Turkey, Turkey and More Turkey!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! What a great start to the holidays. Josh and I were excited to host our first Thanksgiving for both of our families this year. Despite the lack of furniture we were able to make do and everything turned out perfect. Josh's parents and my parents were there along with Caitlin and her boyfriend Mike. Our good friends Rich and Judy Parker also joined us and brought along some delicious food! I have to admit though, I got out of a lot of the work this year. In addition to the roasted turkey I only had to make two other dishes - gravy and corn pudding. I will take some credit for the table setting though, I pulled it together with a little help from my Martha Stewart Living magazine (that really makes me feel old!!). I've got plenty of photos below. If you haven't seen Josh in a while you'll notice the large animal on his face, I mean beard :-) He was growing it out for the "winter" but he recently shaved it off. He wants Darby to know what he really looks like when we finally bring him home.

Speaking of Darby, only 2 more weeks until we go pick him up! We can hardly wait. So far we've collected a few things like collar and leash and plenty of stuffed play toys from his new family and friends. He's going to be one lucky dog, being the first grandpup and all. (Our breeder created a web site so we could watch him grow - http://www.robertradcliff.com/darby/index.html)

Quick recap on the month that's passed - Josh has been hard at work (along with both of our dads) on the fence. So far the old fence is down and come January he'll be putting up the new one. It's no easy task, that's for sure. I recently took a trip to St. Simon's Island, Georgia with a few of my girlfriends. We had such an amazing time (photos below) and it was so incredibly relaxing. If you've never been to the Georgia coast this is definitely a place you should visit. The people are friendly, the scenery is beautiful and it just has this wonderful feeling of calmness (of course the southern hospitality is wonderful too). While the girls were off on our trip the guys decided to do a little camping and fishing. Let's just say the weather dipped below freezing and the fish were NOT biting. I'm sure it was great bonding time, but us girls were glad to be warm and cozy by the fire in St. Simon's.

Up next - Let the holiday parties begin! This year we have 9 parties to attend. Well, I do at least. Josh will go to most (even if he's kicking and screaming). We'll spend Christmas Eve in Gainesville with our parents and Caitlin and then Christmas Day we're heading up to Crestview to see the Highlander family - Darby in tow. After a few days back at the office we'll be packing up again. This time it's off to Toccoa, Georgia for a night with Grandma and Grandpa Wills. We're stopping through on our way to Asheville, North Carolina. We've rented this great little pet-friendly cottage in the mountains and we have our tickets to the Biltmore already. It's our Christmas gift to each other this year, the first time we've ever not done gifts. I have to admit, not having to shop for Josh will be a welcome relief. He's always such a tough one to buy for.

Well, I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season! We really do miss our friends and family that we don't see very often, even more so at this time of year.

Love,

Josh and Jenny

Thanksgiving

Kristin, Katie, Emily and Jenny

St. Simon's Island

Darby O'Gill Highlander - 5 weeks old

Happy Halloween!

Well, it's been over two months since we've last posted so I figured it was time. We've officially been back in Florida for more than six months now! Time has really flown by.

I wanted to share a picture of our pumpkin, Josh did such a great job carving it free hand. Unfortunately he had an accident and is now missing a bottom tooth (the pumpkin, not Josh). We had a blast giving out candy to all the little trick or treaters in our neighborhood and then enjoyed ourselves with other adults who still like to dress up at our friends annual Halloween party (thanks Lorraine and Shawn!).

The picture to the left is the newest addition to our family, our sweet little puppy. He's just a few hours old in this photo. He still has a lot of growing to do and will need his mom for now but he'll be coming home to us on December 20th. The perfect Christmas present! We already have a name for him - Darby O'Gill Highlander, or Darby for short! In case you're wondering where the name came from, it's from one of the greatest movies ever, Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

In addition to our new puppy, we've been keeping pretty busy. The Gators have had a great season so far with the biggest game yet TODAY! We're not making the trek to Jacksonville for Florida/Georgia this year, but we'll definitely be glued to the tv and saying a few prayers for Tim Tebow and the Gators. The game is at 3:30, you won't want to miss it! We've certainly enjoyed being back in Gainesville for football season, there's nothing better than living in the heart of Gator Country (unless of course you're a Seminole or Canes fan).

