Church on Saturday Night

So this weekend was a good one cause because Saturday night there was a Church service in downtown Phoenix. Church as in, Eric Church. And boy was it a service.

I went with a couple of my girlfriends (and one of their boyfriends - poor Colin was severely outnumbered) and we started the night at Charlene's making dinner and cocktails.

Pre-game cocktails are always a good idea because a good buzz that doesn't cost $50 is always a win in my book. Plus, we were taking the Light Rail to downtown and it was the first time I'd use public transportation in Phoenix sooooo...I needed a good buzz, right??

Between a family of four offering us their day passes for the Light Rail (yay free tickets!) and a pretty empty train filled with mostly people (seemingly) also headed to the Eric Church concert, our journey downtown on the Light Rail started out pretty good. And then a motley crew of sorts came on and they weren't wearing shirts, and they had unicorn purses, and a sling made of shotgun shells, and neon animal fur for hats, and all sorts of fishnet tights, and in that moment all my expectations of what the Light Rail would be like, came true. And this was us:

They started making jokes about basic white girls and I'm almost positive they were making fun of us, but hey, we didn't get robbed and I'm pretty sure no one peed in the seat before I sat down in it so things could always be worse.

After about thirty minutes and 10 stops-worth of us asking, "Is this us? Is this our stop? How about now, should we get off?" we finally arrived at the arena and we made a plan of action: 1.) Bathroom, 2.) Beer, 3.) Seats. Quick and dirty - just like my criminal record. I'm kidding of course, I don't have one of those. We managed to get to our seats with a few minutes to spare before Eric came on!

Once those lights dimmed, the spotlight came on, and the silhouette of Eric himself appeared as if from nowhere, it was all systems go: screaming, yelling, extensive woo-ing, singing out of tune, dancing, and I may have even thrown up a pitchfork a time or two cause sometimes I just don't know what to do with my hands besides throw up a pitchfork (go Devils!) or break out the spirit fingers; I don't think people would take me seriously though, if I used spirit fingers. At least my pitchfork could be mistaken for like, some gangster street cred shiz. Cause I have that, you know. ...People still say "street cred," right?

Anyway, he opened with a rousing rendition of The Outsiders cause duh, The Outsiders World Tour, and then it was hit after hit after hit from there.

The goal was to make our beers last long enough for when he played Drink in My Hand (and also so we didn't have to spend another $12 on a beer cause we're cheap) cause what fun is singing along to that song without a literal drink in your hand? It was a close call for Charlene (far left cup), but we made it and we cheers'd and toasted and sang the whole dang song with our drinks in our hand.

He ended with Springsteen but before he finished the song he took a moment to tell us that hey, we're gonna make a memory right about now (a la the song lyrics themselves), and then he led us on a sweet chorus of "whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh's" over and over and we sang it as one. As one congregation. In the midst of the most amazing Church service.

And all Eric's people said Amen.

Sushi and Oysters and Skyping, Oh My

It's Sunday night and here we are - another day another dolla Sunday, another blog post. Before I started writing a minute ago, the following exchange just took place:
Nate: "Jake's on his way over, just FYI"
Me: "Are you saying I need to button my pants?"
Nate: "........"

Life is rough when you have to button your pants on a Sunday.

Anyway, this weekend wasn't exactly thrilling BUT the best part about it??...It's not over yet!! Thanks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, I will be enjoying my three-day weekend into tomorrow! And by "enjoying" I really just mean probably cleaning my house and cruising Target at some point (cause the best way to spend your days off is cruising Target. No, seriously).

Anyway, the highlight of my weekend was Saturday night when my sister and I took my mom out for sushi. She'd never had sushi before. So basically, we took her sushi V-card. Her reaction:
"It's ....interesting."
"Definitely outside the box for me."
"Very...interesting"
So the jury is still out on if she actually liked it or not, but she was a sport and tried everything...

...even the oysters my sister ordered. 

...which is brave cause even I don't get down with oysters, although I do have to give myself a little credit cause if she tried them, I had to too.

She said, "it tastes like the ocean"...

So we tried new things, drank good drinks, ate good sushi, and had a fantastic girls night out.

Then Sunday I had a fantastic girls night in when I Skyped with Brianna and Kailey for...wait for it....three hours and 13 minutes

It's funny cause the last time we Skyped, we Skyped for three hours and 14 minutes. We were trying to find a time when the three of us could all video chat together and Brianna said, "Kailey maybe Sunday when you have a free hour?" and Kailey said, "When do we ever Skype for ONE hour??" and we laughed and laughed cause it's funny and true. What do we talk about for three hours you might ask?? I don't really know. Sometimes nothing. Sometimes we just sit there and Snapchat each other when someone catches someone making an ugly face mid-sentence. Sometimes we walk our computers around the room to show the others how we want to rearrange it. Sometimes we make sandwiches or coffee together, or drink wine together (virtual happy hour is my personal fav). Wherever the Skype wind takes us, I tell you.

Then I sat down to finish this blog post and noticed that my wine matches my Bible.

If that's not divine intervention telling me I needed some pink moscato tonight, I dunno what is.

Oh and also, what would a blog post be without some Gunther in it? Please know that if you throw a blanket on top of Gunther, he won't move or try to get out from under it. He just sits there (Lord knows why). So we tried an experiment to see how many things we could throw on top of Gunther before he tried to get them off. It was a lot of things.

