Celebrating Two Years: Part 1

On July 1st Jared and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary. Two years... wow. Where has the time gone? We decided to split up the planning responsibility so I planned the first half of the day and did the last half.
I wanted to plan something I knew he would really like.

Much to my dismay elation, there have been an abundance of comic book movie that have come out this summer. Thor, The Green Lantern, X-Men First Class, and soon Captain America. We've seen the first two and I knew Jared wanted to see X-Men so I looked up show times and we went. I will be honest, I didn't love it as much as I did the first ones. I was confused on who was who. What is it with doing the prequel after the other movies? For those of us that don't follow comic books, it is a little frustrating. Oh well. I am sure I will watch it again some day... 20 years from now.

After the movie we headed to the Birch Aquarium. Jared has always enjoyed the aquariums at Sea World so I knew he would like this. I thought the place would be bigger but we enjoyed ourselves. We saw a lot of strange things like:

Rock Fish

Entirely too many types of jelly fish...

An Octopus:

It is in the top Left corner



Leopard Sharks and a Giant Sea Bass:

And some really beautiful aquariums and tide pools:

 We also had a great view of the ocean:

We were only there a couple of hours but we definitely had a good time!

Sweet Summertime

It is officially Summer. Although I am not a lover of the 100+ heat, I enjoy the longer days and cool breeze of the evenings. I don't generally do too much during the summer months (other than work) but this year I want it to be different. I want to do stuff like :

* Drink more lemonade and iced tea
* Lay on the couch with my love, a lot.
* Visit the Birch Aquarium
* Go to Sea World and see the new Sea Turtles Exhibit
* An evening on the beach cooking smore's
* BBQs with friends
* Quality time with my best friend
* Take my nieces and nephews to the Zoo/Wild Animal Park
* Picnic
* Do a 30 day photo project
* Do the P90X program ( I know... not exactly fun but definitely a goal)
* Color with some kiddos
* Read
* Try a new restaurant or two
* Walk on the beach
* More Ladies Nights Out

Anaheim

Last year Jared and I went to Disneyland and an Anaheim Ducks game for his birthday. This year his mom got him tickets to another Ducks game so we took off midday Friday and headed up to Anaheim. There was a "big storm" coming in on Friday so we went prepared with umbrellas, warm jackets, gloves and extra clothes.

There were definitely more people at Disneyland than we expected but we didn't really care. It sprinkled for about 5 minutes before we went on the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. When we got off of Pirates, everything was soaked. Apparently we missed a major down pour. It started to rain a bit just as we were heading to the car for the hockey game but even that wasn't bad.

During the game the skies opened up but just as we were done inside, it slowed way down. Yay for a nearly rain-free trip!

Disneyland was a blast, minus the car load of BYU cheerleaders we were stuck with on Space Mountain. 1) they were BYU so they were our rivals for the Aztec game that happened on Saturday and 2) they are cheerleaders... meaning they are louder than most people at Disneyland and scream at a pitch that could shatter your ear drum.

The hockey game was a blast. Some of those Ducks fans are hard-core and they were cracking me up. We were down a little lower this time and right at the railing so I was able to get some great pictures.



FIIIGGGHHHHTTT!!!

  The game was 2-1, with the Minnesota Wild in the lead. With only 3:30 left in the game we figured it was over and decided to leave with 2 minutes left.We were hoping to avoid most of the traffic. With exactly 2 minutes left on the clock, the Ducks scored and tied the game.

 It went into overtime and with 6.3 second left on the clock, Minnesota scored the winning goal. It was a great game but if the Ducks would've scored with 6.3 seconds left of overtime, it would have been incredible.

We knew we wouldn't get out of the game until late so we stayed the night in Anaheim and went to breakfast before heading home Saturday morning. I've heard a lot of people talking about having fried chicken and waffles for breakfast. I thought this was the strangest thing but Jared told me about a restaurant that specializes in it. Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles. Sure enough, I found it online and they have a Long Beach location.

I'm not going to lie, the surrounding area was a little ghetto and just a bit scary. I mean, what restaurant has a security guard at the door.. at 10:30am? Regardless, the food was amazing. I don't know why the combination of fried chicken and waffles (served together on one plate) works, but it does. Oh yes it does indeed.

I Love Hockey!

For Jared's birthday gift I planned a little trip to Anaheim.

We kicked off our mini-vacation by going to see Jared's favorite sports team: The Anaheim Ducks.

Trying to park at the Honda Center (Formerly known as the Anaheim Pond) made me feel like I was trapped ub National Lampoons European Vacation when they are stuck in the roundabout. 3 U-Turns later, we made it in.

We found our seats pretty quickly. Funny, I didn't think I ordered sky-box tickets! OK so maybe they weren't that high but good Lord they were pretty far up there! Clearly the seating chart on ticketexchange.com doesn't give you a clear picture on where your seats really are.
No only were the seats high but they were steep. Jared, being the loving boyfriend that he is, let me cut off the blood flow to his hand hold his hand until I calmed down and adjusted to the height from which we would be watching his beloved Ducks.


The guy next to Jared got increasingly drunk chatty throughout the night and the ,loud, obnoxious, know it all.. er uhhh.. character behind us seemed to have a great time bantering with said chatty cathy. The.Whole.Time. I have to say though.. it made for some entertaining eavesdropping.

Of course, what hockey game is complete without atleast one fight? Within in the first 5 minutes gloves came off, sticks and helmets were thrown to the side and 2 guys were in boxing stances ready to go for it. It was so cool!

Hands down, my favorite part was when the Ducks scored their first goal. Jared yelled,jumped out of his seat, and threw his hands in the air.Whoa whoa whoa!! Who is this man showing such excitement, joy. Such enthusiasm? Don't get me wrong, he isn't a stone cold individual. I've just never seen a reaction like that from him. I loved it. For the record, he had this reaction for all 3 goals the Ducks scored.

Final Score: Ducks 3, Redwings 1

By the way.. I'm gonna have to start watching more hockey! It was SO fun!