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Friday, June 28, 2019

who writes these quizzes?


buzzfeed quizzes crack me up.  i have no idea who comes up with these things, but some of them are entertaining.  can buzzfeed guess your personality trait based on what sandwiches you like?  it guessed "organized" for me and that's 100% accurate.

have a great weekend!
love, laurie

Thursday, June 27, 2019

national ice cream cake day


it's summer and that means it's the perfect time for ice cream.  we love homemade ice cream and homemade ice cream cakes!  today is national ice cream cake day, and i'm dreaming about the homemade carvel ice cream cake and the homemade peanut butter cup ice cream cake i made for ryan's birthdays.  yum!

love, laurie

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

apparently garlic is a kitty toy

we had garlic sitting on the kitchen counter and had to laugh when leko turned it into a kitty toy.  that guy sure keeps us on our toes!

love, laurie

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

paytime for kitties

we love visiting ryan's parents' cats.  they are super friendly, but they aren't always interested in playing.  the other day they had a great spurt of energy and played for a while with a few balls.  we joked that we had to document it since it was a rare occasion.  they sure are cute, and silly!  it sure is hard to photograph a moving target too!

love, laurie

Monday, June 24, 2019

hallelujah, spring dance recital season is over!!!


after three incredibly long months, spring dance recital season is finally over!!!  we had our last dance recital at the theatre on saturday and we couldn't be more thrilled.  we're excited to have a minute to rest now that this part of the year is over.

now onto summer outdoor concert season!

love, laurie

Friday, June 21, 2019

a little monday night dinner date

i met up with ryan on monday night after work because we had to run an errand together for work.  we were starving, and nowhere near home, so we decided to grab a bite for dinner.  we don't often eat at chain restaurants, but there happened to be a chili's restaurant where we were, and we don't have one of those near our house.

we made a little monday night dinner date out of it.  chili's had a special where you could get an appetizer, two entrees, and a dessert for $25.  we didn't think that was a bad deal at all considering all of the things we chose would have normally totaled $47.

here's the thing though, we thought the portions would be small since it was a 2-eat-for-1-price deal, but they were absolutely huge.  we each got fajitas (thank you, chili's for actually offering a decent vegetarian fajita option!!!) and we took home enough leftovers to feed us for two more meals!

it was a fun little outing and a ton of food!

love, laurie

Thursday, June 20, 2019

outside reiki


back in the winter, my parents gave me a gift certificate for a private reiki session with one of my former dance teachers.  it took me until june to get a chance to schedule it, but i was happy to get an appointment for last tuesday.  i took the day off work and took a drive down for the session.  it was so nice and peaceful, especially since the weather was gorgeous outside!

thanks mom and dad!

love, laurie

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

look ma, i'm driving a fork lift!


our jobs working in the theatre industry always keep us busy doing odd things.  last monday, we got a chance to take some fork lift training.  i'm happy to report that ryan and i both passed our written exam and our practical exam and now are certified to operate a fork lift!  i doubt we'll use it much, but at least we did it!

here are a few pictures we snapped during the training . . .


love, laurie

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

happy birthday!

happy birthday today to ryan's dad!

love, laurie

Monday, June 17, 2019

father's day!

this past week/weekend was another busy one with several dance shows in the theatre.  we had a show on sunday on father's day, but we were able to carve out a little bit of time in the afternoon before the show for lunch at our house with my parents to celebrate my papa!  we had grilled bbq pizza, tomato/cucumber salad, coleslaw, and fun mason jar parfaits for dessert.

we'll have to take a rain check to celebrate with ryan's dad since his parents weren't in town on sunday.

love, laurie

Friday, June 14, 2019

breakfast in bed . . . kitten style!

we stooped to a new low . . . we let this guy eat in bed the other morning in an effort to give us a few more minutes of sleep without him yelling at us. 

we're not above bribing our kitten to get a few more minutes of sleep . . . world's greatest parents over here for sure!

love, laurie

Thursday, June 13, 2019

finally!!!

ryan bought me this gerber daisy plant for valentine's day in february of 2016.  it had nice flowers on it when he gave it to me, but after those flowers died there has been nothing in that pot except for one lonely leaf for the past three years.  i was seriously considering throwing it away since it wasn't doing anything, but i continued to water it all of this time.  a few weeks ago, ryan put a bit of new soil in the pot and then much to our surprise new leaves and a flower popped up out of nowhere.  we couldn't believe it!

i'm enjoying seeing the bright pink flower on my window ledge at work now!

love, laurie

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

it's hunting season . . .

. . . birdie hunting and squirrel hunting through the living room window, that is!

love, laurie

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

celebrating national doughnut day . . . in bed!

friday was national doughnut day.  we stopped by krispy kreme on our way home in the evening and picked up two free doughnuts.  we got around to eating them the next day on saturday night (in bed)!  we tried the new key lime and pineapple and both were really good.  sounded like a good way to celebrate national doughnut day to us!

love, laurie

Monday, June 10, 2019

summer night date!

friday evening after work was a rare occasion when ryan and i both had nowhere to be and nothing to do!  we took advantage of our free time and loaded our bikes on the back of the car and hit the trail for a late afternoon bike ride after work.  biking over 10 miles made us hungry, so we stopped at a new-to-us restaurant on the way home for a little dinner date.  the weather was gorgeous so we were able to eat outside.  we shared shrimp tacos, a veggie burger, and parmesan/garlic fries.  it was such a nice little friday night summer date!

