Herbie's B-day '08

Jeremy's grandpa and grandma live in Utah so we get to see them often. We had a birthday dinner for him to celebrate before he went in for surgery on his back. It's a good thing we live so close to them becaue Herb was in the hospital for 6 weeks! Jeremy had to drive his grandma to the hospital every morning and then we would pick her up at night and either take her home or bring her over to my parents for dinner and then drive her home. Jeremy didn't get a lot of work done during those 6 weeks between driving to the hospital twice a day, us visiting, and going to the Dr. appointments at the hospital. However, Jeremy was glad to be able to help out. Herb and Genive are like his second parents as they had a huge part in helping raise him.

Cute Herbie blowing out his candles

My mom had a neat idea of making Herb a book complied of everyones' thoughts and memories about him. Jeremy emailed his family and asked them to write something that they wanted to about Herb. Once they emailed them in we printed them out on colored paper, added stickers etc. and put them in a binder. He enjoyed reading all the great memories and funny stories everyone contributed!

Herb is one of a kind...he really is a genuine, generous, down to earth, honest and kind man! I am lucky that he has been such a big influence in Jeremy's life because he has been a great example of how to live and Jeremy has many of these qualities also.

I was laughing so hard when Spencer showed me his mini skateboard! I've never seen such a tiny one. So Jeremy and I ditched the b-day party for awhile and decided to "skate or die dude."

Camping at Mirror Lake

Jeremy and I went camping with Michele, Barry, Janessa, and Spencer at Mirror Lake in August '08. It is such a pretty place to camp! We had lots of fun hiking, biking, tossing the baseball, making smores, cooking breakfast, and playing cards. We actually went camping at Mirror Lake (in a different area) about 2 months before this camping trip, but didn't take any pictures!! That was a fun trip too...we rode our bikes around, tossed the football, the kids went fishing (we weren't as close to the lake though), Michele tripped over a rock and bloodied up her knee, we stayed up late laughing around the campfire and I called Michele Unis :)

We had fun walking around the entire lake on this bridge and other trails. We also took our mountain bikes out for a spin.

Tica was in heaven chasing squirrels all over the campsite, but they easily escaped right up the trees.

The funniest thing was when one squirrel out-smarted her and ran up one side of the tree...while she was staring intently up the tree it ran down the other side of the tree and made a clean get away! Poor Tica...she never gets the squirrel but she never gives up either.

Spencer, Michele & Tica...look close and you can see Barold laying down in the tent.

We had a nice, secluded spot for our tent...in between lots of trees to block the morning sun.

Jeremy & Spencer were the pyro maniacs playing with the fire whenever they could....

Spencer, Janessa with Tica & Barold

Vacation to Myrtle Beach '08

Garry (Jeremy's dad) planned a fun vacation with the whole Cunningham clan June '08. He origionally wanted to go the year before, but the entire family couldn't make it so we all decided on the following summer. Jeremy and I thought Myrtle Beach would be a great place for everyone to meet...it was only about 3 hours from our house (we wouldn't have to buy plane tickets or rent a car)! Yeah, well that plan didn't work out so well for us because we moved back to Utah! So we ended up having to by plane tickets and renting a car, but it was worth it because we had fun. Our house was still for sale in NC and all of our furniture was there...so Herb and Genive stayed with us at our house the night we flew into NC and then we rented a car the next day and drove to Myrtle Beach.

We stayed in a condo across from the beach with Jermy's grandparents and everyone else shared condos closer to the beach. We had a great place with two huge simming pools and a hot tub.

Jer grillin' up some dinner.

It was nice having a kitchen because we were able to make lunches to take to the beach or we came inside from the pool for lunch. We also ate a few dinners there to save money :) We had fun celebrating Father's Day and Genive's b-day while we were there too. We all went to church on Father's Day...Garry doesn't get to be with his kids often especially all at once since everyone lives in seperate staets, so I think it was nice for him.

