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!! 

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!!