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!! 

Open Houses, and a Business Trip

It's been a crazy week, so I'm sorry it's been so long! This past weekend, we didn't do anything because I was so drained from my work trip (I'll get to that a bit later). But, the weekend prior to this weekend, we went down the shore with McGee's family for one night which was SUPER fun and relaxing. I didn't get any pictures of that trip because I was too busy relaxing, but I did get a picture of Guinness after we returned. We had to board him for one night, so when we picked him up he was stressed out and exhausted. He slept for the rest of the weekend!!

My favorite part of this picture is his back foot that's tucked up onto the pillow (at the bottom of the picture)

The day we got back from the shore (Sunday) we went to an Open House that we were super interested in. This house had a creek!!  The house was backed up to a really beautiful creek, and I thought it was AMAZING. The interior of the house wasn't too great, and it was really challenging to get to this house (about 30 minutes away from the highways, and VERY curvy roads!). But the creek was beautiful and I thought it would be super cool to live in a house with that in your backyard!

Can you see the creek in the background? That deck was pretty nice too! 

Here's a close-up of the creek. It was beautiful! The water was moving pretty quickly too (so no stagnant water to worry about!). 

So, this week was my work trip out to San Francisco. It was a really quick trip with very little downtime, so I wasn't able to coordinate a trip up to Sacramento to see my family and friends, unfortunately. I flew to SF on Monday, and flew back on Thursday. The ONE good part of the trip was a dinner cruise that our boss planned as a "bonding" activity for everyone in our group. There were some really beautiful views, and it was a pretty great cruise. The rest of the trip was pretty lame, and a lot of my co-workers are catty and mean... I won't go into details, but I was so happy on Thursday when I was able to leave. It was an exhausting trip, so I pretty much slept all weekend!  

Alcatraz!! It was a very lovely cruise. 

Here was a picture I took on the cruise. SF sure is beautiful!! 

On Sunday I did sorta wake up in time to make brunch for us. McGee made the bacon and coffee (both are VERY important!!), and I made the Cheddar Apple Scones. It was my first time attempting to make scones, and while they may not have been the prettiest scones in the world, they were SUPER tasty, if I do say so myself! The cheddar and apple combo was quite delicious. I tried to take a good picture of them, but I am clearly not a professional food photographer...

Cheddar Apple Scones

This Thursday we are going to go see E.T. at the Hiway Theater (that old theater that we like to go to). I am SOOOO excited to see E.T. on the big screen!!  I'll try to post again very soon!!  I hope you're all doing great! 

Picture time!

Well, I think all of you know that I do NOT like having pictures taken of me (or taking pictures of myself), but I promised some pictures of my haircut! And somebody (cough cough, Adriana, cough cough) reminded me this morning that I hadn't posted pictures yet. So, this morning I took a few! My hair was still a bit wet though from my morning shower, so I'll try to take another one next week or something when it's dry and looking a bit better.

I was attempting to take a normal picture... 

But that just didn't feel right, so then I tried this. 

And that didn't feel right either, so then I brought Guinness into the picture (after he pounced on my head a few times... thus the messier-looking hair)

And then I took a few pictures of Guinness lounging with me on the couch while I was getting a bit of work done. He's such a cuddler nowadays.

He became quite alert when he noticed me taking pictures though! 

I hope you're all doing really well! I'll try to do another post this weekend, or next week while I'm traveling for work.  

August is busy so far!!

It's been a pretty eventful week! First, I went and got a huge haircut on Wednesday. I chopped off about 12 inches and donated it to Locks of Love. I don't have any pictures of it yet, but I'll take some soon - I promise! My hair is really gross right now from going to the gym earlier, so I definitely don't want to take a picture of it now. And it's so short right now that I can't even put it in a ponytail... It's an inch or two above my shoulders. So it's a little shorter than I hoped it'd be, but oh well! I'm sure it'll grow out in no time. 

