New Car

As you all know (since most of you were tricked), we bought a new car just recently.


We are so happy with our purchase! Here's a stock photo so you can imagine us inside.

The Announcement You've Been Waiting for...

JJ and I are adding a new member to our "family"!













An Acura MDX.

We're supposed to pick it up in a couple of hours.

Pardon My Post

... it's almost 3 in the morning. Am I crazy? I have to be at work in 9 hours (my average per-night sleep time), and I'm writing a blog post.

Oh well.

I'm just too excited/nervous/what's-the-word-for-have-a-lot-to-do-but-it's-not-overwhelming... yet?

JJ and I have been having some very serious conversation lately. We all knew that he was going to be.... going... somewhere... for a while... (see: I'm not supposed to be talking about it online) because of work in the near future (for 4 months). What we didn't know, yet, was what I'd be doing.

I thought I could be a tough girl and work a lot and be fine. Then he went on a couple of work trips and, well... I'm not a tough girl. The funny thing is that I was totally fine being across the country from him (for 9 months) when I had other people to hang out with. Now that I have... maybe.. 4 friends, if we stretch it... in DC, I find that my time off is dreaded, and I can't STAND when JJ is gone.

So there we have it. I am wussing out. Sometime soon (Yonny--not a word of this at work) I will be packing up my apartment, hopefully fitting everything I need into suitcases, and moving.

TO UTAH.

again.

And I'm excited about it!

I've spent the last couple of nights thinking about what I can do to make this move easier. Here are our conclusions:

1. Get some kind of relaxed job--maybe my resume can wait for a little while, and I can just do something mindless for a while? Where I *maybe* have holidays off?

2. Fly. I know this sounds ridiculous, but... We're just going to buy a car when I get out there. We were thinking about getting something new around Springtime anyway, why not just push the date up a schmidge to Fall?

3 (&4). Live with my parents. I couldn't believe how much I missed them in the last couple of months. So much, in fact, that I actually went home for a few days just a couple of weeks ago. I came out of that trip with no pictures (except the ones TJ has still failed to email me), but I loved just being with my family, even if the "annual" crawdad trip was a near-failure. So this will simplify both rent and loneliness.

I guess you never know about the good things 'til they're gone.

What're Ya Doin?!

Not much, that's the answer to that. I'm thinking about doing another "Day in the Life of" so you can watch me go to work, come home, watch tv, sleep, go to work, come home, watch tv, sleep....

This post is just going to be a bunch of thoughts about what I do on my days off.

I have 3 days in a row off. HOW WEIRD IS THAT! So yesterday I organized some more stuff. Wrapping paper and cards and stationery. That's right, folks, I have a problem. A paper-buying problem.

In my future home, I will have a deluxe gift-wrapping station. It's just got to happen. Because I like it.

After organizing the paper, I went to buy some more things (with JJ). I needed some more work clothes that are summer appropriate (aka lighter, since I found out that summer + humidity = sweaty me = nasty!), so we went to Tyson's Corner (aka one of the biggest malls ever, it's gotta be!). I got some pants at Old Navy for only $6/pair (awesome), then some stuff at H&M, then we decided to eat some Panda Express while we were there.

The weird part about living in a city with convenient public transportation? We NEVER eat fast food. EVER. So I miss things like Del Taco and Panda Express and the occasional McDonald's.

PANDA EXPRESS IS YUMMY.

And induces comas, apparently. I slept from 8:30 PM last night to 6:45 this morning, with only a slight break during the middle of the night to take off my jeans and stuff.

This morning, I was up early, so I watched JJ eat some yogurt (ew it was so gross) and then went to the DMV. The DMV here opens at 8 AM, which was awesome, since I made it there by 8:30, so I only had a 20-minute wait once I got my number... but then the lady that called my number didn't speak English hardly at all and didn't understand my question so she left her station and just went away somewhere leaving me with no car title or registration or forms or ID, or I would've just left (the lady next to her didn't have a customer and answered my question in 10 seconds flat).

Then I found a Target I didn't know existed and bought some shoes, undershirts, and a cute dress.

Then I went to JJ's work and picked him up for lunch, where I found out what he had found out: He got a raise! WOOOOOOOOOT!

We ate lunch across the street from his office, I had beef stroganoff (yum!), and then I went to Harris-Teeter.

I WAS SO GLAD I DID! It was like a Harmon's grocery, which I love! And I miss that about Utah. And it's only 2 blocks further than the Giant I've been going to (which is depressing like Albertson's was).

So anyway. That's all I've been doing. I'm boring.

TOMORROW>>> JJ is getting Lasik!

Puerto Vallarta

JJ and I went to Puerto Vallarta with my family during the first part of June. We really loved the trip! I was so glad to see my family, and we were able to spend a lot of time relaxing, despite some big plans on the trip.

When we got to Puerto Vallarta, we went to our hotel and went to eat some "Mexican food" at the on-site restaurant. We were all too tired to go anywhere, so we stayed around and ate rice and beans... which we all know isn't really Mexican food.

In the afternoon of day 2, we went down to the pool for our first SCUBA lesson. That's right, y'all, Me, JJ, Micia and Stewie all SCUBA certified. Our guide's name was Erik and we really really liked him.

Taking a taxi to go get some dinner (JJ, being the only Spanish speaker in the group, sat up front most of the time and took pics and translated and haggled).

JJ and Stewie were both really excited about the Coke with real sugar in it.

The next two days, all of us "kids" went off in the morning to the SCUBA shop, then took a boat about an hour out to Los Arcos, which would serve as our dive training site.

We got all suited up, then jumped into the water.

Then the big moment came! Down, PERISCOPE (I have no idea what that really means, but it has something to do with submarines)! 

We saw a ton of interesting sea life, but, unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of the best thing we saw: a HUGE Manta Ray! I'm talking, like, 25-foot wingspan! It was amazing.

Here are some pics of us with creatures underwater. There were animals down there, too.










It was suuuuch a fun trip! Let's see what kind of adventure the Roby family comes up with next year!

Room Remodel

When we got to DC, it was painfully obvious that we needed to re-vamp our bedroom. Not only did we need about twice as much storage space as we had, but our room seemed so.... blah.

Before:



After:
We're still trying to organize the stuff on the top, but I think we did pretty well so far.
The other weird thing about our apartment is that we don't have any overhead lighting in the living room or bedroom. Don't ask me what the architect was thinking... So we added some of these:

Thanks, IKEA!

2nd Anniversary

Something else we did during our trip across the country?

Celebrated our 2-year anniversary.

Yay us!

We didn't really do anything specific... just hung out with my family in Vegas (it was Mother's Day), where we ate at a Korean BBQ and saw Iron Man 2.

Insert gushiness [here].