Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone has an absolutely fantastic day! Our Christmas was almost over before today, but we saved the presents that my Mom mailed us for today so we had something to open! Jim got some great Red Wings shirts and a Red Wings calendar and I got a Bed Bath & Beyond gift card and we both got a Red Wings grill cover from her and Kevin. Ohhhh what it would be like to live where you can buy Red Wings stuff any time you want. Someday...

We had Christmas with Jim's family last weekend and made out like bandits! (I think that's the correct saying...) :) I got a Cuttlebug which I've been wanting FOREVA and some cash which I used to buy embossing folders for my Cuttlebug. W00T! Jim got some cash and a gift certificate to Hockey Giant and some Red Wings golf balls. Sweet!

I was spoiled by my friends this year. Actually I think I was spoiled by everyone! But Kala and I got each other Twilight shirts and it's so weird because we both bought some other smaller stuff for each other...and we each bought the other a Scentportable from Bath & Body Works and the exact same kind of Yankee Candle. Sometimes it's scary how much we think alike! A coworker brought me a FRESH PINEAPPLE FROM HAWAII! OMG! I about died when I smelled it. That was SOOOOOOOOOO nice! She said she remembered me saying that there's nothing like a fresh Hawaiian pineapple. And she's right, but I thought that was so thoughtful. Got a bowl full of Oreo balls from another coworker. Mmmmmmm YUMMY. And a gift card to Pier 1 from another coworker...since she knew we were wanting to build or buy a house this spring, so perfect! And a cute hot chocolate cup from another with lots of homemade goodies. And a cheeseball, crackers, bowl and spreader from another. Honestly, I really made out! Holy moly! :)

I think we did pretty well...Peyton & Jazlyn loved their shirts from Disney and their gift cards! And David & Ashley got exactly what they wanted. Jim's mom seemed to love the massage gift certificate and we know Jim's Dad will love his tomato plant thingys. And when I talked to Chase he was already playing his "Red Wings game"...we got him a hockey PS2 game and a week or so ago he mentioned to me that that was what he wanted for Christmas. Good job by us, I'd say. He loves it and loves his "football shirt with the mouse on it." That cracked me up. It was his shirt that we got at Disney. And my Mom and Kevin loooooooved their Harley shirts from Orlando as well. I'd say we did pretty well! :)

Okay, so Jim and I bought lots of stuff this year...and knew all along that we wouldn't be doing Christmas for each other. I mean, come on, we went to a Red Wings game, got new furniture, flew my Mom & Chase out here, plasma TV, Wii, and I can't even begin to say all the little things! So I mentioned to Jim that I was sad we wouldn't have anything to open on Christmas (this was before we had my Mom's presents!) So when I came down the stairs this morning Jim had wrapped the TV all up and wrapped the Wii and a box that his new computer RAM came in (he replaced my RAM with his and then put my old RAM in a box and said that my new RAM was my Christmas present). So here was my big present this year!









HAHAHA. He cracks me up. So anyways, we always go to the movies on Christmas Day. I can't remember when we started that...or why...but we've done it for the past few years so we're headed to the movies in a couple hours. I think we decided on the something something Life of Benjamin Button. Something like that. LOL!!!!

Hope everyone has a magical day!

Bentley Video

So our weekend was pretty dull...in fact what cracked us up the most was watching Bentley howl at our answering machine. For some reason he hates it and everytime he hears it he howls at it. So we kept calling the home phone to make him do it. LOL. Here's a video of him:



Jim had a hockey game last night and scored! YAY! That's his third goal this season! :)

Happy (late) Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was wonderful and was spent with just the two of us. We did make a large lunch with turkey, potatoes, pie, apple crisp, the works! It was YUMMY! Jim worked the next day and I just had to run into the station for a few minutes and had the rest of the day to myself...and bought an oh-so-gorgeous coat. :)

Let's see...what's been going on...So I told you about the Twilight books that I love. Kala and I just HAD to have shirts made for the movie premiere...We are such dorks! The movie was good...not as good as the book of course, but very good nonetheless. And they have been given the green light to make the second and third books into movies as well. YAHOO! I finally have all four books back from friends that borrowed them and am gearing up to re-read the series once this semester of school is finished.

