Dominican Republic

IMPORTANT DATE:
May 17th. It is our Engaged and Graduated Party. We have a bar (smoke free) rented out all night just for us. Live band. All the cool people will be there. Emily is graduating with her Masters, with a 4.0! Which is almost as amazing as her agreeing to put up with me for the rest of her life.

Here are pictures from our trip. I still need to scan in our pictures from swimming with the dolphins. Conveniently we could not take our own pictures, so we had to purchase the $12 pictures with the nice cardboard frames..memories folks...memories!



The Flight
I have a problem with flying. I am not afraid to fly, just makes me nervous when we take off and land. Once we are in the air at 30,000, I feel great. I have a fear of getting to the heights. Being at the top of the Eiffel Tower didn't scare me, but the loud clanking glass elevator did. This same fear is why I avoid roller coasters. That slow CLICK, CLICK, CLICK drives me crazy. Once I make it over the hill, my fear subdues and I have fun.
So, to combat the fear of taking off and all the noises, that in mind sound like the plane is going down, I stay up all night so I just pass out. It is a good plan as long as there is no layover. We had an hour flight to Atlanta and then a 3 hour layover. I was super tired, but forced myself to stay awake. I was asleep on the plane before we even the ground. 30 minutes before we land I am woken by the captain to tell us that we are landing. I read a gossip magazine trying to ignore the sounds of the landing gear, telling myself that the wheels will not fall off. As you can deduct from me writing this, we landed safely
I had arranged for transportation when I booked the vacation, so we had a van waiting to take us to our resort, 30 minutes away. The roads in The Dominican Republic are actually nice, better than many roads around St. Louis. The problem is that most cars drive like they are the only car on the road. I fear for my life while passing a car on a hill numerous times. One time our van and another car got in a game of chicken: who's going to move first. We had a car (in the correct lane) and a scooter on the other side (there are more scooters than cars on the road. they all drive on the side of the road). Luckily our driver "chickened" out and swerved over, forcing the car in the correct lane to swerve over as well. No horns were honked, no middle finger was flashed, and it was as if this was completely normal. Meanwhile, I needed to change my pants.
We arrive at our resort tired and relieved to be alive. Emily and I go to our room, change, grab a drink and hit the beach. After dinner

we watched an Africa Show

and went to bed.


MONDAY
We played on the beach all day

It was amazing. No cell phones, no work, no worries! It was the first time in three years that I was able to sit and do nothing, and I loved it!
We joined in a volleyball tournament with some guys that we had meet. Emily, who is much better than me, loved it. She was the best person on the team. We won 3 games in a row to win the championship! It was a nice victory. We played against an all French team, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of national pride. I won one for you guys!

OCEAN WORLD



Tuesday I woke up to the excitement of Emily. We had booked a day at Ocean Word and swimming with the dolphins, which had been Emily's childhood dream. She was as gitty as a school girl. I will admit that I was happier to see Emily happy than swimming with the dolphins.
Ocean World is a waste of money: unless you swim with the dolphins, which I will say is worth the extra money. The dolphin swimming was much better than I had expected. And, regardless if I had fun or not, seeing the smile on Emily's face was well worth it.
We started by just petting the dolphins,

(These are not the pictures from the swimming, just dolphins hanging out). You could stick your hand out over the rail and they would jump up and hit your hand.




then they kissed us and then we danced with them. The best part was grabbing hold of both their fins and ridding them to the dock. They are super smart animals and I would recommend swimming with them to everyone!
Next we got to play with the Sea Lions,

which was totally different than the dolphins. They remind me of a large 300 pound dog that can swim and do really cool tricks. Not quite as cool as the dolphins, but once again, worth the extra money. Like I said before, Ocean World would have been a total waste of money without swimming with the Dolphins and Sea Lions.
We headed home that night with my excitement of deep sea fishing early Wednesday morning.

