Travel: America, I Love You

It's no secret that I absolutely love to travel and see the world. I've seen various countries, but I'm still fascinated by the diverse landscape and culture of my very own country. America! This country really is such a beautiful and amazing place. I love that you can find such a variety of different foods, lifestyles, traditions, and places to explore. All of this exists without even leaving the country. Amazing!

{ not only do I just love to travel, but I love spending time in airports almost as much }

It's without being said that many of my favorite blog posts involve our travels.

Here are a few of my favorite posts. I dug these up from the archives just for you!

{ just click on the links to read the entire post }

Soul Stirring Utah : If I've ever felt moved by the land, it was during our drive across the state of Utah. Just about every square inch of Utah is photograph worthy. It was breathtaking, and maybe someday we'll even get to ski/snowboard it. That would make my year.

Oh Dam It: Hoover Dam Tour : I never thought I'd be so interested in learning about electricity and so many million cubic yards of concrete. It blows me away to think this masterpiece of engineering was built without the modern technologies we use today for construction. Plus it's funny to tell people you drove across that dam road.

The Stanley Hotel | Haunted Travels : I absolutely hate scary movies, but boy do I love a good ghost story. You'll hear plenty of ghost stories if you take the ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. We thoroughly enjoyed walking the halls of the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. It was so creepy and fun!

These are some of my favorite posts! I hope you enjoy them too.

What I learned in 2011

Hey everyone!

I have missed you all, but the busyness of life has taken a hold of me lately. This whole balance thing is still very elusive to this 28 year old blogger/wife/daughter/friend/retail-worker. I'm not sure I'll ever figure it out fully. Unless maybe I learn to stop trying to achieve perfect balance, because maybe that's not our concern or our job. Anyway, I don't want to bore you with my strive for more balance in life.

I really wanted to share some of the things

that I have learned through the course of last year.

It sure was an adventure!

Here are some things I learned last year in 2011........

Life is hard.

Life is difficult, exciting, crazy, humbling, challenging, and fun all at the same time. My husband and I were in for the ride of our lives when he received a phone call last spring about a job opportunity with a new airline. We watched everything around us change within months. Our home as we knew it was taken away, along with our understanding of our life together, but we have found ourselves learning an incredible amount about our capabilities to adjust and deal with change. We have made plenty of sacrifices during this whole experience, but we are learning to trust that everything ends up working out in the end. If it's not okay, then it's probably not the end. Life is hard, but we should try and enjoy the ride of a lifetime.

Give thanks for everything.

Life can change in an instant. Be thankful for any and everything that's a blessing in your life. It could be a smile from a stranger to a hot meal for dinner. Material possessions are not forever, and neither are our lives on this planet. We sold my husband's paid-off pickup in order to afford our move from Colorado to Florida, and we bought a rather old Saturn car as replacement. It was all we could afford when we got here. When faced with car troubles, my husband actually said he really appreciated having his crappy Saturn over having a piece of crap Saturn that doesn't work. Having things and losing them helps make real priorities more clear. We must make the most of every single day, because you never know when you may not have another. I hope to continue growing a grateful heart, even through setbacks, because gratitude makes for a happy and a healthy heart.

Social media is not all it's cracked up to be.

Real life is so much more interesting than what people portray their lives to be through social media. I deleted my facebook last year, and I have gained more than I've lost since then. More of my friends have actually called, sent a text, or emailed to keep in touch. Not having a facebook account has also reminded me that relationships take actual work. They don't come along on their own or by reading about what your friends are doing. Going out of your way to remind people you're thinking of them is much more meaningful than receiving a facebook message if you ask me. Getting rid of a major social media connection in my life has forced me to work a little harder to maintain meaningful relationships with family and friends. It's definitely been a learning process thus far. Here's to more phone calls and hand-written letters in 2012!

Laugh a little.

At the end of the day, it takes real strength and a good sense of humor to laugh at your own misfortunes. Those little quirks of life may actually turn into real blessings. You just never know. When something that may seem negative happens to you, laugh about it. "Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive."

We're definitely looking forward to what 2012 has to offer.

Life is an adventure, and we hope to continue learning and growing!

Florida Drivers

After the serious tone of yesterday's blog post, I wanted to lighten the mood with some observations from Florida. It hasn't taken us long to realize that there are a lot of crazy drivers on the roads down here in the Sunshine State. In fact, Interstate 4 in Florida is the #3 most dangerous interstate in the country.

Driving the Florida highways can be very intimidating, but apparently "baptism by fire" is the best way to learn. My husband and I have driven I-4 a few times already, and the good news is that we've escaped without incident so far. That's not to say that we haven't seen some very close calls though.

Accidents are not laughing matters, but I think the *rules for driving in Florida are something to giggle about. Drivers in Florida almost make Denver drivers look like saints, and that is no easy feat folks! So here we go.

* Please keep in mind, these are not the actual traffic laws,

although one might think so, for driving here in Florida.

Rules for Driving in Florida:

1. Never ever, for whatever reason, use your turn signal. Other drivers will brake accordingly.

2. The posted speed limits are only suggestions. Most likely you should add 10 mph to the posted speed limit. Drive as fast as the weather, or your vehicle, will allow.

3. Feel free to cut off all other drivers when necessary. Your vehicle is always the most important car on the road. For example: cutting off other drivers is acceptable when you almost miss your exit, when you are attempting to pass a much slower vehicle, or just because you feel like it.

