banana shpeel.

the reason we celebrated tina's bday on friday night was bc she and her hubby had tickets to the opening night of banana shpeel, the newest cirque show. her poor hubby got a migraine and was unable to go and so she asked if i would like to fill in. duh, of course i do!! fun!! i didn't know anything about it or even where it was, but turns out it was at the historic chicago theater downtown which i'd never been in and it was awesome!

the show started and it was a vaudeville-esque shtick. it started fairly amusing... got funnier... then it would drag...then it'd be funny. then they had this guy do a hat act that was very cirque-esque and good. then more comedy. then some dancing. the dancing was super good. lots of tap dancing. however, there was a tinny pre-taped sound of the tapping. b/c we were so close, i could hear both which was annoying. i understand the need to amplify the sound, but tapping just sounds so cool on its own. then there was more shtick and some was funny and some was beyond disturbing! like where a 'pregnant lady' gave birth - it was actually a crazy scary looking man. it was so disturbing....
for the second half, there was some fantastic dancing! and two great acts: a lady twirling napkin-like things on her feet and hands as she lay back and a guy that literally looked like he had zero bones in his body. he was by far my favorite. it was so dreamlike and beautiful and he made the act look so easy when it clearly took so much physical strength. it was unreal!!! he was twirling around and doing handstands and balancing on a rotating pole. and then there was more dancing... and some fantastic tapping. and then it was basically over. it was very un-cirque like and i enjoyed it, but i'd have much rather have seen the circus type acts. the comedy was funny in parts, but it tended to go on and on and on too long and the jokes ended up getting just a little old.

in our 2nd row center seats!


this was the super disturbing part of the show right before the intermission!!


the opening set for the show.

after the show, we went to sushi samba for a late dinner. yum! there weren't many people there and the manager came over and insisted on giving us dessert and patron shots. neither of us wanted the shots tho - tina had to drive and tequila makes me throw up! plus we were tired from the night before and were ready to head home. no need to take a tequila shot just to head home! so very carefully, tina managed to pour her shot in to her water glass and no one saw. then i did, but i didn't get my whole shot in the glass and so there was some left in the bottom of the glass. the waiter gave me crap for that! and ended up taking a picture of it to make fun of me... little did he know that we'd dumped all the patron in the water glasses! i know, i know... it was a shame to waste it...


our 'water' glasses... particularly funny picture since the waiter took it!


at sushi samba: happy birthday tina!!

christina's birthday affair!

christina is a friend from high school and her bday was this past sunday. so on friday the evening of the 20th, we all went out to celebrate! we started the evening with dinner at quartino's... yum! it's family style-esque sharing italian type place and so we had an assortment of foods and of course wine! from there we tried to go to howl at the moon but the line was ridiculous and no one wanted to wait... so we went across the street to hub 51 and enjoyed some wine there. and some shots from the icky guys at the bar table behind us... after some time there, we headed back across the street to rockit where we enjoyed some more drinks and some more shots as we all got hit on by these brazilian guys who live in the city b/c they are going to the u of chicago for biz school. would have been more fun had half the guys not been wearing wedding rings! gross!!!! christina grew up in chicago and knew the owner of rockit, billy dec, who happened to also be there that evening. i got to meet billy dec.... ooooooooooooh. you guys should be jealous (sarcasm here). he is a lot shorter than i thought he'd be and he was hanging out with this amy winehouse wannabe chick. billy dated jen schefft for you bachelorette fans for a while a few years ago. anyways, after rockit, our evening came to a close. it was so much fun!


at quartino's: abby, lindsey, me, stefanie, and tina


at hub: stef (scripps girl!), vanessa, & tina


me (please note: never give me scissors before heading out for the night... i end up with slightly too short bangs!!), lindsey and abby. btw: this has become my go to going out outfit... i feel super cute in it in person... but i don't think the pics are so cute...hmm... not sure....



me and the birthday girl, christina!

funny!?

so today mom and i went to the storage unit so we could get out my childhood dolls (have i told you guys about these?!) - another post, but basically my nana would bring them back from various countries she visited! at the storage unit, this nice guy who was maybe 10 years older than my mom was there with his wife and her sister. we were all joking about the crap that we each had and my mom said the joke was on me when she and my dad were gone cause i'd have to clean it all out then. the guy then asked us if we were sisters! what?!?!?! seriously?! i know my mom is young and all, but either she looks fantastic or i looked like shit. i'm going with a combo of both since my hair was up and allergies were beyond out of control and i hadn't showered. so admittedly i was gross, but not so bad! but my mom has been on cloud nine all day! so, funny?! or not?? :)

san antonio!

