Changing of Seasons

Today we'd set aside time to go visit mama's grave and put up decor for Fall, since that's right around the corner. 

We put together a Fall bouquet and you can't see it in the angle I did here, but there's a tiny gnome (her fav) and a little pumpkin. She loved the holidays and we want to make sure she can still celebrate. 

Vegas, Babeeeee!

 Well, it's Martin Luther King Jr Day, which means its a 3 day weekend! BUT, I have this Friday off (In my job, I only work every other Friday), so technically, I have a 6 day weekend, hot dog! So we decided to make a long weekend of it and go to Vegas. Now, are we going to do anything that we wouldn't do here? Nope! But it'll be in a slightly warmer location, so I am hype. We found a good AirBnb for a good price, and planned our trip. Husband had to bow out at the last minute due to some school stuff, and he was missed. So after packing up our suitcases, we hit the road this afternoon. We made pretty good time! After a trip to the grocery store for some essentials, we settled in for the night, watching a movie to wind down. Epifanio was told he had to go to bed, and he, in typical fashion, was a drama king about it. 

This just made me laugh so hard. That fake crying is perfect. Soon after, we all went to bed, nobody was willing to stay up past, oh, 9:00 or so. What can I say? We rock out hard. 

Smash Face

Tonight, we were preparing dinner and grabbing some things out of the garage, and tiny Darth felt the need to trip. (I know, I know, it was an accident, but I still wanted to say that) He tripped on...I'll say himself, because I don't even know what it could be, and smacked face first into the wooden garage stairs! Ouch! He said his cheek hurt and after a few minutes, it swelled up in agreement.

He was in good spirits, and didn't let the bump get him down.

Germany: Day 2 Part 2

After finishing up with the museum, we had only had time to get to a chocolate shop in town to get chocolates, and then we had to get back to the hotel so that Husband could have another meeting. While he had his meeting, I was all set to spend those 2 hours getting ready for the gala, and then I sort of lost track of time…while I was looking at Pinterest, oops. Finally, I got my butt into gear with about an hour to go. I hurried and did my hair, curled it all up. It looked really cute for about 15 minutes, I think, and then it started to fall, even though I had used my super-duper extra hold hairspray. Finally, when there was like, twenty minutes to go, Husband finally came back to the room, and was a flurry as we both hurried to get ready. I pulled on my Spanx (honestly, these are the devil. Has everyone worn these? They are awful.) and got my dress on, added the jewels, and I was done. He finished closely after me, and we went as fast as we could downstairs. While waiting for our transportation, we snapped a pic:

You can’t see the curls, but they were there, at least for 3 more minutes. We made it to the location of the gala, which was a secret, and found out, it was being held at an old steel mill. Holy crazy! We stepped in, and they were handing out alcohol aplenty, and we couldn’t see any waiters with no alcohol, so we didn’t get anything to drink. We took a look around, and saw that they had a moving sushi bar.

I didn’t partake, naturally. For the first half hour or so, it was all schmoozing with people, and finally, we made our way to our seats. While we were sitting down, there was a gal on the stage, on a pole, just sort of going back and forth, high up in the air. I can’t describe it any other way.

We watched her for a while, then there were the opening speeches – three of them, and they seemed to go on for a while. Luckily, we had some water by then, so that was nice. After the speeches, they served us our first course, venison pie and a salad. I wish I could have gotten pictures of everything, but it seemed weird to take pics at such an event. Taking it of the entertainment was ok, but it seemed odd to do it of the food. The pie was not very good, but I’m not adventurous. After they cleared the first course, we had some more entertainment, a guy and a girl who used the poles to do acrobatics. It was pretty cool. After they were done, we got our second course – coconut curry soup and a seafood wonton. Seafood, gross. The soup was pretty good. After they cleared that course, it was time for more entertainment, a drumline. They were awesome! They drummed, and had light up LED stuff on them, which turned off and on in time with the beats. After the drumline, we had another course, a beef filet with potatoes, that was really good, even though the steak was basically rare. I made my way through it, though. Then we had a long wait, so pictures were taken of everyone.

