Oasis in the Desert Heat

The Before:

The After:

How it got to looking the way it does now:

Pool boy aka my hard working husband

the not so lucky frog found among other not so alive animals at the bottom of our pool. We won't even tell you that we found frogs, mice, dead birds and too many bugs to count.

Somehow wearing a shower cap made the not-so-plesant job seem just a little more fun. (You should try it sometime. It is true what a difference a tiny piece of plastic can do.) Mark and I lugged bucket after bucket of mucky water out of the bottom of the pool. It didn't look like that much was left after the pool pump got most of it out, but we stopped counting after 25 buckets each!

Extreme Home Makeover-Newlywed Edition

Most people, when they get married typically get their cars decorated, right.!? Well we did too. Although by the time we saw the car it did not look like this it was a melted runny mess. I actually did not know what it looked like until Dawn posted pictures of it on her blog. The kids all told me that Chris was the one responsible for it, but I'm sure he had some help. . . Anyways the windows were so messy that I couldn't see out of them. Mark wanted me to drive but I said I would not until we went through a car wash-good luck-we had to travel over 30 miles to the nearest one. (I think I still have an Oreo cookie down in the crack by my windshield wipers. Maybe it will come in handy one of these days.)

Well, their adventures did not stop with the car. Nope. Not even close. When we arrived home from our honeymoon, it was very late or maybe even early early morning. We were tired and glad to be done traveling, but the house seemed different to me. To start, there was tin foil covering the entryway glass. Weird, I thought. Maybe Dad thought that would be an added safety measure since we were not home for all that time. Upon unlocking the door the strange russelling noise began. "Um, what is that? Mark why don't you go first-what is going on?" Well this is part of what we saw. . .

someone. . .or a bunch of someones. . . completely changed the look of our kitchen to a space age stainless steel kitchen. From our chandelier to our carpet, counter-tops to covered doorways. They covered everything. How could they have known I'd always wanted stainless steel appliances? (Loved that they covered the toaster cord too)

Wow! We wandered through the house surveying the damage. Although the bulk of it was in the kitchen we found cupboards opened with sports balls all over the living room. Our T.V. was going to be a little difficult to watch with all that tinfoil on it. We were tired and determined that we would take care of it in the morning so we just went to bed.

More surprises in bed! We found little rolled up tin foil balls between the fitted sheet and mattress. Our sheets had been short sheeted too! (Mom, I heard that was your idea. . .) Luckily in the morning I also discovered on the night stand were loads of goodies to enjoy. (I heard that Braden wanted us to have something nice so he took it upon himself to gather us up some yummy treats leftover from the reception. Thanks Braden!!)

We woke up ready to conquer the tinfoil and found it was much more elaborate than we had originally thought. We kept finding tin foil everywhere (and still do actually). We opened the cupboard to get a drink and found this

Our silverware was also covered-each piece individually wrapped. (We didn't actually take the tinfoil off the silverware since we thought it would take way too long and besides, we got new stuff for our wedding. We just loaded up the silverware and put it in dad's new work office. Wonder if he's found it yet? :)
Breakfast anyone? Yeah, even the eggs inside the carton inside the refrigerator were covered in tin foil. I can't even imagine how long it took them to do this. It seriously must have taken all day. I mean it took the 2 of us 3 hours to unwrap most of it. We actually took a break in between to sculpt tinfoil clothing for each other. Project Runway, here we come!
Some of my favorite things they wrapped (which still make us laugh even as we write this) are the dishes in the dishwasher (which were dirty, by the way-YUCK! :)), my rock collection with each rock individually wrapped (and I have a lot of heart shaped rocks), the papers on our kitchen counter, the pens in the pen holder-all individually wrapped, the cupboard and drawer handles. I also kept finding little wadded up tin foil balls in everything for weeks to come, in our shoes and my coat pockets. I loved how they even wrapped the toilet paper roll but then re-wrapped it with the paper covering so you couldn't tell until you went to use it. I can't believe the effort and detail they invested in their prank! I don't know who had more fun-them wrapping it and imagining us finding it or us discovering it and having to unwrap it all. But hey, when we were done we had one way cool tin foil ball (and memories to last a lifetime-thanks!)