On Thursday evening I finally got my car back from having it repaired after the accident! They had to replace a lot more than I thought they would, but it looks brand new now. They even managed to vacuum up all of the Guinness fur in my backseat! I don't know how they managed that.... It's kind of a miracle. Kevin was joking that maybe he should go get in an accident so they'll get rid of all of the Guinness fur in his car too! 

Friday night we went to a BBQ at Kevin's friends' house. They live really close to us - only about a 15 minute walk. And they've been married for about a year - their wedding was the first one we went to at the Ballroom at the Ben. It was a super fun and relaxing evening, and the weather was perfect for hanging out in their backyard on their deck. And they had all of these large torches around their deck that burn an oil that repels bugs (I'm guessing some sort of citronella oil?), so we weren't even bothered by any bugs! It was a really great evening. 

Saturday morning Kevin went with me to Verizon to get a new phone! I was due for an upgrade, and my phone had been misbehaving a lot (it was constantly dying on me... even with a charged battery), so I went and got the LG G3. I really like it so far! It's slightly bigger than my Samsung Galaxy S3 was, but not by much at all. I'm still figuring out some of the tricks to the new phone (I've never had an LG phone before!), but so far I really like it. And I got a pretty purple case for it too. 

Saturday evening we met up with McGee's family in town to celebrate his sister's birthday, and we went to one of Jose Garces' restaurants. He's one of the Iron Chefs, and McGee took me to one of his restaurants (Garces Trading Company) on my birthday (if you remember the steak frites dinner?). This restaurant was called Rosa Blanca, and it serves Cuban comfort food. It was AMAZING. I highly recommend it. 

After the super awesome dinner, we all walked over to the theater to see The Book of Mormon. Kevin's sister (Maureen or "Mo") had wanted to see the show for her birthday, so we all went to see it. I had NO idea what it was about, but I'd heard it was a really funny show. Kevin had told me that it was written by the guys that write South Park, so then I knew that it would be REALLY funny (and probably super inappropriate!). It was so beyond funny (and inappropriate) - I loved it. We weren't allowed to take pictures during the show (understandably...), so I took a few pictures before the show started. 

Here's Kevin and his sisters (Mook and Mo)

Here's the ceiling! It was a really beautiful theater. 

Here's the stage - our seats were pretty darn great! 

It was soooo hilarious! 

 And all of those pictures were taken on my new phone! Yay! This week is going to be crazy with work - I'm still working on a huge project. I think we're going to try to make a trip over to the Hiway Theater (the cool old theater that we like to go to) one night though because they have a few awesome movies playing there this week. Oh, and last week we saw Guardians of the Galaxy!!  It was SO awesome!! I highly recommend it.

I hope you're all doing great! I'll try to do an update this week - AND take a picture of my short hair, like I promised.

I'm so ready for Fall!!

This past weekend I flew down to Virginia to spend some time hanging out with my dear Lindsey! The weather made some of our plans challenging (it was rainy all weekend), but we had a really great time. On Saturday we were going to head to the pool to go swimming, but due to the weather we had to make other plans! We went to this HUGE Yankee Candle shop that is really awesome and has a bunch of little shops attached to it. They have a very huge Christmas-y area, that let us know there was only 144 days until Christmas! The Yankee Candle Shop had all of their Fall stuff out, so I bought a few Halloween decorations that I'm really excited about (I'll show you once I decorate for Halloween!). And Saturday night Lindsey and her family and I went to a baseball game! The rain held off for most of the game, but at about the 6th or 7th inning it started getting pretty rainy. We stood under the awning for awhile, but ended up leaving a bit before the game was over because it was getting late and it just didn't seem like the rain was going to stop.

Yankee Candle! It was so fun and pretty.

144 days til Christmas (even less now!)

I was excited for this because I love bacon, but it did NOT smell "mmm" at all. 

Baseball game! Before the rain started...Haha :) 

Lindsey!!  

Here are Lindsey's little girls: Reagan is on the left, and Colby is on the right. 

