Photos From The Tahoe

A photo post... because I'm the perfect combination of narsisitic and lazy today.

We arrived in Lake Tahoe on Wednesday evening. There were two families: my mom and stepdad and me and my sister (and our men, and my man's brother) and my stepdad's brother, his wife, and their two kids. (This cabin renting thing has become somewhat of a tradition for our families at Thanksgiving time. Much easier than having everyone at one person's house for the entire long weekend. )

So anyway, Kyle, Kelsey, and I show up Wednesday night, eat some amazing ribs, and then the drinking beings. By the time Sunday rolled around, everyone sobered up and went home. The following pictures were taken sometime in between.


Drew, my sister's boyfriend, doing the turkey brine thing.


Mmmmm... Nothing says yummy like raw poultry in a bucket.


Uncle Lance and Jessica - playing some serious Ping Pong


Moving on to (Beer) Pong


Pong Tournament - Action Shot. (And yes, Kyle's shirt definitely says "Michelangelo is a Party Dude")


Kelsey and Jessica, kicking butt, taking names, and cheesin it up for the camera


Jessica, me, Caitlin - more cheese


Me and the Caits - WORST PONG PLAYERS EVER!!!!!


Seriously, Just.Terrible.


I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard.


Thanksgiving day - My sis lookin all beautiful


Look mom! I can make Brussel Sprouts!


Pumpkin Spice Bread Turkey - YUM! (And so cute!)


Mom, Aunt Nina, and Jes (and yummy sweet potatoes!!!!)


Keith and my stepdad, being manly on the couch watching football while the women-folk cook


Drew, the master carver with Turkey #1


We were a little concerned about Turkey #2... it appears to have been deep fried to a crisp!


Luckily, it's gorgeous on the inside. (And isn't that what really matters?)


After dinner couch time


Bundeled up for a night time walk


On Friday, there was much hiking at Squaw - must burn off that 4th helping of pie!


Kelsey and Kyle bundled up - It was cold!


Men in the woods - I love this picture!



Squaw is pretty ugly


Me and Kyle - FINALLY at the Summit - Hiking at altitude was REALLY HARD! (There were several occasions where I thought we'd need to be airlifted out...)


All of us at the top! (I swear I'm not short! I just hang with tall peeps.)


Yeah, we bought hot chocolate and took the Gondola back down the mountain - we're hard core, but not THAT hard core.


View from the bottom looking back up - Woah - that was quite a hike!



On Saturday we took a boat tour of Lake Tahoe - Very relaxing and pretty

On Sunday, having had our fill of beer, and wine, and Pong, and turkey, and beautiful things to see, we went home, thankful for the amazing weekend.

:)

As Heard In My Apartment

Flipping through yet another bridal magazine, I came across yet another article that made me want to throw in the towel, hop a plane to Vegas, and vow to love, honor, and cherish with no one but a half-naked Britney Spears impersonator and a few sequin clad Elvises as my witnesses.

"Seriously, Kyle, let's elope."

Kyle put down his magazine, stared deeply into my eyes, and said, "My darling, I love you like the sweetest melon, but we cantaloupe." All with a straight face.

And Then I Forgot To Blog

Kill me.

Blogging from Mighigan and then from the woods of Lake Tahoe was quite possibly the hardest thing EVER. It literally drove me insane.

And then, when I finally got home last night, all comfy, in my own home, with decent internet, my own computer, no family to mock my "need" to blog, and absolutely nothing to do, I up and FORGOT TO BLOG!!!

I realized it this morning as I drove to work. It felt like someone punched me in the gut. All the stress of the past two weeks was for nothing! The blogging from Kyle's dad's computer as he questioned (again), "now, what is this "blog thing" you're doing?", the hurried post as Kyle's family waited for me, the airport blogging, the "borrowing" our neighbor's shaky internet connection in the woods of Lake Tahoe, the attempt to upload pictures via my sister's boyfriend's dial-up VPN connection, the blogging on Thanksgiving when I should have been hanging with my family, and finally the typing letters on a TINY keypad so I could blog from my sister's cell phone at 11:45 pm so that I didn't miss a day was for NOTHING. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

How could I FORGET to blog yesterday?

I am officially NEVER doing this again.

:(

New Low

I'm blogging from my sister's cell phone. This is a new low. Is November over yet?

Things To Be Thankful For

In addition to family and friends and my health and my wonderful fiance... this week I am thankful that someone invented Pong (the kind with beer, not the kind with two white lines and a dot that bounces back and forth across your TV screen.) SO MUCH FUN. I am also thankful for the fact that my sister is as terrible at it as I am. We played on the same team. It was hysterical.

