bright eyed

this guy is the cutest!  he was happy to have us home last night at a reasonable hour after work.  it was a nice treat to be able to see him for more than just a few minutes!  i just can't resist his gorgeous eyes!

love, laurie

peach music festival '19

this past week and weekend ryan and i both worked the peach music festival.  we sure packed a lot of hours into the last several days.  the shifts were long, and the temperatures were hot, so we both now feel like jello.  it was a lot, especially having this festival back-to-back with camp bisco.

just like camp bisco, the peach fest is a huge music festival with numerous acts performing on multiple stages at once.  the whole thing takes place on the same ski resort / water park mountain, and concert attendees camp out on the ski slopes and have free range of the festival so they wonder around for days listening to the music on the different stages while riding the water park rides.

this is our third year working these crazy festivals, so we knew that we would be there for extremely long hours.  before the festival, i bought us new camp chairs with footrests as an early anniversary present to ourselves.  they were a god sent, and we got some good use out of those new chairs between set changes!  it was so nice to be able to prop our very swollen legs and feet up between bands in order to give them a rest.

a few pictures of the course of many days at the water park stage . . .

love, laurie

his new favorite spot to hang out . . .

i wasn't kidding when i said this is leko's new favorite place to hang out!  what a cutie, he sure loves the bottom of this old basket chair!

love, laurie

hello, hydrangea!

we bought this crazy hydrangea plant at a local k-mart store several years ago for the low-low price of 73 cents.  it has grown like crazy over the years and it's now a huge plant with gorgeous leaves, however, it rarely ever produces flowers.  this week i saw a flower on it and had to snap a picture to document it!  hello, hydrangea!!!

love, laurie

i spy . . .

i was in the bathroom and ryan was in our upstairs hallway talking to me.  he peaked around the corner into our office and saw leko on the floor passed out among his toys.  i asked if leko was sleeping and ryan picked up his phone to take a picture for me to see.  when we looked at the picture we had to laugh because leko opened his eyes just enough to see what we were doing.  that guy doesn't miss a trick (just like his mama)!  i know this picture is blurry, but it's just too good not to share.

have a great weekend!
love, laurie

another show . . .

in the midst of all of the camp bisco craziness this weekend, on friday i had to break away from the mountain to come back down to the theatre for a kids' musical theatre revue show.  about 25 local students from kindergarten through 4th grade participated in a performing arts day-camp over the past two weeks.  on friday, they performed what they learned on our stage.  the show was cute!  it was called "groovin' with games" and featured songs about board games . . . they sang "the candyman" for candyland, "let's twist again" for twister, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" for scrabble, "shake rattle and roll" for yahtzee, "jailhouse rock" for monopoly, and several others.  i didn't get many photos, but i did manage to snap a few because the set was so cute.

love, laurie

camp bisco '19

this past week and weekend, ryan and i both worked camp bisco.  we worked the stage build, load in, entire show run, and load out . . .  all from tuesday night through sunday morning.  camp bisco is a huge music festival with numerous acts performing on multiple stages at once.  the whole thing takes place on the side of a mountain at a local ski resort / water park.  concert attendees camp out on the ski slopes and have free range of the festival so they wonder around for days listening to the music on the different stages while riding the waterpark rides.

this was my third year and ryan's second year working camp bisco (here are some pictures from 2017 and 2018).  the absolute only thing that makes this crazy event worth working is getting to work with ryan.  we both requested the wave pool stage again since that's our favorite stage to work for these festivals.

the hours are insane, the work is hard, and the crowd is nuts.  somehow we (barely) survived, although i'm pretty sure each of us had moderate heat stroke by the end of it.  we're beyond exhausted and feel like zombies.  we're hoping to come back to somewhat normal over the next few days before we start this whole process over again later this week for the next festival.  ahhhh!

a few pictures of the course of many days at the water park stage . . .

love, laurie

hidden in plain sight

last weekend i was sitting on the couch for a few minutes watching tv.  i was wondering where leko got to because he is usually glued to my side.  i glanced down and saw him under the basket chair that we have in our living room.  the circular base of the chair is the perfect size for him.  he was so cute in there that i had to text these two pictures to ryan while he was at work.  this is now his new favorite spot in the house!

what a cutie!

love, laurie

it's summer concert season!

summer concert season is in full swing.  we've already had three summer concerts at the outdoor concert pavilion where we work.  we don't get many pictures when we're working, but here are a few.  we didn't manage to snap any at the third eye blind show.

this week/weekend is the first of two multi-day festivals.  these festivals are not our favorite things to work because they are many days long and the hours are absolutely insane.  (last year one of our shifts was 39 straight hours!!!)  fingers crossed that we survive the next few days.

have a great weekend!

(and wish us luck!)

love, laurie

two date nights in a row!!

sometimes it's hard for us to find free time to carve out of our schedules for any type of date night.  last week we lucked out with not one, but two date nights in a row!  on tuesday night last week we took our bikes out on our favorite local trail for a ride and then went to the movies to see toy story 4.  it was discount movie night at the theatre which meant our tickets were only $5 each!

the following night, we went out to see aladdin and used a gift card for the movie theatre that someone gave us months ago as a christmas present.  after the movie, we used another gift card to grab burgers at red robin.

talk about cheap dates!

it was so nice to be able to get out and do something fun!  (and the air conditioning in the movies was great since it was so hot outside!

love, laurie

a very rare occurrence

i've mentioned before that leko very much loves a small pink plastic ball that we have.  it's his favorite toy and he plays with it every day by hunting it and "killing it" before delivering it to us (kind of like a dead bird or mouse).  when we're not home, he dunks it in his water bowl which we keep in the bathroom for him.

when we came home on saturday after the garden tour, we found both pink ball and its friend green ball in the water bowl!!!

this was a surprise because this has only ever happened once or twice before (once for sure)!  we're not sure what the special occasion was that made him dunk both balls, but we sure thanked him for it!  what a cutie!!!

love, laurie

a summer flower show and garden tour

over the weekend my parents and i went to a local garden club's flower show followed by a neighborhood garden tour.  it was a gorgeous day with great weather which made for a perfect day for a garden tour.  i took a ton of photos of all the flowers.  above are a handful of them from our day.

love, laurie

a video of our norwegian escape cruise to bermuda

to conclude our bermuda cruise posts, here is a video of clips from our trip.  we had such a great time on our cruise.  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 "good to be alive" by andy grammar which is a song that the norwegian cruise line uses often.)

love, laurie

you can see more photos from our cruise to bermuda here, here, here, here, and here

norwegian escape cruise to bermuda - part 5

we ventured out on our own to the beaches and the city of hamilton during our first two days in bermuda.  for our third day we decided to book an excursion through our cruise ship to make sure that we would get back in time before the ship set sail.  

we took a glass-bottom boat from the docks about 6 miles out off the coast of bermuda to the site to two shipwrecks.  out there we got to snorkel around the wrecks and check out the remains of the ships along with all of the beautiful coral reefs and the fish that call the reefs home.  after an hour of snorkeling the shipwrecks, we got back on the boat and went to a second location to snorkel a different section of coral reefs.  the second location was even better than the first!  the clear water allowed us to see all of the fish and reefs.  it was really awesome and i felt like i was in the little mermaid movie!

our boat returned us back to our ship at the dock in time before our ship set sail.  i'm so glad we decided to do this excursion because it was such a great experience!  (thank goodness for a waterproof camera for this excursion!!!)

love, laurie

you can see more photos from our cruise to bermuda here, here, here, and here