We went minuture golfing with Junior, Alicia and their kids, and Herb and Genive. It was such a hot day...I'm suprised we didn't all dehydrate! Notice that little orange score card in Jeremy's hand? Well, he STILL has it...he is keeping it as a reminder of the one and only time he beat me in miniture golf! Hey, I don't blame him he needs proof somehow :) One night we all went to a dinner theater show which was awesome! I've never been to one of those and I had so much fun. We ate dinner while watching this show that was almost like a rodeo or something, but they had the audience really involved and cheering because we were on teams. It was a blast! We went on Father's Day so the fathers got a discount. The food was pretty good too. Jeremy couldn't stop laughing because anyone who knows me knows how picky I am with meat...I like it cooked beyond well done, pretty much dry and burned. And I can be pretty picky about meat at a restaurant (you will never see me eating meat at a chinese place!) Well, they bring out our chicken and it's a whole baby chicken with the legs on it and everything (minus the head) kind of like a rotiserie chicken I guess. I thought 'that's pretty gross, but it's ok I can just pick at it and get some good meat' until they turned the lights out for the show!! I had no idea we were going to be eating in the dark! Oh-well the rest of the food was good and the apple turn over for dessert was the best I've ever had! Jeremy and I went to a BBQ place called Little Pigs with his grandparents one night for dinner...it was definitely nothing to write home about!! But the funny thing is Herb always got the name mixed up and every time we drove by it he would say "oh there's 3 little piggies". We left a day earlier than everyone else because we needed to drive to our house and do some cleaning and mow the law etc. before we flew out. So the morning we were leaving we went to say goodbye to everyone in their condo parking lot. We were waiting around for Junior, nobody knew where he was. All of a sudden he called his dad's cell phone and told him that he was chasing a robber that just broke into their condo. So we all ran up to the condo to see it ransacked and stuff everywhere. They thought a lot of their stuff was stolen, but could have been worse if Junior didn't walk in on the guy and scare him forcing him to jump 2 stories off the balcony and run. On our drive home we got the good news that the idiot thief left the duffle bag behind to make his get away. Way to go Junior you saved the day!

Happy Birthday to us...'08

Jeremy and I both get to celebrate our birthdays in May, except I am a Taurus and he is a gemini.

Yippee...I got my peanut M&M's...too bad Jeremy couldn't find a larger bag!

I was excited to get my Ipod alarm clock and stereo thing. I hate waking up to BEEP! That is the most annoying thing ever, it puts you in such a better mood to wake up to music :)

Jeremy looks like a little kid waiting to open his gifts

Just what he wanted ties!! I swear he is the hardest person to shop for and think of things to get. I'm a pretty creative person too!

I knew he could use a new swim suit and blue is his favorite color. I also knew he could use a camelback for mountain biking...poor guy would have to keep up with me just so he could get some water from mine :)

Lindsie's birthday is also in May so my mom and dad just had one big birthday dinner to celebrate all 3 of us. We had fun singing to eachother and sharing a cake.

Happy Cinco De Mayo

ARRRIBBBAAA! ARRIBBBAAA!!! Our friends had a Cinco de Mayo party (5/5/08) at their house. We thought it would be funny to dress up, my dad had these great authentic outfits from Guatamala and the masks have been in the family for many generations :) I'm pretty sure we were the only ones laughing when we showed up to the party dressed like this...I guess the joke was on us, especially when we tried to eat through the tiny holes in the masks. Eventually we had to take off our disguises so we could enjoy the food. Hey at least we know how to have fun!!

My name is Megusta and yes I know I have a mustasche...

This is my husband Paco de la Torre

Another Adventurous move!!

We had planned on living in NC for 3 to 5 years and then moving back to Utah. Well, our plans changed as plans do! You could call it an impulse decision, but one that made sense (sort of...) Jeremy had talked with his company about becoming an independent contractor for them and figured he could work from home. He could get more work done and get paid more (who wouldn't want to do that?) As he begin thinking about working from home, he figured he could work from home in Utah just as good as working from home in North Carolina. So he begin negotiating that with his work and they decided it was fine as long as he flew to NC every month or so and trained another person. They gave Jeremy a 6 month contract with the possiblity of renewing it, but we hoped he would find a job in Utah by then. All of this happened in about 1 month, from the idea, to us talking about it, to it happening and us moving!! So...we talked with our realtor and put our house up for sale and left the next day! It was the first week of February '08 and we loaded up our Toyota Tacoma with everything we could fit. We bought a bunch of rubbermaid containers to put our clothes in and stacked those in the bed of the truck. We shoved shoes and other items in the back seat. We tried to think of everything we would need (for who knows how long) since we were leaving the rest of it in our house. We brought my vinly machine and vinyl rolls, our huge saw, my sanders, skis/snowboard and winter stuff, and all our mountin biking stuff...with the mountin bikes on the back in their hitch. I am so mad I didn't take a picture of the truck, but it was packed so full you couldn't even open the doors without something falling out!!