Then I made a trip to the restroom, and in the washings of my hands, I lost my CTR ring. I have never been so sad! I had nothing to do then, I couldn’t find it, I had no idea where it went. I went back to my seat, and we had another act, a singer. I don’t think she was famous, she only did covers of stuff, but she was fun, and really good. She sang a few songs, and then they gave us dessert. For dessert, they gave us pieces of cake cut into the shapes of puzzle pieces, they had three different kinds: carrot cake, coconut cake with mango sauce, and a chocolate mousse cake. This was served alongside a banana papaya ice cream. It was all good, but when all was said and done, it took us 5 hours to eat dinner. You read that right: 5 hours. Finally, after the meal was done (and the alcohol was flowing to everyone but us 4 Mormons) the dancing begun. The singer was singing an oldie tune, which I now can’t remember for the life of me, and Husband and I started dancing. He took ballroom, and I can’t dance at all, so he was basically twirling and spinning me around, and I just followed his lead. My dress was perfect for twirling, it really spins out and is awesome, so a few drunk Germans were trying to get us to go up in the front and dance, and after a while, we finally did, and that was a lot of fun. After that song was over, Husband went to go talk to someone, so I just hung out by myself, sort of near a friend I had made, and danced, just by myself, doo doo doo like I do. When it was nearing the end of the singers set, she was doing the thing that singers do, when they’re like, “Oh, I’ve had so much fun here, thanks for coming out, etc.” and then when she was introducing her next song, she said “Ok this one’s for you, blue dress” and pointed at me, and I almost died. It was a great song, so I danced my heart out (which basically consists of doing shimmys and shakings and some twirls) and then I was EXHAUSTED and HOT. So I went to the back of the room, where there were no people or heaters, and cooled right down.

At this point, I looked at my watch, and saw that it was midnight. Now normally, this would be just fine, but we needed to be up at 5 the next morning, to catch our flight on time, so we left, right as the party was going to get started. We heard a DJ was up next but I just couldn’t justify in my head staying up all through the night and then just catching my flight and trying to sleep there, since I already know that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep there, so we called it a night. After getting some pictures taken by the photog they had there, we went back to the hotel, and finally, went to sleep. A smashing night, a smashing success. Hopefully they’ll put the pics from the party online, and I can show you them soon!

Germany, Day 2 Part 1

Today was our last day here, so we had to make the most of it all while going to all of the work obligations that we’re here for. I should have explained, the reason we’re in Germany is because the company that Husband works for is having their 40th year anniversary. So they’re having a gala tonight, and that’s why we came – to go to the gala. This morning, we had to go to a thing of speeches, which was interesting. Because we speak English, and the founder of the company doesn’t, we needed an interpreter. They handed out headsets to all of us, and while they spoke their German speeches, and interpreter spoke into my ear while I was trying to pay attention to that. The only issue with me, is that my brain kept trying to listen to the German speeches, even though I kept trying to tell it to listen to the English coming in through the ear piece. The way they interpreted this, and I didn’t know this, but it makes sense, is that those speaking get their speeches to a girl, and she translates them into English, and then reads them. Well, when the founder got up to speak, he kept going off his speech, so our interpreter couldn't keep up. She would laugh at something he was saying, but then apologize to us, saying that since he was going off speech, she couldn’t follow him. It was funny.

Finally, the speeches ended after a few hours, and after a good lunch, we split into groups. One of the groups went on a tour of the factories, but since we went on that tour in December, we chose instead to take a free afternoon. We walked into town, and found a museum that we went into. I honestly don’t know what the museum was about, because they had such a varying list of things inside. The outside had light sabers over the entrance:

And then on the first floor, it was all movie memorabilia

And then the second floor was religious stuff.

And there was a place I could use a feather quill to sign a piece of paper, and it took me forever to sign my name, those things are hard to use!

The third floor was animals and medieval times things

And the top floor was Star Wars.

