A very Remi Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends!! We love and miss all of you and wish we were together today. We are very grateful for the time we had in Ca a few weeks ago to celebrate Christmas a little early. We saw our families, ate delicious dinners, watched the kids tear through their presents, walked down Candy Cane Lane and were able to celebrate with my best friend on the night of her engagement!

JD is off work Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and we could not be happier about it. Last Christmas he was still in the academy and we spent Christmas across the country from each other. This year we are keeping it low key and making red velvet pancakes for breakfast, then relaxing in our pajamas all day.

We have a new member in our household this Christmas, a very handsome 8 week old chocolate lab puppy named Remi (Remington). Remi was an early Christmas present from JD, he surprised me with him about a week ago! He is so much fun, has lots of energy, loves to snuggle and is a crack up to watch. So far he has kept me on my toes, the only time I trust him is when he’s sound asleep. Remi has already proven to be the most popular in the Poplin house, and I'm sure he will be for a very long time!

This will definitely be a Christmas to remember, our first Christmas in AZ, in our own home, with a new puppy! Thank you so much to my in-laws and the Antonio's who helped JD surprise me with Remi, I know a lot of work went into making it happen and I feel so special! Congratulations to Kayleigh and Mark on their engagement, we are so happy for the two of you! From our home to yours we wish everyone a very merry love filled Christmas and we hope all of you have a happy new year!!

     xoxo,

              Rachele

The Hunt

One thing that has always been popular with the Poplin men has been hunting, and I am proud to say JD has officially joined the buck club. Every year the guys in the family go on their hunting trip and JD has always missed it because of baseball or work, so this year he got the time off and headed out to Missouri.

JD was in Missouri with family and friends for about a week, and on their third day of hunting he got the buck he was hoping for; a 4x4 white tail. I cannot tell you how proud he is, he’s already addicted to the sport and is planning his next trip out there.

I am really happy for him and so glad he had a great time and spent a week with his dad, papa and one of his best friends. I'll admit that even though we weren't apart for long I am happy having my mountain man back home! I am also really grateful that a family friend took pictures of all the guys, they are awesome pictures and I’m excited to share them!

     xoxo,

              Rachele

What happens in Vegas... goes on the blog

Vegas was awesome! The hubs and I took advantage of a long weekend and turned ‘date night’ into three days and nights of dates together in Vegas! We took a few hour detour on our way and stopped to check out the Hoover Dam, wow,  it is huge and pretty cool to walk over and marvel at how they built it.

 Neither of us had been to Vegas since we were kids so we did the normal site seeing and touristy things. We checked out all of the hotels and the cool unique things they had, saw some animals from the shows, went on roller coasters, and did some serious people watching. We made our way down to Freemont Street one of the nights to check things out and stopped to take some pictures at the pawn store from the TV show Pawn Stars! We also found an awesome shooting range that lets people shoot machine guns and things, so JD shot the SCAR (I’m not even sure what it is, haha, but it looked cool).

My favorite parts of the trip were by far the restaurants we ate at, yum yum yum! We ate some of the most delicious food while we were there, including lunch at Buddy V’s (The Cake Boss’ new restaurant), dinner at Maggiano’s and dessert at Serendipity. Our first night we had dinner at BurGR which is Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant and they really were the best burgers we’ve ever had. After dinner we had drinks at the Chandelier Bar, it was gorgeous, the bar is literally inside of a giant Chandelier. And our last morning we ate brunch inside of the Eiffel Tower overlooking the whole strip.

On the drive home we started planning our next trip, where we want to stay, restaurants we’d like to eat at and shows we want to see. It’s was so nice to have a little get away just the two of us. Vegas is now very Popular with the Poplins!!

 

     xoxo,

              Rachele

 

Under the stars... and into the woods

Ever since I was a baby the end of summer meant camping, at the same camp ground in the same camp site each year. My parents have been taking my brother and me to Sand Flats since I was a baby, and my grandparents started it all by taking my Dad and his siblings to this same site since my Dad was a baby. Whether it was just my immediate family or my entire Dad’s side full of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, we always made a camping trip together before school started back up.

I hadn’t been camping in years and had really been missing it, plus JD and I had never gone camping together, so we had plans in the works for a while and this year we were finally able to go! So a few weeks ago, JD and I drove to northern Ca, packed my Dad’s truck full of camping supplies and hit the road with him. (The trip fell on our 6 year anniversary!)

It’s about a four hour drive up into the Sierras and once you reach the turn off you definitely need a truck or bigger 4 wheel drive car to get down the “road”. It’s not so much a road as it is a very old washed out river bed, nothing is paved and it is full of dips, large rocks, steep turns and a dusty down hill grade. Getting back up the dry river bed is no easy feat either, it takes about 30 minutes to strategically go down or up it.

We had such a great time while we were there, and it was an amazing change of scenery and temperature to be in the nicely shaded, cool and crisp green woods. I love that is it isn’t a well known camping area; we had the whole place to ourselves. The water and rapids are only a two minute walk, which is perfect when you’re roughing it outside and you need the (freezing) water to clean off and brush your teeth. We took long walks and hikes each day, explored a lot, had some target practice with the BB guns, relaxed, cooked our meals over the fire and woke up to deer outside our tent in the mornings.

Going back to one of my favorite places, and getting to show JD, was really fun and brought back a ton of childhood memories for me and for my Dad. I’m so happy we finally went. Sand Flats is such an important place to my family and has always been popular with the Meier’s; I can’t wait for it to be just as popular of a place with future Poplin’s!

