Thanksgiving!

I can't believe Thanksgiving is already here!  We're heading to McGee's family's house tomorrow for a lovely dinner.  McGee's dad does the cooking (he's an awesome cook), but he doesn't like to bake or make desserts so I was hoping that I'd get to make some pies to bring for dessert (I have a craving for some pie making!), but I think we missed the boat on that one and McGee's cousin already claimed bringing pies!  So we're bringing a few bottles of wine instead.  I'm thinking maybe I'll have to make a pie this weekend for McGee and I.

I'm very excited for the Thanksgiving Day Parade tomorrow, because I think the weather is supposed to be kinda crappy!  I always love watching the parade when the weather is bad... which maybe makes me evil, but I don't know.  I just think it's so much more exciting when there's strong winds or it's crazy cold or it's rainy/snowy!  I think tomorrow New York is supposed to see some good winds and really cold temps.  So that'll make it interesting hopefully!  Speaking of cold temps, it has been FREEZING here (like in single digits with the wind chill!).  Today we had a non-lovely mix of rain, sleet, hail, and snow.  It was a gross day, and it definitely feels like winter.

Here's my favorite float from the Thanksgiving Day Parade!  Wait, I just noticed Kermit there too... I suppose he's my 2nd favorite.  But my 1st favorite is the Tom Turkey Float!  

Tonight we're going to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which I think is a highly-underrated Charlie Brown movie.  I love it to pieces.

And that little movie just so happens to be the last item that I had left on my Fall Bucket List, so I'm happy to report that I checked off everything!  So, since that one's done, I thought it was time that I make my Christmas Bucket List.  I tried to make it look pretty!

And here's a picture of Guinness, just because.  He's trying to give me his paw, for his "paw" trick (in hopes of a treat).

I hope that everyone has a really wonderful Thanksgiving!!  I'll be thinking about you!!

Yuengling Brewery

This past weekend, McGee and I roadtripped up to the Yuengling (pronounced "Ying-Ling") Brewery!  It's about 1.5 hours away from our crappy apartment.  The Brewery was SO cool.  I've definitely never been in a brewery with anywhere near that much history (it IS America's Oldest Brewery, after all!).  It has been family owned and operated since it was established in 1829, and it is now owned by Dick Yuengling (the 5th generation to own it), and his three daughters all currently work in different sections of the brewery and are learning the ropes to eventually buy the brewery from their dad!

There were tons of cool stories, and unfortunately I can't remember a lot of them (I should've written them down right after - dang!!), but most of them were about what the brewery went through during Prohibition.  I remember that during Prohibition, Yuengling started up a dairy right across the street from the brewery, and that's where they were making a good amount of their money during that time (they made a lot of ice cream).  They were also still producing "near-beers" (0.5% alcohol) and their Porter, and their Porter was prescribed by doctors to aid anemia and it was also prescribed by doctors for women who were breastfeeding (yeah... weird...).  So, the tour guide said that during that time, women were breastfeeding their children for many years and there were a lot of people with anemia because they all wanted their prescriptions!!  People had to have their beer.  The tour guide also said that during Prohibition, a lot of people around the town would store Yuengling's beer for them (on the down-low of course... because it was quite illegal to have it!), including the Catholic church that is next to the brewery!  The Yuengling Dairy was also used to secretly store a lot of the beer.

One of the coolest things about the brewery is the underground caves that were hand-dug and used for fermentation and storage before there was refrigeration.  It took 10 years for these caves to be dug-out, and when you're walking through them you can see why!  It's nothing but rock!  I tried to take some pictures of the caves, but they turned out kind of blurry:

 A sign on the wall of one of the caves

Here are some copper sinks in the brewery

This is a cool stained glass ceiling in the brewing room!  Isn't it gorgeous?  

Gotta have hop storage.

And after the tour is over, they take you to a little bar area for some samples!  

Here's a picture of the Yuengling Dairy across the street:

And this is a picture of the outside of the brewery:

A little more Hawaii stuff

So this post will probably mostly be for Lindsey, because I think she's the only one as nuts about animals as I am... But I thought I'd post some pictures of some of the animals we saw when we were in Hawaii!  It took a lot of self-restraint to exclude them from the last post (and I still included one turtle... I HAD to...), but I knew I'd have a LOT of pictures in that post with just the beautiful scenery and the fun stuff we did!  So, for Lindsey and anyone else who wants to see lots of animals...:

The resort had a lot of parrots around the lobby area.  They definitely rotated them so that the same ones weren't always out, but they didn't seem phased by the people, and some seemed to really like attention.  They had signs near the parrots though that said not to touch them (of course), and warned you that some of the parrots had been known to steal jewelry from people!  So they advised that you keep an eye on your jewelry around them.