Jim's hockey has been going well. He got to shoot in the shootout last night. Didn't score but did well. We've been looooooving all the Roadrunners games lately. No more until New Years Eve but they're having a big New Years Eve party after the game that night that all the players will be at and whatnot, so we bought tickets to go to that. Should be lots of fun!

That's about all for now....But before I go, here's some new pics of the dogs!

Bentley and his new favorite toy, Alice the Octopus.

Portia & Bentley fighting over Alice

I think Bentley is the laziest dog in the world...he was laying here and started to get down, that's why his foot is on the floor...laid his head on Jim's leg and fell asleep. LOL!

Wow, it's been quite awhile since I've posted anything! Sorry! I guess we've been pretty busy around here lately! Jim's brother got married a few week ago so we were in Salina for the weekend for that shindig. It was a lot of fun and Ashley's great so we're glad they're all married off. ;) They'll be coming here next week actually to go to a Roadrunners game with us, so that will be fun! We had another wedding last weekend...a coworker of mine got married. That was fun. And then my wonderful cousin, Susan, is getting married in a few weeks! Unfortunately we'll have to miss that one because we'll be in Goodland for Jim's family Christmas. :( I'm very sad that we'll miss it...there's nothing better than a Boos wedding! And I'm so happy that Susan is happy. Sooooo, let's see...Jim's hockey team is doing pretty good...There's 6 teams in their league and I believe they're ranked somewhere in the middle. At least they're not the team that hasn't won any games! LOL

Okay, so at the end of October, a friend of mine told me about a book series called Twilight. I had heard of it but had no desire to read it. It was written for Young Adults and it has a vampire in the book. Not really my cup of tea. However, she loves the Harry Potter series and I'll admit that Jim and I are HP fans too, so she told me just to give it a try and that she just knew I would like it. She gave me the first book in the series (there are 4 in all, so far). I started reading it and wow, it grabbed me. The author (Stephenie Meyer) writes so well, you honestly feel like you're there. In fact I read the first one in a day and had to go out and buy the second one right away because I just had to know what was going to happen. In the second book there's this really sad part at the beginning and honestly I thought my heart was breaking. They are SO good. So, I bought the 3rd and 4th books right away. And honestly, my entire week was consumed with the books. I would get up in the morning and read during breakfast. Come home for lunch and read. As soon as work was over I would come home and read. It was like a serious addiction! I read them all in a week (and they aren't small books! The last one is almost 700 pages I think!) and then I was so sad that it was over! Jim was cracking up at me because he just didn't understand how they could be so addictive. But honestly I couldn't do anything else! I tried doing some homework that week and couldn't concentrate...all I could think about was Edward and Bella. I honestly had to finish the books before I could do anything else that week. It was crazy. I passed the books along to a coworker so she could read them. They grabbed her the same way. And then Kala (my BFF and coworker) was making fun of us so I begged her to read the first book. I told her if she would read until "the meadow scene" if she didn't like it she could stop. Well, let's just say that I had to bring book 2 to her at dinner on Friday night and she asked for book 3 today. :) The good news is that the first book comes out as a movie this coming Friday! Our movie theatre here has the first showing at 1:10 so I took the entire day off so I could see it. :) Jim did too even though I told him it's an amazing love story. I think he just wants to see what the big deal is.

Anyways, I encourage you to get the books and read them. I checked with our library and all the books have like 40 people in line waiting for them so you might have to wait awhile to get them from the library. But honestly, they are so good that you should just buy them. It's taking all of my willpower not to go downstairs and start re-reading them right now. :) In order, the books are Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse & Breaking Dawn. Eclipse is my favorite, but you have to read them in order. Also, once you're done you won't know what to do with yourself, but the author does have Midnight Sun posted on her website...it's about 1/3 of the first book but from Edward's point of view (the others are in Bella's POV). I loved reading his point of view because you got to see a lot of stuff that you didn't really know by reading it from Bella's view. I hope the author finishes that one and actually releases it. Honestly, they're amazing. And if you're not a reader, go see the movie. Rumor has it that it is very true to the book, so YAY!