4. Tailgating is not reserved for sporting events! Remember that measly 2 second rule for following too closely? You can forget it! Tailgating while driving is perfectly acceptable if not encouraged. Remember, you are the most important vehicle on the road.

5. U-turns are a way of life. All of the other states are doing it wrong! Forget turning left at intersections with traffic lights or left turn arrows. In Florida, the left turn is possibly every and anywhere you need one. No joke.

6. Yellow lights are your signal to step on the gas pedal. Many people would say a yellow light signals you to slow down for the impending red light, but that could not be further from correct. Floridian drivers take that yellow light, and sometimes the red ones too, as a signal that a long wait lies ahead. (This rule is especially dangerous, so be sure to look both ways before proceeding at a green light.)

7. Merge lanes are meaningless. If a vehicle is merging into traffic, do not let them in front of you. If you are using a merge lane to enter traffic, be sure to force your way into the flow of traffic. Merging traffic is only a nuisance, so make sure to treat merging vehicles with utter disrespect.

8. Let nothing get in the way of your final destination! When traffic gets busy, make sure to continue in a forward motion at all times. Slower vehicles, traffic jams, and all other vehicles on the road are there to get in your way.

So there you have it. Those are some of the rules of the road we have learned from observing the traffic patterns around us. Hopefully you had a good laugh over some of them. Have you ever driven in Florida and noticed any of the above trends? Or do you have similar drivers in your neck of the woods?

Happy Monday, friends!



Diary of a Traveling Coffee Addict

As you might know, my husband and I just moved across the country from Colorado to Florida. We arrived in Florida after three days of driving in a Uhaul "Easy Rider Van" across parts of eight different states! (More on that later). The road trip was a once in a lifetime thing!

I have a lot of stories and photos to share with you all, but my husband and I are still not settled in to our new apartment yet. I'll do my best to keep up from the laptop. I've missed you all!

I've also really missed keeping current with blogging, and I have a lot of catching up to do. Before I do that though, I wanted to tell you about my uncontrollable little coffee problem.

Apparently I have a mild addiction to my daily cup of Starbucks coffee. We usually make coffee at home since it's way cheaper than buying a cup from the store each day, however, traveling cross-country in a Uhaul did not afford us the luxury of making our own cup of hot Starbucks coffee at home each morning. As we drove east out of Denver, the frequency of seeing a Starbucks on the road dwindled quickly. I soon realized that most of the country does not view the importance of Starbucks the same as I have learned to view it. This was a teensy problem for me to deal with while driving across the southern part of the United States.

This entry from my travel journal is a piece from day 2 of our road trip:

" Nine hours and counting since we've seen a Starbucks. It's consuming my every thought. I keep thinking I'll see one around the next bend in the road. I might have a problem! You really don't know what you've got until it's gone. I definitely took having a Starbucks on every third corner, like they were in Denver, for granted. I really hope we come across a Starbucks soon! "

On our third day of driving, we came across a Starbucks just south of Birmingham, Alabama. You have no idea how delighted I was to sip that sweet nectar from the coffee gods! Three days without a Starbucks coffee is like the equivalent of three months to a coffee addict. I really hope to not go three days without a perfect cup of Starbucks coffee again. Friends, I have a serious coffee problem!

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It's still a little hard to believe that we live in Florida now. We move into our apartment soon, and I think it will seem more real once we settle into our own place again.

There are so many stories and pictures that I want to share from our road trip across the country. Also, I just bought a Flip video recorder today, so I hope to share some videos of Florida with you too! I've been on the hunt for "gators" lately, and I saw one but it was too small to catch on video from the car while we passed it. I hope to get a video of an alligator soon. (:

Hope you are enjoying your week!!



Piloting Life Cribs: The Crashpad Tour

I wanted to give you all the tour of where I have been residing for the past few days and nights.

This crashpad has been "home" to my husband for the past six weeks.

My husband's crashpad currently has a rotation of about eight guys "living" here. You'll find pilots, a TSA worker, and an airplane mechanic all under one roof. I find it sort of discomforting that anything relating to aviation/pilots has the word "crash" associated with it, so I tried coming up with a different name for the crashpad. All I came up with was "overnight pad", but obviously that sounds rather "feminine" if you will. So crashpad it is. After all, it is a place for crashing each night.

My husband and I have been sharing his twin size air mattress, so that's fun. Really heated, or not heated depending on who wins the blanket, tug of wars ensue shortly after we both fall asleep. Not to mention the battle for space. Fun times. No magic happens here. Just sleep.

It's almost like we're sleeping in the cockpit of an airplane...

Flying high in the living room

In the "living room" you'll find posters of the cockpit where my husband and two other new hires studied throughout their training. Next to the cockpit you'll find a random palm frond. I have no idea what that's all about, but it adds a little color to an otherwise "vanilla" room. Who can argue with that?

 It's all about the coffee

The kitchen centers around the coffee pot. It's a staple at the crashpad. Coffee pots outnumber cartons of milk around here. You'll also find plenty of foods for grilling and the microwave, because we all know that when the women are away the men will eat foods not allowed at home. Let's be honest, there aren't a whole lot of fruits and vegetables in this crashpad kitchen.

The backyard has a few resident black widows, so watch where you step. You might also find some great smells floating from the grill. The crashpad is usually pretty quiet with people in and out at all hours of the day, so try to keep it down out here. That's the crashpad, folks!

I hope you enjoyed the tour...

Now get out of here!  ;)