Vancouver Day 1

Hello friends!  This is the start of our vacation recap, I won't do a post for each day (that would take way too long), but I do believe certain days deserve their own post.... especially the first one/two.

We left for the airport on Friday the 19th, for our flight at 5pm, getting there with plenty of time to doodle around, get iced coffee and what not. Two hours into our plane ride, all the flight attendants, started running up and down the aisles saying, " we need to collect all of the beverages and food we just gave out".  When I say running I literally mean running.  I don't know about you but I personally do not like to see flight attendants in a panic when we are thousands of feet in the air.

The captain comes on the speaker and says, " Sorry folks but we need to make an emergency landing in Charlotte, NC, it seems that some of the hydraulic systems on the plane are not working correctly"... 

Me- Excuse me, did you say emergency landing?!?!?! Oy! *panic sets in*

Captain- " It should be a pretty normal landing, but you will see lots of emergency vehicles around the plane, but there is nothing to fear, that is a precautionary measure." 

Me- *still panicking*

The captain wasn't lying tho, I don't know if he was just really good at what he does, or if it really wasn't that big of an issue, but the landing was relatively normal.  He did have to apply the breaks a little more intensely than I would have liked but we landed safely and I could not wait to get off the plane.

Obviously we had a major problem, you see, we were on our way to Phoenix to catch a connecting flight to Vancouver... we obviously were not going to make that flight.  After getting off the plane we ran to the ticking counter to see how we were going to get to Vancouver.  The lady at the ticketing counter told us the next flight out to Phoenix was not until 9am the next morning, then we would be able to get on a flight to Vancouver at 8pm... No thanks, please keep looking....

She ended up finding us a flight to Toronto, where we would stay the night at a hotel, and fly out the next morning. Cool we will take that one thanks!  I asked the lady at the counter if we had to pick up our bags when we got to Toronto or if they would just go straight to Vancouver and she told me we didn't have to worry about the bags, awesome!

*huh I thought we were going to Vancouver*

Well we got into Toronto around Midnight, and I suggested we go to the baggage claim to make sure our bags were on their way to Vancouver and not sitting there waiting... sure enough there they were, good thing I didn't listen to her...  It took the Toronto US airways lady about 2 hours to get us a hotel voucher, and by then it was already 2am and we had to be back at the airport at 6.... In hindsight we probably should have just slept at the airport, but we went to the hotel anyway and got a couple of hours of sleep before heading back to the airport.

oh wait, but not before another fiasco, you see the shuttle from the hotel to the airport ran every 30 minutes, and when we got down to the lobby to get to the shuttle it was already full of pilots and flight attendants....AHHHH. We really thought we were going to miss our flight. Luckily I yelled at a few people, ( do not mess with me after only 3 hours of sleep, and an emergency landing), and we hopped into two taxis and made our flight!

*finally*

We picked up our car and headed over to the apartment we were staying in, in downtown Vancouver.  It was a really nice day in Vancouver.

Pretty blue skies, and some cool buildings along the way.

We settled into our apartment, and headed over the Lion's Gate Bridge

to have some lunch:

The kabobs were pretty good here, not as delish as my mom's cooking but not bad for a restaurant.

After lunch we headed over to a shopping center that was having a really cool antique car show:

and grabbed a few food items at the Whole Foods, while gazing at the pretty flowers.

before heading to a family's friends house for the evening.  A lot of people in West Vancouver live on a hilltop with amazing views of the city:

We took advantage of the nice day and the pretty views..

It was a very hectic start to our vacation, but now that we have been through it we can laugh about it!

Alright that is all for today, more tomorrow!

Doctor says...

I had my second doctor's appointment today for the torn labrum in my shoulder and after 5 weeks of physical therapy, the doctor asked me if I was getting better (slightly), and if I could live with the pain I have now.. to which I replied absolutely not.

So I am currently scheduled for an MRI with Arthrography next Tuesday.  I'm not gonna lie, I'm not really too excited about this procedure.  I don't consider myself claustrophobic, but I feel like being in a scary metal tube for 30 minutes could change that. The are going to inject a contrast medium into the joint ( I feel like that is going to hurt), apparently my doctor said that they were going to be able to get a lot of fluid in my shoulder because there is a lot of empty space? (say what?) I don't have any idea what that means, but I'll go with it. 

Good news is that, if I do have to have surgery the recovery time is only 4 months.  And I have a feeling that is full recovery, which means I will (hopefully) be able to run my 10k in October, Woot (this is me not getting my hopes up), and go snowboarding this winter. 

I will have more updates on that when I know more, next week.

For the next few days I will recap our Vancouver vacation, so stay tuned :)

Happy 2nd wedding Anniversary to us!

Hello friends!

We have been on vacation in Vancouver for the past 10 days!

I am very behind on my blogging and commenting I promise I will catch up.

