Livin on a prayer...

My father is a huge Bon Jovi fan.  I grew up listening to 80's rock and big hair bands with my mom and dad and i have always had a special place in my heart for Bon Jovi.  Until i was in middle school I thought the words to livin on a pray were "jonny used to work on the dog"  not Tommy and a dock...anyways. Right before christmas I heard that Bon Jovi would be starting their circle tour  in seattle the week after my dad's birthday.  Could there have been a bigger hint?  Yes i had to get tickets. So thats what my dad got for christmas.

We road tripped to seattle on one of the best weather days Seattle has seen in Feb. It was beautiful. We stayed at the Waterfront Marriott and had a great view of Elliot Bay and the Ferry Boats.  We spent Saturday afternoon wondering around Pike's place market and watching the flying fish and smelling all the wonderful flowers.  Its Tulip season in Washington and the flowers are amazing. so many different colors and styles of flower. 

We stopped at the Crumpet shop and had a delicious crumpet with cream cheese and strawberry jam.. man oh man was it amazingly good.  The crumpets alone are enough to make me want to move to seattle. 

My sad attempt at a group picture with the sign in the back ground.....didn't quite turn out how i planned.

We had amazing seats to the show thanks to my husband and his amazing skills on the internet ticket sites.  The circle tour started in seattle on friday night and we went to the saturday night show.  Dashboard confessionsals opened the show. In my opinion Dashboard and Bon Jovi have totally different fan bases.  I know in concerts that the opener never gets the best stuff and they are usually a little less impressive, but I was not a fan.   I like dashboard and a few of their songs but this was not the best show i'd seen. 

Row 10, Best seats ever.

Daddy and I ready to Rock N' Roll

Happy me.

The concert was great. They played a mix in match of old and new stuff. Dad sang just about every song right out loud.  Im sure he was having flash backs of the concert he went to with his high school friend Klye, the Slippery when wet tour in 1984!  

Not to bad for a guy who's almost 50!  You've almost got him dad.   The show was awesome.  They even came back out and did an encore. 

This poor picture won't rotate for me so oh well.

We had a great time in seattle and I loved every minute of the trip with my dad. I love you Daddy! Happy Birthday!

Been a While

Life has kind of gotten away with my blog. Sad I realize, but sometimes the silly things take a back seat. 

We went to the International Auto Show to let Ryan drool over the cars. I fell in love with the Acura MDX. that should be my new car.  We had fun pretending we could afford all these great fancy cars.

This picture was right side up when i tried to put it in here. oh well. turn your head to look at it.

My Amazing husband took me away for Valentines weekend. We got to spend 3 amazing days at the Oregon Coast. We stayed at the Hallmark Inn in Newport. It was beautiful. The weather wasn't my favorite thing. Typical Oregon weather. It was cold and rainny the whole time.  We spent time walking on the beach watching the huge waves and trying not to get attacked my the incoming tide.

We spent saturday exploring the Historic Bayfront in Newport, which is basically a fishy-smelling board walk with lots of funny shops and little resutrants and things you only do on vacation like the underwater world adventure and the wax museum and the Ripleys beleive it or not exhibit. And yes, we did all three. 

Thats me with Jonny Depp, be jealous, very jealous

and these two pictures are for my mom, cause i love her so much

That's right, giant wax people of the famous M*A*S*H.  I will always have a special place in my heart for this show and its all my mom's fault.

And ryan trying really hard to get out of the picture before i took it... good ole Lewis and Clark

We had breakfast at this resutrant with huge windows to see the ocean and i had the best french toast made out of crossants. it was so amazingly good. We went to see Mr. Bill and play some traveling Trivia on Saturday night. its a great little trivia game that Mr. Bill used to play at Bushwhackers. We miss Bill and so much fun getting to see him again and play some trivia.  On the last day there we went and took a tour of the Rouge Brewery. It was pretty cool to see how its all made and how it goes from the brewery to the bottle or keg and to the bar where ryan works with it every day.

Ryan and I had a great valentines day together with no work and no stress.a trip we hope to make a yearly thing. Hope you all had someone to Love this Valentines day.

New Year, new Adventures

I've been a total blog slacker lately. To much else going on and not enough down time to talk about life.  That and i haven't really done much that was picture worthy.  Well, New Years eve we were at Bushwhackers as usual for a weekend. Ross and Myra came down, it was a good time. busy night and Ryan actually danced with me which was nice.  Good going on the camera there Ross,

This last weekend me and some girlfriends went up to Seattle for the night.  There used to be a lacross team in Portland called the Lumberjacks. Well at the end of last season the team was disbanded and the players were all picked up by different teams. For those of you who don't know much about lacross, your not alone cause neither do i.  For the most part lacross players are Canadian. which is really fun, but most of the teams that play in this league are in Canada. There is a team in Seattle, well actually its Everett but close enough. a lot of the boys who used to be jax's players went to play for the Washington Stealth and then there were a bunch who went to play for the Edmonton Rush. so theses two teams full of old Jax's players played each other in seattle on Friday night. So us girls, as lacross fans, went up to the game.