I'm quite glad that summer is almost over. And the main reason is all of the frickin bugs everywhere. I know that sounds whiny and lame, but seriously, they are BAD this year!  The worst I've ever experienced. There are so many mosquitoes, biting gnats (that like to swarm), flying big reddish beetles (that make their way into our basement on a very regular basis), and the newest one is this ENORMOUS grey-ish bug that I've seen the past few weeks. They attach themselves to our house, and sometimes they're just sitting on our walkway to where we take Guinness to go to the bathroom. Well, today I finally figured out what they are: they are cicadas. I don't know how many of you have seen cicadas or heard them (they're quite noisy, and you can usually hear them making noises from trees, etc), but they are HUGE (the bodies are literally the size of a ping-pong ball or larger) and ugly. The good news is that they're fairly harmless, but they will bite if they mistake you for a tree. I'm going to attach some pictures so you can see the grossness of what I'm dealing with here:

This is one molting its grey-ish skin. I saw a few of them in this stage today... I could see their green heads poking out of their grey bodies. 

And here the cicada has almost completely shed its grey skin. I've found a few of these grey-ish "shells" laying around, and one of these huge green bugs flew past my head today. 

So, I think you will understand why I'm ready for some freezing temperatures at night. Yes, you heard that right: I am asking for freezing temperatures. I'm just very over Summer. Come on, Fall!!

Our Trip

We are SO excited for upcoming trip in November. We're going to see Belgium (Brussels, Bruges, and Antwerp), Paris, and Amsterdam. I thought I'd give everyone an idea of what we'll be up to, though we're still working out a lot of the details (and some stuff we'll just wait and figure out when we're there).

Brussels:
We will be flying into Brussels, and we'll be spending 4 nights at a lovely B&B that is right in the middle of everything, and only a 5 minute walk to the train station. We're not really sure of many specific things we want to do in Brussels, but there are two things we know for sure: The Grand Place and the Cantillon Brewery.

The Cantillon Brewery is a family-run brewery that's been brewing beers since 1900. 

The Grand Place is the central square of Brussels, and it's served as the town square since the 12th century. 

Bruges:
We will be taking a train ride to Bruges while we are staying in Brussels, and we'll check-out the sites to see there. We're guessing one day will be enough to check out the sites in Bruges, but we could always head there for another partial day. In Bruges, there are a few things that we definitely want to do: the Halve Maan Brewery, the Belfry, the Markt, and Dumon Chocolatier.

The Halve Maan Brewery was first mentioned in the town's registry back in 1564! And the rooftop of the Brewery is supposed to have amazing views.

Dumon is a small family-run chocolatier that is supposed to have the best chocolate in Belgium!

The Markt has tons of shops and restaurants, and is the town center of Bruges. 

The Belfry has 366 stairs, but is supposed to have some amazing views. 

Paris: We are going to be taking a daytrip from Brussels to Paris via the Thalys train (it's only an hour each way!). I know most people will say that it's pretty impossible to see Paris in a day, but I think for the stuff we want to see it'll be quite do-able. We want to see the Eiffel Tower (of course), Notre Dame, and the Arc de Triomphe. And probably eat a croissant or baguette or something.

Antwerp: After our four nights in Brussels, we plan to take the short train-ride up to Antwerp and spend a night there (it's on the way to Amsterdam). We found another great B&B, and it's right in the heart of everything. I know of a few things I definitely want to see in Antwerp: Botanic Gardens, De Vagant, and the Central Station (where our trains will be, so this will be easy!).

Central Station - built between 1895 and 1905. 

The Botanic Gardens! 

De Vagant is a cafe with over 200 Belgian gins! Belgian gin is called "jenever". 