most of you know that i was in san antonio over the weekend doing the rock n roll half that took place on sun, nov 15th. i first flew to houston and then my parents and i drove about 3ish hours to san antonio. on the way we stopped at buc-ees. buc-ees prides itself on fabulous bathrooms, tons of gas tanks, tons of food, and pretty much anything texas you might never need to buy! once we got to san antonio, we went to the expo to pick up my packet. my parents had never been to one and they wanted to check it out too. at one point we saw registration for the race and my dad said i bet i can beat your time walking! i told him to register and try it! my mother poked me in the ribs and told me not to encourage him to do it as she didn't want him to have a heart attack from lack of training even though he walks 3-5 miles almost every day. that evening we walked to the river walk which was a short distance from the hotel and ate dinner at casa rio, a restaurant that has been there since the 40s i believe.


the alamo at night...


the restaurant, casa rio, as seen during the day time (duh)

the river walk is basically a path that meanders and has loads of shops, restaurants, hotels, and tourists.

on saturday, we walked to the new portion of the river walk which just opened in march of this year. unlike the older portion, this portion is not built up at all. about the only thing on this path is the san antonio museum of art which was in a former life a brewery.


me and mom on the river taxi. much cheaper than the actual guided tour.


along the new portion are various art installations... we liked this one a lot. a bunch of giant fishies! they light up at night.


views along the river

at this point we were getting rather tired and mom was getting snippy and in return i was getting snippy and dad was just trying to not get yelled at. turns out mom was tired, hot, and had enough of all the noise. luckily, we passed by an ice cream shop and in her words 'ice cream makes everything better' and it did. i had blue bell (the best ice cream in the country! - their slogan and it is) - in cake mix flavor. YUM! and then we passed a shop with sweatshirts for 10 bucks so we got one for the race in the morning so that i could just discard it when i got hot. it was a fun shop with all kinds of funny t-shirts. i got one for my brother's present for xmas. it's great. too hard to explain tho. and while we didn't get them... my dad thought it would be funny for me and mom to get the shirts that said "if you think i'm a bitch you should meet my mom" and "if you think i'm a bitch you should meet my daughter". he thought it would be funny for us to wear them around together. and that just cracked us up and our whole snarky moods were all forgotten.


mom and dad and me in front of the alamo!

sunday: the race!

i woke up super early to be able to get to the busses where we had to load up and get to the start line. it was a 45 min long line!! then once there, we had to walk a ways to get to the start... then the line for the port o potties... my word!! but, in each line i found interesting people to talk to so that was ok. the course was super interesting - we went past all kinds of neighborhoods and thru the older areas of town and past the alamo. they even had professional photographers to take our pics in front of it! since there was no line - luckily they had enough photographers there... i took one!


little photos were *borrowed* from the official photographers...

it was a great course. so much fun! like i said - tons to see and look at and also fantastic amounts of people cheering you on! there were also some slight hills - the up stunk, but going down definitely helped me make up some time!


love the pony tail action!






dad holds up my cheer signs


mom was never quite ready for the camera so every time i saw them i had to kinda stop or slow down so she get take a picture



at the end! it's a fantastic medal to add to the collection!

the worst part of the race was the disorganization at the end. it took me forever to get out of the corrals to take a pic, then to get out of the race area, then to figure out how to get to the meet up spots, then actually get to the meet up spots. i had to go up and down stairs and while they had signs, they weren't easy to follow as there were so many people around. so, great course, terrible organization. they def needed more port a potties and a start line not requiring busses!


at the end of the course, i found them again. aren't the signs cute?!



awww... me and my daddy

i will def be back for this race next year. i had so much fun!!! my parents are awesome cheerleaders!! and btw, i've convinced them to train for dallas in march! it's another rock and roll event - but it benefits komen!

decorating idea!

for all of us out there that are not quite as creative as some others of us... here's an idea!



