Vegas Baby!

Earlier this week we booked a trip to Vegas! We're both very excited. Christi and I haven't been on a vacation since the honeymoon and we're happy to get to go somewhere soon. We'll be leaving next month; more details to come as we get closer. We're traveling with Christi's parents, her brother Jason, and my grandparents (Sappoo and Laverne.) We're planning on seeing some shows and checking out everything since it is Christi and my first time going. Of course I'll tell you all about it when I get back.


In other related news, we're going to rent Vegas Vacation and watch it several times before we go - haha. Christi hasn't seen it, yet. Maybe we too can get lucky and win a car - or 4! Hanging with Wayne Newton would be pretty sweet too...


Just wanted to fill you all in on the news. If anyone has been, tell us what you thought, places we need to see/avoid, etc.

Prayer Request

I have a prayer request. I recently found out that Jody's brother, Cory, who is 26, has enlarged kidneys. Because they are larger than normal, his body is shutting them down because it thinks it doesn't need them. Obviously, that's a problem. From what I understand, because of the disease he has they can't reverse the process that caused the enlargement. However, a new kidney (or kidneys!) will correct it. He's on the donor list and is in the process of finding out if anyone in his family is a donor. However, he has already told Jody and Jody's twin brother, Jessie, that he won't accept a kidney from either of them because he thinks they both have the rest of their lives ahead of them. His life expectancy without new kidneys is 4 years, best care scenario. Realistic scenario? Who knows...


Please keep Cory and his family in your prayers (note that Jessie is not Jessica I have talked about in previous posts. Jody and Jessica are married. Jessie is Jody's twin brother. I know, confusing.) Hopefully Cory will get a donor and this will all work out fine in the end. Thank you for your prayers.

Out on the town

Before I get started, I want to add to my "Indecisiveness" post. We made 2 weeks worth of menus the other night, but after reading Lauren's comment on my post I realized we didn't really leave any nights open for going out to eat. I like you left the days floating, so I'm going to steal that idea from you, too. Thanks!


It's Friday. I'm glad. The last 3 days felt like they have been 3 weeks long. I've been stuck in a training class at work. What class you ask? Outlook 2007. I'm not sure how I got stuck in there, but I was. I didn't learn anything. Why? I could already do everything. I should have tried to get out of the class but I didn't because I thought maybe I could pick up a few more tips. Oh well, I'll get training credits for it so it's all good.


Last night was a fun night. Jessica and Jody came over around 5:30 or so after looking at houses. They're just starting the house hunting process. Since we recently went through it, we're going to lend them any advice and/or answer any questions they may have. Being a younger couple, it's interesting going through the new things together, especially ones that require big purchases. For both Christi's car and the house, we could tell the people who were involved with selling us the product (salesman and real estate agents) were skeptical of us. I'm guessing it was because of our age and they are wondering if we can afford this or if we are just playing arround. I assume they get your people in all the time who just want to test drive cars to kill some time or something. It's not insulting because I can undserstand their side, but at the same time you just want to be taken seriously.


Anyway, back to last night. We went out to eat at Wild Wing with Jessica and Jody. Coming to that decision was a bit of a process, though. I just posted about us getting better at making decisions, but a group of 4 made it 2 orders of magnitude harder, though. The wings were decidedly better than Buffalo's. No contest. Taste, flavor, size, quality - Wild Wing >> Buffalo's. The only down side was the table we were sitting at was underneath two ceiling fans set on hyper-drive and we were freezing all night. There were some interesting people in the restaurant. We observed two guys together, one of which was trying to pick up one of the waitresses. The waitress and guy were sitting on one side of the both together and the other guy was left by himself. The expressions on the other guys face were priceless. By the end of the night the other guy wasn't looking at them, was laying his head down, and pretending they weren't there - basically doing everything possible to ignore them. Watching him eat his food in dismay was quite entertaining. Another guy was creepy golf guy. Where we were sitting was directly in front of a massive 120+" projector TV and it was showing the Accenture match play tournament. About half way through our meal we noticed about 5 feet behind us was this middle aged guy with this crazy death stare on his face. We couldn't figure out if he was staring at us or the TV. We hope it was the TV. We turned around a short while later and he was gone. Vanished.