All Jax'd up and ready for the game. Tia, me, Annette, and L'Erin

The start of the game, or what happens every time a team scores. its a lot like the tip off in basketball except with sticks.

Some random players, doin some random play.

After the game the players come up to the Ice Box and do a meet and great and sign autographs and just basically hang out with the fans. we had a great time at the game and the Washington Stealth won 15 to 7 i think.   The motto of the game  "its like hockey but with Balls"

On Saturday we went to Seattle and played around. Went to the Space needle and walked around the EMP.

Space Needle

EMP (Experience Music Project)

Annette, Tia, L'Erin, Me in front of some random Fountain we found.

Side note about this picture. the camera was put on timer mode and set on top of a trash can and i ran to get in the picture. On of my famous "self portraits". Who needs to ask strangers to take pictures. We don't.

Next we went to Pike Place Market and wondered around. I tell ya Seattle is almost as bad as San Fran with the hills. I am so glad i was not driving a stick shift car. We would have been Screwed!  The guys at the fish market tried to make us kiss the fish, EWW gross!   lots of funny shops and people all over the place.  This random dude was doing a street show on a uni cycle trying to juggle knives. I didn't want to get to close.

Gross fish.

A look down the hall at the market.

We were about to cross the street to go to this little cafe when a women stops us to ask if we know if she can park here. you look up to the street sign, and there is no way to figure out how to answer this poor women. there were 5 different signs on the pole all talking about parking.

Can you figure out the times its actually ok to park here?

We had a great weekend in Seattle, one of my favorite places to visit. I can't wait to go back.

Happy Christmas

We celebrated Christmas eve with Ryan's side of the family up at his parents house. We had so much food you would have thought we were feeding an army. We sat around the tree and opened all the gifts. we got lift tickets from stacey and her family to go snowboarding on Mt Hood, Ryan got a bunch of Coke collectable stuff to add to his ever growing stash. He got some new Saw horse's, i got some cloths. We gave Every one framed family pictures from the wedding (that i finally got printed). after the gift opening we all grab a copy of the night before christmas and follow along as it is read. We had a great time and its so good to have family close at the holidays. 

Ready to read the Night Before Christmas

Christmas morning Ryan and i woke up and exchanged gifts with just us, it was great, I got ryan some shirts and new jammies, he practically lives in comfy pants if he isn't at work. Ryan got me a pair of super comfy and warm slippers, they are amazing! and some cook books, and new snowboarding cloths. 

Ryan looking so excited with his gift.

Me showin off the new slippers. Yeah!

Ry loves funny shirts from AE.

We then headed to my dad's house where we had breakfast with Dad and Brady and opened more gifts. Brady brought up all the gifts from my family and we had tons to opne. Daddy made an awesome pancake eggs and bacon breakfast...it was delicious. 

Brady ready for a nap.

Opening more presents.

Showing off the gifts.  Ryan got dirty jobs, and NCIS. We got a little dirt devil vaccum, and family pictures in a super cute frame. Ry got a new Football, and brady got a yard of Bubble Gum...yes thats right a yard. The kid loves candy.   We all went to see Sherlock Holmes at the theater later that afternoon, and it was great. Loved it.  

We went to Mt Hood snowboarding the next day with dad, brady and Ryan's friend Ross and his girlfriend. We had such a good day, it was beautiful weather. Sunny and not to cold. Ryan hadn't been up on the mountain in 6 years, my dad hadn't been up skiing in 17 years! it was crazy. I did lots of falling down. my sad little body has been sore ever since. we had a great time. It was a great christmas and we are so thankful for the friends and family that were there both in person and in spirit.

Christmas came with a BANG

SO im starting off this blog with some nice pictures of our christmas at our house. the Redneck tree and the beautiful flower we got that finally bloomed.

Take extra care to notice that there are really pretty white lights on the top. Its our snow.

The front of the flowers, there are now 4 blooms. they are so pretty and guess what, They are PINK!

So, on my way to work on Wednesday morning i had just left the house, i was just mindin my own business and driving slow cause it was icey out, well on the first s curve to get me off the hill and on my way to work i hit a bad patch of ice and slide around the corner and into the ditch. it was so scary.  The crazy thing is that a guy driving a white ford explorer had done the exact same thing about a half hour before i came down the hill and he was already in the ditch.  I smashed into the back of him when i went into the ditch.

I have some pictures but because it was so foggy the camera tried to focus on that.  my car is the black one, and the ditch is about 3 feet deep so the angles of the cars are a little werid.

And after all that, this is the only damage done to my car. Just a little crack in the plastic bumber.

I am very thankful that things didn't turn out worse. I am blessed and know that i was being protected and guided to the side of the road as safely as possible. I am grateful for my husband who i woke up with a hysterical phone call that he came to my rescue and helped me and let me know that everything was going to be ok.  It was not the start to the holidays we were looking for, but it could have been so much worse.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!