Last Weekend

Last weekend was a busy one! I feel like I say that after every weekend.

Saturday we went to look at one Open House during the day, and it was NOT a good house. The interior of the house was very "eh" and not too great, but the exterior was TERRIBLE. There was a little square-ish parking area right in front of the house, but then there was a super loooooooong (at least a quarter of a mile) skinny (one-car wide) driveway from the main busy road that lead up to the small parking area. Well, long story short: a bunch of cars (including us) ended up getting kinda stuck there when another car came down the driveway towards the house. McGee managed to maneuver his car in a way that would let them by us, so they could park in our spot, and he even got out of the car to wave them by. Well, this person freaked out and decided to just slowly reverse the whole way down the driveway back out to the street. They had a few close-calls with almost falling off the side of the driveway road, but they eventually pretty much made it back out to the street. And by that time the other parked cars had started to move a bit, so our only choice was to just reverse down the driveway too - Luckily, McGee is AWESOME at driving in reverse! We made it out to the street in no time, away from that nightmare of a parking situation.

Saturday night we went to a Union soccer match, and it was a very exciting game! The score wasn't exciting, but there were lots of shots-on-goal which was very exciting. McGee and his friend Juliff both have season passes to the Union games, and Juliff couldn't make it to this one so I got to use his pass. I had a lot of fun at the game!!

Our excellent seats! That fence wasn't really in my way at all - it just looks like it in the picture. 

After the match, we were getting home early enough that we decided to stop at Rita's! Rita's is a chain of dessert shops around here that serves something called "water ice" (like a slushy kinda)... but they also serve frozen custard!! It's AMAZING. It's so rich and delicious. My favorite is the chocolate-vanilla swirl, and you have to get sprinkles (or "jimmies" as they call them here...)!!  Who doesn't love sprinkles??  Except maybe Amanda... but only because she likes weird milkshakes instead (inside joke!!).  But Rita's shops are all only open during the summer, so we're getting near the time of year when all of the shops will be closing. So, I had to have it one more time this year!! 

Rita's frozen custard with sprinkles!! Yumm!! 

On Sunday, we went to FIVE Open Houses, and there was one house that we liked a lot out in the middle of nowhere. It was great, but we definitely have to weigh in the fact that we'd be a decent drive from the city which would make fun activities like going to a concert more difficult. And speaking of concerts (look at my segue skills!!), on Sunday evening we went to a Jeff Tweedy show!!  He's the lead singer of the band Wilco, and they're the organizing band behind the Solid Sound Festival that we like to go to. He has a new project just called Tweedy, which is a band he's formed with his 18-year-old son. It was really cool!!  And Jeff Tweedy also performed some of his own hits towards the end of the show. It was a REALLY fun show, and our seats were in the 2nd row!!  Such a cool night.

Here's Jeff, and that's his son Spencer in the background

Here's our view on our walk back to our car after the show! That's City Hall (with William Penn on top of it). It really is a pretty city. 

Frisbee Pup

I'll do a post about our awesome weekend soon, but first I wanted to do a post about our dear boy's new skill! Guinness has learned some new frisbee skills!!  We tried to work with him on frisbee skills when we first moved into this house, but he wasn't quite getting it... so we put the frisbees away for awhile and have just been playing lots of fetch with tennis balls with him. He loooooves fetch.

But, on Friday we decided to bring out the frisbees and give them a try, and he was soooo good at it!!  He loved jumping up in the air for the frisbees. Our boy has some crazy hops... He can jump soooo high. I took a video, and I'm going to try to upload it... but we'll see how that goes!  I also took a bunch of pictures, so those will work even if the video doesn't. He was having a blast with the frisbees though, and we've played a few more times since then! His skills are getting better and better.

Happy boy!! And look at that ridiculous tail! It's so curly. 

He's so excited!! 

He's jumping! This is one of my few successful action shots. 

Happy boy after he caught the frisbee! He'd kinda prance back to us after successful catches.

Another action shot! He was pretty high in this one (sorry he's so small in the picture!).

Ok I have no idea if this video upload worked... I'm going to post this, and then I guess we'll find out together!!  It didn't give me any error messages, so I think/hope that's a good sign... 

I hope you're all doing really well, and I hope Fall weather has found you wherever you are! Fall weather has definitely come to our area, and we're loving it. I'll post about our exciting weekend soon!!

