& that's the way life goes

When is the last time you laughed like this?

Thanks to these two ladies: Jenni & LP,

I almost died from laughter.  Best way to die, just fyi.

There were a couple crazy nights at the local bar.  One night included a creepy guy that wouldn’t leave poor Jenni alone.  But she’s hot and awesome so I guess I can’t blame him.  But dang…he was gross.  We are all Beaver Certified. If you care to know, it’s called a beaver for two reasons: It has fur & because it eats wood.

The tubing adventure was all about A LOT of beer, new friends, Jenni getting stuck in the tube and no one actually helping untangle her, branches smacking people me in the head, Jenni getting a bruise from her awesome waterproof box, jello-jars, sex talk and most of all FUN.

There was a lot of noming and cheek kissing going on

Shotgunning beer FAIL

I can’t wait to do it all again next year!

xoxo

This past weekend was and will be my longest vacation of the summer.  The weather couldn’t have been any better.  Sunshine, blue skies and warm temperatures.  Mother Nature must have been trying to make up for the chilly summer we had last year.

I’ll just tell you that there was a lot of:

• † Laughing
• † Beer
• † Sun
• † Boating
• † New Friends
• † Jell-O Shots

There wasn’t a lot of time for

• † Cleaning
• † Arguing
• † Cooking
• † Reading
• † Sleeping

[View with PicLens]

It was a pretty great weekend.  Definitely a 4th of July to remember.

Over the weekend we were in Oscoda and it was beautiful for April. Since we had the place to ourselves and there wasn’t much else to do, we used the dogs as entertainment. Sometime before this little playground adventure, Nani hurt her paw and limped almost the entire weekend and Scooby hurt his tail, so it was Liko I got to push down the slide enduring all the fun. After the first couple times he really got into it. I think he’d really like agility classes.

Liko’s Playground Adventure from rialeilani on Vimeo.

I tried putting him in the baby swing but he drew the line and bit my hand and kicked me with his feet when I picked him up.

{via ♥}

It’s that time of year where I start making summer plans.  You know how it is, right?  The weather starts touching 60 degrees and even though I know that the poor flowers that are trying to sprout up are going to get a big heavy snowfall before we are officially out of winter, I’m making plans for my flip flop clad feet.

{via ♥}

Let’s start with April.  Yes, I realize that it will probably still be freezing in April but humor me.  For C’s birthday we are going up north with the dogs, with the hopes of maybe finally actually looking at cottages.  We went up in April a couple years ago and got caught in an ice storm.  Obviously not flip flop weather but eh, you gotta start somewhere.

{Oscoda, April 2008}

{Oscoda, April 2008}

{Oscoda, April 2008}

Next up is May.  At the tail end, Memorial Weekend, we are going to Chicago to celebrate my birthday.  It’s 2 weeks before the actual day but it’s cheapest then

{Chicago, March 2009}

{Chicago, March 2009}

The weekend in June, while C is gone with his friends, I plan to have a party at my house.  Who’s coming over to watch girly movies and play Wii with me?!

{via ♥}

Shell and I are making plans to invade Oscoda in June.  Possibly even reliving our glory days by camping in a tent.  OMG, I did just say that.  We’ll see if it actually happens.  I’m kind of excited of the prospect of throwing up our old tent since it’s been 9 years since both our hands have done it together.  We were totally these girls, ah, those were the days

{via ♥}

{Oscoda, July 2000}

LP and I are planning another girls weekend up north sometime in July or August.  Hopefully this year there will be more than just the two of us.

{Oscoda, August 2009}

{Oscoda, August 2009}

These are just the beginnings of what will hopefully will be a warm summer.  C’mon mother nature, I’m ready!!

Besides the beautiful sunsets, warming sunshine and beyond awesome weather; I think my favorite thing was Yogen Fruz. No seriously. They had green tea frozen yogurt. I’m easy …easy like sunday morning… and that totally made my trip. I was really sad I only got it once.

There are couple frozen yogurt places by my work so I decided to venture out since I’m skipping my lunch time jog at the gym. I almost peed my pants when I saw green tea on their menu. Of course they didn’t have it. Boo.  Instead I settled for Pomegranate with kashi granola, strawberries and kiwi.  It was still good but no green tea!

I’m begging someone to open a Yogen Fruz in Michigan. Please?

Valentine’s Day started with the most perfect sunrise over the mountains.  Yes we were up at sunrise, that is how we roll.  No matter what we did we were up early every day!

We drove up to La Jolla and walked around a bit.

Wanting to jump in the car and just drive we decided just to see where we ended up.  (I look thrilled, huh?)

