Too Much Food; Not Enough Sleep

We're back! And we're totally exhausted. But the exhaustion is 100% worth it.

A quick recap:

• Karen and Mike's wedding was amazing. I have never seen a more stunning bride than my sister - she was the epitome of beauty.
• We saw the Blue Man Group after the wedding; what an awesome show that was. I've heard their shows are an acquired taste - it's not for everyone. But it's definitely for me. I'm pretty sure Lee liked them, too
• We ate some of the most amazing food we've ever tasted
• We saw some of the craziest people we've ever seen
• It took about, oh, 3 seconds before being bombarded with call-girl business cards got old
• Lee and I took an afternoon to see the Hoover Dam. And this is where it became apparent to me that I married someone who likes to read every single one of those informative signs. Seriously - every single one. And wants to take pictures of every single one.
• The drive up to San Francisco is absolutely gorgeous. In fact, it's gorgeous enough to keep us from paying attention to speed limits. Thankfully the CHP was nice enough to inform us of this. Ouch.
• Napa is breathtaking. The whole landscape looks fake - like we took a picture in front of a green screen and someone came in after the fact to add some gorgeous mountains
• San Francisco is awesome. The hills are absolutely insane. It gets up to a 45 degree angle in some places. It's actually like a really slow roller-coaster.

Here are some pictures - I know there are a lot; feel free to skip though them!

Vegas, baby!!

Mike and Karen's Wedding

The hilarious shirt Mike wore the morning before the wedding.

Karen, right after getting her hair and make up done.
She's so pretty.


Lee and me after Karen and Mike's wedding


Mike doing his toast. I love Karen's expression in this picture.

Blue Man Group

We tried to get him to smile ... no such luck

Lee posing with the background band members for the Blue Man Group

Casino shots

The view from the top of the Stratosphere


Lee on the ride that's off the top of the Stratosphere.

The Luxor, home of a delicious Sunday Brunch

The roller coaster in front of the NY NY ...

Yep, still don't like roller coasters

The water show in front of the Bellagio

Paris

Hoover Dam trip

View from one of the lookout points they have along the Dam

Hoover Dam big-horned sheep!

The white section on the rocks is where the water line used to be.

It's dropped 80 ft; they expect it to drop another 15 ft by September.

Lee pointing to the American Society of Civil Engineers sign.
He's such a nerd.



The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay

Jellyfish are so pretty behind a glass barrier

Cute fish

Freemont Street Experience

It was NASCAR week, so they did a car theme for their light show.



California

Ouch.

The worlds tallest thermometer.

It's hard not to be jealous, I know.

Really cool windmills along the Interstate

Wine Tasting in Napa Valley

All the vines are dormant right now, so we didn't see any grapes, but even dormant vines are amazingly pretty. Hopefully we'll be able to go back when the grapes are out.

Nickel & Nickel Winery

Inside their cellar

Pride Mountain Winery

Lee playing King of Pride Mountain's Rock

The view from the picnic area at the top of Spring Mountain

Domaine Carneros Winery

Doesn't this look like a fake background?!

Me, Lee, and Christi ... I think you could buy a bottle that big (I think it holds a case of wine), but it's mainly for picture-taking purposes.

San Francisco

We just happened to make a turnoff from the main road,

and it led us to this little lookout point. What an amazing view.

There are gorgeous flowers like this all over Fisherman's Wharf

Sunbathing sealions! I had no idea how noisy these fellas are -

we could hear them inside the restaurant where we were for lunch.

A crayon portrait I made of us during lunch at the Sealion Cafe.

Pretty impressive, huh?

I didn't realize just how many pictures I took of the Golden Gate Bridge!

The famous cable cars. I LOVED riding them.

With all the big hills, it's like a roller coaster ...

but with them going at about 3 MPH, it was like a

really, really slow roller coaster - just my speed.

It sort of became a tradition throughout this trip to

take pictures of Lee "interacting" with different things.

It made us laugh the entire trip :)

Lee tickling Lance Burton's nose

Holding up the Port of San Francisco sign

Poking a sealion on the nose

Holding up the US Department of the Interior sign

Tickling Big Boy's arm on the World's Tallest Thermometer

I commend anyone who made it to the end of these pictures! Bravo!

The Time Has Come

  Vegas, baby!

 

Karen's Shower

My mom and I threw my sister a lingerie shower at her house this past Saturday. I had a blast and I'm fairly certain Karen did, too. She did the appropriate blushing and giggling that one should do at a lingerie shower, so I call that a success.

