Music and Life

Do you ever have songs that remind you a specific day, or mood, or place? I definitely do... with a lot of songs actually.

Today this came to my mind while driving home from work and listening to the first Colbie Caillat CD. The whole CD brought me back to the fall of 2009 when I was interning at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Immediately I imagined myself driving my brother's old Ford Explorer with it's ripped leather seats and the broken cruise control button barely hanging on to the steering wheel, on my way to MAW. I drove his car every other month (that's a story in itself for another time that you should know if you know mine and Kelsey's car situation throughout college) while my brother, Steven, was living in Chicago. I could literally smell the way the Make-A-Wish office smelled, and I thought about my life at that point in time. It was actually a pretty hard time that I was going through with a pretty bad breakup and my confusing feelings for Trent (give me some slack... Trent wanted us to start dating the day my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. I was a little confused and not too eager to jump into a new relationship). Colbie helped me through that time with her lyrics, and if someday I meet her again (yeah, I met her once... she told me she liked my purse) I will let her know how therapeutic her songs were to me. Anyway, I enjoyed going back to that time and thinking about the great time I had at Make-A-Wish, and how I am happy to have gotten through my mini quarter life crisis to where I am today.

I also have a few other CDs/songs that bring me to specific places and times in my life. The newest Boys Like Girls cd reminds me of the hunt for a house to buy with Trent. It was a new CD to me when we first started looking, and I got the know the songs throughout the hunting process. I can still smell the houses when I listen to that CD, and some songs remind me of specific houses. Weird how that happens.

The song 3 by Britney Spears, which I hate, also reminds me of one particular house that we looked at. We got lost in the neighborhood on the way out and that song was playing on the radio.

Just a little look into my train of thought today in the car. I'll leave you with the lyrics of Colbie's song that was my "song" for Trent during that period in my life.

Feelings Show:
You told me
You'd wait here patiently but
I wonder if he's kidding
Well maybe he could be serious now
Maybe not
Maybe not
Because'

Love is crazy
Pretty baby
Take it real slow
My feelings show
All you have to do
Is never ever let it go
My feelings show
And I want you to know

I'm sorry it's taking me so long
To find out what I'm feeling
I wonder if it will come to me
Maybe not
Maybe not
Because'

Love is crazy
Pretty baby
Take it real slow
My feelings show
All you have to do
Is never ever let it go
My feelings show
And I want you to know
My feelings show

I want you to know

What I'm trying to say is that
I'm feeling a change and
I'll let it take all over
If you need time away
I won't ask you to stay
But I don't want to lose you

Love is crazy
Pretty baby
Take it real slow
My feelings show
All you have to do
Is never ever let it go
My feelings show

So it's been a couple of weeks since either of us has written a new blog entry. I'd say it's because we've both been pretty busy. After we got back from Orlando I (Erin) had to go back to work (which is always tough after vacation) and got some new responsibilities. This is definitely a positive thing, but as everyone knows, change takes some getting used to. But I'm very happy with this new responsiblity and find myself being much busier at work, which I needed. So that's good! The Friday after we got back from Orlando we had Kinsey & Jason's reception at the church. It was really nice and everything looked great, including the bride and groom, fresh from their honeymoon. The next morning I was up early and headed to Hilton Head to spend some quality time with some of my girlfriends. It was so much fun, and I loved seeing them, but I can't help but miss Trent when I'm away from him (yes, you can gag right now). Then this past weekend I went BACK to Hilton Head to spend the weekend with the Stapleton's. Trent ended up having to work, but they were nice enough to let me still come hang out with them. Another fantastic weekend in one of my favorite places on Earth, and another weekend away from my husband. This weekend brings Mandy's bachelorette party at Chateau Elan, and I'm sure another weekend full of fun!

Mandy and Bryce's wedding is in less than 2 weeks! I can't believe it! The wedding is taking place in Charleston, SC and it's going to be very beautiful! I can't wait to be a part of such a special wedding. Photos will definitely come soon.

I don't really have any funny stories to tell, so I'll leave on this side note, I am in need of some suggestions for books to listen to on CD. If anyone has any I can borrow, please let me know! Or if you have any books that are must reads (or listen tos), please let me know. I'm always in the car for so long going to and from work, and I find that books on tape make things go by a lot faster.

Thanks!