Anyways, besides becoming a Twilighter there really hasn't been much going on. A few weeks left in this semester of school and I'm glad about that. But now we're to the part where all of our big semester projects are due (term papers, marketing plans, etc.) so that's stressing me out a little! And Christmas...I thought I would start early and get a lot of Christmas shopping done ahead of time. And we did get a lot of shopping done in Orlando but not everything. So I really need to get on that! And I have to get to making my Christmas cards! They HAVE to be mailed the day after Thanksgivig...no idea why I'm so adamant about that, but I haven't even started making them! Yikes!

So on that note I better go. I'll try to update more regularly going forward! :)

Chase and Jimbo!

Quick update today since I'm at work...but I meant to do this last night and didn't get around to it. Although now I'm glad I didn't get it done because I have a great picture to share!

First things...Jim had hockey games this past Sunday and yesterday. They won on Sunday, barely I think. But last night they came from behind to win 7 to 4 (or maybe 7-3, I don't remember for sure). Anyways, he GOT HIS SECOND GOAL! Woo-Hoo!! I joked with him and said I was surprised he wasn't traded, he's not the best skater, ya know! But then he goes, "Why would they trade me? I got 2 goals in 4 games!". hahaha. So that was pretty exciting!

Well everyone knows that Chase is the light of my life. I love that little boy more than I ever thought possible. And he's playing football this year so here's his completely adorable football picture!

He shouldn't be old enough to play football! It seems like just yesterday he was taking his first steps! Anyways, just had to share that picture!

And to close, the Red Wings play tonight so LET'S GO RED WINGS!!!!

We're home

Well...we're home! We got home at midnight last night. What a long day. LOL. Sorry for no post or pictures yesterday or the day before! We didn't really take many pictures after my last blog post. On Thursday we did go to NBA City Restaurant for lunch. Here's some pics for Raubin:

Dang that hand is big! ;)

Thursday afternoon was spent by the pool (in the pool for Jim...he hates laying out in the sun). I finally got somewhat of a tan. lol. It was really nice and relaxing.

Friday I packed our stuff up in the morning while Jim was in his conferences and then we ate lunch, spent some time relaxing in the afternoon before heading to the airport. Nothing too exciting!! lol

Today I spent all day at the office. The first few working days of the month are my busiest time so it took a lot for me to be gone this week (and a WHOLE lot for me to be able to not think about work). Anyways, I'll be working again tomorrow to hopefully be mostly caught up before the week starts again. Jim has spent all day searching for his keys...he can't find them. Either left them at the hotel (they're supposed to look for them and call us back) or in the rental car. Sheesh, what a pain. The dogs were so excited to come home though! And we were excited to see them. Bentley has grown noticeably even in the week we were gone.

Anyways, so Jim and I were saying that if his company sends him back to this conference next year that we want to go on a cruise either right before or right after (preferably right after). That would be sweeeeet. So on Friday, the company that was putting on the conference (ASG) asked for suggestions and Jim said quite a few people suggested they have it on a cruise next year. Could that BE any better??? lol

Anyways, here are the scans from the pictures that I had to take a picture of...including a new one from Hard Rock and one from Epcot.

I guess it's back to reality now. No more suntanning...no more vacationing...for awhile at least. Reality sucks. :)

Jim's conference started today so he was busy all morning and then again for an hour or so this afternoon. I laid out by the pool trying to get a tan...We met up for lunch and went to Bubba Gump's for lunch:
Anyone that's seen Forrest Gump should know what the restaurant stands for...














































After Jim's meetings were over in the afternoon we went to Islands of Adventure. It's the other Universal Studios park here and we were excited about going to it because we knew they had a few roller coasters. The park is set up like different "islands" (The Lost Continent, Dr. Seuss, Toon Landing, Jurassic Park, etc.) so here's some pics from the park:










































This was from the entrance into Islands of Adventure.



Seuss Landing: This part was geared towards kids but looked like so much fun. I mean, come on, who doesn't love The Cat in the Hat...or Green Eggs and Ham???


























































































The Lost Continent: These pics are from the attraction "Poseidon's Fury" or something like that...















































Jurassic Park:




















Alright peeps...tell me what this is...



















Don't know? Here's a hint: It opens on 2010. And when I realized what it was I was so darn excited. And we've already decided we HAVE to come back when it opens. Don't know? Ok, here's a visual clue:
























My HP peeps should have it figured out by now. But if not, here's another...

























