Mark and Heidi came to town

Mark and Heidi on their first airboat ride!
The "wild" alligators and pigs on our airboat ride at Billie's Swamp Safari

Check out those sexy red legs!!
We went to see the crocs down at the southwest end of Florida

This one is the biggest we've ever seen!! It was probably 10-12 feet but it's hard to see in the water!
Josh and I on the airboats


Kayaking in Key Largo
We saw lots of stingrays, a shark, some barracuda, and lots of fish!

This is before they all got sunburned!! Nice and white!! ;)

So if it hasn't been obvious yet, I had much needed break from school!! The first little bit of it was spent in Texas visiting family (the post below), and then the following week our great friends Mark and Heidi came to visit!! We had a great time trying to show them around Miami. Unfortunately everyone except me got completely fried while kayaking in Key Largo the first real day they were here...therefore we tried to stay indoors the remainder of the week! :) We also took a few adventures to the everglades to check out the alligators and crocs...one of mine and Josh's favorite things to do. We shopped, walked the beach, ate yummy gelato and had a grand ole time! Come back and visit again please!!

San Antonio!

After a long break of no pictures (and no posts...sorry about that, I just got lazy and didn't know what to write about I guess!) AND thanks to the Recalde's who loaned us their camera for our trip to Texas, we finally have something to blog about! We spent 5 days at the Jone's home (Josh's sister and her family) in San Antonio and had a great time! We got to know our 2 nieces (Makenna 5 and Kyla 3) and nephew (Wyatt 11m) better while spending quality time with family. Thanks Arianne and Ron for letting us come and be with your family! We had soo much fun!

Makenna, Kyla, and Arianne downtown San Antonio

Josh and I at the Alamo

Kyla swimming at the river!

Makenna making us muffins!

Josh playing with the girls at the river...

Goooo Longhorns!

Playin with Wyatt!

Josh and I again

Update...

Here is a quick update on Josh: the Wednesday following his hospital stay he went to see his primary care provider who ordered another bunch of lab tests. He got the results back about a week and a half ago and I just wanted to let everyone know that EVERYTHING came back completely NORMAL!! Great news! So for future reference: stay away from Aventura Hospital because they seem to like to admit perfectly healthy young men! And of course Josh has continued to feel absolutely normal since that night. Who knows what really was causing him pain that night but it's good to know that all of the exams came back saying what we already knew-Josh is a very healthy guy!

Also, I broke our camera so until I do some research and buy us a new one, there won't be any pictures!!

Pinewood derby, birthday and a hospital stay...

Hello All!! We have had quite a crazy past week! Most of it was great but there were some parts we could've done without! First off, the pinewood derby....Josh was very excited to enter his car this year-it was his first one since he was a boyscout! Our friends the Recalde's were also very involved with building the fastest car...it was kind of a joke between us with who had the fastest car and who would take first place in the derby-all I know is that I should've been spinning wheels at 3:30 in the morning but instead I slept peacefully on the couch while everyone else stayed up until 5am perfecting their car! The next few pictures are from the derby...we ended up taking 2nd place to our friends Jamie and Punj.


Josh named his car 5am which was quite fitting considering the circumstances!

This is the group of all the racers

The race track
Some of these kids came up with very creative cars! It was fun to see the different designs

These are the boyscouts cars...everyone else was in the open tournament

After the pinewood derby, my birthday adventure started! Josh had set up a day full of different festivities for my birthday (which was Sunday). Basically he would give me a clue to an adventure and then I would have to choose between 2 options-the catch is I didn't know what the options were! My first adventure took me blindfolded to an "undisclosed" location...

Josh leading me from the car



I ended up at the mall with my friend Jamie who treated me to a fantastic pedicure! Thank you Jamie and Punj! After the pedicure I had to make another choice and I ended up getting some money to spend on a new outfit! After the shopping spree I got another clue and option to choose from which landed us at PF Changs for a birthday dinner!


A bunch of our friends (and my husband who had left me while I was blindfolded before the pedicure) were waiting for me at PF Changs which was another fun surprise! After dinner we went back to our apartment for presents, ice-cream cake, and another "choice" to make to determine our adventure for the remainder of the evening!! I didn't get any pictures of the night activity but we ended up at a country dancing bar that teaches line dancing on Saturday nights! It was a great birthday! Thank you Joshua for planning such a fun day for me! You are very creative and the BEST husband a girl could ask for!!

