10 Day You Challenge: 10 Secrets

I found this on Kim's blog and decided to give it a shot.  I don't know if I have 10 secrets, but I'm going to try anyhow.  Probably won't post these in 10 days, but maybe 10 weeks - once a week on Tuesday sound good to you?  Alrighty then!

10 Secrets:

1. I realized today, after talk of Father's Day, that I bought a card for my father, for a few father's days ago... that I never gave to him because he decided to spend the day with someone other than his children and it hurt my feelings.
2. I'm ashamed and embarrassed that I've let myself go as badly as I have.  I've never hated my body so much.  I'm too lazy to actually do anything about it.
3. I hate Twitter and don't know why I keep my account up and running.
4. I'm 127% addicted to Angry Birds.  I just found this game last weekend and I've already beaten one of the 3 versions.
5. I found a patch of wild flowers up near my job and in said patch of flowers is one color of a flower that I've been anxiously wanting to plant in our yard - I want to dig some up.  Today, on break, I drove by them and it turns out that the flowers are part of a prairie restoration project so I probably shouldn't dig them up.  What I don't understand is why they are planted on a plot of land marked "For Sale/Lease" - so ... I still want to nab a couple.
6. I don't think it's a secret - but I've lost almost all of my motivation for photography.
7. I've had a twitch in my head for over a week now.  It started in my left eyelid, lasted a week, and has now moved to my left temple.  Each time it twitches, I think I'm going to get a migraine and it freaks me out.
8. Ever since my kitty had to make an emergency trip to the vet, I panic when some thing in his routine is off.  I'm ready for that to be done.
9. If you can read this, I think you're super neat!
10. I'm scared to send my real secret into postsecret, but want to so badly.

Ok - so they weren't really secrets, but secrets are secrets for a reason - why would I share them with anyone?!  DUH.

Summer Swap & A Weekend Get-a-way!

So my swap partner lives in Canada - little did I know that shipping takes WAY longer!  So I mailed out on the deadline date and I know she has since received the package - I'm sure she'll post when she has the time.  Joanne... HOLY SHIT - so... as I went to go find her blog link so that I could link to her, I discovered that her blog has been removed... sucky.

Sooooo... I guess that's pretty disappointing.

I sent her a pair of Teva flip-flops - which is a HUGE summer staple to me.  It took up most of my budget, but I was able to get her a couple bottles of nail polish in pink (her fave color), and a pack of Giants Sunflower Seeds - all things that are truly summer must haves for me!

Here is what I got:

She sent me an awesome magazine with summer recipes - which I do plan to tackle at some point.  Also 3 bottles of nail polish (green, pink, orange - my favorite color combo) which I just used last night to do polka dots on my toes (pink toenails, with orange and green dots), absolutely LOVE the colors!  There is a nail file there, which is always good to have around.  Then, the part that I'm most excited to try is the candy!  There is some candy that we don't have in the States - so it's kind of like a super treat - plus some sour candy, which I live for!  I seriously LOVE everything :)

So.. sorry this is so late, I got the package late last week and just finally had the time to photograph and post!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Missouri for a long weekend with one of my favorite people.  Renee has a pool in her backyard, and rumor has it it's pretty hot and humid down there, so I'll likely come home with a nice tan/burn.  I'm excited to see her and her family, but I'm honestly pretty sad to be away from Steve for 3 nights!  I'm addicted to him.  I probably won't be blogging while I'm gone, but hopefully I'll return with lots of pictures - I'm flying in and out of St. Louis, so that Arch will be a feature in this blog soon.I'm excited to take pictures with my DSLR (I've been before but only had a point and shoot at the time)!

Until we meet again....

I love my boyfriend!

As you know, I went to see Glee Live in Concert on the day of mine and Steve's 2 year anniversary together...

My cousin stayed the night because she works 5 minutes from my house and wanted to get some sleep being that we were getting home late... not really the point here - so we get back to my place and walk in the dining room to see this:

This photo was recreated the next day as I moved the flowers directly to the mantle and so I could go to bed

A dozen red roses, a bottle of passion fruit vodka, and a love letter (in the love letter he told me to go look at the white board), so up to the white board I go:

The picture at the top is a daily calendar that you tear a page off each day... behind the 2 YEARS is many many more pages :)

I ran into the bedroom with a huge smile on my face and gave him the biggest hug ever!!

What an amazing thing to come home to!

(PS - I finally got my Summer Swap package, so I hoping to get pictures taken and posted this weekend!!)

Glee - LIVE!

