Movie-watching Sunday

Today was a beautiful, sunny, 93 degrees out - a perfect day for a ride on the Harley. Shane and I ventured out on the bike and made our way on the back-roads to the Palazzo theater to watch an afternoon matinee. The movie of choice was "The Hangover" which had us laughing until we were in tears. The movie takes place in Las Vegas so it was fun to see all the sites again since I had just been there.

After the show, we made our way back home, threw a couple of steaks on the grill and enjoyed the rest of our evening curled up on the couch watching a DVD.

A co-worker of mine had lent me a DVD earlier this week titled "Fireproof" that she said was a "must-see" so we decided to go ahead and watch it. Shane has been wanting to see this movie since last year when it was released in the theaters. I had never heard of it nor had any idea what it was about.

I will warn you that the acting isn't the greatest and is "cheesy" at times but the "take-home" message definitely makes it worth watching! It had some serious parts, some humor and some sad parts that had us BOTH shedding a couple of tears - yes, even Shane!

The movie is about a firefighter who’s marriage is on-the-rocks and the process of saving that marriage. Without giving away all the details, the husband (played by Kirk Cameron) decides to take part in an experiment called “The Love Dare” in order to prevent divorce between him and his wife. However, the catch is that the experiment can only be successful if he accepts God in his life and applies that understanding to his marriage.

I found this story to be inspirational on so many levels. For those couples who are struggling with their marriage, it provides understanding and sympathy as well as provides information on how to begin the restoration process for a hurting marriage. For those couples who do not struggle in this area, it gives a true appreciation for what they have, reinforcing the strength already present in that marriage. Even for single people, it is inspirational so that they will know what to expect from marriage should it ever be a consideration.

I urge all of you reading this blog to watch this movie with your spouse. After you do, take a step back and evaluate where you are in your marriage. Learn to "fireproof" it from all the negative & bad things around you and make sure you "never leave your partner behind"!

*stepping down from my soapbox*

Father's Day

"F" aithful.
"A" lways there.
"T" rustworthy.
"H" onoring.
"E" ver-loving.
"R" ighteous.
"S" upportive

Happy Father's Day to my Dad - You are the greatest father & grandfather a family could ask for! We love you Dad!

Monthly Game Night

This month's game night found us all heading on over to Olathe to Jill's house. She has been joining our neighborhood group for the past few months now and was kind enough to host this month's game-night festivities. She had a huge selection of beverages and everyone brought some great appetizers. We spent several hours eating, laughing & chatting away and didn't even break out any games to play as we were too wrapped up in conversation. All the girls left around 11:30pm while I ended up staying to catch up with Jill. We took our party out on the deck with another bottle of wine and stayed up well past 1am catching up. It ended up being a great evening with friends and a nice way to end the work-week!

Is that a Harley in my garage?

So before I left for Vegas, there was talk from my husband about going to "look at" a Harley Davidson motorcycle down in Pleasant Hill, MO. We had talked about the potential of buying a Harley and as far as I know he was just doing some research on them as to which one he wanted to get. Little did I know he already had one in mind & was determined to buy one if a "deal" came along too good to pass up.

Well, as I pulled into the garage at 1 am last evening, there it was: a 2002 Harley Davidson Deuce. He was SO very excited to show it to me today and I must say it is a beautiful bike - and it doesn't hurt that he looks super hot on it wearing all his Harley apparel :) The price he paid for it was a steal and he couldn't be more excited. Now we just need to buy me a helmet so I can go riding with him - I wonder if they make them in pink & black?!?


Now he just needs to sell the dirt bike, so if anyone reading this is interested or knows of anyone looking to buy a Honda dirt-bike, please let me know!

Vegas - Day #4

This morning HK, Deb, Jennifer and myself got up early and made our way over to Caeser's Palace to enjoy a morning at their spa. I was SO excited to get to share this experience with the girls as I went there last September and LOVED it!

We were first given a tour of the all that the spa has to offer. Then we were given lockers where we changed into these heavenly robes. We all started off by getting 50 min massages and enjoyed the huge selection of coffee, teas, juices, water, fruit and other snacks while we waited to be called on.

After 60 minutes of absolute heaven, we all met up and made our way first to the eucalyptus sauna room and after 20 minutes of that we headed over to the roman baths/jacuzzi room.

Last but not least, we finished our spa experience in the arctic ice room where it was a chilly 55 degrees. We exfoliated our skin with ice chips and then moisturized with the falling snow flakes which were actually lotion flakes. Definitely a great way to close up the pores and end your spa experience! We then made our way to the shower facilites where we got ready for the rest of the day. All the ladies LOVED their spa experience and we can't wait to return!

