It's the little things

Take a look at this photo -

You will notice two things.
 1. Our new GMC organizer for the Terrain
and
2. Gallons of paint

The GMC organizer is a handy little thing my dad just gave us. It's been great for bags of groceries (no sliding around in back and tipping over!) and now, gallons of paint (no worry about spills!).

The paint is for my upstairs project.

We got Behr Dolphin Fin for the new guest room (former office)


and Coastal Surf for the current (bigger) guest room.


I picked the Coastal Surf from a swatch (it's a little more aqua in person) and the Dolphin Fin from photos online since I wasn't loving any of the grey swatches I had. Hopefully it looks good... Everything we've painted in our house (except the kitchen cabinets) has been Behr, and we've been very happy with it. I love Behr Ultra because then you don't have to prime.

So that's what we'll be up to this weekend - lots and lots of painting. Photos to come next week!

Winter is back!

Okay, so it never really left. But now it's back in full force. Tuesday night we had some freezing rain and snow resulting in about an inch of snow on the ground yesterday. Last night and all day today it's been snowing. My car needs new tires (the back two are down to the cord!), so of course today was the day I picked to do it. Horrible timing. My commute in was interesting. Luckily, Adam followed right behind me so I felt safe. He's the best.

Here's looking out my fancy window at work.

Hopefully it gets nice and all this snow melts. A never ending winter with six months with snow on the ground is a bit much for me...

Weekend Recap: Wisconsin Dells

We had been looking forward to our mini-vacation of a weekend in the Dells for a while. It was nice to get away. I worked until 1:30 on Friday, ran home to pack up Chester and his stuff, and then drop him off at Adam's parents house before Adam got home. However, I didn't account for the fact that Chester would be stressed out by seeing all of his stuff in the kitchen and then seeing his mom going in and out of the house to load it in the car. He hid under the bed and I had a hard time getting him to come out.

Adam got up super early to get in to work and get out by 2. On his way home, he picked Kelly up at school because we were giving her a ride to the Dells too. They got home before me, so had to wait a bit. I blame Chester. We were on the road by 3:15 though, so it wasn't too bad. Three hours later, we were rolling in to the Dells and met everyone at the Kalahari. My parents and sister had one of the "party" rooms. We were in one of the adjoining rooms, while Mary and Kelly were in the other one.

We went to dinner with Christine, Carey, Bill, Kelly and Mary at Damon's at the hotel. The food was okay, but the service was horrible. This would be a theme of our entire stay.

On the way back to our room we stopped at the pastry stand and I got a tiramisu dessert. It was really pretty, but it definitely could have used more rum flavor. It was kind of generic tasting.

After dinner, Adam and I went down to the pool for about an hour. It wasn't too crowded, so we went on a few waterslides, including the MasterBlaster, and then relaxed in the new indoor/outdoor hot tub. I love those things in the winter time!

On Saturday, we slept in a bit and then headed over to the outlet mall for an hour with my mom. We spent the majority of our hour at Old Navy. Trying on clothes is time consuming! Then we returned to the hotel where we met my dad and Alex for lunch at the restaurant in the hotel lobby - Ivory Coast. Once again, horrible service. And my food was horrible as well. I ordered a crock of French Onion soup. It came to me room temperature. I sent it back, and instead of giving me new soup, they just heated it up. It's not like it mattered really, because it was so salty that it was inedible. And there was no bread in it? When I asked the waitress about this she condescendingly said, "Well we make it from scratch so it's a little different than most places. It's not supposed to have bread in it. I guarantee it." I was like "Really? French Onion always has bread in it..." but I let it go because I was starting to doubt myself. On the way out, I peeked at the menu posted out front. Lo and behold, it said "...with crostini," which last time I checked, IS BREAD. I wanted to march back in there but my mom and Adam said to just let it go... At least the Bellini I had was good!

Then we headed back to the room and put our suits on to spend a few hours in the pool. We went on some waterslides, and then spent a while in the adult indoor/outdoor pool with swim-up bar. It was fun minus all the obnoxious frat boys. I got a drink at the main bar since the swim-up one was packed. The guy started to wait on me "What would you like?" and when I started to answer he was like "Nevermind, this other guy was here first." Meaning the guy down the bar from me. How rude!!! I was super annoyed, but still ordered my NINE DOLLAR drink (a fruity slushy thing). Since I was annoyed at his rudeness and lack of apology, I didn't tip him. So after he ran my card and saw no tip, he actually threw my card back on the bar. Nice....

This year was the first time that Adam and I attended the dinner and dance for the parts cooperative show that the adults always go to. It was a lot of fun! Cocktails were free during happy hour, so we hoarded quite a few to consume throughout the night.

My drink of choice (due to limited mixers & spirits available) was a kiddie cocktail with vodka (so vodka+grenadine+7Up+cherries), a little drink I learned from my friend Laura. They're dangerously good!

After dinner, we had fun taking pictures by the giant elephant sculptures. And yes, my little camera is a pile in bad lighting...

There was a pretty good live band, and Adam was a dancing machine! I actually danced a lot too. It was a fun time! Except now I have terrible blisters on my feet from all that dancing in my heels.

Once again, we slept in on Sunday, packed up our stuff, and checked out. We then met everyone down at the pool. Adam wasn't feeling like going on waterslides, so I went down one with him and a few with my sister. We ordered a pizza at the pool, which was surprisingly good. We headed out around 3, and stopped once for gas + fresh cheese curds. Back home, we regrouped and I dropped off Kelly while Adam picked up Chester. He was so excited to see us! There was a lot of squeaking and running around. We were so exhausted that after unpacking, we went to bed at 8! Haha.

It was a super fun weekend! Thanks to my fam for having us and thanks to Adam's fam for watching Chester!

Weekend Recap: Easter

For the first time ever I think, we spent Easter up here. It was nice to have my family come to us instead of heading out of town. My family didn't join us until Saturday, so we spent Friday night making dinner and picking up the house. We had the delicious Mahi dish I blogged about a few weeks back, and I finally remembered to snap a photo. On the side, we had braised kale and garlic bread. It was delicious!

My family arrived around noon. We had lunch, and then mom, Christine, Chester and I went for a walk and took some photos.

Around 4, we headed over to Carey, Bill, Caroline and Kelly's hotel to hang out and go swimming. We ordered pizza and enjoyed the hot tub.

Easter Sunday, we slept in a bit, got ready, and then enjoyed our breakfast spread of fruit, macarons, and caramel rolls.

Then we hunted for Easter eggs and our Easter baskets. Chester found his before we were even ready, so he was quite excited when I finally got his basket out for him.

Church was a bizarre experience. Because parking downtown is an issue, we went to 11 am mass out in the burbs. It was very strange. There was a weird "welcome" speech, along with hand clapping during a few songs, and the music lyrics projected onto the wall. The place was packed too and had an auditorium feel. I like more traditional masses, so needless to say we will never go back there.

We regrouped at home, and enjoyed Adam's perfect Bloody Mary's and a mimosa for me.

I made Chester try on his bunny ears that I had made him. He hated them of course, but they were darn cute!

At 1:45, we met the K's at Salut for Easter Brunch. It was a buffet, which is hard to do well, but it was pretty good. I wish they would have had better dessert options though. Everyone enjoyed it though.

We said our farewell's to the K family, ran home to pick up Chester, and then went over to Adam's parent's house to visit.

It was a nice Easter and we enjoyed seeing everyone. By the end, we were exhausted. Back at home we went to bed for a short nap, and didn't wake up until 2 hours later when Chester was bugging us. Good thing he did, or we would have missed the season finale of Walking Dead!