Weekend Recap: Birthday Party, Shower & Spring

Updated with photos of Adam fishing.

As usual, we had a busy weekend down at my parent's house.

We drove back Friday afternoon after work. Back at my parent's house, we had a nice meal of fish, shrimp, asparagus and coleslaw with my mom and dad. Luckily, Stine was gone because she hates fish and all fish odors.

Saturday, the guys went fishing. It was super windy and they didn't have the best luck. But they enjoyed getting out in "their" new fishing boat.

Mom, Stine and I went to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona. It was an interesting place, especially for such a small town. They even had a few Monet's and a Renoir among other notable Impressionists. Stine and I got sicking of seeing so many paintings of boats, ships and sailboats though. I think my favorite part was the National Geographic Simply Beautiful photography exhibit. I think even Adam, the art museum hater, would have enjoyed that part.

Check out it's website - http://www.minnesotamarineart.org/
It's worth an hour or two if you're in the area.

 That evening was my little cousin Joey's birthday party. It was fun to get together and see everyone on my mom's side of the family.

Cocoa found a new friend

 I loved his gold mine ice cream cake that they put together. It was so clever and detailed!

There may or may not have been some frosting snitches

Sunday was my cousin Lanette's baby shower, which was the reason we came down for the weekend. It was nice to visit with all the ladies on my dad's side of the fam.

And the brunch food was delicious! There were even "Faux Mimosas" - orange juice & Canada Dry

Once again, the guys fished all day. It was beautiful out and the fish were actually biting.

Back at my parent's, we got packed up and enjoyed the beautiful day. There was even a little surprise we discovered in the yard when taking Chester out-

Daffodils blooming!

"Maybe, if I sit good, I'll get a treat!"

My new favorite photo of the little guy

We didn't get back home until 8:30, which was a little rough. There wasn't much time to relax at home after unloading the car, taking Chester for a walk and unpacking. Definitely a fun weekend though, even if it was a little exhausting.

London, here we come!

We're going to London. We're going to Paris. We're going to Dublin. Oh and also the Cliffs of Moher and maybe Galway.

That's right, it's official. I've been talking about this for months, but I bought our tickets last night. Okay, so it's 6 months away, but I'm REALLY EXCITED. Yes, that deserves all caps.


So we'll be doing a little of this...

 And this...

Please excuse my poor photoshopping skillz, I didn't have much time, but I just couldn't resist.

I CAN. NOT. WAIT to return to London, my favorite city ever, and to experience it with Adam. This is his first (of many) trips to Europe. Paris will be so romantic with my hubs. And while I've been to Ireland briefly (Cork area for a weekend), Dublin will be new to me. I talked Adam into spending an extra night in Ireland, so I'm hoping to get out of the city for one night and head over to the Galway/Cliffs of Moher area. 

We'll be spending 4 nights in London, then taking the EuroStar to Paris for 3 nights. From Paris, we will fly to Dublin and spend 4 nights in Ireland before flying home from Dublin.

I've been watching airfare for a while now, and I just don't see it going down much (if at all). We're doing a multi-city itinerary which is a bit more expensive. And we wanted a really specific flight there - direct flight out of MSP at 9:45 PM on Thursday night. We'll arrive in London around noon which is perfect. I love red eyes for traveling abroad. That way you don't waste a day in the air; you (hopefully) sleep through it. It worked for me when I last went to London to study abroad and this time I'll have Adam to snuggle against.

We'll be leaving out of Dublin with a 3 hour layover at ATL. I considered a 1.5 hour layover at JFK, but that made me really nervous. That's not much time for an international to domestic flight. I'd rather be safe with a few extra hours to kill than stressing out because we cut it close.

So yes, in case you can't tell, I'm super excited. Adam's super excited. Chester? Not so excited (that is if he actually knew what was going on)

For those keeping track, we have lots of vacations planned this year.
- Dells in March
- Vegas for Adam in April
- Milwaukee in May
- Bayfield/Madeline Island in July
- Boston in August
- London/Paris/Dublin in September

I live to travel and plan vacations...

Weekend Recap: Fogo & Bowling

Sorry for the weekend update delay - sometimes I just don't feel like blogging.

First- the kitchen
For all intents and purposes, the kitchen is done. It's not actually done as there are a number of little projects to do and I'm not ready to post the "after" pics. But I'm done updating and counting how many days it's been since we started. We've been working on it sporadically and it's functional now. I'll post more when we finally finish everything.

