Back to reality

Kenny and I are sitting in Chicago waiting for our flight back home. Since we have a 4 hour layover, I thought now a good time as any to recap on our trip. We had a really great time and are sad to be heading home already. Aside from the 3,427 mosquito bites that I have, we could not have asked for a better trip. We got to spend time with great family, that we just love, and just have a good time. Between the great company, delicious food,a million laughs, and the party, we couldn't have planned a better visit!

Oh. Well I guess I have one complaint. Aunt Patti should have raised a better son. One who isn't a big, fat cheater.

Home again

We are home. Boston was great. We were out and about the entire time we were there, and like San Francisco, walked a million miles. My legs are still a bit sore.

Wednesday: We flew in Wednesday afternoon and after checking into our hotel, we walked around to see what was in our area. For dinner, we went to Bukowski’s. It was a great dive with delicious burgers. Not too exciting a day.

Thursday: We woke up and decided to walk the Freedom Trail. It was a chilly, but still a good time. We found Mike’s Pastry which was probably tops on my list and shared a cannoli. The whole trail is about 2.5 miles, but total, we walked closer to 5. After we were done with the trail, we took the T to the Samuel Adams brewery for a tour and tasting.

Friday: We took a bus out to Harvard and walked around campus. We went to their museum which had animals on display that were over 100 years old. It smelled like dust in there. That afternoon, we went to the Charles river and took a nap on a dock we found. We walked back to the hotel to get ready for our baseball game! What are the odds that the Sox would be playing the Yankees while we were there? I mean, seriously?!? They were, and it was not easy, but we got tickets! It was such an awesome game. The atmosphere was amazing and the fans, some of the best! The seats were completely filled. The game went 11 innings and the Sox won!

Saturday: We took a boat out to go whale watching. We got to see a few whales, and a seal, and even some dolphins. I started to feel a bit sick half way through so I took a break and laid down on the bench on the boat. It was freezing and windy, so Kenny and I thought we would go down to the second level where there was an inside cabin. We walked in there and there were a ton of people way worse off then I was. Their heads were leaning on the tables, people were lying on the floor. We had entered the sick ward. There was also a funk in the air and just as I noticed it, someone came by me with a full barf-bag. We were standing right next to the trash can so she had to walk right by me to throw it away. Then another person headed our way, but her bag was dripping (I am gagging while typing this). So, we went back outside. Kenny went to the first level cabin to see if it was any better-nope. Worse. Ugh-so gross. When we got back to land, we took a break and just sat outside for a bit. I hate that I get seasick. I can’t do anything about it.

Something I noticed while in Boston: Before we actually went, I was looking for restaurants online. I saw that there were a ton of French restaurants, from casual café’s to expensive, fancy places. When we got there, there were French people everywhere! I assume, they were mostly French-Canadian, because Quebec is relatively close. I swear we never went more than 5 minutes without hearing someone speaking French. I would say we had a 50/50 split between French and heavy Boston accents. Am I missing something? I thought Boston was known more-so for the Irish…..

Pictures on "Our life" link to the right

Off to Boston

Kenny and I leave for Boston next week! Neither of us has been and we both thought it sounded like a really great place to visit! I have no idea what we are going to do when we get there, but I am going to try to figure some of it out this weekend. I have had a few suggestions thrown out that sounded pretty good too! I am not even worried about it because 1.I won't be at work and 2.I will be with Kenny. What could be better?

A few words on my trip to San Francisco

I'm home. Had a great time. The work part of it was pretty painless and then Kenny came out Thursday morning. Ryan and Darcie were fantastic hosts. We ate way to much food and walked a million miles. Hopefully, we walked off most of the calories consumed but I highly doubt it. I got a bunch of blisters on my feet. We saw the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Park, the aquarium, went to Napa, and did some other things in between. We were bombarded by seagulls and mass poop bombs, ate too many delicious treats to count, and Kenny had a failed attempt at surfing (too cold and windy).

San Francisco

Well, I am off to San Francisco. I will be there for work through Wednesday and then Kenny is going to fly out on Thursday! We will head back Sunday to spend Easter with family. We are both really looking forward to the trip, and our good friends Ryan and Darcie will definitely make it a fun one!

I will be sure to post some pictures when we get back and hopefully I will have a story or two to share.

