Bonaire

our favorite underwater pic

Bonaire was such a wonderful vacation. It was just what both of us needed. Philip said it was the best vacation he has ever had. It was the most relaxing vacation I have ever been on. 

if you recall from this post, about this time last year I tried to get certified in Hawaii. motion sickness got the best of me and I was unable to get it. 

However, in the lovely country of Bonaire, you shore dive!!! and after day 2, I was officially an open water certified diver! 

my temporary card

So after I was certified, we just loaded up our rental truck, drove to a dive site, geared up and went diving! The dive sites were marked with a rock colored yellow, and the name of the site on the rock. They were everywhere! 

our truck all loaded up!

my favorite dive- pink beach 

It was so crazy to me that we just drove to a little yellow rock and found the most amazing sights underwater from there. noone knew we were 70 feet down. noone was waiting for us to come back out. It was just the two of us, floating around in a completely different world, seeing the most beautiful and colorful underwater sights. there was a 50 feet wall of coral reef with wildlife all over it. I loved it. 

In between dives you had to have what is called a 'surface interval' to get the oxygen balanced back in your body. 

Then we would pack up and do another dive. 

I  never had to step foot on a boat (the whole reason we went to Bonaire in the first place). my motion sickness was kept away thanks to Scopolamine patches I wore all week. yay! after each dive we had to rinse our gear in fresh water, to get all of the salt off of it. Then we would get out our 'log books' and write down the dives we did. you record how deep you went, how much air you used, how much weight you required, etc.

rinsing in the hot tub on our balcony

On average we did 2-3 days a day. The dive that is apparently a 'must' is the Hilma Hooker- a sunken boat that goes almost 100 feet down. We did it, but I wasn't overly impressed. It was cool to see, but the reefs and fish were much more entertaining to me.

There is a little plant called a 'Christmas Tree' that is my absolute favorite. If you get close to it with your finger it collapses onto the coral it is attached to.  

The whole island is dive-oriented. Most people that are there, are there to dive. We did have time to lay at the pool and relax. which was so nice, but also so hot. it was in the 80's all week. 

at our resort

The food there was amazing. and very diverse. one night we would be eating at an Argentinian Steak House. or a hole in the wall restaurant where Philip has the best crab soup he's ever eaten. or a grill that made the most amazing mushroom empanadas. 

Part of our resort package was breakfast on the beach each morning. we would roll out of bed and walk down to a table on the beach where we had coffee and amazing breakfast every morning. 

We also stumbled upon this amazing little sandwich shop. we wish we had discovered it sooner- there were so many sandwiches we wanted to try! 

The first couple of days we were there, Bonaire celebrated 'Carnival'. We had no idea it was such a big deal. Dive shops closed, restaurants closed, everyone flocked to downtown for 'Carnival'. So we went down to see what the hype was about. 

It was basically a parade and drunken party. it was CRAZY. 

 Anyway, our room had an awesome L-shaped balcony. Every night we would get drinks and hang out on our balcony, watching the waves and the amazing view of the stars, and talk.

from our balcony

Our mission of the week was to see a seahorse. but we couldn't find one:( we did however, see a little sea turtle that I fell in love with. 

the fish there were so beautiful. the coral was gorgeous. it was sensory overload trying to take it all in. Philip wore a board on his arm that allowed to write back and forth to each other. as you can imagine, communicating underwater is difficult, but this helped a lot. 

Philip wanted to night dive, and I promised I would consider it. When we were on the dock looking into the black abyss of an ocean, I just couldn't make myself do it. Yes we would have flash lights, but there was a lot of stuff living under there I didn't like to see in the daylight. I can't imagine doing it at night. I think he was disappointed but was ok with it. Instead we settled for drinking on the dock and shining our flash lights down and seeing what we could find. 

the baby trumpet fish I named 'Trumpy' that was waiting for us every night. he LOVED the light

 I uploaded (alot) more pics on facebook. It pained me to cut some of the underwater pics out, but I do understand that most people don't love it as much as we do. I am so thankful for our camera and the images it captured for us. This was definitely a trip neither of us will forget.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy February 14th ! 

I have never been the biggest fan of this holiday, but appreciate the fact that a day is devoted to telling those you love, that you love them.

Unfortunately, I had to work 7am-730pm today. Philip worked last night and got off work at 7am (story of our life right now). So I got to see him in passing at work this morning. 

I did, however, leave him some cards and a present before I left.

the Be Mine is a rawhide given to Jackson from Layla :) I saved it until today.

While Philip was sleeping today, my Mom stopped by the house and dropped these goodies off:

There were also press cookies that she made. when I came home, they were nowhere to be found. In fact Philip was like 'what cookies?' when I asked where they were. Apparently Jackson got on the counter, got his pink heart, the cookies- and went to town. Philip woke up to red rawhide pieces and cookie crumbles all over the living room. awesome.