dev & les' house on the left! and my house on the right! :)

north carolina

this is a long overdue post, but better late than never! on oct 16th, alice and i all flew over to new bern, nc to visit our high school friend, susan. i'm still awaiting some of the super duper cool pictures that i have from cherry hill which is the marine base that susan's hubby jeff works/flies at. but, i'll start with out adventures anyways...

alice and i left chicago together on a us airways flight to charlotte and then met tara at the charlotte airport where we boarded our itty bitty plane - still a jet, no prop, thankfully! and we took our short hopper flight to new bern airport which is in eastern NC. we de-planed on to the tarmac down the plane stairs which tara and alice found hilarious b/c they'd never done that before... i guess i've just been to my fair share of itty bitty airports! and at long beach, jetblue boards on the tarmac too. anyways... we get off the plane and it is truly a very small airport... and we begin to wonder just where the heck we were! susan met us at the airport and we began our hour-ish drive back to her and jeff's house in beaufort. their place is super cute! a pretty two story white house in a cute subdivision. that night we just hung out and had some fun.


at the new bern airport... tara and alice and i wait for susan to come rescue us!

on saturday, we got up and went in to downtown historic beaufort which is known for its pirates. it's one of the oldest towns in the US. so we wandered around the waterfront and then headed to atlantic city beach (i think this is what it was called!) where it was too chilly to actually spend much time there, but we got to see it and walk around on the beach for a bit. then we headed to this novelty store called merv's or if you are a local, perv's. we had some good laughs and then headed to the pumpkin patch. well, ok... not so much a patch as the front of a church that was selling pumpkins. i refused to get pumpkins from the store. i'd have preferred a hayride or something, but whatever...picking out pumpkins from the church yard seemed to be good enough. after many many minutes of walking around and looking for the perfect pumpkin, we each found one for ourselves and susan also got one for jeff. that evening, we put on our finest for beaufort or maybe the surrounding down just over the bridge - we had dinner at shef's 105 or something along those lines. it was a really yummy dinner! then we headed back downtown for a few drinks at the wine bar. it was a fun evening!


inside the general store, alice and i played dress up!

the beaufort general store!


on the beaufort boardwalk


at the beach... tara, me, susan and alice


me and susan


brrrrrr...it's kinda chilly!


susan told us to be funny... but what the heck am i doing?!


our pumpkin selections!


at dinner, jeff was one very very lucky man!


obligatory photo in front of the fireplace!


alice and i loved this sign - it says civil war trails... her dad is the biggest civil war fan and one year dragged us from IN to New Orleans and along the way we stopped at every single civil war battle site...ever!


then on sunday, we decided we should go to the havelock chili cook off. havelock is just by the base and so we headed over. it's about 30 mins or so from susan's house. we got there and then met up with susan's friend, kate. we then drove around for awhile looking for said cookoff. which we couldn't find. but we did see some signs and a place where it looked like the chili cook off could have been, but we didn't understand where it was now. until someone brought up the date and it turns out the cook off was fri-sat...not sat-sun like we thought. gosh danggit!!! btw folks, havelock is NOT a big town... there are not that many parks and grassy areas for the chili cook off to have been. ummmm... yeah... we all felt real smart so we headed over to diesel which is a restaurant/bar in havelock to have a drink or two and some food and to hang out with kate. bummer! no chili!! that evening susan and jeff's friends came over - rachael and her husband, john. they were adorable and we had a great dinner and drink time with them.

ummmm, this is where the chili cook off should be....


but it wasn't b/c we were there on sunday the 18TH!!!

two thumbs down for being dumb and having it on a fri/sat and not sat/sun!!! boooo!!!!


bo-han-glays... this was the joke all weekend. from alice declaring it to be her favorite place to susan declaring she would never ever go there to jeff and susan calling it bo-han-glays instead of bo-jang-les b/c of an inside joke. they had a friend who say the fast food joint and asked about it and called it bo-jang-lays like they would say in mexico... maybe you had to be there, but it is the funniest thing ever. i promise. and then they have endless and i mean endless commercials on the radio for bo-han-glays. crazy!