Turn left now to enter Hell

When my mom and I were out in TX for Thanksgiving, we decided it would be fun to go to ICE, at the Gaylord hotel in Grapevine. We had to take two cars and I ended up in the car with my Aunt Joanne and my mom. I figured this was the better choice because the other car had two little kids in it. Yeah, I was totally wrong. We were supposed to follow my aunt there. You know, the person who actually lives out there and knows where she is going. We weren’t even 5 minutes from the house when all of a sudden my aunt J is passing my aunt C. Her and my mom are just chatting away and I ask her what she is doing. I look behind us and they are nowhere to be found. There is a ton of traffic and we have no idea where we are supposed to be. My cousin calls me, asks what the hell we are doing and then tells me where we need to go. I attempt to relay the info to my aunt J.

Turn onto the highway here. (There was only ONE option where she could go.)

Where?

Here. Take a right here.

Which way? Where am I supposed to go?

HERE. TAKE A RIGHT HERE.

Where the F am I supposed to turn?

Oh my God. Take a right here. Onto the only highway we can get onto right now.

Here? Here? Which way?

RIGHT.

My cousin would call every few minutes to let us know where we needed to be since they could not catch up to speedracer. By the way, we also had directions in the car with us. My mom printed them out JUST INCASE. We were doing alright for about 5 minutes and then aunt J decided to turn onto some other highway. Did my mom tell her to? No. Did my cousin call to tell us to? No. She just did. Before we left, J was telling us how Grapevine was at 1 o’clock to Fort Worth. Like, if you are looking at a map, it’s up to the right a bit. That is how she was planning on getting there. No map, no directions. I asked her is she knew how to get to “1 o’clock”, and she said no, but she would just head in that direction. Nevermind that there are a million and one different highways where we were. So, now we are on the wrong highway and my cousin calls to tell me that they did not turn there. No shit. My mom and I are trying to tell J to go back to the highway we were on and she, instead, pulls off to a gas station to buy a map. This is when I get a text saying that the other car is already at the hotel. J goes into the gas station, buys a map and gets back into the car. She hands the closed map to my mom and starts driving again making the decision to turn off again on the wrong highway.

My mom: Where are you going?

Aunt J: I don’t know.

MM: Why are you turning here? We need to get back to X highway.

AJ: (Flipping out) That’s neither here nor there, Shoulda, coulda,woulda. Where the F am I supposed to be now? That’s in the past! I don’t know nkjdsfdhfjd fjkdl ckj lakjhf ljfbk jlbvjk…………

Long story short(er), we ended up at the freaking airport. When we finally got to where we needed to be and there were signs specifically pointing to the hotel, she still ignored them. “Stay in the right lane” and she would merge to the left. “Turn left at light” and she would ask where she was supposed to go.

The ride back was a lot more quiet because no one was allowed to distract her. We made sure not to lose my aunt C, but the GPS decided to mess with us and take us a way that took twice as long.

What fun holiday family time.

Seattle or bust!

For our second wedding anniversary, I took Kenny on a surprise trip with surprise friends! Kris and Patrick came over on Wednesday night and Kenny had no clue. Patrick showed up first and Kenny thought that he was just stopping by to visit. When he finally figured it out, he was really excited!

We also kept the “where” part a surprise until we got to the gate. I cannot tell you how many times I almost wrecked where we were going! This trip has been planned for months and things have happened, or we have seen things on tv, where I wanted to say, “Oh, we can go there when we are on our trip.” or “I can’t wait until we are in Seattle to do…..” I did it though! I kept it a secret until the last possible second!

For the record, I love everything about Seattle. I would move there tomorrow if I could.
I decided that on this trip, everything we did had to be accessible by foot, monorail, ferry, etc. So, we stayed right downtown at The Alexis. It is a beautiful hotel and was in the perfect location to get to everything with ease.

We arrived in Seattle on Thursday morning and went straight to The Underground Tour. I highly recommend this tour if you ever make it up that way. It is really interesting to think that 16 blocks of Seattle’s “ground floor” is actually really the second floor. It is also weird to think about what goes on in the other 13 blocks where the tour doesn’t venture. I can imagine there is some very sketchy stuff happening down there. The rest of the day we spent walking around town figuring out where things were and what else we could do. We met up with Marcus that night for dinner and went to the Crab Pot. The guys all did a boil and it was a ton of food! We finished the night with a (loooong) walk to The Cheesecake Factory for dessert.