Orlando

Okay, so definitely the most important thing that happened when we went to Orlando was the marriage of Kinsey Stapleton & Jason Salisbury. I must tell you that those two are two of the most in love people I have ever seen. It makes you love love, even if you already did! It makes me happy that they are now bonded as one together, under God. They're perfect for each other. Not an eye was dry anywhere in the vacinity of their wedding. It was beautiful. Here are some of the pictures! Congratulations Salisburys!







We also stopped by Disney World and Universal Studios! I won't go into much detail, but The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is unbelievable! SO real! We had Butterbeer, Pumkin Juice, rode a hippogriff, and got a tour of Hogwarts! Seriously, amazing! Small, but really cool. Here are some pictures of that, too.



This weekend to Orlando starts a lot of weeks of fun adventures to come... so check in with us to see what's up next weekend... Kinsey & Jason's reception, and Hilton Head for Erin!

Little pieces of inspiration

It's 11:28 PM and it feels just like old times! It has been several weeks since I have last needed the aid of the blog to put me to sleep. I must admit that I have succumbed to the laziness of having a tv in the bedroom. And, to make it worse, for the past three months we have had all of the movie channels included in our cable package as a new customer bonus. In fact, at this very moments, Hook is playing in the background. It has been wonderful bits of inspiration, such as Hook, that has persuaded me to lift up this laptop and free the mind before getting to sleep this evening.
I think Erin has done a great job of updating everything involving our married life thus far, so I'll try and just write a few lines about nothing at all. I have explained to a few folks in the past few weeks that I never really had a motive behind writing these blogs. I was not trying to influence anyone to think a certain thought or act a certain act, but it truly was so that I could fall asleep. If I could clear my mind just long enough so that I could fall asleep, then the entry was successful. I never went back and proofread the thing, or double checked the spelling...because I didn't care. I never really expected someone to read it in the first place. I rather suddenly realized today that that was not the case. I love the fact that people can become somewhat interested in what goes on in our lives! And as the tv is chanting " Run home Jack" instead of "Homerun Jack" it becomes even more clear how important the things we say and do really are. I have had several experiences this weekend that can better illustrate that point:
As most of you know, I run a barbecue joint and that means that the 4th is a very busy day for me and my store. Thankfully, we are not open on Sunday, so I actually had the 4th off this year, but we took care of business on Saturday. For those of you that have never worked at Barbecue Street or do not know someone that works at the store, the day of the 4th celebration goes something like this for my self and the owners: 6:00 AM arrive at the store, by 8:00 AM have had to chop nearly 200 lbs of barbecue meat and gathered and loaded the vans with enough sides, drinks and paper supplies for 1500 people for an all day catering, by 10:30 AM have the store ready to open for business, 3:30 PM head to downtown Kennesaw to set up a booth for drink sales during the fireworks celebration, 10:00 go pick up the booth while fighting the ridiculous people traffic, 12:30ish Am the next morning help unload the 1500 person catering and close up the store and finally get home and get some sleep. In a nutshell...it's a long day. Well, fit in there at about 11:00 PM back the van up to the trailer in the parking lot. While doing so, my headlights were shining on to the road in front of me where nobody was. Well, as I was backing up, two police cars pulled up to the light directly in front of me...and unfortunately my lights were shining right in to the first car. Instead of ignoring the lights or shielding his eyes or just plain looking in the other direction, the police officer(if he even deserves to be called that right now) decided that the proper way to protect and to serve would be to turn his spotlight on and shine it right back in to my face, so as to blind me as well. ---This is an example of how little tings can negatively effect in a bag way. I'll be honest, I think a lot of police officers are on a power trip...and this certainly did not help improve my opinion. I am sure there are a lot of good officers out there, but my experiences have not been helped as of late. It's kind of like during WWII. I am sure there were thousands of really good German people, but ask a WWII veteran what they think of Germany being in the World Cup Finals and I am sure they will gladly share their opinion (Go Netherlands!!!)
The next day while Erin and I were walking to the lake to see the fireworks, we were walking behind an African American family. We got close enough to start to hear what they were talking about, and it was quickly understood that there were not above making rather quick judgments...the same kind of judgments that if I had said the same thing about a black person, I probably would have made it on the evening news for starting a race riot. Now, I am not a racist person or easily offended, so it didn't bother us too much, but it was the principle of the matter. How did we allow for so many double standards to be established?
Today I had some better experiences, but they don't make for an exciting blog entry, but I will say how great it was to see Greg get on to a roller coaster and see the terror in his eyes as we climbed the first hill on Goliath this afternoon.