So what's up next for the Highlanders? Well, for starters, we'll be building a new fence around our yard in preparation for our new puppy. We're also finishing up some projects around the house which seems to be a never-ending task. This year we'll be hosting Thanksgiving for our families. We're both so excited to celebrate the holiday in Alachua, and hopefully it's the first of many in our new home. I've got some exciting things planned through the fall with the Tridelta Alumni Chapter that I recently became active with and Josh will be spending every chance he gets fishing (which sadly isn't as often as he'd like). Lastly, I have a fun girls trip planned for St. Simons island in November. Katie, Kristin, Emily and I are heading off for the weekend to relax and enjoy some much needed time by ourselves. I think that about sums it up! I'm sure you'll be waiting patiently for my next blog with photos of all this fun stuff ;-)

Until then, we hope this finds everyone doing well!

All the best,
Jenny and Josh

Pumpkin carving - The Highlanders, Emily, and The Weitekamps.

Getting ready for the Trick or Treaters...
We had TONS of kids, thankfully we had just enough candy.


Cat Woman and a Lumberjack -
The best we could do with things we had around the house.
(I bought the ears though!)

Some of the ladies at the adults Halloween party.
(Lindsay, Katie, Me, Nancy - aka Prom Queen, Kat Von D, Cat Woman, Rachel Zoe)

I could have sworn it snowed! 32 degrees in October, unbelievable. The yard frosted over and we had a layer of ice on the roof and across our fence. It was pretty until all the grass died!

Summer Fun!

The summer is nearing an end, well the official summer anyway. As most of you know, Florida maintains the summer heat well into the fall. Not that we expect it anytime soon but we're looking forward to some cooler weather. This fall/winter will be our first cold weather in quite a while!

We've officially been back for 5 months now, can you believe it?!?! The time has flown by. We're both enjoying work and LOVE living in Alachua. The small town atmosphere suits us both very well. For those that haven't been to this area before, you'll have to plan a trip. Ginnie and Poe Springs are both close by, the town of High Springs is great for antiquing and Alachua has some surprisingly wonderful places to eat and shop! There's my plug for now. I think you should all come visit!

We wrapped our summer up with a fun concert in Jacksonville. We went with some friends (Katie and Brad Weitekamp and Adam and Laura Harms) to see Kenny Chesney. It was an awesome show!!! He played for more than three hours. We danced and sung along for three hours too.

After the concert was the UF vs Miami game and my 28th birthday. The Gators pulled out a big win just for me. We had such a blast and Josh was like a little kid on Christmas now that he's back in Gainesville for football season.

Lastly, we recently went back to Crestview for Josh's 10 year high school reunion. Boy do we ever feel old! It was really fun and Josh got to catch up with some old friends and I got to meet some new ones. We stayed down in Destin (thanks Carol!!) and enjoyed a nice weekend back home.

Beyond football (which I could talk for days about) we're just enjoying work and our friends. We have quite a few visitors planned this fall so we're looking forward to that. The latest update on our puppy is that we should have him/her in late December, just in time for Christmas. The breeder we're talking to is just waiting on the litter to be born.

I hope this finds all of our friends and family doing well! I love to receive updates from everyone so when the mood strikes you, send us an email.

Enjoy the photos! I couldn't get just the album covers to show up so if you want to see the photos I think you have to click on the name of the album.

Love,

Jenny and Josh

Four Years and Counting

Wow, it's pretty hard to believe it's been four years since Josh and I first met! For those that don't remember (or maybe never knew), Josh and I met on July 17th, 2004. It was a rainy evening and we were encouraged to go to Durtty Nelly's by some of our mutual friends. We both showed up despite our apprehensions, and the rest is history! Well it wasn't quite that easy, but you get the point. On one hand, it seems like just yesterday and on the other, we think about all that the last four years has brought us and it seems like a lifetime ago. We feel so blessed though and are looking forward to the next four, and forty. (The picture isn't from four years ago, only about three, but it's the oldest I could find that I had digital)

Things are going very well for us now that we're settling back into a normal routine. It was a tough few transitional months after moving back but it has paid off and we're so glad to be back with our friends and family. In fact, we had an amazing 4th of July holiday weekend with our friends. I have some photos below of our trip to Ginnie Springs. Our visitors were Kyle and Harmony Abney as well as friends of Katie and Brad's, Laura and Adam Harms. It was such a blast!!

Up next for the summer is more work around the house as we get settled in as well as the start to Gator Football season. Oh, and there's Josh's 10 year High School reunion coming up as well. Fun fun fun!! We're looking forward to all the visitors during fall for football games, if we haven't already invited you, please know you're certainly welcome.

