we headed to South Beach for most of the day- the beach was awesome! (minus me getting hit on by some creeper, and even after telling him I was married he still proceeded to hit on me- GROSS. I thought John might kill him.) Anyway, after that point our night kinda went downhill- we changed clothes and went to Larios on the beach- which is one of Gloria Esteban's Cuban restaurants. The food was delicious (I had eaten there when I came down for my interviews and took them there to try it) HOWEVER, we ended up waiting 2 hours and it rained on us :(. It was also very expensive. So we were already kinda frustrated. Then we decided to check out the scene and everything was WAY too expensive and not really us. After walking around for a long time and getting blisters we came home, irritated to say the least. Oh well. Most of the day was good and we still had Key West to look forward to the next day!
Chris enjoying a birthday drink!
We saw a lemur! just some of the fun of people watching on South Beach :)

The next morning we got up and got ready and made the drive down to Key West! It was a good 3 1/2 hour drive- it was LONG but BEAUTIFUL! For some of you who dont know, I lived in Key West when I was little so I was super excited to be able to show John where I lived and went to elementary school. I also became terrified of bridges with water under them when I lived there and am still working on getting over it- no idea where it came from, but that's just how it is. So there is this amazing 7 mile bridge on the way to Key West and I thought I may have a heart attack, but DIDNT! I think I may have officially gotten over my fear (*fingers crossed*). :)

When we got there we drove by my elementary school and it had been turned around and rebuilt- I guess that can happen after 18 years. YIKES! lol But it was there and they still had parts of the old playground that we saw. We also drove by where I used to live and unfortunately it was pretty run down :( but it was still neat to see! Then we headed to the southern most point in the continental US! YAY! lol- Cuba is 90 miles from that point. crazy.

then we headed to the beach! We went to one and it was covered in sea grass (gross) so we left and tried out another one. (gross beach below- pretty! but it smelled and was covered in sea grass)

This one was much better even though the bottom of the ocean/gulf (we were at the point they met) was covered in coral. We had a good time though- we same out to some rocks and took pictures.

Then we watched the sunset- GORGEOUS to see! God is such a great painter!

Then we headed off to eat dinner at a restaurant I always heard my parents and uncle talk about- Sloppy Joes. It was Ernest Hemingway's favorite place! It was great food and fun entertainment. :) Overall, good time- expensive, but fun. Everything here is expensive, just still gotta get used to it! Then we headed home and I was exhausted! LOL Overall, great trip though!