Guinness is 7 years old!! Plus, the Oscars are tonight!

Hey guys!  It's been a busy February so far! Our dear Guinness turned 7 years old on February 2nd, and we celebrated by just spending the day hanging out with him and taking him for a hike around Valley Forge, he got to hang at a brewery and murder a tennis ball, and we also cooked up some chicken and rice for him to have as a treat!  He had a great day :)  That night was also the Super Bowl, and we stayed home for that so we got to just hang with Guinness during the game too!  I was super bummed that the 49ers lost!!  I was for sure rooting for them.  Here are some pictures from Guinness on his birthday:

We also went to a concert recently!  We went to see Cold War Kids with some friends of ours, and it was an amazing show!  It was so great hanging out with our friends too.  Here are a few pictures from that night: 

Me in front of the cool LIVE sign (that's modeled after the Philly LOVE sign).  

Me, Fro, Kevin, and Rob

Cold War Kids

Cold War Kids

After the show, we went to a bar around the corner for a beer, and we played Jenga!  Here's Timmy and Kevin in a deep conversation of some sort. 

Rob and Sarah watching the Jenga madness. 

 You guys, the Oscars are tonight!!  I'm quite excited, and I'm also quite excited because Kevin and I managed to watch ALL of the Best Picture nominees!!  That almost never happens, but I'm so glad we were able to see them all.  So, I'll give my little thoughts and opinions on each of them:

-The Irishman:  This one was just TOO long for me.  I felt like it was really slow during parts of it, and I also felt like it could have easily been cut down to 2 hours.  I did enjoy most of it though, and I thought all of the actors did a really great job (especially Pesci).  Definitely not my pick for any awards though. 
-Once Upon a Time in Hollywood:  I really enjoyed this one!  It was also pretty long, but the end is AMAZING and INSANE, so it kinda made you forget how long it was.  And all of the acting was AMAZING, and Brad Pitt is for sure my pick for Best Supporting Actor.  I've heard he's pretty much a lock for that award, and I agree with it. 
-1917:  We were able to see this in IMAX at the movie theater!  That really added to the experience I think.  I really really loved this movie, and I'm shocked that the 2 main actors didn't get nominated for this.  I think this HAS to win for Cinematography.  I think this might win for Best Picture, and it isn't my pick but I'd be happy for it if it won. It was SO cool how they shot this movie... It really looks like it was shot all in one continuous take (and of course it wasn't really, but that's how it looks!).  It's SUCH an immersive movie. 
-Marriage Story:  So... I didn't enjoy this movie.  It was like WORK for me to get through this, I'm bummed to say.  The acting was all really great though, so that was definitely a positive.  As far as the story and writing though, I didn't enjoy it at all.  Adam Driver is amazing though, and that guy is going places.  I'm sure he'll be nominated at least a few more times in his life. 
-Parasite:  We just saw this last night, and HOLY CRAP.  This movie blew my mind.  It was craaaazy, and it was nothing like what I was expecting.  It seriously blew my mind.  This is my pick for Best Picture!  I've never seen a movie like this one, and it's such an original idea.  I will be thinking about this one for quite a while.  
-Joker:  This was a great movie, but I can't say I really "enjoyed" watching it, but I feel like it's not one that is SUPPOSED to be enjoyable, ya know?  Or maybe that's just my take on it.  But HOLY CRAP does Joaquin Phoenix deserve Best Actor for this.  For this one, I'd be upset if anyone else won, because he just really deserves it.  And yeah, great movie, but for sure upsetting to me. 
-Ford v Ferrari:  Loooooved this movie.  This was one of the first ones we saw, and I really enjoyed it.  The story was so interesting and great, and the actors all did a great job too.  It doesn't have my pick for any awards, but I loved it. 
-Jojo Rabbit:  LOVED this movie so much.  This was my pick for Best Picture before I saw Parasite last night.  I absolutely loved this movie, and all of the kids did SUCH great acting in this!  Like, it was shocking how great the kids were.  And Scarlett Johansson is my pick for Best Supporting Actress for this!   Really really loved this movie so much.  It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think. Loved it.  I'd be so happy if this won, but I don't think it will. 
-Little Women:  I thought this movie was great, and I just love the story of Little Women.  I did like Amy a lot more than I've ever liked her before (I usually hate her character), but I was sad that I didn't love Beth like I usually do.  One thing I did not like about it though was that it jumps around in the timeline a lot, and it's hard to keep track of which time you're in.  And I even know the story quite well, so I can't imagine if I was seeing it and I didn't know the story.  I did like it a lot though, and Greta Gerwig should have been nominated for Director.