Day a million (Saturday)
1. Wipe/scrape off more grout haze
2. Put on first coat of grout sealer
3. Decide original application method just wasn't cutting it (Q-tip)
4. Switch to applying with a paper towel
5. Apply second coat of grout sealer
6. Wipe off any excess sealer

Next - the weekend
We had a pretty fun weekend. We grilled at home one night and watched a movie - Hugo. It was okay. The cinematography was beautiful (what it won an award for) and I loved that it took place in Paris. However, there were a lot of dogs and dogs barking in the movie, which definitely impacted our ability to enjoy it. Chester was constantly jumping off the couch and freaking out at the tv. He really needs to get over this phobia/aggression. I just don't know how to help him with it?

The other night we went to Fogo de Chao in downtown Minneapolis as part of Restaurant Week. It was just okay. We've been wanting to go for a while, and would discuss going every time we passed it on the way to a Twins game.

The service was excellent (minus the dessert issue) despite the fact that it was PACKED. The place is huge though. And the food was just okay. The premise of it is these chefs walk around with meat on sticks which they cut off for you if you want some. A lot of it was over done or not very warm. I'm not much of a carnivore myself, so the salad bar was probably my favorite part with all the gourmet cheeses. But I was surprised that Adam didn't love it. He tried almost every meat item though (like 14?). I don't know, it just did not seem worth it and you could definitely tell it was a chain. Maybe I'm a food snob, but I was not impressed.

And then there was the dessert issue. When we were done, a different server asked us as he was clearing our plates, "Did you save room for dessert?" Thinking it was like any other restaurant that asks you that to determine if they should bring out the dessert menu, we said no. At no point did he mention that hey, dessert is included with your meal. UGH! I paid for dessert that I didn't even get. And it was like a selection of gourmet desserts too. I didn't figure it out until I got home and looked at the menu online and saw it was included. I was kind of wondering when we were there because so many people had these awesome looking desserts, but I figured the waiter would have said something. He knew we had never been there before. I mean, come on, really? I'm still fuming!!! Can you tell? I have no desire to ever go back.

On Sunday, we had a family day with Adam's dad's side. We met at a bowling alley for a few hours. Now, I wasn't expecting to have much fun after my bowling fail the previous week. But surprisingly, I had a great time. Deep fried pickles may have helped. Oh, and the fact that after the first game, my bowling skills dramatically improved. I even had 2 (almost 3) strikes in a row! Unheard of for me. It was rather funny to go from a score of 33 in the first game (oh yes, it was gutter ball city), to over 100 in the 3rd game. We played 3.5 games in 2 hours.

Adam won! And I brought up the rear

After bowling, we briefly stopped by Adam's parent's house. There they gave us a lovely "new kitchen" gift. I can't wait to use it. I'll have to post photos.

I hate caulking

I'm super bored by posting about the kitchen and I'm sure you're so over reading about it. So this will be brief. Plus, we haven't done much, and what we have done has been kind of fail.

I don't have many photos from this because this step annoyed me and there wasn't much to see anyway.

Day 31 (Monday AKA grouting FAIL day)
1.  Work on removing grout haze

2. Put the light switch covers back on

3. Apply grout caulk where the counter and backsplash meet and a few other spots

4. Use finger to go along caulk line to smooth it out (my job)

4. Run out of grout caulk

Day 32 (Tuesday AKA grouting FAIL discovery day)
1. Go to HD to buy more grout caulk and some wood to make the arch

2. Discover grout caulk fail when removing painters tape (tape had been put down before we tiled so it was far under the tiles and took most of the caulk off with it once removed instead of leaving a nice smooth line)

3. Scrape off all grout caulk along the counter

4. Decide to do a practice area

5. Place tape on the counter to the left of the stove

6. Apply grout caulk, use finger to smooth

7. Caulk other areas like under the window

8. Remove tape on counter after 20 minutes, admire the nice straight line

Day 33 (Wednesday - Grouting FAIL fixing day)
1. Tape the rest of the counters

2. Apply grout caulk

3. Smooth with finger

4. Remove tape and admire

I'm so glad to be done with the stupid caulking

This caulking process was probably one of my least favorite parts. Probably because we had to do it twice and that ticked me off. And because we did it three different nights when it should have all been done in one. I have no patience.