Things I want to do in my life before turning 30!

This year I turned 29.  I have 1 more year in my 20's and wanted to make sure that I made it a productive year.  I will actually be living and staying in one place all year and want to enter my 30's not plagued with the same issues as my 20's.  Some of those go away with simply getting older but some you have to work on.  So here are my "goals" for the year:
1. To get my health in order.  I have long feared going back to the doctor after a bad experience but have now gone twice in a month to figure out what's going on and fix it.  Luckily I found a great doctor on the first try (good recommendations always help) and we are working on it! I have also started physical therapy and yoga to alleviate some pain and once all the diagnosis come in will hopefully have an understanding on my other ailments.
2.  Finish my Event Certificate from GWU and be ready or start working in the event world.  I have 2 classes and my internship left.  I also have to compile my portfolio from an event I have already done.  I am really excited to get to work on all of this and finally be in the field that feels right for me!
3.  Take a vacation! I know this sounds silly since we have spent the better part of our marriage traveling the world but many of our vacations and trips have been dictated by that travel.  I want a completely relaxing, our choice vacation.  We are hoping to do this in November, so I am keeping my fingers crossed!
4.  Be better with money! I have been working on this for some time, but I want to get a better handle on budgeting (and sticking to it) and having our money work better for us.
5.  Lose Weight! This has been a goal all year and through my doctors visits I am learning that regardless of my efforts my health issues may be more to blame for not being able to accomplish this than I thought!  However combining that with hopefully a correct diagnosis will allow me to get this done!  I am excited to just feel better about myself when I look in the mirror instead of trying to figure out what I want to conceal, I would like to see what I want to show off!

Did anyone else make this kind of goal before they reach a certain age?  What are your goals?

Family, Classes, and Earthquakes...

I spent last week in Northern VA and DC seeing friends and family and taking a class at GWU for my event certificate.  I had a great time catching up with friends and spending the evening out having drinks, reminiscing about college and projecting the future with friends who have now been around for a decade or more.  I also found time to see my Uncle, Aunt and cousins for a short time one evening and was glad to hear about what the girls were up to and how they are prepping for school and catch up with what was new in their family.  Then I got to see my grandmother for a few hours before heading home and show her photos of our house and the many projects we have been doing.  All in all it was a great visit.
I would now normally tell you how wonderful my class was (and it was) and how informative it was (and it was) and how I can't wait to do an internship in a non-profit (I am) to see my newly found knowledge put to work, but that was not my excitement of the week.  I got to experience the earthquake while in DC at GWU.  It was quite the experience actually, at first you could see the fear racing across peoples faces, assuming a terrorist attack had happened.  Quickly however, due to a couple of people who worked for the government at the pentagon, we were told it was just an earthquake.  It struck a cord with me however, the people that experienced the terror attacks first hand, the fear they live with every day just boiling under the surface.  I will say my metro ride back to Vienna, VA where I was staying was quite the opposite of my morning ride.  In the morning you can hear a bin drop, everyone in their shells and shying away from people and trying not to disturb the silence.  On my way back, not 30 minutes after the earthquake (for fear of them shutting down I jumped on right away) the metro cars were filled with people, laughter, talking and all to the stranger across the aisle or a group of people chatting in the center of the car.  It was amazing actually, people smiled and reassured people it was ok.  I wish it didn't take a terrorist attack or natural disaster to bring people together the way they do.
The east coast got a double whammy as you know with the earthquake and then the hurricane that came through, luckily my family fared pretty well with only very minor damage (some screens blown out in the screened in porch) and only lost power for a few hours.  The power loss not being far longer was amazing since they usually lose power when the wind blows the wrong way and its off for a long time.
This is the first year in 7 years that Brian and I have not had to deal with a hurricane heading straight for our house.  Mainly because instead of living a mere 20 minutes from the ocean, its now 5 hours.  I can't say its something I am missing going in to the this fall... I hope all are safe and sound and ok after both natural disasters this week.

Our New Master Bathroom!

This project was started 30 days ago today! Our original time line was ~2 weeks give or take a few days and our only real set back was 1 1/2 weeks of no air conditioning upstairs and it was just to hot to work.
Here is what we did:
-removed builder grade mirror/fixtures
-removed wallpaper
-removed old flooring
-fixed floor, wall and ceiling problems
-prepped and tiled floors
-painted ceiling
-painted walls
-replaced mirrors
-replaced quarter round
-caulked trim, tub and shower and around vanity
-painted trim
-replaced one of the light fixtures & all other "hardware" (we had already done a lot of this before including all the towel racks, tp holder and faucets)
-add shelves on the back wall for more storage
-get bins for the back wall shelves
-get new shower curtain
-get new towels

As you can see it was quite the project, but not a complete gut, it seems every time we redo a bathroom its a little more, maybe next time we will tear it all apart.

Now here are the photos of the new bathroom before I put anything back in to it:

And here it is with everything all moved back in:

We are excited to be moved back in but we aren't quite done.  We still need to take the door off and repaint it due to it coming off its track (its a pocket door) and it got pretty scratched up and unfortunately the trim paint didn't match like we had hoped so we have to paint the window trim too.  But overall they don't affect our ability to be in the bathroom now (when we take the door off we will use the other one for a day or so).  I am also not 100% on the bins I have chosen for the shelves, a few may be changed out over the next few days!  Hope you like all that we have done!