Lastly, in just a little over a week Josh's sister Caitlin will be moving to Gainesville. She accepted a job as a physical therapist assistant at Shands. We're so excited for her to have gotten such a great job immediately after graduation, and even more excited to have her close. She'll be staying with us for a bit while she settles in and then getting a place of her own. One down, the rest of our family and friends to go (we're secretly lobbying to move everyone we know to Gainesville).

We hope you are all having a great summer!

4th of July

We've Moved!

It's time for another post! There have been more big changes in the last few weeks and even more on the horizon. Jenny started work finally at RTI Biologics, the company she was with before she left Gainesville (who am I kidding, Josh doesn't help write these posts so I can stop referring to myself in the third person). I'm so excited to be back and in a new and challenging role. This time around I'm in the Marketing Communications department working with my friends and colleagues, Emily and Nancy (you've seen Emily in many of our photos). My new title is Marketing Communications & Education Manager. It's great to be back with a company I love working for and I'm excited about my future there.

Josh is now through with month one at his new job and is still getting settled in. He's got a learning curve since he's actually doing the design end of engineering this time around, but it's challenging and keeps him on his toes. If he continues along the same path he will be eligible to take his P.E. test to become a professional engineer in about two more years.

I have some BABY news to share. I mentioned in a previous post that our friends Kristin and Jason Jimenez were having a baby. Well, she's here now! Annabelle Lynn Jimenez was born on May 13 and was a healthy 8 lbs 9 oz. We're all so excited for Kristin and Jason and glad to have a new little one to add to our amazing group of friends here in Gainesville.

Although not nearly as exciting as a new baby, our big news concerns our house. We closed on May 29th and moved in the same night (with the help of our good friends). It was a bit crazy, the closing was delayed because the bank put the wrong address on the entire loan packet but we finished in about 3 1/2 hours and got the keys!

Some other fun news.... Because we had to sell our cars in St. Thomas before we moved back, we were in a bit of a predicament as far as car pooling and sharing a vehicle. In a previous post I told you about Josh's new truck, well now I have a new one of my own. Just one day after buying our house we were able to go and pick it up. It's Hyundai Santa Fe and I just love it!! Well, I guess we'll see how much I l really love it when the mortgage and car payments start rolling in :-)

I've included some photos from the move and of the new house. After we get settled a little more I will post some more photos.

On a side note, despite the fact that we have ZERO furniture, we would absolutely love to have all of our friends and family here to visit. We can't really call it our home until it's filled with friends and family so please know you are all welcome any time!

I hope you are all doing well and we wish you a great start to June and the rest of your summer.

Love,
Jenny and Josh

Our new home

Quick Update

Just after we posted the Napa photos we had an exciting new update to share. This past week Josh joined the team at Brown & Cullen. They are a civil engineer and land planning company here in Gainesville. He'll start this Monday (tomorrow!) as a staff engineer. This is a big change from Josh's project engineer days in St. Thomas but he's very excited and motivated to learn. The company is small, only about 12 employees but they're well established here in the local community and very little travel will be involved (yeah!!!).

We don't have any photos to go along with this post. I guess I could make Josh dress up on his first day and take his photo by the door, but he would probably not speak to me for a week (ha ha).

Love you all,
Jenny and Josh

Back from Napa!

We're back from California! The trip was amazing. We stayed with our friends Walt and Morgan Cullen and the Doehnes (Jeff and Jamie) came from Charlotte, NC as well. We spent a few days exploring San Francisco - Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square, Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory, Fillmore Street, Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods and so much more! I our favorite (well at least Jenny's) was the brownie sundae at Ghiradelli.

We also spent three days in Napa Valley visiting the wineries. We really couldn't have asked for better weather. It was cool and sunny. The vineyards were all coming to life after winter and the flowers were all in bloom so the scenery was beautiful.

For the wine drinkers reading this, we visited quite a few that you may know - Robert Mondavi, V. Sattui, Charles Krug, Opus One, Cakebread, Clos Du Val, Sterling, Stag's Leap, Merryvale, Rutherford Ranch, Chimney Rock and Luna. Our favorite was Cakebread but they were all great. Not only did Napa have great wine but it also had great food! Hands down, our favorite meal was the picnic we had with amazing meats, cheeses and breads from the Napa Olive Oil Company (recommended by our sommelier).