As my favorite expat, Laura so boldly commented yesterday... "pics or it didn't happen" - is that Mexico's catchphrase like What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?

Anyhow ~ I felt a overwhelming urge to make sure and take pictures.  Not sure why I felt that way ;)

So I went to see this show with my 2 favorite cousins - not Steve - nice huh?  2 year anniversary and I run off to make out with Puck see a concert.

Our seats were FAR back - so they kind of looked like little midgets or something... and I only had my phone with for taking photos (I didn't want to take my DSLR - too big and clunky for a teeny-booper concert) and my P&S is... no where to be found since the move (It's somewhere, just haven't looked too hard)... sooooo I do promise that I went to the Glee concert - here are the midget pictures to prove it:

They did several of the more popular songs from the show... THEN ... Kurt got up on the little square stage set up on the middle of the crowd and rocked Beyonce's Single Ladies - with dancers and all - it was amazing!  Everyone sounded great!
They were all in character and there were a few little bits of acting skits mixed in - much like any concert where the performers stop and talk to the crowd, instead they acted.

Britney on the show was HILARIOUS last night... I think she'd be good on SNL sometime.  You could see her in the background getting her grove on, or flexing her breast muscles up and down... I don't think she knew we saw that, but it was so funny.

I have a couple of short videos that, at full volume, are way too loud, but if you turn it down a bit, you can make out that they are singing Gaga's Born This Way and Britney's Slave For You.

The lowlight of the night?  They preformed that ridiculous Friday song.  Then I got in the car with my cousins and they played it again... ugh.  (Not even worthy of linking to it)

All in all... it was an awesome night!  GO GLEE!

Random v.11.03

To answer some of yesterday's comments...
@Kristi - Yep.. LOL, Boomer is a whooping 21.5 pounds.  That is down from the 22# he was when we moved in to the new house, so he's down some!  My mother used to feed him a good bit of human food and give him treats daily - so we're trying to get him on a better feeding regimen.  I've only ever fed him 1/2 cup of food a day; he gets 1/4 cup in the morning and the same at dinner time.
@Laura - Glee live is the entire cast of Glee, in concert!  No shit!  It's tonight.  I'm pumped, Steve said I can't make out with Puck :(
To all who commenting on pressure washing - Steve and I are undertaking a huge project - we're painting the trim of our house (have a posted pictures of the outside of the house?) - it's a huge house, so it's a ridiculous project.  A lot of the paint is chipping and peeling, so the idea was to use the pressure washer to get all the loose paint off - so... on Sunday, I busted out the pressure washer (borrowed from Steve's dad) and started on the house trim - it took a good bit of time.  I was only able to get the lower half of the house done, and even that is not 'finished' as of this moment.  So that contributed to a good part of the 3 hours of pressure washing.
THEN... after mowing the lawn and using our new {free} weed-wacker with edging attachment to edge the sidewalk, I decided that I liked pressure washing so much, that I was going to do the sidewalk as well - and OMG does it ever look beautiful, like brand new.  I seriously had a hard time handing it over to Steve to let him do one square of the walk!  I'm like a ... pressure washing addict!  So the sidewalk is long, so it took a good bit of time as well.
(I'll seriously come do any pressure washing you want done, you just provide the pressure washer!)

So I got a lot of house cleaning done on Friday, my day off.
The rest of the weekend we were able to get a ton of stuff done too - lawn mowed and wacked around the trees and other areas where the mower can't reach.  We trimmed up almost all of our trees, there were a lot of low hanging branches and some with branches growing up from the ground so the tree looked more like a bush - no longer!  We bought a dandelion remover thingy... so we did some removing of those, but I got bored with it, so I quit.  Sidewalk edged (which makes it look so much better!), things pressure washed... all in all a really productive weekend!

Quickly, I want to mention how amazing the boyfriend is - around mothers day we were given a free lawn mower, something that hadn't been used in a few years and wouldn't stay running anymore.  We needed one, so we took it with the plan for Steve to try and fix it - so for <$15 (I'm not sure exactly how much was spent) he got it running and now we have a lawn mower!
THEN... this past weekend we went to his bosses house and picked up a free weed wacker that they bought last summer and it wouldn't stay running when they tried to use it this year - for ~$7, Steve had it running!  They gave us the edging attachment as mentioned above as well, so it was like a super bonus!
Two completely necessary lawn grooming devices, for free!  It's amazing what people have to get rid of... you bring it up in passing, the next thing you know it's yours!

