A Car Journey

When Ryan and I first started dating we both were car-less. It was funny because we would literally walk to most of the destinations we desired and were perfectly okay with it. I still would walk everywhere around the world as long as Ryan was my walking companion, but a car was like a far far away fantasy 4 1/2 years ago. Every once in a while we would snag a ride in his brother's car to go to who knows where and we were all lame about it and thought we were so damn cool.

Fast forward about a year later. Ryan's dad found us a beat up old Ram van and we paid like 500 bucks for it. Big spenders. It was THE best thing since sliced bread. We went mostly everywhere in that van. He would come pick me up from my Mom's house and we would cruise around and take our mini adventures around town and the sidewalks didn't miss us much at all. So just picture a big black and aqau van, that has only a driver's seat and a passenger seat. The whole inside was empty except for a bunch of weird stains on the carpet, carpet on the sides and pretty much everywhere and little aqua velvet curtains on the windows. The curtains were my favorite. We named the van Jeb after our big fat black cat. We brought Jeb home in that car, he was the babiest kitten then and we let him roam in the back the whole ride home. We spent a lot of time in the back of the van just getting away from the world for a little bit. Then poor 200,000 mile Jeb the van broke down.

Back to square one. We didn't have a vehicle for about another year-ish. Until we decided to make a rash decision and go to one of those hick used car lots that nobody really knows about. Bobby J's. This is where we got The 1999 Chevy Cavalier. This car was a literal hell on wheels. Not in a good way whatsoever. It has spent countless days in the shop fixing all it's insides. The engine blew and we were without a car AGAIN because it took a while to get it fixed. It's been a good year and a half since that happened and it's still running....sort of, if that's what you wanna call it. We never knew how much gas we had because our gas gauge was possessed along with the speedometer that would sometimes go wacky crazy while you're driving down the road. This car had it all.  Anyway aside from all that we were all happy slappy and then our air conditioning broke completely which wasn't so bad in the fall and winter, but the summer....don't even get me going especially with having a baby. It was just becoming unrealistic. Sigh. Around this time last year our car also got badly BADLY infested with german roaches. YAY. So not yay. We still managed to go on all our adventures and we made so many amazing memories in there don't get me wrong, it's just it was time...

Friday night. It was a casual Friday. My mom had actually taken Lola for the day so I could get some much needed deep cleaning done in the house. Ryan came home and immediately jumped on my laptop. After about 2 hours of his face being planted on the screen. He closed the laptop and we drove to the Toyota dealership down the street. We drove up in our Cavalier, surrounded by nice shiny, bugless cars. We met our sales guy, he pointed straight ahead to what was going to be our future car. I think we were both in straight up awe over this thing. So sleek and black and gigantic on the inside. It was time. We have needed this for a long time coming, especially with Lola coming along on all our adventures. We knew we needed something reliable and strong enough to endure the future unlike our past cars. So without further ado say hello to our 2011 Toyota Camry....

Picnics and New Beginnings

When Florida hands you a chilly but sunny day you say thank you very much and go on a picnic. Florida has actually been treating us with at least one chilly day a week the last few weeks. It's very odd because at this point I'm already melting into my shoes because the humidity is so god awful. I guess things could be way worse right? Like all the snow flurries going on all over the country, but I would be grateful to pile on clothes, instead of fighting a war with my wardrobe and finding something that won't make me turn into a pool of sweat. So anyway it was absolutely beautiful yesterday so Stephanie and I headed to Phillipee Park (one of my favorites) and broke out the picnic basket for some prime time picnicing. We grabbed some publix subs because why make your own picnic basket food when there is BOGO cheez-it's and goldfish that taste like breakfast?


I just can't even get enough of her criss crossing her feet like this lately ^ like it's her new thing and I'm eating it up.


We lounged under giant pine trees, blasted tegan and sara and soaked up probably one of the last chilly but sunny days Florida will offer us until December. It was a nice goodbye to winter and also a sweet welcoming hello to spring. So after our day at the park and getting beat up by the playground equipment with Lola we headed home and the boys (Ryan and Kyle) watched the honey while Stephanie and I spent the evening gathering plans for something that I'm truly excited to announce. We are going to do some testing with it and see how things go, but within the next few weeks Stephanie and I are going to be opening an Etsy shop selling everything crafty and beautiful, but our main focus for the shop is going to be handmade candles. I'll be discussing more of the details as the weeks go on, so keep a look out for links and such! The rest of this weekend is going to be jam packed so I probably will be taking a slight break from blogging up until next week-ish. So I hope you all have a lovely weekend and Happy Pi Day!

Thank you fleas

So we had to de-flea our house. I'm almost positive that bugs upon bugs are just attracted to us and maybe just like our living quarters. We have struggled so much with bugs in this apartment from german roaches, to annoying specks of ants, now fleas. We are clean people, trust me! We treated the cats like three months ago thinking to ourselves, well that was simple...one treatment and we are good to go. Little did we know it's a process a huge process especially when we have three cats that the fleas are taking joy rides on all throughout the day.
All the madness started last week when I started recognizing little red dots all over Lola's skin... I was horrified at first thinking it was chicken pox, but that's gonna be a different day I suppose because we realized it was flea bites. She doesn't seem bothered by it all, but mommy and daddy think otherwise. So while she stayed at my moms house on Sunday we spent the entire day of "relaxation" killing the little monsters and cleaning every last piece of fabric in our house. It was actually kind of nice because we did some much needed house cleansing. That means, discovering crumbs the size of Jupiter in our couch cushions and finding our spare car keys (finally) while vacuuming. That means, working our washer and dryer over time ALLLLL day long, but in the midst of it all making our house permanently smell like laundry which is a mega plus to me. That means, being "those" people that spring clean their house every year when we have never been those people, but now I kind of want to be one of those people if that makes any sense.
So fleas can suck, like suck really hard...but it turned out to be a successful day and I got brand new bed pillows out of it too! It also sped up the process of baby proofing our not so baby safe house.

