We Are Not Exciting Lately

Well, I haven’t posted in a while because we just have not been exciting lately. Our excitement on the weekends consists of GTC, which is an acronym for Groceries, Target and Cleaning. Yes, I stole from the Jersey Shore’s acronym of GTL. I know it might be kind of lame, but I am a big fan of the Jersey Shore. I don’t like to admit it because it’s trashy and ridiculous, but it is also pure entertainment and I love the show. The season has come to an end and I hope they bring back the same cast again for season two because I love watching Snookie and The Situation…pure comedy! Ok, so I kind of went off on a tangent, but watching their saying of GTL makes me realize that Andy and I, sadly, have a weekend routine of our own. This routine consists of going grocery shopping, going to Target and cleaning the house. Now, I know that’s not as exciting as GTL, but it is our weekend routine, as boring as that might sound. Yes, we are not that exciting lately so I had to blog about our weekend routine.

Besides coming up with our own acronym this weekend I also spent it thinking about how much I love living in Arizona. This is mainly due to the weather, but hey, that is the highlight of living here. On Saturday night Mike and AJ came over and we grilled out, had a fire, some wine and topped off the evening with s’mores. Now, we are at the end of January and that is why I love this state. It was January 30th and we were out back in jeans and a sweatshirt sitting around a fire pit with wine and roasting marshmallows. That is definitely something you can’t do in WI this time of year. Also this weekend I hiked around the mountain both days in a tank top and yoga pants. It was beautiful both days and the view from the mountain is just breath taking. All I kept thinking was how happy I am to live here in this state while it’s January and I am in a tank top. Plus, I just love the views of the mountains that this state has to offer.

That was our boring weekend (but I enjoyed every lame minute of it) and hopefully there will be more exciting posts to come.

Week Long Rain Fest

Well, it has been raining all week here in Phoenix and I don’t mind all this rain since this is rare weather for us. It’s nice to see a change every once in a while and plus it reminds me of summer in Wisconsin when it rains nonstop for days. Besides the rain we are having a tornado watch. Phoenix hasn’t had a tornado in twenty or thirty years so it’s crazy wind with rain. Again, this reminds me of a typical summer day in Wisconsin. The only difference is the people. In Wisconsin the weather man doesn’t report on this for days like it’s a hurricane and the News channels aren’t overcome by the story of all the rain and wind. In Wisconsin people don’t drive like complete idiots when it rains. Here, people act like its freezing rain so they will drive 30mph in the fast lane on a 65mph freeway. Thanks to this it will take me over an hour to get home tomorrow night after work. Fortunately I worked in our Scottsdale office today so I didn’t have to deal with the idiots on the freeway. Also, in Wisconsin the people built drains in the road so the water can run off and streets and yards don’t flood. In Phoenix there are no drains so basically everything floods, the streets, back yards, parking lots, etc. Our backyard is very flooded. We now have two pools back there. The one we put in and the one past our retaining wall that the rain created this week. If allowed, Izzy would play and romp in it until she is a complete mess. We don’t allow this because I could just imagine our house when she came inside. Madison on the other hand doesn’t care for the rain. She doesn’t like it very much and would prefer to be inside.

I am ok with this weeklong rain fest, but come Saturday it better be gone. I am ready for the sun to be back. It never gets old to me. I just love seeing the sun everyday!

A Night Of 30K Millionaires

We had a pretty chill weekend, but we did go out for sushi dinner with our friends Mike and AJ. Following dinner the four of us headed to a north Scottsdale bar called Blue Martini. This bar has only been open at the City North location for about a year or less and we finally managed to make an appearance; however, I am still undecided if it was a good thing or not. I was looking forward to checking this place out even though I heard it was way over priced for the martinis. Hey, I had to check it out for myself and I did feel that my friends were right when it came down to the price. We first got there and the bar was over filled with Scottsdale 30K millionaire douche-bags and 40 year old divorcee’s with too much make up and very fake boobs. This is not my crowd of people to hang out with, but it did make for great people watching. It was fun to watch the overly manicured men all douched up ready to hit on the next available, and desperate, plastic chick to walk through the door. After a few drinks I looked around and started to wonder now that I am 30 if this was “my crowd.” I don’t fit into the 30K millionaire group, the divorcee group or the plastic group, but I sure fit in with my age…barely. Since last July I have been 30 and that forced me into a new decade of people. This gave me the credibility in the “older” bars. I didn’t realize this when I first got there because I am not used to this new decade of 30 because I automatically assumed I was way too young for this crowd. This thought changed after a couple drinks and I started to think about age, especially after I took a trip to the ladies room. I was minding my own business in the stall of the ladies room when I was listening to some overly drunk women washing their hands. They sounded like they were 21 years old and this was their first rodeo at the bar. While exiting the stall in the ladies room I noticed these were not newbies at all, but instead these women were well over the age of 40. All I kept wondering is why they were behaving like they are 21 years old, and I am not just talking about their vocabulary, but also the way they were dressed. I am not one to judge, but this incident made me judge as I was hoping to god that I would never be like that when I am over 40 years old. Am I just getting old now that I judge these sad drunk ladies in the women’s bathroom or is that what happens when you turn 30? You get the right to judge the other drunk women in the bar and definitely in the bathrooms? I am not sure, but Friday night was definitely entertaining by all. It’s not a bar I would frequent unless I feel the need for some good people watching while I sip on martinis.