Well we ended up at a mall in La Jolla because C had to pee.  But it wasn’t quite 11am and the stores weren’t open.  We looked for a rest room but ended up walking back out into the parking lot.  Across the parking lot was a Crate and Barrel and I saw a couple come out.  So we hurriedly made our way over there.  We saw the workers standing at the door and we looked at each other like , are we ready to deal with salespeople?  But by this time we both had to pee (lots of coffee will do that) so we sucked in a breath and pasted a smile on our face.  As we walked in they told us to grab a registry gun and to help ourselves.

Help ourselves?

We had walked into an engagement promotion at Crate and Barrel.  I slipped off my wedding band and left my engagement ring on (something I only wear when we go on vacation because normally it just gets in my way).  I asked C to take his off but he didn’t believe me that all the people in there were engaged couples.  As we mocked shopping we ran across mimosas, strawberries and chocolate, waffles, cupcakes, pancakes and more.  It was awesome because we hadn’t yet had breakfast!

After we used the restroom and gotten some mimosas we were looking at furniture.  I unnerved impressed C with my quick skills of fibbing our engagement and wedding date (as he kept his left hand in his pocket).  When we left he was like I didn’t know you could lie like that!  It was fun to pretend for awhile.

Afterward we headed into San Diego where we wondered around San Diego Harbor.  C had wanted to join the navy so we bought tickets to the USS Midway.

Got some Valentine’s Day sushi, where C actually used his chopsticks (even if he cheated a little)

Checked out the Star of India

(C has cooler pictures of this on his camera)

Watched the sunset over the harbor

And back at the condo he was cracking me up while we ate the pizza we  ordered

It was a really good day and classic C and M style.  Low key and trying to avoid crowds of people. 

I need to start off by saying that C and I aren’t planners. We don’t go on vacation with a list of things we MUST do. Sure we’ll pick out a few cool things that maybe we will get around to doing, but in reality, we walk around aimlessly. When I say walk, I mean that literally. We also rent bikes and explore that way too.

So the day it snowed in 49 states? It fucked our flying plans. The closure of the Atlanta and Dallas hubs backed up all the flights and because Delta has it’s head up it’s ass, we waited 3 hours just to check in. JUST TO CHECK IN. We missed our 9am flight and had to be put on standby to fly into LA. They put our luggage on the first flight out so we were stuck flying there unless we wanted to trust them to get our luggage to us. Um no.

C called Delta’s reservation line multiple times as we waited on standby to see if there was anything else we could do. If we could fly into somewhere else and get a flight the next day, or something. There were over 20 people flying standby that had missed the same flight we had.  Did I mention that the flights to LA were overbooked too? On all these calls never once did anyone let him know we could receive a discount on a rental car. We ended up paying $300 more because we had to rent a car in LA and drop it off in San Diego.

We finally got on a flight, rented a car and got to San Diego around 11:30pm PST.  We had been up since 5am EST.  You do the math.  When we got to the condo we immediately passed out though I remember having a conversation about how the sheets smelled musty.  Yeah.  I don’t even want to talk about that.

After all that, we did have a good time and the weather was GORGEOUS.  We flew out Thursday and Friday was bringing rain so we definitely timed that trip perfect.

Enough talking!  Here are some pictures

We stopped in Redondo Beach to grab some dinner on the way to San Diego.

C just wanted to eat

Bike riding around Mission Beach/Mission Bay




Pacific Beach Pier

Mission Bay Sunset

Part II will be about our Valentine’s Day.  It was very movie-esque in something we literally walked into.

Maybe we get along most of the time because he will pose for silly pictures with me. Too bad my camera was set at 800 ISP…why? No idea. And while he will play along for my amusement, asking more than once sometimes is a bad idea. Do-overs are only allowed sometimes. And really, except for the lousy exposure, the composition is pretty sweet. It wouldn’t have been the same the second time. Right? Just nod your head.

And if you care, that’s Scrubs on in the background.

Day Four of My Michigan Bloggers is Mandy from Gingermandy. This lady has some mad fucking talent.  Seriously, she’s all snarky, witty and heartfelt.  I asked her bottle that talent up and sell it so I can drink it, but you know that’s kind of creepy.  And without Mandy I never would have experienced aerial yoga, that would have been a tragedy.   Anyways be sure to check out Mandy’s articles on examiner too, she has some hilarious dating stories and advice.  And speaking of jealous…her career move (freelance writer, yo!) totally makes me turn green!

Enjoy!

————————————

Hey kids! GingerMandy here. Since Ria decided to bail on all of us and head to sunny San Diego amidst our big winter storm, I’m going to take over her fort for a day (Hey Ria – I HOPE IT SNOWS.)

Just kidding, I’d never do that. I hope it’s 80 and sunny. (No I don’t. This is the jealousy talking. Sorry. Don’t mind this.)

