Anniversary of our First Date

Today is the 10 year anniversary of Ryan and I's first date. About this time 10 years ago I was getting ready for the Texas A&M football game. Ryan called and I had to be ready about an hour before I expected and his parents were picking me up in the Appletree parking lot. My roommates helped me pick something cute but good for the heat because we would be standing the entire game. I had to get there early because Ryan was in the corp and I couldn't miss March In. Man, who would have thought it 10 years ago???

We laugh that it was the never ending first date. We had March In and all the before game Corp stuff, the game, then dinner with his friends and family at Ninfa's, home for a spruce up and then the movies. I will never forget Ryan's roommate Travis and my roommate Jennifer went with us to the movies. We took my car, which at the time was a Chevrolet Silverado truck. When Travis saw my car he said, will you marry me? : ) The movie we saw was For the Love of the Game with Kevin Costner. And the rest is history...

Love you babe!

Welcome Home

Here are the first pictures of our new renovation. Don't let the exterior deceive you, it needs work! Notice the dead shrubs and grass, shrubs will be astalavista this weekend...

Bathroom...not too shabby. Will get a total overhaul complete with new low flow water efficient toilet courtesy of the City of Alamo Heights. A couple years ago the City of San Antonio implemented the "kick the can" program. If you had an old water guzzling toilet you could have yours replaced by the city for FREE!!! The program was two toilets per household for free, you just had to have them installed. Well, once I heard of this great program you know I got on the phone to City of AH. Of course we had not started that program yet....URGH! Made no sense to me, our neighborhood is full of some of the oldest homes in the city with the oldest toilets. In my usual fashion I kept calling about once a month to see if the program had started. Every time I stopped by the city of pay my water bill (which cracks Ryan up) I would ask. Much to my delight the city started the program 6 months ago!!! I would like to think it had a little to do with me :) Never hurts to keep asking....

Check out that blue carpet, nothing says clean like blue indoor/outdoor carpet in the bathroom and kitchen.....I am having flashbacks of the linoleum rip-out in Retama bathroom...started to dry heave with all that nastiness....

Kitchen, in all it's glory. Missing the fruit/veggie stickers that were on the original cabinets at Retama...

Notice the fan? We had to bring it not only for the heat but to circulate fresh air in that place, man does it stink! Febreeze plug ins going in tomorrow...

Living Room and front door, check out those curtains. I found out from a lady at bible study that the previous owner was a French lady. Apparently she had an amazing estate sale and sold all her old french antiques. HELLO...where was I? My new friend bought two twin french antique beds from the sale. I will try to work my way into getting her to sell them to me. After all they would be great in the new house I think.

For more pics click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jones0225/BeforeHousePics?feat=directlink

New House!

Ryan and I have sold our house, it's official. After a year of back and forth and contract fall throughs it finally closed before my Birthday. And so the hunt began for a new "reno" house for the Jones'. We have found a house and should close in the next week or so. I have taken many pictures of the new house but left the camera in Athens....

As soon as we get the camera back I will post pics. Of course we will document the complete and total transformation of our new house on the blog. Get ready!

US OPEN 2009

Our seats!!! After we moved down to the lower section. :)You can see Kim Clisters on the left hand side of the court.

Serena and the line judge before the "incident"

Nadal....finished out Gonzales in about 20 minutes...would have liked for him to play longer

Nadal again....

Hubby and I waiting out the rain delays....

For my birthday, Ryan took me to NY to see the US Open. It is something I have always wanted to do and since we sold the house off we went! There is no time like the present to start enjoying life and doing the things you've always wished to do. Excuse the quality of these pics, they were taken with my phone. Later this week I will post better pictures...

One of the nights we were in New York we had dinner at my favorite place of all time, Gramercy Tavern. Five years ago, when I turned 25 we were in NY and ate at this particular restaurant. It is so beautiful I wish I lived there, in the restaurant that is. There are fresh flowers everywhere. And not the cheapy fresh flowers most restaurants have, the real expensive bouquets of roses and unique floral designs you don't see everywhere. On our table alone there was an arrangement with 12 roses (yellow and red in color)....which happen to be one of my favorites....

I wanted to walk around and take a million pictures of all the arrangements but I refrained, after all I didn't want to look like a tourist. I made my usual trip to the bathroom to check it out, I always do this at fancy places. To my delight it was as great as it was 5 years ago. As we left I grab a few boxes of matches, for memories. I still have the business card I picked up from there 5 years ago. Isn't it amazing how some places and moments stick in your mind forever?

http://www.gramercytavern.com/

Enough about that, back to tennis....

It was AMAZING! To have the opportunity to watch something LIVE that you have watched on TV all your life. I explained it to Ryan like this, imagine if he had always watched major league baseball on TV but never been to a game? Mom and I did get to see Agassi and Roddick play when I lived in Houston for charity. I have a picture of Agassi and Roddick standing right in front of Mom and I. We were walking around back in their locker room area like we were with the press. We had to call Darren to warn him we might get thrown out of the place if they ever realized we didn't have press credentials. Luckily, they never noticed :)

One of these days I will get a scanner and post those pics on the blog. What fun we had!!!

New York was an amazing trip, glad we got to experience it together....