love, laurie

Friday, June 7, 2019

a video of our trip to walt disney world 2019



to conclude our walt disney world posts, here is a video of clips from our trip.  we only took short clips on our phones, but somehow we came home with over 1 hour of video!  it took me awhile, but i was able to cut it down to just the highlight reel (which is still nearly 9 minutes long!)

we had such a great time in disney.  i'm so glad we have all of these photos and videos to look back on to remember our trip.  (for those wondering, the music is selections from the magic kingdom hour-long entrance music loop.)

love, laurie

you can see more of our disney trip photos: herehereherehere, and here

Thursday, June 6, 2019

what we ate at walt disney world 2019

we had a really great time on our disney trip.  if you know us, you know that we can't go anywhere without taking pictures of food.  we had a lot of great things to eat while we were there (including this mickey pretzel that we got at the launching pad while we were waiting for the magic kingdom fireworks to start)!

while we were in disney, we often split meals when possible to save money and because portions were large.  here's an entire post dedicated to what we ate at disney . . .

when we went to disney two years ago, we didn't bother getting a disney resort mug because we were only there for three days.  since we were there longer for this trip we purchased one.  it has a chip in it which allows you to use it for the duration of your vacation.  it was much cheaper to purchase the mug with unlimited refills rather then buying ryan a coffee every morning.  we were able to use it for other drinks throughout the day and evening too.  it's also a cute souvenir.

we went to disney springs on the day we arrived since we landed in florida late in the evening.  we had burgers for dinner at planet hollywood (since ryan had never been to a planet hollywood before).  we didn't know that they served guy fieri burgers!  ryan had the bacon mac and cheese burger, and i had the veggie burger.

we love to visit sprinkles when we are in nyc.  we saw that there was a sprinkles at disney springs and we just happened to have a coupon on our sprinkles mobile app, so we picked up a dark chocolate banana cupcake to split at night for dessert.  it was so good!

in order to save some money and some calories, we packed almond milk and cheerios in our suitcase.  we ate that for breakfast several mornings, and then alternated with getting a few breakfasts to share from the pop century resort dining hall.  they were good about substituting extra eggs, potatoes, and waffles since we didn't want the meat that came on the platter.  you just have to have mickey waffles when in disney!

in epcot, we ate lunch in morocco at the tangierine cafe.  we split the vegetarian platter and it was great!  we are always fans of mediterranean food.

in the afternoon at epcot, we popped into l'artisan des glaces in france for an ice cream cone.  it was apple cinnamon and it was awesome!

instead of eating dinner in epcot, we had some free time so we hopped on the monorail and went to the grand floridian resort to grab sandwiches at gasparilla island grill.  we got the veggie panini and the fish reuben.  both were really good!

during our first day in the magic kingdom, we grabbed lunch at pecos bill tall tale inn and cafe.  we ate there during our last disney trip and remembered that the veggie fajita platter was huge.  there is an unlimited sides bar which has a crazy amount of fajita toppings too.  it was a lot of food to split for lunch!

we had dinner in the magic kingdom at the jungle navigation skipper canteen.  we shared the veggie curry tofu stew and the seafood stew.

on our way out of the magic kingdom, we stopped in the main street confectionery  we picked up this english toffee bar to eat back at our hotel  it might not have been the most attractive dessert, but it was delicious!

during our day at hollywood studios, we grabbed a quick lunch to split at catalina eddie's.  a personal size cheese pizza, which came with a little side caesar salad was just enough to hold us over.

we wanted to do a nicer sit-down dinner at hollywood studios, so we made reservations for the 50s prime time cafe.  the entire restaurant is themed like the inside of a 1950s house and the waitresses stay in character the whole time.  i had the veggie lasagna and ryan had a sampler platter of pot roast, meatloaf, and fried chicken.  we shared their signature peanut butter and jelly milkshake too.

later in the evening in hollywood studios, we stopped by woody's lunchbox in toy story land to grab a dessert and we took it with us and ate it while we were waiting for the night fireworks show to start.  we got one of their raspberry lunchbox tarts.  it was huge and tasted just like a linzer tart cookie!

for lunch on our second day in the magic kingdom, we were actually able to snag impossible-to-get reservations for be our guest.  the entire thing is themed like the beast's castle from beauty and the beast.  i had the veggie quiche which came with a salad, ryan hand the croque monsieur sandwich, we shared the potato leek soup (which was vegetarian!), and for dessert had the "grey stuff" cupcake which was great!

since we had a big lunch at be our guest during our second day in the magic kingdom, we shared a salmon dinner from columbia harbour house.  we ate there during our last disney trip and knew we really liked it.

during our day in animal kingdom, we shared the veggie tikka masala for lunch from yak and yeti local foods cafe. it didn't look like much, but it was good!

it was very hot and humid in animal kingdom and we needed to find some air conditioning for dinner so we ate at the rainforest cafe.  ryan had the chicken panini and i had the black bean burger.

for our last treat, we grabbed a dole whip at tamu tamu refreshments before the night show started at animal kingdom.  you can't visit disney without getting a dole whip!  ryan had been asking for one during our whole trip, so it was only fitting that we got one on our last day!

love, laurie

you can see more of our disney trip photos: here, here, here, here, and here