Yes, THAT WAS THE BEGINNINGS OF HOGWARTS CASTLE!!!!!! OMG! So excited. So cool. We couldn't see through on the other side...they had it all blocked off, but for real, so cool.


Modern Super Hero something or another blah blah blah:























Spiderman ride was a very cool 3D ride. Almost as good as The Simpsons.

We got through the whole park before they closed at 6. We rode 3 coasters twice each...The Express Pass is awesome. Plus lines were really short today. Not sure what we'll do tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon...we figured the parks would take longer than they did but no biggie!

We went to dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. We have a picture from there but it's another one we bought sooooo I haven't taken a picture of it yet. That one will just have to wait.

In closing...here's a few things we've learned from this trip (I'll probably add to this too lol):
1. We are constantly amazed at the amount of people from other countries. Honestly, it seems like all Britains come here on vacation. Also lots of Irish people, a few Australian's, South African's, Hispanics, etc. Lots and lots of British people though.

2. Not exactly sure how we'll ever be able to get through our trip that we're planning to England. Everytime we hear a British accent we crack up and think of "Charlie bit me" (look that up on You Tube if you don't know what we're talking about). Seriously, we have to chuckle everytime we hear them. And then of course we immediately say the exact same thing they said in our own British accents. LOL Cracks me up.

3. Florida nights are sooooo nice. We both expected them to be very humid but every night it's been really nice out.

4. Disney World & Universal Studios...We're both glad we have been there. I mean, who doesn't want to see it once? But honestly, we wouldn't come back again if we didn't have kids. I know it's supposed to appeal to kids, but we were somewhat disappointed by the lack of thrill rides. Give us som coasters!

5. Next time we come to Florida...we're going on a cruise. :)

6. The extra money for a really nice hotel? 100% worth it. The service here is amazing.

7. Michelle can't get a tan to save her life.

8. Escargot really isn't that bad.

9. We've been spoiled by Cedar Point. This goes back to number 4. But we crack up when we hear people saying over and over and over about how great The Hulk is. Yeah it was ok...a long coaster. Upside down a lot. But I have YET to lose my stomach on a ride. Give me some big hills people!

10. Don't keep the seashell with the dead crab in it. THAT'S what's stinkin' up the hotel room!

11. If the hotel doesn't have internet in the room, we're not staying.

12. Even if you're full, get the strawberry shortcake. :)

Alright well that's it for now!

Today we headed to Epcot at Disney World. We had a hard time deciding which Disney park to go to. Since we were only going to Disney one day we knew we wouldn't have time to do more than one park. So we chose Epcot. It was a great time...here's some pics!

Mission: Space ride...very cool!

From inside the Nemo ride (same for picture below).

Epcot doesn't really have many rides. In fact, Jim and I really like the thrill type rides more than anything and we both agreed that we probably wouldn't spend the money to go back to Disney unless we were taking kids there. Anyways, there were a few more rides and then the rest of Epcot was "visiting" different countries. It was kinda neat and they really did well making the whole area like the country (they had restaurants, shops, employees dressed like/speaking the languages, etc.) So here's our pics from around the world!

China:

The ceiling in the China building. Very cool!


France:


























Great Britain:
















































He was headed to the Ministry of Magic (my Harry Potter peeps will know what I'm talking about) :)



Canada:
(Yes they sold hockey jerseys in "Canada". So cool. But all they had were the Canadian teams (Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto & Edmonton)


















































Germany:




























Morocco:




























America:






















Italy:


























Japan:


























Mexico:



























Norway:

We took the monorail over to the entrance for Magic Kingdom because we just had to see the famous castle.

We haven't picked out the pictures that the Disney people took yet, so those will have to wait...
After Disney we came back to the hotel and got around for dinner. We went to Pat O'Brien's which has New Orleans type foods...but the real reason we wanted to go there was because they have a piano bar. We used to go to a piano bar at The Bob/Bobarino's in Grand Rapids and it was awesome. We loved it. So we went there tonight. Food was ok, but the entertainment was great. They had two pianos and the guy nearest us was nothing short of amazing. I wish I had a fraction of his talent.























































Yes Kala that IS a drink (and yes it's alcoholic) in front of me. Jim and I both had a couple drinks. lol

Jim's conference starts tomorrow so I have mornings and some early afternoons to myself. YAY! Time for me to work on my tan. :)
Until then...