5 Years!

Brian and I were at our rehearsal dinner 5 years ago today.  I had a ton on my mind and could not sit still, nope not worries about who I was marrying but about logistics.  For those that know me well, this is no surprise.  I constantly think about these things, how they will go, how they could go better and what I can do to improve or change them to be the best decision.  Our wedding did not go off without a hitch and it wasn't perfect but I learned a lot.  One of the main things I learned is things go wrong even with the best laid plans, and believe my psychotic planning was incredible.  You just can't control everything.  Needless to say I believe that it was the day I decided to become an event planner, even though I didn't admit it to myself for a few years.  I had a "weekend of" coordinator who totally dropped the ball and even almost burned down the church, she was awful.  I hope for those who I have helped or planned their events they did not have the same feeling I had during/afterwards about logistics.  While even a great planner wouldn't have set aside all of my obsessing, a really good one would have anticipated it and mitigated it.  Needless to say in the end we were still married and I think most everyone had a pretty decent time.
Welcome to 5 years later and we have traveled most of the globe (several places in Europe, the Carribean, the Middle East, China and several places in the USA), met some incredible people, renovated and sold our first house and moved 1/2 way across the country.  Its been an interesting but fun 5 years.  We aren't without our trials and troubles, but overall I think we have done pretty well.
So here is what I have learned:
1. Each person needs to stand on their own 2 feet and the relationship can survive and thrive.
2. Outside influences can ruin a good thing and bring you down, get rid of them or at least keep them at bay and things will improve
3. Vacations are NOT overrated.
4. In the middle of all arguments start a major home renovation (haha yeah we have a tendency to do this).
5. Learn to express your expectations without using the word expectation.

I figured I'd stop there, 5 for 5.  Of course there are basics of being kind, gracious, don't nag if possible, share the burden of the household evenly, and everything is better if you start everything by saying I love you.

I hope everyone has a great Friday as I will be spending the day with Brian doing some of our favorite things, 90 min hot stone massages, sushi, the mall (don't worry I just need to pick up some jeans that were getting hemmed, not forcing Brian to shop again), working on home projects and the melting pot! Oh and cake :-)! Happy 5th Anniversary to us!

Volleyball, Sunburn and our A/C

Life has been INCREDIBLY hectic for us this month, hence the lack of post updates but things are slowing down (somewhat) this week and next so I figured I'd write and tell you what we have been up to.

We are in the middle of remodeling our bathroom upstairs.  Our original schedule called for us to be done in 12 days, since we started it on July 16, I would say that didn't happen.  But not for our lack of trying or having days to work on it.  What it came down to was our upstairs A/C unit is broken and we can't stand being up there for very long.  Brian installed one of the 2 vanity lights and made the blanket statement that we weren't working on the bathroom anymore until there is A/C upstairs again.  The average temp. for the upstairs without A/C has been about 88 and humid, not awful, but not fun to remodel in.  The good news is the unit should be fixed this week, the bad news is its taking forever because we are having the home warranty that came with our place do it (and pay for it for the most part) and they move at ant speed.  I am very glad our realtor advised us to get a house with 2 A/C units!  Needless to say we aren't out a ton of money because of it but we are having to camp out in our living room.  We moved our guest bed mattress down and butted it up with the couch and have made basically one big bed, there is a small difference in height but it keeps the dogs from jumping back and forth between the two.  So while sleeping on the floor the dogs have decided that they are people too and are sleeping on the bed, using it for their play time and napping on it, needless to say I am cleaning the sheets every few days!  Hopefully I will get a call early this week that the part is in and we can get our A/C back!

Now on to what else we have been up to.  I played in my first volleyball tournament since college.  It was an outdoor grass 3's tournament.  My friend Tracy and I picked up another girl and played in women's BB.  We did alright, but not great.  We give ourselves a break a bit though, 1. we are indoor players, and outdoor playing is very different (setting is completely different), 2. it was over 100 that day, it was killer.  A girl from our pool even got heat stroke and had to leave, it was bad.  3. we picked up someone we didn't know, so that just didn't mesh in the end.  4. we had back to back games at the heat of the day.  Our last match we were evenly matched for the part but we had already played right before that and they had just relaxed in the shade with water... So what I learned was your first tournament back you shouldn't play in 100degree weather, you shouldn't pick a random person and the sun can be a killer even with sunscreen when you are sweating that much.  My forehead is bright pink.  I don't burn too easily but man did I get it bad on Saturday.  Luckily I am finally finding relief this evening, hopefully by tomorrow I can show my face in public without looking like Samantha on Sex and the City when she got that facial peel and went to Carrie's book launch... at least I am not peeling.  The rest of me is pretty ok, although I am feeling a bit of age coming through.  Its just not as easy to recover, now I am guessing part of that is this isn't my usual thing to do, but man those 18 year old girls were just still going after doing this all day... evil!

So hopefully I will have A/C soon so that I can finish up the bathroom and make a post of pics! It really looks great!