Honeymoon!

I am giving in and writing about the honeymoon basically to get it over with. That sounds awful and makes it seem like it was an awful time and I just want to move past it, but that is completely not true!! It is just the fact of sitting down and writing it. But here I am, going to do that now! Don't worry I won't give every detail of every day because you'll probably be terribly bored by the end of it.

We left for San Jose, Costa Rica (the capital) on Sunday evening around 7:00. It was almost a 4 hour flight, but they're two hours behind us so we got there around 9:00. After a slight issue with our luggage (don't worry, we left the airport with all of it) we met up with our rental car guy who took us to go sign the papers so we could start our 2 hour(ish) road trip to La Fortuna that night. He gave us lovely tips and information about staying safe ("Don't worry, they won't kill you, they'll just rob you") and gave us our GPS and we were off. Trent was the only one that could drive because the car was a stick shift, and it was a good thing. I would not have been able to drive on some of those dirt mountainside roads. I was having a hard time just riding! He did wait until we were on one of their highways to tell me that one time he almost lost control of the car and sent us flying over the edge of a cliff. Thanks, Trent.

Anyway, we got to La Fortuna late at night and accidently didn't set our clocks behind two hours so when we woke up in the morning we thought we had missed breakfast and decided to just start our adventurous day. Little did we know it was like 7:30 in the morning and the town was still asleep. Oh well. We spent the day hiking the base of the Arenal Volcano, swimming a little to cool off from our hike, eating, sleeping and checking out the natural hot springs. Those were pretty cool because the ground was all pebbly and sandy, but it was like being in a hot tub.



The next day we took another road trip to our next destination, Manuel Anonio. This road trip was more like 5 hours. It was a really pretty drive though, so not bad. Manuel Antonio is on the Pacific Coast of the country and completely covered in rain forest, but also has nice beaches. We hadn't eaten lunch that day so we opted for an early-ish dinner once we finally made it to the hotel. Our hotel, by the way, was a cool little hotel on the top of a winding dirt mountain road with an amazing view. It was my birthday so we made ourselves look good and journied to a nice restaurant with another amazing view of the ocean. And then the storm came... it started out slow and kind of faded but then came back full force. The electricity was out for much of the second half of our dinner and never really came back fully. We were eating dinner by a candlelight that kept getting blown out by wind (did I mention it was a restaurant with no sides- very open?). When there was a break in the rain we headed back to the hotel for safety, and bed time. I had to sleep with headphones because the storm was SO LOUD and as most of you know I am TERRIFIED of storms.

So the next day we had planned on doing our zip line through the forest tour. When we woke up, however, we realized that damage that the storm had done. We decided we would make it a pool day instead. We took a nice walk down to the beach (complete with about a dozen monkees playing and finding berries to eat) and took some pictures. Unfortunately that's when we found out that we shouldn't swim in the ocean because the storm had churned everything up and it probably wasn't safe. Then we walked back up and found out that our winding dirt mountain road was closed because the storm and knocked down trees. Then we found out our pool was closed from storm damage. The phone lines were out. The internet was out. The cable was out. Hm... okay. So we hung out at the hotel for a couple hours and they finally opened the road. We ventured into the town and took tons of pictures of the damage that had been done. There were power lines and trees down EVERYWHERE. The National Park was closed until the week after we left because of all of the trees that had fallen so we didn't get to do that either. We made the most of our stay there though, I think. Hung out, relaxed a lot.

The next day we did our zip line tour which was really cool. Roads were closed again and power lines were still down so it caused some obstacles but we still go to do it! The rain forest is awesome and even though the only wildlife we saw on our tour were some toucans (too far away to get a picture of) you could still feel it all around you. The next day we had to pack our bags and drive away from our adventurous hotel. I was a little relieved to finally hit some highways again and be off the roads I was afraid were going to crumble beneath us. We spent our last day in the capital city of San Jose and found a cool market in the middle of town.




The trip was definitely an adventure. Not what I expected (with the big storm), but it was a great vacation and an amazing way to start our marriage. Someday we will go to Costa Rica again during the dry season (did I mention it rained every day?) and check out a beach or two. Definitely recommend going there. It's beautiful.

This is what you have all been waiting for!