I won't show pictures of the gifts she got since that would be in poor taste, but I'll show a few pictures of the setup.

I looked a long time for cute lingerie shower invitations and couldn't find them anywhere. So I opted to make my own - they turned out super cute (in my opinion) and much less expensive than store-bought ones. And I made them all different to give them a little personality.

(excuse the gray squares;
I didn't think advertising my sister's address
or my phone number would be a

good thing to do on the internet ...)

Here are the gorgeous desserts I got from Sweet Things (the BEST bakery in Pensacola, if you ask me). I got a few Tiramisu, a few Flourless Chocolate Cakes, and a few Key Lime Cheesecakes. And no dessert tree would be complete without a top layer of Thin Mints.

Here was my gift for Karen. I saw it online and thought it was the cutest thing in the world, so I tried my best to recreate it. I was pretty tickled with the result.

(if it's not apparent, it's a towel wedding cake)

President's Day

So I survived my first solo road trip. I loved it! I had a wonderful time, caught up with some great friends, and did a boat-load of laughing. What fun.

I didn't get lost going down there and I only had to make one U-turn on the search for my friend's apartment. Score for me.

Here are some funny things I saw while driving down to Tampa:

• The inevitable "Daytona or Bust" sign on a Camaro
• A guy in a tricked out car being pulled over by the cops ... and it wasn't much more than two miles before that when he passed me going approximately Mach 12. Karma is so fun.
• A huge, totally fancy RV (like the ones they show on the Travel Channel) towing a helicopter. Yes, a helicopter. A huge, totally fancy RV towing a small, totally fancy helicopter. Goodness.

And it's President's Day, which means today is the 14th or 15th anniversary of me spending the day in the emergency room because I fell off a subdivision sign while pretending to be a ballerina (I know, I know ...).

And it's the 14th or 15th anniversary of me getting sick all over the CAT-scan machine (and myself) while the doctors tried to see if I had ruptured my spleen. (I told the technician that I didn't feel well. But did he believe me? Obviously not.)

And it's the 14th or 15th anniversary of me realizing that a blown-up surgical glove looks really funny - like a guy with a mohawk. Not funny enough to make my non-ruptured spleen feel better, but still pretty funny.

Ahh, memories.

Solo Road Trip

I'm taking my very first solo road trip tomorrow.

Why is it that I'm 26 and have never driven more than 200 or so miles by myself? Unfortunately I don't have a very impressive answer. It pretty much boils down to 1) being a semi-poor college student who couldn't afford to travel too much, and then 2) finding a guy who really likes to drive (which, in turn, lets me do something I like to do: sleep).

I've got some awesome friends from high school who live near Tampa. They've been up to Pensacola plenty of times, so I decided that it's my turn to go see them.

Lee was going to go with me and see some of his friends in Lakeland, but we figured that it'd be good for me to do this trip by myself.

It should be very liberating - or so I hope.

Thank goodness for satellite radio and roadside assistance :)

Super Slacker

Wow. Yeah, so I've been a horrible slacker at this whole blogging thing.

So before I continue ... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anyone who hasn't given up hope that someday I'll update this silly thing.

Our work on the house has unfortunately slowed down. We were pretty gung ho there for a while. Now the progress has petered out. Who knows why? Maybe we've become attached to our painting mistakes and our horrendous bathrooms. And maybe we've discovered that all these unpacked boxes provide a nice place to lay our clothes on.

Or maybe we're just slackers.

Though we DID buy some touch-up paint. It's not the magic kind that'll paint the walls for you, but at least it's there, ready to be opened and used. That should count for something.

Hopefully we'll get off our rumps and get back to work soon. Then I'll have some pictures to show of our progress.

But if Lee gets his wish (and he probably will), the next picture I post will be of our new TV. (Do we have a TV? Yes. Is it broken? No. So do we need a new TV? No. Is our current TV a pretty good size? Yes. Is it wide enough and flat enough? Apparently not. Therefore, it must go.)

And we'll definitely have some great pictures mid-to-late March. My sister is getting married in Vegas in about 5 weeks (on their 11-year anniversary - how cute is that?) Lee and I are staying a few extra days in Vegas, then going to Napa for two days to visit a great friend for a wine tasting extravaganza. Hopefully we'll get to wander around San Francisco, too.

Can. Not. Wait.

Big screen? What big screen?

Reasons why Lee (well, 99.99% Lee and 0.01% Suze) wants to put off buying a big screen:

(Can I get a yee haw?)

(sorry about the head-trippy picture -
I was trying to not get splashed and
take a picture at the same time)