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.

Happy 4th

I was really not looking forward to the 4th this year (sorry guys!). We made plans to head down to Kris and Patrick’s house. Last time we hung out with Patrick on the 4th, I spent the night sitting in a truck while all the guys shot each other with bottle-rockets. Kenny has a scar on his shoulder to prove it. I don’t like being startled and I hate loud things, so fireworks are not on my list of favorites.

It ended up being a fun night-they had a party in their back pasture and set off fireworks for a good two hours. It’s completely different if I know they’re coming. We spent the night and then got to hang out at their parents pool on Sunday-not a bad weekend!

Sidenote: I think stomach touchers are like cats. Cats know exactly who doesn’t like them or who is allergic to them and they seem to want to hang out with only those people. These stomach touchers are coming out of the woodworks! You all told me, “Oh, no one touched my stomach while I was pregnant.” That is crap. I have had more random people, sometimes strangers, come up to me and do the rub.

Let's just drive

Kenny worked way too much these past few weeks. Too many days straight and way too many hours. He actually had an entire weekend off, which is unheard of anymore, so we were really looking forward to spending a fun weekend together. Saturday morning, we woke up and decided to pack the car up and drive to Salida. We loaded up the bikes and the girls in the Element and took off. It was Fibark weekend-a rafting, kayaking, drinking, socializing festival so a lot of people were in town. We did some visiting and then went to watch the hooligan races. People make rafts out of whatever they want and try to float down the river. Pool toys, kegs, 5 gallon buckets, or whatever else they feel like duct-taping together. It’s an entertaining race to watch as most of them get torn apart while trying to get through the rapids.
As we headed out of town, we were trying to decide whether or not we were going to go home, camp in the car somewhere, or something else. We ended up at Kris and Patrick’s to spend the night. Sunday was spent hanging out and smoking food. We got home late Sunday night and then, of course, back to work today.
It was a really fun, spontaneous weekend!

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

Breckenridge snow sculptures

Breckenridge holds the International Snow Sculpture Championships every year, and this year we decided to see what it was all about. I loved it! We headed up there with Kris and Patrick on Saturday and spent the afternoon walking around.

My favorite was the bear with the rv, but it didn’t even place! I wish these pictures showed how detailed these sculptures were, but the sky matched the snow, so it was a bit hard to capture the contrast.

NKOTB

When I was in 3rd grade, I remember walking around the track during recess listening to New Kids on the Block on my Walkman. I would belt out Please don’t go Girl and Hangin’ Tough among others. I adored them. I adored Joey. I had one shirt and one giant pin. Nothing more. I was never allowed to go to one of their concerts though, Too young I suppose.

Well, I can check KNOTB concert off the list!

On Friday night, Kris and headed up to Broomfield to see them in concert. I was looking forward to it, but was not expecting much. I was excited, but not thrilled. Oh man, was I wrong.

It.was.awesome!

I thought it was hilarious that their first time around, most of us, were between the ages of 8-15. Now, we are all in our 20’s and 30’s. I was pretty happy that I would not be hearing screeching girls the entire show. When I went to see N’Sync a while back, I was deaf for a week from the blood curdling screams of 12 year old girls. Completely mistaken. I am still half deaf, but it’s because of the sheer volume of the screaming/cheering. The boys could not even be heard over the screaming when everyone was full on! It was hilarious. Then they started to sing. Holy crap did it take me back. They were really great live! We had seats on the floor and during the show they came over to the middle of the floor and sang about 3 songs from a rotating platform. We were maybe 10 feet from them! They are a lot shorter than I thought they would be, but that’s beside the point.

I also thought it was hilarious that I had no clue how popular Donnie was. Back in the day, I was completely smitten with Joey, which makes sense. I was young and so was he. He was the youngest by far. Little did I know that the older girls were all about Donnie. When he started to sing for the first time, the cheers were just as loud as they were for Joe! The tone was obviously a lot different this time too. Being a lot older, the guys were quite pervy at times. Donnie totally took the cake. I am pretty sure no one minded though.

The seats were filled with about 95% girls and 5% guys. Those poor fellas. Couldn’t even compete with what was happening around them. Donnie even made a comment about how he felt sorry for them, he really did. But seeing as they were soooo nice to take their lady to the show, they were owed a little bit of love when they got home.

Kris and I had a great time. The seats were filled. The energy was awesome. It was a fantastic show!

The rest of the weekend was spent in Breckenridge for Kris’s birthday. We went shopping, hung out and had a delicious dinner. (Note: If you have never tried Three Olives Grape Vodka and sprite I suggest you do so IMMEDIATELY. It tasted like grape soda!)

I wish every weekend could be like this.

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!

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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?

F you Simply Sleep

This past weekend a few of us went camping. I would first like to say that I do enjoy camping and I am good at it. Apparently, I do not look like the camping type. APPARENTLY, it is assumed that I am too prissy for it. Not showering for a few days? You can't handle it Lauren. Peeing behind a rock. Yeah right, Lauren. Well you know what? Screw all of you nay-sayers. I am a legitimate camper. I spit on pop-ups and people who bring tv's and "toilets". I am hardcore.

The only part of camping that I do not like is the "nature" part of it all. I mean, I like the outdoors and I love campfires and sleeping next to a river and all that. I do not like spiders, bees, bears, mountain lions, and whatever else can eat me, bite me, or sting me. This being said, whenever we go camping, I don't sleep. Like, at all. I lie awake the entire night waiting for a bear to rip through the tent and eat me, then Kenny, then the girls for dessert. Kris told me that she takes Tylenol PM when we go camping so she sleeps better. AWESOME. Why didn't I think of that? I went to Target the next day and bought some Simply Sleep. Friday night I was so excited to take it and to be able to sleep though the night. To sleep at all actually. Yeah. Right. Friday night was long and sleepless and I didn't fall asleep until the sun started to rise on Saturday morning. To add insult to injury, the girls refuse to sleep in their own sleeping bag-they totally have their own mini bag. Not 30 minutes after we went to bed, they decided they wanted to be with me, in mine. I have a mummy bag that fits me comfortably, aside form being a bit too short. Add two little dogs, and forget it. So, I stayed in my bag all night, not moving for fear of suffocating a dog, awake, and waiting for the sun to come up so I could catch some zzzz's. The part that pisses me off the most is that Kenny barely hits the pillow and he is out for the entire night.

Saturday, I said shag it and I was going to double up. It had to do something if I took twice the recommended amount. Nope. Nothing. F you Simply Sleep. Next time, maybe I will just take some shots of jager and hopefully pass out.

Weekend was fun, however 5 total hours of sleep over an entire weekend is not ok.

On the road again

Kris, Patrick, Kenny, and I are on a long weekend motorcycle adventure! I will be sure to post when we get back!