The North-East and Ben Affleck

This is way behind but it's better late than never right??? So for our anniversary and for our quest to conquer all 50 states together we decided to take a North-East trip. We flew into Boston October 23rd for a four day weekend. It was short but WAY fun! There is so much to do up there we are for sure going to have to go back someday. Jason is a huge history buff and I think it's pretty cool too, so we saw a lot of historic stuff like Minute Man National Park, the USS Cassin & Museum and Old Iron Sides. We even drove down to Plymouth to see "THE" Plymouth Rock. But you don't think we went up to the North-East and just stayed in Massachusetts do you??? HEAVENS NO! We also drove into Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and of course Maine! We stopped at a couple of places in each state and saw what there was to see that close to the boarder. We went to an Armory in CT and it was pretty cool to see how the guns and rifles have evolved. Granted, I still don't quite understand how someone can come up with that kind of stuff, but it was still cool. OOH and did I mention the leaves??? Oh my goodness! I am a freak about autumn and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the colors of the leaves. I love trees. There is just something about them that is so mysterious. Just think of the things they have been able to see? I love how they can get to be so old and all the intricacies of how each branch is entwined with the other.... I KNOW, I'm a tree hugger (in a different way.)

So some other fun points are:

*Going to the Family Guy Corn Maize
*We saw the actual Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile driving down the road (it was awesome!)
*We tried to go the the site of the Boston Tea Party but "Aunt B" (aka, our GPS) got us lost to many times and with all the toll roads we were having to pay, we gave up.

Side Note---Jason and I are Family Guy addicts. This is one of our guilty pleasures. I know, it's crude but it is JUST SO DANG FUNNY! We actually saw a commercial about the corn maize and decided that we HAD to go. A corn maize is a corn maize and you really can't tell if it was Stewie and Brian that we were walking through, but it was still cool.

Another cool place we went to and it was totally appropriate for the time of year, was Salem, Mass.! Yep, where the Salem witch trials were. The town gets so into Halloween it was really cool. We drove there on Sunday and it was PACKED. So we decided that we'd come back on Monday. After seeing the town, I got really excited to go the next day. (So instead, on Sunday we drove up to Maine, saw a light house and had a Lobster lunch). So, Monday came and we went to the Museum and I was soooooooo disappointed! I mean, this was supposed to be real cool and have all this cool stuff about the trials and witches. NO. NO. You pay ten bucks per person and go into this room where they have scenes set up around the room, and mind you the mannequins looked like they were made in the 60's and the people who made them were high or on something else cause they were way old and out dated and looked like they were melting. So they just spotlighted the scene in the story from a recording that I swear was first made when recording was possible. It was way ghetto. After that, they took you in a "museum" that had pictures of witches from movies and all that and then at the end they had a little Wicca (today's witch religion) schpeal saying that, "If you meet a Wiccan you should stop and listen to what they have to say" UMMMMMMM. I'm gonna have to pass. Thanks though :/ WEIRD. Oh well. Now we can say that we have been there and DONE that and it's checked off the list.

Ok, so another cool history thing we saw was Bunker Hill. It's right in Boston and it's this way tall obelisk lookin' thing so that the soldiers could see way far away for when the enemies were coming to attack. Anyway, you can climb up to the top if you want. I mean it was ONLY 244 stairs up. What's the big deal, right?? HOLY SORENESS! The thighs felt like they were just going to melt right off my bones. I really didn't think 244 steps was that big of deal..... until I climbed them. It was actually pretty cool when you got up there. The view was awesome but you really could spend like 45 seconds up there and be done. But after climbing all those stairs, I wanted to make it worth it so we stayed at least 7 minutes or so. I think it was mainly so our legs wouldn't give out on the way down and make us tumble down 244 a stony, winding staircase. I was grateful for the break.

Here's a story in a story for ya..... While we were driving around the block, past all these really pretty and really old houses (which I absolutely love!) we saw a bunch of cameras and film canisters and trailers and all that junk. I was like, "Cool, they must be filming a movie here!" So before we took the exhausting trip up to the top of the obelisk, we asked one of the guides what they were filming. He was like, oh they've been here for a few months. They are filming a movie, The New Town, with Ben Affleck. COOL! Not that I'm a huge fan of Ben, but I thought it was pretty cool that I could possibly see a major movie star. It would be my first. So after we took the journey up the stairs we walked down where all the commotion was, and there he was. It was really weird actually..... He really is just a normal person. You always think it's gonna be this way cool thing to see someone so famous but it was just like, oh. There he is. Wow. Ok, take a few pictures just to document the occasion and lets go. It's not like he knows me or anything so he's not gonna come up and strike up a conversation. It was still cool and I did get a little giddy, if you will, just cause it was a famous person and I can say I saw him in person.