What did we decide to do after eating way too many wings? Go eat ice cream, of course! We walked to the Dairy Queen, which wasn't too far from Wild Wing. They are both located in a new shopping center called the shops at Riverside. Basically it's a gigantic outdoor mall. On the way to Dairy Queen Jessica manage to scare a lady carrying a baby by doing an impersonation of a movie character we didn't know. Christi said something really funny that made us all laugh uncontrollably for the rest of the night. It's hard to describe through text what she did; it was more of a noise than a word. We were still laughing when we got to Dairy Queen. The clerk was not amused. I was trying to order and everyone was laughing and going back and forth at each other, and he was dead silent and expressionless, which of course made them laugh more. While we were ordering, Christi thought a cake with a Spiderman picture was actually a Barack Obama cake. That was hilarious. Random fact I learned while at Dairy Queen: Dairy Queen was introduced to the Middle East in 1979. That explains everything. We finally got our Blizzards and headed back home. Those are just a few of the events from last night. We had a great time with Jessica and Jody, as usual.


That's about it for now. I have another post coming soon. Hope you enjoyed it

Indecisiveness

What do you want for dinner? I don’t care, what do you want? I don’t know. I was hoping you had something in mind.


One of the things Christi and I always have trouble with is picking where to go out to eat or what to cook at home. Just last night, we resorted to flipping a coin to decide on what we were going to have for dinner (pizza from Papa John’s won, by the way.) This is a problem that has always plagued us.


Initially, I thought this was just something limited to us. However, after talking to many of our friends who are dating or married, I’ve found that it’s a more common problem than I thought. When I tell them one of the only things Christi and I can never agree on and subsequently get frustrated with each other over is deciding what to eat, they all say we do the same thing. Why is this? Why is finding something to eat, which you have to do many times a day, sometimes such a difficult decision? For us, I think it lies in 2 areas – too many options and we are not picky eaters.


In case you have never been to Macon, I’ll give you a brief description of many of the main roads in town: restaurant, restaurant, church, restaurant, church, restaurant, restaurant, church, restaurant. That basically sums it up. Being that we grew up here, we have been to basically every place there is to go and have one or two things we like at each place. When you have so many places you like, it’s hard to choose just one. When coupled with my next point, we are not picky eaters, it makes it harder. Christi and I enjoy all different styles of food: Italian, Asian, Mexican, American , etc. We like it all. Unless we are having a craving, it all sounds good. Since we like most places around and many types of food we can cook, narrowing it down gets tough. If you throw these two factors in with general hunger – watch out. When we’re hungry, we both honestly don’t care where we go; we just want to go – now!


Christi and I are trying a few ideas because we both recognize we spend too much time deciding on where/what to eat. One thing we try to do is alternate nights picking dinner. A second thing we try sometimes is pick what we don’t want to eat. This usually helps us narrow the choices to what we are craving when we don’t realize what we are craving. Still, picking one gets hard. A third is a combination of 1 and 2 – we alternate narrowing down the choices until someone picks a final choice. Finally, something we are trying to start back is something we used to do but have gotten away from – setting a weekly menu. By doing this we pick our choices one a day a week and the rest of the week we just know what we are going to have. Of course, changes can be made, but in general this seems to work out most of the time. Granted, the day we have to choose what we want isn’t exactly a smooth process, but it seems to work.


So I ask my readers (all 3 of you) – do any of you have this same problem as well? What do you do to resolve this issue? Do you see any flaws in our “solutions”? Do you have any ideas for us?

Long Monday

Work today felt like it dragged on for a long time. Maybe it was because last week was a short week. Maybe it was because of the really long meeting I had right after I got to work this morning. I'm not sure what it was, but it was a slow day. It wasn't because I had nothing to do; rather, I had quite a lot to do, but it seemed to just go by slower than normal.


I could be tired from everything we did this weekend. As usual, the weekend went by quickly since we were always doing something. Friday we went out to eat with Christi's parents at Buffalo's. Christi and I split some wings and they were delicious. Typically Buffalo's wings are small and not very meaty, but we order them anyway. Recently, they have been like they used to be - nice sized with a good amount of meat on them. You can actually get full on them, again. I think this is due in large part to a new restaurant that opened up close by around Christmas time. That restaurant is called Wild Wing, and they have more flavors and really good wings. I still like Wild Wing better because of the flavor, but Buffalo's stepped it's game up. Well done Buffalo's. Anytime a restaurant improves its food I'm down with that.


