Birthday Goodness

I had a great time celebrating my birthday this weekend. It started off great by reading the wonderful post that Jessica wrote about me on the blog. That was a pleasure to read and glad you all enjoyed it as well. Friday night we celebrated with friends at the house. Board games and booze make for an extremely fun time. I have a great group of friends and they really know how to have a good time. Like New Years, we played some Kings Cup and that always leads to some hilarious times! Some photos of the night:









On Saturday afternoon, we went with our families to a restaurant here in town called Tres Agaves. It is a Mexican restaurant/tequila bar. The amount of different tequilas they had there was simply amazing. And, since it was my birthday, they let me choose any tequila I wanted (up to a certain price) to have a shot of. Now that, is a birthday treat. Screw the scoop of ice cream and the singing waiters. This place did it the right way!









On a completely different note, I have started my photography project of taking a picture every day for a year. I am three pictures in pictures will be coming shortly of what I have so far.

Happy Birthday!

In honor of my wonderful husband's 31 years of life, I'm going to list 31 reasons I love him, in no particular order:

1) He is one of the funniest people I know.
2) He smells good.
3) He always does the right thing.
4) He gets emotional when we fight.
5) He is very thoughtful.
6) He is young at heart.
7) He always puts 110% into everything he does.
8) He is very smart.
9) He has an amazing relationship with his sister.
10) He has an awesome tattoo on his leg.
11) He is open minded.
12) He loves food.
13) He loves to laugh.
14) He's kind of willing to try new things.
15) He is not tolerant of racism and bigotry and intolerance.
16) He's a good kisser.
17) He has beautiful eyes.
18) He makes me feel attractive and special.
19) He has an awesome family.
20) He is a hoot when he's drunk (see the above picture.)
21) He's a trivia master (movies especially.)
22) He lets me have a crush on people.
23) He's a hard worker.
24) He gives good back scratches.
25) He lets me make fun of him.
26) He's a good friend.
27) He loves his dogs.
28) He gets excited over the little things.
29) He's a great photographer.
30) He cooks good dinners.
31) He is the best husband in the whole world.

I hope you have a FANTASTIC 31st birthday, Manuel. I love you more than you will ever know.

We have finally arrived...

The day I have been waiting for a year for has arrived. Now, if you know me, you might think I am talking about my birthday and that would be a very good guess. That isn't until Friday anyways, but truth be told, there is an even bigger day coming tomorrow. Tomorrow is the Champions League Final, pitting my team, Manchester United, against Barcelona to decide who is the best club team in Europe. Last year, my dreams were met as Manchester won the title. This year, they started off quite shaky and I was sure that there would be no repeat this year. However, they improved little by little, won the English Premier League a week ago and now have the biggest stage of them all to conquer tomorrow.

Can they do it? Well, Barcelona is regarded by many around the world as the best team in the world and last I checked, they were favored. But I don't know - I am being cautiously optimistic. Now if they lose, will I be surprised? No of course not. I will of course be sad, but not shocked. I am starting to lean towards believing we will win, but in the game of soccer, anything can happen.

I am so nervous. Tomorrow's post - The highest of highs or the lowest of lows. We shall see....

60 years...

Yesterday was the long awaited 60th anniversary party for my Grandma and Grandpa (who also turned 90) and what a great time it was. It is always so much fun when the family all gets together and this party was no exception. Enough with my talking; on with the pictures...

My sis....





The happy couple - 60 years




Renewing their vows. My cousin's husband Jeremy is a preacher and got the honor





Cutting their cake - Grandpa is such a ham



Family pictures...


The Valle (and Lowney family)


Me and Jess


My sis and her friend Jen posing



The grandkids...



The whole family...



Of course like any good party, there are much more pictures than this, somewhere around 60, but you can't post them all! Family - if you are looking for pictures from the party, I probably have them!

Getting closer....

...to my birthday that is. Well, a little over a week away, but that has nothing to do with this post. I just couldn't think of a title.

I really don't have a lot to blog about except movie reviews (and I don't feel like doing all those right now), but I felt like I should blog as they have been very few and far between the last couple of weeks. I'll just update you on some things...

Jess has now been back working at the hospital for six weeks and I am really enjoying it so far. Three 12 hour shifts is completely different than five eight hour shifts. For one, she occasionally has to work weekends. However, seeing as how her schedule changes weekly, it isn't every weekend that she has to work. And really, it doesn't matter if she has to work on a weekend seeing as how I work from home anyway. I can always work on a Sunday while she is at work and then take off Monday when she is home. It is nice having a flexible job like that. So basically, now I get to spend four days a week with her instead of the normal two for a Monday - Friday job. It means I have to cook three nights a week now as she doesn't get home until about 730, but it is all worth it.

