April flowers bring June showers...
I think the last time I blogged we were just heading into summer...making all of our plans and getting excited for all of our upcoming adventures. And now, we are in the throws of it! But how do we REALLY know it's summer time? It's raining! I still haven't adjusted to the different seasons out here. In California, summer is the time you look forward to for warmth and sunshine. In Florida, you get the warmth all year long, but the summer time means more rain than sunshine. It's at least a beautiful warm rain and often comes with pretty spectacular lightning and thunder shows! And although it's made a lot of our favorite activities much more difficult to make happen, I think we've still managed to live up to our blog title. :)
Let's start where we last left off! (Deep breath......brace yourself...........)
Toward the end of May, we took a weekend trip down to Palm Beach which is about 3 hours south of us. The beaches down there are just stunning and we really lucked out with the weather! The main event of our trip was of course scuba diving. We spent the first day lounging on the beach and frolicking in the waves. We then received a phone call from the scuba charter that the seas were very rough, with 3-6ft swells (the other downside to Florida summers), and they wanted to make sure we were "hearty divers". We weren't going to let a few swells get in the way of our diving, so we gave them the green light! Well, they weren't lying. The seas were pretty rough, and I even battled a minor bout of sea sickness. But I was fine as soon as we got in the water. The only real difficulty with the swells was trying to get back up onto the boat after the dives! The visibility didn't even seem to be effected as it was still 60 feet or so. We did a drift dive, which is where you drop down and let the current just take you where it takes you! We've done some drift diving before, but NEVER quite like this! We were haulin'! It was like scuba diving on one of those flat escalators. If you saw something cool that you wanted to play with for a bit, you had to find something to grab a hold of or you were forced to keep going whether you liked it or not! We ended up traveling over a mile on the first dive, and saw quite a bit along the way. Unfortunately my video from both dives that day wasn't great. I hadn't yet purchased my awesome new red filter for my GoPro, so the only footage worth sharing is a video of Bart attempting to ride a giant sea turtle. We saw quite a few sea turtles that day and the dive master said that usually when you hop on their shell, they take off! But this turtle wasn't having it! I sure had fun watching Bart try though. Those turtles add so much awesomeness to any scuba dive. Overall it was a really great weekend with sunshine, great diving, great food, and great time with each other.
Every time we get a taste of south Florida diving, we usually can't stay away very long. So two weeks after our Palm Beach trip, we took off to Key Largo for an early birthday weekend! It's about a 5 hour drive but the diving made it absolutely worth it. Our plan was to have two days of diving, and a day of relaxing on the beach. The day we got there we checked into our hotel and decided to waste no time getting to the beach! There was only one problem. Apparently, you do not go to the keys for beaching. Yea. I know. We were just as shocked! I guess to Floridians, this is common knowledge. But it was news to us! There are beautiful beaches with beautiful water all around, but they are all on private properties, part of a hotel, or state parks where the water has been polluted. There are only a few spots that you can even have access to the water, and those spots are not exactly your picture perfect beautiful beaches. They are extremely rocky and sketchy looking areas off the highway where you can pull off and at least get in the water. So after dealing with this harsh blow, we decided to make the best of it and we did find one of these rocky places to at least go relax in the beautiful water which was more emerald than blue in this particular area. We also made sure to drown our "sorrows" with plenty of pina coladas!
The frustration surrounding the "no beach debacle" was quickly remedied the next morning on our first day of diving. We read that Key Largo was one of the dive capitols of the world - and that is the truth! Some of the most, if not THE most incredible diving I have ever done. 83 degree, turquoise water with seemingly unending visibility, and every kind of beautiful colorful fish you could imagine. I had just purchased my new GoPro filter so I was super excited about FINALLY having decent footage of our scuba dives. I filmed some without the filter as well to compare. I won't delve too much into the details of the dives as it's fairly well documented in my 17 minute video. I realize it's long, but it took me a month to get this thing exported! So I hope you will all watch it. :) It was an absolutely breathtaking 2 days of diving, but since our beach day at the end of the trip was no longer possible, we cancelled our last night, booked a hotel in Boca Raton which is about an hour north of the keys, and beached it up there the next day. Boca is one of my favorite places in Florida so I was more than happy to make the adjustment. :) Overall, it was a great trip, and I'm VERY eager to get back down there! But now we'll know how to plan better!
