Day 15

The obligatory Christmas tree photo

Dec. 5th

I took an online class.  Dec. 5th was the last session.  This is one of the books I had to read. 

Day 13

Look who is back...

Day 12

Okay I goofed, this should have been on day 11 not 12. I did my annual chocolate buffet trip with my friend Megan. One of the many delights:

Day 11

The hubs gave me this for our first Valentine's Day together.  We'd been dating for about a month.  I remember my roommates and I had a party around Valentine's Day (a wine, cheese, and chocolate party) and he gave me this stuffed animal and a box of chocolates--which three of my friends ate before I even had a chance to open the box.  Anyway, Jiggles as he was later named was with me for many years, but sadly, he started getting old and gross and in my recent decluttering I let him go.  I was a little sad because I'm a sentimentalist and it was one of the first things the now husband gave me, but I've been reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and so it was time to say good-bye.

Dec. 1st

Saw "The Nutcracker" on Dec. 1st--loved it as usual.  Here are two pictures from that night.

Day 9 The Last Day of November

And when you don't know what to take a picture of for your blog, you take a picture of your ballet shoes since today is a ballet day.

Day 8

Over Thanksgiving break, I did some decluttering.  Got rid of 4 bags of stuff.  Here is an old college t-shirt I came across:

It was from a pub crawl junior year.

Day 7

A friend and I have an inside joke about stapling socks.  These socks needed to be stapled so sadly, I had to throw them away.

Day 6

I bought this at a craft fair the night before day 6 of 30 pics as a gift for my husband.  His old Patriots pillow died and he wanted a new one.  It was supposed to be part of his Christmas gift, but he saw it so he got it early. 

Day 5

I visited some friends in Arizona this past spring.  One of them is a Yankees fan, so as much as it pained me, I gave him a Yankees Christmas ornament.  He sent me a picture of it on his tree on Nov. 26th so I sent him back this picture from my tree:

Day 4

The annual Christmas village picture

Black Friday

I don't even remember why we took this picture, but here we are being dorks on Black Friday (post a morning of shopping for me).

Nov. 23rd

Wow, I'm super creative with these blog titles.  Okay so I totally dropped the ball in regards to taking any pictures on Thanksgiving.  I went to this social in my neighborhood earlier this year and they had pumpkin painting for the kids and rock painting for the adults.  I don't know if you're familiar with it, but you are supposed to paint a rock, then hide it and someone finds it and can post a picture of it, keep it, rehide it, or whatever.  So before our Thanksgiving festivities I decided to paint some holiday rocks to hide at an upcoming holiday event.

Nov. 22nd

So once again I've decided to do my 30 pictures in 30 days.  My husband stopped at Mrs. Fields on his way home from work to pick up a birthday cake for me a few days early.  I love cookie cakes so I was very excited about this cake.

Random Road Trip Stuff

The hubs and I enjoyed our road trip and we absolutely do not regret it, but we will fly the next time we go to Denver.  Nonetheless, we can check something off our bucket list.  :-)  And we'll always have the memories.  So a few random thoughts from the road that didn't make it to any blog post:

-Some of the towns/citites in the US have really funny names.

-My husband is a riot when he car dances to Bye Bye Bye by N Sync while driving.

-We heard Body Like a Back Road (a.k.a. Body Like a Back Roll--long story, actually not that long, but I don't feel like explaining it right now) by Sam Hunt at least 10 times.

-My husband is also a riot when he car dances to New Kids on the Block while driving.

-There are some really LONG freight trains out west, as in over 100 cars (do you call them cars? What do you call them?).

-The sheer number of cows in the US

-Random bodies of water in South Dakota and Nebraska--actually, I'm pretty sure I mentioned the South Dakota one in a previous blog, but there's nothing and then suddenly, oh, we're driving over a lake right now

-If you go on a road trip and don't have satellite radio, learn to embrace country music (or if not, then learn to embrace religious music, we went the country route)

-A sign that said Falling Rock; does that mean only one rock will fall?  If that one rock falls, then do we not have to worry about it any more? Or was it just bad grammar?

Day 14: Home Again

It might not seem like it since it took me months to blog about it, but our two week road trip flew.  We left our hotel in Canton, OH aroud 9am, got gas, and off we went.  We made two bathroom stops and a gas stop on the way home.  It was a long ride, but we made it.  Neither of us were in the mood to make dinner when we got home so we ordered pizza, did some laundry and actually had to unpack and repack because we were doing our annual friends' weekend the next day at my friend's lakehouse.  That was a fun weekend--and the two hour drive was nothing after that long road trip lol  We had a nice relaxing weekend--eating, drinking, boat rides, swimming, and games. 

Day 13: Football, Baseball, Beer, and Rock 'n Roll (and a little Christmas)

We went to the Football Hall of Fame this morning.  I do not like football, but I didn't mind the Hall of Fame.  I may even go so far as to say I enjoyed it.  I was like a little kid though because I can't name that many football players, but every once in a while I'd read about one I'd heard of and I was like, ooh, ooh, honey, I know that one.  We spent about three hours there and then drove an hour to Cleveland.  Our first stop was Progressive Field to try to buy tickets to the Indians game for that night--success!  Then we ventured to the house from A Christmas Story.  My husband (and his family) watches that movie every year so I figured he should go see the house.  He didn't really want to spend the money to do the tour so we just took pictures of the house outside and wandered around the gift shop.  Then we drove over to Great Lakes Brewery for lunch.  Mike bought some beer there too.  After lunch (and beer), we drove to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. I enjoyed it, but I thought there would be more stuff there.  We spent a couple of hours there, then it was off to see an Indians game.  We enjoyed the game, but it was an hour ride back to the hotel so we were pretty tired from our full day.  Nonetheless, I think we did a good job packing a lot in during our brief stay in Ohio.

