The tour

I've finally snapped a few pictures from around our area. They're not great, they're all taken from the car window and they might be a bit boring. I really don't travel much further than a mile from our place to get anyways  which is great for my gas tank. I cannot figure out NESW for the life of me and I'm still getting used to having the ocean to the East and not to the West. My geographical bearings are so off, no matter how hard I try. If you'd like to stick around, I will attempt to give you the grand tour of our new home.
Here goes:

This is our "view." We look into a retirement building, and to the left of us just over those hedges, is the park where we spend a lot of our time.

This is our building. If you are a non-resident of our building, you have to have your car valet. One awesome thing about the valet is, if you have a crapload of stuff and can't carry it all yourself, you can drop it off to them and they will bring it up for you. It's pretty sweet. Especially when you have a car full of Ikea crap.

This is our pool. If we're not at the park or Target, we're here. And I love that everyone here works because that means it's empty all day, every (week)day.

This is our lobby. We have a security/front desk man to the right. You have to check in with them before you can come up and they have to call us every time to make sure we authorize it. It's kind of a pain after a while but I do like the safety of it.

Now that you've seen our place, let's take you to the beach. Literally a few yards after exiting our building, you enter onto the causeway..what the crap is a causeway, I still have no idea. I just call it a giant bridge. So you're driving on the causeway for about 30 seconds and now you're driving over a boat canal, and you can now see the ocean. I'm not even being a little sarcastic when I say the beach is a stones throw away. It takes all of 2 minutes to get there. Once you exit the causeway, you've now hit Sunny Isles. Sunny Isles is a few miles strip long of housing and hotels that run parallel with the coast. If we can afford it, we want to move there and hopefully, if not live on the beach, be right across the street. If you keep heading south on this street (Collins Ave) it will take you all the way down to South Beach/Miami beach (I think). I'm still trying to figure out where everything is.

(Sunny Isles/Collins Ave)

Downtown Miami, it's at least 30min from us. Not close at all.

So there you have it, a quick tour of our current living situation. I'd take you around the rest of our town, but it's not quite as exciting. It's just a bunch of palm trees, apartment buildings, and shops. If you really want to get into it, which I don't know who would? but you can google maps and street view it. Thanks for sticking around, peace out.

Our new home

Jealous?

It's beautiful, right? Sometimes I can't believe I only live 2 minutes from this. The beaches here are nothing like the beaches back home. I'm sorry to say, but the beach here kicks CA beaches butt. I think I've converted :) The ocean is blue, blue, blue and the sand is almost white. It's like egg shell white ha. The water is still a little chilly, but definitely bearable.
When we first stepped on to sand, Mr. E was not a fan. Once he saw his daddy walking on it, he got in to it and loved it. By the end of the day he was pouring buckets of it on himself.

A very short clip of Mr. E at the beach the other day

If any of you want to come visit, you've got a place to stay :)

Oh, I also re-painted this table I found on Craigslist for $80. And I'm quite happy with the results.

Before

After

Baby boy turned 2!

My little, tiny, squishy baby, is now two years old! I cannot believe my baby is no longer a baby. He's this stubborn, sweet, non-talking, always on the go, car loving, couch climbing, always jumping, toddler boy. This boy knows how to make me smile from ear to ear and and laugh my head off. He's not much of a cuddle-r, but when he does, it makes the world stop and I melt just a little bit.
His birthday was soooo- low key, almost non existent. It fell on Easter, so I guess that helped with making it feel like it was a special day. Our day started off with a small Easter egg hunt, getting ready for church and going, going to the park with a few new church friends, and coming home to tacos and cake. I don't think this kid had any idea what was going on, but he did enjoy his frosting :)

Woke up to this...

Moved onto the Easter eggs, he was pretty stoked for his "Cars" basket

Got ready for church

(few hours passed) blew out some candles and had some cake

Happy birthday, sweet baby boy! Mommy and daddy love you so much and know you'll do great things in life. 

Bye, Utah.

March 19 was our official goodbye to our home for the last 5 years. It was a very bittersweet leaving, but because our flight was so early and I was so stressed, it didn't really phase me too much the day we left. I was more relieved to have the whole ordeal put behind me and to move forward with our life. Our life...at the beach :)

Mr. E did really well with our flights. I always stress myself out over flying with him, when he's never given me any reason to stress out about. He's a great little traveler and has never given me a hard time...knock on wood.
Our first flight left at 7am, which meant we had to be at the airport by 6, which meant we had to leave the house at 5, which meant waking up at 4. Ouch. Mr. E. passed out within seconds of take off, and only woke up for the final descent, which was awesome. Then we had to rush to our connecting flight which was going to be a wonderful 4 hr flight. The first half of the flight he was a little difficult. He just wanted to run around when we weren't allowed to. The stewardess had to keep getting on her intercom to tell "everyone" that they needed to stay in their seats while the fasten seat belt sign was illuminated. Whoops. The last part of the flight, Mr.E passed out until we landed. After we landed we made our through the airport, to the baggage claim, and to the hubbster/dad. Ev was pretty stoked to see him. Everyone said that he'd probably ignore him and want nothing to do with him, but his reaction was the EXACT opposite. I loved seeing my two boys reunite. It was one of the sweetest moments I've seen.
Our journey home wasn't long and when we arrived, it felt very weird. I had only seen a short 30 second video clip of our place and that was it. It was empty, minus our bags of clothes and boxes of kitchen crap. I hated the feeling of not knowing where I was and coming "home" to a non-homey feeling...home. But we're getting settled and it's started to feel like home to me now :)

The last bit of our flight, we were both ready to be on the ground and reunited as a family

"Re-united and it feels so good..."