We walked back to the hotel, checked out, enjoyed the champagne brunch buffet there at Treasure Island and then made our way to the airport for our 5pm flight. We were patiently waiting for our flight to board when they announced it was delayed until 6pm...then they announced it was delayed until 6:30pm. By this point we were all so ready to get back home and the group was the quietest I had heard them all weekend. We finally boarded and got off the ground shortly after 7pm and arrived in KC around midnight. Ended up pulling into the driveway a little after 1am and crashed into bed exhausted from the weekend festivites. Thank goodness I had Monday off! I definitely needed it to recover!

And so, another wonderful girls weekend behind us! There is already talk about where we are going next year...

Vegas - Day #3

Today was a day of sleeping in from the late evening festivities the night before. We managed to roll out of bed around 11am and make our way down to the pool for a little lunch and a full day in the sun. There was a fun DJ playing great music at the pool and involved the crowd by playing games, tossing out beads to the ladies and giving "shout-outs" to various people in the pool. After we all got plenty of sun, we made our way back in to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner and our shows.
Since everyone was craving some mexican food, we decided to eat at the mexican restaurant Isla's right there in the hotel. The food was good but we all agreed it was a bit too "fancy" for our tastes and we would have rather had Rudy's mexican food in KC any day!

After dinner, we split up and 1/2 of us went to the Cirque du Soleil "O" show and the other half went to Criss Angel - Cirque du Soleil "Believe" show. There were mixed reviews from the Criss Angel show as 1/2 the girls enjoyed it and the other 1/2 hated it. Those of us who saw "O" were all in amazement and loved the performance. After the shows, we all met up at the Bellagio for one last viewing of the fountains and were in awe at the beautiful "dance" the fountains did to music. It was awesome and we all agreed that we could sit there ALL night and watch the fountains.

We then slowly made our way back to the hotel taking in all the sites, lights and crazy people the strip had to offer. It was a great ending to our last night in Vegas and we were all a bit sad to be heading home tomorrow!

Vegas - Day #2

My morning consisted of sleeping in, going for a run along the strip with Deanna and then later we took a taxi and met all the girls at the Luxor for the bestest breakfast buffet ever! While we were at the Luxor, we decided to pick up our show tickets for Criss Angel - Cirque de Soleil. For those of you who don't know, Criss Angel is a magician and has a show that airs on A&E called Mindfreaks where he performs all kinds of stunts & tricks for the public. Most of his stuff is pretty amazing to watch and leaves you baffled as you try and figure out "how did he do that?"

While we were in line to get tickets, a lady with a headset approached us and asked if we wanted to stick around and participate in an episode of "Mindfreaks" which they were taping right there at the hotel for this fall's show. We all agreed to stay and after waiting around for almost 2 hours, me, Deanna & Kari decided to go shopping instead. An hour after we left, Criss Angel finally appeared and out of all the people standing around waiting to see him, my friend HK had to be the most excited - especially when she was selected to participate in a magic trick with him which they filmed for the show. After the taping, he let her keep the cards used for the trick and took a moment to get a picture with her. She had a permanent grin on her face the entire rest of the day: While the girls stayed at the Luxor, we walked back to our hotel which was on the other side of the strip taking in all the sites and doing some shopping as well. Here are a few pics from the afternoon:

Eiffel Tower @ Paris

Fountains @ the Bellagio

New York, New York

We all met back at the hotel later in the evening and ate dinner at a really fun restaurant called Kahunaville in the hotel. We had the worst service from our waitress who was anything but nice to our group and after complaining to the manager about her, they were all bending over backwards for us! We somehow managed to have a good time regardless of the crappy service & the food was really good!

Afterwards, we all went back to our hotel to get ready for another night out on the town. Earlier in the day while we were shopping, a gentleman had stopped us to tell us about a nightclub he was promoting and ended up giving us 7 VIP tickets to the nightclub JET at the Mirage. We were positive we were going to have to pay him something since it seemed everyone in Vegas who helps you wants a cash kickback, but he walked away before we could even get out our wallets. So we told the girls about it and we all agreed to check it out. We all got ready to go and about 11pm we made our way to JET - of course getting a picture before we left:

We got to the club, found the promoter guy, stood in line for just 10 minutes and he escorted us all right past 3 lines of people on in to the club. We all even got 2 free drink tickets per person which was awesome since drinks in Vegas are at least $10/beverage. Inside the club was way cool and they played great booty-shaking music all night - which we did plenty of! At around 1:30am they had a special performance by a dance group called Beat Freaks who performed last year on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew and placed 2nd. They were awesome to watch and well worth waiting around to see! Of course we managed to snap a few pics of the ladies up in the club:

HK, Jennifer & HT ( a Heather-sandwich :)

HK, Deanna, Kari, & Marlo

What happens in Vegas...