Amsterdam: After our one night in Antwerp, we'll be heading up to Amsterdam for two nights. We found a really awesome apartment in the Jordaan area, which is near Anne Frank's House. It's still very walkable to the city center, but it's supposed to have a much cooler vibe and is part of the canal district. There's a canal right outside of the apartment we'll be staying in! We're still figuring out what we want to do in Amsterdam, but we know we want to see Anne Frank's House (super close to our apartment), the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rjikesmuseum (a large art museum). We're also toying with the idea of taking a train and bus to see the La Trappe trappist brewery. It isn't very convenient to get to, so we're trying to decide if it'll be worth it (trappist breweries don't really like visitors, but La Trappe allows visitors a few days per week). It sounds really cool though, so we'll have to see if we can make it work (and if they'll allow visitors on the days that will be convenient for us). 

This is the shower at the apartment we'll be staying in. The owner is an artist (and she lives upstairs with her family), and she did a bunch of mosaics in the apartment as well as some art on the walls. 

After our two nights in Amsterdam, we'll be catching a flight out of Amsterdam to head back home. We're sooooo excited for this trip!!

The Haunted, the Bad, and the Awesome

It's been awhile since my last post! Sorry about that. This will be a long post though. We've definitely been keeping busy since we got back from our trip. Some good stuff, and some not-so-great. Some of the good stuff is that we've gone to a bunch of Open Houses! It's super fun. We're just looking to look right now, and we won't be buying anything anytime too soon. But it's fun to look, and we're also learning a LOT about what we need/want in a house. So, it's really educational! One house that we went to look at last weekend was SUPER creepy! I kinda knew it would be, because from the pictures on Zillow you could tell that it was a really cool old house and it had kinda fallen into disrepair. In person, it looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It was really creepy walking around the house, and I was totally getting a haunted sort of vibe. And when we were walking around the yard, we saw this fountain:

Um... Yeah. If that isn't a demon, I don't know what is. Who has a demon fountain in their yard???  I think only the psycho owners of a haunted house, that's who. We went to see another house that we LOVED, except the upstairs was totally unusable. It was a cute little cottage located in Valley Forge National Park (BEAUTIFUL surroundings), but only the downstairs of the house was usable. They had the Master Bedroom and a bathroom downstairs, but upstairs there were two more "bedrooms" and a bathroom, but the bedrooms were so tiny that you couldn't fit anything larger than a twin bed, and the ceiling was so low in the bedrooms and bathroom that McGee and I couldn't stand-up straight. So... that's not good. We loved the usable part of the house and the Valley Forge area though! 

One of the not-so-great parts of our time since we got back was that I was in a car accident a few days ago. It was lame. I was just stopped at a red light, and then some big truck that was pulling a trailer (they belonged to a landscaping company) was coming from the opposite direction and decided to make a left turn behind my car, and they did NOT realize how much room they needed for their truck and trailer to make that turn. So... it ripped off the back of my car. It sucked. My car is currently at my insurance's service center, and I'm driving around a nice Toyota Corolla rental car until I get my car back. Luckily, the driver of the truck and the owner of the landscaping company were super nice, and they're stepping up and accepting blame (and they said they are 1000% insured). 

My poor car... 

It has been a really crazy and exhausting week, and I'm hoping this weekend is relaxing so we can recuperate a bit. This evening we're going to a wedding, but I'm hoping it'll just be fun and chill (I think it should be). The reception is at the Ballroom at the Ben, which is a really beautiful venue. If you've seen the movie Silver Linings Playbook, then the Ballroom at the Ben is where they had the dance competition at the end. I'll try to take LOTS of pictures (I was awful about that at the last wedding we were at!). Here's a photo I found online of what the venue looks like: 

Pretty, huh? I'll take lots of pictures tonight. 

And now it's time to share some AWESOME news with all of you!!  McGee and I have decided to take a trip to Belgium and Amsterdam in November. We've been contemplating this trip for a long time (like maybe close to two years?), and we decided to just do it. My work forces me to take vacation for the week of Thanksgiving (I would much rather use that time at Christmas...), so I figure we should do something really awesome with that time off so it isn't wasted. So, we just decided to go for it. I'll do another blog with more details later, but we're super excited about our trip!!  

Bruges, Belgium