Started Decorating

Well, so far I am off to a good start for my New Year’s resolution. Andy and I decided to check out Kirkland’s to see if we could find a floor lamp for our living room. It turned out to be a great trip and a great start to my goal of decorating our house. We found a new floor lamp, new bed side table lamps, floor length mirror and one of those tall cylinder things that you put “stick” looking things in them. Ok, I am sure that was not a great description so I took a picture of it.

This was a stressful buys and we bought this at Michael’s. On Friday night we stopped at Michael’s as I needed to purchase two baskets and while we were there we passed the aisles that sold this kind of stuff. We perused the aisled and after discussion we decided on the one pictured above. It was a tough call since Andy and I are both not into decorating and really have no clue what to do. I was worried that we wouldn’t like it once we got home, but I was pretty pleased with what we decided on.

Another purchase was bed side table lamps. We have wanted to get these for quite some time. We have looked for a while, but could not find anything we liked or just were unsure of the style we found. We found these ones on clearance at Kirkland’s and were even more pleased once we set them up at home and how great they looked. Here are pictures so you can see the lamps we picked out.

We also bought a new floor lamp and floor length decorative mirror at Kirkland’s and got it home and just loved it. It turned out to match our living room perfectly. The mirror is going to replace the crappy one that is in our hallway. I was pretty impressed with our shopping ability and decorating. I couldn’t believe we were able to pick the items we did and everything worked out perfectly in one try. Maybe with a team effort between Andy and me this decorating thing won’t be so bad after all. I will keep you posted as we continue to get things organized and decorated.

Happy New Year!

Ok, so maybe this post is two days late, but it’s always better late than never. I have just been a bit lazy these past couple days, well actually, I have been pretty lazy ever since we returned from Wisconsin. Well, I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve. We of course did. Andy’s brother, Ryan and Lisa, have been in town for New Year’s so we spent NYE with them and our friends, Mike and AJ. We spent all week trying to decide how to ring in the New Year. After research and some thought we all decided to go down to the Fiesta Bowl block party in Tempe. We haven’t done this yet since we have lived here and thought it would be a good time to try it. Since it’s quite the drive from our house we decided to rent the Big Orange Bus. This company picks you up and takes you to your destination and 30 minutes before you are ready to leave you call and they come back to get you. It’s a guaranteed ride home and since the taxi system sucks in this city the Big Orange Bus was the best route to go.

We decided to get down to the block party early and grab dinner on Mill Avenue at Gordon Biersch. Then we went to check out the main stage with the main beer tent. It was ok, but since it was early in the evening it was slightly boring. We decided to walk around Mill Avenue and check out the bars. We ended up paying a cover charge at The Library bar and that was where we ended up for the rest of the evening. Not ideal as we all wished we would have checked out the block party a bit more, but either way we all had a great time ringing in the New Year together and we got home safe by the Big Orange Bus. We all arrived back at our house about 1:30am to a stinky surprise the dogs left in the kitchen. Of course they had to ring in the New Year with two large stinky doggie dumps that smelled up the whole house. It stunk so bad that I couldn’t help clean it up due to fear of vomiting from the horrendous smell. Maybe that was their way of saying thanks for leaving them home alone on New Year’s Eve.

So, did you make your new year’s resolutions? Normally I don’t do this because I can never come up with something that is actually realistic. 2010 is a different year as I did come up with two New Year’s resolutions that are realistic.

The first resolution is to be more organized at home. At work I am plenty organized but for some reason when I get home it’s a different story. I need to clean out my closet, clean the closet in the third bedroom as well as plenty of other hiding places in this house. Our messy garage needs to be cleaned out and organized. We would like to buy the nice garage organizers and just get all the crap in their donated or stored away nice and neatly. I am done being a slob at home, or at least this is what I am saying for 2010 and I plan to stick it. I do know that it will take time to get this house completely in order, but I figured one weekend at a time will do.

My other resolution is to get this house decorated. We have been living here two and a half years and there are no decorations anywhere. It looks like we rent our house. The lack of decorations is not because we are lazy, but because it’s not something I am good at. I have tried many times to purchase stuff in stores, but when it comes down to it I never buy anything. I am not good at picking out colors, paintings, and other misc. decorations so I just get overwhelmed and put everything back. This year I am going to keep trying to decorate until I have stuff on the walls and curtains hung. I mean, how hard can it be…right?

Well, I hope everyone has a great 2010 and I will continue to write posts through the year to keep you updated on our lives.