You may have noticed I didn't pick anyone for Best Actress, and that's because I haven't seen 3 of the movies in the Best Actress category, so I don't really know what my opinion is.  Oh, and I'm really really hoping for Kitbull to win for Best Animated Short!  If you haven't seen this one, you should go to Youtube and look it up.  It's so good.  Those are my thoughts on all of the movies!  If you want to talk about any of the movies or find out more info, just let me know!! :)  I'm excited for the Oscars tonight!! 

A Snowy Weekend

Hey guys!  I hope your 2020 is off to a good start so far.  Mine has definitely been pretty busy, but it's good so far! Not too much to update you on, but this weekend we're getting some pretty decent snow here so I'll be sure to take some pictures of that for you! And because it's snowing, Kevin and I are just hibernating all weekend and we're SO excited about it! 

Last weekend was crazy busy because that's when we celebrated Christmas with the McGee side of the family, and we had it at our house so we were very busy with cleaning and cooking on Saturday!  We'd kept all of our Christmas decorations up (including our tree!  It made it!), so then on Sunday we spent the day taking down all of our Christmas decorations and cleaning up from the party.  We were quite exhausted by the end of the weekend! 

A pic from our Christmas party! In the back row is Kevin's Dad, Kevin, me, Kevin's mom, Mook, and in front is Mo and Mook's boyfriend Ethan! 

So, I don't know if you heard or if you care, but the Oscar nominations were announced!  And every year Kevin and I try to watch all of the Best Picture nominations.  I think we've only successfully seen them all once or twice, but we have fun every year trying!  I think this is the first year where haven't seen ANY of the pictures on the Best Picture list by the time they're nominated, so we have a lot to try to watch this year!  We'll see how far we get.  Here's the list of nominees, and my thoughts before I've seen them:

-The Irishman:  This one looks good, but I really wish it wasn't 3.5 hours long!  That is a ridiculous length for a movie... If it was like 2 hours long, I'd be a LOT more excited to see it. I've heard it's amazing though, and the cast is definitely amazing, but 3.5 hours?!  Crazy.
-Once Upon a Time in Hollywood:  I've heard Brad Pitt is pretty much a lock for Best Supporting Actor for this, and I've heard it's good?  I feel pretty neutral about this one right now - I'm not dreading seeing it, but I'm not super stoked either.
-1917:  This looks amazing!  So excited to see this one.  I think we'll go see it at the movie theater maybe next week?  I feel like this is one that should be seen on the big screen.
-Marriage Story:  I'm not excited to see this one, because I think it's going to be a downer.  I think it's mainly just about the 2 characters getting a divorce?  I do love Adam Driver though, and he looks amazing in the trailers for this movie.
-Parasite:  I've heard this is awesome and creepy and has subtitles, and that's really all I know!  I'm pretty interested to see this one.
-Joker:  I've heard this one is super dark and very rough and super violent, and I've heard that from people that even LIKE violent and dark movies... so I'm not feeling suuuuper excited to see this one, but hopefully it's great.  The trailers all looked great, so who knows.
-Ford v Ferrari:  This one looks fun!  I am excited to see this one, and it seems like it'll just be pretty exciting and fun to watch. 
-Jojo Rabbit:  This one looks great!  I'm very excited to see this one.  The plot sounds craaaaazy too. I tend to love almost anything Taika Waititi does, so I'm kinda guessing I'm gonna love this one.
-Little Women:  I'm soooooooooooo excited to see this!  I love the version with Winona Ryder in it, and I'm so excited to see Greta Gerwig's version of it. It has some amazing actresses in it.