They even had the movies playing (In German, naturally) to sit there and watch. I don’t know what this museum was, but it was so much fun to look through. Look forward to the next part of Day 2!

Germany: Day 1

Hello, friends! I am writing from Germany, I once again have had the good fortune of being able to go to Germany with Husband while he is on business. Not here for very long, only 2 days, in fact, but still, awesomeness. We landed this morning at about 8:00 AM, and made our way to our hotel, 2 hours from the hotel. I was pretty wiped, I didn't sleep as much on the airplane as I would have liked. I woke up today at 3:00 UT time, to be able to be tired enough to sleep on the airplane. I even took 2 Zzzquill on the plane, hoping it would help me sleep, and I didn't get more than about 2 hours sleep in the whole 10 hours, so that sucked. So, we get picked up by the airport shuttle guy and its me, Husband, his coworker, the coworkers wife, and their 4 month old baby. We were told by them that the baby had been so good the entire flight, and that's awesome, but then the baby cried/screamed/etc. the entire drive down to the hotel. Holy cow was that awful.
So finally, we get to the hotel, and they all have a work meeting, which means I got to come up to the room. I explored a bit, and learned that they have a thing in this hotel that the lights don't turn on until your room key is inserted into a slot, what? That's so weird.

Its so that you don't leave the lights on when you leave the room, but still, so weird. Of course, I had to see if they had weird toilet flushers in here, and they do. I don't understand why we have a different way of flushing the toilets in our different countries.

 The way you flush is by pressing the top button there. Anyway, after taking a nap, then eating lunch...napping again, finally, it was time to get to dinner. They were having a dinner for the company, and before we had come, I had asked if I should bring any clothes that are nicer than jeans, just in case, and Husband told me no, it wouldn't be needed. Wellll...at this dinner, we were literally the only people in jeans, I've never felt so underdressed in my whole life, it was awful. The dinner was good, and nobody made me feel weird about just wearing the jeans, so it was just myself putting that sort of pressure on, but ugh I was so irritated that I hadn't brought other clothes. Also, they had carved the hotel out of butter there.

After dinner, we decided to go down to the saunas, which are apparently a huge thing in Germany, I had no idea. They had like, 4 or 5 different kinds, but I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, because when I go in them, they're all just so hot to me, and that's all I can think of. And to top off the experience, I saw a naked guy. Full on, full-frontal, with a shot of butt afterwards, naked guy. I've never been so creeped out in my whole life. Of course to him, he doesn't care that he's naked, whatever, but to me, I just wanted to leave after that.

So there's day one. We're only here for one more day, so stay tuned to find out what happens next!

First time for everything...

I don't embarrass at all. Everyone knows this, heck, I usually could care less what people think to be embarrassed by my actions. I think that today, I might have had my first embarrassing moment! Luckily for me, I was only around one other person, PJ (who else would it have been?) and I'm pretty sure that the people who were in their front lawns weren't paying attention at all.
So we went on this looong walk today, to bask in the nice-ness of the weather. We originally were going to go on a hike, but we couldn't figure out where there was one in our area. During the walk, I noticed that the front of my shoes were way longer than my feet, but of course I didn't think much of it. As we were nearing my house, there was a bee that was, I swear, following us. PJ took off running to get away from it, and I just laughed at her. Then that bee came back for me! I tried to be calm, because I hear that's what you're supposed to do to get bees away from you, but that bee was having none of it. I took off running to get away from it, kinda laughing, and that's when it happened.
I don't even know what happened, but all of a sudden, the ground was coming up at me quite quickly. As I hit the ground, hands out, palms scraping, all I could think of was, I should roll when I hit the ground. Why did I think this? I have no idea, but in my brain, I think I thought it would hurt less if I rolled. So I did, I rolled, hurting elbows, scraping legs, until I came to a stop, a little dazed and out of breath, but alive! My hands hurt for the rest of the day, but today, here I am, no worse for the wear. And at least I now know what its like to have a full-out, hit the ground trip. And it was awesome.