I'm Not Oprah...But These Are a Few of My Favorites Things in December

Sydney's Favorite Things: In December


1. Twilight














As embarrassed as I am to admit this, I too was "sucked" into this teenage thriller about Vampires! It completely "devoured" me and "eclipsed" my entire regular life! (Like my oh so subtle Twilight vocab) Stephenie Meyer is an amazing writer who keeps you on the edge of your seat, staying up late at night saying "just one more chapter," and running out to the bookstore in a frantic panic hoping the store has the next book in the series! I would highly recommend getting "bitten" by this amazing series!!



2. Getting Tipsy with my Girls






























































Although large amounts of wine were involved in this night, getting Tipsy refers to a nail salon in Boca Raton, FL where we enjoyed a little girls night out. The salon is ultra sheek and modern. They have a full bar where you can sip anything from beer to champagne. Each of us brought in some finger food to munch on as we were pampered with manicures, pedicures and sipped some wine! What could be better?? No seriously..what could be better!



3. Being offered my new job at the JCC











4. Steve Getting his Green Card approved!















After 4 long years of dealing with immigration and Visas we are proud to announce that Steve was finally approved for his GREEN CARD!!! What does this mean for us? No more annoying Visas, no more sweating bullets as we drive through customs at the border and no more red tape!! His Green Card was approved for 2 years and after that we re-apply for his 10 year Green Card. Hopefully, by then he will be very close to taking his Citizenship test to become a...dreaded American!!! Congrats babe!! I'm so proud of you!





5. Big Love





















Trust me, I know what your thinking! A series about Polygamy produced by HBO, just another way HBO can get away with showing men having sex with tons of women. But, if you haven't had the chance to watch an episode you're really missing out! Comcast Cable had season 1 & 2 free on the On Demand channel and I must admit that if Steve hadn't left a full month before I did, I probably would have never watched a single episode either. But he did and so I did...and it is amazing! Only HBO, the king of great televison, has done it again!

Our new home!!

Life as been a bit hectic with the big move, but I'm finally here and we're starting to get settled in. What does our place look like you ask? Well, let me just fire up the golf cart and I'll take you on a "virtual" tour of our place. All strapped in?? Here we go.....

The view from our balcony. This is what the community looks like along with the community pool. It's a little too cold for the pool right now, BUT, you can see your shadow, sooooooooo Lacey and Chris come on down!! (A little inside joke)

Now onto the inside of our place. Our beautiful (and modern) kitchen!

Close up of the kitchen. I love the stainless steel appliances and dark cabinets.

The living room

The living room before furniture. Notice the fireplace!! I've never had a fireplace before!

We are sure going to get our use out of this little puppy! It's cooooold here! Brrr!

Farewell Hanukkah!

Hope you picked some good gifts~

Virginia or Bust!

We made it to Virginia but not without a little bump in the road...well, maybe a big bump. About 2 1/2 hours into our drive Steve noticed a strange light that came on the dash. Before I had time to reach for the manual it became very clear what that light meant. With a series of loud thuds we managed to steer a very shaky, lopsided vehicle, off to the shoulder of the road without hitting anyone (or them hitting us). When we got out of the car we were overcome with the smell of burning rubber. We looked down to see our tire shredded to pieces and completely off the rim!! We immediately called AAA (on Xmas day) to send a truck out to help us. To make matters even more stressful, in order to get to our spare tire we had to empty out the entire back of the car, which was jam packed from floor to ceiling with our stuff, onto the side of the road, in the rain! I swear I couldn't make this stuff up!
One bright side to this story is that our spare was a full size tire. So once AAA came out and changed the tire we were back in business. Another 15-20 mins to re-pack the entire car and we were off again. I guess it could have been much, much worse. It added about 1 1/2 to our trip and we arrived in Virginia Beach at about 10:30pm.




Close up shot of where our tire ripped. I've never seen a tire rip like this before!

