Date Nights

Adam and I are pretty good about trying to make sure we have a date night a week. Sometimes depending on our schedule it can get a little hectic, but we try to fit it in – even if it’s just watching a movie at home. Well, for a long time now we have been eyeing the XBox 360 at the store. When we went to NYC back in 2007, we spent a good amoutn of time playing Halo at my brother’s apartment – probably too much time. There was a specific night that I remember one time where we stayed up literally all night long playing James Bond on PS2 until we beat the game. Well, with all the rain keeping us indoors, we decided to go and get the XBox, and I definitley wasn’t dissappointed.

We beat Halo 3 on medium within the first weekend and got Call of Duty 4 which I have yet to master. I am not so good at the walking and turning my head at the same time – but I am learning. We had a blast playing it that rainy weekend, it was nice to do something fun and totally mindless since there was no point in going outside. There’s something fun about just sitting curled up on the couch playing XBox with my hubby – I love it.

On another note, we also made another purchase and that’s a GRILL!! Now I know those of you that have had these for awhile are like, so what, no biggy – it’s a grill. BUT, for those of you that have cooked on a stove or in an oven for 4+ years, you know exactly what I am talking about. It has changed our lives, we have cooked on it almost every single night since we bought it a couple weeks ago. It was relatively inexpensive, we bought it at Lowes, I definiltey recommend it. Adam has done all the grilling thus far and it tastes awesome, I think everything tastes better on the grill:

Adam hard at work:

His creation, it was so stinking good (I should have gotten an after shot – this was before they got put on the grill):

That’s all the updates for now, have a great weekend!!

It’s Really Official

Ok so I know there were some of you that doubted if I would ever get around to finishing the process, but I am now officially Mrs. Ashworth. I did the switch and changed my name, and the drivers license is coming too, it’s in the mail after a horrendous visit to the DMV (but when isn’t it horrendous?) Here’s my proof:

I am very excited, I like my new name and the man that came with it

Book Ladies.

So tonight is the very first meeting of our book club. I’m not sure if it’s a real book club in the since of we get together and talk about the deep theories of each book, but more of a book swap. We are all choosing books none of the other people have read, and then each month we will meet up and switch books. Definite upside of this is 4 books for the price of 1, which I guess you could technically get if you belonged to the library, but that’s no fun. So maybe this is another excuse for us girls to get together, talk, drink wine and have fun together. So far the group is Erika, Tonya, Stacey, myself and Jess – I am pretty excited about it. I feel like we need to come up with some chic/clever name for our club. Haha! I just remember those books “The Babysitters Club” from like 4th grade, I guess because it had the name “club” in it, I digress. Back on topic. So anyways, we will see how this goes, I am hoping that it is super fun and gets us all to read books we wouldn’t normally pick off the bookshelf, the majority of us are pretty avid readers, but I know that I definitley get stuck in a rut. So I’m working on my book list of the books I would like to read right now. It’s interesting because everyone will read the book I pick – so too bad I already read my 900 page novel on the history of Rome, I sure everyone would have loved me for that. Anyways, I got to get back to my list before we meet tonight, I’m so excited!!

Vegas

Well I can’t find the darn cable to my camera, but as soon as I do I will add picture to my post. Ok, a few weeks ago I had to go to Vegas for some work, and Adam and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to take an extended weekend. And we had a blast.

The work part of the trip went great, it was a conference of sorts and I had to make a couple presentations. Adam helped me with this game that I had to create and it was a hit, such a hit in fact that my boss’ boss told me to go and have a dinner with my hubby on him! So Adam arrived Thursday night and we ate a dinner in the canal shops at the Venetian where we were staying. That night I ventured out onto the strip for the very first time. I have never been to Vegas, and it felt right to experience it the for the first time with Adam – I hope we have many more of those firsts in our lifetime. Anyways, we wandered down the strip, saw some lots of things – some very disturbing and sad, others hilarious and absolutely ridiculous, and some incredible. I had to wake up and wrap up the work portion of the trip on Friday morning so we headed in pretty early. Friday after I was done with work, we switched hotels to the Planet Hollywood – this was definiltey more our style. Very chic and modern, and we got upgraded to a room at the top that looked over the Bellagio fountains. We made reservations to Nora’s (a little Italian joint off the strip that Adam has been talking about since we started dating) and then we headed off back down the strip. We didn’t have any plans – so we wove in and out of the people and ended up the MGM. We hadn’t gambled too much up until that point, and as soon as we sat down at a 3 card poker table, Adam got a straight flush – and that paid for our trip right there. We played a little more and won some more money and decided we should go back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. Stopped at a 3 card poker table at our hotel along the way and won even more money. We felt like little kids in a candy store counting the money on our bed, it really wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things – but it was to us, so we put almost everything in the safe and headed down to go on our ‘free’ dinner that my boss agreed to cover – which made it that much better. We grabbed a cab and left the strip and headed into the actual town of Vegas – which was so fun. The dinner was amazing – as Adam promised it would be. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and walked around some more – there really is so much to see. And we got to watch the Bellagio fountains from our window – which was AMAZING from so high and with all the lights. Saturady we didn’t have any plans – we checked into some shows, way too expensive – and then my cousin Jenny called to say she was in town. Since I was sort of getting tired of the strip we decided to rent a car at the airport – and we got another upgrade. However, let me preface the upgrade by saying maybe it was an upgrade for an older, by older meaning 65+, adults. That’s right we got the big ole Crown Victoria, baby blue. I could not stop laughing once I realized which car was ours. On the upside it did have a lot of room and drove really smooth, but what else do you expect from something that’s the size of a boat. We picked Jenny up and headed to grab some lunch, deciding on the very fabulous In And Out. Great lunch. After that we drove around the town for long while, Adam showing us all the sights after he got his footing in the city, we got lost for a little bit It came time for us to drop off Jenny at her hotel with her friend and we headed back to ours. We decided we had enough of being on the strip and decided to eat at another favorite spot of Adam’s, Bahama Breeze. Not really wanting to head to Freemont Street just yet, we drove towards the mountain and up on the side of it and looked over the city. And it was amazing – pics coming soon. My camera didn’t do the view justice, it was so cool to look out over the city. We drove around for a little more and decided to call it a night – we are getting so old. And woke up early in the morning and headed to the airport. It was a great trip and even more great because by the time we left we won enough to pay for the trip plus some, which is always an added bonus