on monday, jeff took us to the base where we met up with susan who worked that morning. susan took us to lunch on base and then showed us around her work. and then! then the fun!! jeff took us to his part of the base and showed us the flight school area and his plane, the harrier. until i met jeff, i had no freaking clue what the heck a harrier was. no i know lots. mainly b/c i grilled him. probably to death. i am probably the question girl to him... but i couldn't help it! i was so curious... and fascinated!! after our tour, jeff took us up to the old air tower and we got to watch a bunch of harriers and other aircraft (but mostly harriers) take off and land and do their practice drills. jeff is the guy that gets to teach/train the new guys to be harrier pilots. so. freaking. cool. these are the pics that are on alice's camera b/c my camera died. and they might just be the coolest ones ever. the thing about the harrier is that it can land and take off by hovering. the thing hovers. like a ufo. so cool to watch. they are so fast. and so loud! i just can't even describe how cool it was. if you guys have a chance, definitely go see them! it was like being at the air show, but better! after a lot of time up in the old control tower, jeff had to get back to work so we went to go to rachael who works in one of the units. she gave us more of a tour which was really cool. we got to see where they do maintenance on the planes which happens after like every flight. crazy.

how cool is this plane?!


another view of the harrier. unfortunately, i didn't take either one of these cool photos, but they will have to do until susan and or alice gets me the real pictures we took that day!!

from there, the other part of the exciting day was that we went over to taberna which is a sub division in new bern where my childhood friend, kenzie and her family live. kenzie had literally just had baby emma on the thursday before... so i got to meet the newest family member! then we were able to just catch up. it had been ages since i'd seen her or really even talked to her and it was so so so good to catch up with her!!! we met in the 4th grade when she, her brother, tanner, and their mom moved in down the block. we met at school and became instant best friends doing everything together! and i mean everything: gymnastics, lemonaid stands, selling crap door to door.... we even got our first and only dog from them when they adopted two labs but could only keep one. goldy was the best! anyways... she had sent her husband and two other kids out to play so that we could talk, but they came back just in time for me to meet them and they were just as adorable in person as they were in person. so freaking cute!!!! we only had about an hour... i wish we'd had more!! but, the fun wasn't over! later that evening, rachael came over and the four of us drank wine, ate yummy chili and crappy (ie yummy) cookies and other treats and carved our pumpkins.


kenzie and me... can you believe she had a baby literally 4.5 days before this picture?! so not fair... she looks amazing!!


here are her beyond adorable kids - peyton and davis. they couldn't be cuter!!!



here are me and kenzie with peyton, baby emma, and davis... seriously, how cute are they?!!?!? look as those smiles!! sorry patrick (their daddy), but they are total mini me's of kenzie... patrick has dark dark hair! he's a harrier pilot too.

carving pumpkins. i hadn't done this in years. and by years, i don't think since i was a kid. i really can't remember. but susan had gone all out and bought stencils. so we duked it out for the more popular ones and got to work on gutting them. this took a lot of work!! so did the actual carving. so much harder than we all thought! good thing we had loud music and loads of wine!! after the carving was done, we cleaned up and pulled out the booze. since there aren't many bars to go to in beaufort, esp on a mon night... we made our own party. and somehow the costumes came out and well... just see the pics! we had fun :)


holy knife alice!!! be careful with that thing!!


i'd like to point out the stencil on my pumpkin accompanied by lovely red wine glass and susan's stellar scooping out pumpkin guts skills!


after pumpkin carving was done, it became the table o' booze.


ohhhhh, the wine has started to kick in!!!


jeff is a 'mile high pilot'... he came home late from work and joined the party like such a good trooper. he even took a shot or two with alice who kept swearing she was sober... three ways to tell alice is wasted: 1. she claims she is perfectly sober 2. she starts dancing and 3. she sings! btw, i think every night we were there we got her to do all three!!!


really!? did i really post this?! yes, yes i did. and yes, i was wearing a coconut bra! perhaps this should be my new fb pic!? haaha, i think no.


tara's awesome wig... we tried to play table tennis on the dining room table and we played some other game on the hallway floor that susan had waxed reaaaaaaaally well. so well that almost every single one of us almost slipped and fell!!


our awesome pumpkins on the front porch of casa poe: my cat, rachael's witch, tara's bat, susan's ghost, and alice's drunky drunk pumpkin creation!

on tues, it was time to say goodbye... we all piled in susan's car and took off for the tiny beaufort airport....eventually boarded our plane and headed home... such a fun trip!!