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary!!!! We spent the entire day on a plane but we were together :)

We had a great vacation and over the next few days I will share our vacation with you all.

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning for my shoulder so we will see what happens. Wish me luck!

My first Digital SLR camera!

Hello friends!

We finally bit the bullet and bought our family a nice camera!  So of course all we did last night was take pictures of random things around the house:

 My sister and her car... silly

 me and the new camera!

 My sister

 The Love Knot ring I got my mom and sister for my dad's anniversary

 I don't know if you can really take a nice picture of a Taco Bell Burrito

 But I tried... and failed...

 These are funny

 Me too hot sauce.. me too.. well and my legs

 She is even cuter in 12.2 MP!

 Bat Dog!

Good Night!

Back to London

My cousins left today :(.

It is always bittersweet when family comes to visit because you know eventually they will have to go back.  When Ava or Farid stop being lazy and post pictures on facebook, I will put them up here. But for now here a few, they might be repeats:

Yup they are in the middle of Dicks sporting goods, playing baseball, totally normal.

Parsa wanted to play in the fountain, also normal.

We will miss them, but we miiigghhttt be going to London in December or January (maybe), we have to see how much tickets are, and if we can get that time off of work. Or maybe we will just make them come back here!

I am still trying to kick this summer cold, so I had some Tomato and Basil Bisque for lunch today:

I didn't have much of an appetite (weird I know), so most of this ended up down the sink (I hate wasting food).  I just wasn't feeling it.  However, when I got home from work I had

 a cupcake from Lincoln and Tatum's birthday party.. It was calling to me, chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting AND my lucky number on it, I couldn't say no.  It was amazing.

For dinner, I made Trader Joe's Orange Chicken with potstickers. YUM.  Afterwards, my wonderful hubby and I watched Eat Pray Love.  I had already read the book a while back and wanted to see how they interpreted it into a movie.  Not too bad, I still obviously like the book better, but it was a cute movie.  The book developed Liz's character better, and featured a lot more of her "inner voice".  Something that I don't think movies will ever be able to portray correctly.  I highly recommend the book, and if you want a cutesy movie, you should watch the movie too.

Alright well I am off to enjoy my Nyquil induced sleep! Here's to hoping my cold goes away soon! Cheers!

Weekend recap

Hello friends!

Sorry I am a bit behind on my blogging, with my family being in town the weekends are usually jam packed so I don't have any time to blog. After staying up until 2am Friday night, it was really hard for us to get up Saturday morning but we did. We were up by 8am, a quick shower, then headed off to my mom's house so my cousins and sister could get their stuff ready to go to the waterpark.

My best friend Jamie from my old job was having a birthday party for her two kids and we were all really excited to go.  We arrived at the park and realized that the water park area was meant for little kids, so my family decided to play a game of mini golf, while I hung out and chatted with Jamie and her family.  It was so great to catch up with her, we don't get to see each other anymore because we live so far apart :(, but we have been and will continue to make an effort to hang out with each other more.

Jamie ordered a super cute cupcake cake for her kids:

and the cupcakes were really good!  We sang happy birthday and gave them presents before the huge storm rolled in.

Later that night, we headed back to Ultra Zone and played Laser tag from 8pm to around midnight.  There were some pretty interesting characters at the laser tag place. And by interesting I mean, there were a group of 30something year old guys there who were really (really) into laser tag, I have honestly never seen anything like it. After our 6th game we headed to Honey Pig!  We can't get enough of this place! Our table looked exactly the same as it did last time, loads of people and loads of food.

Sunday we spent most of the day at the mall. My sister and I both needed to get new shoes for our cousin's wedding and Farid needed to get a suit.

and while we were shopping for shoes the boys hung out and chatted:

Oh ya, I totally forgot to mention Sunday morning before we headed over to my mom's house I went for a short run and it felt great!  It was only a mile, but I didn't want to push it.  I wanted to see how my shoulder would react to me running again.  It felt great, no pain at all!  I don't think I can take Ella out with me yet, but I will hopefully be able to go out and run again!

At the mall we had some delish Five Guys for "lunch" (at 4pm), so when we got back to my mom's house we just hung out and watched Aladdin! Then headed home for the night.

I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose and a sore throat :( What a horrible way to start a Monday! I've been chugging these all day:

They are actually pretty good.  I hope the surge of Vitamin C will make this summer cold go away!  At work today they brought in some bagels, and since I had already eating breakfast I decided to save mine for lunch:

An everything bagel with veggie cream cheese, delish!

My cousins leave to go back to London tomorrow, so we all went out to Moby Dick for dinner. The kabobs here are pretty good, obviously nothing like my mom makes them at home but good for a "fast food" place.  I say fast food, because you order your meal at the counter and they call your number to pick it up, aka no waiters.

Alright I am beat, I am going to go to bed and try and fight off this cold! Have a great night!