So thanks fleas, even though you are a total nuisance and you're making my cats go crazy, you brought a few positives in the mix. You gotta take the bad with the good I guess. I've learned that's the best thing you really can do in sticky situations. And the cats? Well the cats are finally not licking themselves dry every second of every day since our bug guy came. So I'm guessing that's a good sign. Lola is still the fleas favorite candidate, but her bites are healing slowly and she's still the happy camper that she is.
And me? I'm loving our freshly vacuumed furniture (goodbye to the galaxy of crumbs forming under the cushions). I'm loving that this pushed me to go through my plethora of clothes and de-clutter and finally pack away the maternity wear. I'm loving being a spring cleaner and I'm loving these bug journeys in our apartment because we are always up for a challenge especially a bug war...we ALWAYS win. So this is goodbye fleas, your stay has been long over due.

Sincerely, three scratchy kitties, a polka dotted baby, and two overwhelmed parents.

Meet the Cat Children

People say that dog is man's best friend, and that may be so, but I have three furry family members that prove that cats can be man's (or should I say women's) best friend. Today I'm going to introduce my fuzzy four legged babies.
About three years ago, Ryan and I decided that getting an animal of some sort needed to happen. Birds were just too noisy, dogs were too much maintenance for our busy lives at the time, and I'm highly allergic to hamsters or any other rodent for that matter (learned that the hard way). I've always been a cat person, because I grew up with them. Never have I owned a dog, and would even know where to begin when it comes to caring for one. Cats get such a bad reputation for being stuck up, too skittish, or just downright mean. But the day we stepped into the pet store to find just the right cat, all those accusations went out the window.

Meet Jebidia

There were cages upon cages of kittens and older cats, some snoozing and some craving attention from the other soon to be cat owners. I looked down and upon my surprise there were too tiny all black kittens, one with green eyes and one with bright orange staring back at me, mewing. There was a sign taped to the cage stating the store was having a "black cat special" and the cats were "marked down" to a little bit cheaper than the cats surrounding them. As I was reading I overheard, a little girl pointing at the tiny black kittens and begging her dad for them. He looked her right in the eye and said that never would he ever have a black cat in his house and that bad luck would spread. I stared blankly at them as they walked away, and threw an eye roll in as well. Who really believes that junk anyway. I looked at Ryan and I said this is the one I want, pointing at the black kitten with yellow eyes. We wanted his twin brother so badly, but we're unsure about our ability to care for two animals in a tiny apartment that we shared with his two brothers at the time. So we toted Jebidia home.

Now that Jebidia is three years old, he is a whopping 17 pounds and he's very long so although he is hefty, it's pretty evenly distributing through his body. He is our panther and honestly THE sweetest and gentlest animal you will ever meet. When we come home from any of our daily adventures he meets us at the door with head nudges. He can be a bit goofy too like when he tries to fit into anything compact even though he is so large and when he licks our hair thinking we are cats too. He sleeps with me every single night, either on my head or literally spooning with me. He is our gentle giant.

Meet Zeus

We caved the next day. All I could think about when I brought Jeb home was his green eyed brother staring back at me when we scooped Jeb out of the cage. So the very next day we went back and brought home Zeus. And it was like a mini reunion. The brotherhood that they share is irreplaceable, it's absolutely adorable that still to this day they have each other's backs and they are the best of friends. The first few months were so hard because they were identical, but as time went by their personalities starting shining through and we always knew the difference. (Especially because Zeus is the slim one) yep, that's right Jeb is the fat twin :)
Zeus has a very peculiar personality, very very sweet, but polar opposites to Jeb. We always call Zeus "the intellectual one." He's just very sleek, and sly. He's extremely friendly, but I'm pretty sure if Zeus was a human being he would be like Albert Einstein or something. He's very territorial though of his surroundings and of us. Always marking his scent on everything and everybody.

Meet Wednesday

I think it was about a month or two later, that my friend and I were shopping at the pet store and it's like a ritual to us that every time we walk into a pet store we have to go admire the cats. We were walking down the line of cages when my eyes did a double take at the smallest little grey kitten in the entire world. Now, I have always always always wanted a solid grey cat. No clue why, but I always see them on products or commercials, but never in person. She was so tiny and after a phone call to Ryan begging him for this little creature, I was walking out the door with her. The first few days were rough, she didn't know what to do with these two black cats staring back at her. So she hid, and she hid, and she hid some more. Until Jeb and Zeus found all her hiding places and she was screwed. All they wanted to do was meet her and accept her as their little sister, but she wasn't too sure.
Now things have completely changed. Wednesday might as well have been from Jeb and Zeus's litter. They protect her and take care of her and she trusts them probably more than she trusts us. Ryan is her favorite though, she's a daddy's girl. She can be a bit prissy sometimes, but don't let her fool you she can hunt down a lizard in the house in a heartbeat, and won't give up until it's dead. Oh I forgot to mention that she is the size of a kitten still and she's three years old. How cute is that??