Below are some photos from the trip. I tried to piece them together in the order in which they took place. I forgot to take pictures of a lot of the wineries signs so I included captions.

We're in our rental apartment by the way. We have a place in Haile Village here in Gainesville. It's our temporary home until we have jobs and a house. It's a one-bedroom but we've got a pull out couch in case we have any visitors!!

Best wishes to everyone and happy spring.

Jenny and Josh

San Francisco and Napa Valley

Home Sweet Home!

Well I'm sure that most of you already know that Josh and I are back. If we haven't seen you yet, you're probably on our list to see in the near future! It feels great to be back. As we were on the plane leaving St. Thomas we both felt as if we had been on a long vacation. It was fun and we made a lot of memories, but there is no place like home.

Right now we're just nomads roaming between West Palm Beach, Gainesville, Crestview and now California. We'll be celebrating our one year anniversary (April 14th) in Ft. Lauderdale where we'll be waiting to depart on Tuesday for San Francisco. We'll be out there for a few days visiting with our friends Walt and Morgan Cullen and then we'll all be heading to Napa Valley (along with Jamie and Jeff Doehne) to spend a few days wine tasting. This has been a dream trip of Jenny's, and Josh is pretty excited too.

We've also been furiously house hunting here in Gainesville. It's a perfect time to buy except for the fact that we almost have too many choices. After months of watching homes online we narrowed it down to 12 that we wanted to look at with our realtor. At the beginning of the day I loved them all, but toward the end you start to know exactly what you're looking for. We found a house we love but we won't be making an offer until we have our jobs squared away (makes sense!). Surprisingly, the home is in Alachua and not Gainesville. For those that don't know the area, it's just one exit up from where we lived before. It's a very quaint, friendly town. This particular home is between Alachua and High Springs (another great little town). We'll be a bit further away, but that's really what we wanted. A place where we could spread out with a big yard and still be close to our friends the "big city" of Gainesville. The house may or may not work out, so I won't send any pictures until we have at least made an offer. With so many beautiful homes on the market we're confident that if we don't get this one we'll get another that we're equally as excited about.

In the past month since we've posted a lot has happened! I'm including several albums below with photos. If you choose to check out any make sure to see the Anegada and Saba Rock trip. That was our last big adventure in the islands. We went for a long weekend with our friends Christina and Patrick on their boat. It was absolutely amazing and the perfect way to end our Caribbean "vacation."

Other photos are from our Welcome Home party at my parents house, pictures of the new truck, Kristin's baby shower and some of our first get-togethers with our Gainesville friends. Enjoy!

I'll send out another update with pictures from Napa in a few weeks. By then I hope to update everyone on our jobs and the house. We love you all and are so excited to be back in FLORIDA!!

Welcome Home Party

Moving back and welcome back

New Truck

Kristin's Baby Shower

Family Dinner

Anegada and Saba

Reef Bay Trail Hike and more...

After a year and a half of begging Josh to take me on the Reef Bay Trail hike on St. John we finally did it! Good thing, we have less than two weeks left before we leave. The trail runs from the center of St. John down the side of the island and out into a bay. Along the way you can explore old sugar mill ruins from the plantation that used to operate there. Even more exciting are the petroglyphs which are pre-Columbian Taino etchings in the rocks that date back to between 500 and 900 A.D.

The entire hike took about 3 hours which included several bathroom breaks for Josh and time for him to explore each of the ruins thoroughly as well as to follow trails that were NOT meant to be part of the path for hikers... the adventurer in him comes out during times like these!

After the hike we went to a place called Skinny Legs for one of their famous burgers. It was delicious - as well as the chicken sandwich that I had.

We also made our last trip to Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands this weekend. Jost (for those that haven't visited) is a pretty amazing place. Jost was probably the top reason (other than Josh's job and Morgan and Walt) that we moved to the islands. It's relaxing, beautiful and there's just something about it that calls you back again and again. With our passports nearly full from all our frequent visits, we'll leave the Caribbean with more than enough memories to keep us going during those chilly Florida winters (that was a joke, although anything above 75 is chilly these days).

Quick update on the move - less than two more weeks to go and things are pretty busy for the Highlanders. We are packing up and Josh will be loading our container with all our things to ship by Wednesday of this week. Both my car and Josh's truck have been sold which is exciting and scary all at the same time. While we don't have specific updates on the job front just yet, I'm hopeful we'll have more to share very soon. All of our friends have been wonderful as far as referrals, advice and support. We've been saying our prayers and we know that everything will work out just the way it's supposed to in the end.