During the months of May and June I was also rehearsing and performing in "Urinetown" - my first musical at the Athens Theatre. It was a bit of a rough show for me, for many reasons. A lot of politics, frustrating situations, and maddening experiences. But overall, I'm glad I did it. We somehow managed to pull together and turn what I was SURE would be a terrible show, into something I was pretty proud of. And mostly, I just had a blast performing with my friends again. There's something so special about doing a show. You grow closer with your friends, make friends with people you never thought you'd be friends with, and you ending up creating this tight knit family in such a short time. It's one of my favorite things about theatre, and in that respect, this show was one of the best. We laughed a LOT over the course of those 2 months, and we had some fun times I will cherish forever.
I was super excited to get to have the family come to visit at the end of June for my birthday and for opening night! It's so much more fun to do a show, especially an opening, when there are people in the audience to support me. I had a whole cheering section the entire first weekend! I think they all enjoyed it, and we certainly had fun partying with the cast each night afterward as well. Between AJ, Mom, and Dad, I found myself having to drag them away at 1am because I was so tired, and they were partyin'! When did I become so old!
Having the family here for the show was great, but we also made sure to get in plenty of other excitement. They were supposed to be here for 5 days but ended up staying an extra day! We definitely packed a lot into the trip even though weather and other things got in the way of much that I had planned. I think the biggest bummer was our scuba trip getting cancelled. Especially once I learned that Kristy actually got her scuba certification and was going to surprise me once we were on the boat! That pretty much annihilated me! :( But, we picked ourselves up and had a great time anyway just spending time with each other. We visited Blue Springs for a float down the river, went to the reptile discovery center, visited Mike's family down south, drove the 'mote control boat out on the lake, flew Dane's airplane, and had plenty of yummy meals both out on the town as well as here at home. Even with all of the hiccups, having them here was just amazing. I had to leave every morning for a couple hours to go fill orders which was a bummer, but it was such a great feeling knowing I was coming home to a full house! I will remember that visit forever, and I'm already looking forward to the next!
Since the family left, things have been busy as ever. I haven't even touched on work, and I'm not gonna! Other than to say.....it's been nuts. New product launching, new employees, searching for a new building to move into.....we've been keeping busy, that's for sure! As always, we're working HARD to make sure we keep up the fun in our lives because we know how important it is to have that time to relax, and more importantly, to have the time together. We have a tendency to get very bogged down with work and between that, the show, and all the other stuff going on, it's been hard to find time for each other. But we're working on it! Two weekends ago we had a brief getaway at the beautiful Mission Inn for a friends wedding, and this last weekend we got to skydive which was GREAT as it had been a while for both of us! And we also did a couple pretty lame, albeit enjoyable scuba dives out of a local beach. We've gotten so spoiled diving down south that New Smyrna beach just doesn't do it for us. The visibility was pretty rough, and the water was oddly cold! (You KNOW we're spoiled when 73 degrees is cold) But it was great to just get in the water and have some time together. Between the jumping and the diving, this weekend definitely didn't give us much rest but it sure was fun!
Whew. Well, that's about as brief as I can make the last couple of months! The craziness is only going to continue as I have a trip home coming up this week, and Bart is leaving for Europe. So stay tuned! Enjoy the photos and videos below. Especially the Key Largo video, it's a good one - but you may need some Dramamine for my "camera hand". :)
Let's start where we last left off! (Deep breath......brace yourself...........)
Toward the end of May, we took a weekend trip down to Palm Beach which is about 3 hours south of us. The beaches down there are just stunning and we really lucked out with the weather! The main event of our trip was of course scuba diving. We spent the first day lounging on the beach and frolicking in the waves. We then received a phone call from the scuba charter that the seas were very rough, with 3-6ft swells (the other downside to Florida summers), and they wanted to make sure we were "hearty divers". We weren't going to let a few swells get in the way of our diving, so we gave them the green light! Well, they weren't lying. The seas were pretty rough, and I even battled a minor bout of sea sickness. But I was fine as soon as we got in the water. The only real difficulty with the swells was trying to get back up onto the boat after the dives! The visibility didn't even seem to be effected as it was still 60 feet or so. We did a drift dive, which is where you drop down and let the current just take you where it takes you! We've done some drift diving before, but NEVER quite like this! We were haulin'! It was like scuba diving on one of those flat escalators. If you saw something cool that you wanted to play with for a bit, you had to find something to grab a hold of or you were forced to keep going whether you liked it or not! We ended up traveling over a mile on the first dive, and saw quite a bit along the way. Unfortunately my video from both dives that day wasn't great. I hadn't yet purchased my awesome new red filter for my GoPro, so the only footage worth sharing is a video of Bart attempting to ride a giant sea turtle. We saw quite a few sea turtles that day and the dive master said that usually when you hop on their shell, they take off! But this turtle wasn't having it! I sure had fun watching Bart try though. Those turtles add so much awesomeness to any scuba dive. Overall it was a really great weekend with sunshine, great diving, great food, and great time with each other.