We're in a cabin on the north shore of lake tahoe, having a wonderful time. The internet connection makes me want to stab my eyeballs out, but other than that it's perfection. Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday!!!!

Happu Thanksgiving

Gah!!!!!!!!! I'm in a cabin in the woods and internet is sketchy at best. Posting this weekend will be interesting at best...

PLEASE LET THIS POST GET THROUGH!

What The

So Kyle gets home from work yesterday and discovers the strangest thing. About a month ago we planted two azaleas in front of our house, one in each little bit of dirt on either side of our garage. They were darling azaleas and we were very excited about them. Well, one of the little azaleas has since thrived, but the other little azalea, not so much. Bummer. We can’t for the life of us understand why one was doing so well while the other was barely hanging on. So weird. But anyway, Kyle gets home last night and the near dead azalea is GONE! Just gone. And the little plot of earth where it once was looks as though there never was an azalea there to begin with. There’s no hole, so dirt strewn about, no evidence at all that someone had taken our plant. It’s like it just vanished! Poof. The happy plant was still there, but the sickly one, gone. Huh? We shrugged and decided that it must have been an intervention brought on by someone who thought we obviously couldn’t handle the responsibility of caring for this little plant on our own. Oh well.
Well, later that evening we were walking to dinner and we saw this:
















!!!

There is obviously a PLANT THIEF in our neighborhood!! What the??

Well That Was A Bad Idea

I normally have yogurt for breakfast. Sometimes I'll eat a piece of toast with peanut butter or butter and honey, and occasionally I'll grab some sort of granola bar, but usually it's yogurt. Yummy, satisfying, and portable, with just enough protein to get me through to lunch. Hooray yogurt. But we were out of yogurt this morning. And I didn't feel like toast or a granola bar (not that we had either, we SOOO have to go to the grocery store!) and so I settled on a bowl of cereal. Now might be a good time to mention that I also woke up late this morning. (Story of my life!) And when you're commuting in Bay Area traffic, every 1 minute later that you leave you house tacks on like 5 minutes to your commute. It's horrible. So, see, I REALLY didn't have the 6 necessary minutes to sit down and eat a proper bowl of cereal. And here's where the bad idea part comes in. I decided to eat a bowl of cereal while driving to work. For the record, cereal is NOT a portable food item. And I KNOW this. But I always think that maybe, just maybe, I'm special. Maybe physics doesn't apply to me, because I'm oh so much more talented than the rest of the world. I'm silly sometimes.

Anyway, I managed, miraculously, to balance the very full bowl on my lap while I kept one hand on the wheel and the other on my spoon. OH SO CAREFULLY I lifted each bite to my mouth. And I didn't spill a single drop! Hooray me! (See I am special!) And then I did a really stupid thing. I didn't finish the cereal. I got down to about a half cup of milk and all the cereal crumbs from the bottom of the box left in my bowl and decided that I was full. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding the bowl of milk and crumbs (which, by the way was still balance precariously on my lap) I continued on my merry way to work. I rode like this for a solid 5 or 6 minutes. And then, as often happens during rush hour traffic, there came a moment when I had to step on the breaks. And I bet you think the bowl of left-over cereal mush went flying, huh? NOPE! The bowl awesomly stayed put. Hooray bowl! But, see, cereal mush is a funny thing. It sort of falls into that whole "liquid" category. And so while the bowl obediantly remained on my lap, the contents of bowl wasn't quite as cooperative. >:\

Cereal.Mush.Everywhere. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. On my pants, on my seat, on the floor of my car. You would be surprised how far half a cup of milk can go! And the worst part? No napkins or towels or ANYTHING in my car that could be used to clean it up. And the WORSTER part? I still had 40 minutes left in my commute. Kill me. So I had to just sit, marinating my cereal mush for almost the ENTIRE drive to work. It was awful. And, even I tried my best to clean up once I finally did get to work, I've smelled like stale milk ALL DAY. I don't even want to think about how bad my car is going to be. :(

Such a bad idea.

Tablet Brick Potato Llama

I posted this once before, a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago, but I came across it again today and laughed my butt off all over again.

Thought I'd share.