 

     xoxo,

              Rachele

 

It is GRAND

Four Poplins, four days, four cities/sites explored… road trip! Last week my mother and father in-law arrived as our third and final round of visitors for the month. Looking back on the week I can’t believe we fit everything into four short days.

The guys spent a morning golfing, they also accomplished some home improvement items from our list, and we went on an adventure around northern AZ. Our first stop was Flagstaff, a beautiful city on Route 66 where we wandered the town and stayed the night. Next was a short drive to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and holy cow, it was GRAND! We only spent a few hours and were definitely not dressed right or in the right shoes, regardless it was amazing. Next time I plan on packing better and hiking down a little further, but for this impromptu trip it was perfect to see the views, take tons of pictures and enjoy the day at one of the world’s wonders. We also drove into Sedona, which was by far the most gorgeous place we have been in AZ. We forgot we were in the desert state and started to feel like we were in Tahoe for the evening. It was awesome to finish our mini road trip surrounded by greenery and lots of fresh air.

On our last night all together JD and I took his parents to one of our favorite date night spots in Scottsdale, Studio Movie Grill. It is so much fun to have a full on restaurant and movie theater in one, with yummy food and extra big comfy leather recliners. I’m so happy JD had a few days off work and we were able to hang out, relax, travel and explore all together. I probably took a hundred pictures during the trip (I think I have a problem), so I posted a bunch below.

August has been so great with all of our house guests and happenings! I am already excited and looking forward to September’s adventures though… camping camping camping!! Until next time everyone…

 

     xoxo

              Rachele

 

As of lately...

As of lately the most popular things with the Poplins have included friends, family, visits and house guests… which we absolutely love! Now that we live so much farther away we jump at any chance we get to spend time with our favorite people.

A few weeks ago I hopped in the car on a secret mission to surprise my family and Grandma for her 86^th birthday. My family was definitely surprised and my Grandma was so happy, I loved celebrating with her. While I was in town I also met up with my best girls and had a great time catching up with them at dinner. Thank you to everyone who helped me pull off my surprise visit and thank you to my super supportive husband who made it happen for me!

Not too long after I got back to AZ my brother came out for a week and was finally able to see our house and spend time with me and JD. We had a great time showing him around and visiting family he hadn’t seen in years.

Over lapping my brother’s stay by a day was our next round of ‘roomies’, our cousins and extremely adorable godson. We had 4 days of road trips, drive-in movies, shopping, golfing and playing with Callen. Callen even copied JD and did his nightly work outs with him, so sweet.

So in a nut shell that has been our last 3 weeks, along with the fact that JD has been working really hard and had a ton of long shifts and crazy hours. We said bye to all of our house guests two days ago and with in a day we will be welcoming more, my awesome in-laws! JD will have a few days off, his parents will be here on Sunday, and the new adventure begins! We are planning on checking out an area of AZ we’ve never been and I am already excited to share what we find!

 

     xoxo

              Rachele

 

The Birthday Boy & Baseball

A happy birthday blog post for my hubby, (better late than never right?) The week before last was my main man’s birthday, the big 2-8! JD had to work on his b-day so I planned a fun day together on his next day off.

 My guy works extremely hard and I wanted to make sure he had a day that was relaxing, fun and very “JD”, and if you know JD you know that baseball is numero uno on his list! So, I got tickets to the AZ Diamonbacks game, along with ‘all you can eat seats’. I can’t lie, we were excited, we looove us some ballpark food!

 JD got off work later in the evening so I took him to In N Out for dinner (which is a 30 minute drive and 2 towns over for us). After working there for a few years he gets withdrawals not having an INO around the corner, so he was a happy guy. At INO I surprised him with the tickets to the game for the next day and we headed home to relax the rest of the night. Back at the house I gave him his ‘sweet’ birthday card made from his favorite candies… it was a lot of fun to make, you can find lots of ideas for it on Pinterest (of course!).

The game was great and the stadium was pretty awesome. I’m happy we did something to celebrate my handsome hubby, I really love that man!! Happy birthday JD! Enjoy the pics everyone!

 

  xoxo,

            Rachele

 

People and Places and Heat, OH MY!

We’ve been living in a cave, hibernating whenever possible. Blinds shuts, curtains closed, all in the hopes of avoiding the sunlight and the heat. While CA thinks they are going through a heat wave at highs of 105, we are cooling off around midnight at 105. Midnight and it’s 105, ugh, then you wake up to see the forecast and dread the fact that it will be 120 degrees all weekend! Arizona heat is no joke, just one more thing we are missing about CA life.

We have gotten to take 2 trips home to CA over the last couple of months, the last one was kind of “top secret”. Both trips have been so great and insanely busy, but it’s fun to be busy when it means seeing our family and friends!

I have a ton of pictures I wanted to share from both of our trips, but there were so many I had to shrink them down and cluster them together just to show them all off. We have gotten to see close friends, a dozen of our favorite babies and kiddos, eat at all of our favorite places, and spend time with family. This last trip home was focused around a surprise 66^th birthday party for JD’s uncle that had a fun Route 66 theme. The party was perfect, the long weekend in our hometown was awesome and as always we were bummed to say bye.

Enjoy all of the pictures; they are full of our favorite people and places. I can’t wait to go home next so we can see even more friends and family that we have missed on the last trips.

xoxo

              Rachele