So that was a fun way to spend 20 minutes.

But anyway, that boys and girls, is where this virtual road ends. Where the journey stops. Where the.... nope, actually I'm out of metaphors.

Let's have a fantastic Monday, shall we?!

A Weekend That Wasn't Super Exciting but Also Not Super Boring

Guess what I'm doing on this Sunday night while I write this blog post?.....I'm drinking red wine and eating red vines. That's funny cause it's like, kind of a tongue twister and sounds funny when you say it and they're kind of the same except not. Here, I'll show you:

My life is so fancy sometimes I can hardly stand it.

Anyway, I'm here for a weekend recap of sorts, except it's probably not gonna be super interesting cause I only took a couple pictures and let's face it, if you don't have a lot of pictures in your blog post, people won't read. Cause deep down we're all just first graders flipping through the picture book not reading any of the words.

I got to spend the latter half of Saturday with my dear friend Jennica from Strawberries and Wine. We ate lunch at the Chop Shop,

and hung out at her place while she finished my blog design (so pretty right?!). This is her working her magic:

and this is us excited about her working her magic.

Completely unrelated to Jennica working her magic on my blog, here's a picture of my dogs laying in my bed and it looks like they're snuggling with each other and it's really cute and kinda funny cause look at Maycee:

Also, here's another awkward picture of Gunther and I cause what blog post can't use an awkward picture of Gunther and I?

Sunday Nate and I went to church in the morning, then went out to lunch with a friend and I ate a huge burrito, then I cleaned off my desk at home, and then I video chatted with Mosby. See, this is what I meant about the no pictures thing. Either way, pictures or no pictures, it was a good Sunday and a good weekend. And I already get bonus points for going less than two months without blogging so yay for me!

Happy Monday friends!

The First Post of 2015

I think it's funny because the last time I posted (on November 23rd, mind you) I made a reference to wanting to blog more habitually........and I haven't blogged since. Oopsie. I feel like that's been my life for the latter of 2014 - the blogging bug came and went often. So for now, I have the blogging bug and definitely want to have the blogging bug more often in 2015. But that's not an official "resolution" so don't put that on the record, cause I might fail - I can't really seem to control how often I get bugs. ...blogging bugs, not like bed bugs or tapeworms or anything like that. But anyway, let's catch up shall we?

End of November brought Thanksgiving, obvi...

 ...and Thanksgiving brought wine so, yes please.

It also brought Brianna to town from Tucson, which then brought Brianna and Kailey and I together for some quality BFF time.

 We did lunch at the Perch and watched the ASU/UofA game while drinking mimosas. ...Cause how else do you watch day-time football if not with Mimosas?

Gunther's birthday is also in November and you know what that means....doggie birthday party! This is how Gunther felt about his party hat...

 ...but then I was like, "Cheer up Gunther! It's your birthday! Today is all about YOU!" and then he was like, oh okay you're right!...

Then December came and we did all sorts of December things.
I decorated:

We baked:

 We got a Christmas tree:

 ...and we ran into my parents at the Christmas tree lot and I just so happen to be wearing  the same as my dad. So that was awesome. And I'm not even being sarcastic, that's  awesome.

 And then we decorated it:

We took Christmas pictures and I became obsessed with them:

Photo cred to the fantastic Amaes Photography

I wanted to put the above picture on our Christmas card but Gunther's backside and ahem, equipment, are like right there kind of in your face...so to try and make it a little better I blurred out his butt hole. So then I asked Nate if I should use this picture for the card and the first thing he said was, "Where's Gunther's asshole?? Did you blur out his asshole?? Why would you do that?? I definitely wouldn't use it now cause he doesn't look right without an asshole." So you know, that's how that went down.

I saw Kailey and Brianna a couple more times before Brianna left us to go live in Montana for a year (rude):

I saw my dear friend Tyah and celebrated her graduating with her PhD before they left to go live back in South Carolina (rude):

I like this picture because it's blurry and we're all making weird faces and doing weird things, because that is the essence of "the quad" as I've dubbed us. It's just kind of a mess when the four of us get together but hey, we've been quadin' it up since high school so YOLO!...do people still say that?

We also spent some time out in the desert shooting guns which, isn't necessarily "December"-ish per say, but hey, shooting guns is for all seasons.

By then it was Christmas time so that's what we did, we Christmas'd. We Christmas'd with Nate's family:

...and we Christmas'd with my family. We even had extra family to Christmas with this year as my Aunt and Uncle and cousin and his wife all came in from out of town and it was all sorts of fun just like when we were kids before they moved away from Arizona (rude).

We then prolonged the Christmas spirit and went ice skating with said family in from out of town at the Scottsdale Princess Resort. Each year they do "Christmas at the Princess" and boy is it Christmas-y.

So then after Christmas I got to spend some Christmas money on a brand new shiny pair of roller blades. That's right, rollerblades. I'm bringin' 'em back, guys.

And I daresay that about catches us all up. Sorry, that was a really long post with not a lot of explanation and I'll probably kick myself later on when I'm 80 and rereading my blog to try and remember what I did between November 2014 and January 2015 and there's not a lot of detail, but I just really didn't want to have to break this up into two different posts. Can't win 'em all I suppose.

Happy New Year friends!