This weekend we are celebrating a very special event. On Saturday we are having a dual party of sorts as we will celebrating my grandpa's 90th birthday as well as his marriage to my grandma for their 60th anniversary. I obviously consider them both to be awesome accomplishments. I especially cannot believe my grandpa is 90 as he acts and looks nothing like someone is turning 90 years old. I made a video for the party that I am pretty proud of and excited to show. I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures. Until then, that is probably it from here until Sunday when I come and upload pictures from the party. I'll have them up a couple of days so...

...have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend everybody!!!

Photos and photo news

Just some random photos to post tonight that I have been wanting to put up on the blog. But before that, I want to say a new goal that I have. As I am turning 31 in a couple of weeks, I have decided to try to do something for my 31st (although technically, it would be my 32nd year, right?) year of life. My photography skills are novice at best and they say the only way to get good at things is to practice, practice, practice. With that in mind, and really this is a borrowed idea from a guy I went to school with, I am going to make it a point to take 1 picture every day. Now, this is not to say I will be posting them everyday, but I will at least try to post them every few days so I don't fall too far behind. But, the main goal is a picture everyday. What of? Hell, anything. I have seen the friend from school take amazing pictures of something as simple as a keyboard. So technically, it could be anything. That is the goal....


So, moving on.....some recent pictures, a couple by camera phone and the others on my regular camera.



Ok, now, you can't tell me the guy who did the art for this picture thought it was totally innocent. There is no way....



I don't know about you, but I think that is a little too pricey for a Chinese Buffet. It better be DAMN good food.




This is my little bar that I now have in my poker room. I am really liking it so far. I just need to add a few more things to it. I think a mini fridge might also look good in here too.



This is Leia's bed. To the left you can see that Orko does have a bed of his own. I guess on this night, he decided it would be fun to share a bed with Leia. And no, we did not make him go into the bed with her. We were going to bed and Leia jumped in her's and before we knew it, here comes Orko and jumped into the same bed for some reason. Silly boy....

Grub

Wow, over a month since the last burgers and ice cream update. I guess that can be the excuse for the disgustingly high numbers you are about to see. Yeah, that's it...

Superb Burger (The name of the place - although, the burger was great too!)

Wendy's


Jack n the Box


McDonald's



Burger King

The Counter - a GREAT make your own burger place with a HUGE list of things you can add to your burger. I went with mayo, BBQ sauce, Bacon, and Bleu Cheese. Fantastic! (But pricey)


Ruby Tuesday's


Carl's Jr.


Hehe...McDonald's...




That brings me to 34 things of beauty...

Now on to Jess...


Peanut Butter shake from The Counter


Bowl of ice cream at home...



Coffee Toffee Frosty or something like thatfrom Wendy's

Strawberry Shortcake at my aunt and uncle's house

Ice cream at Dad and Fran's


Bowl of ice cream at home


Baskin Robbin's


Ice cream cake for my mom's birthday


Jess is now at 32.

Hopefully, it doesn't take me a month to do this again...

New Tattoo in the family

Sorry I haven't posted since Monday. First week of the month is my busy time.

Last night I took my mom to get her very first tattoo! She has been talking about one for years and has always known what she wanted, but could never really pull the trigger on getting it. Finally, for her birthday last month, we (along with my sister) got her a gift certificate to get a tattoo from Brandon. He did such a good job on mine and Jessica's tattoo, we knew he had to do my mom's.


Getting ready to start. She said she actually wasn't too nervous and instead, was actually pretty excited.




See, that doesn't look like the face of someone scared. In fact, the only thing that was making her nervous was that my sister had a worried look on her face because of fear my mom wouldn't be able to handle it. Shouldn't the person getting the tattoo be more nervous?



And there Brandon goes. I don't know how anyone in the area could choose to go get a tattoo from anyone else. He is simply amazing.



The outline is now on. This is my mom's little siesta man. She collects anything that has this figure on it of a man sleeping against a cactus. And boy, does she have quite a collection!




And there is the finished product. Because it was such a basic thing, I figured it would look pretty simple. I think Brandon added some nice shading and color touches to make even the most simple of things look outstanding. Good times...