417 days!!!

Matt and I decided to have our reception at the Perry Hotel in Petoskey.

http://www.theperryhotel.com/ : This is a picture from the website.



So we will be getting married in 417 days on July 18, 2009. Woo!

I decided that was an accomplishment and therefore it became the only thing we decided over the weekend. But thats a big one!

Paul very kindly humored me and took some pictures. Unfortunetly my Matt was trying to bond with my Dad and was worthless!!!

After threatening to pour water on him he woke up and really humored me.

Don't be fooled he is threatening to throw me in that FREEZING COLD water.

We finally took one that turned out well, so here it is!

Memorial Day Weekend

Thursday night Matt and I flew to Detroit! His dad picked us up and we spent the night in Plymouth. Friday morning we borrowed the car and Matt and I and his brother Chris drove up north. We went straight to Petoskey and met my family (GG, Steven from the Lodge, Mom, Dad, Andrea and Jess from GR). We enjoyed some great Seafood Chowder mmmmmm mmmmmm good and then talked to the lady about having our wedding there. After Jessica asked if she could take down the artwork hehe, we left and went and looked at the other Staffords in Bay View. Then we went back to the Lodge and went in the hot tub!!!

Chris, Andrea, Matt, Jessica nicely posing for me on the new hot tub patio.

Saturday "we" put part of the dock in. Since we can't put the Four Winns lift in we stopped putting in the dock where the dock wraps around that lift.

Here is Chris showing off his waders. Such a helpful person earning his dinner.

Here is Matt directing traffic. :)

We met Duke for the first time, and Steven taught him Coal's favorite summer activity - jet ski riding!!

We also cleared out the shed and the barn because the next time I go up north they will be gone!!!!! :( Our newest project involves tearing down these old structures to make way for a new barn.

We had some of the best food in the world!! Here is Bill grilling

and Jessica and Matt making ka-bobs. (the picture looks like they were working well together, but we know they weren't!!)

The Wii Mario Kart got plenty of use - Steven swears his goggles make him a better driver.
Jess and Andrea made me a FUN FETTI CAKE!!! Such goodness to go with my perfect birthday dinner meal!

And it only took me 4 tries to blow out all the candles... :)

Monday morning we drove back down to Plymouth and Matt's mom made us a nice meal which we ate out on the porch. Then we went back to the airport and flew back to Houston where it is HOT and HUMID. Good weekend.

Sunday...5 Days til Up North!!!

This morning Matt and I woke up and went to the church in the building right next to our apartment, however, when we walked in we realized that it wasn't a church we would feel comfortable in, so we came back home.

We decided to make some soup from a mix my mom had mailed us. After a trip to CVS to get more ingredients the soup turned out really good. (Peanut's favorite part was the side of goldfish). We had it for lunch and dinner...and probably will again tomorrow!

Later we headed out to the lake to go skiing. I skiied really well (for me, mind you), which means I tricked really bad, but it was a great day to be out in the sun. Matt even tricked for awhile with one foot. These pictures are not from this weekend, in fact from awhile ago, but I figured I'd put them up anyway. Show you how awesome we are :)

Now I am watching the ACMs on tv while Matt plays on his computer. Three day weekends are always more fun than a regular weekend, and most importantly... FIVE DAYS TIL UP NORTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pasadena Strawberry Fest

Today Matt and I took the trusty Jetta across Houston to the Pasadena Strawberry Fest. We had no idea what to expect, except we had seen some ads and read the website. The strawberry fest has the worlds largest strawberry shortcake made by the local grocery store H-E-B. We bought two slices to bring home to eat for desert!

After eating some funnel cake :) we watched some acrobats. Five guys did some jump rope tricks, climbed all over each other, and ate some fire. It was better than we hoped, so that was cool.
After that we went to a BMX show where 3 kids rode around on their BMX bikes. They were really good - one of them could do a no-handed front flip and apparently that is rare. Anyway, they flipped and jumped and spun.

