Steve and Michelle's 10th Anniversary

Steve and I thought it would be a great idea to celebrate our 10th anniversary where it started... in Tahoe. We got married at the Cal-Neva resort in '99 and never really got to enjoy being in Tahoe because of the whole wedding thing going on. So, this was our opportunity to really get to enjoy the surroundings. We left early Saturday morning and had a beautiful flight into Reno on a turbo prop which I was less than thrilled about. But we got so close to Mt. Rainier, it was breath-taking. Steve also took that opportunity to take a picture with his cell and tried to transmit the photo to FB. Um, yeah! Getting past the mild hysteria on my part, we were able to enjoy the rest of our flight into Reno. Upon arriving in Reno, with no agenda at hand, we had breakfast since it was the logical thing to do seeing our flight was so early and we didn't eat before leaving. Then off to Tahoe we drove. It was a beautiful drive into Tahoe and I totally forgot how beautiful the lake was. We found the Cal-Neva and pulled into a parking lot where we were 1 of like 20 cars. A little disturbing. We check in and the guy tells Steve something along the lines of how we just missed the rush. It was all Steve could do to hold back, "Seriously?!?" We get to our room which has this spectacular view of the lake, but that's about all it had going for it. Otherwise, I would put it on my list as one of the worst hotel room's I have ever stayed out.

Here is the "living room". See that TV? That TV had 12 channels.

This was our bedroom. See this TV? This TV had a lot more channels and no remote. It was a complete bust!






Tahoe wasn't a complete bust. We drove over to Tahoe City where we found that was the place for us. We took a wonderful Sunset sailboat cruise equipped with complimentary wine, beer, and appetizers. Coming from Washington, we get complimentary nothing. So, this idea of "free" was very liberating. :) It was by far the most relaxing thing I have ever done. The only kicker was that no agenda thing I mentioned earlier. This sailing charter was decided on the whim and we were not dressed to be on the water while it's windy. A little chilly. Totally worth it!

After our sailing excursion, we had a wonderful dinner where we both realized that we were exhausted.

On Sunday before the drive back into Reno, we stopped and played mini golf and had a blast. It's been a while since we played and forgot how much we both enjoyed it.


After our game of mini golf we stopped at a little ice cream shack. I got a scoop for the trip back and Steve got a classic shake. He took on large slip and spit it out. Instead of using the oh so safe vanilla ice cream, they stuck coconut ice cream in his. I thought this was pretty funny. He has such a physical reaction to anything he doesn't look, his looks are always classic. Now, we were onto Reno.

We stayed at our favorite hotel, Peppermill got freshened up for dinner. We met Shelly, Bill, TJ, Mike, and Debi (oh, and Lily) at a restaurant and had our anniversary dinner with everyone. It was really great spending time with them and visiting. It was the perfect dinner!

After dinner, Steve and I went and saw "Footloose" at The Nugget.


This pretty much wrapped up our anniversary weekend away. It was a wonderful way to spend our 10th anniversary. It's hard to believe that 10 years went by so quickly. Steve and I feel very fortunate that we have a great life with wonderful children, great parents, and a loving marriage. It's our perfect world! :)

My Boys and their Toys

Well, Steve finally got a motorcycle. It's not the motorcycle of his dreams nor is it a motorcycle he can use on the street, but when he said, "Man, I would love to have a motorcycle" he didn't exactly specify what type. There is a loop hole to everything. :)

With these stores going out of business, we took advantage of some of the sales. We have been talking about getting Jake on a dirt bike for some time. When we saw how cheap the dirt bike was we couldn't pass up the opportunity. HOWEVER, Jake didn't really know how to ride one, so I actually insisted that Steve get one too. There is no way that Steve can run after Jake if needed. So, Steve's bike really is to chase Jakob around.

Steve settled on a 90 cc while Jake's is a 49 cc. The idea is when Jake gets big enough he will take the 90 cc and Steve will get a 250 cc and Andy will take Jake's 49 cc. Convenient that I have all boys! Per Steve, it was meant to be. :)

Jake is getting the hang of his bike. Shifting is still a little jerky, but with more practice he'll get it.

Tulip Festival

We had a wonderful, but very tiring day today. It's been a long while, but we decided to take advantage of the Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon, WA. It's about a 3-ish hour drive from where we are and the BIGGEST patience tester a driver has to go through (which is why Steve drives). While the drive is a straight, I-5 north, once there, you have to wait to exit (a good hour), then you proceed to wait to get to a field. Once we got there, we were in the car for another 2 - 2.5 hours just chugging along with everyone else. Granted the tulip festival isn't an activity that rates "fun" in Steve's or the kids books, but it is beautiful and the you can beat the pictures you can get. I've never had a bad picture. The kids did enjoy getting their pictures taken and we enjoyed walking around. AND it was a beautiful day in Washington for such and activity. Typically it's pretty rainy during the times the festival is being held and so you are sloshing in mud (which is why we typically don't go). This little trip has me tied over for a couple of years before I feel the need to for another visit.

Afterwards, while we were in the area, we headed to my favorite outlet mall for a little shopping. Got Jake a pair of shoes and the boys a little bit of clothes. I wasn't in it for personal gain today, so it was a pretty short trip... we still had a couple hours drive home. Once we were back in the area we stopped off at one of our favorite restaurant for some dinner. It was very yummy!

Now we are home and it's 10pm (we got home around 9:30pm), and I'm ready to call it a night. I'm sure there are a few hours of good sleep ahead of me tonight!

Easter 2009

We had a wonderful Easter and you would have known about it sooner had I been able to get my pix downloaded to the computer. Different story, different Blog!