Woo hoo - the girls trip has finally arrived! Vegas here we come!

This morning I found myself waking up to my alarm at 3:50am to get ready and be on a plane to Vegas by 6:30am. My friend HK and I opted to take the 1st flight out of town while the other girls waited to take the 5pm flight.
Once we landed, we quickly made way to the baggage claim and out the door to find a shuttle to the hotel. It was a shuttle-trip from hell as we made stops to each and every hotel as well as battled Vegas traffic. My neck still hurts from the whiplash I endured while the shuttle driver sped up & slammed on his brakes repeatedly. Since I hadn't eaten anything the entire morning I was nauseated and ready to throw up when we finally arrived to Treasure Island - but still managed to smile for a picture!
After my nausea had subsided, we ate lunch and hung out in the hotel waiting for 11am to roll around so we could check in. Once we got settled, we put on our swimsuits and headed to the pool to wait for the other girls. It was SO nice to spend some one-on-one time with Heather (HK) before everyone else got there! We started off our vacation with some bonding, some pool-time & a couple of ice-cold beverages - perfect!

The ladies arrived to the hotel around 6pm and we all gathered for dinner at Pizza Francesca's - an italian kitchen right there in the hotel. After we dined on 3 different kinds of yummy stone-pizzas & shared 3 bottles of red wine, we all made our way back to our rooms to get ready for our 1st night out on the town. We ended up going across the street to a nightclub at the Wynn called Blush. After a $10 Bud Light ( I kid you not) and some booty shaking, we all decided we were tired from the travels earlier in the day and made our way back to the hotel where we stayed up for another couple of hours chatting away. It was an awesome day and we were looking forward to what fun & surprises the weekend had in store for us!

Vegas here I come...

...a beautiful word indeed! I am off for 5 days of fun in Vegas with my girlfriends and shall return Monday June 12th with LOTS of pictures & stories! Until then...

Spoiled?

This is the site I see every morning just as I am about to rush out the door to go to work. Once Shane gets out of bed, he puts the Bullies in bed with me and there they lay....long after I have gotten out of bed, after I have showered, ate breakfast, put my shoes on and am ready to leave - they are STILL laying there snoring away. It is a chore to try and wake them up and literally drag them out of that bed, down the stairs and out the door to potty.

Can you say SPOILED?!? :)

Spring-time Blooms

These last 2 weeks my Asiatic Lily's have bloomed & I must say they are absolutely beautiful. I love walking out to the patio each morning and seeing how many more have "popped" open overnight! Just wanted to share a few pics with you all of their beauty:

Eeeek!

So last week as I was getting the hose out from under our deck, I noticed a little woven, fluffy mess in an old flower pot that resembled a nest of some kind with a hole burrowed in it. Didn't think anything of it and went about watering the flowers.

This evening, I went to put the cover back on our grill and notice some small black specks on one of the racks. As I look closer at it I see that it is mouse poo and not charred pieces from the grill. Then out of the corner of my eye I see something on the deck floor move quickly. At first I thought it was a frog since it was raining and they end up on our deck all the time. Uh.....NO! It wasn't a frog. As I get a closer look at it I notice it is a mouse. Then I remember the little nest I saw last week under the deck and realized this little rodent was shacking up under our deck and feasting on the remnants of our grill. Little bastard!

He scurried on over to the corner & just sat there looking at me and I at him (or her)! The mouse actually stayed there long enough for me to go inside & grab my camera so I could get the proof I needed because I knew Shane won't believe me when I tell him about the mouse! I ended up taking 3 VERY zoomed in pics of the little guy and suddenly as I sat watching the mouse with his gaze meeting mine, I got all "soft" and noticed how super cute he was with his little brown body, white tiny paws, little fuzzy ears and a cute twitching whiskers. Then I thought, what if this mouse has a family in that little nest!?! I can't possibly kill a family of mice!?!! I was quickly forced to come back to reality as that furry little devil darted across the deck, past my bare feet and flew down the side of the deck sending shivers up & down my spine. That's it - he was cute NO more! I went inside, got the D-Con out from under the kitchen sink and set it on the grill. It is time for this mouse to have his last meal - RIP sweet furry mouse!