Opera, Soccer, and Football.... Oh my!

We had a VERY busy weekend! It sure was a fun one. On Friday evening we went to Big Mike's opera (I've mentioned Big Mike a few times before). Big Mike and one of his friends wrote an original opera called "By You That Made Me, Frankenstein", and it was about Mary Shelley and her group of writer friends (including Lord Byron) during the summer that she wrote Frankenstein (1816). It was really interesting and well-done, and I loved it. Most of the opera centered around the five friends hanging out during that rainy summer, but then as Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein some of her characters (Dr. Frankenstein and The Monster) started integrating themselves throughout the scenes and interacting with the other characters. Big Mike played The Monster, and he shaved his head for the role and wore some crazy white contacts in his eyes too... He definitely looked like my vision of Frankenstein's monster!!  It was awesome. I didn't take any pictures during the opera, but I did take some pictures beforehand of the very cool venue. It was (fittingly) in a historic building that houses Philadelphia's oldest writer's club: The Franklin Inn Club.

The exterior of The Franklin Inn Club. 

Here's what part of the interior looked like, and part of the audience. 

This is the view from our seats. We were sitting on the side of the stage. 

Here's the cool fireplace that was right by my seat. 

Here's a picture of McGee at the bar set up in the back of the room, buying some beers for us to drink during the show. 

On Saturday we went to a Philadelphia Union soccer match with McGee's friend Juliff, and we did a few hours of tailgating before the match even though it was raining like crazy!!  Luckily we had a tent to sit under, but it was raining pretty hard. In fact, it was raining so hard that they ended up delaying the soccer match by an hour due to unsafe field conditions. I did not take any pictures that day, because I left my phone/camera safely inside of Juliff's trunk during the tailgating and the game because I did not want to risk it getting wet.

On Sunday, we were both feeling pretty exhausted so we didn't do much of anything. We watched lots of football, and made a delicious CrockPot meal - Creamy Green Enchilada Soup.

And now it's Monday... Another week begins. My work has me scheduled for like 5 weeks of travel during the months of November and December (plus I'll be in Belgium for a week with McGee, and I'll be in CA for about 2 weeks in December... so... if you're good at math, that's 8 weeks in November and December that I'll be gone... Yep, two full months). Sooooo... There's a very good possibility I'm going to need to quit my job and find another source of income sometime soon. If anyone has any ideas, I'm very open to suggestions! I'm considering opening an Etsy Shop, or just finding another job... Or both... Or neither.  I have no idea.

I hope you're all doing really well!!  

It's September!!!!!

I'm so happy it's September!! That means it's almost my favorite season: Fall!!!!  Yayyy!!!  And this week is when football starts, which I'm SO excited about. McGee and I already have quite a few plans for the upcoming months, so I think it's going to be a very busy Fall!!  

Last week we officially booked our Thalys train tickets to get from Brussels to Paris for a day, so now it's feeling REALLY real!! We've made more plans too, and tried to coordinate when we'll go see some of the bigger things we want to see (we checked days that everything is open, along with hours that they're open... and admission fees if applicable). I think we have a really great plan for everything!!  I'm so excited that our trip is coming up in just a few months!!

Last week we also went to the Hiway Theater to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I was SO excited to see ET on the big-screen, but for some reason it hadn't occurred to me or Kevin that there would probably be a lot of children at the theater to see it... Hmm.... I don't know why we hadn't thought of that. It ended up being really funny though, because all of the kids were totally cracking up during so much of the movie. And I thought there would probably be a lot of kids crying at the end (which would make me feel better, because I ALWAYS cry at the end of ET when he's all white and sick), but I was shocked that NO children were crying at all. I think I might have been the only person crying in the theater... What the heck??  I think kids are de-sensitized or hardened or something these days... Or I'm just a weenie and cry too easily. One or the other. 

This past weekend, Kevin and I made a quick trip down to Tampa to see my friend Melissa from high school. I haven't seen her in over 4 years, so it was long overdue! She'd never met Kevin, and I hadn't seen her son since he was a toddler and he's now in 2nd grade! We had a lot of fun in Tampa, and the trip was very relaxing and fun. It's such a quick flight down - only about 2 hours! 

I made my Fall Bucket List for this year!! It has a lot of the same things as last year, but a few from last year are missing and I added a few more. I may end up adding even more.. but it's a good start, at least!  Here it is!!