Spaghetti...sort of.

I have put my own spin on spaghetti. I cooked some whole wheat spaghetti noodles on the stove and steamed some zucchini and squash slices in the microwave. Mix that together with your favorite spaghetti sauce and you've got veggie spaghetti all in about 10 minutes. I love the Bird's Eye pre-sliced frozen zucchini and squash slices. You just throw a few in the microwave with a little water in a steaming dish and they come out amazing every time. They are pretty good as a side dish at dinner with a little dill sprinkled on them or just for a snack. (if you love squash, of course!) I just had to share. I wonder if I could get my hubby to eat this...

Finally, cruise pictures!

Don't we look so excited?!?! This picture is at the Atlanta airport as we awaited our flight to Miami. Sorry about the camera blur, and lack of sleep!

TA-DA! The Canival Valor. This was our home for an entire week.

This is a lovely picture of the majestic (wow, did I just say majestic?) Carnival Valor at night. It is the one with the blue lights. I think the other ship was a Norwegian Cruiseline ship.After a couple failed attempts at a self portrait, a lady was nice enough to take this picture as the ship was approaching St. Maarten.

I took a picture with this towel animal...though we're still not quite sure what animal it is supposed to be.

And Ben took a picture with this one. Again, we weren't 100% sure what animal this is, but our best guess is it's either a puppy or a pig. Our other towel animals were a little easier to figure out. I loved coming back to our room with one of these on our bed every night.

CAUTION: SNORKEL GEAR MAKES FOR HUGE LOOKING LIPS!

Yeah, so I know this isn't the most attractive picture we've ever taken of ourselves, but I still love it. I actually printed this picture and have it hanging in our bathroom. This is Ben and I snorkeling in St. Maarten.

Again, another St. Maarten picture. These were the most common fish we saw.
This is actually a nudey (sp? real word?) beach on the french side of St. Maarten. Mostly the nudies were older women who seemed pretty confident with their saggin' parts...kudos ladies. I guess. The beach was beautiful and there weren't very many people despite all the chairs and umbrellas. We actually kayaked over to this beach to go snorkeling and the nudists were just an added bonus!

Wow, hot pic of me, I know. This is a random "climbing sculpture" in a park in downtown Miami. I was a little sketchy that we were downtown, especially at night but Ben seemed pretty chill. Just when I was really uncomfortable about all the homeless people we saw sleeping in doorways downtown, we actually met 4 LDS missionaries. We walked by them the first time and I didn't say hi so I felt pretty bad, but on our way back from dinner, they were still in the same spot. As we walked by for the second time I said "Hi Elders!" and one stared at me and said "How did you know who we were?". Um yeah, I think if you see 2 or more young guys in white shirts with black tags that have bikes and helmets with them, most people know they are Mormon missionaries. Pretty funny. So we chatted with them for half an hour about how Utah is and we asked them how their missions were going. It was kinda cool to see missionaries out teaching the bums. Okay they weren't preaching to the bums but it does sound funny.

So that about sums up our trip! We thought about stealing these life jackets from the ship but we figured we'd probably get in trouble...I must admit though, orange does look fab on us!

It was a fantastic trip and we absolutely would recommend going on a cruise. If anyone wants to plan one with us, we would love to go again!

Here I go...

I have been struggling with my weight forever. I haven't ever been very satisfied with how I look and I would love to feel great about myself, SO...Here I go! I am putting myself out there and telling you all about my 14 days late "New Years Resoloution". Honestly I don't like to call it that because most people that have resoloutions quit them by Valentine's day, but I guess with it being the time of year it is, this is mine.

I am going to lose 30 pounds by my 22nd birthday on August 7th. I realize that 30 lbs is pretty ambitous, but I am ready and 6 1/2 months is a healthy time frame to lose it in. The reason I am telling all of you (if anyone reads this---hi, mom!) is so I have people that know about my goal and hopefully check in on me. I'm definitely not going to post how much I weigh...ok maybe in August I will post my "after" weight so if you'd like to, you can do the math...YIKES! However, I will absolutely post my progress along the way (ie: this week I lost 3 lbs, or I am down 12 pounds!) as well as yummy recipes I find and little workout tips and favorite fat blastin' moves! Wooo! Are you gettin' pumped? I knew you were, so here I go!