Laughs

Saturday we went and saw Nick Cannon's comedy show at The Parlor.

I wasn't expecting much...I thought he was known for being a kinda-sorta actor, not a comic.

Turns out I was SO wrong. He started out as a comic and it was easily one of the funniest shows we'd been to in a long time.

We realized how important it is to have a real good laugh so we signed on to see the next comic they are hosting as well...Ralphie May!! Can't wait!

One a day

I gotta say, I received some pretty amazing gifts this past Christmas, but one really outshone the rest. Oh, and this gift happens to be the one I bought to give to myself.

Yes, to me and from me. It was a line a day journal that spans 5 years.

I am not sure which idea I like more: having enough room to only write a sentence or two or that all these entries will span five years and still be so compact.

I've never been good at journaling (this blog is a prime example of that!) and I hope that with the bar set so low here I can keep up with this. I'm at 100% so far, haven't missed a day...yet.

Sunday, Fun Day?

The plan to lead more exciting lives has already hit a stall. On Saturday we did go out to an Argentine restaurant and take in a little Tango dancing, but that is where the fun stopped.

The next morning it was discovered that my lovely little auto was sporting a super flat.

I wanted to call AAA, Rob said 'Absolutely not! We will change this ourselves.'

OK, no big deal, right? Well, to my astonishment, all the tire places are closed on Sunday. I thought stuff like this only happened in Utah. Guess not.

Mid-afternoon we wandered outside in the freezing cold to switch out flatie with a spare since we'd unable to acquire a new tire until the next day. I was silently cursing myself for not parking in the garage. It would have been SO much warmer to change the tire inside...but that wouldn't have made for a very memorable experience, now would it?

Rob threatened to have me change the tire myself while he supervised, just to make sure that I had the skill under my belt should I be tested on it in the future, but lucky for me, he's too chivalrous to make me lift heavy dirty things by myself.

He's my hero.

Turns out I have some ridiculous kind of theft resistant tires, which means there is a special little key/bolt-type thing required to change my tires...which we didn't know about...and the service department at the dealership was closed so there was no help to be found. I tore my car apart and finally ended up locating it in a little velcro hidey-pocket. Handy.

We I looked so stupid out there. Rob was on the ground unscrewing the lug nuts and there I was...standing there reading the owner's manual...like a total dork. The missionaries saw us, took pity on us and offered their assistance. We, being the independent people we are (ha!) passed, and finished the job ourselves. Er, I mean Rob did all the heavy lifting and I stood there...with the book.

Like I said, hero.

And this took up our entire Sunday. So, how's that for exciting? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Icky

An ugly cloud of sickness has been hanging over our home for months.

Seriously, since mid-October Rob, I or both of us have been under the weather (which translates to being whiny and absolutely no fun), thus not one single thing worth blogging about has happened.

I’ve decided that we’re both going to be feeling better by the time 2011 rolls around so that we can start doing things that are blog worthy. And what I say goes, right?

We'll see.

N-Y-C

I spent the first week of the month in my beloved NYC with a girlfriend and had a blast. The weather had just made a turn for the cold when we'd arrived so I wasn't completely prepared for the weather. Good thing NYC is known for their shopping...I didn't go cold for long! ☺

We spent a few hours downtown where we took the Tribute WTC Walking Tour. It was really amazing. All the tour guides are volunteers that were involved in or are relatives of someone lost in the attacks. We got to see a little of the behind the scenes rebuilding and there was a great museum there too. Quite interesting; glad we decided to do it.

We made our way down to Battery Park, but it was too close to the last ferry time to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island so we skipped it. I'd been before so I didn't mind too much, but I wish we could have gone so my friend could have experienced it.

One afternoon we had tea at The Plaza. Very good. Very girlie. Very Eloise.

We strolled through Central Park and saw all the set up for the NYC Marathon that was being held the next day. I was really looking forward to seeing all the beautiful leaves in the park, but it was a tad disappointing. Either the trees were bare or the the ones with leaves were still green. Weird.

St. Patrick's Cathedral. I love this place; it's so beautiful. While there were lots of other people taking pictures inside, didn't feel quite right about it, so you'll just have to take my word for how amazing it is. Or Google it.

FAO Schwartz was another stop. This soldier was made entirely out of jelly beans, or some candy like that. We picked up a few treats at their sweet shop to sneak into our show that night

We saw a couple shows while out there, Memphis and In the Heights. Both great!