(this one was napping... he seemed QUITE relaxed around all of the people!)

 These cute little lizards were EVERYWHERE, and I thought they were so adorable!!  I loved them.

 We saw a few crabs around the island, and most of them were this dark grayish-black kind.

 One really funny thing that completely caught me off-guard is that there were TONS of wild cats all over the resort!!  Apparently they're great at keeping the rodents (including mongoose...) in check.  I think that is SUPER smart, really... They don't have to use rat poison or traps or anything!  These cats were definitely on the wild side though. Some people were trying to pick them up (which I thought was CRAZY...), and the cats did not enjoy that at all... and some people even had baggies full of cat food for them (which I thought was CRAZY...).  When McGee and I were having our romantic dinner, the cute little cat in this picture was hanging out by our table.  He started to get pretty bold though at times, and was starting to put his paws up on my lap (which I was not ok with... because who knows if he'd scratch me or bite me to get to my food...), so we eventually had to try to startle him away from our table.  I felt kinda mean, but it comforted me to see that he was NOT skinny at all (they all looked very well-fed).  I loved his cute spotted little face though!  His coloring was super cool.

Have I mentioned that we saw a lot of sea turtles and got to swim with them in the lagoon?  There were lots of sea turtles.  And during certain times of day they liked to rest on the warm rocks, so that was a good time to get some pictures!  I have a LOT of pictures of sea turtles.

And as I mentioned in my earlier post, we saw a ton of dolphins on our scuba diving adventure (while I was in the boat getting sick after the first dive was over), and there were also quite a few dolphins at the resort too!  It was fun to stop by and watch them playing.  For some reason, I didn't get any pictures of them though...

And we saw SO many cool fish!  It has really made me want to get a saltwater aquarium, and OF COURSE I'd want to get a cute puffer fish for my aquarium.  I've heard that saltwater tanks are quite a pain to take care of though, so I'll have to research that a bit more... 

I think that's it for the many animals of Hawaii!  This coming weekend we're planning a trip to the Yuengling Brewery, so I'll make sure to get some pictures and post about that adventure.  

 

The Best Family Vacation Ever: Hawaii!!!!

We just got back from our vacation to Hawaii yesterday morning!  It was an amazing time, and there aren't enough words to describe how wonderful it was.  My parents, my brother and his wife, my two adorable nieces, and McGee and I all had a great time.  I'll upload some pictures and some blurbs about what we did each day, but there's no way that I'll be able to sufficiently describe the awesomeness of Hawaii and our vacation!

Day 1 (Wed. 11/6):  Flew to Kona!  The flight total is about 12 hours.

Day 2 (Thurs. 11/7): We were all pretty tired from our day of travels, so we decided to have a chill day at the hotel's lagoon.  Yes, the hotel has a lagoon.  It's a little inlet from the ocean, and there's tons of fish and sea turtles swimming around.  It was so lovely to hang out there all day and swim with the fish and turtles!  And the girls had a blast playing in the sand.  Here's a picture of part of the lagoon (a portion without a sandy beach).

Here's a turtle that decided to take a little nap on the rocks!  

Day 3 (Fri. 11/8): We drove to an area of Kona that my dad knew from a previous trip, and it was super cool.  It reminded me of the boardwalk at Santa Cruz, but with even prettier beaches! We wandered around there all day and had lunch at the Kona Inn (BEAUTIFUL views!  You're outside, right by the ocean), and we all did some souvenir shopping.  In the evening, we went to a luau back at the resort!  It was SO awesome.  I loved all of the fire dancers.  The girls even got up on stage to dance!  Addison was confused by it, but Cassidy LOVED it and was not shy at all.

Day 4 (Sat. 11/9):  We went to Volcanoes National Park!!  This was something I REALLY wanted to do, and I was so excited.  It was just as awesome as I'd hoped! 

A steam vent!  It was SO hot!

A cool volcano tube we hiked through. 