That's amor

Scandalous! Here start the adventures of married life for Mark and Charity Miller, but the plane
tickets and cruise passes do not reflect this.


For those who do not know, we went on a cruise to the Mexican Rivera for our honeymoon. Okay and we loved it!! We could just end this post at that, but we wanted to post some pictures to remember it and make you all a little bit jealous :).


The ship was amazing! For those of you who have never cruised before it is hard to imagine that all that can be inside a boat. From 3 swimming pools and 5 hot tubs to a mini-golf course overlooking the ocean (I got a hole in one and won the game!) and rock climbing wall. They had an ice skating rink, theater and a promenade filled with shops and restaurants. They had dance clubs and karaoke competitions. And there were so many rooms. We liked ours. It even had a nice window view. The bathroom was very practical (I guess)-you could use the toilet, brush your teeth and shower all at the same time. I guess they figured you wouldn't be spending much time in there.


As for food-we were never hungry and most of the time stuffed. The first couple of days we loved the options and ate as many things as we could fit on a plate (or two or three). Breakfasts and lunches were generally buffet style and dinners were 5 star dining every night. We loved our waiters Achmaad and Ben. Mark was a little more adventurous when it came to ordering new things off the menu: escargot, lamb and watermelon gazpacho are a few things he ordered. (The escargot was amazing by the way!) I stayed safe and ordered salmon, strawberry cheesecake and seafood pasta. We both loved lobster night! Wow, that was yummy. Achmaad even snuck us a third lobster tail to share! By the end we were sick of food and all wanted was normal stuff. Our serving size shrunk considerably and we stopped ordering midnight room service (oh but right now a vegetarian panini sounds amazing. Oh room service. . .)

Our first port of call was Cabo. We tested our skill on the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific Ocean in a two person sea kayak. And, if we must say so ourselves, we were good. Neck-and-neck with our guide the whole way there. We saw whales and sea lions. We snorkeled and saw many tropical fish (until Mark lost his snorkel to the bottom of the ocean-oops). Relaxing on the beach and swimming in the ocean was refreshing. Mazatlan, here we come!




Mazatlan brought on an excursion we can't wait to repeat. We went on a zipline canopy adventure. If the drive up to the first zipline was an indication of the events to come, I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with it. We almost drove off the edge of the ravine (even our driver was a little shaken with how close we got). The first zipline was absolute scary for me and a complete adrenaline rush for Mark. Phew, one down, 8 to go. By the time the third one came around I got it figured out and Mark was already on to flying down the zipline upside down (I thought I was doing good just going right side up). We would definitely do that again sometime. We rappelled down at the end and headed back to the ship. Yipee!













In Puerta Vallarta we decided to relax on the beach and enjoy the the water, that is if the beach vendors would leave us alone for 5 minutes. That got annoying fast! I put my Spanish to good use and used my new husband as my excuse not to have my hair braided or buy and of the jewelry. (I actually thought he wasn't understanding my conversation and that I had used him as my scapegoat but when I finally confessed, he already knew. Busted!)

On the way back to LA I thought it would be fun to go to a towel folding class. (Mark has some amazing turtle towel folding skills-you should ask him about it sometime. He will act modest and try to deny it, but check your nearest you tube for a demonstration soon.) He was a good sport because he really didn't want to go. Mark wanted to go ice skating, but the way back home was very windy and walking was hard enough. I couldn't imagine trying to skate. The water in the pools was splashing out 7 feet out of the pool and by the time we docked in LA the pools were almost empty.

I'm not sure we will ever again have the chance to watch whales out our breakfast window or while we exercised at the health spa, but we sure enjoyed it while it lasted. One morning I think I even saw a shark!

It was hard to leave all that behind and go back to real life. I mean we kind of got used to being together. The longest time we were apart in our first nine days of being married was 20 whole minutes. The only bad thing is that it had to come to an end.