Tropical Thailand

I just realized that I never really showed the pictures of our island adventures in Thailand. What gorgeous places we went to! We spent the first part on the island of Phuket and the second part on a very small island by the name of Koh Phi Phi Don (goes by "pee-pee" for short).

I found out that if we are ever to be stranded on a deserted island that my husband would be able to provide food and drink for us. He knows how to climb palm trees, and he can open coconuts within a minute.


Celebrating our one-year anniversary, woo-hoo! We had a great day filled with rock hiking, paddle ball, swimming, opening coconuts, surfing, and of course "splurging" on a nice meal. By the way, the dress that I'm wearing in this picture I had made in Vietnam. I can't wait for summer to get here so that I can wear it!

On a hike to the other side of the island...

Our little bungalow

We took a boat ride to Phi Phi's neighboring island, Koh Phi Phi Ley. No one lives on this island and it is beautiful! We hit a lot of snorkeling spots along the way and did a lot of "oohing" and "aahhing" at the impressive cliffs and crystal clear water.





We spent part of a day kayaking to different coves and beaches on Phi Phi. I forgot how tiring kayaking was...wow did we get tired. But we found an awesome beach so it was well worth the trek.




Later that same day Brian and I went to the other side of the island to swim with sharks...reef sharks. We had heard that they were always at this specific spot so we decided to check it out. Actually, I had Brian check it out first and then I mustered up the courage to get out there myself. I'm glad that I did, it was pretty cool. Well, this brings us to the end of our travels. I can't believe we've been home for almost two months now. I already can't wait til our next trip :-)
Australia? New Zealand? Africa? South America? Who knows, but I'm looking forward to it!

Handy Man

As I've mentioned before, I have quite the handy man on my hands. Brian loves projects and creating things, and I love the ideas he comes up with! We had been getting pretty tired of not having any sort of entertainment center/console and weren't up to spending $900 on the one that we liked, so Brian decided that he should make one. It was perfect this way because we were able to make it the correct size for our cute little shack. Many thanks to my father-in-law too who stayed after work many times so that he and Brian could work on this project. We LOVE our new entertainment center! Who would have thought that it would be so nice to have a place to put DVDs and photo albums? We have yet to decide what color we should paint it/stain it, so we are letting it hang out in the nude for a while until we decide. Here it is in all of it's glory...

Bali video

Peter and Jessica put together a few minutes of our Bali adventure and have it posted on their blog.  Click here to check out the video!

Beautiful fall day

My mom recently got a new Canon Digital SLR, so we decided to play around with it the other day.  I haven't shot with that kind of camera since high school.  I've totally forgotten all that Mr. Howell taught me in photo class...aperture is set to what?  How fast should the shutter speed be, etc.?  Needless to say, I shot in the green mode which does all of that for you.  I think I should spend some time this afternoon brushing up on my camera knowledge.  Anyway, here are a few of the shots we got of my sister and her cute little ones (and her one on the way).  Oh, and I also need some help with my editing skills...maybe that's because I don't have any yet...photoshop, here I come...

I'm gonna be an Uncle again!

We just got word yesterday that my brother and sister-in-law are going to be getting a little boy (hence the reason I am going to be an uncle...it's kind of a family joke) from Ethiopia! They have been in this whole adoption process for a year and a half now and have been so patient throughout it. They should be going to get the little man in about two months...we are so excited about this new addition to our family. Congrats Reno's!

Cambodia

As I mentioned briefly before, Cambodia was, well, a bit crazy.  Honestly though, that was part of the experience.  Everywhere you went you could be sure that someone was trying to scam you, even the littlest of kids.  For example, Brian was pulled into one of these schemes by a ten year old boy who was spouting off facts about California and United States (part of his great plan to catch our attention)..."Sacramento is the capital of California, there are 50 states, Barack Obama is going to be your next president, etc."  Anyway, all that to say that he ended up beating Brian at a game of tic-tac-toe, and we had to buy a pack of post cards because we lost the bet, it was pretty funny in the end. 

On the other hand, Cambodia was beautiful.  Our main reason for visiting was to see the Temples of Angkor in Siem Reap.  Here's a bit of information for you:

• The temples were built between 900-1200 A.D.
• Angkor Wat (the main temple) is said to be the worlds largest single religion monument.
• Angkor had been the largest pre-industrial city in the world with an urban sprawl of 3000 square kilometers (that's the size of LA). 
• 72 major temples or other buildings are in this area. 

Here are some of the things we saw...

Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

Traditional Khmer food

See the man perched on the top of that big truck?  That was a much seen sight around the streets of Cambodia.

Prah Khan temple below

Vietnam

As I mentioned before, we loved Vietnam! The town we stayed in was just so charming, I think that's the best way to describe it.

On a ride to China Beach to try and find some surf. There's something about bike riding through Vietnam that is just so fun. If I ever find a bicycle from Vietnam, I'm buying it. They're so cool. (i'm having a font problem and I can't change it back to my normal font, blogger has done this to me before. I don' know why, it drives me nuts)

Believe it or not, that is a fishing boat...we saw them in action.

Around town photos...

Vietnamese iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk...so delicious! We looked forward to it every morning.

"Pho" Vietnamese soup that is so yummy!

Fish with lemon grass, steamed in a banana leaf, also very tasty.

Brian, picking out his suit styles and getting measured. We had such a great time with our tailors. They were such nice, fun ladies.