On Saturday we did some work around the house in the morning. You know, the usual: laundry, picking up some things, trying to make the house look better. That's definitely the biggest difference in our apartment and the house - it takes much longer to clean up! After that we spent some time at Christi's parents' house and hung out with them. We didn't see them too much during the week, beside Friday of course, so it was good to see what they had been up to.


Jessica and Jody came over Saturday evening. Christi cooked chicken fried rice, which was awesome. We tried to make the shrimp sauce (aka yum-yum sauce aka white sauce aka orange sauce aka who knows what.) All the recipes we found were basically the same. The one we made apparently had more garlic powder in it that we are used too and it tasted funky. We threw that away in disappointment. I really want to find a recipe that taste's right, so if anyone happens to have one, or knows where I could even order the sauce, I would appreciate it! After dinner we played the Wii and some board games. Jody and I won the battle of the sexes game against Christi and Jessica. Besides that, we talked a bunch, watched some college basketball, and just hung out talking about who knows what. It was a good night.


Sunday we didn't do too much. We watched Georgia Tech men's basketball blow a 15pt lead (I didn't see that part, but I came when it was tied) to Clemson and in the process show some great plays with some really stupid plays. We lost by 8, I believe, which sort of sums the season up. We can play almost anyone close for about 30-35 minutes, but we will undoubtedly commit some awful turnovers and make some stupid plays that results in us losing any chance at winning the game that we might have had. After the game Christi and her mom did some shopping while I went over to my mom's place to help my sister, Annie, with a project for school. Once I got done with that, I went back to the Grizzard's house to eat supper with them, Christi, and Jason. We had spaghetti, which admittedly isn't my favorite meal, but it was very tasty and I ate two plate fulls. Maybe my taste buds are changing. Who knows...


That's basically what we did this weekend. I'm not sure what our plans for are tonight. We need to go to the grocery store, but before we do that we have to decide what we want to eat this week and make a list of what we will need. Have a good evening everyone.

A lot going on

We've been pretty busy lately. I could have sworn I posted something Friday, but apparently I didn't. We've been spending a lot of time hanging out with family and friends. Christi has been busy with things at school. Also, she got sick this weekend and is finally starting to feel a little bit better.


This past Saturday was Valentine's Day. Because we have been so busy, we both decided we didn't need to do anything big. We basically spent the day with each other - did a little shopping, visited Christi's parents to give them Valentine's Day gifts, and went out to eat at Taki (a great Japanese steakhouse.)


I've been fortunate enough to have some time to go play golf. Sunday after church, Christi, Jessica, Jody, McKenzie, and I went to the course to play 9. Christi played for the first time in a few years and played well. I ended up shooting 43, which was better than expected, but I missed a few short putts! McKenzie had fun putting on the greens and running around collecting golf balls that people had left. She was cute. Monday, my friend Jason (aka Pagoda) and I went back to the course to play 9 again. I started off very badly but recovered to finish with a 47. Not the best, but overall pleased. Both days I feel like I should have shot lower, but that's golf - no matter what you feel like you could have done better.


Besides golf, we've been doing some work around the house trying to keep it in order. We've bought some more games for the Wii and have been trying those out, although I still play Wii Sports a good bit. Christi's favorite so far is the Sims. Christi's parents and brother, Jason, gave us 3 games total for Valentine's day so we're enjoying those as well. I'm not sure which one of those if my favorite because they are all fun, but I might have to say College Football 09. I've been thinking about doing some game reviews, but I figure that's not why people read the blog so it's looking doubtful at the moment.


I checked my email Monday night and was happy to find 3 pictures that I had completely forgotten taking. My cousin, Lew, had taken some pictures of his daughter, Juliet, and me at our family Christmas get together. Below are the pictures. It's pretty obvious who the cute on is.

That's right, I'm the cute one. Seriously though, she's an adorable baby who's always happy. She loves her parents and is definitely going to be a daddy's girl.