AND WE WENT TO THE PIG RACES!!!! Yes, it was the same pig races from the rodeo, the same speaker, the same swimming pig, the same fake pig names...but it was still sweet. It reminded me that we forgot to watch the Preakness, but horses...pigs... same thing.

After pig races Matt and I got some food and then picked up our cake. On the way out we watched one last circus act where they had some little girls doing another chair handstand set, a ring set and then this guy played on this twirly thing going around. They also had 2 people ride dirt bikes in a big sphere.
We were really tired after that and decided it was time to go back. On the way back Matt was yelling go left, but I had one hand on the steering wheel and one hand shifting, and no hands left to hold up to figure out which way was left...so alas I got on the road going the wrong direction. With a ...few... more adventures to follow we made it home!!! Now we are watching the Astros because the Red Wings played earlier and we missed it....bummer.... :)

PS: And Courtnay - I completely agree with you, I go oooo take a picture for the blog!! Ha, the sole reason I do anything besides sit on the couch - to write about it!

Adventures of the Knife Block

When Matt and I moved down here I bought a knife set online and we opened it up and the knife sharpener didn't fit in the hole, which was really lame. Matt told me not to worry he would take the drill to it and I adamently refused. (Back then Matt had been taking the drill to just about everything, I really thought he was just on a drill kick.) I finally got around to calling the company and they said that they would send me a new one it will be here in a month. A MONTH! So I said okay and forgot about it. It has been about two months and I realized it never came and wondered if maybe it got delivered to the front desk and they never bothered to tell me. So I wandered up there and asked and sure enough it had been sitting there for awhile. (Really ticks me off because I had been in there everyday this past week arguing with them).

I got back and opened it...and it wasn't the right one! There was an included letter saying the one we had is no longer made and hope this one would do. No that one would not do! So Matt decided this was his permission to demonstrate the improper use of a drill...


And...yes it now fits. So as Matt tells me, I should have let him do that in the first place. So we now have the replacement knife block for no good reason. Oh well.

Weekend

This past weekend was...hot. Friday afternoon Matt got back from training and we went to the pool where we met up with Matt. The three of us promptly fell asleep in the sun until a random girl came and woke us up and told us to play volleyball with her. It was really odd, but we played some volleyball in the pool with some other kids our age she woke up. The girl was annoying, but Mike was a nice guy (we saw him again at the pool on Sunday). Matt and Misty came over for dinner and we played some Mario Kart before going to bed at ...9pm.

Saturday Matt and I did some errands and went to Panera for lunch. Nothing too exciting.

Sunday we decided we should go to church, so we found a local community church and got ourselves up and went. We walked in and they were having a flag parade of every imaginable country. It was...odd. I wanted to leave right then, but Matt made us stay. We lasted an hour and ducked out of the back. It was really weird. Not going there again. So we went to the grocery store where I bought some cheesecake for our efforts. We went to the pool again and then came back and grilled some dinner. I marinated some pineapple and then grilled it - it was really good! Then again, I think pineapple is always good so.

Back to work today. The weather man said "enjoy the break from the humidity today...because it will be back". Great...

Flight Home

On Monday morning we woke up and caught our last bus driving on the wrong side of the road to the Brisbane airport. We went through customs and boarded this plane for the long flight back. The flight left at 11am Monday morning, flew 12 hours, and landed at 7am Monday morning in LAX. It was a long....two....Mondays.



We survived the flight back (barely on my part! man bathrooms are scary!) and then split up to go our various directions back in the states. For my part, I boarded my Continental flight back to Houston, fell asleep, woke up to be fed (thats right they still feed you), fell asleep again until we landed. Everyone made it back alive and by this point better be back on American time zones!!

Good trip, hope you enjoyed the blogging!!

Til summer!

Brisbane + Sunshine Coast (Day 7!)

On Sunday Morning we lost Andrew (who had to fly back early) and the rest of us got more vans and drove to the Carins Airport to fly to Brisbane. After landing in Brisbane we boarded our 56 passenger bus (all 17 of us!) and drove the hour ish to Sunshine Coast. Alli can tell you more details, but we got off at one end of the beach and walked down the water towards the other beach.