Friday, we woke up and went to Pike Place Market. I love that place. Kris and I found some fantastic finds and Patrick and Kenny ended up buying a load of fish, lobster tails, and crab from the Pike Place Fish Market. I also found my second husband there. I don’t really believe in past lives, but I seriously have a very strong obsession with anything to do with lighthouses, fishing towns, fisherman (only hot ones of course), fishing boats, etc…..realistically, I cannot stand the ocean and I get sick standing on a docked boat. Kenny was nice enough to take a picture of my 2nd (wearing waders and sporting a beard). It was too funny. I miss him already. After the market, we made our way over to the aquarium. It is a bit older, but you can tell they are working on it. It was also a lot of fun and we got to see some adorable sea otters and an octopus eating 2 fish. They also had my favorite, the decorator crab, so that made me happy.

Saturday was an early morning. We took a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island and walked around there for a while before grabbing some lunch right on the water. It is a gorgeous island and I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t see more. When we got back to Seattle, we stopped by the best crepe place in the world, and then took the monorail over to Seattle Center where we went to Empsfm and took a few pictures with the Space Needle. That night, we met up with Marcus again for dinner and some drinks.

This is the short story of everything we did. I know it’s pretty long, but we were out and about walking up and down huge hills the entire time we were there! We never had a bad meal, and I honestly enjoyed every second of my trip. I even got to see an old friend while there. He works right across the street for where we stayed!

I love Colorado and everything it has to offer, but Seattle has always been one of my favorite places ever. Who knows. Maybe someday I will be able to call it home.

I can hardly wait!

??????????

We leave for our "Secret Anniversary Adventure" tomorrow morning. It is not a secret to me where we are going, only to Kenny. All he was told was to take October 16-19 off from work. I am really excited to go where are headed. I LOVE it there!

Kenny and I will be married 2 years next Tuesday. We've been together 9 though, so that's pretty good, right?

Motorcycle weekend adventure

With the bikes

Crazy Horse

Profile of George (Mount Rushmore)

Deadwood

I have always said that I do not like doing "touristy" things when I go on trips. After this past weekend, I need to change that statement to say that I do not like going on trips and doing "touristy" things during tourist season. Late August is a great time to go anywhere because school has just started and roads trips are mostly over for the year.

We left on Thursday morning bright and early to head out to Keystone, SD. We had to drive though WY to get there. I have nothing nice to say about that state. I'm not a scientist (or engineer or whoever figures this out) but I am am pretty sure we could power the entire nation with the wind in Wyoming. I should definitely check into that. Ridiculous. Wyoming was windy as crap and hot. The wind felt like a space heater blowing directly onto me. When we hit South Dakota, the wind slowed and the temperature dropped. Which is another thing. Everyone told us that SD is hot and humid this time of year. Not this past weekend-it was in the 70's and gorgeous. We totally lucked out. We got to our hotel in the early evening and just hung out the rest of the night. It had been a long day of riding.

Friday morning, we rode to Deadwood, Sturgis, and Rapid City. If anyone decides to visit South Dakota for any reason, I strongly advise staying in the Black Hills. They are beautiful. Reminded us of Colorado actually. Sturgis, we are pretty sure, only exists for the Rally. The rest of the year, the city is run down and full of empty buildings. It was pretty gross. Granted, Sturgis was only a few weeks ago, but it was a ghost town. Rapid City? Meh. Nothing great. Deadwood was so cute. We all liked it. The whole feel of the town was great. We caught lunch where Wild Bill was shot and then rode up to the cemetery where he is buried. They had a hot rod thing going on also, so there were a ton of cool cars everywhere.

Saturday we went to Jewel National Cave where we took a lantern tour. Basically, they take you in the cave, with just a lantern, to show you how it would have been experienced back in the day. It was really interesting. It lasted about 2 hours and we went up and down a ton of tiny, skinny stairs, crouched through some openings, and sucked our guts in to get through some narrow passageways. A lot of fun. On our way back we stopped at Crazy Horse. The size of the project is astounding. If you don't know anything about it, check it out here. If you are from Colorado, the whole idea and process of CH reminds me of Bishops Castle. A crazy family wanting nothing to do with the government building something "great and significant". Great and significant takes on a different meaning when talking about Bishops castle though. Crazy Horse was really amazing and really frustrating all at the same time. The face took 10 years to complete and it was done in 1997. That is still all that is completed. I don't think I will be here to see the finished product. Shame really. After we were done there, we went to Mount Rushmore. It was about 5 minutes from our hotel, which was cool. Here's a fun little fact. All of Mount Rushmore fits into the head of Crazy Horse.

