PCH

A last minute thing came up on the 9th and I conned Nick into joining me. There was only one real downfall. We had to get up at 2:30 in the morning. We were able to volunteer for the ABC telethon for Phoenix Children's Hospital. Our shifts were 4:15-10:15. The good thing was that when we were done we got to go home for they day! It was interesting to sort of see all the behind the camera stuff for the news. Also, because it was so early, etc. but they want to make it look like calls are pouring in and we are busy we were "acting" alot and making our phones ring and pretending to answer them. I didn't find a clip where Nick and I were surprisingly interviewed....needless to say we were not expecting it.

You can sort of see the beauty queen? More on that....

What we were supposed to be doing...

What we did more

Big Red made a generous donation

Someone brought in IHOP. Nick and I were pretty sure these were the beauty queen's breakfasts.

One of the camera guys with sweet chops!

I've done this once before and I have loved it both times. I feel like it's such a worthwhile cause.

Trying

I am trying to keep up on my blog because I know if I don't things are going to get backed up quickly. So, here goes. First, this is random, but if I put it here then I will know where to find it again!

I made this the other day and I thought it was yummy! Paired with some brown rice :-)

Tour de Tempe

To cap off our crazy week we had the Tour de Tempe ride Sunday morning. We got out there early to register and get all our free stuff! Coffee, tea, banana, bagel, muffins!!!

I will say that this is a fun ride, but for some reason the fact that they advertised it as a 10 mile ride was perfectly fine with me. There ended up being 15 of us in our little group.

I know some of these people are in our group but I only recognize Mikel in the pink stripe on the left

Stephanie, John, and Brendon getting ready to ride

Ok, here you have Stephanie, Lynn, Mikel, Bart, and Lance

I had my Endomondo going but most the time when it talks to me I wouldn't hear it in time or didn't hear it at all. I started to feel like we were going further than 10 miles though.

This was our own little pit stop. You have Jane, Bart, Lynn, the two girls I don't know (Teri's peeps), Dave, Daphne, Brendon, Monica, and Lance

Got some pictures in. John, Mikel, Steph, Teri, and Bart

This was as we rode through the ASU campus. I also want to say that someone didn't plan this well. There was the festival of the arts going on down on Mill plus a triathlon on Tempe Town Lakes which we rode through all of them. I had to get a picture of this tree though because I thought it was so pretty.

I think Mikel was tired of riding too. This was on the way back and she sort of just took off!

So it ended up that the ride was more like 14 miles. My butt hurt and still does. However, when we got back by the car we saw this!

It's sort of hard to see, but it's actual LARPing!!! They were serious about it too. I had a good laugh over it. This was all that came to mind:

Alissa get your gun!

This past week was our gun safety class. So Wednesday and Thursday night I went to John's work for the class. There were about 24 of us. The bosses were really nice and brought in dinner for us and everything.

Saturday was our range time. We were split into two groups. He had us do several different exercises. We did a seated round, standing, one armed, timed, and so on. This was all with a .22 and went pretty well. Then we got into some 'races' with balloons. Then we had a sort of free for all with a variety of guns. Again we were provided with some chips, sandwiches, and cookies.

Teresa and Donna

John by one of his targets

Gene, Ken, and Donna checking out their handiwork

Adding new targets

Donna loading her magazine

One of me!

This was my untimed target

I love that revolver!

Some of the girls with their targets!

This video was really quick because I only got the last little bit on video. Gene and Ken had gotten new guns. I can't remember what they were but they blow your socks off a little when you fire it.

To finish out our Saturday we went out to Maricopa since John's parents were getting ready to head to Idaho. We went out to the casino for the seafood buffet. It's not cheap but we ended up getting a steal! If you sign up for their players card you get a free buffet, $10 per person, and we got a 12 pack of soda! So we had quite the haul.

Practice makes perfect?

So I've had a few ongoing things in my blog lately. This post is a quick update on a few of those items and maybe a few new ones. First to book end this post:

My ongoing run 100 miles before the cruise challenge. I'm not sure what day this was taken but I was pretty excited to be getting so close to the finish (I think the finish is going to be awesome. Stay tuned about another 12 days...). As you can see, there was some sabotage at work and my countdown.

Next, is that somewhere along the way I decided to want to shoot a gun, or carry a gun, or something. So we had gone that one time in February. Well....John's bosses decided they wanted to offer a gun safety course to employees and spouses. So we signed up! But once I realized there was a practical test, I thought I needed more practice. So the Saturday before Easter we went shooting that morning with Jim.

Not too bad for my second time!

We were also using Easter weekend to celebrate Bart's birthday. He wasn't cooperating and said he wanted a lazy boy and a movie. So we interpreted that to a trip to Ipic!! We went and saw The Host. I haven't read the book and I thought the movie was pretty good! But because we went so early we got to see this sunset when we left.

We also went to dinner at Portillo's. That might be somewhere we have to try again.

Nick posted a picture of Cailee from Easter and I thought it looked similar to a picture of me from back in the day. So I put the two together to see.

Last, I call this progress :-)

Poor Joey and poor John

About 3 weeks ago Joey had a bad day. He had to get his teeth cleaned. It was a long time coming and he needed it badly; he had butt breath. I took the day off because I had to take him and drop him off and I was worried about Edward being home alone....

So I took him to the vet and she cleaned his teeth and ended up having to pull 9 teeth. He is now the spokesperson for this company

Edward didn't like it so much when I left him to drop Joey off and run to the grocery store. So I took him with me when we picked Joey up. He thought this was a great idea.

The poor John part comes because probably 2 weeks ago John hurt his back. I don't know how. It could have been yard work, pouring concrete, working out, etc. So we let it go for a few weeks but it didn't really get better so he went to the doctor this past week. It is hopefully just muscular and we scored some muscle relaxants out of it.

Update

So I was updating mine and John's phone and so I found a few pictures that I wanted to add.

This was at the outlet stores in CA that we stopped at

This was John's mold. I think it turned out great.

My pumpkin

This was my mold. I like it but there isn't very much coloring

John's black and white flower. I questioned the colors originally but it turned out really great