The Love Birds
There was a cage full of Love Birds and we were allowed to feed them. Emily was freaked out at the idea of birds crawling all over here, but I loved the idea. The lady gave me a pinch of food and I held out my hand and the birds flocked to me.

The Nurse Sharks
Another feature that we could have done is Swimming with the sharks and stingrays, which we opted not to. But there was still a show we could watch. The shows they had were the dolphin show, sea lion show




and shark feeding show. And each of those, for extra money of course, you could do the experience. Swimming with the dolphins, playing with the sea lions and actually feeding the sharks. We swam with the dolphins and played with the sea lions.
The shark feeding show was cool, just not something I would want to do, I like to keep my distance: call me crazy.

WEDNESDAY

We woke up Wednesday at 6:30 (which, in case you were wondering, the RD is only one hour ahead than Missouri). We eat breakfast and rush to meet our tour guide at 7:20. I have been excited about Deep sea fishing for weeks. This was my swimming with the dolphins. We sit in the lobby until 8:20 and Emily goes to find our guy only to fond that all water sports have been cancled for the day, including my much anticipated deep sea fishing. I felt like I just was told there is no Santa Claus. I sulk back to the room to take a brief nap. I had the fishing itch, so I "fished" off our back patio.

and I caught a small leaf.



We head down to the ocean to find that no one is allowed in the water based on the nasty under toe.



The big waves in the normally calm water did make for some good sea shell finds, which I hope brings Norah joy.
I will say, the sights of the beach is well worth the 7 hours of travel...

Even though we were not able to deep sea fish, I enjoyed another relaxing day with Emily on the beach and at the pool. I never understood how much a relaxing day meant to me: I think I need another one already. We enjoy our last day on the resort by playing some more volleyball, meeting up with some people from New York and heading to bed with visions of how the house will look when we get back.
(While we were gone, we had planed to have the new floor in the kitchen and entry way be put down and have the whole house painted. We thought this would eliminate a lot of stress on our part).
I had purposely booked a later flight, 3:30, so we could spend some time in the morning on the beach. But we were informed that if we wanted a ride to the airport, we would have to be there 3 hours early (point of advice: This is a crock of shit). We get to the airport 3 ½ hours early only to find out that our flight has been delayed one hour. We spend 30 minutes getting through customs and now stare at the clock for the next 4 hours. We land in Atlanta and sprint to catch our connecting flight back to St. Louis. We had called Emily’s Dad from the airport and he informs us that this is the last flight back to St. Louis. For those who have not flown out of the country: When you get back to the States, you have to grab your bags from baggage, then recheck them through customs, a process that takes about an hour: which was 5 more minutes that we had to catch our flight. After pushing kids and old ladies out of our way, we cram some horrible Chinese food down our throats and load the plane.
Justin picks up at the airport and we trek home to see the “perfect” house.

America's Best Mom

I have nominated my Mom has America's Best Mom. Click HERE

You can vote once a day, so vote a lot. The top 12 I believe will be on the Today Show and the winner will get $25K. So pass the link on and vote: and vote often!

You will have to register, but it is free.

Is it Sunday yet?

