Joel and Kate Come to Visit

I spent all weekend cleaning in preparation for Joel and Kate's visit to Ohio.  I cleaned spiderwebs from the walls and ceilings, washed sheets, dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed floors, cleaned 2 microwaves, washed mirrors and windows and scrubbed clean and caulked my tub.

Have you ever caulked before?  The first hurdle was realizing I needed a caulking gun.  Thank goodness Michelle and Dom had one (actually 3) that they could lend to me.  

I cut off the end of my caulk, and put it in the gun, ready to caulk the tub.  A start pushing on the trigger, but nothing comes out.  I push harder and harder and feel something give, but still no caulk.  After a minute, I decided to read the instructions.  Turns out there is a foil inside that needs to be punctured.  When I pulled the caulk out of the gun, this is about what it looked like:

Caulk was all over the gun and the bottom of caulking tube was no where to be seen. I ran out to target and got some more caulk, and finally was able to finish caulking!

Joel and his new fiance Kate arrived on Wednesday afternoon.

After a quick shower, we headed out to the Cleveland Horseshoe Casino to try out the buffet.  Kate managed to double her money on slots (although she only put in 1 dollar).

When we got home, everyone was pretty tuckered out so we watched elf for an hour or so, then gave up and found ourselves in bed before 10pm.

The next day we woke up, Joel got some high scores on CoD Black Ops.

Then we headed out to CiCi's Pizza buffet.  Since they don't have cici's in philly, Joel and Kate were rather excited to try it out.

It was pretty good.  It wasn't the best pizza I had ever had, but still pretty good.  After CiCi's, we headed to the outlets in Aurora.  Joel was full of pizza, so he took a nap in the car while Kate and I did some shopping and got up to shenanigans:

We picked up some chocolates from Malley's

Then drove over to the Christmas Story house.  We started in the giftstore where Joel bought us all tickets for the tour.  There was tons of awesome merch, of which we took lots of pictures:

Finally it was tour time.

We learned about the history of the movie and how the house was bought and sold until it became the landmark that it is today..  Then it was picture time!

Joel got under the sink and was making a sad face saying "Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie!!"  That had to be one of my favorite parts of the trip!!

Although it was also pretty funny when he was pretending to be the mom on the phone after Ralphie said "Oh Fudge"

We then went across the street to the Museum.  It was pretty small and the only thing of note was this scary doll:

After we were all A Christmas Storied out, we drove around looking for a bowling alley, but, alas it was league night at the 2 alleys we tried.  We finally gave up and drove to the North Olmsted library to get some movies to watch.  As we were driving there we saw a Donato's pizza place.

Joel was SO happy.  I guess he had some fond memories of Donatos, but they closed the only one near him years and years ago.  So we had pizza and watched parks and recreations until about 10pm, after which we all promptly fell asleep.

I was SO sad to seem them go this morning, but beyond thankful that they made the trip to cleveland, even if it was only for a couple of days.  I'm so lucky to have such a great brother and soon to be sister-in-law!!!  Best.  Weekend.  Ever!!

So I've Been Lazy with Blogging...Sorry

I  have been super unproductive the last 3 weeks, so, I didn't blog because there was nothing to blog about! One week I tried to make tortillas.  They turned out HORRIBLE.  Thick and brittle and somehow uncooked in the middle!!

The week after the horrible tortilas I tried a different recipe that called for baking powder and crisco instead of just oil.  These turned out thing and soft and amazing!!!

I also made crisco cookies for Mitch, Dom and KW.  They turned out less than delicious, but my friends didn't care and were just happy for cookies!

Last week I was feeling motivated, so I printed out all my chores and had my friends pick numbers randomly, which determined which chores I would do:

The first choice was number 4:

Then 9, 3, 1 and 11:

Guess how many of these chores I accomplished.  One.  Clean the toilet.  The easiest one.

I rationalized that it was raining, and I couldn't bring my vacuum into the rain to vacuum my car, so I skipped that.  And I decided to put off washing the sheets until just before my brother and his girlfriend came to visit, so they would be super fresh.  The rest just fell by the wayside.

Uggh, stupid procrastinating!  Joel and Kate come to visit this up coming weekend and I have SO much cleaning to do before they get here.  Worth it though.  I'm SO excited to see them!!  Tminus 7 more days.

I Got to Hang Out with My Friends SO MUCH!

As the title implies, it was a great weekend!  It all started with a message from KW asking if we wanted to hang out and drink on friday night.  I said ok, but couldn't get drunk b/c I had work the next day.  Well, one drink in and I was asking mitch for my favorite tattoo.  A full sleeve alphabet tat:

I still think it looks mighty bad ass. Anyway, the next morning I woke up for work and it has smeared EVERYWHERE!  It was on my comforter, my hands, my upper arm!  EVERYWHERE!