Anyway, she also made us this DELICIOUS dinner

heart shaped pizza!

When I got home from work, Philip had cards for me. We had agreed not to get each other any 'presents'. He thought he would be sneaky and address a present to 'Mom, from Jackson &Maya'. (so technically he didn't break the rules:)). 

We had a lovely night eating pizza and drinking wine (thanks again Mom!).

With facebook's new timeline,  you can see things that happened in different years. look what popped up the other day :

(disregard the comment from whitley)- how funny that philip wrote on my wall March 25, 2006?! 2 years before we started dating! I dont even remember him writing that! 

Hope everyone had a happy valentine's day! We made the best of ours :)

even the babies got along today

OJ cake

We finally got some snow! Tuesday night Philip and I were outside playing with Jackson and grilling out. Wednesday morning I woke up and the view from our house was a blanket of white! it was beautiful :) crazy KY weather though! Supposedly it will snow a lot again tonight, and of course I have to work tomorrow. I am NEVER going to get to play in the snow :(

A big Happy Birthday ! to my Grandma Wilhoite. She is 86 years old today:) 

Anyway, to the point of this post- yesterday I made a breakfast cake and took it to work for a birthday. I was surprised at how many people loved it! So I wanted to share the recipe. It's a cake my mom has been making for years. it's so so delicious. 

Orange Juice Cake

Cake

1 pkg. yellow butter cake mix

1 small box instant vanilla pudding

1 c. orange juice

½ cup oil

4 eggs

Chopped pecans or walnuts

Glaze

1 cup sugar

½ cup orange juice

1 stick margarine

Mix all ingredients for cake together.  Spray the bottom and sides of a bundt pan with Pam.  Sprinkle the chopped nuts in the bottom of the pan.  Pour the cake batter over the nuts.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until done.

About 5 – 10 minutes before the cake is done, mix the ingredients together for the glaze in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and allow to boil for 2 minutes.  Pour glaze over hot cake while still in pan.  Allow to cool for 30-40 minutes before flipping cake out of pan.

glazed, before you flip

  Even Philip likes it, and that is a feat. he doesn't have the sweet tooth that I do.

And for some pre-Valentines Day humor:

(thanks joy!)

Happy Friday! I'm going to see The Vow tonight and am sooo excited!

Superbowl

The Superbowl, for me, is never about the teams or the actual football game. 

It's about commercials, food, and socializing.

My parents hosted all the fam at their house last night. Philip had to work :( We had quite the spread: stuffed mushrooms, buffalo chicken dip, hot bacon& cheese dip, bacon & water chestnuts, homemade pizza rolls, rolo pretzels, honey oat chex mix, chocolate chip cookies, sandwiches and pumpkin roll. wow, so much yummy food. 

My favorite commercial was Doritos. 

I also liked the M&M.

Hope everyone enjoyed the SuperBowl!

Philip's crazy talk

My husband warned me when we got married that he did weird things in his sleep. 

y'all, I had no idea how weird it was going to get.

For those of you who didn't get to hear the story, several months ago Philip stayed up late and ended up watching an alligator show on Discovery. I dont know what time he came to bed, but I do know that around 3am he woke me up when he jumped up in the bed and yelled 'holy crap!'. I jumped awake and asked him what was going on. He kept saying 'holy crap!', as he was crouched down on his feet in the middle of the bed. He jumped off the bed and asked me if I could see it. I asked him what he was talking about. He was looking at a brown throw blanket that was in the middle of the bed. Maya was laying on top of it. He grabbed a pillow and was jabbing at the blanket like the pillow was a sword. I told him to 'stop! it's Maya!' and he whispers 'It isn't Maya. it's an alligator!'. I grabbed our poor kitty and instructed Philip to go back to sleep. which he did. and didnt remember any of it until I recounted it for him the next morning.

Several times a week he will just say garbish words in his sleep that I can't even understand. Sometimes he will start laughing in his sleep. Last week he sat straight up in bed and said 'holy crap' (again). I opened one eye and told him to go back to sleep. 

However, 2 nights ago Philip took a scuba class. He didn't get home until late and I had already gone to bed. So when he woke me up at 2am and said 'I was in the pool!'. I thought maybe he really had gotten in the pool. So i asked him which pool. 'the BIG ONE' he says. and I was like 'UK?' and he said 'no the big one!'. here we go again... so i told him to go back to sleep. but he didn't. so I said 'you're crazy'. Well this spurred him to jump out of bed and swing around the post on our bed frame yelling 'I'm crazy!'. All I could do was look at him and laugh.

gotta love him.

You can't make this stuff up.