Here's Emma freaking out, as we pile our stuff from the trunk into the front seat to keep it from getting wet.
Moral of the story? Always keep a full size spare in your car when driving cross country on Xmas Day!!
Stayed tuned for pictures of our new place!!

Virginia is for Lovers!

If Virginia is for lovers then why are two, young, madly in-love newlyweds living in Florida? We might as well move to Virginia, right? Well, actually….right!!!!! The Berlin’s are moving to Virginia Beach, Virginia! I will give you a minute to close your mouths which I’m sure just dropped open in shock from this news. You are probably thinking a million thoughts right now and for those of you who know me well, the first and foremost thought in your brain is, how is this native Floridian going to handle the cold weather? And the answer is.....hopefully well!

The other thought you may be asking yourself is, (self?) what brought on this sudden change? Steve was offered an amazing job opportunity working for a company in the pet industry. It is a full line pet supply store as opposed to his previous position which was strictly aquatics. So not only has Steve found Nemo, but he found 101 Dalmatians, Big bird and Kermit the Frog too!

We have so much to do in preparation of our big move. The most important thing is to sell or rent our condo in Florida. I’m dreading this task, as the Florida housing market is one of the worst in the country. Steve has already rented and moved into an apartment in Virginia Beach. He made the big move last week. 14 hours and 18 mins later (thanks mapquest) he arrived safe, sound and freezing!! He arrived to a balmy 40 degrees! Yikes...I better start stocking up on scarfs and gloves now. I plan on driving up with Emma on X-mas day because let's face it, what else would I be doing on Xmas day? Seeing a movie and eating Chinese food probably. I was offered a job working for the local JCC working in membership and programs. They have also offered me the opportunity to get certified teaching aerobics and aquatics classes which I'm very excited about!

We are so excited share this amazing news with everyone! Check back frequently for more updates about our new journey.

The Berlin's Wall

It's times like these that I wish I had paid a little more attention in high school English! This is my first time blogging and I'm petrified it will show. Please bear with me!

Since we are getting to know each other there are a few things you should know about me, 1) I'm a huge fan of the exclamation mark. I hope this doesn't offend anyone! Yep, this "!" will likely look like my best friend before long. I assign it at the end of almost every sentence. If I could, I would erase the period "." all together from my punctuation vocabulary and replace it with exclamation points!! Besides, it is so hard to tell someone’s tone online and what better way for you to really hear my true voice then to have exclamation marks everywhere indicating my strong feelings or high volume! Probably both. Since I started numbering my points I assume I should continue in the same fashion, 2) I caanot spel to save my lif!!!!!! Seriously, it's a major problem that has my husband doubting that I ever attended a real school. Thank god for spell check and I promise I will use it often, however it never seems to catch alllll my spelling and grammatical errors. So again, I ask you--please bear with me!!

Lastly, I tend to ramble on about topics that have nothing to do with my original intent in the first place (example A, entire previous paragraph).
Which leads me finally to this-- My reasons for jumping on the blog bandwagon or blogwagon if you will, now? Up until this point blogging always seemed a little too, well, self-indulgent to me. Granted, I love reading other people's blogs. Truth be told, I’m a total blog junkie. It's the whole doing one about OUR life that's held me back. I mean, is our life really interesting enough to sustain an entire blog? I guess we're about to find out!

If you're still reading this....I was born and rasied in South Florida. After meeting my handsome husband online (that is an entire blog post I will have to write one day...but thank you match.com) we fell in love and the rest is history. Right? Wrong! In the short 2 years we have been married we have, adopted our precious dog Emma, moved 3 times, including moving to another state, bought our dream house in Virginia 6 months ago only to put it on the market last month to move back to South Florida. Are lives are anything but dull.

This blog is dedicated to keeping sane within the chaos that is our life. Balancing my high maintenance, Princess Vespa, tendencies with my desire to keep things fresh, simple and organized. Starting our lives together, focusing way too much on our dog Emma, gearing up to start a family and much more!

Enjoy!

Contact Me

theberlinswall@gmail.com