The Llama Song

Pressure Blogging

So, right now I'm in the Detroit Airport with Kyle and Kelsey, we've partied at the wedding, celebrated Kyle's sister's fiance's birthday, had our (early) Thanksgiving dinner, hugged all million members of Kyle's family 15 times, and said goodbye with promises to return at Christmas. Now we're trying to make our way back to California. And our flight's been delayed. Ugh. Normally this wouldn't really bug me too much... but today is different... because, HELLO I haven't blogged yet today! We were originally supposed to land at 9:30 pm PST... plenty of time left for posting a NABloPoMo entry... but now, with the delay, we might actually not make it back by midnight!!! CRAP. So I just paid $5.25 for 15 minutes of internet time here at the airport. And WOW 15 minutes goes quick! (Only 3 minutes left!)

So anyway, this is sort of just a perfunctory post. Written while I watched the clock tick down. (No pressure!) Sorry.

I promise to be more entertaining tomorrow.

(oh and Kyle says hi!)

:)

The Promised Update

We're quickly approaching midnight here in the midwest and I've yet to find something truly noteworthy to blog about today. Blah. And so all you get is an update of my weekend. And you'll just have to like it.

We made it to the wedding last night with a solid 37 seconds to spare, whew. It was a lovely ceremony followed by an awesome reception. It was Kyle's cousin's wedding, so a lot of the guests there were members of Kyle's family, which gave me a nice little peak into what our wedding might be like next fall. In a word? Dance-tastic. Young and old alike shook what their mamas gave them until 1 am. The bride's dad had quite the repertoire of moves including, but not limited to, the sprinkler, the little old lady with a walker, the shopping cart, the lawn mower, and some move that involved the motion of cleaning your ears out with q-tips (???) He was down right hysterical. We danced till they kicked us out and then headed upstairs to the hotel bar. We shut that place down at 2 am and then decided that we had had enough and came home. It was SUPER FUN and I especially liked all the time I got to spend with my future extended family.

Some pics from the festivities:

The reception site - quite stunning. Note the chivari chairs. Sigh.


First dance.


Kyle's dad and sis cutting a rug.


Kyle's mom and bro getting down.


Kyle, me, and the beautiful bride.


Shake it, sister.


I totally want a shot like this at my wedding!

Today we watched miserable football game after miserable football game. Yuck! Tomorrow, we're doing an early Thanksgiving. Yay!

Gotta Go

Yikes! The family is totally waiting for me. 'What family' you ask? Kyle's. Oh. Didn't I mention? I'm in Michigan, with Kyle's fam right now? (Hey it's NABloPoMo, I gotta dole the information out slowly or risk having nothing to post about!) But anyway, they are TOTALLY waiting for me. Like in the car and everything. And we are LATE for a wedding. And I'm blogging. Awesome.
More updates tomorrow - I gotta go.

Slow Day At The Patent Office

So right now I'm writing the final paper for my patent law class (ick, but at least it's almost over... well it would be almost over if I could just tear myself away from all the blogs - MUST RESIST!) Anyway, while perusing the over 7 millions patents currently issued in these here fine united states, I came across this beauty:

Patent?

An ornamental toy skunk? Really? That's patentable material? Come on guys.

This makes me wonder, why don't *I* have a patent yet!? Obviously they're not that hard to get, quick skunk sketch and you're there! And how cool would it be to say, "Yeah, so when I got my patent..." Think of the street cred! Or at least the cubicle cred. Maybe that'll be my New Year's resolution this year. 2008: start working out, read more, get patent.

Road Rage. I Has It

:( I have NEVER seen myself as a road rage kind of person. At least not on the freeway. Sure, on city streets I mostly hate all pedestrians and motorized vehicles within 1000 feet of me, inconsiderately bumbling around like blind gnats, intent on keeping me from my final destination. Jerks! But on the highway, well, we're all going the same direction at roughly the same speed, and once you're on the freeway, there's just not a whole lot you can do to change the outcome of how long it will take to get where ever you're going. If it's bumper to bumper, you can't really be mad at this car or that car, it's no one's fault, there is no one moron who should die a horrible death for trying to make a left turn from the center lane on a red light during rush hour. I hate that moron, by the way. But that guy lives on city streets. Not on the freeway. On the freeway, 9 times out of 10 there are just too many cars on the road. So we all have to slow down. Annoying, but no reason to get upset. And those people who let the stress of the stop and go get to them? Who let the driving habits of others affect their own mood? What's that all about? I don't need that sort of negative energy in my life. Just chill out, right?

Wrong. Not today.

