Viva Las Vegas

Ma and Pa Sechrist flew into Vegas to visit with the Jared Sechrists so Shawn and I drove on down for the weekend to steel a little attention. We got in on Friday and lunched at the Paris buffet. My parents endured a 4 hour seminar about timeshares to earn $125 to eat there. The bill came to a whopping $4.

On Saturday morning we got up bright and early for Dylan's Orioles game. Above is Dyl up to bat as his dad pitches to him. Jared's the coach and it's "coach pitch."
I had to throw this one in too because Dad was the volunteer 1st base coach. I'm sure they really had to twist his arm. If you click to enlarge you'll see 3 generations of Sechrist men on the field together. (Dad coaching 1st, Jared coaching 3rd and Dylan on 2nd.)
Brock really wanted his Uncle Shawn to take a picture of him "doing this." Whatever "this" is.
We drove straight from the Baltimore to Philly so we could watch Cole play offensive guard for the Eagles. He did a great job! He's number 33 smack dab in the middle there.
It was so hot at all those games I wanted to take a dip but Dad, Jared, Shawn, Cole and Dylan all took off for some Nevada nature. (yeah, you read that right)
Mom and I tried to play chicken but Lindsey wouldn't get in the pool. You'd think that eating everyone under the table at a buffet the day before and then seeing myself in a bathing suit would have stopped me from ordering the all you can eat Sushi for dinner Saturday night but you'd be wrong.
Alas our trip ended all too soon. Shawn and I took our time getting home (stopping off Tropicana Ave for In N' Out) because we knew once we got there work would be just around the corner. Well Sechrists I had fun with you guys, can't wait for you to come visit me (hint hint).

Six Quirks Tag

My sister-in-law Kathleen tagged me and I have to name six quirks about myself...I don't really know what to say so it might take a while.

#1 I play with my eyelashes, I have since infancy. I literally used to suck my thumb and wave my pointer finger back and forth across my lashes. I do it so they tickle my finger tips, it's best with fresh mascara because you can feel it better. Yeah, I always have mascara crumbs under my eyes but its been happening for 26 years so what can you do.

#2 I love to be surprised. I hate it when I know what I'm getting for Christmas or a birthday before hand. I hate it when people tell me ANYTHING about a book or movie because I want to be COMPLETELY surprised. I like to try to guess and figure things out before hand but I never actually want to know. Ironically I'm not very good at acting surprised, I promise I like gifts I just don't think I show it very well.

#3 I need a lot of ice. A lot. When I say, "diet coke with a lot of ice" I mean it. I want my glass full of ice and then the drink may enter and if it isn't done this way I will ask my server to do it again. I have had them dump soda out at plenty of drive thrus and movie theaters for insufficient ice. Go ahead and think I'm rude but it really does taste different and I'm the one paying for it.

#4 I've been known to speak in many accents. I don't know why, and most of the time I don't even realize I'm doing it. I mean I'll randomly bust out in various American dialects as well as European, South American etc... for no reason at all.

#5 I cannot share frozen food or lolly pops with people. Why the heck would I want to lick anyone's spit? Especially their frozen to my popsicle spit. Excuse me while I gag.

#6 If I'm buying anything that costs more than say, $50 I'll shop around. I'll go to every store I can think of that would sell that item, I'll look on-line and then I'll contemplate how I can make it myself for less. I agonize over the purchase and get buyer's remorse before I even get home. You'd think I was really frugal and good with money because of this but I'm really not. I just want to get it for cheap so I can make excuses to buy more things.

I don't really know if these things count as quirks but it's the best I could do Kathleen. We'll say if your link is on my blog and your name starts with A, you're tagged.

Randomness From the Last Week

Lauryn is getting married and we worked on her centerpieces. I'm so excited for her because Jonny is such a great guy. And because her centerpieces are going to be darling.

Utah sucks because it never rains. Utah doesn't suck because when it rarely rains, we get a lot of these:

We went out to dinner with the Gallaghers. They want us to sign up for "vacation ownership." (they invited us to a free dinner where they try to get you to do it. George and April don't really care if we do it or not.) We won't. But we still love them.

I got much farther on putting the basement together. Still no pictures because I want to get curtains first. (I just realized that you can see the paint color in the picture of us working on Lauryn's centerpieces...oops. A sneak preview I guess.)

Busy and Fun Weekend.

No pictures but in the nature of this being an on-line journal of sorts I thought I'd tell the tale of our Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Friday- Lindseth Sleepover. Bethany and Kaden and Amy came and played. We had pizza, watched a movie and went to McDonalds for breakfast the next morning. Did you know they have breakfast happy meals? I didn't. Oh...and we met Luke, Amy's new beau. I'll leave it at that so Amy doesn't hate me in the future.