Sunday, it was time to head home. It was pretty uneventful aside from the fact that all three of us got pulled over by the State Patrol and we missed 3 tornadoes by about 20 minutes.

I never realized how much the wind can take out of a person. I am completely exhausted from the trip. The Black Hills are amazingly beautiful and it was a memorable trip to say the very least. Photos to be added soon.

Clever, clever boys

Whenever Kenny and I go out of town, my mom stays at the house to "babysit" the girls. I never think twice about what is going on at home, but that will now change. After our return home from San Diego, Brad informed me that we were lucky. We're lucky they (Tad and Brad) decided not to mess with us. I told him my mom was there so they couldn't have done anything, to which he replied, "She would have totally gone in out it with us." True enough, Brad.

A few of their non-executed ideas:

1. Put confetti on top of the ceiling fan blades. When we turned them on-instant party!

2. Shave Hazel and glue the hair onto Clementine.

3. Saran wrap the toilets.

4.Cut labels off of cans in cupboard.

5. Sod your patio/garage. This actually would have been welcomed-sod is expensive!

6. Change the way the refrigerator door opens.

It is so on Brad(and Tad).....

Butter-pants-ka-chou

Kenny had the worst luck with butter this past weekend. Friday night, we went out for dinner. We ate at the Ore house (insert lame, perverted jokes here-I sure did). Our server walked behind us and dropped her basket of bread and butter onto Kenny's back. She casually picked it up and went on her way. No sorry. No apologies of any sort. Just a nonchalant oops and away she went. I looked at his back to wipe the bread crumbs and their was a huge clump of better on his back. I cleaned it off, all the while our server walked by again and watched me, not saying a word. Then, on Saturday, out to dinner again. We ate a lot that weekend. The boys had an amazing Cajun dinner where they just put paper down and pour all your food onto the table. Crab, corn on the cob, sausage, and shrimp. It looked delicious. I wouldn't actually know if it was though. There is something about food being served directly on the table that turns guys into cavemen. I didn't dare try to stick my hand in there for fear of it being ripped off. Some random guy came over to clean up and when he was getting ready to leave he dropped an entire ramekin of melted butter on Kenny's pants. Oh, sorry. Sorry-was all he said as he made his way to the trash with the remains of what started as dinner. Kenny's left pant leg was completely covered. Completely. You could tell he was really annoyed but was trying to keep his cool. He went to the bathroom and soaked it, but 5 minutes later it reemerged with a vengeance. Hey, butter-pants-ka-chou (Usually he is referred to as Shoo-Shoo-ka-chou. Long story.), do you want to go grab a beer? Oh man. I hope this name sticks.

Disco bar+a few drinks=F.U.N

There was this bar at the hotel called Desires. Totally sketchy. It was kindof a sports bar, kindof a disco (seriously-it was decked out in disco decor), and kindof like hanging out in your friend's basement when you were younger. It had the faint scent of feet. We actually hung out there more often than one would think.

Taxi!

Kenny and I left the hotel one morning to go into Old Town. When we were getting ready to leave, there were a few guys sitting outside their taxis on the curb. We went over to them and asked for a taxi. His response? "No. Too many cars." Granted it was a busy place, but, isn't that his job? My mistake.

And, just because, a few more pictures from our trip

Back to the grind...

Well, Kenny and I made it home safe and sound last night with only a bit of a delay. I am used to perfect weather now, so the 40 degrees we came home to was a bit chilly for my liking. We had an amazing time on our trip and I am not too happy about being back at work. I woke up this morning and had no idea what I should be doing. An alarm woke me up instead of the sound of waves crashing on shore. I have not had to be fully clothed for an entire week. I forgot my routine for getting ready in the morning. Coffee was never made. My feet are desperately searching for sand. I wanted to use sunscreen instead of lotion. Breakfast wasn't downstairs just waiting for me to arrive. Instead of a beach towel, I had to grab my coat as I walked out the door. My constant buzz from pina coladas and mojitos is completely gone.

This is the view from our room.