I feel like such a bum because I have not posted anything on here in months and I have no good excuses for ignoring these empty pages. But, I have a surprise for everyone this evening!! As Erin has explained, we are finally married and enjoying married life. On a side note, what kind of an answer do people really want when they ask "How's married life"? I don't get it. First of all, in the first three weeks of marriage, not much has changed. We haven't even received our wedding license on the mail yet, so as far as border patrol is concerned Erin is still not a Stapleton. So, in response to that question, which I have probably been asked 1,000 times in two weeks, married life is great. It has instantly reduced our car insurance rates, and that is wonderful!
Speaking of car insurance, do I have a story to tell! I couple of years ago, in fact just before Erin and I officially became a couple, we took a trip down to Panama City for a very good friend's wedding. On the way back, I got pulled over for speeding in Alabama. Say what you would like about me getting pulled over, but I am a responsible driver and was just enjoying the empty and open Alabaman highway with a beautiful girl in the car next to me....I don't see anything wrong with that. Long story short, I paid the bill a few weeks later over the phone after I received it in the mail. The ticket came in the Summer of '08, and the payment took place in probably August of '08. Flash forward to June '10. We had been home from our honeymoon for a few days and it was time to get back to work and take care of the things like opening a car insurance policy for Erin and I. Everything was going great, Erin's report came back good and the agent assumed that mine would be good because I had been active on my parents policy for years. She quoted me at a wonderfully low price for 6 months and I was ready to sign on the dotted line when she pulled up my license report to find that my license had been suspended...since November of '08! I assured her that she must have been mistaken because there was no way that it had been suspended and I wouldn't have known about it...but sure enough, a court in some small city in Alabama had requested the suspension of my license for an unpaid ticket.
Now, I knew that I had paid the ticket because I spoke with a clerk at the court office and paid with m credit card over the phone. So, I quickly called the court to figure out why they had suspended my license. Come to find out that the ticket had been underpaid by $.78! 78 cents!!! Really? It probably cost this court more money in paper work to have my license suspended than to forget about $.78! But don't worry, I'm sure they made it all back in late fees! Luckily, the maximum late fee that you can be charged for a late ticket is $100. I say that because it had been nearly two years! I don't even want to imagine what it would have been if they didn't have a cap on their late fee penalty!
So, $110.78 to the Alabama traffic court, $35 to the Georgia DDS, and 2 1/2 hours of the crowded DDS office, I am a legal driver once again!
We are trying to figure out how to get the wedding slide show uploaded so that everyone can see it. If anyone knows how to upload something that is made with iDVD to the internet, please let me know

New Look

It's Erin again. I'm sorry if you get bored with my posts, but Trent just hasn't updated in a while and I don't want you all to be bored!

So I changed the look of the blog a little bit... what do you think? I told Trent I wouldn't make it too girly. We'll see what he thinks!

I hope everyone has been doing well lately. I don't have a big topic to write about or anything and I just haven't been able to bring myself to write the Honeymoon blog. I feel like I've told the story so many times already that I can't sit down to write it, too. But I'm sure one of us will sooner or later. Kelsey and Greg have been living with us since we got married (in fact they moved in while we were on our Honeymoon). They'll be with us for about two months. I'm sure a lot of you think we are nuts to have roomates while being fresh Newlyweds. It's really no big deal, though. Nobody has really gotten in any fights yet and we don't really get in each other's way. I went from living in that big house by myself to living with 3 other people and a dog! But I enjoy the company.

Another new look I'm getting (besides this rockin new blog template) is my new iPhone 4!! I preordered it the first day you could and cannot WAIT for it get here! I just spent the last 45 minutes of my lunch break searching for a new cover for it! Ugh, I just can hardly contain my excitement! My original iPhone that I've had now for 2-1/2 years is done with me. It keeps crapping out on me one way or another. It knows I am replacing it and is getting back at me. A few pieces fell off recently, it gets stuck on certain screens, it goes REALLY slow now, and the battery has just decided to go super fast over the last week and die on me while I'm driving in the rainstorms we keep having every evening. Oh well... only 6 more days until the new one! Someone let me know if they find a good cover for the new phone!

I want to make a quick shout out to Miss Cecelia Bree Benich who was born yesterday! I can't wait to meet you Bree! If you're anywhere near as fun and cute as your brother (which I know you will be), we'll be best friends :)

That's all for now... have a good weekend everyone!