Saturday- Painting the basement. Basically I bought the paint for our basement before we were even married so yeah, it was about time. We got it completely done in two movies. Not too bad.

Afterwards we showered and got all done up for a party that apparently had taken place the night before and although it was 10 o'clock I wanted to do something since I went through the trouble of applying makeup. On our way to the Nickelcade (hey, I said something, I didn't say something glamorous.) I got a phone call from Courtney Taylor! I was so excited to talk to Courtney, Aubree, Easton, Kim and even baby Jackson for a little bit. They sounded like they were doing well but I think they miss us just as much, if not more than we miss them.

The Nickelcade. It was fun...I had fun. I'm pretty sure Shawn had fun. And up until the end when we realized it was 11:30 and we still hadn't made cupcakes for the entire primary we enjoyed battling each other in ski-ball, basketball and other arcade classics.

Sunday- Primary program practice for 2 straight hours. Torture. Shawn made lunch, "most delicious sandwich ever" and then we napped for longer than usual. When we got up I rearranged the basement, reattached the power plate covers and painted wall decor for the basement. I hope it all looks nice when it's done. At least I can say with confidence that it will look better than it did.

Yard Sale!

On Saturday we had the yard sale we'd been talking about for months. Shawn had 4 roommates before we got married and they didn't really take everything with them when they left. I'd warned them on more than one occasion that we weren't a storage facility and on Saturday my wildest dreams came true. (That's not to say we didn't have our own junk to sell, because we certainly did...someone though had a hard time letting go of any of his 11, yes 11 winter coats...)

It all started on Monday, Labor Day, Shawn and I both had the day off and we cleaned out our basement closet as well as our laundry room. We reorganized what we were keeping (Shawn and I both found out how many Christmas ornaments I really had) and we piled up the rest for sale. Shawn's old roommate Greg came over for his couch, his TV, VCR, DVD combo and his entertainment stand. (See sometimes threats do work.)

We purged. I was actually really surprised at the turnout since we'd been warned that yard sales in our area didn't work. We, in the townhouses are by far the paupers of our area, every other house within a 10 mile radius is at least a half a million dollar home and allegedly people who live in those homes don't shop yard sale. Go figure. I guess bright red lettered signs and posting on two websites paid off. See the fruits of our labor below.

Antelope Island = Sister Torture

My sister Amber was in town on a work trip last week and what a time we had. When Amber and I get together the Pennsylvania accent comes on real strong (please read with inflection). We're pretty sure we annoy everyone around us and we definitely giggle as they attempt the PA hick talk. Not everyone has the gift we've been blessed with.

As much fun as Amber has talking like a hick, she definitely doesn't enjoy hick-like past times. Including but not limited to going to National Parks to look at wild life. (I told her that she should just pick Park City and Shawn would be fine with it but she left it up to him and this is where we went.) Yes this is a big shot of my hind end and no Shawn is not struggling to hold me.

We dipped our toes in the Great Salt Lake where they say the largest living organism is the brine shrimp (or sea monkey.) Well, that might be so...in the water...but right at the shore where they bird poop filled sea touches the sandy shore there are gnats a' plenty and as you walk into the water they part like the Red Sea. I promise you this is not an exaggeration. Amber wanted to die and in her opinion she still could because she's convinced she caught something from the less than sanitary water. I put in this picture of Shawn's foot so that maybe if you click on it to enlarge you'll see what Amber was calling "loogies" floating on the top of the water.

On the bright side we saw many buffalo (which Amber practically wanted me to hop on the back of in the manor of 8 Seconds) and a few antelope and maybe even burned off a few calories hiking around.

Primary Class Party

So I've gotten behind but I want to post picture from our party because it's fun.

Shawn and I teach Sunday School to the 10 year olds in our congregation. It's a lot of fun even though we only have one girl and the boys get a little rowdy. 2 Saturdays ago Shawn and I hosted a party for our Primary class because they earned it. Earned it? You say? Yes, we've put in place a point system to promote reverence so we can get through our lessons.

Our class could earn up to 10 points a week and once they got to 200 we would throw them a pizza party. Well, it was long and hard but they made it. We had pizza, video games, a silly string fight, make your own dessert pizza and awards.

Over all I'd say it was a success and the kids are striving to be extra good to earn enough points to have a Christmas party (we might throw them a bone if they don't make it anyway, it's Christmas after all).