 

A friend of mine is a huge Stevie Nicks fan so I had to take a picture of her dress and send it to him.

I forgot to steal my husband's phone, hence the lack of pictures of the Indians stadium--my battery died that night.

Day 12: On The Road Again

Day 12, I woke up fairly tired.  Exercising at 9:45pm the night before was probably not smart, but after sitting in a car for 100s of miles and many hours, I had to do something.  I woke up this morning at 4:32 and was awake until at least 6:00.  Mike's alarm went off at 6:30 and woke me up again.  I finally gave up at 7:15 and got up.  We left the hotel at 8:17, got gas, and then drove to Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines because I was determined to see something in Iowa and I didn' think I'd be back any time soon. The sculptures were cool.  I took a few pictures and we were back on the road within a half hour after arriving at the park.  We made a pit stop for Mike and one for me (becuase of course we didn't need one at the same time--go figure).  Not too much to say about the drive through Illinois except they must have had some serious rain recently because the water was right up to the highway. One school playground we passed was partially underwater.  We saw a truck pumping out water on one road.
We made a gas stop near Notre Dame so we decided to take a little drive to see the school.  We didn't get out of the car or anything, but we saw a tiny bit of the campus.  Couldn't see in the stadium from the car, but saw the outside.
Sometime between 5:00 and 5:30 we stopped at a rest stop in Indiana for a bathroom for me and pizza for Mike.  He hadn't had pizza in over a week so I thik he was suffering pizza withdrawl--I think he would live off pizza if I let him.  :-)
We got to the hotel around 8:00.  Checked in and then went down the street to a Red Robin for dinner.  Then back to the hotel for the night.

Day 11: Red Rock and The Road

I was hoping to go to The Mint on Monday (day 11), but you can only get tickets the day of and despite the fact that my mom was in line before 7am, there were only tickets left for the 3:30 tour.  As we had a nine hour drive, we were unable to do the 3:30 tour.  My parents and their friends enjoyed their tour though.  Since we couldn't go to the Mint, we made an impromptu trip to Red Rock.  We didn't stay too long because we had a long drive ahead of us, but we enjoyed wandering around a little bit, taking pictures, and checking out the area.  Then it was time to get on the road and begin heading back toward home.  We made a bathroom stop in Colorado on the Nebraska border.  A little later we stopped at a diner in North Platte, Nebraska for lunch.  It was at a place called Penny's Diner--a 50's diner.  It was pretty good.  We made one more pit stop later that afternoon.  On our ride we saw lots of cows, corn, and windmills.  I still found that part of the ride more enjoyable than Wyoming though.  We listened to quite a bit of country music--not Mike's favorite, but limited options in places.  With the time zone change, we arrived at our hotel at 8:10pm (in Iowa).  Our room was really nice, I kind of wished we were staying for more than one night.  We ordered take out dinner from a place we'd seen on the Travel Channel and Mike went to pick it up.  It was Jethro's BBQ.  Mike really enjoyed his sandwich.  After dinner, I did a short work out in the hotel gym.  A little reading, then off to bed.

Day 10: A Little Baseball And a Little Beer (And some Books)

We did the usual breakfast and gym this morning (and by we I mean we went to breakfast and I went to the gym).  Then we headed to Corrs Field to get tickets to the Rockies baseball game.  We watched the first three innings or so and then my brother, his wife, and two of their friends from back home came to the game.  We joined them and hung out with them for the rest of the game.  I couldn't tell you too much about the rest of the game as we chatted through most of it.  We had a great time though.  We left a little before the game ended because Mike's friends had to catch a flight home.  So we all walked out together then they headed toward the hotel to get their luggage and the four of us went down the street for an eary dinner/late lunch.  It was called Biker Jim's and I believe it's locally famous.  I had some type of vegan hotdog sausage thing that came with cream cheese an onions.  I also tried a random beer, that was just okay.  After dinner we Ubered back to my brother and sister-in-law's house, had a delicious carrot cake cupcake and then wished them well as we wouldn't be seeing them again for a while.  We stopped at Fiction Brewery on the way back to our hotel.  I loved the decor--it was a book themed bar, even the drinks were named after books.  There was even a big  full bookcase at the bar.  I ordered a flight, which I did not love, but then the bartender gave me some random drink which I really did not want (it was free), but he talked me into it and I'm glad he did because it was really good--better than the flight!  Then it was back to the hotel to pack up as we were leaving Denver the next day.

Day 9: The Wedding

My brother's wedding a.k.a. the reason for the road trip was on day 9.  We had a lazy morning--breakfast, gym, hanging out at the hotel.  Around noon time, we went downtown to have lunch and peek around for some souvenirs.  We ended up just sharing some appetizers for lunch and all I got for souvenirs were two postcards.  We found some fun stuff as we were walking around though--fun chairs to ride, corn hole with bean bag chairs, and beer pong (no beer) with soccer balls and trash barrels.  Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding and board the shuttle to the wedding. It was an entertaining shuttle ride.
The ceremony was nice--short and sweet.  It was at a brewery in the mountains.
The reception was fun--great food.  We met some new people (friends of my brother's from Colorado) and it was nice to see some of his long time friends again.  We ate, drank, danced, lauged,and had a good time. The shuttle back wasn't quite as entertaining as some people were a bit annoying, but such is life.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was around midnight so we called it a night as we were exhausted.  We had a good time and I am very happy for my brother.