Back Again!

So.....it didn't work out too nicely to rotate blogging between the hubs and I. Having less than five posts and being married almost two years is no bueno. So I'm gonna try to post all by my big girl self and then maybe we'll have a guest post from Mr. England himself every now and again. If you all play your cards right that is :)

Let's see - the last time we left off was Europe. Back in good ol' 2010 when we were newly hitched. A lot has happened since then, but to catch you up to speed I'll give you a picture montage of the most note-worthy action. Are you ready for this? (Da da da..bum da'bum da'bum bum HEY!)

Coop got bored all by his lonesome.  

So we got him London. 

And now they're besties.

We went to Hawaii for Joe's job and found the biggest avocados in the world.

I had an awesome 24th bday and Joe surprised me with tickets to So You Think You Can Dance - which we almost missed because he thought it was another night, I'm just saying it's a good thing I ruined the surprise. 

For our first Christmas together we skipped town and headed out to the Cayman Islands to hold turtles and swim with sting rays.

Joe may have done a wee bit better than me with the latter.

In February Joe had his bday (ahem 31) so naturally we went and shot each other paintballing.

In April we celebrated our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!! Joe planned the entire trip and it was A-MAAAHZING. 

Oh yeah...we bought a truck and christened it properly by getting it nice and dirty in Moab.

Then we drove across the country in one week, stopping only to eat, use the bathroom and sleep. N-E-V-E-R again. 

We DID get to take a small break for half a day and visit one of Joe's mission buddies and his family in North Carolina and they showed us a true southern time by letting us shoot some guns. Watch out Annie.

Next we traveled down to Puerto Vallarta in August because it seemed like the thing to do. We played pool, ping-pong, won bingo, shot some arrows and participated in other such shenanigans.  

(BTW - the ostrich is Fred and I didn't trust him for a minute)

Then we headed off to sin city for my bro-in-law's Iron Man triathalon. It was an incredibly inspiring even to watch and I may have even teared up a time or two. 

We had found an amazing deal on a cruise and decided to give it a go. It was pretty much the worst way EVER to travel. I got SUPER sea sick and just wanted to fly home. But we made the most of it and still made sure to have a good time and eat plenty of free food. It also happened to be my birthday (I'm a quarter of a century now, watch out!) so we took care of that with a fancy-schmancy dinner and chocolate souffle. 

And that about sums it up!

Oh yeah and this happened:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

All in all, it was a great year! Here's to 2012!