To see all of the photos from our hike and our last trip to Jost Van Dyke you can click on the photo album icons. Enjoy!

Reef Bay Trail Hike

Jost Van Dyke

Josh's 28th Birthday

This weekend we are celebrating Josh's 28th Birthday, as well as his departure from the Marriott Frenchman's Reef (whoo hoo). We went on a sunset sail on the Lady Lynsey (Ritz-Carlton catamaran) and sailed over to St. John where we got off and met some of our friends for dinner. It was a blast. After dinner we sailed back under the stars to St. Thomas. Here are a few pictures: (to see all the pictures there is a small pop-up you can click on that will take you to the album)

Sorry for all the emails!

So much for not bogging down your inbox, ha! I have changed up my system of notifying you all about my posts. I will send out a group email instead which I have to do manually, but at least we won't risk having anyone reply to all...

Thanks for being patient, I'm new at blogging!

4 More Weeks to go!

It's been a while since our last post so I figured we were in the clear to post again (and not have anyone complain that we're clogging up their inbox). A few things have changed since we last posted. We're still moving back and Gainesville is still the place we'll call home. Only big change is that we're coming a week earlier than expected!

A few things changed with Josh's job and he'll be leaving the Marriott Frenchman's Reef project on February 29th. He may continue to do some work with KMI for the month of March but his main priority will be packing us up and getting us ready for the move. His part-time job will be chauferring Jenny around. I sold my car to a couple that I work with so we'll be sharing one vehicle for a short time. Our flight is scheduled for Thursday, March 27th now.

In other Highlander news, we recently participated in the St. John Gatorade 8 Tuff Miles road race on the island of St. John. When they say 8 Tuff miles, they really mean it. Five of the eight miles are uphill and not just gradually up hill, but a steep incline. We finished together in 1 hour and 42 minutes which was two minutes ahead of my (Jenny) time last year. Josh seemed to be the motivating factor :-) While he could have left me in his dust, he stuck with me and kept me going even when I was certain I might die if I didn't stop to walk. For the record, we finished with a better time than well over half of the 800 participants, not bad considering neither of us had jogged (let alone run!) in at least two months (probably more). Who knows, maybe there is a marathon in our future one day...

Also, we're getting ready to celebrate Josh's 28th birthday on March 2. He definitely feels older, but that might have something to do with the 8 mile race we just ran, our leg muscles are in a bit of pain lately. Early Happy Birthday to Aunt Kathy as well, she's another March birthday in the family.

For those that know our great friends Morgan and Walt, we have a quick update regarding them. Morgan was asked to model in a Regis hair salons event and had 15 inches of her gorgeous hair chopped off by Nick Arrojo (hair stylist on TLC's What not to Wear)!! Photos below. The new short "do" looks great on her of course. In other friend news, our Gainesville friends Kristin and Jason Jimenez are expecting a baby girl that's due on May 5th. We can't wait to be back in Gainesville to celebrate her birth!!

Lastly, we have included a slideshow with a few pics from the 8 Tuff Miles race, Valentine's Day and some other exciting adventures. Our next post will probably not be until we're back in Florida!! Hopefully by then we'll have jobs to update everyone on.

Lots of love from the sunny Carribbean!

Jenny and Josh

Moving Back To Gainesville

Yes, it's true. We're officially moving back to Gainesville! We're so excited and can not wait to get back. We've spent a year and a half down here in the islands. While it's been exciting and beautiful, we are more than ready to get back to Florida.

Why Gainesville? It's pretty obvious for those that knew us before we left. It's a great place to live - Gator Football, affordable place to buy a home, great school system, 4 hours between each of our families, lucious green landscaping, art and culture and most importantly, the most amazing friends ever!

Jobs are still in the works so hopefully we'll have more to update you on there soon. Our official homecoming is Wednesday, April 2. We'll be in WPB for the first month but a good portion of that will be traveling to Gainesville to home search and also on our trip out to Napa Valley. We can't wait!

Of course, there is much that we will miss about the islands. For those that came to visit, you already know. The water is the most brilliant color of turquoise, the sun shines year-round and the lifestyle is relaxed...

We'll always remember our great adventure and we can't wait to tell our kids one day about how their parents once lived on an island. That earns bonus cool points with kids doesn't it?