Blogging From A to Z

Tomorrow, Rob and I will be starting the A to Z Challenge.  For the month of April, we will be blogging and photographing our way through the alphabet.  We hope you will follow along :)Want more information, check out the Blogging from A to Z Blog.

March 31, 2012: Garden

March 30, 2012: I won Soap!!

I won a bar of Orange-Mint Soap in an online giveaway!!  Check out Megan's Etsy shop.

March 29, 2012: Rob saw a Hummingbird

March 28, 2012: More Forks!

There are forks hanging on our clothesline, too.

March 27, 2012: Leaving Las Vegas

Our visit to Vegas made us all think of the Capital from The Hunger Games.  The food, the glitz, the glamour, the style, the fashion....although we prefer the food choices in Oregon :)  We sat at the Las Vegas airport and said goodbye to the sun :(  We had a feeling we would not be seeing it again soon.  The flight was easy.  In fact, the flight was not full, so I got three seats to myself and could lie down and sleep (which was really good since I had come down with a fever the night before and was still feeling crummy).

 When we arrived home, we found a beautiful piece of art awaiting us on our back lawn.

 Two friends had stopped by with 2,000 forks and left us a surprise while we were gone. Pretty creative :)

 Kia quickly decided that we were never leaving the house again, and she staged a sit-in on our suitcase.

March 26, 2012: Vegas Day 3

Our last full day in Vegas.  We spent most of the day sitting by the pool.  It was so warm and beautiful.  The hotel has a regular pool, a wave pool and a lazy river.  I liked the lazy river, personally.  That evening, after dinner, we shared a cupcake my mom bought at the Cupcakery.

 Lemon cupcake with blueberry frosting.  It was amazing! and sparkly :)

March 25, 2012: Vegas Day 2

Rob and I started our first full day in Vegas by taking a walk all the way down the Strip to the Treasure Island casino.  On the way we stopped at Margaritaville and had a drink at the 5 O'clock Somewhere Bar.  The bartenders did awesome tricks every time they made a drink.  It was pretty entertaining.

 We also walked through Caesar's Palace, where we saw these huge statues.

 To get a picture of this one we had to ride the escalator a couple of times.  I don't think you can really tell in this picture, but the escalator is curved and tall.  It was a little scary at times.

 That night we went for cocktails at the Chandelier, a bar that is made to feel like you are sitting in a chandelier.  It was really cool, and the drinks were tasty.  I recommend the Fire-Breathing Dragon.  Yum!!

 Even behind the bar was shiny and shimmery.

 After dinner we went exploring in Excalibur and New York New York.  We had too much fun.  I'm still not sure if this poster is a spelling error, or if they wanted to say Hungary.  Either way, we thought it was hilarious, since my brother-in-law is Hungarian.

 Excalibur always makes me think of a giant bouncy castle :)

We found this sign outside an Irish bar.  My favorite soup!  How did they know??

 Digging for gold in a bobble head :)

 The devil made him do it :)

 Rob really wanted to chill with the penguins at the ice bar.

 We also did a little gambling.

We won a little; we lost a little.  Who cares?  It was fun!

March 24, 2012: We arrive in Las Vegas!

We arrived at Portland Airport to find that our flight was delayed.  We had a whole extra hour to play with, which was great because I had forgotten to pack a lunch to eat and we were not arriving in Vegas until 5ish.  We decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the airport.  Unfortunately, the lighting was really bad for pictures; it created all kinds of shadows that weren't actually there.  We tried to improve the situation by looking up directly at the light.  

It started to look like we were talking to a divine light or something :)

When we arrived in Vegas, we checked in at the hotel, the Monte Carlo.  This was the view from our window on the 17th floor.  The room was nice, although we had some really noisy Spring Breaker neighbors who liked to wake us up at 4:30am.  I swear they never slept or left their room :)

 We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the hotel.  We had pizza!  This picture is kind of dark, but you may still be able to notice the wall of wine bottles in the background.

 Outside the restaurant, in the casino, there was a woman in very little clothing dancing on a bar.  We had a pretty good view of her from our table :)

 After the meal, we headed out to a show:  The Amazing Johnathon.  He has a Comedy Central Special that is available on Netflix streaming.  He was absolutely politically incorrect, but actually very funny :P It was a fun first night in Vegas!

March 23, 2012: Nap Time

I spied a fuzzy kitty on the bed today and decided to steal a snuggle and take a little nap.  For some reason I cannot explain, the kitty insisted on putting a paw on my mouth.  Maybe my breath stinks?

March 22, 2012: More Snow!

When we woke up this morning, we were greeted by a very white world.  Hoping for another snow day, we got a two-hour delay instead.  Hey, an extra two hours of sleep isn't so bad.  When we woke up for the second time, Rob found out he actually did have a snow day, and my student day got changed to a non-student work day :)

We had a visitor in the night.  I think we always have visitors, the neighbor cats love our porch, but the snow left evidence.  Little pawprints leading all the way up the path and porch steps.

Yep, definitely a cat.

That would be me in the black car.  Rob really enjoyed standing on the porch, taking pictures of me driving away in the snow.

 The drive actually wasn't that bad.  The main roads were completely clear of all snow.

The snow looked really neat on the outdoor steps.

 Our neighbor's lilac tree lost a limb, which brought down a phone wire that was attached to our house.  Luckily we don't have a landline; no harm done.

 Our snowy front yard.

 After I left work, Rob and I walked around the neighborhood.  We saw a magnolia blooming in the snow.

 A lot of the cherry trees in the neighborhood had lost limbs, big flowery limbs.

This weather has been crazy, even for Oregon :)  I hope it gets better soon.

More March 21, 2012

 Just wanted to add a picture of the cut daffodils.  Aren't they pretty??

March 21, 2012: Snow Day

 Yep, that's right.  It's the second day of spring and it is snowing.  This is really unusual weather in Oregon, and just to make it worse, our relatives in Wisconsin and Illinois are having unusually warm weather this spring!  And this time we actually got a snow day :)

Our daffodils were buried in snow,

 so I knocked all the snow off them.  They still didn't have the energy to stand up tall, so I cut them and put them in a vase :)  First cut flowers of the season.

 This picture gives you an idea of how deep the snow is... and it's still falling.

 Kwan Yin still looks peaceful.

 The lilac buds are like little ice cream cones, and yes, the garage needs to be repainted.  That's one of our summer projects this year.

 What a crazy, crazy day!