Lastly, as this is already LONG... Today marks 2 years of Steve and I (officially) dating!  I add the officially because we kind of transitioned into a relationship without ever really marking an official date.  So we put some thought into when that happened and came up with June 1st.  We've been 'together' longer than 2 years though...  :)  YAY for happiness!!  I love you baby!

A Game of Numbers

3 - hours spent pressure washing things this weekend

511 - blogs I've written since coming to blogger! (512 if you count this one)

7.5 - hours of sleep I was supposed to get last night

4 - hours of sleep I think I actually got

154 - photos I posted from Hawaii (on Facebook)

1.5 - hours of actual work I've done today

9 - days until I leave for Missouri

21.5 - my cats weight, in pounds

1 - day until GLEE LIVE!

100 - days until Milwaukee

2 - number of sore arms I have from kicking ass this weekend!

6.5 - pounds of pork butt I slow cooked using a traditional Hawaiian Recipe this weekend - YUM!

Hey Hun... barf

I've always had moments where I see a pretty girl and think God, I'd love to have her hair or Man, she dresses so cute, wonder if I could pull off that look.
Often times I look at these girls knowing that I am who I am (and feel good about who I am, most of the time) and can't help but feel a little bit envious, for whatever reason.

I really like girls with tattoos - but don't feel like I could pull off a sleeve myself

I often wish I had hair like hers:

or even just something simply wavy like hers:

I don't often find myself wishing for blonde hair, but I can say I've thought about it.
... and even though I don't think Katy Perry has a voice worthy of mentioning, I do admire some of the looks she can pull off:

Unless, however, after admiring a girl upon walking into a hardware store, because she has awesome colored hair and looks a bit edgy, she calls me "Hun" as I walk out.

That happened to me yesterday - stopped in the hardware store to get some stuff for work, see this cashier who has a look I want and is pretty cute in general, walk part her to do my business at the back counter, walk out, hands full of stuff and I say do you need to see my receipt? and she replies You're good, hun.

Ugh.  Way to completely ruin my admiration of you.

At this point it's needless to say, but I will anyways: I can't stand when people I don't know call me Hun or Sweetie/Sweetheart.  I'm not your hun, bitch.

The Wizard Of Oz Ballet

via

Last night I was able to cross something off my bucket list; I went to a ballet!  I don't have any pictures because photos weren't allowed... but I did find this online, which is some of the cast:

via

I went with my best girlfriend, Pam and it's safe to say we both enjoyed it.  It was definitely something different for me, but I'm pretty open to all forms of art - I was surely impressed with the dancing in this ballet.  I kind of feel like this was more of an 'amateur' performance - and I only say that because there were a lot of children, in which I felt the dancing would have been a lot more skillful had it been all adults - but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I look forward to attending another ballet at some point in my life!

Places I Want To Go

Paris, oh la la
via

Sydney, Australia
via

New Zealand
via

Brazil
via

New York City (while I've been before, I really want to go with Steve, we'd have a simply wonderful time together)
via

Maldives
via

Chicago (same notes as NYC)
via

Venice, Italy
via

Niagara Falls
via

I could go on for days and days about all the places I want to go.. these are just a few.  Looking at all these photos in one place, it's clear to me that I have a thing for water :)

Random v.11.02

So... thanks to those who commented, I found out that blogger was down late last week.  My bedroom post was unpublished when I went back to look and I was super confused...it was missing some photos as well -  so, I've reposted it, but it had no comments on it - so if you left one, I didn't get it.  If you haven't seen the post, click HERE to find it.  Not saying you have to go re-comment.. but if you had something awesome to say... you probably need to go say it again, because I love reading awesome.
The post I had scheduled for yesterday (Maui Photos) was in my list twice, both scheduled to post, one missing photos and verbiage.  So I had to fix that so that you could see all the photos... so so silly.  Pretty sure I got all the comments to that post just fine!

I had to take my kitty to the emergency vet on Thursday - I woke up for the day and went to go feed him, only I couldn't find him...turns out he was laying by the back door lifeless... I started bawling.  I woke Steve up and had him come down to try and talk to Boomer.  LONG story short, he has pancreatitis.  EXPENSIVE vet bill later, he is at home where I am trying to care for him and nurse him back to health.  He is on a special bland diet and he had some pain meds that I had to give him... He goes back in tonight for a follow up, less expensive, visit.  I'm hoping all the blood work comes back in his favor.  He finally slept in the bed with us last night, first time since Wednesday night.  Boomer has really put me on a roller coaster ride of emotion.
I had to take Thursday off for that little guy, the vet visit wasn't super fast, then I had to get him meds and give him the meds... so the day was a waste as far as work was concerned.