I was happily driving along in stop and go and traffic (GAH! Must learn to leave house BEFORE 7am so as to avoid the stop and go!) when suddenly a horrible horrible woman, wearing far too much make-up, driving a SUPER-SIZED SUV, shouting into her cell phone, cut in behind me and then proceeded to glue the front bumper of her giant evil global warming machine to tail pipe of my tiny Honda. Grrrrrrrrrrr. (For the record, I don't actually hate SUVs, provided they serve some purpose other than to make the driver feel tall. If you live snow country, they make sense, if you live on a farm with unpaved roads, they make sense, if you are schlepping around 5 kids and 2 dogs 12 hours a day, they make sense... but if you live in the city and commute on the freeway 5 days a week, ALONE, for crying out loud get a Civic, because, seriously, you're just pissing people off.) So, little Miss Evil was ON MY ASS. Like seriously, I felt like I should be able to use the carpool lane because she was totally hanging out in my back seat.

We'd go 25 miles an hour (the two of us, together, like conjoined twins) and then traffic would come to a complete stop, she'd of course have to slam on her brakes to avoid rear-ending me, and then we'd sit. And then it would pick back up and we'd go 25 miles an hour again. And then we'd stop again. Lather Rinse Repeat. And all the while she was shouting into her cell phone and gettin friendly with my back side. Eye... twitching... mrrrr.

And then she started honking.

Oh yes. We'd be stopped, and the *INSTANT* the car in front of me would start to roll forward, she'd honk at me to inform me that it was now my turn to also start rolling forward. And I was like, "Ummmm, thank you for the driving instructions, Miss Honky von Honkerson, but just because you want to suck my exhaust doesn't mean I need to be all up on the tail pipe of the car in front of me. STOP HONKING AT ME YOU EVIL WHORE!"

But oh the honking did continue. (Fingers gripping the steering wheel, blood boiling...)

And then I decided that I couldn't take it anymore. I slammed on my breaks and she slammed on hers, and then I just sat there. And oh the car in front of me kept going, and the space between us grew! And soon there may have been a whole 30 feet in front of me. Stupid lady laid on her horn and flailed her arms in the air, and I just sat there. (So bold I am!) She finally cut someone off in the lane next to us and passed me. And as she drove by, you know what I did? I flipped her off. Oh yeah. And I didn't even feel bad about it*. And then, I'm ashamed to admit, I honked at her several times. [hangs head] I totally let her get to me. Ugh.

(*I of course feel bad about it now, I'm such a weenie)

Honing My Skills

When I arrived at the bridal salon on Sunday, I was immediately overwhelmed by the sea of white that surrounded me. They must have had a thousand dresses there. And the sales girls knew of each them (the dresses I mean) by designer and style and they rattled their names off as if they were familiar household items instead of overpriced pieces of satin.

Her: “I’m seeing you in a Pronovias Ebano… or maybe a La Sposa Saman… what do you think?”
Me: blank stare… “I was, uh, hoping, for something, sorta, um, white-ish, that uh, um, makes me look pretty. What do you have in that department?”
Her: “Courtney, sweetheart! Don’t worry. We’ll get there. When’s the wedding?”
Me: “uh… September... of next year?”
Her: “Oh thank God! Thank God we have time! Come with me.”

And then she whisked me away into a fitting room, stripped me of my clothes, put me in strapless corset bra and petticoat and then started hoisting wedding dresses over my head as I closed my eyes and stretched my arms toward the ceiling. Shimmy, zip, pin, fluff, Viola! I’m bridal! I try on about ten dresses with varying degrees of success. None of them was *it* but I did learn a lot:

First of all, the classic A-line dress makes me look fat. I didn’t actually think it was possible for an A-line to look bad on anyone, but, hey, I guess I’m special.

Second of all, beads, sequins, rhinestones, crystals, and anything of the shiny persuasion – GET IT OFF ME! The sparkles that I love so much on other brides, and that I think show up so nicely in their photos, make ME feel like either a little Disney princess or a trampy Vegas showgirl. Neither of which is what I’m going for. Blech.

Third, straps are painful! Who knew? All my life I’ve had my heart set on a dress with tank top style straps (the better to wear a bra and be comfortable with!). But nooooooooooo. Now I understand why 99% of the store was filled with strapless gowns. If your dress has any sort of heft to it, the straps dig into your shoulders and make it impossible to hug people. Yikes! So now I’m thinking I might go strapless – this literally flips my entire world on its side. I’ve never thought of myself as a strapless kind of girl!

Fourth, NO SWEETHEART NECKS! You gotta give a girl SOME coverage if she’s gonna go strapless! Sheesh. There will be grandparents at this wedding. I can’t have my “girls” falling all out of a low cut sweetheart neckline. So please, Less Flesh!!