Day 5 (Sun. 11/10):  Beach day!  We went to a dive shop to rent some snorkel gear (and got some info on scuba diving... more on that later!), and then it was only a short 15 minute drive to an awesome beach!  We had a blast swimming around there, and then after a few hours we drove to another beach 5 minutes up the road and did more swimming and snorkeling! Later that night, my parents watched the girls while Brad and Amanda had a romantic anniversary dinner (4 years married! Congrats!), and McGee and I had a romantic dinner too (and it's maybe our 3 year dating anniversary?  We aren't 100% sure of the date... but mid-November sometime).  

Addison ate a lot of Cheetos if you can't tell!

Yep, this is our table for our romantic dinner!  Not too shabby, eh?

Day 6 (Mon. 11/11): Dad, Brad, McGee and I all went scuba diving!  It was awesome.  I've never gone before, so I had a little trouble figuring out how to breathe into the regulator (I was finally doing it right after my 4th or 5th failed attempt... turns out I wasn't exhaling correctly!).  After I was finally breathing correctly and the Dive Master (Tony) could help me swim down to the rest of the group (yeah, they all figured out the breathing very quickly...), it was really fun and AMAZING!  We saw an octopus (my FAVORITE!!!) and a huuuuge puffer fish (my 2nd favorite!  Seriously!), and tons of pretty fish.  After we had been down there for about an hour, we got back in the boat to head to the 2nd dive spot.  Well, this is when things took a turn for me.  The waves were REALLY choppy that day and our boat was going really fast, and I got super sick!  I was leaning over the side of the boat vomiting (we did see a TON of dolphins while I was getting sick though! So that was pretty cool.  And the guys on the boat joked that I was "feeding" them... GROSS). The boat took me back to the shore so I could try to feel better, and my dad stayed with me (he wasn't feeling 100% either), but the rest of the group (including Brad and McGee) went to the 2nd dive spot.  They saw sea turtles and a shark on that dive!  

Day 7 (Tues. 11/12): We had a relaxing day at the hotel, and went to the pool (and we went down the awesome water slide 5 or 6 times... SOOO cool) and we also chilled at the lagoon.  It was the perfect last day, and we all just spent a lot of time hanging out together.

Day 8 (Wed. 11/13): Such a sad day... We all had to leave Kona :(  It was really a perfect trip, though!  

Guinness is 9 months old!!

It's hard to believe that our little Guinness is 9 months old already.  He's developing SUCH a personality, and it's a really fun personality too!  He's full of energy ALWAYS, and he's a happy boy ALWAYS.  Some days he's a lot for me to handle on our walks just because he's so excited by people and dogs and he is super strong now, but most days he does great on our walks!  I've learned to avoid walks with Guinness during peak times (like 5-6:30pm), and then that makes things a lot easier on me.

We just discovered yesterday that he definitely knows the word "ball" now!  I'd had my suspicions before, but it was confirmed yesterday.  If we say, "Where's your ball?" then he looks around the apartment until he finds his favorite green ball.  He'd done that a few times for me before, but I thought it could have just been a lucky coincidence and I wasn't SURE that he knew it, but yesterday McGee and I tried it a few different times and it's definite.  He's such a smart boy!!  McGee and I are very proud, even though we didn't really have anything to do with it.

Another funny thing we learned about Guinness is that he is terrified of the heater!  Like shaking, whimpering, hiding behind me terrified.  It's so sad to see.. BUT, on this one he's going to have to just toughen up, because I plan to use the heater a LOT this winter.  Hopefully with some time he'll get used to it... Here's a picture of him from last week after he finally passed out after hours of being stressed out by the heater:

We don't really have any new stats on him, but we should find out his weight in December.  I'm thinking an easy 60 pounds by then!  He's looking more and more like a German Shepherd, but we do see bits of  his Blue Heeler side.  Especially when we look at this picture of a Blue Heeler: 

He has a white little line down the middle of his forehead from the patch of white that is on the head of every Blue Heeler I've seen, and his paws are just like a Blue Heeler, and that sure is his open-mouthed smile!!  The eyes look a lot like his eyes too.  

Speaking of smiling, Guinness still does his big cheesy toothy smile when he's super happy!!  It is the CUTEST thing, and it makes us so happy when he does it.  Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to capture a picture of it because he's always moving around too much and wagging his whole body (so pictures are just a big blur), but I found better pictures online of what he looks like.  Just combine the smiles from these two pictures, and imagine it on the cute little face of Guinness.  

That's it for the update on Guinness!  We're leaving for Hawaii in a few days!!  I'm so excited!!!!!  I'll do a new post after we return from that.