I miss college when my weekend typically would start on Thursday evenings. Three day weekend?! Oh please, I’d love to have that now again. Life is going way too fast!

Weekend recap: my new 50mm camera lens arrived in the mail just in time for the weekend! Tyler he needs to practice with the camera so I can at least be in some of the pictures some day instead of always being behind the camera.

I was supposed to take my sister’s senior pictures over the weekend but one of my dad’s best friends was in town so we postponed it to next weekend. I’m so excited that I practically told her what to wear and made her promise me she’d bring her sparkly gold dress to wear.

My sister repainted her bedroom to 2 shades of light pink. She’s so crazy obsessed with Victoria’s Secret so she wants to make it look like VS. I’ll be helping her save mom & dad money by doing some DIY projects to revamp up her room. I’m thinking of a clothing line with VS bags. I wish we took a before picture of her room but I think it’s good that we didn’t since it was sooo messy!

Now the “not so fun” part of the weekend was yard work. I absolutely hate it. Not even 30 minutes into doing yard work, Tyler pulled a muscle in his back. We were both laughing so hard because we’re obviously yard noobies if he already pulled a muscle in his back! We decided to get rid of some plants that were ugly. Tyler almost took everything out of the yard and I convinced him we didn’t need a bald yard with just rocks. I begged Tyler to let me take a picture of him holding the plant on his head. Doesn’t his new hair extensions look good? See his roots? That’s what my roots look like right now, no joke. I need to get my hair done soon!

Hopefully next month I’ll have a page up on my blog with a tour of our house. Our house is kind of messy now. We plan on doing another round of spring cleaning like we did last year. My in-laws are coming to stay for a few days in mid-April so it’ll be nice to have the house deep cleaned before then.

Here’s a weird conversation that took place at the grocery store tonight:

Me: What do you want to make for dinner tonight?
Tyler: You
Me: My parents already made me 26 years ago. You’re more than welcome to make a mini-me!

Hahaha! And no, we’re not trying to have kids now. :)

This is where I live which is in a master-planned community that is a family-friendly neighborhood and includes a community-oriented lifestyle with recreation, entertainment, top-notch schools and all with 31,000 residents. There’s a golf course, club houses, sports, gyms and a big water park. Pretty much everything a family wants.

My parents moved our family from Seattle to this town* in Arizona in 2001 when I was in high school. I would have never thought that years later Tyler and I would buy a house in this town. We would have not been able to afford it but because of the economy we were able to buy a bank-owned home. It was just perfect!

We’re so happy to be living here and be only less than 4 miles away from my parents. I love running into my parents and friends at the grocery store or any other store in this town. Sometimes we even drive by each other. Remember that surprise birthday party we had for my parents? I was so nervous about running into my parents at the store when we were all at the grocery store with out of town relatives. Later my dad admitted that he almost came over to my house on his way home from the hardware store on the day of the party. I’m so glad he didn’t! It shows that this town is small but that’s what we all love about it and we all share the same appreciation for this town.

Anyways, I could swear that more than half of the people living here don’t work or one spouse makes enough that the other spouse doesn’t need to work. There are some days where I feel like I’m the only one going to work. The other day I was looking at the community center schedule to see what kind of fitness classes I could take and it seemed like there were more options during the work day than before/after work. The town just looks so alive during the days that I feel like I’m the only one that doesn’t have a tree with money growing on it.

The only negative thing about living here is rules of HOA. We have gotten a few letters about parking. We’re not supposed to park on the street EVER. We even asked where our guests are supposed to park if someone stays overnight or if we have a party. They didn’t even give us an answer and just said no parking on the street for any reason. Seriously!?! We have noticed that they usually check during office hours so we just will be sure to not park on the side of the street during the days. I have already told our frequent visitors to park on the street at the house across the street. Who cares because that house is a vacation home and it’s barely occupied, ha!

A lot of families here have electric golf carts to get around in town which is smart when it comes to saving gas for our vehicles! I swear if the gas prices continue to go up this summer, we’re going to have to consider buying a golf cart! It’ll be perfect for Tyler since we only have one car and he has a company truck. He obviously can’t use the company truck for personal use. I’m sure Tyler would rather buy a brand new car or a motorcycle (keep on dreaming, Tyler!).

This place is home to us and we are proud to live here!

*Even though the picture gives the name away, I don’t want to type it out and have my post appear when someone searches the town.