So, because it's snowing this weekend, we're gonna watch at least a few of those movies probably, and just have a nice fire going in our fireplace all weekend.  We have some amazing food lined up for this weekend too for our hibernating!  Tonight is going to be some roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans, and tomorrow is our homemade pasta with homemade alfredo sauce. Sooo excited for this weekend!  I hope you all have a lovely weekend too!

Christmas / New Year's

Christmas was in California this year, and we had SO much fun!!  It was so great to see everyone, and to hang with family and friends.  The trip flew by WAYYYYYY too quickly though, and I miss everyone so much already!  I can't believe our trip is over, and I'm going to have to plan another trip out soon.  It was a truly amazing Christmas.

I didn't take any pictures (whoops!) in California aside from our amazing trip to Disneyland (see previous post for those pictures), but I did take a lot of pictures of our house in PA all decorated for Christmas!  So here's some pictures of some of our decorations around our house:

Here's our house from our driveway! It isn't fully night, so you can't see the lights super well, but you get a little glimpse of them! 

Here's an up-close picture of our two windows over our garage!  The blow-mold on the left is a candle that says Noel, and the one on the right is a Santa. 

Here's a light we have in our window by our front door!  i think this decoration is meant for your lawn, but we like to keep it indoors because the weather is usually so gross in December.

Our tree! I loooove our tree skirt that my parents got for us years ago.  It's SO my style! 

Here's a closer view of the top of our tree!  We have a cool multi-colored star, and Bumble.

Here's Guinness enjoying our tree!  The tree is where we usually keep his crate, and he loooves to nap in his crate.  We moved it over to the other side of the room, so it always takes him a few days to get used to the new crate location! 

Here's our fireplace mantle! And I put all of the Christmas cards we receive in the art over the fireplace. It's like this metal tree thing, and it's kinda perfect for holding cards! 

Here's a ceramic tree that I painted a few years ago! 

And this is one of our tables in our dining room. We have another that has all of our Christmas mugs and Christmas beer glasses and wine glasses, but I forgot to take a pic of those!  

For New Year's Eve, Kevin and I just hung out at home with Guinness and we relaxed.  I still wasn't feeling 100% (I'd caught a terrible cold as soon as we got back from CA), so relaxing sounded perfect for New Year's Eve.  On New Year's Day, I thought I felt good enough to head into the city to see the Mummer's Parade.  We had sooo much fun hanging out for the Mummer's Parade, and we were able to meet up with Kevin's sisters Mo and Mook and Mook's boyfriend (Ethan).  It was a cooooold day though, so it probably wasn't very smart of me to go hang out!  By that night when we got home, I was feeling sooo much worse and it definitely set me back from getting better! 

Here's a pic of Kevin, me, Mo, Mook, and Ethan at the parade! 

Here's a cool pterodactyl that was in the parade! And that's beautiful City Hall in the background. 

Here's two people that dressed as construction cones!  Amaaazing costume idea. 

 

This was an amazing float in the parade that had some AWESOME live music!  And there were drag queens walking along with the float, and they were soooo fun and were really interacting with the crowd.

Disneyland!!!!

Oh my goodness, I only posted one time in December!  I'm so sorry about that.  December was definitely extremely busy, so I'll try to catch up now!  Kevin and I left on Dec 17 to head to CA to meet my family at Disneyland on Dec 18, and then on Dec 21 we drove up to Oakdale, CA with my family, and then on Dec 26 we flew back to Philly!  So, December was definitely a big ol' fun whirlwind, and then as soon as I got back to Philly I was sick.  I had a terrible cold / sinus infection / grossness like literally the day after we got back to Philly, and it still isn't fully gone (but almost!). 

SO, this post will be about the AMAZING time we had at Disneyland with my family, and then I'll do another post about just general Christmas / New Year's stuff, and then I'll go from there!

We had suuuuuuuch an amazing time at Disneyland with my family!!  Disneyland is seriously SO magical for the holidays.  We were there on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then we left on Saturday.  On Wednesday and Thursday we were able to do TONS of rides and see so much stuff and it wasn't busy, and then on Friday it was definitely a LOT busier so we were able to do a ton of stuff in the morning, but then the rest of the day we weren't trying to do too many rides and were mainly hanging out and just enjoying the holiday beautifulness of Disneyland.  Here's a ton of pictures from our time at Disneyland:

This was the line for Soarin'!  