Anyjealous, I always feel weird going on someone elses blog and talking about myself, but Ria asked me and the other awesome Michigan girls to do it, and I’m never going to pass up talking about myself to a group of new people, so I’ll tell you about the most interesting and random vacation I’ve ever been on.

I’ve been to a lot of big cities including Vegas, DC, Chicago, LA, NYC, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, the list goes on… I love big city life, I love the thought of walking everywhere I go, the thought of walking to a Starbucks down the street from your high rise loft when you’re bored, and the thought of possibly being able to stalk famous people. What?

That’s why this particular vacation was not only incredibly out of my element, but what I’d presume to be an absolute nightmare, equivalent to leaping off the empire state building and catching my eyelid on a nail and then being set on fire.

When I was 16, my Dad brought my family out west. He’d been out there quite frequently for work and discovered a lot of things he knew we’d all love doing. We were in LA for 3 days, where we did all the touristy LA stuff (Hollywood, all the beaches along highway 1, you get the idea) and then drove to Vegas for 4 days. On the way to Vegas we drove through Arizona. He was always talking about this “small town” in Arizona he’d discovered, and insisted we had to stop there. Whatever, Dad.

We began driving there, and apparently this “little town” was in “the middle of the mountains.” Like literally. The. Middle. Of. The. Mountains. He drove the windy mountain offroads for about 20 minutes, scaring the living piss out of us around every curve until finally we drove up onto this little patch of…. driveway or something. I figured we were stopping to pee maybe, there were a few small buildings and some random burro’s walking around the 1/2 mile dirt road. I had no idea why my Dad chose to stop here. The town we were supposed to be visiting couldn’t be THAT far.

“Well kids, we’re here!” He said with a big smile on his face.

“………………………………………………………..”

“Seriously Dad?”

“Yep, welcome to Oatman, Arizona.”

This little road with the burro’s walking around and the handful of buildings and the handful of people? Yea. This is the town he’d been raving about.

Upon arrival in Oatman, your mother will make you stand in front of a burro for a picture the second you get there. Once you take the picture, she will look at her camera in horror when she discovers she chose the “horny” burro. Then you’ll stand in front of another burro for another picture, but first she’ll check to make sure his frank and beans aren’t as excited as the first and your little sister will say “Mom why are you looking at the donkey’s weiner?” And we’ll all giggle and Dad will say “WELL let’s go get ice cream!”

Once you get ice cream, the burro’s will flock to you and show you their teeth. Sadly, they have more teeth than anyone in town. You’ll offer them a lick to your ice cream, but before the burro has a chance to take a lick, a wrangly, toothless lone ranger will come out of the woodwork and tell you to get your ice cream away from the damn burro’s, otherwise they be shittin’ all over the porch. True story.

It turns out the little town wasn’t all that awful. It wasn’t what I was hoping for, definitely not the glitz and glamour of Vegas and DEFINITELY not a town that is familiar with a dentist, but we had fun shopping for raccoon hats and moccasins, buying beef jerky by the pound, chasing burro’s up the mountain and hunting for a full set of teeth. There was also some really interesting history about how the town came to be. The population is something around 13, or maybe 130, no… 130 sounds too industrious. Anyway, the people are happy and loyal to their town and apparently learned the hard way about feeding the burro’s ice cream.

For a fun vacation, you don’t have to go somewhere big and fancy. I mean, I’d still prefer NYC to Oatman any day, but I’m really glad we went. It gave a whole new meaning to the term “hung like a horse.”

Well peeps, I’m headed out to Southern California soon! I’m beyond excited and can’t believe it’s my vacation already. Just in time since we got a bunch of snow, thankfully not as much as DC though!

In my absence, my gorgeous Michigan Blogger friends will be posting for me. Some of you got a sneak peak in your readers because of a database malfunction my Blog and I had. I swear I didn’t touch it but The Blog is blaming me. There may have been some kicking and pulling of the hair but we are finally on good terms now and The Blog seems to be running just fine. *knocks on wood.

Fun things you should check out:

♥ Jenni has her own promotion code (jenrem) for her friend’s flower business. It’s 20% flowers. C’mon at this time a year that’s pretty spectacular.

♥ Nic is having a coffee chat, which are always fun

♥ Mae answered Nic’s chat and has a couple questions of her own

♥ Lauryn gives us the 10 commandments of winter

♥ Ashley spills about her move from the big city to big mountains

♥ Sarah is  answering any question you wanted answered and making cute headbands

This isn’t fun but send Amanda some positive thoughts and energy.  Luke, her greyhound ate some raisin bread that can shut down dogs’ kidneys.  Luke still isn’t out of the woods so send some love/prayers/energy her way.  It’s awful to have a sick doggie.

And that my friends is all I have time to recall from the top of my head.  If I’m missing other great things, tell me I’d love to know. Where ever you are I’ll try and send some sunshine your way.

xoxo
Ria