I think I am now MUCH more prepared for this whole process. In fact I just got off the phone with a second bridal salon. When she asked if I had any idea what I wanted, I responded, “Yes. I’m looking for a modified A-line with a dropped waist, made of silk, off white, with asymmetrical rouching on the bodice and a skirt that moves when I walk. Court train. No beads. No chiffon. No charmeuse. Lace is an option, but only as an embellishment. Nothing low cut.”

Ha! I can *so* do this!

Now all I need to do is FIND this (fictitious) perfect dress that I've invented in my head...

Wedding Dress Shopping Take 1

First this:

Comment from my mom on my last post:
Next time I get to go too.....that is part of getting to be mother of the bride - I get to go the bridal shop and cry as I watch you become a vision of loveliness over and over again.

Response:
Dear Mom,

Are you on crack? What is all this about “next time I get to go too”. This is ME we’re talking about here… you HATE shopping with me. Remember in high school, when I *finally* got my own room, and I got to upgrade from a twin sized bed to a full sized bed, which meant that I got to buy a new bedspread. Do you remember the nineteen stores I dragged you to in search of the *perfect* one. Do you remember shopping for hours on end, in store after store, patiently standing by as I hemmed and hawed over scores of choices that were nice but weren’t quite right. Do you remember me liking the border on this bedspread but liking the lace detail on that bedspread and if only the yellow were sunnier on this one or maybe the blue richer on that one, and oh! look at this one over here! It’s absolutely perfect on one side, but, oh, the back side makes me want to vomit, and you know, this one might work but I’d have to find just the right throw pillows to really pull it off… Do you remember being exhausted, and at your wits end, and finally breaking down and begging me to JUST PICK ONE ALREADY!!!! Remember???? And that was just for a freakin bedspread! Don’t make me remind you of the time you decided to help me pick out a new pair of jeans! Gah!

I am not fun to shop with. I am picky. Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicky. And I plan to bring it to a whole new level with this white fluffy number. I foresee the process taking 6 months. And seriously mom, you do not want to subject yourself to 6 months of crowded bridal boutiques – they’re hot and noisy and sales women run every which way carrying 20 pound dresses wrapped in plastic while frazzled brides shout after them, “Lace! I need more lace!!” After an hour and a half yesterday even *I* had had about all I could handle. You’ll be sitting on a little bench outside the dressing room while I’m naked inside being dressed by a strange sales woman desperate to extol the virtues of the new taffeta numbers they just received. Every 15 minutes or so, I’ll emerge, listing off the things that aren’t quite right about gown, you’ll take one look at the price tag and say, “Oh Courtney! That’s too expensive, I can make this for you.” And then I’ll say, “Yes, Mom, I understand that you are very very talented in the dress making department, but do I really need to bring up the fiasco that was you making my prom dress, and the dark dark day that you *gasp* hemmed it too short and I all but committed suicide so horrified and forlorn I was that the dress would never be perfect? Do I!?!?”

I love you too much to do that to you. Trust me on this one. When I’ve narrowed it down to my top 35 choices, and I've given up on finding a dress that is both backless and very supportive, modern and traditional, made of rich heavy silk satin that is suprising light and easy to wear, with buttons AND a lace-up back, painstakingly detailed while remaining simple and unfussy, with straps that magically disappear whenever I need to lift my arms to hug someone, one that slices and dices and juliennes potatoes, all while making me look as if I've lost 15 pounds, then you can come. OK? Let me run around the block a few thousand times to wear myself out a bit before you start tagging along. I think we’ll all be happier.

Love always,
Your beautiful first born daughter, who you love unconditionally, even though sometimes she's a bit crazy

:)


Then this:

:( No pictures. Booo. Not that I found anything that I would even consider walking down the aisle in, but still, pictures would have been fun. I took exactly one (of my girlfriends patiently wiating for me outside the dressing room) before being reminded of their stirct no photo policy.


Patient ladies

I think they're afraid that you'll find a dress you like, snap a picture, and then go buy it cheaper someplace else. Which is probably what I'll do, so I can't say that I blame them. But still. I MUST find a way to take some sneaky pictures. Because, HELLO, the way the dress looks in picutres is sorta the most important thing. It could weigh 400 pounds and be held up with a thousand tiny daggers digging into my torso, if it makes me look good in my wedding photos, I'm buying the thing.

So anyway, the hunt continues. I'll keep you all posted. (Even you, Mom.)

Something New

I'm trying on wedding dresses today... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. If they let me take pictures I'll add them later.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

No Fair Weather Fans In This Bunch

It was cold, and wet, and we lost. But oh my goodness, did we have fun cheering our hearts out in the pouring rain. College football is so good.


My girls.


Punt to DeSean, you chickens!!!


Losing sucks