New Glasses!

So, Jake's been Jones'n some new glasses for the past few months with good reason as he hadn't had his prescription updated for the past few years.  I can't decide which Jake I like best:

Urban, Thrifty, Grunge Jake

or

Sophisticated Jake

Truth to be told, I like Jake no mater what glasses he's wearing.

It's Time

So, I thought that it was time that I move on from my last sad blog post and prove that Jake and I have been up to stuff.  The week before Labor Day was rough for us...probably because it was be beginning of school and work is dang busy since we've had another employee quit lately, so I planned a little camping adventure for us over Labor Day weekend to Allegany State Park.  Sadly...this is the only picture we got while we were there even though the park itself is beautiful.

If you are curious about what the heck this is, I'll tell you.  It's a pic of the abandoned mini golf course at the state park.  It was too creepy to pass up.  Buffalo is full of oddities that I will one day document in full.

I'm Sad

So, I'm sad, real sad.  It's been busy and stressful lately for both Jake and I and to top it off Jake's computer had a freak out and.  He was able to send it in and get it fixed-no charge, but the sad thing is is that all of our pictures from our first 2 years as a married couple were stored on the computer's hard drive.  We have talked in the past many times about how it would be a good idea to save all of our pictures to CD's...just in case, but more often than not, I don't take proactive against disaster until I have already learned my lesson.  Lesson learned...

Overdo Post-Trip to Utah

So, I am so behind in my posting.  By looking at my post it appears like we didn't have a summer at all.  Summer went by so fast and now that Jake is back is school it sure feels like it!  However, we DID have a summer and we went to Utah for part of it.  Here is what the Utah trip consisted of:

The Utah Mountains.  Man, I miss those.

 

An early morning race.  Cole and Mandi look about as excited as I felt that morning.

 Two parades

 

 Miss Mckena Time

Miss Lucy time

 Fancy Food, thanks to our gracious hosts, Scott and Lindsey

And more good food with the people we love.

It's always a treat to be with family again..excuse the pun, I couldn't resist. There was a boating trip and a trip with my fam to my aunt and uncle's cabin in there too...I'm not quite sure why we don't have pictures of those.

*Warning* This is going to be a long post

So...the summer just seems to have past us by.  There has been so much going on that I really haven't taken the time to update the blog about it, but now Jake is at a Super Saturday and I am alone on a Saturday night, so...it's time.  Rather than give a play by play of our summer pre Utah trip I will tell the story in pictures and some captions...starting...NOW!

We kicked off the summer by pulling our grill out...for a day.

 Mandi happened to be in Niagara Falls for a night as part of a school project.

 My sweet husband knows how much I love colored glass, so he surprised me with a trip to the Corning Glass Museum. 

 There was some cool stuff made of glass there...

 AND I got to make my own glass, which really just consisted of blowing into a tube, but it was still super cool.

 We went on a day trip to Bennet Beach in South Buffalo, which consisted of sitting on the sand with a ton of other people and watching this guy... It was a great time.

 Went to the Greek fest, which consisted of navigating through this crowd of people to get our hands on some really great food.

 On a Friday night when we had absolutely no plans we went to a Buffalo Bills game.  It turned out to be the right thing to do because we were handed some free extra tickets and it happened to be Star Wars night.  Oh yeah!

 We went to the Allentown Art Festival again this summer.  It consisted of navigating through this crowd to look at some local art...

And to watch this guy...

 And to see this...

 And this...

And to attempt some artistic shots of the back alleyways of Buffalo.  I have to say that the city is growing on me more and more all the time.

More to come of our trip to Utah

A Guest and Recent Events

So, we've had a guest in town for the last couple of days.  Jake's dad had a conference in NYC and then met with a client in Buffalo before heading back to Utah and we were fortunate enough to hang out for a couple of days.  The first night he was in town we went to dinner at a great BBQ joint Jake and I discovered downtown.  I had planned to do a traditional Easter dinner on Sunday, but the only size of ham I could find was a good 7 pounds+, so I decided to do our big dinner last night and share it with Tom.  It's always fun to cook for a guest.  It was great having you in town Tom!

 While Tom was in Town we played a little Mexican Train.  We got to be creative in the making of our trains due to the intimate size of our table.

At the end of the first round Jake was the proud owner of the 50 piece-as this was the very last tile to draw. 

In other news, I made my first pot roast for Sunday dinner a few weeks ago, 

and Jake had a birthday which we celebrate by stuffing our faces at the casino buffet in Niagara Falls in Canada.  Are we getting old before our time???

And here is Jake with his shiny new slackline courtesy of his thoughtful wife ;-)

San Diego in Chronilogical Order

So, Jake and I were fortunate enough to go to San Diego for a couple of days over spring break in order for him to present some of his research he did in association with IADR.  It was so nice to get out of the Buffalo weather for a couple of days and sadly...now that we are back, San Diego already feels like a long lost dream.  The whole time we were there all I could keep saying is that people actually live like this!  It is an unbelievable place and so beautiful.  Anyway, I posted some pics of our trip in chronological order.

The second day we were in town we drove to La Jolla.  Here is Jake getting friendly with the seals.

 A cute mama and her pup.

 The waves were really high the time of day that we were there and kept breaking over the pathway I remembered walking on on my previous trip to San Diego.

 Apparently this is the king sea lion.

 Smash Burger!  No need to say more.

 La Jolla Shores

 I don't know if you can tell but I am SO happy to be there!

 I had to take this picture because I thought these were one-legged birds. I thought it was a terrible thing that so many of them could have lost a leg, but on closer inspection we discovered that they stand on only one leg.  The oddities of nature...

 Consequently, humans also do odd things.  Jake decided to take a picture of a group of a segway tour  mostly because they looked funny.

 Here is the old hotel on Coronado Island.  It's so pretty.

 Jake and Jake's poster at the conference.  I was so proud of him ;-).

 So, we met up with one of my good friends from High School that is now one of the lucky people to reside in the San Diego area and his wife and their cute baby.  Since our restaurant was not yet open, we went to dessert first.  Everything was covered in flowers and berries and looked too good to eat...but when it came down to it...we didn't really have a problem with it.

 This area of town is real big on putting plants on your food.  I think this is Rosemary coming out of our monumental portion of a meatloaf sandwich.  Who ever thought I would eat meatloaf on a sandwich or that I would LOVE devouring it?

 So, sadly...one thing that Buf doesn't have is frozen yogurt, so anytime I go to a place that has it it's been much a necessity to get some.

...And...after the the close of our trip Jake couldn't resist documenting our greyhound bus ride home for the last 3 hour stretch to Buffalo.  It's a long story, but after over 16 hours of traveling at 6 in the morning we finally made it home so that Jake wouldn't miss his test that day.