i'm in gryffindor!

i'm finally picking the harry potter series back up :) i'm almost done with book 5, then plan to read 6 & 7 right after that :) nate and i are also behind on the movies, we're getting ready to watch 4!

bloggity bloggerson!

cassie's here and we're all getting ready to head to the beach :) it's definitely hot enough! i've been posting pictures from all our adventures, most recently from last weekend, we went to mgm studios and epcot with ian, ben & sam. it was a good time :) sam even let me borrow her lens while we were at epcot, so if you're wondering why i took so many pictures of singular items with blurry backgrounds... that's why, i was playing with it :)

for example:



a few weeks ago, nate and got to go on a cruise for work (yes, i know how ridiculous that sounds) :) we were really excited to be able to go on the same one this time! we did quite
a bit of data collection and got some time in to have fun too :) we went looking for the queen's staircase in nassau, but unfortunately we thought we couldn't find it and stopped looking when were just a block away! we also spent time at nate's favorite, castaway cay- the beach we were on was almost entirely empty and extremely shallow! as evident in this picture:

that's pretty much the last few weeks :) AND... next week we're headed to pennsylvania for the Big O Party- a celebration with nate's family and all of those turning a decade this year. and my mom and my sister will be joining us so i'm really excited to show my mom around connellsville and pittsburgh (cassie's already been a few times). AND we're going to get to spend some quality ghoon time as well, we're looking forward to seeing little o and his ghoon parents :)

happy birthday gram!!

living green!

so nate and i have been trying to make changes in how we live to better conserve the environment. thought i'd share many of the things we found simple to do ;)

• we've been running our dishwasher on air dry and light wash and only when it's full


• we programmed our thermostat to better suit our schedule (i.e. let it get warmer during the day while we're working, and cool it down while we're home) and since we live in FL, 78 degrees has become the 'new cool.' to help out with the less cool air, we're using our ceiling fans more often.


• we're steering away from bottled water (takes a lot of resources to package it), we're lucky enough to have good tap water here.


• we're unplugging power 'vampires' like our TV or other devices that pull power even when they're turned off.

that's a start of our list so far! more to come :)