And just a little sneak peak of what's down the street from us (2 minutes drive, less than a mile away). High risers, we live in one (not one of these ones), they're everywhere! These are all lining the coast, so you can't see the beach unless you park and walk, which kind of sucks, unless you live in one of these very expensive high risers. One day maybe :) This is Collins Ave. It runs parallel with the beach and is one of the main roads. There's tons of food places, shopping and resorts that run all long this street for miles and miles and miles and miles.

Juice cleanse: Day 3

Oh day 3, I must be completely bi-polar. I woke up today feeling totally motivated and ready to get my juice on. After breakfast I totally felt like I love doing this. But when I think back to yesterday, I wanted to shoot myself. Not sure if the food at dinner time helped me out or if it was just a "day 2 of no eating" got to me thing. Breakfast and lunch have been easy and I've had NO cravings today. I'm still debating on whether or not I'm going to eat a dinner tonight. If I do, I won't feel like I've failed and if I don't, well then I'll probably just think I'm pretty bad-A for doing (or not doing) so.

For the past 4 weeks I've been battling one cold after another. It's like I alllllmost get better, and then BAM! Hit with another cold. So I need to totally boost my immune system and decided this morning for breakfast to have a strictly vitamin C juice. And it was so good. Just oranges and a handful of pineapple. So good. Soooo good.

Day 3:

Breakfast

10 oranges

1/4 pineapple

Lunch

(green juice from day 1. See here)

Add a handful of kale as well and an extra cucumber

Dinner

Protein and veggies with a side of left over green juice.

Juice cleanse: Day 2

Day 2... this is stupid. So glad I didn't designate a certain amount of time otherwise, I'd feel like a failure. But because I said no set amount of time, I feel accomplished. If I can do at least one more day, I've accomplished a 3 day cleanse. Pat on the back for this no self-control girl. I may keep going but do juices throughout the day (2 meals a day), mixed with whole fruits, and protein and veggies for dinner. That sounds like the smarter path to me.


Day 2

     Breakfast
(same as yesterday's dinner)

Lunch

3 green apples

3 stalks of celery

2 medium carrots

1/4 of a pineapple

1/2 lemon

2 inch nub of ginger (peeled)

BIG handful of spinach

Dinner

Dinner...ah dinner...Alright, I totally caved and cheated and ate an actual dinner tonight. I had protein and veggies, and it was delicious, and I'm not even a little bit mad about it. As I mentioned before, I think I'm going to juice for 2 meals, eat a lean, clean, dinner. I'm totally satisfied with that. I mean c'mon, who in their right mind skips every meal and replaces it with juice? Lez-be honest, that's just stupid. I'm not going to sugar coat a cleanse like this. It sucks. I find it extremely difficult. I'm not some super human who can ignore cravings and hunger pangs...or is it pains? Either way, they over power me. Maybe some of you have more self control, but heck, I do not. So here's to juicing at least twice a day :)

Juice cleanse: Day 1

To help me ease into my cleanse, I started replacing meals with juice a few days ago. I feel jumping right into eating nothing and drinking only juice would be difficult and challenging. I replaced Sunday dinner, and Monday breakfast. Today I only had a serving of eggs and 2 big mason jars of juice. By tomorrow I should feel comfortable enough to cut out all solid food and indulge myself in some sweet, sweet juice.
I don't know about you, but I'm new to this whole juicing thing. I haven't done much experimenting with it and am just hoping for the best as I throw my produce in the juicer. I try to use fruits and veggies that I think would compliment each other and taste good together. So far, my 2 juices have been delish. I didn't want it to have an overbearing veggie taste as I began my detox, because I know it'd put me off and I wouldn't follow through with the cleanse. So I've made my juices more on the fruity side but will slowly start adding more veggies in to make my juices 70% veg/ 30% fruit.

Here's day 1. I had a small breakfast because I wasn't at home to juice, but juiced for lunch and dinner. The juice is surprisingly very filling and I've felt satisfied this whole day.
I'm making juice for 2 people, myself and my mother-in-law. So cut the recipe in half or keep as is and just store your extra juice for "snacking." Each recipe makes about 4-6 cups of juice total. I keep my juice in large mason jars and seal them as tight as I can. Also, try to not "prep" too far in advance. You'll lose nutrients by doing so. You can wash and store, just don't peel and cut. Also, try to drink your juice daily so you can get as many of the nutrients while it's still fresh.

Day 1:

Lunch

1/2 pineapple
4 oranges
8 tangerines
4 celery stalks
2 carrots

Dinner

2 apples

2 pears

3 celery

3 baby cucumbers

2 big handfuls of spinach