When Emily and a booked our vacation to the Dominican Republic two months ago, I never thought the week leading up to the vacation was going to be so stressful.
I am now working part time at Planet Cash. Herman, our assistant manager does a good job of running the store on a day-to-day basis. My main role is checking in and getting all the paperwork done and making sure no one is stealing from us. It has worked out really well for me since we are getting the house ready to sell.
I am leaving Thursday morning to drive to the Lake to drop off Winston at Mom’s, grab a kitchen table, then drive to Springfield, MO to meet with our investors Thursday night, and then back to St. Louis on Friday, and then Sunday at 6:00 am. We fly out of the country: and I shut off my cell phone. It really sounded liked a damn good plan.
While we are gone, the new floors in the kitchen and entryway are being put down and the house will be painted, so we will come home to a new house. In an effort to save some money, I said that I would get all the stuff off the walls and patch up the holes, then push all the furniture to the middle of the rooms.
We purchased new base cabinets for the other side of the kitchen, so I got those stained and Jimmy, our floor guy, is going to install those after he puts the floor down. We then bought new doors for the pantry, hall closet and both guest bedroom closets; so all the doors are matching 6-panel doors. So had to paint those this week. And of course when I go hang the doors up, something always goes wrong. My plan to: pop, pop, pop and the doors are done failed miserably after the first hour. (You see, our house used to be a rental and the rentals before I bought it tore the crap out of it, so the owners came in, flipped it and sold it. If you know anything about flipping a house, you know that they typically do it the cheapest, fastest way. I knew this three years ago when I purchased the house, and had planned on doing these improvements over time: But I figured cramming it all into 10 days would be much more fun). So, every quick project turns into an hour because I have to fix or replace what they had covered up.
The rush for me to have all this done before we leave is that I want to come home to a house that is ready to sell. I don’t want to sit my fat ass on the beach and worry about the doors that I need to hang when I get back. Oh yeah, I also have to replace boards on the deck so our painter can paint the deck. And I am sure that when I take up one board, the whole damn thing will fall.
All this is happening when Herman’s, our assistant manager, Grandmother passed away on Monday. So, my time to get the house ready has been slashed to cover the store. I know, I know, this is all part of owning a business and I accept that, doesn’t mean I can’t still bitch about it. So, I am sitting at the store, with our system down, which means there is not much work I can do here, thinking about all the crap I need to get done.
Justin now has to cover the store (which he has a full time job still at corporate) on Thursday, Friday and Monday. I had planned this trip during this time for tow reasons: 1. It is Emily’s Spring Break so she is off and 2. It is a slow time for the store and Herman can handle it while I am gone: But that plan backfired since Herman has to deal with the funeral and visitation, etc.
So, here’s to the nature of bad timing.

An empty nest

Since I was 18, when I went off to college, I have always had roomates. I have always been a super social person and having roomates just seemed like the thing to do. When I graduated college, bought a house, and proposed to Emily, I thought my days of living with roomates was over. And, as most of you know, shortly after, Emily and I break up, and I am staring loniness directly in the face. Quickly I find a roomate and get back on track of the "good ol college days." I live this way for a while, Brad moves out, Andy moves in, and then Paul moves in. 3 guys living here and having the time of our lives.
Around July of 2007 Emily and I start dating again and in September Andy moves out to live closer to work and Pat moves in. Then, in December Emily moves in. Now, we have 4 people living in the house. I will admit, it was not the ideal situation, but since the money situation went south a year ago, financially, this was the only thing that we could do.
Honestly, the roomate situation worked out really well. Pat works nights, so he would leave around 4:30 and not get home until 10:30 or 11:00. Paul had to be at work at 5:30am every day, so he was in bed early. So, we hardly ever saw everyone until the weekend.
It was always known that eventually the guys would have to move out and it would just be Emily and I, but that was just in the back of my mind.
When we figured out that us moving to Kansas City, we gave the guys 2 months to move out, which would have been April 1st. The guys found a place to live and moved out March 1st. So, for the first time, I have no roommates. It is just Emily and I. Granted, I am 26 years old and there is no time like the present to start this new phase of my life.
Emily and I have not had time to even enjoy the peace and quiet yet. We have been going non-stop trying to get the house cleaned up after the guys moved out and ready to be sold.
So, here's to the next phase of my life. I am very excited, Emily and I are both at the point in our lives that we are settling down, neither one of us really go out much. We both love each other's company and enjoy the quiet nights watching American Idol. But there is a part of me that is just a tad bit sad to see the days of hanging out with the guys on Sunday's, making sure the couches don't move.

A quick update. Emily had her interview yesterday and she said it went well. It was a brand new elementary school and she said it was very nice. So, now we just sit and wait.