Better late than never!

Well, this post is much later than I intended for it to be! So sorry for the delay but our hectic life got the best of me last week!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! We certainly did! Andrew got a 4 day weekend for the holiday so we headed over to Santa Cruz to visit our "bonus" family - Andrew's biological mom (Ash), her husband (Jason), and his half brother (Zack) and sister (Brittany)! Andrew worked a half day on Thursday (thanks to being called in at midnight the previous weekend) so we were able to get to Santa Cruz in time to go to a beach party at a local bar called The Crow's Nest with Ash and Zack. I love live music and even though the band they had was definitely sub-par we had a great time!

Lake Anderson 

Andrew tubing

Friday we went out on the Cartee's boat on Lake Anderson for a day of sun, swimming, wake boarding, and tubing! It was a blast! Although, we both came away with sunburns! It was a windy day so the wake on the lake was pretty extreme, which made for some knarly tubing! Though Andrew and I both grew up on the lake this was our first chance to go to the lake together! Being out on the lake made me miss my favorite lake buddy, my dad!

Speaking of my dad, my parents, younger sister (Blakeley), and her boyfriend (Josh) were in Seaside, FL for the 4th of July weekend - one of my most favorite vacation destinations! While in Seaside Josh popped the question and asked Blakeley to marry him! WOW! She said yes, of course, and we started planning wedding #2 for 2011! After much deliberation they decided on a beach wedding in Seaside for 11-11-11 (Josh will never have an excuse to forget their anniversary!) With only 125 days til the wedding its been a flurry of wedding planning for the ladies of my family the past few days! This morning I helped Blakeley shop for her wedding dress from 2,400 miles away - I praised God for technology that allowed me to be a part of that special experience! Let me just tell you, she is going to make one beautiful bride! Check out the wedding website I designed for them for pictures, all the details of the proposal, the wedding, and other fun stuff!
http://www.wix.com/theweddingsite/blakeley-and-josh

At Sky Park

At the Cypress Lounge

Saturday morning we just hung out at the Cartee's house and recovered from the day on the lake. That afternoon we went to Sky Park with Ash and Brittany for a Hops and Barley festival! It was way hot but the live music was great (minus the reggae, which I got more than enough of in Jamaica! I'm just not a fan....) When we couldn't take the heat any longer we headed back to the  Cartee's to recooperate for a while before Ash, Andrew and I headed over to the Cypress Lounge for drinks and to hear one of Ash's friends, Lucille, do a music set. Due to some technical difficulties we didn't get to hear Lucille perform for long but she had a truly amazing voice! After Lucille's set we went over to The Red, a cool trendy bar to hang out for a while before heading back to the Cartee's house to crash!


Sunday Andrew and I took it easy hanging out at the Cartee's house while they had other things going on. Ash's parents had a barbeque at their house so we went to the cook-out. 

Fireworks at the Pyro Spectacular

At the Pyro Spectacular

After a very late night on Sunday we slept in the morning of the 4th and had breakfast with our bonus family before heading back home. As odd as it may be, we thoroughly enjoy road trips together - most likely because of silly singing and "car dancing," we keep each other laughing! I was happy to be home to see our fur babies (their "Aunt" Nicole took care of them for us while we were out of town - she's just awesome like that!) We curled up on the couch and caught up on our favorite shows that we missed while we were out of town before heading to Sacramento for fireworks at the Cal Expo Center's Pyro Spectacular! My parent's gave us reserved stadium seating as a gift so we had a perfect view from our awesome seats! It was hot but we had a blast! The Air Force Band played the few hours before the fireworks started, which Andrew really enjoyed. We ran into Andrew's friend from work, Matt, and his girlfriend, Kourtney while wandering around the Expo Center exploring the different venders and spent the rest of the evening with them! They were able to come back to our booth to sit with us thanks to the ticket checker that didn't quite check the tickets thoroughly ha ha! There was an adorable little girl (probably 2, maybe 3) sitting in front of us and she kept us entertained with her dancing in her seat, whacking Andrew with her pink light up sword, and trying to put her pink feathered, sparkly, light-up bunny ears on him! The fireworks show was AWESOME! It was timed to popular songs like Katy Perry's Fireworks, Ke$ha's This Place About to Blow, and Miley Cyrus's Party in the USA, which was super cool! It definitely wasn't a sparse show either, there were constant and multiple fireworks (not the like the wimpy shows that have fireworks go off one at a time with delays!) We, of course, jammed to the songs while enjoying the fireworks, too (our turn to entertain the little girl in front of us who thought we were way more interesting than the fireworks, apparently!) It was one of the best fireworks shows I've ever seen, and I'm a major fireworks fan! We got stuck in terrible traffic on the way home so we were completely exhausted and happy to be in our own bed by the time we finally made it back!

Tristan's poster I made
 (which was a lot harder than I expected!) 

After the holiday weekend we settled back into our weekly routines of work and school and our cherished family time (i.e. us and our pups) in the afternoons! As I mentioned, I've been doing as much as I can to help my sister and my mom get Blakeley's wedding plans underway this week, as well as working on a couple projects for Tristan's room (he'll be with us this time next week!) I'm really enjoying getting his room fixed up for him (even though he's too young right now to really appreciate it.) Andrew is appreciative enough for the both of them, though, it makes me so happy to make him happy! We still have some final touches and things we would like to get before Tristan is here next week but I think the room is coming together nicely, if I do say so myself!

The lid of Tristan's toy box
I just couldn't stand to leave it plain!
(that would've been way too boring!)

Our plans for this weekend are to kick back and relax since we will be traveling with Tristan every weekend for the rest of this month! Check back next week for more of Life With the Taylors!