Corporate Buzzword Annoyance

Ok, so you know how everyonce in awhile these words/phrases come into the workplace and everyone says them?? Here are a few you might hear or (gasp!) even have used: “

-transparancy
-30,000 foot view (i’ve used this one)
-organizational effectiveness
-reinvent the wheel
-plus/delta

Anyways, you get the point. Well, the newest one to hit the meeting rooms have been the, “Aha Moment.” For those of you who have not heard this phrase, I will use it in a sentence for you.

Manager to Me: “While we are rapping up our plus/delta, Lindsey did you have any aha moments while working on this last project?”
(This was a real example from a current meeting)

It’s easy enough to deduce the meaning of the phrase when used, but I just thought to myself, why on earth did you have to say it like that? Couldn’t you have just said – “Lindsey did anything really stick out at you while you were working through this last project that you think we could do differently next time around?” And then after that meeting I started hearing it everywhere. And the more I pay attention, the more I hear people using the buzzwords, everywhere – and I am definitley guilty of using them myself. So my new resolution – no more buzzwords, unless I think they’re really cool.

I think I might be in trouble…

So, I don’t know if you guys have been watching TV lately, but there seem to be more and more infomercials out there, and some of them look pretty tempting if I do say so myself. And I can fully see myself at the age of 65 wanting to buy everything that I see on tv – heck there are some that I want to buy now – but am a little afraid to admit to. But I figure that’s what a blog is for right? To talk and admit those things that I normally wouldn’t cover if we sat down and had a 15 minuite conversation together. If I ever just got a bunch of money lying around – I might just do “Lindsey’s Infomercial Review.” But for now since I don’t, I will share with you some of the items “As Seen on TV” that I secretly kind of want to buy….

1. The Snuggie – It looks a little bit like monk-wear but the idea is genious! I drive Adam crazy trying to seal all the ‘airpockets’ that come in through blankets that aren’t correctly covering every inch of my body. And I hate it when the remote doesn’t work through the blanket I have on. (can you tell I am cold all the time) Anyways, here’s a picture of them, I think I could defintiley benefit from a snuggie.

2. Bumpits – so these niftly little things help you style your hair, and they have all different sizes, which is perfect since I don’t have a ton of hair to bump up. I’m not exactly sure how these would look, but I really want to try.

3. Silky Smooth Buffer – Apparently it’s all the rage in Europe. It’s this little buffer pad that your rub over your legs and it gets rid of the hair (not forever) and is an alternative to shaving. Now there is 90% of me that fully suspects this thing is nothing more than a glorified nail file that will make my skin as dry and scratch as literallly running a nail file over my legs, but I still want to try.

I’ll stop there for now as to not embaress myself any further. But I think I really might be in trouble in my older years – the older woman who buys everything she sees on tv.

8 hours of a day?

So I am totally stealing this blog topic from another blog – but it’s ok since I’ve been in somewhat of a blogging slump lately. Back to the topic – 24 hours in a day:

-8 are spent sleeping (or should be)
-8 are spent at work (assuming you work)
-what about the other 8 hours?

It seems like a lot of people that I have been talking to lately are all dealing with wanting to be productive and disciplined in multiple areas of their life. And if you really look at it, there are only 8 hours of the day that you have to be productive outside of working and eating, which isn’t too much. I started thinking about how I could best spend those 8 hours, and if I could have ‘the perfect day’ where everything went my way and I would hope that my day would look something like this with my ‘8 hours’:

-1 hour with the Lord in prayer and in His word
-1 hour on physical exercise
-1 hour working around the house, whether that be cleaning, cooking, etc
-2 hours in fellowship with others, especially my husband – eating, socializing, etc
-1 hour serving someone
-1 hour running errands (grocery store, bills, budget)
-1 hour to relax, read a book, take a power nap, play with Emme

Sad to say, that is definiltey not typically what my 8 hours outside of work and sleeping look like. I don’t know if that is neccessarily right, if my priorities are correct, but it’s so interesting to put it on paper and see how little time we have in this world, and no wonder time is just flying by. I looked down at my watch the other day and could not believe I have been married for over 5 months – where has the time gone? I pray that as I continue in this life and hopefully start a family, that my time is intentional, that I am serving others, that I am a good wife, and a good friend, and that I am honoring the Lord with my time and all that He has blessed me with. What about you? Where do you spend the 8 hours of your day?