Posted by Kitty

Tumbleweed Tiny House to be exact.

There are only three of us living in this giant house, with the energy cost going up every year I’ve been seriously thinking about downsizing to a tiny home. I have not seen one in person, nor do I have any idea how small it really is. But the idea of getting rid of all the clutter, all the possessions to the absolute minimal totally intrigued me. My curiosity is really getting to me, I’m DYING to see one, to be in one to see if I can live in such a small space. The cost to construct a tiny home varies from $20,000 and up depending on the materials used and of couse add on the labor cost, it doesn’t really sound like it costs all that much. Maybe a project we can take on when we retired in Australia? Where do you even park the house?

They had a workshop here last summer, we didn’t make it out to see them… I especially like these two models:

Popomo

Fencl

Posted by Kitty

Wow, has it really been 10 years? I’m so much happier and content now. Kerry brings me joy, eases my worries and supports me!

We took a cruise to celebrate our 10th anniversary, the trip was booked only a month before we sail I really didn’t get to do much research on the ports we are stopping in. We decided to spend 1 night before and 1 after the cruise in Puerto Rico, I’m so glad we did!

New San Juan, Puerto Rico - Park Hotel
We got here around 10:00 pm, walked around for a little bit looking for something to eat. Just so happened, there’s a street vendor selling chicken sticks. That will do! The people there are so friendly! chatted with them for a while then headed back to the hotel for the night, tomorrow is our big adventure!

Ship: Royal Caribbean - Serenade of the Seas
Cabin: 1097
Ports:
Bridgetown, Barbados
Castries, St. Lucia - lushest trees, good snorkeling
St. John’s, Antigua - best beaches, most memorable
Philipsburg, St. Maarten - best shopping
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands - easiest to get to the beaches, we walked right from the port!
San Juan, Puerto Rico - friendliest people, great food, old historical buildings

I couldn’t recommend Royal Caribbean more, we had a blast! I will never ever forget the memories we made on this trip. As big a beach bum as I’m, visiting all these Caribbean islands and the beaches was a dream come true. I even got to squeeze a seaweed wrap/massage spa treatment on the first night, it was some experience! The whole treatment took 3 hours long, aaaahh I’ve never been so spoiled!

Dinning was to-die-for, from lobster to prime ribs! so yummy, our waiters worked their butt off and catered to our every need. They even sang happy anniversary to us on our anniversary!

Posted by Kitty

Chicago > San Francisco

Getting to the O’Hare airport was an adventure on it’s own, due to the storm the night before, most of the streets in Chicago were flooded and police were there to block these streets off preventing drivers from entering and getting stuck. However quite a number of people somehow made it through anyway and flooded their cars, we saw a guys sitting on top of the car waiting for someone to rescue him! After dropping off the car, the shuttle couldn’t drive through the blocked streets to the airport! Our flight was leaving in an hour, big panic sets in because if we don’t get there soon we were going to miss our flight! A quick thinking worker there said to drop us off at the international terminals and we can take a train to the domestic terminals. We got there about the time when the flight was taking off, it was a nightmare… everyone was late getting to the airport including the TSA crew, after a long wait we finally made it through security. We were about 30 minutes late, I couldn’t believe the flight was still there, we got on and landed in San Francisco without further delay or issues. Yeaahhh!

What an awesome trip, I LOVED it here. Perfect weather, beautiful places, great food. We are so tempted to relocate

Day 1: Farmer’s Market, Fisherman’s Wharf, Crab House, Soupman, Jeremiah O’Brien

Day 2: Lombard Street, cable car, Alcatraz, Chinatown

Day 3: Jelly Bell factory tour, Golden Gate park, Japanese tea gardens, dim sum at Hong Kong Lounge

Day 4: Monterey, Carmel, Pebble Beach

I’ll post some pictures real soon…

Posted by Kitty

Even though we’ve been to San Francisco several times, but each time we went separately. I’m so looking forward to spending some family time together.

Are we crazy not renting a car for this trip? After doing some research, parking is a nightmare and costs an arm and a leg. I figured between gas, parking fees and the rental cost will probably cost about the same for taxi or public transportation. So we are going to leave the driving to someone else. Besides we want to ride the cable car!

Here are some of the things on our must-see/do list, let’s see how many we get to do

- Alcatraz (order tickets online, check)
- Chinatown
- Lombard Street
- Fisherman’s wharf
- Ride a cable car
- Golden Gate Bridge
- Japanese tea garden
- crab boil!!
- Jelly belly factory tour
- Monterey - I was here on business almost 2 years ago, loved the area and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We might rent a car for the day and make a day trip down the coast.

Since my last trip to Ohio and I left the GPS home, Kerry had to overnight it to me, I decided to write up a packing check list, we will see how it goes this time around. Speaking of packing, I better get that started!

I’m so excited!!

Posted by Kitty

When I saw the Virgin mobile $25/300 mins, unlimited text/web deal was about to increase to $35 on July 20th. I decided to check out what kind of phones they have to offer us. Dazza and I wanted to replace our iPhones for a while now. Kerry is still loving his iPhone 4 manufacture unlocked that he got from Canada. He basically can do everything he wants without any restrictions. But for Dazza and I, we are stuck and have to jailbreak/unlock the iPhones each time we upgrade.

So… We have been testing the Motorola Triumph and locked into the $25/month plan, if we don’t like it or for any reason at all, we can return it within 14 days and go back to T-Mobile. By switching to Virgin, we are saving $50 a month on the phone bill. Hello. It’s a no-brainer! But the real question is, how does it compare to the iPhone? Before we got the iPhone, we tested every phone in the market and returned every single one of them. We went from Centro > HTC > Google > iPhone.

I must admit, even though it does things differently than the iPhone I’m don’t have anything to complain about. I know at some point, I was going to get on a cheaper phone plan and use the iPad2 like a big iPhone

We have 2 weeks to decided…