Every time we get a taste of south Florida diving, we usually can't stay away very long. So two weeks after our Palm Beach trip, we took off to Key Largo for an early birthday weekend! It's about a 5 hour drive but the diving made it absolutely worth it. Our plan was to have two days of diving, and a day of relaxing on the beach. The day we got there we checked into our hotel and decided to waste no time getting to the beach! There was only one problem. Apparently, you do not go to the keys for beaching. Yea. I know. We were just as shocked! I guess to Floridians, this is common knowledge. But it was news to us! There are beautiful beaches with beautiful water all around, but they are all on private properties, part of a hotel, or state parks where the water has been polluted. There are only a few spots that you can even have access to the water, and those spots are not exactly your picture perfect beautiful beaches. They are extremely rocky and sketchy looking areas off the highway where you can pull off and at least get in the water. So after dealing with this harsh blow, we decided to make the best of it and we did find one of these rocky places to at least go relax in the beautiful water which was more emerald than blue in this particular area. We also made sure to drown our "sorrows" with plenty of pina coladas!
The frustration surrounding the "no beach debacle" was quickly remedied the next morning on our first day of diving. We read that Key Largo was one of the dive capitols of the world - and that is the truth! Some of the most, if not THE most incredible diving I have ever done. 83 degree, turquoise water with seemingly unending visibility, and every kind of beautiful colorful fish you could imagine. I had just purchased my new GoPro filter so I was super excited about FINALLY having decent footage of our scuba dives. I filmed some without the filter as well to compare. I won't delve too much into the details of the dives as it's fairly well documented in my 17 minute video. I realize it's long, but it took me a month to get this thing exported! So I hope you will all watch it. :) It was an absolutely breathtaking 2 days of diving, but since our beach day at the end of the trip was no longer possible, we cancelled our last night, booked a hotel in Boca Raton which is about an hour north of the keys, and beached it up there the next day. Boca is one of my favorite places in Florida so I was more than happy to make the adjustment. :) Overall, it was a great trip, and I'm VERY eager to get back down there! But now we'll know how to plan better!
During the months of May and June I was also rehearsing and performing in "Urinetown" - my first musical at the Athens Theatre. It was a bit of a rough show for me, for many reasons. A lot of politics, frustrating situations, and maddening experiences. But overall, I'm glad I did it. We somehow managed to pull together and turn what I was SURE would be a terrible show, into something I was pretty proud of. And mostly, I just had a blast performing with my friends again. There's something so special about doing a show. You grow closer with your friends, make friends with people you never thought you'd be friends with, and you ending up creating this tight knit family in such a short time. It's one of my favorite things about theatre, and in that respect, this show was one of the best. We laughed a LOT over the course of those 2 months, and we had some fun times I will cherish forever.
I was super excited to get to have the family come to visit at the end of June for my birthday and for opening night! It's so much more fun to do a show, especially an opening, when there are people in the audience to support me. I had a whole cheering section the entire first weekend! I think they all enjoyed it, and we certainly had fun partying with the cast each night afterward as well. Between AJ, Mom, and Dad, I found myself having to drag them away at 1am because I was so tired, and they were partyin'! When did I become so old!
Having the family here for the show was great, but we also made sure to get in plenty of other excitement. They were supposed to be here for 5 days but ended up staying an extra day! We definitely packed a lot into the trip even though weather and other things got in the way of much that I had planned. I think the biggest bummer was our scuba trip getting cancelled. Especially once I learned that Kristy actually got her scuba certification and was going to surprise me once we were on the boat! That pretty much annihilated me! :( But, we picked ourselves up and had a great time anyway just spending time with each other. We visited Blue Springs for a float down the river, went to the reptile discovery center, visited Mike's family down south, drove the 'mote control boat out on the lake, flew Dane's airplane, and had plenty of yummy meals both out on the town as well as here at home. Even with all of the hiccups, having them here was just amazing. I had to leave every morning for a couple hours to go fill orders which was a bummer, but it was such a great feeling knowing I was coming home to a full house! I will remember that visit forever, and I'm already looking forward to the next!