Then on Friday Boomer and I had a sort of lazy day, for the most part... he was lazier than I was... but I still managed to get in a nap.  I didn't sleep well on Thursday night wondering if he was okay or why he wouldn't come upstairs.

Saturday was a pretty icky day outside as far as weather goes, but I got together with my cousin to talk engagement photos (I'm going to be the photographer for those)... we went and had a pedicure, went to lunch at panera, then went to a purse store in downtown Anoka.  It was a much needed break from the stress of dealing with my cat and worrying about him.  Shannon and I managed to pick some locations and picked out a date to do the photos (with a backup date, in case of bad weather)

Sunday, Steve and I got some shit done around the house... and in the yard.  It's safe to say, we kicked ass.  He mowed the lawn, I took a shovel to all the grass clumps we had growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, then we threw down some fertilizer on the grass (which also kills the dandelions, and we gots lots of 'em)... The next day the weeds were wilting and the lawn already looked better!  We also installed some motion senor lights on the garage - one of the things about the house is some of the stuff doesn't quite make sense to me.  The outside garage lights are controlled from inside the garage - which... makes sense .. kinda - I'd like to be able to turn on the lights from inside the house though, you know, for those dark winter mornings and I can't see anything as I walk out to my car.  So, one of the things we bought at Home Depot on our shopping spree - motion lights!  We actually got 2 of them as there were 2 fixtures that needed replacing.  Anyhow - we got 'em switched out and now we have light when we walk outside!  Not as exciting as the summer light is upon us.. but it will be super exciting as the daylight hours begin to fade.  Ugh, I don't even want to talk about that yet... it's barely spring.

Yesterday, I had to take another day off work to drive 3 hours with Steve to attend a funeral for his grandma.  She was 96 years old!  How awesome is it to make it to that age?!  I got to meet Steve's grandma once last summer - but it was pretty obvious how amazing she was.  As I sat there and listened to all of her friends, family, and people whose lives she touched in a very special way, I couldn't help but get pretty emotional.
It really got me thinking about how I want to be remembered and the impact I want to have on peoples lives... I want people to stand at my funeral and talk about me in a positive way.  It really has me deep inside my head - How can I be a better person?  Is this really a big deal; am I overreacting?  Let it go.
I don't think I've ever mentioned faith, God, or church in any of my posts; maybe one day I'll blog about it... it's a pretty confusing topic to me.
I'm just glad I had the honor of meeting one of God's most amazing people put on this Earth.

So, it was a long weekend as far as not working, but it was a pretty exhausting weekend as far as everything goes!

Back to work now...

Hawaii: Maui

I don't really know where to begin or end this post - I'm just going to upload photos and give some brief explanations about them; in short, Maui is amazing.  

I love how every drink in Hawaii is served with a flower :)

 The absolute BEST restaurant on Maui - Mama's Fish House, worth every penny

 Sunset

Our little rental car (note to anyone traveling to Maui, f you rent a car and want a convertible, you WILL get a Mustang convertible... just FYI, they have NOTHING else.

Surfboards :)

 Cheeseburgers In Paradise 

 Sand Writing...

 We went to a Luau - it was by far the happiest and most memorable time I had in Hawaii.  You're greeted with a fresh, real flower lei that smells divine!  The employees walk around with trays of Mai Tai's that actually taste good!  I'm assuming they use some sort of mix, because we tried a mai tai at every single place we went... and none were good except for the ones at the Luau.

The uncovering of the luau pig 

 The Luau Show - absolutely AMAZING dancing!

 The Road to Hana sights and views:

Black Sand Beach 

 See?  Black Sand on my feet!  There were signs posted all over saying not to swim because of sea creatures (Man o' War, jellyfish, and other dangerous things - this made me sad as I really wanted to recreate this video, which naturally, because it's in B&W, I feel like it takes place on a black sand beach)

 Black Sand Beach from afar

 Rounding the corner to a red sand beach

Seriously - isn't the water color amazing!? 

Red Sand Beach 

 Molokini - where we went Whale watching

We were very lucky to see a lot of whale breach's - but were unable to get any good pictures (I didn't take my camera out on the boat as I was terrified that I'd lose it in the depths of the ocean).  We also heard a pod of whales in competition for a female... it was a pretty surreal experience!  

That, my friends, is a whale's tail.

 The little triangle piece - that's passion fruit - my new addiction

 We shouldn't be so happy on a plane ride home, but ... we had just finished a great vacation together AND... while at the Honolulu airport, I was able to talk to some local grocery stores and find out where I can buy passion fruit in Minnesota!  ♥