Regardless of how much I scrubbed, it did not come off, so, I got teased a little at work.  No regrets, I still think it was awesome.

Sunday I met up with Dom, Mitch, and KW for some homemade cookies and a movie.  Dom mixed everything up and then Mitch and KW put the cookies on the pan:

but I had the most important job, taste tester (they were SOOOOO good, I had to do lots of taste testing):

Mitch, then took a random pic of KW, which was so interesting I had to post it:

We then sat down to watch pans labyrinth, which is one of my all time favorite movies.

While we were watching the movie a giant bird landed on KW's roof!!

Do you see it?!  Here's a closer view:

All around awesometimes were had, and we all left full of cookies and great movies.

On Tuesday  I got a call from Mitch asking if I wanted to go out for dinner shenanigans.  Her hubby was off with his friends so I got a girls night with Mitch.  We went to a Mexican restaurant down the street.  It was SO good!

We were both full and needed to walk it off, so, we walked around my condo complex to burn off some energy.  Mitch decided to try and climb a tree.  She got surprisingly high before giving up and coming back down.  I don't have a picture of it, but it looked something like this:

Honestly, lots of awesomeness was experienced this weekend!

Oh, Canada!

Leeann and I decided to take a girls day trip to Canada   It was so much fun!  The drive there was pretty quick.  As I was merging over into the lane to get to Canada  Leeann yelled "OH MY GOSH!" So of course I assumed I was about to merge into someone.  My heart leapt into my chest and I started frantically looking around for the car I was about to hit...when suddenly Leeann said "WE'RE ALMOST TO CANADA!!"  It took a few minutes from the terror adrenaline rush to wear off

When we were waiting in line to cross the boarder, Leeann and I were yelling.  CANADA!!!  CAN-A-DA!!  CAN-A-DA!!  We were beyond excited!!

So Close!!

We had no trouble getting in.  They asked us where we were going and then said "Welcome to Canada".

Our first adventure was to go to the famous Tim Horton's.  We got COMPLETELY lost, but, eventually found one.  This is about when Leeann started saying "Ay" at the end of sentences and cracking both of us up!

At Tim Hortons, Leeann got a breakfast sandwich, Coffee, and a doughnut:

While I got a B.L.T with a soda:

Our second adventure was outlet shopping at the Windsor Crossing outlet mall.  A lot of the stores were busts, either too expensive, or the styles weren't super cute.  We were about to leave empty handed when we found Ardene.  It was a huge store with EVERYTHING!  Clothing, Shoes, Jewelry  Scarves, Socks, and on and on.

We must have been in there for an hour or 2.  There was so much to see and buy!  I bought some socks, and hair stuff:

Leeann also bought socks, and leggings.  Yay for outlet shopping!!  Our last adventure of the day was to visit the Caesars Windsor Casino.  We used the money changers to switch our American money for crazy Canadian coinage:

We played the slots, and lost.  Leeann and I must have played at 25 different machines.  We would play for about a min, get board and wander off to a new machine.

There was some beautiful artwork that Leeann tossed up in the air:

Along with beautiful artwork, they also had old timey phones!!

Before we headed home, we went to the casino buffet.  It was SO good.  We were both super stuffed by the end.  There was food:

And more food:

And a customize your own pasta bar, where they made custom pasta's for you!  I got a chicken/bacon/sun dried tomato/carmalized onion/alfredo sauce/farfalle pasta:

While Leeann got carmalized onions/bacon/chicken/mushrooms?/meat sauce/spaghetti:

As we were traveling home, we stopped off at the duty free store to change our Canadian money into american moola.  They had a throne there, so, picture time!!

The boarder crossing back into America was a bit more strict.  They took a picture of us as we were driving up to the boarder, then, a GORGEOUS man asked us some questions before letting us back into the good ol' US of A.  I mean, he was so handsome.  Leeann and I probably spent the next hour talking about how handsome he was (so super duper handsome!)

The rest of the weekend was pale in comparison.  I made scotch eggs again, AND they didn't break, like they did last time!!

I also saw the movie Don Jon.  It was only ok.  The funniest part was that the movie theater ushers kept walking in and making sure no one was getting up to shenanigans (because it was a risque movie, I guess?)  Over all a 4 out of 10 for me.  Would not recommend, although, Joseph Grodon-Levitt was so handsome in it (which is why it got 4 instead of 1 out of 10).