Then we went to a strip and ordered some burgers. I ordered some more Aussie Burgers!! As we stood in line and ordered the lady at the counter asked "just how many of there are you, I've never seen this many people together, this must be a record". We are just that cool.

We kept on walking down the beach for one last group picture.

Then family pictures...awwwww....

Berki missing Jon

Holmes missing Brian (for real...who would ride a bike over this???)
Petros except missing Andy and Nancy.

Missing Jeff, but Tim is good at being the replacement.

We met the bus and drove to Sunshine Coast University:

WHERE WE SAW KANGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Paul obviously thought us gawkers were a better picture than the actual kangas....

All of them had little babies...awww they were so cute. Carol asked if this was comparable to staring at squirrels and my mom compared it to staring at the Perry Park deer...kinda pathetic when you think about it that way...so I didn't!

The bus drove us from the University to Alli's apartment...were it made an awesome 10k point turn to make it around the bend. We got some more looks, and I am sure Alli's friends will never be the same after seeing us pull up...but here is us and our bus!

We parted from Alli and drove back to Brisbane on back roads to avoid the awful traffic jam on the main road. We arrived at a very fancy hotel (Sofitel) and stayed on the club level. There were included food and drinks on the 30th floor where we went and crashed the business attire people. (I am not sure if you can call the sushi etc food...but oh well). Some of us walked around Brisbane for awhile at night, down the main street or "16th street mall" if you are from CO.

This is a view of Brisbane from the hotel room window.

Then we went to bed, in very comfy beds!!

Great Barrier Reef!! (Day 6)

On Saturday a bus picked us up (again) and we drove past the pretty scene (still didn't have a camera) again. We got to Port Douglas where we boarded onto this boat - Quicksilver Tours. Looked a lot like the Mackinac Island Ferry! (BTW do you like their t shirts? - Go Evan!)

The boat ride took about 1.5 hours over to the Great Barrier Reef.

We arrived at the reef where this dock was waiting. It was really nice to not be on a rocking boat while snorkling, instead they had this raft "oil tanker" of sorts where they had all the snorkling from, and also a lunch buffet! It was a really good set up.

On the way over to the reef we signed up for helicopter tours. The man was impressed that my mom knew everyones last name - another person really confused about who we all were. There were two helicopters (3 person and 4 person) and we signed up for everyone but Carol :(

Below is the 3 person helicopter - my Dad and Steven and I were together and I got set up front!

We took a pontoon boat of sorts over to the raft where the helicopters landed. We wore our lifejackets around our waist like fanny packs.

Picture of heli, landing raft, and pontoon boat.

Here is a picture of the second heli (4 person).

View of the Reef from the helicopter. The pilot pointed out some sea turtles, but they looked about the size of the ones we caught up north from up high. The reef went on as far as you could see both directions - it was sweet, and really pretty.After the helicopter rides we doned our "anti stinger suits" and went snorkling! Steven and I even saw a shark!!!


There were TONS of fish to see, and it was exciting to say that I have been in the Great Barrier Reef.

Couldn't even tell you who these two people are...but Allison rented an underwater camera and took a lot of pictures. If I had paid attention in my Coral Reefs class I probably would have appreciated the large varieties of coral that there was, but alas I probably ditched that class on vacation to some place (hey it happens). It was still pretty!


Tim and Dad showing off their snorkle skills (they got recruited back by the boat...bad boys!)

Like the bunch of idiots we are, none of us brought towels with us so we went with the "air dry approach". Good thing we had perfect weather - along with the rest of the trip!

We took the boat back to the mainland, spent some money at the various gift shops and then boarded the bus back to the Peppers Beach Club. We ordered pizza for dinner (HAHAHAHAHA that was hilarious) and hung out in the Berki room while discussing the barn project and being lazy bums. A good end to a good night.