So there you have it. Our little weekend up in the North-East. It was short, but full of adventure and LOADS of fun. I love the fact that we will be able to tell our kids all the places we went together and all the cool things we've been able to see. So after this trip, we only had 9 more states to visit before we've gone to all 50!

'Til next time........

Thursday the 12th....

Thursday the 12th was far more evil than Friday the 13th this time around. The plans for Thursday were good and I was excited for the way it was Supposed go. I had to bid a new schedule at Skywest at 9:40 in the a.m. and Jason had to be into work at 8a.m. so I was just gonna drive with him and go into work to bid instead of calling. All was well until we hit bangerter and 4700 South..... This is when the TROUBLE started. We were just stopped at the stop light and when we started to go, the car wouldn't GO! The car was still turned on and the lights were functioning but it wouldn't accelerate. It would just putt along like how it does when you take your foot of the brake. So we turned off of Bangerter into this LIFE CHURCH and were just baffled. We tried going around the parking lot a couple of times and turning the car on and off and it didn't change anything. Luckily we have insurance that covers tows. So we called them and they said it was gonna be an hour until the tow truck would get there. Instead of just sitting in the car we took a walk over to Smith's and bought some cereal cause it was on a really good sale and then we went back and played UNO in the car til the guy came. At this point it was about 9:20 'ish and I was supposed to bid in 20 minutes! Of course I forgot my packet that had all the shifts available since I was just gonna go into work but now I obviously just had to call. We get to Pep Boys and they just run a diagnostic test and come back and say that it wasn't working at first but they just drove it around the parking lot a couple times and it seems to be working. So we go to Discover Card so Jason can check in with work since he was supposed to train a class at 9 and I just sit in the lunch room trying to figure out my bid and what I'm going to choose. At this point I had already talked to them and they gave me the line numbers that were available but since I didn't have the packet I had to pring them out at Discover, which was a complete failure. It printed the excel sheet GINORMOUS and so I was trying to piece the shifts together. So that took a little bit but then I just waited and waited in the lunch room for about an hour and a half while Jas was figuring things out. He only ended up having to stay for 2 hours and then we left. The car started AND accelerated so that was a good sign. Jas was gonna get on the freeway but then I was like, what if your car stops again.... We don't wanna be stuck on the freeway. So he turned back onto Bangerter and I kid you not, in the SAME EXACT PLACE! 4700 South and Bangerter is CURSED I tell you! So we putter along BACK into the LIFE CHURCH parking lot and wait. We thought that since the car was turned off for awhile and it worked we could do the same thing again and at least drive to the car dealership to have them look at it. WRONG!!! After we played a couple games of UNO in the car again we tried to turn the car back on and this time it wouldn't even turn over. So we looked around and had a guy jump start our car and it started but wouldn't accelerate AGAIN! So we called the insurance company again and it was going to take ANOTHER HOUR for the tow truck to come and get us. This time we had them take us to the Nissan dealership to have them look at it since Pep Boys obviously missed the problem the first time. So we finally get down there and at this point it was like 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon. SO MUCH TIME WASTED ALREADY! So they said they were just gonnna do a diagnostic test again and then let us know what was up. So we just decided to wait til we knew how long it was gonna take and then we would go grab a bite to eat cause we hadn't eaten since 7 a.m.! So much for that...... it ended up taking them an hour before we went and asked what was going on. So a guy went back to see what was going on and 15 min later came back and told us the (insert heavy sarcasm here) "oh so good news!". We needed a new alternator and it was going to cost $650. OUCHY! That hurts the wallet. Oh and the other "good" news was that there wasn't a place in UTAH that had the kind of alternator we needed! FAN-diddly-TASTIC! Jason was in awe that not a single place in Utah wouldn't have one and they were like, "oh, well the companies that we work with don't have one but we can call auto zone or checker and see if they have one, we just won't be able to guarantee the part". FINE, whatever, we don't care, we just want our freaking car back! So they found a store up in Bountiful that had a part but obviously we weren't gonna get our car back til the next day. So my LOVING mother came and picked us up and drove us home. ALL DAY CONSISTED OF WAITING, SITTING AND MORE WAITING. We didn't get home til 6:30pm!

All I can say is that I'm going to be a lot more leery of Thursday the 12th than Friday the 13th.

-That is all

HELP!

Ok, so I really want to make my blog a lot cuter by adding different fonts and all that so I "Googled" how to add more fonts on blogger and basically was told to edit the HTML on the layout page manually..... Well that is pretty much a foreign language but I did figure out how to change a couple of the fonts (yay me!) but it was purely by luck. If any of you out there would want to teach me how to do this in an easier way PLEASE DO SO. I also want to make my header or whatever it's called cuter too by adding pictures or scrapbook-esque type stuff in the title. MAYBE I just need to go back to school to learn all this crap...... BUT I REALLY DON'T WANT TO! ANYWAY, your help would be GREATLY appreciated. That is all. BYE :)

Can I just say.......

Happy Birthday Jason! I love you so much!