Since the family left, things have been busy as ever. I haven't even touched on work, and I'm not gonna! Other than to say.....it's been nuts. New product launching, new employees, searching for a new building to move into.....we've been keeping busy, that's for sure! As always, we're working HARD to make sure we keep up the fun in our lives because we know how important it is to have that time to relax, and more importantly, to have the time together. We have a tendency to get very bogged down with work and between that, the show, and all the other stuff going on, it's been hard to find time for each other. But we're working on it! Two weekends ago we had a brief getaway at the beautiful Mission Inn for a friends wedding, and this last weekend we got to skydive which was GREAT as it had been a while for both of us! And we also did a couple pretty lame, albeit enjoyable scuba dives out of a local beach. We've gotten so spoiled diving down south that New Smyrna beach just doesn't do it for us. The visibility was pretty rough, and the water was oddly cold! (You KNOW we're spoiled when 73 degrees is cold) But it was great to just get in the water and have some time together. Between the jumping and the diving, this weekend definitely didn't give us much rest but it sure was fun!
Whew. Well, that's about as brief as I can make the last couple of months! The craziness is only going to continue as I have a trip home coming up this week, and Bart is leaving for Europe. So stay tuned! Enjoy the photos and videos below. Especially the Key Largo video, it's a good one - but you may need some Dramamine for my "camera hand". :)
Pina Colada's after diving in Palm Beach
Beautiful palm beach sunset.
Dinner at Bonefish Grill in West Palm Beach.
More Pina Coladas in Deerfield Beach.
Dinner in Boca Raton.
I did a (very) short film in June with my good friend David Lowe. David and I have done two shows together at the Athens so this was a fun adventure.
"Run Freedom Run" - Urinetown
"What is Urinetown?" - Urinetown
Act 1 Finale
This was a promo shot for the show.
We've been trying to do beach days every Sunday. We've lucked out with the weather most weekends!
Bart has been trying to get more track time in lately. We're even talking about getting ME on the track!
Lunch in Key Largo.
The Keys water was exactly what I was hoping it would be!
My most recent "goal photo". Been workin' my butt off! Literally!
In almost 4 years together, this is the first time I've seen Bart hold a baby. He did well. :)
My sweet birthday gift from the Roblees. I love Dane in this picture!
A pre-opening night drink at The Abby.
Opening night intermission.
Bart brought me flowers! :)
AJ and David. Enough said.
Hanging with some friends after opening.
I LOVE this picture so much. So much love! I'm not a mother, but I would imagine a moment like this is about the best life gets!
I loved waking up to this every morning!
Down south visiting Mike's family.
Such an awesome picture! Dad got nailed in the chest for this one. :)
Ahhhhh, boys :)
The guys put on an awesome fireworks show for us two days in a row!
Sparklers!
At the Deland Reptile Discovery Center. Dane is holding a baby gator!
Both of the boys did very well with the reptiles.
Like my new snake belt?
Having lunch at Dick and Jane's, one of Bart's and my regular spots.
That's a nice chunk of salmon!
Enjoying a homemade Mediterranean feast!
Such a sweet pic!
Out on the dock enjoying the lake.
Spending time with Alana.
The goodbye is always so hard. :(
That's a sad Kimmy.
Closing night with my buddies that I met during Jake's Women - Alexa, David, and Sara.
Bart has been reading a lot more lately. Since we have no central lighting in the living room, I got a good laugh when I came home to find him on the couch with the lamp from the guest room!
The view from our hotel room at the Mission Inn.
The rehearsal dinner was a roaring 20s theme!
This photo was texted to the groom a half hour before the ceremony. Has Pinterest written all over it.
The ceremony was a bit delayed due to the rain. We found a 10 minute break in the storm and squeezed in the ceremony with just minutes to spare before it dumped again. But hey, it wouldn't be a skydiver wedding without a weather hold!
Bart's attempted turtle ride in Palm Beach.
Key Largo
New Smyrna
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