We all took turns driving and Tica was a big help! Jeremy and I decided to try and drive straight through and not waste time or money on hotels, especially since we had so much stuff in the bed of our truck we knew we couldn't stop anywhere. We left early in the morning and stopped at McDonalds drive through for Breakfast. As we pulled away and I stared to drink my Diet Coke (yes, Diet Coke is a breakfast drink) Jeremy said something funny and I tried to hold in my drink, but because I was also laughing I ended up spewing it all over the dash board and everywhere. Then I was choking and coughing so bad he had to pull over and I had to get out...I eventually stopped coughing about 10 minutes later and we were on our way again. McDonalds was 5 minutes from our house so we hadn't even gone far...this was just the beginning of our adventure :)

Notice all the nice leg room the passanger had! And the seat was scooted up as far as it could go too because we needed all the room we could get in the back! It was definitely a cozy ride...good thing we all get along so well. Things were going pretty smooth...we were making good time and when one of us was driving the other one was sleeping. We usually ate in the truck, but I let Jeremy talk me into stopping at Shoney's, he said it was really good and he ate there all the time when he was growing up and hadn't eaten there in a long time. I was hesitant because it looked a little shady to me, but we stopped and parked the truck where we could keep an eye on it. The food was gross and the service was slow...we ended up mad that we wasted the time and money. When Jeremy said "I remembered that place being a lot better, maybe it was because I was a kid and we didn't go out often" I almost punched him :) We were back on the road again driving straight through and thinking this is great we are going to make it to Utah in 36 hours! Well, pretty soon we hit a bad snow storm in Arizona...it slowed us down a lot! The truck was slidding around everywhere, some roads were closed causing us to find alternate routes which took us out of our way and then they ended up getting closed. We decided to back track through all the bad snow we just went through and head a different direction through Arizona and cut into Utah. Hmmm...that didn't help so much...the snow storm was worse and people were slidding off everywhere! We were driving 5 miles an hour only to find the other way into Utah was closed! We had no choice but to stop and get a hotel. It was about 10 pm when we started to UNLOAD THE ENTIRE TRUCK into the hotel in the blizzard. What a nightmare! The stupid door to the hotel would lock so everytime we got another load of stuff, a rubbermaid container, a mountain bike etc we had to get our key out and swipe it then open the door and walk down the hall to our room. We were trying to be quiet and lay low too since we had a dog with us! Of course she was going nuts and following us back and forth. As I was trying to carry our pillows and suitcases and open the outside enterance to the hotel with my key, I dropped our pillows into the puddle of mud water that was right by the door (you had to straddle it while opening the door to avoid stepping in it (it was at least 6 inches of water) ARGGGH!! We finally unpacked the entire truck and filled up our room with the stuff. Now it was midnight and we needed dinner, so we went to McDonalds and brought our food back to the hotel while Jeremy watched the end of the super bowl (Giants Vs. Patriots) I think he was secretly excited we had to get a hotel. We couldn't get the internet to work so we weren't able to check out maps or routes of ways to go in the morning. Finally we went to sleep and woke up the next morning to pack the truck up again and hit the snowy roads. The major storm had stopped but the roads were still bad and it took us a lot longer than normal to finish the drive. We were so happy when we finally made it to my parent's house!

Merry Christmas '07

We spent our second Christmas together in our NC house...just Jer, me and Tica and the sunshine. No white Christmas there :(

Who says you have to have snow and cold weather to enjoy sitting by a cozy fire? Tica could sit by the fire, under her blanket on a 100 degree day!

Jer was excited to get his cottenelle butt wipes in his stocking...those things are awesome! The head lamp has nothing to do with them :) it is for camping!

Santa knows meg loves her peanut M&M's !!

I was so happy to complete my nativity set this year!! I love this nativity set, it's my favorite one I've ever seen. Now I have all the parts to it I can't wait to set it up next year. I'm not sure Jeremy will know what to do without having a "for sure idea" of what to get me...each year he would get me a part of the set for a gift (he even gave me some of it for my birthday one year).

Margo & Rick gave us matching Last Chance sweatshirts. We are hoping that next year they will give us the property to build a house on their lakes! We think the sweatshirts were just a hint :)

Tica was very suspicious of the present Grammy & Grampy gave her. Of course my parents sent Tica a gift, after all they call her their "granddog".

She ended up loving the toy and wouldn't stop squeeking it. They also sent her a bone that had her entertained the rest of the day.

We learned our mistake of making a Christmas Feast to feed 100 last year and decided to scale back. We were able to eat dinner at a normal time and still have the evening to enjoy eachother and our gifts.