That's pretty much it for today. We're about to go over to Jessica and Jody's house to watch some TV and eat pizza. Have a good night everyone.

Weekend Happenings

This weekend was a busy weekend, as is the norm here. Saturday we slept in but woke up just in time to meet Christi's parents at Chickfila right as breakfast was ending. After that we went home and did some work around the house. I cleaned the gutters and blew some leaves away from the house while Christi did some cleaning and laundry inside.


Later, Sappoo and Laverne came over to the house because they wanted to see the bar that we had built. They ended up staying for a while and we got a chance to sit and talk with them about a lot of things and basically just had a good time. We also showed them the Wii since they wanted to see how it worked and ended up getting them to play Wii bowling. By the end of it they were both really good. Sappoo bowled a 165 and Laverne ended up with a 148. Pretty good for first time bowling, much less first time ever using the Wii! I'm trying to talk them into getting one :)


Saturday evening Christi and I went over to her parent's house to see their bathroom they had just finished remolding. It looks really good. Christi and her mom ended up going shopping while Mike and I stayed at home and watched TV. Her dad and I went to Fresh Market to buy some hamburgers to cook on the grill that evening, which turned out great. They were some delicious burgers. For the rest of the night we hung out at their place and watched some movies.


Sunday we went to church with Jessica and Jody. It was a good message that focused on being responsible with your finances. After church we went out to eat with them and talked about a lot of things over lunch. We decided that we might go golfing later that afternoon. Christi had to go make some copies for school real quickly, so we went to her parents house for her to do that. We stayed there for a few hours and had fun with her parents while the copies were running.


After we were done at her parents house we met Jessica and Jody at the golfcourse. We had a great time playing golf, but only could play 9 holes since we were going to watch a movie at church that night. We still had a lot of fun. I enjoyed being able to play again. I didn't play as well as normal (shot 49) but overall I was happy since it was my first time on that course and I haven't played in a few months. Really, I wasn't too upset. It was a lot of fun and the best part was being able to enjoy the afternoon racing golf carts and laughing at each other when we made bad shots.


When we got done playing golf we hurried over to the church to watch the movie "Fireproof." The movie turned out to be much better than expected and was actually quite good. It starts Kirk Cameron and is about a couple whose marriage is going through tough times and the dynamics of everything that results from that. I won't go into a lot of detail, but I thought it was probably the best portrayl of how things really are than in any movie that I remember watching. It was good. Some of the acting is pretty bad and you can tell it's not a big budget film, but the message is really good and the raw emotion really makes the movie. I highly recommend any couple, no matter how things are going, to watch the movie. It was good.


After the movie we ate some finger foods at church. Well, mainly dessert since by the time we made it through the line all of the "dinner" foods had basically been eaten and all that was left was an enormous amount of dessert. I was hungry so I got a lot of it and Christi got mad because I "embarrassed" her by "piling my plate up." I will admit one side was slightly piled, but that was because half of my plate was covered in cheese dip and everyone knows you can't put dessert in that section, so I had to stack my donuts on top of my brownies and other goodies. It's just how you have to do things. It didn't matter because I ate all of my food so there wasn't any waste.


That pretty much sums up our weekend. As usual it was packed with a lot of things. We are really enjoying being able to hang out with family in friends while still being able to go home and get some things done when we need to.


That's it for tonight. Time for me to go back into the living room and watch some TV with the wifey.

Zombies!!!

I saw this and couldn't resist posting it. I think it's hilarious.





Watch out for zombies! You can only stop them by shooting them in the head. Always be prepared.

Prayers

Please send your prayers out to Christi's family. Her cousin, Patty, passed away earlier this week and the funeral was this afternoon. She had some previous medical problems, but this was unexpected. Her family is definitely very sad and grieving. If you could say a quick prayer to help ease their pain, it would be appreciated. Thank you.

Health Update

Thanks everyone for the kinds words, texts, calls, etc. I am feeling much better today. Thursday and Friday were the worst days, but I got progressively better throughout the weekend. I was able to go to work today and felt fine, besides my nose that never seems to quit running.


That's about it for tonight. I'm going to watch the Big Bang Theory in the other room.