I snapped a few shots of the set of In the Heights.

We shopped and lunched at the Chelsea Market

My friend is much more adventurous when it comes to food than I am so I ended up eating at places I normally wouldn't and eating some things that I was a little iffy about. I think it was good for me though, although I'll probably still stick to my same boring food in the future!

We got VIP tickets to see a live Martha Stewart show...we're cool like that. I was really hoping that there would be some famous guests on and that we'd get some fabulous giveaways, but I was wrong. Still had fun nonetheless.

I also might have snuck my camera out to take a picture or two...or ten.

The skating rink was up at Rockefeller Center, but we were a few weeks to early to see the tree. Bummer.

We got to the Top of the Rock just in time to see the sun going down. It looked amazing. My camera is too crappy to really capture the great view, but you get the idea!

And that is where the pictures stop. I wasn't great about documenting this trip with pictures. We did manage to fit in a lot of other amazing things...ate a bunch, shopped even more, bumped into a Kardashian or two...you know, the usual.

I'm ready for a trip back, just wish the Robster would come with me. I'm working on him.

Visiting ALL the way from Utah!

The last week in October we had some fun house guests, who we've been waiting to come and visit us for a LONG time! And as if they weren't fun enough, Chase came up with them as a surprise. Good surprise!

We had lots of things planned to do but it being Seattle and all, the rain kept us from doing a few of them. We actually lucked out and got a couple days of really good weather.

First things first, we hit Pike's Market to get some hot mini donuts and see some flying fish. And a visit isn't a visit without your picture atop Rachel the pig.

We headed down to the waterfront for lunch at The Crab Pot...more food than we could handle!

The next day we went to the Seattle Aquarium. Chase posed with giant carved pumpkins, the girls got their faces painted and we all got to touch on slimy sea things.

From there we made our way down to the Family Fun Center for nothing but fun. How can a family not have fun there? It's in the name.

We went on ride after ride and played games galore. There were quite a bit of tickets racked up that were cashed in for loads of silly little trinkets. Yep, we had fun.

The next day we all went to the Zoo, costumes and all. Now, aren't they the cutest fairy and cheerleader you've ever seen!? Thought so.

Erika, the little navigator, checking out the map.

All they really had their hearts sent on seeing was the bears and we nearly struck out. All the bears were hiding or their exhibit was closed, except for the sloth bear, and that wasn't really that exciting.

A couple hours and a few feet of cotton candy later (seriously, a lot of cotton candy!!) and we were ready to head home to get ready for some good ol' fashioned trick-or-treating.

Yes, Jackson had a costume this year, and he only hated part of it...the hat. He did sport his bat wings without any complaint. We brought him along with us as we all took the girls out trick or treating and I was 100% surprised that he didn't tackle any little kids and scarf down their candy.

After the girls scored some treats they packed up and headed back to Utah.

We did lots of things in between, but since I don't have pictures, I can't remember what they were {yep, I'm getting old, my memory is going}.

One night the guys took over kid duty so Melanie and I could keep up our tradtion of seeing all the Twilight Saga together and we saw a late showing of Eclipse. They made fun of us for doing it, but I don't care!

Their stay seemed to go by way too fast. Can't wait until they come back again!

Fall Stuff

Some weekend mid-October we trekked all the way out to Stocker Farms to conquer the corn maze and give their haunted house a try.

I think this was the first time it hit us that it was starting to get cold out. We weren't dressed warm enough for the weather, but luckily Rob had a few extra sweatshirts and pairs of gloves in the car!

We got there too late to hit their pumpkin patch, but were not much for pumpkin carving anyways. With an hour or so of daylight left we took on the corn maze. They offered us a map as we beginning, but we passed and entered the maze with nothing but our superior navigating skills.

There were all these CornText check points throughout the maze, but we didn't give in. We were certain we'd make our way through without any help.

Turns out we sorta suck. We ended up coming back out of the maze without any problems...only we came back out the entrance, not the exit. So technically we didn't do the whole maze, but I thought we did pretty good.

The haunted house was awesome! It wasn't really scary, but there were definitely some parts where I was startled. We met some fun people in line and went through it with them, which made it even more entertaining.

On the way home we tried to ignore the fact that our shoes and pants were all muddy and stopped PF Chang's for dinner. I think we got a weird look or two, but pretended not to notice!

I think we can scratch corn mazes and haunted houses off our list for a few years.