Making a wish...
Most of you already know what happened after that, but I'll explain to those who don't (and I'm going to try to make it short!). We got home from country dancing and after watching part of a movie we went to bed. At 4am Josh woke me up complaining of severe shoulder, chest, and abdominal pains. His blood pressure was high and he was nauseated so naturally I got worried and took him to the ER. To make a long story short, they ended up admitting him to the hospital for rhabdomyolysis (abnormal breakdown of muscle) even though in my opinion he didn't need to be. We got out of the hospital on Monday evening after 2 days of wasting time and money! We still don't know why he felt the way he did but the good news is he has felt great since 7am Sunday morning-hence the reason we wasted time at the hospital!! The catch is that his LFT's (liver function tests) in the blood kept coming back high so now he has to follow up with a GI doctor to make sure that his liver is okay. Soooo as you can see it was an eventful weekend!! Luckily things have gotten back to normal and we are happy and healthy! Thank you for all of your calls and concerns! We truly are blessed with great friends and family and we love you all!

Weekend Fun...

Hi all! Josh and I have had 2 busy, fun weekends in a row! The first one was a planned temple trip to Orlando where we also went to the Universal Parks again since we have a 3 month pass. Angie and Matt also met us there from Alabama which was a lot of fun. This past weekend was more of an upexpected adventure! We found out around noon on Saturday that Kenny Chesney was having a free concert that evening in Key West...well we rushed through our chores and hopped in the car around 2:00pm to try to make it to a concert that started at 5:30, and that was 4 hours away! You see, Key West is only about 170 miles from our place; however, the majority of the way is a small 2 lane highway with water on both sides and bridges when there isn't any land connecting the Keys. Sooo, 170 miles takes around 4 hours to drive! It's a gorgeous drive though, one that I'd recommend to anyone...bright blue waters, white sand, and very tropical. Anyway, we made it to Key West around 6:15 but still saw plenty of Kenny! He was playing in a local bar, basically just partying and enjoying his weekend in the Keys. The "concert" was very casual, he sang a lot of his own stuff but also a lot of other artist's songs and he sang for about 4 hours including a bathroom break! It was very fun and very cool to see Kenny up close and personal! Jamie took pictures of him while my camera sat in the backpack but I'll try to get some from her and post a couple.

This is outside of the bar he was playing at, called "Sloppy Joes"

The concert/Key West goers: Josh, Jamie, Storm, Brooke, Lindsey, Taffy (the woman who informed us of and invited us along for the free Kenny concert), Punj and Casey

We ate dinner at the original "Margaritaville" along Duval Street then started the trek back to Miami-we didn't get home until very early Sunday morning!

Jamie and Punj at Universal during the Orlando temple trip weekend

Me and Angie
Michelle met us in Orlando to go to the Universal parks with us.

Better late than never...

I forgot to blog these pictures in January since we had a busy month and so a little late is better than never! Mom and Scott Neuman came to visit us for a long weekend and we tried to show them a piece of south Florida! I think they thought it was a crazy place but that's pretty obvious if you've ever spent time here! We had a great time and hope that they come back soon to visit us again! These pictures were taken when we spent a day in the everglades.


Scott and Paula

These alligators were caged in at the Billie Swamp Safari place but the one on the right was huge!! You can't really tell in this picture but take my word for it!

Joshua and his mom
Lindsey and Josh with Scott filming some gators and the beautiful scenery!

Naples!

Our friends were going on an overnight trip to the Gulf side of Florida so Josh and I tagged along. We went to Naples and Ft. Meyer area which is just a bit south of Tampa area and only a 2 hour drive from our place in Miami. It was beautiful and actually reminded me a lot of the Keys but with beaches (and of course a lot more houses and people!). We spent our day on Ft. Meyer's beach and it had beautiful white sand that felt like flour between your toes! It was soo soft! And the beach was covered with shells! It was fun to watch the sunset over the ocean-we've finally become accustomed to the sun going behind us as we lay on the beach so it was fun to be able to watch the sun as it got lower in the sky! We brought some snorkel gear but unfortunately the ocean was a bit cloudy so we couldn't see much of anything-well honestly I didn't even try but Josh was sad about it! We'd love to go back again and enjoy another day exploring the area.

Ft. Meyer's beach...soft white sand!

Jamie and Punj Recalde!!

sunkissed!
I'm a bit embarrassed by this picture but was excited about taking it so I'm posting it anyway!

Josh and I dropped our camera in December and since then it hasn't worked quite as well as it used to...but I'm posting this picture anyway because I think it's cool!

Again, forgive the broken camera but I was trying to be creative with the moon and this palm tree! :)
Josh and I cruising around downtown Naples...match match!