Saturday we got together with our friends, The Lee family, for appetizers, dinner, and drinks. During our time, myself and Wendy stuffed many plastic eggs full of candy for the kiddos the hunt the next day. Then realized that we needed more stuff and did a Wal-Mart run. Okay, the night before Easter, not the best time to be in Wal-Mart. We were in line at Wal- Mart for as long as we shopped there. Crazy-ness! We came back to my place to wrap things up and then they headed out. I still had Easter baskets to make and to create the Easter morning scene in the Bell household. Steve and I went to bed, finally, at 3am.

Sunday - we rush out of bed at 9:45am to get the kids bathed and ready for brunch that we needed to leave for in 45 minutes. The words "on time" and "quick" do not exist in my household. Rather "rushed" and "on time-ish" are words that best describe us. So, around 10:30 we are not ready. Oh, and remember the "Easter scene" I mentioned above, yeah, still had to happen. So, since Jake was a year old, I have had an Easter bag (not basket) that I leave by his door, empty. Then from his door to his Easter basket I leave a trail of eggs for him to pick up and put in his bag. Well, now having two, I do this for both kids. They love it, so it's worth it. So, we rushed the easter bag trail thing to get out of the door by, yes, 11am. We have brunch on the waterfront in Tacoma, it was a disgusting rainy day, but the scenery made up for it. Then we headed back to my house and waited to see if we would get a break in the now thunderous rain. Yeah, 2 hrs into the waiting game, we have restless kids and still thunderous rain. We revert to plan B... Easter egg hunt indoors. These are things you need to be prepared for in Washington. The kids still loved it and they still got their hunt on.

All in all, it was another successful Easter!

Andy's 1st Dentist Appt - OMG!

Andy had his very first dentist visit today. I purposely put it off until he was a little after three because, well, Andy is our strong willed child and we need to have buy in before we can really proceed with anything new. We talked about it and we walked through some of the motions, but nothing apparently could prepare him for the real life event. We took him to a Pediatric dentist for the fact they are use to dealing with some children who do not always cooperate and I really didn't know what to expect with Andy. So, like any good mother, I expect the unexpected.

He did not want to get weighed or have have his height taken... so right off the bat we did not start off well. We get through that then onto X-Rays. Yep, was not having it. Wasn't going to participate and definitely would not be bribed into it. Okay, we'll just start the cleaning. Lord have mercy, you would have thought this child was being tortured if not for the sound proof crying room we were in. Aside from the fact the chair could have been made out of snapping alligators because he refused to sit in, he totally lost all composure as soon as they started to "work the chair", yes everyone, they laid it back and raised it up. The horror!! Imagine how the rest this experience went once they actually had to start cleaning his teeth. This is the first time that an appointment was a 2 parent task. Steve had arms and head and I got the feet. We had to restrain him in order to accomplish cleaning his teeth. The only positive is that through all the screaming they were able to clean his teeth successfully.

It was truly an awful experience. Unfortunately, he had the same reaction when first started to get his hair cut. If that tells us anything, it would be that it's going to take a few more rounds at the dentist in order for Andy to fell comfortable. Andy does not new experiences nor does he like any surprises.

Keep track of what's online the easy way!

Hopefully in this post I'll give everybody a good tool to keep up with whatever you find interesting online, like maybe this blog and the Frantz blog. What makes it easy is something called Real Simple Syndication, or RSS for short (if you already know what RSS is you can probably just skip this post). RSS is a way for a web site to alert readers of updates to the site. Using an RSS reader you have one place to see everything that's new.

In order to use RSS you need to start with an RSS reader. The easiest to get started with might be the google rss reader here. Another option, if you use the firefox web browser. It has a feature called live bookmarks that allows it to act as an RSS reader.

Once you find an RSS reader the next step is to subscribe to RSS feeds. The best way I know to find RSS feeds is to use firefox. If you're using firefox as your web browser (which I highly recommend) you'll see this icon on any page that has an RSS feed at the top in the address bar. Clicking on that icon will take you to the feed and give you some options of where to add it (with firefox live bookmarks and google reader being two of those options).

RSS feeds allow you to go one place and see updates for all the things you're interested in. I follow about fifty feeds in my RSS reader between news, comics, blogs, etc...

Hopefully you'll find this useful. Let me know if you have any questions.

You're lucky day - Very Long BLOG!!

Well, let me start off by saying Happy Reading. I meant to blog all weekend, but hurt my wrist like nobody's business and couldn't do much of anything. As technical as Steve is... he doesn't think to get on our little blog website and write a word or two for himself. To date, he only reads what I write. It's like an elaborate calendar entry for him to reference.

Saturday - Jake had his graduation for his Orange belt. The test was last Thursday and he passed with flying colors. Then on Saturday they make all those who pass put on a demonstration for the parents wrapping up everything they learned for the last 3 months. We are very proud. He's got his sight set for that black belt. It'll be a while, but it's a great positive influence and when it comes down to it, he loves it. You can see the yearning in Steve's eyes to get out there too. One day, Steve, one day. Right now, you can live vicariously through your son.
Sunday - Well nobody really wants to know that I spent the morning at the spa (again, while Steve's not writing this he would like me to add his input and say that he got me the spa deal for Xmas) which is great and all until I had an acid peel done to my face. Um, interesting. My face is still sensitive. That's really all I have to say.


Monday - Well, I'm pretty sure we crossed into March. By the looks of it it might as well be December all over again. I guess Mother Nature wasn't done with the pretty white stuff. While we are not expecting anything above 2 in, it's facinating that I still am writing about these, well, at least once a month. It is pretty and I don't get tired of looking at it... while I'm inside the confines of my house. While I was enjoying the beauty of it all, Andy's got really sick with some sort of stomach bug. Got up early this morning and hasn't been able to keep anything down. Thank goodness for hardwood floors!