This was on the big ferris wheel ride at California Adventure, and we were in one of the swinging cars!  This picture was taken before the big swinging started... 

And this picture is DURING the big swinging!!  Brad and Amanda were sitting across from us, so they had a great view of our reactions.  I definitely got a little green on this ride! Haha :) 

This is during the Cars ride!!  It was soooo fun!!! 

 Cars Land!  I loved all of the attention to detail in this area. 

Kevin and I in our Wall-E shirts in front of the cute Wall-E sign! 

The Incredicoaster used to be called California Screamin'!   It's such a fun ride.  You can see Amanda posing in the back!  And that's some random kiddo sitting next to my dad. 

I Lava You!!  This was in the Pixar restaurant, and I looove this Pixar Short!  If you haven't seen it, you're missing out and you should watch it.  It's soooo cute. 

The castle during the day!

The castle all lit up at night! 

Star Wars!

Star Wars!

My mom and dad with Mickey!! 

Splash Mountain!!  This is probably one of my favorite pictures.  Haha 

We saw the Beast wandering around, and he decided to hold hands with the girls and walk around with us for like 5 minutes!  It was pretty funny and adorable. 

One day when we were hanging in the lobby of our hotel, Santa came and surprised my mom and Addison!  He sat right on the side of the chair, and asked Addison what she wanted for Christmas.

My dad and Cassidy, and all of the pretty lights! 

Such beautiful decorations!! 

A family picture in front of the big tree!  This was our last night.  

Christmas Season is Here!!!

Happy December!  I'm soooo excited that it's Christmas season!!  Our house is decorated (pictures coming soon), I've made a good dent in my Christmas shopping, and I'm starting to feel that Christmas spirit!  But, before I can share my Christmas Bucket List and my Christmas Movie List with you, I should wrap up November!! 

My first time ever cooking a turkey went great!!  In case you missed my last post, our sweet neighbor gave us a fresh turkey on Tuesday, so on Wednesday while I was working from home I cooked my first turkey!  It was 20 lbs, so it took like 4.5 or 5 hours, and it was actually kinda fun to cook!  I didn't love prepping it, but I liked basting it and seeing its progress throughout the day.  Plus, the smell was amazing.  Kevin got home from work and it was all ready to come out of the oven (perfect timing!), and then he carved it up!  While he was carving it we both had the idea that we should give one of the breasts to our neighbor that gave us the turkey, so we took that over to her house before we even started eating our meal! 

My turkey!  I rubbed it with butter that had sage, thyme, and I can't remember what else.  It was delicious though! 

Our Thanksgiving was awesome, and McGee's dad out-did himself again!  The food was awesome, and we also got to hang out with Kevin's cousin's new baby!  Her name is Elena, and she's only about a month old.  I didn't take any pictures of her or of the family, but I did take a picture of my handsome husband carving the turkey on Thanksgiving at his parents' house! 

Ok, now onto Christmas!!  I have a list of 26 Christmas movies I want to see this year!!  I was going to do 25, but then I just had to add one more!!  Here's my Bucket List first: 

Here's my list of 26 Christmas movies: 

1. Elf
2. Mickey’s Christmas Carol
3. Muppet’s Christmas Carol
4. Frosty the Snowman
5. Rudolph
6. Santa Clause is Coming to Town
7. Year Without a Santa Clause
8. Christmas Vacation
9. Love Actually
10. The Grinch (old cartoon)
11. The Grinch (Jim Carrey)
12. The Grinch (new one - never seen it!)
13. Home Alone
14. Home Alone 2
15. Die Hard
16. Charlie Brown Christmas
17. White Christmas
18. Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version OF COURSE)
19. It’s a Wonderful Life
20. Prep & Landing 
21. Scrooged
22. A Christmas Story
23. Fred Claus
24. The Night Before
25. The Nightmare Before Christmas
26. It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947).  My Uncle Jim just told me about this one, and it sounds great!  I want to find it and watch it.  

And just for fun, here's a cute picture of Guinness from a few days ago: